The Patriot Post® · Tuesday Short Cuts

Insight: “Taxes on capital, taxes on labor, inflation, bureaucratic regulation, minimum wage laws, are all — to different degrees — unnecessary slices of the wedge that stand between an individual’s effort and reward for that effort.” —Jack Kemp (1935-2009)

For the record: “[S]ome Trump supporters are talking as if a failure to change the rules for the benefit of ‘the Donald’ — by letting a plurality, rather than a majority, choose the winner — would mean that Trump had been cheated out of the nomination. But what of the voters who voted AGAINST Trump during the primaries? Despite the fog of political rhetoric, we should not lose sight of the fact that those who voted against Trump in the primaries were far more numerous than those who voted for him.” —Thomas Sowell

Trumped: “I think it’s very clear to him that he cannot control the editorial on my show, or from me, in a debate or other setting.” —Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on why Trump attacks her (An interesting indictment of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly.)

That’s the problem: “Somebody said, ‘Well, there’s a rule and another rule.’ I don’t care about rules, folks.” —Donald Trump

Non Compos Mentis: “Everybody believes that we are weak; we are weak on the world stage; we are not doing things that make sense economically. And [Trump is] probably the person who is most likely to do that. Are there better people? Probably.” —Ben Carson, perhaps the worst surrogate ever

Empty boasts: “[W]e’ve been leading a global effort to secure the world’s nuclear materials. And with summits like this, we’ve made important progress. Working with other nations, we have removed or secured enough nuclear material for more than 150 nuclear weapons — material that will now never fall into the hands of terrorists. All of South America is now free of these deadly materials. Central Europe and Southeast Asia are on track to be free of them later this year.” —Barack Obama (As for Iran, well…)

Late-night humor: “Tesla unveiled its new model 3 electric car. And I saw that fans were camping outside Tesla stores to reserve one. Camping out is actually great practice for when their cars run out of power 30 miles from the nearest outlets.” —Jimmy Fallon