From "The Patriot Post" Notes on Presidential Character

This is the complete text of an email I received from "The Patriot Post" on the subject of Presidential character. It is really a message for loyal Democrats whose party has been highjacked by radical elements like Barack Obama. Read on. And for my conservative friends, take heart. Obama's numbers are slipping, just as the truth is starting to stick.

Here is the message, courtesy of "The Patriot Post":

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

In his Inaugural Address on 20 January, 1961, President John F. Kennedy closed his remarks with these famous words: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

With those words, JFK, considered by many to be the most exemplary leader of the Democrat Party in the 20th Century, asked Americans to put country first, a bedrock principle of the Party until the last few decades.

However today, the current slate of Democrats have turned Jack Kennedy's national challenge on end, essentially proclaiming, "ask what your country can do for you, not what you can do for your country."

In 1963, Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and said for all to hear, "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Has his dream been realized, or have Democrat leaders divided us up into constituency groups, where we are judged by all manner of ethnicity and special interests rather than the individual and national character King envisioned?

Kennedy and King had it right, but the Democrat Party has squandered their great legacy, and betrayed us, moreover enslaving many Americans as dependant wards of the state.

This is not the Democrat Party envisioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Harry Truman, much less its founder, Thomas Jefferson, who would not recognize even the most vestigial elements of his once-noble Party. (This dramatic transition is evident in the Democrat Party Platforms from Kennedy to Obama.)

When asked why he left the Democrat Party, perhaps the most famous of former Democrats said, "I did not leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me." That was Ronald Reagan, who earned the respect and support of an enormous number of Democrats during his presidency. His observation, "the Party left me," has never been more true than today.

For several months, we have heard and observed two presidential candidates, centrist Republican John McCain and liberal Democrat Barack Obama. It should by now, be obvious to all of us who put our country first, which of these candidates possess the high qualities of a statesman, and the prerequisite moral and civic virtues for an American president.

Unfortunately, too many of my fellow Americans have difficulty distinguishing these qualities.

Every four years, at the peak of presidential election cycles, we're told by the talkingheads and the party hacks that "this election is the most important in our lifetimes." This time, however, they may be right. These are indeed perilous times.

Our nation is facing crises on several critical fronts, including an historic economic disaster, the resolution of which will require the steady hand of a statesman in possession of outstanding character — character that has been honed over his lifetime, character that is proven consistent with our nation's legacy of liberty and equality.

That reformed Democrat, Ronald Reagan, wrote, "The character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the 'little' choices of years past — by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation, [which was] whispering the lie that 'it really doesn't matter.' It has been determined by all the day-to-day decisions made when life seemed easy and crises seemed far away — the decision that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness; habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence; habits of duty and honor and integrity — or dishonor and shame."

For the first and final word on the necessary character traits the next president should possess, let's return to our foundation, our Founders, those who risked all to proclaim our individual rights and responsibilities as ordained by God, and outlined them in our Declaration of Independence and its subordinate exposition, our Republic's Constitution.

Our Founders wrote at length about character, both of those who seek high office (or, rather, those that high office seeks), and those who elect them. Here are but a few excerpts in their own words.

John Adams: "Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom. ... If we suffer [the minds of young people] to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. ... We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. ... We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections."

Samuel Adams: "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. ... If men of wisdom and knowledge, of moderation and temperance, of patience, fortitude and perseverance, of sobriety and true republican simplicity of manners, of zeal for the honour of the Supreme Being and the welfare of the commonwealth; if men possessed of these other excellent qualities are chosen to fill the seats of government, we may expect that our affairs will rest on a solid and permanent foundation. ... [N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. ... No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders. ... Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. ... Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."

Thomas Jefferson: "It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. ... If a nation expects to be ignorant — and free — in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. ... The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. ... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."

George Washington: "No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other. ...[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted [early in life] are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous. ... The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world. ...[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths...? Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens."

At the end of the Revolution, when our Founders were endeavoring "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity," Founding brothers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and our Constitution's author, James Madison, wrote The Federalist Papers, its most authentic and comprehensive explication.

In Federalist No. 1, Hamilton warned, "Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants."

Sound familiar?

In No. 10, Madison cautions, "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm," and insisted in No. 57, "The aim of every political Constitution is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers, men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous, whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

Madison's Supreme Court nominee, Justice Joseph Story, wrote, "Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them."

The Founders thus warned of the perils posed by the candidate who lacks political courage; the candidate who tells us everything we want to hear.

In November 1800, John Adams, in his fourth year as president, wrote to his wife Abigail, "I Pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessing on this house, and on ALL that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof!"

We should all pray likewise, now, today, this minute.

As Adams understood, "A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."

Almost two centuries later, Ronald Reagan reiterated, "Freedom is ... never more than one generation away from extinction. Every generation has to learn how to protect and defend it, or it's gone and gone for a long, long time."

So, what of the current generation of voters, and the two presidential candidates?

On 4 November, one of these candidates will receive a majority of electoral votes, and in January, be seated as our next president. But for sure, this election is much more than a referendum on the two candidates; it is a referendum on the ability of Americans to discern between one candidate who possesses the character and integrity of a statesman, which the office of president requires, and one who does not.

At this pivotal moment in our nation's history, let's hope that a majority of us have sufficient courage and character to make that distinction, and vote on what we know rather than how we feel.

Let's put country first.

For more information on the character of the presidential candidates, link to The McCain record and The Obama record.

Please forward these insights to your family, friends and associates.





What is Fantasy Trek?
More Than Just a Game. It's a Star Trek Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

Lucky Me! I Just Found Out I'm a Racist!

I was waiting for the laundromat to open when two black guys walked up with a grocery cart (I'll just point out here and now that this was a stolen grocery cart. They don't sell them to customers, so if it says 'Albertson's' on it and it isn't in the Albertson's parking lot, it's stolen. Whether they stole it from the store or stole it second hand, it's still stolen) full of laundry. That's okay. But as soon as they arrive, they start launching into a diatribe about how wonderful mister barack hussein obama is, and how he's pure and holy, and how he graduated from Harvard which is the best school in the country, according to these learned young grocery cart thieves. It used to be elitest and white and evil until mister obama went there. What would we do without him? I suppose that these fine young upstanding grocery cart thieves finally have a reason to be proud of their country. Well that's good. Sadly for me, (according to these thieves), if I disagree with them, I'm either rich or racist. And since I'm not rich, I must be racist.

What is it that tells me that these two thieves are right? Because they didn't resort to any personal attacks. Nope, they stayed on issues. Issues like everyone is Alaska is drunk and stupid (and white trash, according the non-racist, sensitive, caring gentleman). He looked straight at me and my wife when he said that, just to make sure we understood. Gosh, lucky us. Issues like being held in a prisoner of war camp makes you crazy. Issues like black people finally getting what's coming to them. Issues like Bush is a criminal and finally obama is going to throw him in jail. And it was refreshingly lacking in such personal attacks like obama's voting record, or the racist pastors or terrorists he calls friends, or the fact that he has no problem with throwing unwanted babies in the garbage, or that he thinks that the middle class is bitter and clinging to guns and religion, I guess, because their lives are so empty. Nothing about the definition of life being above his pay grade.

I'm just glad that these two fine young thieves were kind enough to teach me that I'm a racist. Maybe next time I can be a thug and a punk who lives like a leech off of tax dollars provided by hard working non-thieves who actually own an alarm clock and a work ethic. Maybe I can be someone who can scoff at a hero who sat in a POW camp and had his arms broken every day. Maybe I can steal grocery carts and bellow and bluster with all of dignity of a two year old. Maybe I can be lucky enough to be such a pathetic excuse for a human being that I'll support any crook that promises to steal from hard-working people to enable my drug habit. But for now, really, I'm just excited that these two shining examples of humanity have taught me that I'm a racist. WooHoo!


What is Fantasy Trek?
More Than Just a Game. It's a Star Trek Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

Just What Is a Barack Hussein Obama

Brian Williams has just finished telling me again why I should vote for mister obama. But fortunately, I have a brain, so I didn't fall for it. Mister Wlliams, I don't have any business ties to any Islamic republics. Can you say the same? No. You work for NBC. NBC is owned by GE. GE has business ties with Iran. One less reason to give you any credibilty.

Mister Obama has spent decades in the company of people like Louis Farrakhan, Reverend Wright, and William Ayers. He has marched in lockstep with avowed Marxists. Members of the American Socialist Party. His voting record (not counting all of those 'above my pay-grade' 'PRESENT' votes), is among the most liberal in the history of congress. He has voted 94 times to raise taxes. In Illinois he made no effort to stop the practice of throwing out and leaving in the trash failed abortions. That is as bad as it sounds. When an abortion failed, and a living (but unwanted) person was pulled out of a woman, it was thrown out. In the trash. And mister obama doesn't have a problem with this. The question of whether or not a person who is born ACCIDENTALLY, breathing air and aware of its surroundings is worthy of more than being dumped in the trash next to half-eaten burritos and empty coke bottles is above mister obama's paygrade. Good God man, just what is important enough to you to warrant taking a stand on? If you get elected, how many times can we expect you to vote 'present'? And if we have another 9/11, would the response be above your paygrade? You like to say we should concentrate on issues and not personal attacks. Well, the biggest issue I worry about is the very real prospect of having a president who makes Bill Clinton (hell, who makes Hillary Clinton) look like Ronald Reagan. Your solution is an all-powerful state that regulates every aspect of our lives and takes our money to redistribute according the state. I actually have faith in the love of country that most liberals profess. I think they're misguided and dangerous, but still patriotic. You are, in my opinion, not a patriot. You are a dangerous liberal marxist who is in a position to do damage to this country that would have made Stalin blush. Where do I get that? I get that from mister obama's friend Frank Marshall Davis and the rest of his communist friends in college. Not counting the year that spent 'pretty much in a daze'.

That is what a barack hussein obama is.






What is Fantasy Trek?
The Only 'Star Trek: The Experience' You Can Still Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

The 700 Billion Dollar Cr@p Sandwich

John Boehner had it right when he called the bailout a cr@p sandwich, and Conan O'brien ('s writers) had even more right when he called it a cr@p sandwich with cheese. Let's look at this for a second, and without the liberal blinders on. This problem started in earnest in 1992 when Mister Clinton had the great idea to sell houses to low-income voters who couldn't afford them. The records are there. Here are a few links that show just what I'm talking about:

From The New York Times in 1999: Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9c0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all) "Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people..."

From the New York Post: Alarms and Denial (http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/09262008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/alarms__denial_130763.htm)

Bloomberg Financial News: "How the Democrats Created the Financial Crisis" (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aSKSoiNbnQY0)

YouTube: Democrats in their own words (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs)

YouTube: Burning Down the House (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_597487)

YouTube: Obama Ranks Second In Freddie/Fannie Contributions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-_HlpZ8azA&feature=related)

I'm curious as to why Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, and Katie Couric aren't talking about this, but I'm really angry that McCain isn't talking about it. I understand that sticking to his word (unlike Mister Obama) means he doesn't have unlimited funds for unlimited commercials, but unless he is waiting for an October surprise, he is sitting on something that could not only spread a little truth on the campaign (and make a few bitter, aged, liberal mouthpieces even more bitter), but keep a very bad man out of a position of power we can't afford to give to him. It was the clumsy hand of government that got us into this mess (not an opinion, a fact), and the clumsy hand of government is not going to get us out. The clumsy hand of government has never done us a favor. They turned victory into defeat in Vietnam. They convinced the Soviets to go into Afghanistan, resulting in the Taliban and a country-sized safe haven for Al Qaeda. They pulled troops back when we were on the verge of catching Bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains. They failed to put adequate troops into Iraq when the military knew what was needed. Now they're going to put $700 billion of our money into a broken system and hope that it works. Of course, they say that taxpayers actually have a chance to make money on the deal. As if they're actually going to cut us a check if this scheme turns a profit. That was the best laugh I've had in a long time. But at the same time I'm really insulted by this piece of BS handed to us by the drive-by media, the minions of the liberal elite. The most feared words in the American lexicon are "We're from the government and we're here to help*, and that fact has never been more true. This cr@p sandwich with cheese is going to cost us more, I think, (in money, anyway), than the Iraq war, and the best anyone can say is "we hope it works". So if it doesn't, who will be grilled by a committee? Who gets to explain why to the American people? Who gets fired? The fact is, all of you place-holders on Capitol Hill, there is a limit to how much money we'll give you to further screw up our country. Unless you forgot, you are actually our employees, and at some point we're going to get sick of you bungling job after job after job. I know of no other profession (aside from maybe meteorologist) that allows you to be wrong so consistently and still call yourself an expert. There is no question that George W Bush has historically bad approval ratings, but he doesn't come close to the pathetic ratings that Congress has earned.




What is Fantasy Trek?
The Only 'Star Trek: The Experience' You Can Still Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

Top Ten Reasons I Don't Watch David Letterman Anymore

Number Ten:
He's nothing more than a liberal mouthpiece.

Number Nine:
Two words: Not funny.

Number Eight:
He was never funny. His writers were, a long time ago. He's just a bitter aging liberal with sagging ratings and a bad hair piece.

Number Seven:
There's no dignity in a bitter aging liberal trying to pick up on girls fifty years younger than himself.

Number Six:
Why stay up late to listen to liberal claptrap when I can get it on the evening news?

Number Five:
Dave doesn't understand that addressing a crisis is more important than being insulted by him. Going on the evening news is more important than being insulted by you, Dave. Heck, just about anything is more important than being insulted by you.

Number Four:
Dave's offensive liberal bias is as worthy of my time as Michael Moore.

Number Three:
Conan O'brien got the job you couldn't get last time, Dave. Maybe he's better than you.

Number Two:
Because Dave, you are a boob.

And the number one reason I don't watch David Letterman anymore is:
I grew up. Letterman didn't.



What is Fantasy Trek?
The Only 'Star Trek: The Experience' You Can Still Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

The Company That He Keeps, The Content of His Character

Obama has been using the current financial disaster as fodder for his sagging campaign, saying that John McCain has been a part of the problem and will only allow the culture of corruption to continue. He's actually coming frighteningly close to telling us the truth. He's just gotten a few of the names wrong.

Barack Obama comes in second behind Chris Dodd in donations from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson was on Obama's committee to help select a vice president. He also admitted that he received preferential treatment from Countrywide mortgage. Who else got preferential treatment from Countrywide mortgage? Chris Dodd. Now look at another Fannie Mae CEO named Frank Raines. He commited fraud to the tune of $6.3 billion. Why isn't he in jail? Why weren't the hearings done? Good question. Mr Obama doesn't have an answer for that. He should, though. Raines is Obama's adviser on housing policy. And he, like Mister Johnson, walked away with tens of millions of dollars.

In four years, Obama ranks second among donations from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae among all members of congress since 1989. In four years Obama has received more money from Fannie and Freddie than any other member of congress in the past two decades except for Chris Dodd, and Chris Dodd has been in federal office since 1975. Obama's only been in office since 2005. He's second among donations from Lehman Brothers among all members of congress since 1989. The top executives at Lehman Brothers, Ted Janulis and John Ray, are chief fundraisers for Obama. And by the way, one of them was a part of the head of Mortgage Capital at Lehman Brothers.

Mister Obama is pretty good at changing words and facts around to suit his purpose, but the company that he keeps... the people he worships with and studies under and benefit from and employ say a great deal about him. None of it is good.


What is Fantasy Trek?
The Only 'Star Trek: The Experience' You Can Still Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

Where America Lives

I saw something on the evening news that actually didn't make me want to throw an egg at Brian Williams' fake smile. People in Texas actually helping each other out. Not because they were running for office or fullfilling a community service sentence. They were helping each other out because they wanted to. Earlier in the week there were stories about people helping out neighbors who didn't have electricity by stretching extension cords across the street. That is when I'm reminded of what is actually right about this country. Patriotism has nothing to do with paying more taxes or expanding an already bloated and broken government. It has everything to do with actually building up the bedrock of America, which is the community. America doesn't live in the swamp that is Washington DC. It lives in Houston and Galveston and New Orleans and Scranton and San Diego and Juneau and the Bronx. It lives where people work for a living in a community and depend on each other and don't count their assets in voting blocks. America lives in the hearts of people of all races, creeds and colors who live here legally, pay their taxes and do their best to make a comfortable life. America lives in traffic jams and factories and grocery stores and malls and movie theaters. It lives in bus stops and schools and on beaches. America lives where we are. Where we are working and playing and living and struggling honestly. It lived, at one time, in the halls of government where patriots struggled, sometimes with each other, to unite a nation where before only enslaved colonies existed, but it doesn't live there now. It does live on blog sites and talk radio that keep a careful watch on the ivory towers of government that used to represent us. It lives in Wrigley Field, but not the Chicago Machine. It lives in sand-encrusted equipment that volunteer soldiers struggle to maintain in a desert country, just as it lives where people protest against the war. But it doesn't live in the hearts of politicians who think that losing the war would be good for their careers. It lives in classrooms where people argue about creationism versus evolution, but not in people who deny us the right to disagree. It even lives in liberal newscasts where sometimes, after all of the 'if it bleeds it leads' sensationalism and editorializing disguised as reporting, in the last moments of the newscast, almost as if by accident, we get to see a quick shot of real Americans helping each other.



What is Fantasy Trek?
The Only 'Star Trek: The Experience' You Can Still Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

What Obama Knows

This is a topic that one post can't really do justice to, but let's just talk about it a bit.

Ever since the Founding Fathers threw off the shackles of King George, we've understood that government does best when it does the least. There is not a single instance in our history when the government has taken over a job from the public sector and improved on it or even maintained it at the same quality level. Our Founding Fathers understood just how dangerous a government is when it becomes perpetual and self-serving. They feared what we have now, which is a bloated, voracious, and all-powerful giant with no real understanding of or interest in the people from whom its power is supposed to flow. The Constitution is pretty specific with respect to the power that the federal government is entitled to when it talks about 'those powers not specifically granted to the federal government'. That is for a reason. A federal government that can grant itself more and more power as the days and weeks and years go on is a dictatorship in the making. Absolute power does in fact corrupt absolutely. And what does Mister Obama think of this? What is the answer to the ills of our country? He thinks the answer is a bigger, more powerful government. He thinks that public service should be managed by the government, just as he wants to take still more money from businesses that are already struggling (under the guise of 'taxing the rich'), not so that hard-working middle class people can create their own prosperity, but so that the government can have more money to reluctantly hand out to whatever group's votes are coveted on a particular day. It has been stated (by Democratic deity John F Kennedy) that no country has ever taxed itself into prosperity, but they keep trying to sell us the same empty idea. The Soviet Union tried to do that, and someone who knew better ran them into the ground. Thanks Ronnie. But Mister Obama, who has spent more than his share of time studying communism, just doesn't get it. Mister Reagan was a very kind, charitable man (the kind who simplistically clung to guns and religion when he wasn't winning the cold war), would probably very kindly say that it isn't that Mister Obama doesn't know anything, it's just that he knows so much that isn't so. Well, that's probably true. Mister Obama knows that simple people (who are only the backbone of this country when he's trying to get their vote) bitterly cling to guns and religion. He knows that big government has always been the answer to mankind's problems. He knows that we can tax our way to prosperity. And he also knows that the election's already won.


What is Fantasy Trek?
The Only 'Star Trek: The Experience' You Can Still Experience
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

Shooting From the Left

I've been pretty quiet lately, but I've been busy just the same. Aside from working on my fantasy trek project (see http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com for the only "Star Trek: The Experience" you can still Experience... and for free by the way). But I've also been watching all the shooting from the left that somehow just seems to be catching them in the foot. Not an easy thing when the left foot in question is so firmly entrenched in their own mouth.

Mister Obama says that he's going to change things, and that's why we should vote for him. First of all, Mister Obama seems to do much better when there's no voting at all. Either it's him not voting on any issue that might come back to haunt him (regardless of how important it is that someone charged wth representing the people actually take a stand based not on focus groups or snap polling but on conviction and principle), or it's votes not being allowed from Michigan or Florida (until he knows he'll win anyway), or it's votes not even being taken in the Democrat love-fest in Denver (rather than risking some delegates going against the commands of party bosses and 'super delegates'... and more on the subject of super delegates later), and declaring, not electing, the Chosen One's victory by Acclamation. Star Wars fans, remember that the last 'Chosen One' may have started out looking innocent but ended up being Darth Vader. The party that shouted out how much they wanted every vote to be counted suddenly seems to feel otherwise. And there is something else that needs to be considered here. Is it a pure coincidence that Darth Hussein Obama's :) victory speech so closely coincided with the anniversary of one of Martin Luther King Jr's most famous speeches? I don't think so. I think it was decided long ago who was going to be giving a victory speech on that night. I think 'super delegates' were put in place and the 'Acclamation' was planned long before a single primary vote was cast. I think that Hillary's campaign was doomed from the start. I think that the Kennedy's were all in on the act from the start. That's why they suddenly wanted nothing to do with the Clintons and were throwing their entire weight behind someone with so little experience and with twenty years of association with controversial America-hating, white-hating racist demogouges like Louis Farrakhan and Reverend Wright. They chose(n) him as the new JFK, and they weren't going to let a silly thing like democracy get in the way. And about those super delegates. I remember when a concept called 'one man, one vote' was an important idea in this country. Not any more. Now we have Super Delegate, who knows what's best for us, even in the voting booth. That's why they're given the voting ability of hundreds of us mere mortals. Who needs Batman?


What is Fantasy Trek?
http://fantasytrek.blogspot.com

No War on Terror?

Just a quick note here. I live in a tourist-dependant town, near an airport, in an apartment/residential area. Just two doors down, last Monday, an undercover sting operation caught someone who was getting ready to dump mercury into the water supply of a nearby airport. Tell me what that is if it isn't terrorism. And then explain how it isn't a war. I'm serious. If there is anyone out there who genuinely believes that it isn't terror and it isn't a war, I want to hear from you. And then folks, the question must be asked why local (and indeed national) had nothing to say about it.

William Delahunt (D-Mass) Identifies Vice Presidential Chief of Staff David Addington to Al Qaeda

Here's a little something, courtesy of Newt Gingrich that I don't recall Brian Williams or anyone on CNN or MSNBC mentioning;

Congressman Delahunt Should Apologize or Face Expulsion from Congress
By far and away the most sour note struck this Independence Day holiday was the outrageously irresponsible and un-American comments made by Congressman William Delahunt (D-Mass.) to vice presidential chief of staff David Addington in a hearing last week.

Rep. Delahunt repeatedly asked Mr. Addington about the use of waterboarding when interrogating enemy combatants. Mr. Addington replied that he could not discuss interrogation techniques because, as he said, "al Qaeda may watch C-SPAN."

"Right," Delahunt responded. "Well, I'm sure they are watching, and I'm glad they finally have the chance to see you, Mr. Addington." View this disgraceful exchange for yourself here.

For his unconscionable expression of pleasure at the prospect of murderous al Qaeda being able to identify an American public servant, Rep. Delahunt, in the very least, owes Mr. Addington an apology. If he refuses to apologize, his colleagues in Congress should move to expel him. There is no place in Congress for a pro-al Qaeda, anti-American public official.

I suppose Mr Delahunt figures that most people don't watch CSPAN and know only what the liberal-controlled media tells them. Unfortunately, our enemies (and we really do have them) are watching everything they can, and are taking every bit of information they can get. But just how hard will they have to hit us to unite us in this country for more than a few months? Apparently 9/11 wasn't hard enough.

I Apologize if My Remarks Were Misinterpreted

Just kidding. I apologize for nothing I say here. What I'm talking about is when people in the political arena say horrible things, and when they get caught out, they don't actually apologize... They apologize for people misinterpreting or somehow taking offense at some innocent thing they said. You know, if you say something against someone you hate (oh wait. Liberals don't hate, do they? Just conservatives hate), don't apologize. If you mean it, you mean it. I mean, we all know that politicians always mean what they say, right? :) And if you're going to backpedal and apologize, strap on a set and apologize for what you said.

Stupid Things I've Heard Today

You know, the cheap version of that stuff that men take so they can get aroused? The upstanding (second-rate) product that also happens to inhabit the subject header of 90% of spam messages in the world. Yeah. So in the little almost whispered list of potential debilitating side-effects (nausea, vomiting... hmmm, sexy), they say 'don't use if you're taking nitrates for chest pains'. Okay, chest pains in this case equals prone to heart attack. And just a suggestion. If you're prone to heart attacks, maybe you should move an erection down on your  priority list.

Here's another one. Nutra System shows these over-the-hill sports stars talking about how you can 'eat like a man and still lose weight'. Again, if you think that you have to eat what some blowhard on TV tells you to feel like a man, a diet is not going to help.

And I'm sure there's more

Obama the Racist (among other things)

The subject header may seem strange, but really, what other word sums up
this person? Nothing really does it justice. He lies to us regarding NAFTA
during the primary, and sends his henchman to Canada to say, don't worry if
Obama objects to NAFTA, he's just saying it to get elected. He spends 20
years worshipping in a church that is led by a preacher who hates white
people and the country. And he doesn't see a problem with that, for 20
years, until someone points it out to him on youtube. There is no outrage.
Hillary refuses to exploit the situation, so no doubt didn't deserve to win.
Obama says he will stick with limited, verifiable public funding until he
discovers how much more he can get privately. He says he doesn't accept
money from lobbyists and special interest, but he does. He takes money from
labor unions that spend dues paid by members, regardless of the wishes or
political beliefs of those members. He even admits that he's beholden to
those donors. All politicians do it. We all know it. But Obama cannot look
down his nose at others and claim that he won't do the same. If he simply
had a different idea of how to fix the country, I could deal with it. But
his dishonesty just makes him just such a horrible choice to lead anything.
He is smug and elitist, and what's more, he's a racist. By claiming that
"they will try to make you afraid of him because he's black", he is using
his race, and fear of racism to garner support. He is assuming that a white
person (and now that the primary is over, that would have to be a
conservative white person) who doesn't like him must feel that way because
he's black. He can't see past his own color. He is no better than the KKK
because all he sees in himself and others is black and white. Mr Obama, I'm
not afraid of you because you're black. I'm afraid of you because I think
you're the most damgerous candidate for president we've had since.... oh,
1776? Something like that. You have the audacity to look down on the real
muscle of this country, saying that they cling to guns and religion because
we're bitter. I'll tell you why we cling to guns and religion. Because they
are our God-given right. The government cannot grant us these rights any
more that they can give us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. And it was guns and religion that gave us our freedom from
Britain.

Good and Bad Founding Fathers

I've been reading David McCullough's John Adams, and aside from a fantastic
history lesson, I'm getting a picture of our early Congress that is, as hard
as it is to believe, almost as bad as that nest of vipers we have now. I'm
also learning of some of the truly brave men and women who gave us this
opportunity that our representatives now seem to be squandering. Rather than
try to explain each excerpt, I'll just present the words of David McCullough
and John Adams.

...Outraged by Dickinson's insistence on petitions to the King as essential
to restoring peace, even after Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, Adams
had strongly denounced any such step. Like many other delegates, he had been
infuriated by Congress's humble petition of July 8, 1775, the so-called
Olive Branch Petition, that had been Dickinson's major contribution. From
the day he saw with his own eyes what the British had done at Lexington and
Concord, Adams failed to understand how anyone could have any misconception
or naïve hope about what to expect from the British. "Powder and artillery
are the most efficacious, sure and infallible conciliatory measures we can
adopt," Adams wrote privately...

*****

...The greatest minds agreed, Adams continued, that all good government was
republican, and the "true idea" of a republic was "an empire of laws and not
of men," a phrase not original with Adams but that he had borrowed from the
writings of the seventeenth-century philosopher James Harrington. A
government with a single legislative body would never do. There should be a
representative assembly, "an exact portrait in miniature of the people at
large," but it must not have the whole legislative power, for the reason
that like an individual with unchecked power, it could be subject to "fits
of humor, transports of passion, partialities of prejudice." A single
assembly could "grow avaricious . . . exempt itself from burdens . . .
become ambitious and after some time vote itself perpetual."...

******

...But when later that evening a preliminary vote was taken, four colonies
unexpectedly held back, refusing to proclaim independence. The all-important
Pennsylvania delegation, despite popular opinion in Pennsylvania, stood with
John Dickinson and voted no. The New York delegates abstained, saying they
favored the motion but lacked specific instructions. South Carolina, too,
surprisingly, voted no, while Delaware, with only two delegates present, was
divided. The missing Delaware delegate was Caesar Rodney, one of the most
ardent of the independence faction. Where he was or when he might reappear
was unclear, but a rider had been sent racing off to find him. When Edward
Rutledge rescued the moment by moving that a final vote be postponed until
the next day, implying that for the sake of unanimity South Carolina might
change its mind, Adams and the others immediately agreed. For while the nine
colonies supporting independence made a clear majority, it was hardly the
show of solidarity that such a step ought to have.The atmosphere that night
at City Tavern and in the lodging houses of the delegates was extremely
tense. The crux of the matter was the Pennsylvania delegation, for in the
preliminary vote three of the seven Pennsylvania delegates had gone against
John Dickinson and declared in the affirmative, and it was of utmost
interest that one of the three, along with Franklin and John Morton, was
James Wilson, who, though a friend and ally of Dickinson, had switched sides
to vote for independence. The question now was how many of the rest who were
in league with Dickinson would on the morrow continue, in Adams's words, to
"vote point blank against the known and declared sense of their
constituents." To compound the tension that night, word reached Philadelphia
of the sighting off New York of a hundred British ships, the first arrivals
of a fleet that would number over four hundred. Though the record of all
that happened the following day,Tuesday, July 2, is regrettably sparse, it
appears that just as the doors to Congress were about to be closed at the
usual hour of nine o'clock, Caesar Rodney, mud-spattered, "booted and
spurred," made his dramatic entrance. The tall, thin Rodney - the
"oddest-looking man in the world,"Adams once described him - had been made
to appear stranger still, and more to be pitied, by a skin cancer on one
side of his face that he kept hidden behind a scarf of green silk. But, as
Adams had also recognized, Rodney was a man of spirit, of "fire." Almost
unimaginably, he had ridden eighty miles through the night, changing horses
several times, to be there in time to cast his vote...

*****

..."Unfaithfulness" was something he could not abide, and in his spells of
gloom he pondered whether the fault was in the times. Unfaithfulness in
public stations is deeply criminal [he wrote to Abigail]. But there is no
encouragement to be faithful. Neither profit, nor honor, nor applause is
acquired by faithfulness. . . . There is too much corruption, even in this
infant age of our Republic. Virtue is not in fashion. Vice is not
infamous...

*****

...Then, just as agreement seemed near, Henry Strachey proposed to amend the
line specifying the American "right" of fishing to read "liberty" of
fishing, to which young Fitzherbert declared the word "right" to be "an
obnoxious expression." The moment was one made for Adams. Rising from his
chair, smoldering with indignation, he addressed the British: Gentlemen, is
there or can there be a clearer right? In former treaties, that of Utrecht
and that of Paris, France and England have claimed the right and used the
word. When God Almighty made the Banks of Newfoundland at 300 leagues
distant from the people of America and at 600 leagues distance from those of
France and England, did he not give as food a right to the former as to the
latter. If Heaven in the Creation have a right, it is ours at least as much
as yours. If occupation, use, and possession have a right, we have it as
clearly as you. If war and blood and treasure give a right, ours is as good
as yours. We have been constantly fighting in Canada, Cape Breton, and Nova
Scotia for the defense of the fishery, and have expanded beyond all
proportion more than you. If then the right cannot be denied, why then
should it not be acknowledged? And put out of dispute? It was settled -
almost. Article III of the treaty would read, "It is agreed that the people
of the United States shall continue to enjoy unmolested the right to take
fish of every kind on the Grand Bank." However, on the matter of taking fish
along the coast of Newfoundland and "all other of his Britannic Majesty's
Dominions in America," the people of the United States were to have the
"liberty," which, insisted the British negotiators, amounted to the same
thing. "We did not think it necessary to contend for a word," wrote a more
mellow John Adams years afterward. By the end of the day there was agreement
on everything. Dining that evening at his hotel with Matthew Ridley,Adams
was in high spirits. Asked if he would have fish, he laughed and declined,
saying he had had "a pretty good meal of them" already that day. Adams
generously praised his fellow negotiators. Franklin, he told Ridley, had
performed "nobly." But to Jay belonged the greatest credit, Adams said. Jay
had played the leading part, Adams felt then and later, never failing to
give Jay credit. The following day, Saturday, November 30, 1782, all parties
made their way through still another damp Paris snowfall, again to Oswald's
quarters at the Grand Hôtel Muscovite for the signing of the preliminary
treaty. Oswald was first to fix his name, followed by the four Americans in
alphabetical order. In effect, the Americans had signed a separate peace
with the British. They had acted in direct violation of both the
French-American alliance and their specific instructions from Congress to
abide by the advice of the French foreign minister. To Adams there was no
conflict in what they had done. The decision to break with the orders from
Congress, and thus break faith with the French, had been clear-cut, the only
honorable course. Congress had left them no choice. Congress had
"prostituted" its own honor by surrendering its sovereignty to the French
Foreign Minister. "It is glory to have broken such infamous orders," Adams
wrote in his diary. "Infamous I say, for so they will be to all
posterity."...

More about Traitors

The last (almost) eight years has seen our government... that body which is
given its power from We The People and which serves at our pleasure, not
serving us. It hasn't worked to represent us, nor has it solved any of the
myriad problems facing us. Indeed, the historic low approval ratings that
Congress has earned make President Bush seem like a rock star. And that is
because they have failed year after year to decrease our dependency on
foreign oil (which is really the cause of so many other problems) by either
increasing domestic production and refinement or by pushing hard for serious
progress for on alternative, sustainable and renewable fuel. I don't mean
ethanol. Ethanol is not much better than oil, because it still burns oil,
but also uses up so much of our farm produce that it creates food shortages.
Indeed, the fixation that the world has with ethanol is beginning to
encroach upon valuable rain forest resources that we can't afford to lose.
We are not going to quit this addiction (and that's what it is) until we
actually learn to stop burning things to make our cars run. What we need is
the courage and the foresight to challenge ourselves to start a revolution
that ends the oil era. We need a moon shot for the new century. In response
to the Soviet's launch of Sputnik, John F Kennedy challenged the nation to
win the space race by landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to
Earth by the end of the sixties. That's what we need. What made it easy for
America (and America's politicians) to take the challenge seriously was the
paranoia... the supposed threat that the communists would drop bombs, or spy
on us from orbit. That's the threat that we have now, even though
particularly the left refuse to recognize it for political reasons. Our
strongest oil-producing ally in the middle east is Saudi Arabia, a kingdom
that has no respect for its citizens, and is one of the largest exporters of
terrorists in the world, and is itself threatened by even more radical
neighbors. So it doesn't matter what happens to the price of oil. We need to
get off of it. And if we must stay on it for a while, we'd better learn to
live off of what we can make ourselves.
Our government has also failed to learn some basic lessons of economics. Tax
cuts are necessary to protect the basic health of our business sector by
giving employers the means to hire and increase production, thereby lowering
prices, even as it helps working class people to keep (and spend and save)
more of their own money, which helps businesses to prosper. Supply side
"Reaganomics" really do work. It has been proven time and time again that
tax increases actually result in an overall loss in tax revenue by reducing
the average income of American workers, while tax cuts have in fact the
opposite effect by giving employers more hiring and production power and
giving consumers higher income and more spending power. But this really only
works if those tax cuts are matched with fiscal responsibility. Every tax
dollar that goes into the government has to treated like a valuable
commodity, because if it isn't spent doing the legitimate business of the
people, then it'll have to be replaced by a dollar that is spent correctly.
Asking the taxpayer for more money to pay for pork projects would be like me
demanding an extra paycheck because I spent the first one on computer games.
If I got away with that, I might be helping the local Best Buy to stay in
business, but it'll be at the cost of the bookstore I work at. I can't even
blame this on just the Democrats, much as I'd love to, because the
Republicans held all three branches of government for six of the last eight
years. The Republicans lowered our taxes wonderfully, but didn't have the
guts or political will to enact the spending cuts necessary to balance the
books.
Traitors? Well.... let's see. If I stand by and watch my neighbor's house
burn down without calling for help, aren't I just as guilty as if I roasted
marshmallows over the burning embers, or even started the fire myself? I
think so.

How Stephen King supports the troops

"Reading -- I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV but the fact is that if you can read, you can walk into a job later on.  If you don't, then you got the army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that.  It's not as bright.  So that's my little commercial for that."

 

Stephen King on the intelligence of American Troops, and apparently how he "supports the troops".

 

Traitors

"...Unless America took action, and at once, they faced the prospect of
living like the Irish on potatoes and water..." from the memoirs of John
Adams.

I've been watching a documentary on the lead up to, execution of, and
moments following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I am reminded of a time
not quite seven years ago when America was caught dozing on a sunny morning.
In the first few minutes of the attack on Pearl Harbor, our military men
thought that whatever was happening must be a drill. They stood and watched
open-mouthed because they couldn't believe that anyone would attack us. This
after more than a year of open agression by the Japanese military against
China, Manchuria, and the Soviet Union. Even after an attack on a US naval
vessell getting Americans out of China, as well as the rape of Nanking. Now
we're facing threats from enemies who have already targetted and killed
Americans, murdered 3,000 people in a single cowardly act, and we still
stick our heads in the sand and convince ourselves that it can't happen to
us. And worse yet, our so-called leaders, so-called representatives, the
people who think that everything we own comes through them first... these
people have stopped doing the work of serving the country and its citizens
and legal residents and now only do the work of their corporate and
political masters. Worse, they're cashing in on the war in Iraq, most
recently with the DNC using footage of American soldiers (who everyone says
they support) being blown up.

More next time

Do I Have To Say It?

Forget that Obama has been sitting in an "unashamedly black" church for twenty years while his inspirational 'uncle' spouts racist hate speech... never mind that an "unashamedly white" church would have been shut down.... never mind that the American (and I use the expression loosely) who's philosophy is most in line with that of Osama and (the racist hate-mongering) Louis Farrakhan really really REALLY wants Obama to get elected. Never mind that. Never mind the lack of any specific plans to address any problem facing the world. The man has already been caught lying about his position on international issues. (NAFTA/Canada). He is already demonstrating his lack of honesty and conviction... and the reluctance to accept responsibility for people who work for him (again, NAFTA/Canada, and the volunteer with the Cuban flag/Che Gueverra's face in the office). He has no respect for the National Anthem, and states that the flag lapel pin means nothing but the war and 9/11. We do have freedom to not demonstrate patriotism here... we even have freedom to not feel patriotism. But with the country in as much trouble as it is now, we need a president who at least pretends to be a patriot. I realize that his wife has never been proud of her country, but if he wants to be the commander in chief, I think he should also kind of be the cheerleader in chief. At least pretend that the flag means more to you than politics. And then maybe you can explain how you can be so influenced by a man and listen to him preach for twenty years the kind of racist spittle that Adolf Hitler (and Osama Bin Laden and Louis Farrakhan) would have loved.... and then not remember hearing any of it.

And if that weren't bad enough, the jack-booted fascist that looks preferable by comparison, Hillary Clinton, wants a do-over in Florida and Michigan. Not because she cares about every vote being counted (that's right... they did say that was important, didn't they?), but because she's losing. If you want to punish two states for breaking the rules, at least have the integrity to stick to that when it's inconvenient. That's what we can expect from another Clinton administration. Hillary has experience? Well, we have experienced Hillary, and she stinks.

Newt's Declaration of Independence

I was very happy to read Newt Gingrich's Declaration of Independence, and I was quite excited to read it. It makes common sense, and has me looking forward to, well, not this election (because Newt isn't running this time), but certainly the next one. It also harkened very well back to Ronald Reagan.... the following transcript of Gingrich's inspiring speech is provided with very kind permission by http://newt.org/


Thank you all for that remarkable welcome. I’m deeply, deeply grateful, and Callista and I are delighted to be back here once again at the most important single meeting of the conservative movement in a historic time.

Many of you know that my background includes being a teacher, and I am going to try in the next few minutes to offer a little bit of a lesson. My Dad was a career soldier, served 27 years in the infantry, and when I was very young, he convinced me that leadership and courage and a willingness to think deeply are vital to the survival of a free country.

Between my freshman and sophomore years in high school, when we were stationed first in Orleans, France, and then in Stuttgart, Germany, I concluded that what we are doing here today is really, really important. It’s part of the dialogue by which a free people govern themselves. My dad was reassigned to Fort Benning, Georgia, and in 1960, I was a volunteer as a high school student in the Nixon-Lodge campaign. So I want to talk to you this afternoon from having spent what will be this August, fifty years studying and thinking about what it takes for America to survive. In many ways, they’ve been remarkable years. The Georgia I arrived at in 1960, was legally segregated and a one-party Democratic state. Today it is legally integrated and a two-party state with a Republican governor, two Republican senators, and a Republican legislature.

When I decided at the beginning of my sophomore year in high school that I would study national security and I would try to understand how we acquire the power legitimately from the people in order to implement the policies we need, the Soviet Empire was a real and a direct threat to the survival of freedom on this planet. Because of the courage persistence, clarity, and vision of one person, the Soviet Union does not exist today, and that person was Ronald Wilson Reagan. Next month will be the 25th anniversary of two speeches: the speech in which he broke with the elite, morally neutral, real politik, accommodationist view, and described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”, the beginning of the end of that evil… and 13 days later, the speech in which he outlined a proposal for a science-and-technology-based, entrepreneurial approach to national security to develop a strategic defense initiative which would in effect bankrupt the Soviet Union and lead to its collapse.

Those two speeches could have been given by no other leader in the last fifty years. He had the courage, he had the conviction, and from 1947 on, he had been systematically thinking about and studying communism and trying to find out how to defeat it. Now, he made the first CPAC conference really important, because he came here at a time when we were in despair, when the Republican Party was crumbling under the weight of Watergate, when the Left was on offense, when the counterculture was in full steam, and he said in [March of 1975] that we must have a flag of bold colors, no pale pastels. [“Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?”—Ronald Reagan]

I tried in thinking through what I could say to you this afternoon to literally ask what would Ronald Reagan have said in this setting at this time, not to repeat what he said in other times, but to think about the clarity and the historic context. I went back and looked at what Barry Goldwater said in 1960 when there was a conservative eruption because Nixon was going too far to the left, and Goldwater’s name was put a nomination for vice-president, and he withdrew it and said he would support the ticket. Compared to the other party, there was no choice. I looked at what Ronald Reagan said in 1976, when having risen in rebellion against an incumbent Republican President and come within 70 votes of the nomination, he said that given a choice between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, there was no choice, because Jimmy Carter would be about as bad as he turned out to be.

So I want to say several things that are fairly complicated and I hope you will bare with me, because I think we are at a moment of historic choice for the conservative movement’s future. I want to give you four sets of numbers, those of you who are truly interested in this may want to write them down, we gave you a copy of the Platform of the American People which I’ll talk about in a minute, but feel free to write on the back of it. I think you’ll find this interesting as a lesson in history and as a thought process about where we are now. The first is the number 9 million. The second is two numbers: 1928 and 68. The third is 0 to 6, and the fourth is 14.6 to 8.3. I believe in these four sets of numbers, lies a diagnosis of where we are and where we must go.

The first number, 9 million, is the number of additional votes who came out to vote in 1994, the largest one-party increase in an off-year election in the history of the United States, brought out by a proud, positive, clear, and very, very bold Contract with America. I cite it to point out that when we stand clearly, simply, and directly for large-scale change, that year it was welfare reform, the first tax cut in 16 years, a balanced federal budget, accountability for the Congress, stronger national defense and intelligence. The American people responded.

The second set of numbers, 1928 and 68. In 1928 was the last time a Republican Congress was reelected. We had held the House from 1946 for two years, we held the House in 1952 for two years, and when I became Speaker I felt the greatest challenge I had was to ensure that we would in fact keep a majority in 1996 for the first time in 68 years. Now, it was a doubly difficult problem because I had every expectation that President Clinton, as one of the smartest, most agile, and least inhibited by principle politicians in America, would flow magically to whatever he had to in order to get reelected. So my assumption all along was that come the presidential campaign, we would have an uphill fight. No Republican House had been reelected with a Democratic President winning. And I want to share three keys with you that people don’t understand to this day in this city:

The first key is, we kept our word on the Contract, and we voted on every single item in the first 93 days, and people began to believe we were serious.

The second, is something that the news media and the elites and the Republican consultants got exactly backwards. We got into a struggle over balancing the budget with Bill Clinton and the federal government was closed. Everyone says, “What a huge mistake,” and I keep trying to say to them, “We were the first reelected majority in 68 years and you think it was a mistake?” If we had broken our word with fiscal conservatives, if we had rolled over and caved, if we had failed to fight, we would not have held the Congress in 1996. In fact, it was precisely because people suddenly looked up and said, “Wait a second. These guys actually believe it enough to lay their careers on the line and stand for something even when they’re being yelled at,” that led people to decide that we were real.

And third, we voluntarily committed that we would balance the federal budget. We weren’t required to by the Contract. The Contract said we’d vote on a balanced budget amendment. But we said when the amendment passed the House and failed by one vote in the Senate, we would go ahead and behave as though it had passed. And we said by definition if we were going to pass the amendment we thought we could balance the budget in seven years because that’s what to amendment said. And so we held a meeting and I’ll never forget it. Dick Armey, Bob Walker, Bob Livingston, Bill Archer, John Kasich, Tom Delay. We all sat down and we looked at each other. And I said, “We have a chance to decisively make history if we have the courage to make history.” Now in order to do that, we had to reform Medicare in the middle of an election year with a liberal Democrat in the White House. And we had to do so, so carefully, and with such training that all of our members could go home and explain what we were doing. And we had to do so with such care that AARP would not attack us, because we couldn’t have withstood it if they had decided to tell every senior citizen that we were against them. When we finished keeping our word on the Contract, standing firm even if it had involved a real fight, and moving towards a balanced budget with an effective reform of Medicare that people agreed was needed and correct, we kept the U.S. House for the first time in 68 years. And there’s a big lesson there.

Now the third number, which I think should have led to a vastly bigger discussion in the Republican Party, is 0 to 6. That’s the track record of incumbent U.S. Senators in a close election in 2006. Now if your party loses every single close incumbent election despite having raised an immense amount of money, maybe there’s something wrong. I don’t want to be too bold, but I want to suggest that if I were a stockholder and we were 0 for 6, I would like to talk about what’s going on. And yet we sleepwalk through 2007.

Now, because we were sleepwalking through 2007, we get to the last set of numbers which should sober every person in this country who does not want to have a left wing president. On Super Tuesday, there were 14.6 million Democratic votes, and 8.3 million Republican votes. Now, I want to repeat this because I want it to sink it in here. There were 14.6 million Democrats who thought the presidential nomination was worth voting for, and there were 8.3 million Republicans on Super Tuesday. That is a warning of a catastrophic election. I was in Idaho this last week, and Barack Obama on last Saturday had 16,000 people in Boise. The idea that the most liberal Democratic Senator getting 16,000 people in Boise was inconceivable. And every person who cares about the conservative movement and every person who cares about the Republican Party had better stop and say to themselves, “There is something big happening in this country. We don’t understand it. We’re not responding to it. And we’re currently not competitive. And if we want to get to be competitive, we had better change and we had better change now.”

Let me tell you flatly. I said the week before Super Tuesday, actually a week before the Super Bowl, reporters asked me, I think it was on Hannity and Colmes, and they said, “What are the Republican chances this fall?” And I said, “Well, I think they’re about as good as the New York Giants beating the Patriots.”

Now, and this next comment comes with a little pain because I’m a Green Bay fan, and I learned a lot about the Giants when they played in Green Bay recently, but here’s the point I was making. People thought I was saying we didn’t have a chance to win. I was saying, the game hasn’t started, and if we field the right team with the right issues in the right way, we have fully was much chance to win as the Giants did, but I’ll tell you, we are currently no where near being ready to do this. This is not a comment–I want to make this clear for the news media–this is not a comment about any of the current candidates for president.

This is a comment about the conservative movement, and it's a comment about the Republican Party, and all the candidates currently running fit within those two phrases. But it is about all of us. It is about our Congressman, our Senator, our governors, our county commissioners, our school board members.

And let me make this very clear, I believe we have to change or expect defeat.

And I believe that this is a time for the conservative movement, to issue a declaration of independence. And let me explain what I mean by issuing a declaration of independence.

First of all, I think we need to get independent from a Washington fixation. There are 513,000 elected officials in the United States and the conservative movement should believe in a decentralized United States, where every elected official has real responsibility, and we should be developing a conservative action plan, at every level of this country, and not simply focused over and over again on arguments about the White House.

Second, I think we need to get independent from this leader fascination with the presidency. Remember Ronald Reagan rose in rebellion because Gerald Ford was negotiating the Panama Canal Treaty. I voted against two Reagan tax increases. I voted against George H. W. Bush’s 1990 tax increase. It is a totally honorable and legitimate thing to say I am going to support the candidate and oppose the policy. This idea [is] that I think we [did] President George W. Bush a grave disservice by not being dramatically more aggressive in criticizing when they were wrong, and being more open when they were making mistakes.

And I don’t think it helped them or the country.

I also think that we need to declare our independence from trying to protect and defend failed bureaucracies that magically become our’s as soon as we are in charge of them. We appoint solid conservatives to a department and within three weeks they are defending and protecting the very department that they would have been attacking before they got appointed. And this is a fundamental problem and I think it comes from some very great challenges. And I want to suggest to you, and I spent a lot of time since 1999 thinking about this. That’s the part of why I wrote the book Real Change, and why I have tried to lay out at American Solutions a fundamentally different approach to how we think about solving our problems.

I think that there are two grave lessons for the conservative movement since 1980. The first, which we still haven’t come to grips with, is that governing is much harder than campaigning. Our consultants may be terrific at winning one election, they don’t know anything about governing. And unfortunately most of our candidates listen to our consultants. And so you end up with people who don’t understand briefing people who don’t know, and together they have no clue.

We win the election and then we lose the government. And this happens at every level. It happens in Sacramento, it happens in Tallahassee, it happens in Albany, it happens Trenton, and it happens in Washington D.C.

So the first lesson is that we are going to have to learn as a movement how to actually create conservative government, not just conservative politics. And that is a fundamentally harder thing.

The second thing that I think has been a very sobering surprise to me, and it really started when we won in 1994, and I thought that the Democrats would stop and say “Wow we just lost power that we had for forty years, I guess maybe we did something wrong.”

They didn’t say that at all. They said, “Gingrich must have cheated.” And their most partisan members just hated me. They filed 83 ethic charges and they did all sorts of things because they just couldn’t stand it. They knew they were supposed to be chairman. In fact, the first couple of weeks, people would come in and sit in the chairman’s seat and we would have to say to them, you know, you’re the ranking member now, and they were just beside themselves because they can’t have been wrong. And frankly this is why they hate George W. Bush so much. The notion that we might have actually been elected under the rules in 2000, the notion that we might actually be doing the right thing, just drives the Left crazy.

But it is a deeper problem. I had no real understanding of how decisively and deeply entrenched our opponents are from every level. From the Marxist tenure faculty member running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, achieving the impossible, the only man in America who could be to the left of Al Franken, and a vivid reminder of how much our University campuses are filled with people who hate the very country that provides them their salary, that provides them their tenure, and provides them their freedom.

To a Detroit school bureaucracy which is crippling the children of Detroit, which graduates only 25% of its entering freshman on time, which is one of the highest paid and most expensive programs in the country, and which, when a successful millionaire offered to give $200 million dollars, to help create charter schools to save the children of Detroit, promptly attacked him as a racist because no white man had the right to step in and save black children, and in fact drove him out of Detroit, because he was such a threat, by insisting that teachers actually be competent, and that the purpose of schools was actually to teach.

But we have seen the same thing right here. Any of youo who have listened to Ambassador John Bolton knows that we have a vast portion of the State Department deeply committed to defeating the policies of President Bush. We have a large proportion of the Intelligence community deeply committed to defeating the policies of President Bush. The fact that he is the elected Commander in Chief of the American people, the fact that the laws have been passed by the elected legislators of the American people, seems to be no matter to this bureaucratic elite, which arrogates to itself the right to do things that are stunningly destructive.

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran can only be understood as a bureaucratic coup d’état, deliberately designed to undermine the policies of the United States, on behalf of some weird goal.

There is one other declaration of independence we need and this will startle some of you. And remember I say this from a background of having been active in the Georgia Republican Party since 1960. In a fundamental way, the conservative movement has to declare itself independent from the Republican Party.

Let me make very clear what I'm saying here. I am not saying there should be a third party – I think a third party is a dumb idea, will not get anywhere, and in the end will achieve nothing.

I actually believe that any reasonable conservative will, in the end, find that they have an absolute requirement to support the Republican nominee for president this fall.

And let me remind you, I say that in the context of personally believing that the McCain-Feingold Act is unconstitutional and a threat to our civil liberties.

And I say that in the context of believing that the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill was a disaster and was correctly stopped by the American people.

But I would rather, as a citizen, and I say this with Callista and I have two wonderful grandchildren. Maggie who is 8 and Robert who is 6. We think about their future. As a citizen, I would rather have a President McCain that we fight with 20% of the time, than a President Clinton or a President Obama that we fight with 90% of the time.

Let me, if I might, carry this a step further so that you understand where I am coming from. I believe the conservative movement has to think about reaching out to every American of every background. I think we have to decide that in 2010, we are going to recruit and support conservative candidates in Democratic districts, because the right answer to gerrymandering is to beat them in the primary.

Now all of you have a copy, I hope you got a copy, but if you didn't, you can get it later on outside of the Platform of the American People from American Solutions. And it’s also at the back of my new book Real Change. And you can also get it at AmericanSolutions.com. And you can download it for free.

Let me tell you how we developed this. This is a work in progress and this is phase 1. We had a Solutions Day workshop last September with over 100,000 people participating across the country on the internet, in person, and on television. We had over 25,000 people in telephone and townhall meetings where we asked them to be involved and we listened to their questions and worked with them. We took six national surveys. And what we were looking for, and what’s in this Platform of the American People is issues which are tripartisan. They get a majority of Democrats, a majority of Republicans, and a majority of independents.

Now it turns out when you develop a tripartisan platform, it's a center-right platform because this is a center-right country. The fascinating thing will be watching Senator Obama who is for “Real Change” and has “change” on all his slogans, and I am for it. We wrote the book Real Change last summer and I want to thank the people at Regnery for going along with the title, it turns out this February that it was really a good title.

But it was also an obvious title. But here’s the question: Are you for the right change or the wrong change?

Let me give you a couple of examples from here. And this isn’t the Gingrich Platform, this is the Platform of the American People. And by the way, we’re going to want your help when you go back home reaching out to Democrats and Republicans, to get them at your county, at your district, at your state, in both parties to adopt this platform. Everything in here has a majority Democrat support. It doesn’t have a majority elite support, but I’m hoping you’ll go back home and I do want to introduce for one second Princella Smith who’s here somewhere. Princella is the chief advocate of the Platform of the American People and she’d love to talk to you later on and be available to explain it and work on it.

And here’s my point. Let’s talk about the right change versus the wrong change. 85% of the American people believe we have an absolute obligation to defend America and her allies.

So if we need to strengthen our intelligence capabilities, and strengthen our interdiction and surveillance capabilities, and strengthen our ability to win wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere that would be the right change. But if we want to have weakness, under funding, and crippling of our departments of security that would be the wrong change.

Now let me give you a second example. 75% of the American people believe we have an obligation to defeat our enemies. Pretty strong language. Actually a higher number than I thought we’d get. 75% to 16%. So if we knew how to be clear and articulate and explain it, if we knew how to communicate to every American what the Director of National Intelligence said last week about the depth and intensity of al-Qaeda and this was on public record it just wasn’t, people didn’t pay attention to it, the news media didn’t want to cover it. The Director of National Intelligence said, let me tell you, al-Qaeda is working all day every day to find a way how to kill Americans. And they’re recruiting Westerners to have more sophisticated people to come and kill Americans. Now you would think if that was on then someone might say to Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, okay if al-Qaeda wants to come here, would you like to stop them over there? And if you want to stop them over there, how can you run back home to here if we’re trying to stop them over there?

Just three more examples to show you the difference between right change and wrong change. 92% of the American people believe that for us to compete with China and India in an age of science and technology we have to dramatically improve math and science education. Now, I am prepared to change every bureaucracy in America that is failing our children until we get them to actually succeed, and I think the change should start today, because we shouldn’t lose a single child to prison who ought to be in college if only they had a decent school to go to.

And the question for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton is simple. Are you prepared to put the children ahead of your union allies, and actually measure achievement rather than union dues as a primary success?

Two last examples. 87% of the American people believe English should be the official language of government.

Now, 87% means an absolute majority of Democrats favor English as the official language of government. An absolute majority of Republicans favor English as the official language of government. An absolute majority of independents favor English as the official language of government. An absolute majority of Hispanics favor English as the official language of government.

Both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton voted against 87% percent of the American people, but nobody knows it.

Well, it’s not their fault that nobody knows it, it’s our fault. So I would think if you want an example of real change, I think the Senate Republicans should say you know we like this idea of working together, we like this idea of getting real change, we’re prepared to work with Senator Obama next week, and Senator Clinton next week, and then once a week I would give them a chance to vote up or down on making English the official language of government. And let it just keep drawing it out.

Because there’s a profound principle here. If something is both historically right, and has 87% of the American people in favor of it, then leadership which is prepared to stand firm will in the end be successful in getting the right change, not the wrong change, for America’s future.

Lastly, 84% of the American people would like to have a one page tax form with an optional flat tax.

I know a number of you favor the Fair Tax, I’m just pointing out as an interim transition step, a one page flat tax wouldn’t be a bad interim step. And here’s my point about real change. If every Republican in the House and Senate were to send out a mailer to all of their constituents in March with literally the one page tax form, and an explanation on the back, and a little questionnaire that said, “Hi. Would you like to just change the whole tax code and have the option, now you can keep the current code if you want. If you like record keeping and you think you need your deductions, and you want to pay your CPA and your tax accountant or attorney, that’s fine. But if you’d like simplicity, clarity, and certainty, you could have this.” You would suddenly change the entire tax debate from finding a way to get more money for Washington, to finding a way to save an immense amount of time and clarity, and all of a sudden the Democrats would have to answer the question: Would they like to have real change now, and would they like to have the right change now?

Those of you who have cell phones with you I’m going to give you a chance to do a text message if you want to know more about what we’re doing. At American Solutions, we are dedicated to reaching out to everybody in the country. And so if you’d like to text Newt, see they made as easy for you as they could, we’d love to find out how to stay in touch with you.

I believe the following. And I say this having lived through the narrow defeat of 1960, the great convention victory of Goldwater followed by a disastrous defeat in ’64, the recovery in the ’66 off-year election, the very narrow election of Nixon in ’68, the stunning landslide over McGovern in ’72, the collapse of the Nixon administration, and the rise of Reagan, the loss to Jimmy Carter, the extraordinary victory of 1980.

I believe we have two futures this year.

I believe we can be for real change now. We can put the Democrats on record every day from here on out. We could use the House and Senate as opportunities to have the country focused on what’s the right change and what’s the wrong change. We can take on the bureaucracies and decide that we don’t care who the nominal head is. The permanent bureaucracy is permanently liberal, permanently obsolete, permanently incapable of doing its job, and we need fundamental deep change from school board to city council to county commission to the sheriff’s office to the state legislature to the governor to Washington, D.C., and we are the movement of real change by this summer I suspect we will win one of the most cataclysmic elections in American history. Because the sad reality is that our friends on the Left are trapped by their allies, they’re trapped by the trial lawyers, they’re trapped by the unions, they’re trapped by the big city bureaucracies, they are trapped by their allies in tenured faculty, they are trapped by the Hollywood Left.

And if there is a clear choice of which change, we will win. But if we run a traditional consultant-dominated tactical Republican campaign, like we’ve seen in the last eight years, we will be defeated this fall, and we will be having a CPAC meeting next year talking about how we rebuild for the future with either President Obama or President Clinton in charge.

I’m here as somebody who has spent his entire life practically, since I was fifteen years old, trying to find a way for us. And we’ve had great successes. We cut taxes dramatically, we re-launched the American economy in the 1980s, we eliminated the Soviet Union. The fact is we won the Cold War. People are freer.

So we have had great successes. But we can’t rest on them. And so we need to go out dedicated to insist on real change now, on the right change now, and about making sure that every American, of every background, in every neighborhood, understands that their future, their children’s future, and their country’s future, rest on creating the kind of opportunities that we are building, and that that requires real change in the obsolete, expensive, and destructive bureaucracies we’ve inherited in the past.

With your help, at every level, starting with adopting the Platform of the American People, and moving on to encouraging every elected official you know to be active in the reform movement, we have a chance I think to set the stage for a dramatically better American future. Thank you, good luck, and God bless you.