The Patriot Post® · Friday Short Cuts

Insight

“Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess, that itself will need reforming.” —Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Upright

“Rising CO₂ levels are not the greatest handicap faced by the world’s most vulnerable countries. Poverty is. Poverty makes every problem worse, including those caused by climate change. … What poor countries need above all is to climb out of poverty. They require more growth, more technology, more infrastructure — all of which require more access to the fossil fuels that remain, overwhelmingly, the source of the world’s energy. The surest way to expand resilience to climate change is to first expand economic development. The United States today leads the world in reducing carbon emissions in large part because it earlier led the world in building an industrialized economy. That is the pattern for the developing economies to emulate.” —Jeff Jacoby

Re: The Left

“Collectivism is now cloaked by environmentalism. Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud is dwarfed by ‘climate change,’ a financial scam and global power-grab of such monumental proportions that even collectivist megalomaniacs like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong wouldn’t have dreamt of achieving it. Using dubious ‘science’ and massive propaganda campaigns, governments are imposing draconian policies that will never affect the planet’s climate but will make proponents unimaginably wealthy, while stripping most of the world’s population of their property and their freedoms, leaving them destitute and starving. The methodologies of the save-the-world con artists vary, but the underlying beliefs and practices are always the same: ‘Our goals are so lofty that the rules don’t apply to us.’ And when the soi-disant saviors are exposed as incompetents, hypocrites, frauds, thieves, or even murderous autocrats, their defense is always the same: But we meant well.” —Laura Hollis

“Make no mistake, Democrats engaged in a nationwide bribery of young voters by handing them a $10,000 check to motivate them to go to the polls and vote for their pals in the government. Every court so far has struck down the student debt relief as an unconstitutional exercise of executive power. The administration’s decision to implement this plan without Congressional approval or support shows a blatant disregard for the rule of law and the constitutional separation of powers. Despite having a team of lawyers at their disposal, they chose to move forward with this illegal measure in a desperate attempt to avoid a Republican victory in the elections. … This supposed relief is far more nefarious than it appears at first glance. This is a calculated ploy that will exacerbate divisions within our country and generate further support for the preposterous idea of court packing.” —Armstrong Williams

“In years past, when journalism was trusted by consumers much more than it is today, The New York Post might have been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop. New Twitter owner Elon Musk might have also won awards for his revelations of collusion between Twitter, intelligence officials who claimed the story was Russian disinformation, and leading Democrats who were in touch with social media owners to suppress stories that might have harmed President Biden’s re-election. There is a snobbery among the journalistic elite which distrusts information that doesn’t come from certain organs, like The New York Times, The Washington Post and major broadcast media. … If ‘democracy dies in darkness’ — the slogan of The Washington Post — so does journalism if much of the major media turn off the lights when it comes to accurate and fair reporting.” —Cal Thomas

Non Compos Mentis

“[Brittney Griner] represents … the best about America — just across the board, everything about her.” —Joe Biden

“[Griner] is an important role model.” —White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre

And Last…

“Biden gave up a Russian arms dealer in exchange for an anti-American WNBA player, while leaving US Marine Paul Whelan to rot in a Russian prison. This is an abomination.” —Matt Walsh

“They didn’t trade for Griner because she’s in the WNBA. Nobody cares about that. They traded for her because she’s gay and black. She had more intersectional points than the other American prisoners so she moved to the front of the line. That’s the way the system works now.” —Matt Walsh

“I am greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four-year anniversary of my arrest is coming up. I was arrested for a crime that never occurred. … I’m happy that Brittney is going home … but I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.” —Paul Whelan

“Obviously, there’s a lot of very understandable human emotion here in getting Griner released, but this is a very bad mistake by the Biden administration. This is not a deal. This is not a swap. This is a surrender. And terrorists and rogue states all around the world will take note of this, and it endangers other Americans in the future who can be grabbed and used as bargaining chips by people who don’t have the same morals and scruples that we do.” —former National Security Advisor John Bolton