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The ADVANCE, August 18, 2021 /Page 6A
(Site Ahumtce
A free press is not a privilege but
organic necessity in a great society.
—Walter Lippmann
COMMENTARY
out of
CONTEXT
A compilation of quotations on a variety of
issues by national, state and regional writers,
well-known personalities, just plain everyday
people and from various publications
collected by the editors of THE ADVANCE.
Quotes for our Times:
Frank Liberato, writer for American
Thinker: Biden's six months in office have
us on the road To communism.
But then who would vote for Demo
crats? The only immigrants crossing into
this country from the south who would not
eventually vote for Democrats in large
numbers are Cuban refugees. They are
also, by and large, the only group with
legitimate asylum claims -- and they are
the only group Biden's government is
turning away. Their fate is something you
probably don't want to think about, but it
serves the purposes of the Biden adminis
tration, whose goal is to import as many
future Democrat voters as humanly pos
sible.
Derek Hunter, Radio show host and
author: Liberals show you what they really
think of the country (and you).
Essentially, liberals are ready and
eager to believe anything and everything
bad about this country. . . , It's how you
get hoax after hoax reported as fact and
screamed from the mountain tops, only
to be corrected in the dark in the hopes
that no one will notice that no one both
ered to do any journalism in the process
of reporting.
John Stossel, author of "Give Me a
Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats,
and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge
of the Liberal Media": Silenced!
The real reason for shortages and suf
fering in Cuba is communism. "When the
government controls your business," says
Cuban emigre Alian Collazo, "people
don't have food. All resources end up in
the hands of the state."
Other American "useful idiots," like
Michael Moore, praise Cuba's "free" ser
vices. In his documentary "Sicko," Moore
took a group of Americans to a Cuban
hospital and celebrated how they were
given free health care.
But Collazo points out that "free" is mis
leading. "Go to a hospital in Cuba -- they
don't even have aspirin! Yeah, (health
care's) free. (But) it's horrible."
Greg Gutfeld, host of Gutfeld! and co
host of The Five: Climate change is saving
hundreds of thousands of lives
Fact: more people died from cold
weather than hot. A new Lancet study re
ports that while a half million people die
from heat per year, roughly 4.5 million die
from the cold. More than have officially
died worldwide from COVID, but global
warming has reduced the intensity of ex
treme cold weather.
According to (Bjorn Lomborg of the
New York Post): "as temperatures have in
creased over the past two decades, that
has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths
each year... But... Because global warm
ing has also reduced cold waves, we now
see 283,000 fewer cold deaths."
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The Biden Blowout
Is Just Beginning
A trillion dollars used to
be a lot of money, even in
Washington.
Now, a trillion-dollar
spending bill is a trifle barely
worth arguing over and the
stuff of bipartisan consensus.
Oscar Wilde famously said
that nothing succeeds like
excess, but even he might
blanch at the shameless
profligacy that is America’s
new normal.
In their wisdom, Senate
Republicans decided to help
President Joe Biden pass a
portion of his blow-out fiscal
agenda, a $1.2 trillion
infrastructure bill that is a
prelude to an even bigger,
vastly more consequential $3.5
trillion reconciliation bill.
The infrastructure bill
itself is, as fiscal analyst Brian
Riedl of the Manhattan
Institute notes, “one of the
largest non-emergency
spending bills of the past 50
years.”
Republicans told
themselves that only about
half, $550 billion, is new
spending, and that by going
along they can take the heat off
of Democratic moderates
Kyrsten Sinema and Joe
Manchin, who are being
constantly pressured to ditch
the filibuster.
Perhaps, but there’s no
doubt that the GOP has
blessed, and lent a bipartisan
imprimatur, to a portion of the
president’s hoped-for historic
spending spree. In so doing,
they have taken at least a little
ownership of an agenda they
should want no part of.
Republicans will have
much less influence, and
perhaps none, on the next
spate of spending, which is the
so-called “soft” infrastructure
(aka, a wish list of progressive
social programs) after the
“hard” infrastructure in the
bipartisan bill (roads, bridges,
rail).
Under the reconciliation
process, tax and spending bills
evade the filibuster in the
Senate, so Democrats can pass
whatever they want so long as
they hold all 50 of their
senators.
The sheer numbers here
are jaw dropping. Including
the $1.9 trillion so-called
COVID-19 relief bill from
earlier this year, Biden wants
to spend nearly $6 trillion in
three measures passed within
months of each other. In 2019,
by point of comparison, the
entire federal budget was $4.4
trillion (and at the time,
President Trump wasn’t
exactly tightening the country’s
fiscal belt).
The tide of new spending
will add to already
extraordinary levels of red ink.
The White House projects
that the U.S. debt will reach
109.7% of GDP this year,
higher than at the end of World
War II when we had abandoned
all fiscal restraint to win an
existential struggle against two
expansionistic totalitarian
empires.
The Senate instructions
for the reconciliation bill say
that only half of it has to be
paid for. Democrats will claim
a dog’s breakfast of purported
savings and painless revenue
increases, but the bulk of the
new dollars will have to come
from a tax increase that easily
could rank as one of the biggest
ever.
The parameters of the
reconciliation bill were crafted
by the socialist chairman of the
Senate Budget Committee,
Bernie Sanders, and it shows.
The priorities read like
crib notes from his old
presidential campaigns. The
bill would add new government
programs for the young and
the old, from universal pre-K
to tuition-free community
college, to family and medical
leave, to expansions of
Obamacare and Medicare.
It would make a big nod to
Please see Lowry page 8A
GRITTY
Cancel Culture
and Wokeness
Will Destroy Our
Country
The enabling tool
of what we call
“cancel culture” or
“wokeness” is
language.
People are put in
categories to which
names are assigned,
and this supposedly
captures who they are
and what should be
done with them politically.
Unfortunately, the whole business of
racial identification and categorization is
not about advancing the quality of the
human condition and human dignity but
about progressive politics.
The left puts people in racial categories
as instruments toward their political
agenda.
In 1977, the Federal Interagency
Committee on Education produced a five-
race classification for the American
population: American Indian or Alaskan
Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black,
White and Hispanic.
These categories, over time, continued
to undergo changes and refinements.
The Hispanic category emerged in the
1970s, and the legislation described this
group as “Americans who identify
themselves as being of Spanish-speaking
background and trace their origin or
descent from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba,
Central and South America, and other
Spanish-speaking countries.” So, an
American with roots in Spain and an
American with roots in Peru wind up in
the same category because their country
of origin was Spanish-speaking.
Hispanic is neither race nor ethnicity.
It is a category of political design, including
individuals from 20-plus countries, with
no commonality other than the language
Please see Nitty page 8A
By Star Parker
COMMENTARY
Back to
Golden Isles
ST. SI
MONS IS
LAND - If I
did not live
in Athens, I
would want
to live here,
where the liv
ing is easy and
the laid-back
lifestyle touch
es your senses
so poignantly that you feel rather
Shakespearean upon taking leave,
“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
When the exit takes place, you
know that you will find your way
back to the Golden Isles. With the
good fortune of having traveled our
state top to bottom, corner to corner
over the years, no place has less-to-
like features than St. Simons. You
cross the Fernando Torras Causeway
and park at your destination, fully
expecting a greeter to open your car
door and smile, “at ease.”
No place in our state is more
relaxed, reassuring and inviting. St.
Simon’s tranquil atmosphere leaves
you appreciating abundant good
things and shooing away pessimism
and melancholy. Mental apathy is not
allowed in the Golden Isles.
Good feelings wash over me
when I come this way. It all begins
when I pull out of the driveway and
connect with Georgia Highway 15
in the Five Points section of Athens
and head south. Along the way, a lei
surely drive awaits. It will be a stop
and go routine by choice. I want to
connect with good friends along the
way. First, there was a call in Greens
boro to the Journal Herald and the
latest news from Carey Williams,
an old friend who probably knows
more Georgians than the last half
dozen governors. It was Carey, who
arranged for my first Masters ticket.
I’ll always be grateful for that. He is
the only person I know who actually
won the lottery.
In Sandersville, I raised an imagi
nary toast to my late friend Tommy
Walker, who was a Damn Good Dawg
if there ever was one. How I miss his
chatterbox conversations and his
generous and perpetual laugh.
As I aimlessly ride though my
hometown of Wrightsville, I re
call Friday Night Lights, dating in a
pickup truck and the fun that I had
with my friends; the 4-H club, FFA
and a coach named Red. His Knute
Rockne style oratory seldom made a
difference, mainly because he didn’t
have the talent to make a difference.
Nevertheless, it was fun playing for
him.
When I approached Tarrytown,
4.4 miles south of Soperton, a call
went out to Georgia Supreme Court
Judge, John Ellington. Hooray, he
was home and had time for a Diet
Coke and conversation about turkey
hunting, Gridiron, Bulldawg foot
ball, haying, Atlanta traffic and his
forthcoming trip to Charlotte for
the opening of football season, now
less than a month away. There was
an invitation to stop by on my return
for a bouquet of roses, tended by his
Please see Loran page 8A
By Loran Smith