Newt Gingrich: Five threats to American way of life

Philadelphia Inquirer ^ | February 7, 2005 | Newt Gingrich

[radicalamericannationalist]

Has also spent his time in the wilderness.

[AirForceDVM]

& the next 5 reasons
Slick Willie
Slick Willie
Slick Willie
Slick Willie
Slick Willie

[itsahoot]

I know the younger generation gets tired of hearing about "the good ol' days", but life was definitely different 50 years ago.

Amen,

[cainin04]

yes, absolutely. That is pretty much all this book is. It is a book outlining his conservative agenda. I believe he must be planning to throw his name into the hat in 08--got to be!

[webstersII]

Newt came to a place I used to work a few years ago for a speech and question/answer.

His speech was okay but the first question for Newt was about ensuring privacy in the digital age, with identity theft a growing problem. The guy asked Newt how we could develop more privacy.

Newt basically said that it used to be 100 years ago that if you wanted to live by yourself and be anonymous you could go live out west and no one would bother you. He said that that wasn't an option anymore, and he basically said that there was no more privacy anymore in our society and we just had to get used to that and determine how best to protect the financial and personal information which is available on all of us, blah, blah, blah.

I was rather unimpressed with his answer. It was more of "the gov't is here to take care of you because we know best" and "just trust the gov't to do the right thing" sort of answer.

He gave the same answer as Hillary or most any of the leftists would (and on a couple of other things, too). When you couple that with the fact that under Newt's watch the federal budget grew enormously and he and the conservatives were the ones pushing for bigger gov't, Newt is not really a "Small Gov't" conservative, he's a "Big Gov't" conservative, which is about the same as being a liberal IMHO.

[jwpjr]

re: life was definitely different 50 years ago.

I remember when my grandmother, my mom, my aunt, my sister and friend would spend all day Saturday doing Toni home permanents. Horrible smell. And I remember when packages of cigarettes purchased machines from had two or three shiny new pennies inside the cellophane on the package. Cigarettes were twenty-two or twenty-three cents each and the pennies were your change for a quarter. I also recall when you picked up the phone and waited for an operator to say "Number please" and you had to listen for your specific ring signal on the party line. Ours was a long and two short. Ah yes, the good old days!

[radicalamericannationalist]

That's all I could think of as I read it.

[itsahoot]

Cigarettes were twenty-two or twenty-three cents each and the pennies were your change for a quarter. I also recall when you picked up the phone and waited for an operator to say "Number please" and you had to listen for your specific ring signal on the party line.

I had forgotten about the pennies. Do you remember when they added a penny coin box to coke machines, when they raised the price from a nickel to 6 cents? They spent a lot of money changing those machines, then very shortly raised soda to 10 cents.

[jwpjr]

re: added a penny coin box to coke

Wow, you're right. I had forgotten that little piece of history. How about that little box on the front porch where the milkman put the milk every morning?

[swilhelm73]

It is a damn shame the Dems were able to take down Newt with their false charges of wrong doing. He definitely was a fighter - something the Republicans always need more of.

Of course we did lose the biggest fight of his career with Clinton, but Slick was an opponent easy to underestimate - an even bigger mistake with the monolith of the MSM circa 1995 in full support of him too.