Monday Brief: Obama Needs You to Enact His Agenda

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Subscribe to The Patriot Post — It's Right and It's FREE: click here. Brief · October 3, 2011 The Foundation "It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated." --James Madison Opinion in Brief "There's been a lot of speculation about what President Obama meant when he told an Orlando television interviewer that the United States is 'a great, great country that had gotten a little soft' over the last two decades. Some critics have compared Obama's remarks to Jimmy Carter's 1979 'malaise' speech in which Carter, down in the polls, the economy failing, his prospects for re-election growing dimmer by the day, made a television appearance in which he told Americans they were having a crisis of confidence. Others have argued that Obama's statement revealed a mix of 'condescension, incompetence, and narcissism,' in the words of columnist Charles Krauthammer. There's another way to read what the president said. Look at Obama's speeches in the last couple of months, and he has repeatedly scolded audiences for not working hard enough and for not sacrificing enough to achieve the goals he has set for his administration. He's done it with both supporters and with adversaries. With friends, his message has been: Nobody told you this would be easy, and you've got to work harder to enact my agenda. With adversaries, his message is: You've had it too easy, and you've got to make sacrifices to enact my agenda. Obama's 'gotten a little soft' remark fits into that theme: A soft America is one that is insufficiently willing to work and sacrifice to enact the Obama agenda. ... Lately, with the economy worsening and his approval ratings falling, he's been having a hard time bending Washington, and the country, to his will. Is it any surprise that he's now telling Americans they've gotten soft?" --columnist Byron York How are you working on Obama's agenda? Insight "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) Essential Liberty "The founders believed that special skills were necessary for free, self-governing individuals. Our second president, John Adams, said, 'Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.' Thomas Jefferson proposed a system of public schools to instill the necessary knowledge and attitudes, saying memorably 'If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.' When Ronald Reagan reflected on his eight years as president in his farewell address, he mentioned that one of the things he was proudest of was the renewed spirit of patriotism in the country. 'This national feeling is good,' he said, 'but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge.' ... And in what may have been the understatement of the decade, he said '... As for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.' ... When liberals tell the story of America ... they tend to focus excessively on our flaws and sins. ... [But in so many things] the U.S. is exemplary. If the public schools could convey just that much, it would be progress." --columnist Mona Charen The Gipper "Government exists to ensure that liberty does not become license to prey on each other." --Ronald Reagan The Oath Accountability Civil Action Join the tens of thousands of Patriots who have already signed on to the Oath Accountability Civil Action for Constitutional Integrity. To enforce our Constitution's limits on the central government, we believe a formal legal action is necessary. This action, if successful, would require that all members of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches, first and foremost, abide by their oaths "to support and defend" our Constitution, under penalty of law, and comport with its enumerated limitations on the federal government. The current scope of federal activities provides abundant evidence that many members of those three co-equal branches have long since abandoned their oaths, and, at present, there is no recourse for prosecution to enforce compliance. To that end, we urge you to join this action with Patriots across the nation in this effort to establish legal standing as citizens, particularly those in our Armed Services who defend their oaths with blood and life. If we are unsuccessful in our effort to seek remedy for the lack of any proscription against, and penalty for breach of oath, it will be because the judiciary refuses any such accountability regarding the wanton violation of our Constitution. Such rejection would in effect condemn Americans once again to the abuse previously characterized in American history as "Taxation Without Representation." Our goal is 500,000 signatures. Please join us, and encourage other like-minded Patriots to do so. A large support base will be necessary if the federal judiciary refuses to hear this action and we are forced to take it to the national legislature for codification into federal law. Government "Don't assume what happened to the solar-panel company Solyndra is unique. Its high-profile bankruptcy is basically the green-jobs fallacy writ large. Consider how these subsidized companies are funded. Are anxious investors ready to shower dollars on wind and solar power because there's great potential to make more money in this promising field? That's how companies get off the ground -- and stay there: They attract entrepreneurs who see the chance to make money and are glad to invest. Companies such as Solyndra, by contrast, apparently can't get by without money confiscated from you and me. (For that matter, they can't even get by with it.) That should tell you something about how viable their product is. ... Remember, too, that government spending has to come from somewhere. Money that likely would have been put to a more productive use has been funneled to a politically favored industry. As energy expert Nicolas Loris notes, 'When the government gives money to build a windmill, those resources cannot simultaneously be used to build other products.' Simply put, the government is picking winners and losers. Or trying to, at least -- the government record on such efforts is, well, a losing one." --Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner Click Here OOORAH! SEMPER FI MARINES! Let 'em know you are one of the few and the proud with these exclusive Marine insignia items: luggage, bibles, hats, mugs, wristbands, pins and more! Re: The Left "[Journalist Ron] Suskind has been criticized for getting quotes and facts wrong. But the White House hasn't disputed his interview with Mr. Obama, who had some remarkable things to say [in Suskind's book 'Confidence Men.'] ... Mr. Suskind asked him why his team had difficulty creating a policy to deal with unemployment. Mr. Obama said some of it was due to circumstances, some to the complexity of the problem. Then he added: 'We didn't have a clean story that we wanted to tell against which we would measure various actions.' Huh? It wasn't 'clean,' he explained, because 'what was required to save the economy might not always match up with what would make for a good story.' ... [T]his is mostly a problem for the Democratic Party at the national level, and has been since the 1980s. ... Because they couldn't take Reagan's views and philosophy seriously, they couldn't believe anyone else could, either. So they explained him through a story. The story was that Reagan's success was due not to decisions and their outcomes but to a narrative. The narrative was 'Morning in America': Everything's good, everyone's happy. Democrats vowed to create their own narratives, their own stories. Here's the problem: There is no story. At the end of the day, there is only reality." --columnist Peggy Noonan Political Futures "It may sound counterintuitive, but here's betting that President Obama wouldn't be at all upset if the high court rules that his health plan is unconstitutional. By urging an expedited review by the U.S. Supreme Court, the president knows that the politics cuts his way. If the court strikes down the plan, then Obama won't have to defend it in the fall campaign, robbing the Republicans of one of their two lines of attack, the other being the moribund economy. He could rally his base by arguing that he had pushed through a great 'progressive' reform only to be foiled by the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. People, like markets, hate uncertainty, and the presumed swing vote by Justice Kennedy could settle the issue. If Obama wins the judicial appeal, it will still be a win for him along the lines of today's conventional thinking. He will be able to argue that the Administration always knew Obamacare was constitutional, and the expedited review will muffle the issue in the general-election campaign. The one nightmare scenario for Obama is if the Supremes hear arguments before the election and decide the case after the voting. In that event, the briefs and oral arguments could well inflame the political debate. By asking for a speedy review, the President is evidently hoping to avoid this awkward straddle." --Washington Examiner Executive Editor Stephen G. Smith Will the Court's ruling help or hurt Obama? Faith & Family "Obamacare regulations proposed by the Department of Health and Services on Aug. 1 would require every private health plan in America to cover sterilizations as well as all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including 'emergency contraceptives.' These include drugs such as ulipristal, which can cause abortions both before and after an embryo implants in a mother's womb. If this regulation is finalized ... every American Catholic with a conscience formed in keeping with the teachings of his church would be forced to choose between disobeying Obama's law or disobeying his conscience. Because the 'religious exemption' in this proposed regulation is so narrowly drawn that it does not apply to Catholic hospitals, Catholic charitable organizations or Catholic colleges and universities, vast numbers of Catholic institutions would be forced to choose between dropping all health-care coverage for their employees or violating the teachings of their own church." --columnist Terence Jeffrey Reader Comments "Friday's Patriot Post asks the question, 'What's the right way to create jobs?' The answer is deceptively simple, but everyone seems to know it except President Obama and his sycophants; Government needs to get the heck out of the way and let business 'do it's thing.' Simply put, reduce taxes and regulations, thus allowing more freedom of action for all businesses, but small businesses most especially. Oh, and as a way to build even more confidence in Government's support for business, stop the practice of throwing money at businesses that should be allowed to fail rather than pay off political supporters who squander hundreds of millions of taxpayer money by accepting monetary favors just before filing for bankruptcy." --Scott "Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan is a huge step in the right direction. Tax a larger base and get rid of the loopholes. Reduce the size of government to fit into the revenue we get from tax -- don't expand tax to fit the size of government. We will all be better off with reduced intrusion into our lives. Freedom is what America is (was) about." --Harry "Without repealing the 16th Amendment, a sales tax would allow a future congress and administration to pile it on. If a sales tax is to be used, it needs to replace the income tax, not be in addition to it." --Gary "To answer your question about the federal government's intrusion into education, NO! The standard of education has gone south since the feds got involved. Standards for the education of our children should be left to the states with a lot of input from local school districts. I also think that the teacher's unions should be dissolved!" --Nancy The Last Word "[O]bama doesn't care much that a billionaire has 1,000 times more than a millionaire -- or that his new tax proposals will take a lot more from those making $200,000 than from the tiny few making $1 million. Instead, the president is in a populist frenzy to rev up his base against 'Them,' who supposedly 'are not paying their fair share.' The president's argument apparently is not that the top 5 percent haven't paid enough taxes. ... Obama seems angry that the top 5 percent will still have more money after taxes than do others, and so they should pay a redistributive government still more taxes. But 21st century class warfare is a weird thing. ... In the old days, class warriors were proverbial men of the people who made an effort to match their lifestyles with their rhetoric. Not now. When President Obama rails about 'millionaires,' we expect that in a few hours our Class Warrior in Chief will golf with Wall Street fat cats to hit them up for campaign money. We presume that the First Family prefers Costa del Sol, Martha's Vineyard or Vail to a passé Camp David. ... Class warfare is now not about brutal elemental poverty of the sort Charles Dickens or Knut Hamsun once wrote about. It is too often the anger that arises from not having something that someone else has, whether or not such style, privilege or discretionary choices are all that necessary. ... These are hard times, with high unemployment rates and economic stagnation. But we are not a nation of the malnourished and starving who are preyed upon by idle rich drones who pay no taxes. And a government that borrows $4 billion a day and spends $2 trillion more a year than it did just 10 years ago is hardly stingy." --historian Victor Davis Hanson Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis! Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team (To submit reader comments click here.) Patriot News Review Here We Go Again: Another Green Project Backed by Fed Loan Suffering Financially Mental Hospital Fighting to Release Attempted Reagan Assassin Never Would Have Guessed: White House Tipped Off AP Reporter Ahead of Michelle Obama's Target Photo-Op Obama Rebukes GOP Candidates for Not Speaking Up for Gay Soldier Roseanne Barr: Behead Bankers, Rich Who Won't Give Up Wealth It Begins: World's First 'Fat Tax' Introduced in Denmark More News The Right Opinion Burt Prelutsky: The Republican Mole Michael Barone: Is Herman Cain a Contender? George Will: Federalism, Coerced Debra Saunders: Is Mitt Romney the Next Meg Whitman? Burt Prelutsky: Aging Beats the Alternative Ken Blackwell: Will Obama Destroy Franciscan University of Steubenville? Peggy Noonan: Once Upon a Time in America Argus Hamilton: From The Comedy Store Edwin J. Feulner: The Green Jobs Fallacy L. Brent Bozell: Unzipping the Male 'X Factor' Lawrence Kudlow: Obama as Demoralizer-in-Chief Oliver North: Friends and Enemies More Opinion Grassroots Commentary 'Just' an Army Chaplain Why Gingrich Targets Obama's Czars Civilization versus Terrorists Is the Federal Reserve Constitutional? Mindless Marxist Minions Taxpayer Funded Scandals and '12 Election More Commentary Policy and Analysis Heritage Foundation Insider Heritage Foundation Research American Enterprise Institute Center for Strategic and International Studies The Cato Institute Hoover Institution National Rifle Association Ludwig von Mises Institute Citizens Against Government Waste National Center for Policy Analysis The Heartland Institute (Please pray for our Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.) Follow The Patriot Post:

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