The Patriot Post® · Friday Short Cuts

Insight: “[P]rudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all, and this applies especially to the dealings of democracies. What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain.” —Demosthenes (384-322 BC)

Most government jobs = permanent jobs: “I’ve never encountered an organization where leadership was measured by how many people you fired. You can’t fire your way to excellence.” —VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson

So it’s all just for show? “The fact is that even if every single American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what — that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.” —John Kerry at the Paris climate summit

“The planet will be ok, there just won’t be any damn people on it.” —Han Solo Harrison Ford’s alarming prediction about man-made global warming (Of course, without warming, he’d still be frozen in carbonite…)

Dezinformatsia: “[Democrats] have to speak up and just tell the American people we can’t get anything done on gun violence because Republicans are in the way. Put it on the obstructors. Put it on the people who always defend a piece of paper that was 225 old or whatever, back in a society that doesn’t even exist today. … Then maybe you might strike a nerve with the American people to get rid of some of these jackasses who live by an old document that is just totally outdated.” —Ed Schultz

What could go wrong? “Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police. … Ban guns! Not just gun violence. Not just certain guns. Not just already-technically-illegal guns. All of them.” —New Republic’s Phoebe Maltz Bovy

Non Compos Mentis: “What I’m observing is that it’s tragic that in the immediate aftermath of a series of high-profile mass shootings people feel like they have to go out and purchase a gun. … [I]t’s tragic and ironic.” —Josh Earnest (What’s tragic is how the Left stands on the coffins of innocent people to politicize shootings.)

And last… “To think there is a right to bear arms because of the 2nd Amendment is to mix up cause and effect.” —Frank Fleming