The Patriot Post® · Thursday Short Cuts

Insight: “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” —Frederic Bastiat

For the record: “Two-thirds to three-quarters of a $4 trillion-plus federal budget can be described as Congress taking the property of one American and giving it to another to whom it does not belong.” —Walter Williams

Upright: “The crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border is a real emergency — not a figment of Trump’s imagination. Think of what the president is doing in terms of your family budget. You have money set aside to buy a new car. Then a member of your family gets seriously ill and requires emergency medical treatment that costs you several thousand dollars not covered by your health insurance. What do you do? You postpone buying the new car and use the money for emergency medical care.” —Hans von Spakovsky

For the record II: “Virtually all of the high profile widely-reported hate crimes over the last two years have been hoaxes. A broader motivation for these hoaxes is that the demand for bigots in America greatly exceeds the supply. … We have a very well-funded grievance industry. … The SPLC currently has an active invested endowment of $432 million dollars.” —Wilfred Reilly, Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University

Paging a young socialist woman: “I think we would look for somebody who is maybe not of the same gender that I am, and maybe someone who might be a couple of years younger than me, and somebody who can take the progressive banner as vice president and carry it all over this county to help us with our agenda, and help us to rally the American people.” —Socialist Bernie Sanders on who he would want on his presidential ticket

Friendly fire: “Overall I am not a supporter of the Green New Deal.” —Rep. Abigail Spanberger

Friendly fire II: “To be honest with you, I’ve read [the Green New Deal], and I’ve reread it, and I asked Ed Markey, ‘What in the heck is this?’” —Sen. Dick Durbin

Non Compos Mentis: “I think all of the announced Democratic candidates for president are capitalists. We don’t have socialist candidates running for president in the Democratic Party.” —Rep. David Cicilline, who added, “I don’t see any movement in the Democratic Party towards socialism at all.” He also asserted that Bernie Sanders isn’t “a member of the Democratic Party, so I wouldn’t attribute too much significance to how he self-identifies.”

And last… “I’m sad about the whole Jussie Smollett thing. Obviously I’m happy the crime didn’t actually happen, but I’m sad that we’ve apparently reached a point where victimhood is so virtuous that you’d risk absolutely everything to gain it.” —Allie Beth Stuckey