The Patriot Post® · Monday Short Cuts

Insight: “We have every right to dream heroic dreams. Those who say that we’re in a time when there are no heroes, they just don’t know where to look.” —Ronald Reagan

Upright: “Contemporary American society is suffering from many crises, but one stands out above all the others: We have a crisis of gratitude. It’s time for Americans to fall in love with America again.” —Josh Hammer

Going out with a whimper: “It is both sad and dangerous that John Bolton’s final public role is that of a traitor who damaged America by violating his sacred trust with its people.” —Secretary of State Mike Pompeo

Food for thought: “There is no ‘nice’ way to arrest a potentially dangerous, combative suspect. The police are our bodyguards, our hired fists, batons and guns. We pay them to do our dirty work of protecting us, the work we’re too afraid, too unskilled or too civilized to do ourselves. We expect them to keep the bad guys out of our businesses, cars, and houses, out of our faces. We want them to ‘take care of the problem,’ we just don’t want to see how it’s done.” —Charles H. Webb, PhD

For the record: “What we should have learned from the Trump administration’s daft and destructive little trade war with China is that we cannot bully our way into success with tariffs. The U.S. balance of trade in the month of January 2017, when Trump took office, was –$65.6 billion, and in January of 2020 it was –$65.5 billion. (The so-called trade deficit is the wrong metric, but it is the one the president has chosen.) Total U.S. exports were lower in 2019 than they were in 2018.” —Kevin Williamson

Belly laugh: “When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find more people. You’re going to find more cases. So I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please!’” —Donald Trump, joking with supporters at his Tulsa rally

Non compos mentis: “The American people are owed answers about why President Trump wants less testing when experts say much more is needed.” —Nancy Pelosi, deliberately missing the joke

Demo-gogues: “If people don’t have adequate access to the ballot, I mean, that’s the stuff on which revolutions are built. If you begin to deny people the capacity of your democracy to work, even the Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, we have an inherent right to challenge that. And I’m worried that increasingly, people are disaffected.” —John Kerry (“Thing is, he’s right. Not because there will be voter fraud, but because people like John Kerry will tell everyone there was.” —Keith Koffler)

And last… “Since we’re dismantling anything built by white supremacists I guess it’s time to get rid of Planned Parenthood.” —Allie Beth Stuckey