Thoughts for the Day

From Wolfshield:
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“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." –Patrick Henry

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"To talk with Gingrich supporters is to enter a world where words have no meaning. They denounce Mitt Romney as a candidate being pushed on them by 'the Establishment' -- with 'the Establishment' defined as anyone who supports Romney or doesn't support Newt. Gingrich may have spent his entire life in Washington and be so much of an insider that, as Jon Stewart says, 'when Washington gets its prostate checked, it tickles [Newt],' but he is deemed the rebellious outsider challenging "the Establishment" -- because, again, 'the Establishment' is anyone who opposes Newt." --columnist Ann Coulter

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“Last night, during his State of the Union address, he promised ‘a blueprint for an economy.’ But economies are crushed by blueprints. An economy is really nothing more than people participating in an unfathomably complex spontaneous network of exchanges aimed at improving their material circumstances. It can't even be diagrammed, much less planned. And any attempt at it will come to grief.” –John Stossel

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“The executive branch also needs to change. Too often, it’s inefficient, outdated and remote. That’s why I’ve asked this Congress to grant me the authority to consolidate the federal bureaucracy so that our Government is leaner, quicker, and more responsive to the needs of the American people.” --Pres. Barack H. Obama
(if this doesn't scare you, you need to study the constitution more)

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"I know it's been said before, but it merits repeating: the debate about taxes in general, and about extending the Bush tax cuts in particular, only sounds like the issue in question is fiscal. It's not. The Right and Left differ on tax policy primarily because of a difference in values. Broadly speaking, the Right believes that your stuff is yours. The Left believes your stuff doesn't really become your stuff until the government says it is. So the Right sees taxes as a way to pay for necessary government services. The Left sees taxes as an instrument of social control and redistributive justice. . . . It is simply not credible for Democrats and liberals to say they oppose extending those tax cuts because of concern for budget deficits. The real reasons are just old-fashioned envy, hard egalitarianism, soft socialism, and Keynesian claptrap about the economic benefits of redistributing income to promote consumption over saving. I agree with the supply-side argument that virtually all Americans benefit from the growth effects of keeping marginal tax rates low. But the most important reason to extend the tax cuts for everyone is that it is wrong for the government to steal and redistribute income." --National Review's John Hood

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"In the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama averred that if in three years he hadn't alleviated the nation's economic pain, he'd be a 'one-term proposition.' When three-quarters of Americans think the country is on the 'wrong track' and even Bill Clinton calls the economy 'lousy,' how then to run for a second term? Traveling Tuesday to Osawatomie, Kan., site of a famous 1910 Teddy Roosevelt speech, Obama laid out the case. It seems that he and his policies have nothing to do with the current state of things. . . . Responsibility, you see, lies with the rich. . . . For Obama, these rich are the ones holding back the 99 percent. . . . A country spending twice as much per capita on education as it did in 1970 with zero effect on test scores is not underinvesting in education. It's mis-investing. . . . In Kansas, Obama lamented that millions 'are now forced to take their children to food banks.' You have to admire the audacity. That's the kind of damning observation the opposition brings up when you've been in office three years. Yet Obama summoned it to make the case for his reelection! Why? Because, you see, he bears no responsibility for the current economic distress. . . . This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so much as Hugo Chavez." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

Tea Party Woes

I keep hearing and reading about "the Tea Party losing it's grip on the Republican Party" and "the Tea Party failing to produce a good, alternate republican candidate." When, if ever, was "the Tea Party" part of the Republican National Political Party? My experience with the Tea Party is that it is made up of Democrats, Republicans, and independents; conservative and liberal. Also, The "Tea Party" is as much of a political party as the original Boston tea party (not at all).
The Tea Parties (yes more than one) of recent years are groups of citizens across the country who decided to rally and make some change. I don't know where the surge of patriotic activism is but they did have a very large effect on the most recent National congressional elections. I wish the fervor was still alive. The idea behind the Tea Parties was that the Federal Government is broken in very many ways and it's time to stop, take a step back and look at what is going on. The idea was to support each other as citizens and make a difference in the elections. It was never about re-shaping and existing Political Party, it was a fight against them.