The Foundation
"[T]he fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace." --Alexander Hamilton
Editorial Exegesis
"Osama bin Laden's bodyguard may soon exit Guantanamo Bay, along with dozens of others. Bad idea. To keep the U.S. homeland safe, dangerous terrorists should check into Gitmo -- not check out. The American left has been squawking for years about the detention facility for captured terrorists set up after the 9/11 attacks, on U.S. territory at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, arguably the most comfortable POW camp in the history of warfare. ... As president, Obama found Gitmo came in handy, and reneged on closing it. The recent news that U.S. intelligence believes a 53-year-old Gitmo alumnus named Sufyan Ben Qumu, a leader of Libya's Ansar al-Sharia militia, helped organize the recent killing of Ambassador Chris Stevens is a reminder of the facility's importance. The 55 detainees getting Get Out of Gitmo Free cards include Idris Ahmad Abdu Qadir Idris, a bodyguard for the late al-Qaida terrorist chief Osama bin Laden. 'There are numerous examples of jihadist prisoners, from Gitmo and other prisons, returning to terrorism,' Dennis Pluchinsky, adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies and author of a 2007 study on global jihadist recidivism, told IBD. While there is no study of overall recidivism rates of jihadists worldwide, the U.S. government pegs the Guantanamo Bay rate at about 27%. So Obama's planned release 'means that a quarter of them will return to violence,' Pluchinsky warns. 'Given that most are Yemeni and returning to Yemen, I would add another 8%.' Obama's release list features Taliban operatives Noorullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Khairullah Khairkhwa and Mullah Mohammed Fazl, suspected of killing thousands of Shiites in Afghanistan before 9/11. The White House says the worst won't be let go. Good luck finding 'good guys' among this bunch of captured terrorists." --Investor's Business Daily
Upright
"[Obama's] objective between now and November is that nothing happens in the world, as if he can stop it -- ignore the Middle East, ignore the Iranian problem, ignore the debt ceiling and the cliff. Ignore everything so you can get over the finish line and then expect the world to respond to us." --columnist Charles Krauthammer
"[P]resident Obama lives in a world of words. His presidency is marked by his worship of his own rhetoric; he's said repeatedly that his worst mistake as president is a failure to communicate with the American people, as though his actions are secondary to his mellifluous statements. Obama believes that words drove Muslims to murder our ambassador in Libya, storm our embassy in Tunisia and burn American flags in Cairo. He thinks that words and actions can be equated. ... He believes in a restricted vision of free speech, a politically correct vision. That's not free speech at all. It's tyranny." --columnist Ben Shapiro
"We must ... remember that taxes are not meant for the government to milk as much income from taxpayers as possible to pay its gigantic bills. The level of taxes that a government aspires to collect should have some connection to the necessary goods and services it has to provide to individuals. And by necessary, I don't mean all the spending promised to every possible interest group out there. We shouldn't be having a conversation about taxes, and whether someone pays enough or too much, without also considering what services should be provided by the government. As we stand now, the government is overreaching and overspending and it's no surprise that it doesn't have enough revenue to pay for it all." --columnist Veronique de Rugy
"Our media doesn't just report 'news' unfavorable to Romney. They obsess over it; complete with repetitive and thoroughly useless incantations that Romney's campaign is hopeless. ... I will wager a million dollars that Barack Obama has held a meeting with his major donors where he has told them his job is not to worry about the 47 percent of greedy right-wing rich Republican voters who won't vote for him. It's the way politicians talk to donors in private. ... This Romney tape was recorded in May, but the activists who recorded it obviously wanted to delay its release until the fall campaign. ... We know by now that to these 'news' manufacturers, nothing can be a 'big story' unless it makes Obama look good and helps him win a second term." --Media Research Center president L. Brent Bozell
"The bigger the state, the smaller the citizen. Every Republican candidate should be repeating that truth in every speech. Why? Because the American experiment is on trial this November: Are we to remain the heirs of the American Revolution or become heirs to the French Revolution? Do we want to take care of ourselves, our families, and our communities -- or do we want, as in Europe, the government to do so? Is it moral or compassionate to saddle our children and grandchildren with a crippling national debt? Is it moral or compassionate to keep printing dollars, which both devalues the savings of all Americans and imposes a tax on all Americans, especially on the poorest? These are the questions Romney must pose every day and in many of his ads. Only when Americans have to answer these questions will a sufficient number of them vote Republican this November." --columnist Dennis Prager
Insight
"By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable." --economist Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992)
"The trouble is the Communists got their theories out of a book by that guy Marx. He was like one of those efficiency experts; he could explain to you how you could save a million dollars, and he couldn't save enough himself to eat on." --American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)
Demo-gogues
Editor's Note: Obama spoke at the United Nations Summit in New York Tuesday night. The following are some excerpts from that speech:
"We understand why people take offense to this [anti-Islam] video because millions of our citizens are among them. ... We do not expect other nations to agree with us on every issue. Nor do we assume that the violence of the past weeks, or the hateful speech by some individuals, represent the views of the overwhelming majority of Muslims any more than the views of the people who produced this video represent those of Americans. ... Let us remember that Muslims have suffered the most at the hands of extremism. ... The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. ... And it is because of the progress that I've witnessed in my own lifetime -- the progress that I've witnessed after nearly four years as president -- that I remain ever hopeful about the world that we live in. ... Nations have come together to lock down nuclear materials, and America and Russia are reducing our arsenals. ... At a time of economic challenge, the world has come together to broaden prosperity. Through the G-20, we have partnered with emerging countries to keep the world on the path of recovery. America has pursued a development agenda that fuels growth and breaks dependency. ... New partnerships have been forged to combat corruption and promote government that is open and transparent." --Barack Obama
The noise of allies: "I have conversations with Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu all the time. And I understand and share [his] insistence that Iran should not obtain a nuclear weapon, because it would threaten us, it would threaten Israel, and it would threaten the world and kick off a nuclear arms race. ... When it comes to our national security decisions -- any pressure that I feel is simply to do what's right for the American people. And I am going to block out any noise that's out there." --Barack Obama, responding to whether he feels "pressure" from Netanyahu
It's about time: "Oh I think that, you know, as president I bear responsibility for everything -- to some degree." --Barack Obama
Except it's not his fault: "When I came into office, I inherited the biggest deficit in our history. And over the last four years, the deficit has gone up, but 90 percent of that is as a consequence of two wars that weren't paid for, as a consequence of tax cuts that weren't paid for, a prescription drug plan that was not paid for, and then the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression." --Obama, with a quote that is almost point-for-point lies
It's ok when he said it: "What I think will re-engage people in politics is if we're doing significant, serious policy work around what I will label the 'working poor,' although my definition of the working poor is not simply folks making minimum wage, but it's also families of four who are making $30,000 a year. They are struggling. And to the extent that we are doing research figuring out what kinds of government action would successfully make their lives better, we are then putting together a potential majority coalition to move those agendas forward." --Barack Obama in 1998, saying essentially the same thing Mitt Romney said about voting blocks
Class warfare: "I can afford to pay a little more and Mitt Romney sure can afford to pay a little more. We don't build the economy from the top down. We build it from the bottom up." --Barack Obama
Squeaky wheel: "The information released ... by Mitt Romney reveals he manipulated one of the only two [years] of tax returns he's seen fit to show the country. That raises the question: What else in those returns has Romney manipulated? ... [Romney] says he wants to be president for only half the people but he acts like he only cares for the top two percent." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
Dezinformatsia
Belly laugh of the week: "[T]he Republican Party has done Romney no favors by forcing him so far to the right that he may not be able to scramble back by November 6th." --former ABC news anchor Charles Gibson
Opposite day: "President Obama's time in office ... has given rise to a new approach. Republicans decided to do all they could to make the president unsuccessful. Their not-so-subliminal message has been: We will make the country ungovernable unless you hand us every bit of legislative, executive and judicial power so we can do what we want." --Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, complaining about the very approach Democrats actually took
Inversions: "If Obama wins, to put it bluntly, he will become the Democrats' Reagan. The narrative writes itself. He will emerge as an iconic figure who struggled through a recession and a terrorized world, reshaping the economy within it, passing universal health care, strafing the ranks of al -Qaeda, presiding over a civil-rights revolution, and then enjoying the fruits of the recovery." --columnist Andrew Sullivan
The BIG Lie: "When your guy left town, Dubya -- who nobody asked him to come back by the way at the Republican convention -- unemployment was well past 10 percent and skyrocketing." --MSNBC's Christ Matthews to talk-show radio host Roger Hedgecock (Unemployment was just over 7 percent when Bush left office.)
Newspulper Headlines:
Out on a Limb: "Analysis: Release of 2011 Taxes Unlikely to Mollify Romney Critics" --Los Angeles Times website
We Blame George W. Bush: "Tom Latham Blames Eric Cantor on Farm Bill" --Politico.com
Answers to Questions Nobody Is Asking: "Yes, We Still Need a Women's Movement -- for the Sake of Everybody" --Huffington Post
Breaking News From 1998: "Monica Lewinsky Ready to Reveal Clinton Sex Secrets" --FoxNews.com
Bottom Story of the Day: "Distrust of Media Hits All-Time High" --Politico.com
(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)
Village Idiots
Extreme class warfare: "There are rich people everywhere. And yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries. They don't invest in public schools, in public hospitals, in other kinds of development internally." --Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, preaching to the UN about "collecting taxes in an equitable manner," by which she means soaking the "rich"
Reducing women to sexual objects: "[Women are] not really concerned about what's happened over the last four years, they really want to know what's going to happen in the next four years." --Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter implying that all women just want free contraception and abortion
Mountains out of molehills: "[Last week] began with Governor Romney basically slandering 47 percent of America saying that they were, you know, hooked on dependency, didn't pay their taxes, and so on. And at the end of the week we saw him manipulating his own tax returns to try and plump up his portion of taxes to 14 percent." --Obama adviser David Axelrod
Sure thing: "No one either intentionally or unintentionally misled anyone involved in this [explanation about attacks in Benghazi, Libya]. No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than we do." --Obama adviser Robert Gibbs
Endorsements you don't want: "Y'all better vote for f-----g Obama, OK? For better or for worse, we have a black Muslim in the White House." --Madonna
Short Cuts
"As part of the strategy for the upcoming presidential debates, the Obama campaign is attempting to lower expectations. And believe [me], if there's one thing that President Obama is good at lately, it's lowering expectations." --comedian Jay Leno
"The Middle East is in chaos, Americans are murdered, and the economy continues to crumble, and Obama is going on The View after his fun time with Letterman. You ever get this feeling that the problems facing America just aren't that interesting to Obama?" --humorist Frank J. Fleming
"Democrats need to change their party mascot from the donkey to the squirrel. They divert the media's and the electorate's short attention spans with fleeting, fuzzy objects -- like the main canine character in the animated Pixar movie 'Up,' who was easily distracted from his main thoughts and serious duties by every last little moving trifle." --columnist Michelle Malkin
"U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice claimed the attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya was a spontaneous reaction to a video. The protesters just happened to be carrying their rocket launchers on September 11th when they felt insulted over a video released on YouTube in June. That's what the president told Rice, and as we know, rice goes with anything." --comedian Argus Hamilton
"Intelligence sources now say the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi involved a former Gitmo detainee. Great. And these are the only illegals Obama wants to ship out of the country." --Fred Thompson
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team
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