Always A First Time

Obama Unaccustomed to Having His Lies Challenged
By Doug Patton
August 17, 2009

Barack Obama is one of the most spoiled politicians ever to capture the imagination of a nation. He has enjoyed what author and newsman Bernard Goldberg has described as “a slobbering love affair” with the American media. So many members of the Fourth Estate in this country have so thoroughly compromised themselves to sell his radical agenda that the American people no longer trust them even to report the news. And now, as the president and his toadies in Congress run into a brick wall in their efforts to take over the American health care system, they are shocked to discover that many of the same people who put them in office last year are outraged at their lies.

American citizens have been vilified, marginalized, lied about and smeared by these Washington hucksters. Good people, frustrated at the arrogance of their government, are being called names like a mob, Nazis, evil-mongers, terrorists, etc. Meanwhile, the president and Congress are watching the poll numbers they live by fall into the basement. I wonder why. Most of us learned in kindergarten that when you call other people names, they are not likely to react kindly. And they certainly are not likely to vote for you again.

It is almost axiomatic that people tend to project their own motives onto their fellow citizens. With that in mind, think of the deceit of this president. He speaks of doctors who remove tonsils for the sheer greed and profit motive. Is that what is in his heart? Does he really believe that a doctor would remove a child’s tonsils just to make money?

Recently, he went a step further and suggested that physicians sometimes look at the profit contrast between administering oral diabetes medication or other treatment with “a $30,000 or $40,000 leg amputation.” This statement is so despicable on so many levels it is hard to know where to begin!

Let’s start with the fact that he was once again shooting from the lip with no earthly idea what he was talking about. There is no scenario where a doctor makes $30,000 or $40,000 for a leg amputation. Their compensation generally is between $900 and $6,000 depending on the complications. Therefore, it is tempting simply to dismiss Obama’s ignorance and not comment further; but he is, after all, the President of the United States, so further comment seems essential.

Does this president really have so little regard for the medical practitioners of this country that he believes an American physician would cut off a limb just to put money in his/her pocket? Is this how his mind works? Does he have no shame? Does he actually know of such a doctor? Does he have evidence of such a contemptible act? If so, why is he not reporting it? We all know the answer to that. He is simply a liar who will say or do anything to drive home his agenda.

U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, R-IN, recently referred to the health care bill as “regrettable.” As a good friend of mine pointed out recently, “Regrettable is when I leave my car out in the rain with the windows down. This is an outrage!”

My friend is right, and one of the few people in public life with the guts to tell the American people the truth is Sarah Palin, who has described the health care bill as “evil.” She is right, of course, which is why Barack Obama’s political hit squads are working overtime to kill her chances of ever being anything more than the former governor of Alaska.

This White House and its goons in the media can tell lies until hell freezes over, but they will not stifle the American people’s thirst for the truth, especially about something as personal as their health care. We will not stand for this tyranny. We will hold Barack Obama and his accomplices accountable for their lies.
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© 2009 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a speechwriter and policy advisor to conservative candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.
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Patton Rides Writes Again

Palin Should Come Out Swinging in Debate

By Doug Patton

September 8, 2008

On the night of Thursday, October 2nd, first-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will face off against six-term U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware in their only scheduled debate of this campaign season. The conventional wisdom says that Biden, while being careful not to appear mean or condescending toward Gov. Palin, must simply display the fruits of his 35 years of experience in Washington in order to hold his own. But as is so often the case, conventional wisdom fails to take into account how wrong Biden has been on almost everything over the years.

While John McCain was still being tortured in the Hanoi Hilton, Joe Biden, like every flippant Democrat of that time, came to the U.S. Senate opposing the Vietnam War. Once elected, he voted to cut off funds to the South Vietnamese government, thereby ensuring a Communist victory.

In the 1980s, when President Ronald Reagan was facing down the Soviet Union’s “evil empire,” Joe Biden favored the utopian notion of a nuclear freeze and opposed the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative, saying, “The president’s continued adherence to SDI constitutes one of the most reckless and irresponsible acts in the history of modern statecraft.”

Biden supported Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega and fought Reagan’s attempts to support the Contras opposing him. He also opposed many other necessary weapons systems, such as the Trident submarine, the B-2 bomber and the Pershing ballistic missile.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, the whole world rose up to support the coalition led by President George H.W. Bush. Not Joe Biden. He opposed the use of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf War, thereby voting to allow Saddam Hussein to continue raping and pillaging a neighboring country, stealing their oil and threatening the nearby Saudi Arabian oil fields.

When America again found it necessary to take on Saddam Hussein in 2003, Joe Biden thought it would be a bright idea to split the country into three ethnic states: Sunistan, Shiastan and Kurdistan. Then, last year, when John McCain was urging the Bush administration to implement the surge in Iraq, Joe Biden voted ‘no.’

And those are just some of Joe Biden’s foreign policy misjudgments. His judgment on domestic policy is just as bad. He claims to be Catholic and yet supports abortion, and his votes on judicial appointments prove it. As chairman or ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he opposed some of the best Supreme Court nominees of our time: Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. He voted for Antonin Scalia but later said he regretted it.

A believer in gun control, Biden receives an ‘F’ from the National Rifle Association. He supported lawsuits against gun manufacturers for gun violence, but voted ‘no’ on more penalties for gun and drug violations. So, to review, he wants the victim of a gun crime to be able to sue the manufacturer of the gun, but he wants no additional penalties imposed upon the perpetrator of that crime. Sounds like typical liberal thinking to me. A lifetime NRA member, Sarah Palin could have a field day with that one.

Biden also wants to raise taxes, just as Obama does. He not only favors allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, he wants to raise new ones as well.

Sarah Palin should embrace the Ronald Reagan debate philosophy: be yourself and trust your conservative political instincts, knowing that while you will not win over every voter, enough of the American people share your values that you will prevail over the class warfare, international appeasement and emotional gibberish of the Left. In fact, Palin should perhaps quote Reagan on the silliness that is liberalism. One of my favorites from the Gipper was when he said, “It’s not that liberals don’t know anything; it’s just that so much of what they know just isn’t so.”

Yes, Joe Biden is knowledgeable in the ways of Washington. His inside-the-beltway experience is extensive. But he has been on the wrong side of history for 35 years, and Sarah Palin should come out swinging and point out that fact at every opportunity.

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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton

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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.

Memorial Day - Doug Patton

A Memorial Day to Remember 2008
By Doug Patton
May 26, 2008

This Memorial Day, I will remember the 4,435 Americans who died revolting against the tyranny of King George in the American Revolution.

I will remember the 2,260 Americans who died fighting the British again in the War of 1812.

I will remember the 13,283 Americans who died in the Mexican War.

I will remember the 558,052 Americans, on both sides, who died in our bloodiest war, the war between the Union and the Confederacy.

I will remember the 2,246 Americans who died in the Spanish-American War.

I will remember the 116,708 Americans who died fighting German aggression in World War I.

I will remember the 407,316 Americans who died defeating fascism in Europe and imperialism in the Pacific during World War II.

I will remember the 33,651 Americans who died battling North Korea.

I will remember the 58,168 Americans who died in Vietnam, including my best friend from high school, killed by a sniper in June of 1968, at the tender age of 20.

I will remember the 293 Americans who died driving Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait during the Gulf War.

I will remember the 2,464 Americans who were murdered by our Islamist enemies at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

I will remember the 506 Americans who have died so far liberating and securing Afghanistan.

I will remember the 4,081 Americans who have died liberating and securing Iraq.

I will remember the simple words carved in stone at the Korean War Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC: “Freedom isn’t free.”

I will remember those who have paid the price for that freedom, which I so often take for granted.

I will remember that courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the willingness to act decisively in spite of fear.

I will remember that there have always been far more tyrants than freely elected statesmen, and that brave Americans have had to pay the ultimate price to preserve liberty throughout our nation’s history.

I will remember that the United States of America has always been a fragile experiment defended by ordinary men called upon to do extraordinary things in times of great peril.

This Memorial Day weekend, many Americans will visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. It took our nation far too long to erect and dedicate it, and many who served in that epic struggle are no longer here to see it. In fact, we are now losing the members of that generation, most of whom are now in their eighties, at a rate of more than 1,000 per day.

There was never any adequate way for us to thank them for what they did. They never expected that we should. Like all those who have laid down their lives for freedom in all of America’s wars, they simply did what destiny called them to do. When their war was finished, those who survived returned home to resume their lives and stoically cope with the horrors they had seen.

This Memorial Day, I will remember that even as the free nations of the world could have lost World War II, without the will to be victorious America could still lose the worldwide war on terror.

As always, this year I will commemorate the sacrifice of my grandfather and my father, who served in World Wars I and II, respectively. They are now buried next to their beloved wives in a small cemetery on a hilltop surrounded by rolling farmland in Montgomery County in Southwest Iowa.

I will remember their service, and the noble lives they led after returning home. I will remember that they helped to preserve a legacy of freedom and opportunity for those of us who came after them.

This Memorial Day, I will remember those who sacrificed to protect my God-given rights.
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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at mhtml:%7BB5A5E0E5-09A7-4E7E-ABCC-097CA314DBE1%7Dmid://00000015/!x-usc:mailto:dougpatton@cox.net.

More Doug Patton

BHO is no JFK

By Doug Patton
February 4, 2008

With several members of the now largely irrelevant Kennedy family endorsing the most radically left-wing, least experienced candidate in this year’s race for president, perhaps it is time to introduce some reason into the ridiculous argument that Barack Hussein Obama is the new John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

JFK supported tax cuts, knowing they would spur economic growth. BHO thinks he can somehow tax us into prosperity.

JFK was a foreign policy hawk who stood up to the Soviet Union and let it be known that the United States of America was a superpower to be reckoned with. BHO is a foreign policy wimp whose proclivity toward appeasement in a very dangerous world would signal weakness to our enemies and invite them to attack us.

JFK told us to ask what we could do for our country. BHO tells us to expect that our country will do everything for us.

JFK was a genuine hero who very nearly died in World War II. The closest BHO has ever gotten to a war zone was when he was working as a “community organizer” on the mean streets of Chicago.

By the time JFK was elected to the presidency, he had already served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives and eight years in the U.S. Senate. BHO spent a few years in the Illinois State Legislature and lost a bid for a U.S. House seat before winning the 2004 U.S. Senate race. He spent one year in the senate before launching a bid for the presidency.

It is impossible to imagine JFK endorsing the radical idea that homosexuals should be allowed to marry each other, or even have the rights of marriage, as BHO believes.

It is also impossible to imagine JFK supporting the murder of the unborn. BHO’s position goes much further.

With terrorism and the economy taking center stage in our politics, it was relatively easy for most Americans to allow the tragic 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade to slip past them on the 22nd of last month. One third of a generation — fifty million Americans — are not here because of this holocaust, and two generations now have no memory of a nation without legalized murder of the unborn.

For various political and financial reasons, today’s Democrats — and far too many Republicans — are invested in keeping abortion legal in the United States. But few Americans with a conscience are willing to allow abortionists the right to kill a baby up to and beyond the moment of birth.

Barack Obama is.

Back in 2006, in a column about Barack Obama titled, “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” I wrote, “Most important to the liberal extremists who run the Democratic Party, this man’s moderate demeanor would successfully belie his leftist political ideology.”

A few weeks ago, in a piece about moderate, pro-life Democrat Sen. Ben Nelson, D-NE, endorsing Obama for president, I pointed out that Obama was the most radically left-wing member of the United States Senate on the issue of the sanctity of life. As it becomes increasingly possible that this man could become president, it is time to examine the ramifications of Obama’s position on the issue.

Jill Stanek, formerly a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois, led the fight in that state to stop the practice of killing babies born alive during an abortion. She testified in favor of legislation in the Illinois State Legislature that would give protection to such children. Barack Obama, then a state senator, opposed it.

When a similar piece of legislation worked its way through the U.S. Senate, even Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted for it. These are among the most liberal, pro-abortion leaders in the Democratic Party, and they concluded that protection of a child who survives an abortion was no threat to Roe vs. Wade. Not so BHO. He believes an abortionist should have the right to kill a baby after he or she has been born!

In this relativistic brave new world in which we now live, how long would it take medical science to begin experimentation or organ harvesting on newborns if BHO had had his way?

To paraphrase the late Lloyd Bentsen, on virtually any issue you can name, but especially on the issue of life, BHO is no JFK.

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© Copyright 2008 by Doug Patton

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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and public policy advisor. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online, TheConservativeVoice.com and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.