Thought for Today

"It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition."

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson

Thought for Today

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters."

~~~~~ Samuel Adams

Thought for Today

"The real question of government versus private enterprise is argued on too philosophical and abstract a basis. Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity and until they do (and find the cure) all ideal plans will fall into quicksand."

~~~~~ Richard P. Feynman

Thought for Today

"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and the one was of the contrary, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."

~~~~~ John Stuart Mill

Thought for Today

"Party is the madness of many, for the gains of a few."

~~~~~ Alexander Pope

Thought for Today

"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."

~~~~~ Jonathan Swift

Thought for Today

"The special deals and payoffs are incidental to the [health care] bill in one sense; if they were all removed it would still be a bad bill. But in another sense, they reveal something essential about a government takeover of health care: it is all about looting, about how one group of people can tax and regulate others in an attempt to get something for nothing. All statist programs are rife with this kind of scheming, and they have to be, because whenever wealth is seized by force, there is a battle among the looters over how to divide the spoils."

~~~~~ Robert Tracinski

Thought for Today

"The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just."

~~~~~ Abraham Lincoln

Thought for Today

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men."

~~~~~ Samuel Adams

Thought for Today

"It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do."

~~~~~ Edmund Burke

Thought for Today

"You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream – the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, 'The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.'"

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Thought for Today

"When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, ... who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."

~~~~~ George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Thought for Today

"A Fatal Tendency of Mankind. Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing. But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. ... This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man – in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain."

~~~~~ Frederic Bastiat

Thought for Today

"Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty. We're working on the third generation which has had little in the way of education about what our Constitution means and why it was written. Thus, we've fallen easy prey to charlatans, quacks and hustlers."

~~~~~ Dr. Walter Williams
             George Mason University
             Fairfax, VA

Thought for Today

"Communism possesses a language which every people can understand – its elements are hunger, envy, and death."

~~~~~ Heinrich Heine

Thought for Today

"Authoritarian socialism has failed almost everywhere, but you will not find a single Marxist who will say it has failed because it was wrong or impractical. He will say it has failed because nobody went far enough with it. So failure never proves that a myth is wrong."

~~~~~ Jean-Francois Revel

Thought for Today

"One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way. Hitler's government was a popular government; the Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise."

~~~~~ Robert A. Heinlein

Sarah Palin: With a Stiff Spine America Must Stand Against Obamacare

12:24 PM CST Sunday, March 24, 2010 —

If Senator Reid, Speaker Pelosi, and President Obama get their way, soon our country will be changed forever. Using every partisan parliamentary trick in the book (including some they invented just last week), Washington’s Left intends to ram through their takeover of our health care system regardless of the consequences.

The latest twists and turns in the Obamacare drama seem almost surreal. One minute the Democrat leadership is trying to amend a bill before the president has even signed it into law, and the next minute they’re trying to draft a new rule that will allow the House to “deem” a bill passed without actually voting on it! They’re determined to use the Senate reconciliation process as a parliamentary trick to bypass the regular voting procedure (and by the way, to add insult to injury, they’re now going to ram through federalization of America’s student loan industry with this same reconciliation vote). Is there any other wildly unpopular legislation they’d also like to sneak in? Perhaps the anti-energy-independence policy “Cap and Tax” (aka Cap and Trade) is next?

And make no mistake, the Obamacare bill is wildly unpopular. The Democrats’ own pollsters warn of an “unmitigated disaster” for them in November if they don’t abandon their plan and start over with real incremental health care reform. Incredibly, at this point, they don’t seem to care. Speaker Pelosi thinks Congress must pass the bill so that the American people can then “find out what’s in it.” We know what’s in it. We don’t want it. The Democrats will take short-term electoral losses in exchange for long-term radical change of the United States of America. They assume we’ll come to accept this new intrusion of government once we’re stuck with it. That’s why we can’t concede this battle. Americans must stiffen our spines and stand against this action that violates the will of the people with centralized government mandates and crippling costs.

Republicans in Congress are holding the line, and some Democrats are standing with them. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) said he won’t vote for the Senate bill if federal funding of abortion is included. Last Friday, he told National Review Online that some Democrats have told him that if abortions aren’t covered in Obamacare then “more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more…Money is their hang-up. Is this how we now value life in America?” As I wrote in my first post on this topic, human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion. Government health care will not reduce the cost of medical care; it will simply refuse to pay it. And who will get left behind when they have to ration care to save money?

Please ask yourself: who will be left behind? And who will decide – what kind of panel will decide – who receives the health care that government will obviously have to ration?

There’s a great deal of pressure being put on Stupak’s pro-life Democrats. They’re already dwindling in number. Their party is threatening them, and so are powerful SEIU labor union bosses. The Democrats respecting the sanctity of life have every incentive to buckle under the pressure, so they need to know that we’ll support them if they do the right thing and vote no on Obamacare.

Please take the time to get involved in the debate this week. There are many grassroots efforts under way. There will be a march on Washington on Tuesday, March 16th (see here for details). Rep. Michele Bachmann has a “Kill the Bill” online petition that you can sign here. Most importantly, contact members of Congress and offer your support if they do the right thing.

We know we’ll beat them at the ballot box, but we have to kill this bill before November. This is the final push. We must stand up and stand together one last time to insist on true market-oriented, patient-centered health care reform that reflects America’s values and the will of the people.

– Sarah Palin

Thought for Today

"Right now, if you don't like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you're sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don't like 'global governance'? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?"

~~~~~ Mark Steyn

Thought for Today

"From now on, when you hear Obama speak, try replacing 'let me be clear' with 'let me lie to you,' and see if it makes more sense."

~~~~~ Jacob Sullum

Thought for Today

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."

~~~~~ Leo Tolstoy

Thought for Today

"One of the ways the country is going in the wrong direction is not simply with huge government spending but with huge government period. Ordinary Americans are uneasy about trusting their fate to huge government. They know that government services are inefficient, expensive, and occasionally repressive and subject to corruption. More than that, huge government is unreliable. The healthcare debate has got to be reminding ordinary Americans of their unease over government promises. Think about it. The same big government Democrats who are promising government-secured healthcare are promising 'healthcare savings' that are clearly the denial of Medicare services to the elderly. That is to say, Medicare services that were once promised to seniors by Medicare's advocates are being taken from them under the false claim that they are savings. Face the facts: the Democrats' healthcare savings are actually healthcare denials to those who have been counting on those services for years. Government does not keep its promises. Yet government is the Democrats' solution to practically all our current problems. ... Once again government cannot be trusted. What government gives to us, government can take away."

~~~~~ R. Emmett Tyrrell

Thought for Today

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

~~~~~ Alexander Graham Bell

Thought for Today

"You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."

~~~~~ Lyndon Johnson

Thought for Today

"Here is a math problem for you: Assume that the legislation establishing government control of medical care is passed and that it 'brings down the cost of medical care.' You pay $500 a year less for your medical care, but the new costs put on employers is passed on to consumers, so that you pay $300 a year more for groceries and $200 a year more for gasoline, while the new mandates put on insurance companies raise your premiums by $300 a year, how much money have you saved?"

~~~~~ Thomas Sowell

Thought for Today

"A liberal mistrusts lessons bought with experience. For him, theory is all. He's the only man who would sit down on a red-hot stove twice. That makes well-meaning Democrats marks for shysters selling health-care 'reform,' global warming and appeasement of radical Islamists."

~~~~~ Wesley Pruden

Thought for Today

"When you knowingly pay someone to lie to you, we call the deceiver an illusionist or a magician. When you unwittingly pay someone to do the same thing, I call him a politician. President Obama insists that health care 'reform' not 'add a dime' to the budget deficit, which daily grows to ever more frightening levels. So the House-passed bill and the one the Senate now deliberates both claim to cost less than $900 billion. Somehow '$900 billion over 10 years' has been decreed to be a magical figure that will not increase the deficit. It's amazing how precise government gets when estimating the cost of 10 years of subsidized medical care. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's bill was scored not at $850 billion, but $849 billion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her bill would cost $871 billion. How do they do that? The key to magic is misdirection, fooling the audience into looking in the wrong direction. I happily suspend disbelief when a magician says he'll saw a woman in half. That's entertainment. But when Harry Reid says he'll give 30 million additional people health coverage while cutting the deficit, improving health care and reducing its cost, it's not entertaining. It's incredible."

~~~~~ John Stossel

Thought for Today

"Tragically, this administration seems hell-bent to avoid seeing acts of terrorism against the United States as acts of war. The very phrase 'war on terrorism' is avoided, as if that will stop the terrorists' war on us. The mindset of the left behind such thinking was spelled out in an editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, which said that 'Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, will be tried the right way -- the American way, in a federal courtroom where the world will see both his guilt and the nation's adherence to the rule of law.' This is not the rule of law but the application of laws to situations for which they were not designed. How many Americans may pay with their lives for the intelligence secrets and methods that can forced to be disclosed to Al Qaeda was not mentioned. Nor was there mention of how many foreign nations and individuals whose cooperation with us in the war on terror have been involved in countering Al Qaeda -- nor how many foreign nations and individuals will have to think twice now, before cooperating with us again, when their role can be revealed in court to our enemies, who can exact revenge on them."

~~~~~ Thomas Sowell

Thought for Today

"Our task now is not to sell a philosophy, but to make the majority of Americans, who already share that philosophy, see that modern conservatism offers them a political home. We are not a cult; we are members of a majority. Let's act and talk like it. The job is ours and the job must be done. If not by us, who? If not now, when?"

~~~~~ Ronald Reagan

Thought for Today

“The United States of America – five percent of the world’s population – leads the world economically, militarily, scientifically, and culturally – and by a spectacular margin. Any one of these achievements, taken alone, would be cause for enormous pride. To dominate as we do in all four arenas has no historical precedent. That we have achieved so much in so many areas is due – due entirely – to the structure of our society as outlined in the Constitution of the United States.”

~~~~~ Bill Whittle

Thought for Today

"When Barack Obama was campaigning – not that he's ever stopped – back in 2008, he made a number of promises. As we all know, like a cad on the make, he was only trying to get us in the sack. Once he had his way with us, he barely remembered our name, let alone his various vows."

~~~~~ Burt Prelutsky

Thought for Today

"They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare.... Giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please."

~~~~~ Thomas Jefferson