The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Short Cuts

Insight: “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” —Mark Twain (1835-1910)

A blind squirrel finds a nut: “Unless the government had good reason to believe that Project Veritas employees were directly involved in the criminal theft of the [Ashley Biden] diary, it should not have subjected them to invasive searches and seizures.” —ACLU attorney Brian Hauss

“America should not participate in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, and Joe Biden must certainly not attend them. Communist China does not need a propaganda victory as it imprisons and brutally treats over a million Uyghurs.” —Nikki Haley

“If the $4 trillion House spending bill passes, the U.S. will have the highest combined federal and state personal income tax rate in the developed world. … Under the Democratic plan, the combined U.S. top rate would climb to 57.4% by 2026. The U.S. would leap over 22 other countries in the OECD tax ranking, including Italy (47.2%), Sweden (52.3%), and even France (55.4%). Germany comes in at a relative bargain at 47.2%. Congratulations, America, you’ll be Number One.” —Wall Street Journal

“Inflation is the most regressive tax of all, yet is advocated by those who claim to be progressive.” —Elon Musk

Nope: “We need immediate relief at the gas pump and the place to look is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.” —Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (The place to look is Biden’s domestic war on fossil fuels.)

Nope again: “It’s very simple. If we want to create more jobs, if we want to fight inflation, if we want to help families lower costs, the best thing we can do is pass Build Back Better.” —Chuck Schumer

Grand delusions: “[The reconciliation bill is] going to cut the cost of childcare. It’s going to cut the cost of healthcare. … It will help invest in building housing units so that people can go and find affordable housing. So, this is a bill about cutting costs. That’s exactly what the American people need right now and economists across the board will say this will actually help reduce inflation.” —White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki

Belly laugh of the week: “I’m a tough grader on myself. And I give myself an ‘A’ for effort.” —Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas

Swamp Doctor: “One of the things that to me was most difficult to accept is that we put together a good plan for how we were going to try and dampen down the spread of infection early on, thinking that that was accepted by everybody. And then the next day the president’s saying, ‘Free Michigan. Free Virginia.’ I didn’t quite understand what the purpose of that was, except to put this misplaced perception about people’s individual right to make a decision that supersedes the societal safety.” —Anthony Fauci

Non compos mentis: “There are also a lot of Americans who despite having gotten the shots and checks are still telling pollsters that [Biden’s] accomplished nothing or almost nothing, which I find amazing. I guess they spent the whole $2,000 and now they’re not happy anymore.” —MSNBC’s Joy Reid

That’s racist! “Michelle Wu, an Asian American, is the first woman and first person of color elected to lead the city [of Boston]. While many are hailing it as a turning point, others see it as more of a disappointment that the three Black candidates couldn’t even come close.” —NPR (Friendly fire: “This is … not good journalism.” —Andrew Yang)

Facepalm: “Every day we hear about heroes that stopped active shooters. That’s what was going on here. And that crowd was right. And that crowd was full of heroes.” —Kyle Rittenhouse prosecutor Thomas Binger (“Imagine seeing the videos of what happened that day and concluding that Kyle Rittenhouse was an ‘active shooter’ and that the armed mob of people trying to murder him were a ‘crowd full of heroes’!” —Doc Holliday)

Dumb and dumber: “The #RittenhouseTrial displays yet again that our ‘justice’ system is racist. How would this trial be going if he was a Black 17 yr old that crossed state lines illegally carrying an AR-15 and shot 3 white protesters? We need real justice in the legal system. This isn’t it.” —Ben & Jerry’s (“Not only did the judge just throw out the charge of carrying a long gun ‘illegally,’ but Kyle is from the Kenosha area and drove only a few miles to ‘cross state lines.’ And if he were black? I, like tens of millions of gun-owning Americans, would support his exoneration because we’re not melanin-obsessed racists like the libs at Ben & Jerry’s.” —Jesse James)

And last… “You simply have no credibility if you are blaming Kyle for going to the riot but not the rioters for rioting in the first place, or the media for provoking the riots based on lies about the Jacob Blake case.” —Matt Walsh