The Patriot Post® · Tuesday Short Cuts

Insight

“Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of.” —Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995)

Re: Free Speech

“If leftists insist on framing the speech debate as a binary choice between compulsion and discrimination … then yes, free expression, explicitly laid out in the Constitution, should trump the right of a stranger to walk into a store and demand the owner say something he does not believe. Using [Justice Sonia] Sotomayor’s identitarian calculus, a shopkeeper would never be able to refuse the demands of any customer who happened to be gay.” —David Harsanyi

Re: The Leftmedia

“Ordinarily, the discovery of Hunter’s laptop would have had journalists drooling over thoughts of Pulitzers and fighting each other to see who’d break the biggest scoop. Ordinarily, the journalists at the New York Times and ‘60 Minutes’ would have been all over the laptop story. By now they would have sent their reporters all over the planet, tracking down the names and connecting the big dots between the sacks of money Hunter received from his ‘jobs’ in China, Ukraine and Russia and the big guy in the White House. … Ignoring Hunter’s laptop was a deliberate act by the mainstream liberal news media that was intended to protect Joe Biden and prevent Donald Trump from being re-elected — and it worked.” —Michael Reagan

As a Dog Returns to Its Vomit

“You can see why President Trump is pissed. He should be. The election was undoubtedly affected by suppression of a story damaging to his opponent. But Trump’s next move — calling for a suspension of the Constitution — is a perfect example of jumping on a rake with both feet. It allowed the Democrats and the media to avoid the #TwitterFiles story entirely by redirecting to Trump’s spoken authoritarianism. The Sunday shows were entirely Democrat-media activists smacking around Republicans about Trump’s comments. So instead of Americans being sympathetic to Trump’s claims of being jobbed, Americans received a firehose of rhetoric about how Trump is a threat to democracy — precisely the case Twitter’s censorship czars were making when they wrongly banned him!” —Ben Shapiro

The BIG Lies

“Americans are facing elevated prices at the grocery store. One of the reasons? Giant corporations have been using inflation as cover to abuse their market power and jack up prices for consumers. We need to crack down on corporate price gouging.” —Senator Elizabeth Warren

“Because of our policies, folks are starting to feel the impact of our legislative achievements in their own lives. It will only accelerate in the months ahead as we implement our investments in American families.” —Joe Biden

Village Idiot

“I always think of [testosterone] as a toxin that you have to slowly work out of your system.” —Hollywood director James Cameron

And Last…

“I find myself more frustrated with weak, wimpy, limp conservatives than I do with the Democrats. At least they fight for what they want. Republicans claim to be fighters and really are just weak on a lot of things.” —Allie Beth Stuckey