Saturday, May 09, 2009

by Newt Gingrich
Posted 05/06/2009 ET

If there was one feeling that inspired almost a million Americans to come out for the Tax Day Tea Parties last month it was this: That our government, supposedly created of the people, by the people and for the people, is busy picking winners and losers.

The feeling that our politics are increasingly rigged against us didn’t begin with President Obama. Deciding to bailout Wall Street rather than let deserving companies go bankrupt began under President Bush.

But the Obama Administration has elevated rewarding some Americans and punishing others to a governing philosophy.

And as he has expanded the size and the scope of government, President Obama has only increased his ability to reach into our businesses, our communities, and even our homes to separate Americans into two groups: Those who will benefit from the new order, and those who will pay the bills.

What follows is just a partial list of the winners and losers of the Obama Administration so far, organized by the government policies that will decide their fate:

The Chrysler Bankruptcy Pt. 1: From the Rule of Law to the Rule of Politics

Winners: The United Auto Workers
Loser: The Rule of Law

Bankruptcy was once a legal process in which an insolvent company, an impartial judge and creditors voting in good faith worked together to make the best of a bad situation.

Under the Obama Administration, the Chrysler bankruptcy has become a political process in which government has bought off some creditors, demonized others, and predetermined a favorable result for an important political constituency.

What happened last week with Chrysler was an unprecedented case of executive branch involvement in a bankruptcy proceeding. The Obama Administration bullied smaller investors to fall in line with TARP-funded creditors in a deal that ultimately benefited the union bosses who bear so much of the responsibility for Chrysler’s downfall to begin with. In the end, the losers weren’t just the secured creditors and the taxpayers who have footed the bill for all these bailouts, but the rule of law itself.

The Chrysler Bankruptcy Pt. 2: America, Get Ready for the “Model O”

Winners: The People Who Are Evading Responsibility for Chrysler’s Bankruptcy
Losers: Consumers Who Want to Buy Good American Cars

The end result of the rigged Chrysler bankruptcy is that two political entities whose priority is winning votes (the Federal Government and the UAW) now have majority ownership of a commercial entity whose priority should be making good cars.

And despite his protestations that he wants to get out of the auto business, President Obama has some definite ideas about what kind of cars Chrysler should make. Announcing the bankruptcy, he blamed Chrysler’s troubles, not on its uncompetitive labor costs, but on its “failure to make the fuel-efficient cars like its foreign competitors.”

Politicians, not businessmen and women, are calling the shots at Chrysler. America, get ready for the Model O.

Cap and Trade: Punishing Americans With High Energy Taxes

Winners: Government Favored “Green Industries”
Losers: Anyone Who Heats a Home, Drives a Car or Has a Job

I’m in favor of doing all we can to protect our environment, but I have a fundamental difference with Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House: I believe in incentivizing Americans to produce the innovations that will protect our environment, not punishing Americans with taxes, regulation and litigation.

The Administration’s cap and trade legislation makes losers of the American people by imposing a $1 trillion-$2 trillion energy tax on an already struggling economy. And the winners? They’re the lobbyists for favored special interests and “green” industries who are already lining up in Washington to collect the spoils.

Closing Gitmo: Terrorists from Guantanamo Coming Soon to a Neighborhood Near You

Winners: Terrorists and Anti-Americanism Worldwide
Losers: The New Neighbors of Terrorists and The American Tax-Payers

You may have missed it in all the news of the week, but the Administration has a truly mind-boggling idea about how to solve the problem of the terrorists left homeless by closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay: Send them to a neighborhood near you.

That’s right. As many as 30 detainees at Guantanamo are slated for release into the United States, including a group of Chinese, al Qaeda-trained jihadists who are reportedly being encouraged to settle in Northern Virginia.

And not only is the Obama Administration releasing these terrorists into the United States, it’s proposing that the U.S. taxpayers foot the bill.

Here’s how Dennis Blair, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, rationalizes their plan for welfare for terrorists: "If we are to release them in the United States, we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life," Blair said last month. "You can't just put them on the street."

Picking a New Supreme Court Justice: Playing Favorites Through the Courts

Winners: Anyone the President Deems Deserving of Judicial “Empathy”
Losers: Everyone Else

President Obama has announced that his criteria for picking a Supreme Court Justice to replace the retiring David Souter are jurists with the proper “empathy” and those who don’t regard justice as “abstract legal theory.”

Empathy for the less fortunate should have a central place in our public policy. But feeling the people’s pain is the job of the people who make the laws. The job of judges is to interpret the laws without regard to the race, color, creed or station of the individuals involved.

When we start picking judges based on their “empathy” for certain groups, the rights of favored groups inevitably collide with the rights of others. That’s why we have – or should have – equal justice before the law.

Demonizing Wall Street: Putting Talent and Resources Where Washington Wants Them

Winners: Professional “Community Organizers” and Other Government Activists
Losers: Young Americans Who Want to Chose Their Own Careers

President Obama frequently urges young Americans to emulate him by making the choice to forgo a lucrative career in finance or law and choose public service instead. But now he’s put the full power of the federal government behind his favored career path for young Americans.

Speaking last week to the New York Times, President Obama said that his anti-business, high-taxing, and high-regulating crusade against Wall Street “means that more talent, more resources will be going to other sectors of the economy. I actually think that’s healthy."

The message will not be lost on young Americans: Do what the President thinks is “healthy.” Be an Obama winner, not a loser.

What is at Stake Isn’t Just Tax Dollars and Jobs But Freedom

The list could go on and on.

What is at stake isn’t just the tax dollars, the jobs and the opportunities of those Americans who come out on the losing side of the Obama Administration’s policies -- as important as these things are.

What is at stake are moral issues of fairness and freedom. As Arthur Brooks, the President of the American Enterprise Institute, wrote last week, it’s immoral for the government to “confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It's also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don't have without regard for our children's future.”

Americans don’t mind working hard and competing to win. We don’t even mind losing sometimes.

What we mind is government making the call. That was the real message of the Tea Party movement, and it’s one President Obama and his aides would do well to hear.

Remembering Jack Kemp

I end today on a note of sorrow and remembrance of a great man.

Callista and I were deeply saddened to learn of Jack Kemp’s passing last Saturday.

America knew Jack Kemp as a public servant of boundless wisdom, energy, optimism and compassion. Callista and I were fortunate to know him as a friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family in this painful time. You can read our full statement here.

Friday, May 08, 2009

What the Fair Tax Would Mean to You:


The Why's Men

1. Why do men become smarter during sex?
(because they are plugged into a genius)

2. Why don't women blink during sex?
(they don't have enough time)

3. Why does it tke 1 million sperm to fertilize one egg?
(they don't stop to ask directions)
4. Why do men snore when they lie on their backs?
(because their balls fall over their butt-hole and they vapor lock)
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(You're laughing, aren't you?!?!)

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5. Why were men given larger brains than dogs?
(so they won't hump women's legs at cocktails parties)

6. Why did God make men before women?
(you need a rough draft before you make a final copy)

7. How many men does it take to put a toilet seat down?
(don't know.....it never happened)

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( C'mon guys, we laugh at your blonde jokes!)

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And a personal favorite:

8. Why did God put men on Earth?
(because a vibrator can't mow the lawn)

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Remember, if you haven't got a smile on your face and
laughter in your heart...
Then you're just an old sour grump!

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Thursday, May 07, 2009

Obama Tax Plan vs. Fair Tax

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Odd Day...

is coming Thursday, 5/7/9.

Three consecutive odd numbers make up the date only six times in a century. This day marks the half-way point in this parade of Odd Days which began with 1/3/5. The previous stretch of six dates like this started with 1/3/1905---13 months after the Wright Brothers' flight.

Read more here
A Buggy Ride

An Amish woman was driving her buggy to town when a highway patrol officer stopped her.

"I'm not going to cite you," said the officer. " I just wanted to warn you that the reflector on the back of your buggy is broken and it could be dangerous."

"I thank thee," replied the Amish lady. "I shall have my husband repair it as soon as I return home."

"Also," said the officer, "I noticed one of the reins to your horse is wrapped around his testicles. Some people might consider this cruelty to animals so you should have your husband check that too."

True to her work, when the Amish lady got home she told her husband about the broken reflector, and he said he would put a new one on immediately.

"Also," said the Amish woman, "The policeman said there was something wrong with the emergency brake."

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

I believe -


That we don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

Monday, May 04, 2009

The Obama Flu?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted 05/01/2009 ET
Updated 05/01/2009 ET

Because of the peril of swine flu, Joe Biden said yesterday, he would urge his family to stay out of "confined places" like airplanes and subways here in the United States.

Yet, the Obama administration will not consider closing the United States to airplanes and buses coming in from the epicenter of the epidemic, Mexico City.

Does this contradiction make sense?

America, at this writing, has recorded fewer than 100 cases of the swine flu. One victim has died, a 2-year-old Mexican boy. He was flown out of Mexico City to Matamoros, crossed over with his parents into Texas, was taken to a hospital in Brownsville, terribly sick, then transferred to a Houston hospital. There he died.

Clear from this is that Mexicans, seriously ill, may head for the United States, where the medical care is known to be far superior and also free for the indigent.

This is understandable.

What is not is the United States conducting business as usual on the Mexican border, when tourists are fleeing Cancun, cruise ships refuse to put in to Mexican ports, Texas is closing schools, Europeans are shutting airports to flights from Mexico City and Obama is telling parents to pull the kids out of school if the flu shows up.

Is this a serious medical menace to Americans or not?

Some scientists claim this is a mild hybrid strain of the flu that visits every season, no big deal. But the World Health Organization has raised the threat level of H1N1 swine flu to Category 5. This means the world is at imminent risk of a pandemic. Yet, the death toll, as of now, is only one in the United States, and 159 out of 2,500 sickened in Mexico.

Still, the political fallout here could be immense.

According to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, in a normal flu season, 35,000 Americans die. Thirty-five thousand! That is more than 10 times the number who died on 9-11 and about as many as we lost in the Korean War.

And if this Mexican flu is anything like the Hong Kong flu that killed 33,000 Americans in 1968-69, or, Lord forbid, the Spanish Flu that killed 25 million to 50 million worldwide in 1918-19 -- more Americans died from it than all the Americans killed in World Wars I and II combined -- this administration is dangerously behind the curve.

Back in 1980, Gov. Jerry Brown's refusal to use the pesticide malathion on the Mediterranean fruit fly almost killed his career. For the Medflies made it over the mountains into the Central Valley and ravaged California's crops and orchards. And we were only talking then about farm produce, not tens of thousands of lives possibly lost.

Obama's coolness may prove correct.

But if he is perceived at having refused to close the border to buses bringing in sick Mexicans, or airports to planes coming in from Mexico City, so as not to offend the open-borders crowd, and a deadly epidemic ensues, full responsibility will be his. And he will pay a far greater price than George W. Bush did for being AWOL in Katrina.

For a president's first duty is not to the NAFTA-mandated free flow of goods and people between the United States and Mexico, but to protect the health and lives of the American people.

In the 1940s, it was not uncommon, when there was an outbreak of measles, mumps, chicken pox, scarlet fever or polio, for homes and families to be quarantined until it could be demonstrated to health authorities that everyone in the house was free of the disease.

Today's political correctness means we cannot discriminate against individuals who may bring in infectious diseases like AIDS.

Under NAFTA, GATT and globalization, America threw open her doors to mass immigration and accepted an invasion of illegal aliens that brought 12 million to 20 million into the country.

With them has come a raft of diseases never seen here before, or eradicated years ago: multiple drug resistant tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, measles, syphilis, Chagas disease, dengue fever and new strains of hepatitis. Even bed bugs have invaded half the American states.

However "mild" Mexican swine flu may prove to be, it is wreaking havoc in Mexico. And, already, that country is suffering from a collapse in the price of oil it sells to the United States, a reduction in the remittances sent back from Mexican workers in the United States due to the downturn here and a collapse in tourism due to the cartels war that took 6,000 lives last year.

Now, with tourists fleeing, hotels emptying out and athletic events being canceled, Mexico could be hit with a second devastating economic blow, from which she does not soon recover.

In January, the U.S. Joint Forces Command identified two large nations in real danger of "rapid and sudden collapse."

One was Pakistan, the other Mexico.

Unfortunately, the boys at the JFC seem to have gotten it right.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

A little girl, dressed in her Sunday best, was running as fast as she could, trying not to be late for Bible class. As she ran she prayed, 'Dear Lord, please don't let me be late! Dear Lord,please don't let me be late!' 

While she was running and praying, she tripped on a curb and fell, getting her clothes dirty and tearing her dress. She got up, brushed herself off, and started running again! As she ran she once again began to pray, 'Dear Lord, please don't let me be late...But please don't shove me either!'


When our lives get chaotic, we pay dearly in stress and money. There are hundreds of things you can do to simplify your life. Here are six ideas to help you get started.

1. Carry only the keys you use every day. Clean everything else off your key ring. If you don't recognize what a key is for, toss it. If you have keys you use occasionally, keep them on separate rings in a safe place. I carry only three keys: house, car and office. They're not bulky, and they fit into a small pocket in my purse. Not only has this simplified my life, but my car's ignition is happier too. Heavy keys pull the ignition out of alignment causing it to fail eventually.

2. Downsize your purse or briefcase. Carry only the minimum essentials. If you're anything like me, no matter what size of bag I carry, it is completely filled and then some. Ditch the bag that's the size of Nebraska in favor of something small and compact. Now carry only the items you really need.

3. Cut back your jewelry to a couple of simple but elegant items. It takes a lot of energy to manage dozens of pairs of earrings, necklaces and bracelets. About five years ago, I decided I would own and wear only one pair of classic earrings. It was a bold move, but one I have never regretted. You cannot imagine how this has simplified my life.

4. Buy only white linens. Now everything matches, and that saves time and hassle. Fine hotels everywhere feature all white linens. When everything is white, you don't worry about fading, about matching up sets or whether the linens match a room's decor. Every top sheet goes with every fitted sheet, so you don't have laundry time hassles. Everything launders the same. White linens are classic, and they're cheaper, too.

5. Keep a tasteful trash receptacle where you open mail. Handle mail only once. Don't carry all the junk mail to a new location to become more household clutter. Put a waste can right where you open the mail and dump the junk the moment you identify it as such.

6. Get rid of two guilt-creating devices: Call waiting and the answering machine. I cannot believe how my life has been simplified since I no longer walk into the house knowing that I'm obligated to return 12 calls. If they want me badly enough, they'll call back. Ditto for call waiting.

We're given just 24 hours each day. So far, no one's figured out how to increase that number, but if you begin to simplify your life you'll swear you've suddenly found more hours in your day!


Presented for your consideration, the first of a series to help us all make it through these troubling times. As always, click on the hyperlink in the title for more information