The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

For the Record

“Yes, it’s true that in nominal terms stocks are at record highs. But one of the first rules of investing is that you need to pay attention to your after-inflation profits. … The real (inflation-adjusted) rate of return in the S&P 500 after three years of Biden is … only 8%. This is fairly anemic and well below the average annual real rate of return since the New York Stock Exchange opened its doors, which is a three-year average of more than 20%.” —Stephen Moore

Observations

“So many descriptions of human behavior have been modified or changed to gloss over their real meaning. In part, I think, it is to avoid judgment which can lead to a change in behavior that benefits individuals and the wider culture. Failing to identify certain behavior for what it is can have the effect of legitimizing that behavior in the eyes of people who are engaging in it and in the wider culture that refuses to accept a standard defining right and wrong.” —Cal Thomas

“Two of the Ten Commandments prohibit adultery and bearing false witness. Those two forms of behavior are increasingly allowed in our ‘non-judgmental’ culture. We see daily the corrosion violating these commands have caused.” —Cal Thomas

“At the start of the 20th century, a new form of moral confusion was introduced. While there were always those who called good evil and evil good, shortly after Einstein discovered relativity in the natural order, Western civilization applied relativity to the moral order. … Instead of good and evil, we now have a set of other ‘moral’ categories: rich and poor, white and black, colonizers and colonized, strong and weak, oppressors and oppressed.” —Dennis Prager

“For the American Left, the concept of Christian nationalism is simply a tool which they can use to draw lines against political action by those who oppose their agenda. In that way, it’s not unlike Putin’s use of a religion that he himself doesn’t believe in for purposes of achieving his own political stability. Putin celebrates it out loud while quietly shutting it down. The American Left lampoons it out loud to the same end: that faith would stay put in the heart of the individual. But a faith that stays put in the heart is a faith with blocked arteries. A heart that can’t pump its lifeblood outward will end in cardiac arrest.” —Jared Bridges

Non Compos Mentis

“They come up with things to profile us for. I believe this with everything in my heart — we can get rid of all the crime in America overnight, just like that, and people ask, ‘How, Attorney Crump?’ Change the definition of ‘crime.’ … They made the laws to criminalize our culture, black culture.” —civil rights attorney Ben Crump

“Now it’s time to organize formally and bring into the halls of Congress the power and the transformative nature of hip-hop culture. … Our goal is to make sure the hip-hop community has a seat at the table as we work on federal policy.” —Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)

Useful Idiot

“[Biden] is not going to be public with everything he says to Netanyahu. But I know this: He feels about the way I feel when it comes to Netanyahu. [H]is leadership has not been good for Israel.” —Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC)

Belly Laugh of the Day

“The president has done an incredible job of bringing this country back from the brink and then protecting us on the national and international stage as well.” —Biden senior adviser Mitch Landrieu