The Patriot Post® · Thursday Short Cuts

Insight: “Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.” —Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874-1950)

Upright: “[V]iolence is a tool. It’s not a good tool — in the moral sense — nor is it a bad tool. Surgery to save a life is laudable. Surgery to inflict pain is torture. A hammer can smash in someone’s skull, or it can build a house. To say that all kinds of violence are equally bad isn’t high-minded morality; it is amoral nihilism wrapped in a kind of gauzy, brain dead sanctimony.” —Jonah Goldberg

Nothing more than a vast right-wing conspiracy. Move along: “I think that the Clintons basically are better people than their enemies. … Trey Gowdy, who is a tool of the Koch Brothers, just feeds the New York Times stuff and they put it in the paper… You would think that at some point people who are supposed to know better would learn their lesson. But they never do, and so, therefore, I have to keep coming out of retirement to point this kind of stuff out.” —Clintonista James Carville

Birds of a feather?: “[Kanye West] has said very good things about me. Extremely positive things. … He’s actually a different kind of a person than people think. He’s a nice guy. I hope to run against him someday.” —Donald Trump

Owned: “I like Jeb. He’s a nice man. But he should really set the example by speaking English while in the United States.” —Donald Trump

Stumbling into the truth: “I don’t think that we should expect that anything that we’re going to enact in Washington is going to stop shootings.” —Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) during a lengthy rant about — what else? — why we need more gun control

Late-night humor: “NBC just announced that President Obama will appear on an episode of ‘Running Wild With Bear Grylls’ later this year. Yeah, I guess the episode features Obama roughing it on a golf course that hasn’t been mowed for a couple of days.” —Jimmy Fallon