Free Republic

The video title identifies this as a speech at the '64 Republican convention. That is incorrect. RR made the speech in LA on October 27, 1964 for the Goldwater campaign. Everyone who watched the telecast knew he could go places in politics if he wanted to. It was definitely a boost to us Goldwater kids after hearing "you are going to lose" for months. WATCH IT AND REMEMBER WHAT IS LIKE TO HAVE A REAL LEADER!

NEW YORK (AP) — Weren't Republicans against Medicare before they were for it? It's a question vexing Democrats in the fierce battle over President Barack Obama's push for a health care overhaul as the head of the Republican Party has portrayed the GOP as the lone bulwark preventing deep cuts to the popular, government-run health plan for older people. It's a remarkable turnaround for a party whose leaders tried to slash billions from Medicare more than a decade ago and have assailed the program as a wasteful entitlement. None other than Ronald Reagan, a hero to Republicans, warned in 1961...

After nearly a week of incessant post-mortem vacuity, not a single commentator has hit upon the real legacy of the late Kennedy political dynasty. The Kennedys are largely responsible for making African Americans dependent on an alliance with liberal Democrats. The result--highly unstable in a democratic society -- 90% of black voters regularly pull the Democrat lever. The 90% solid black vote tips the balance in favor of Democrats in Missouri, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Maryland. Without these votes, Democrats would simply cease to function as a national party. Without the Kennedys around...

The modern GOP was created in 1965 with a stroke of Lyndon Johnson's pen. If that is an exaggeration, it is not much of one. When Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he made a prediction: In committing the unpardonable sin of guaranteeing the ballot to all citizens regardless of race, he said, he would cause his party to lose the South ``for a generation.'' And indeed Southern Democrats, who for a century had bombed schools, lynched innocents, perverted justice and terrorized millions in the name of intolerance, responded by leaving their ancestral party in droves. They formed the base...

Sharon Jasper . http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/jasper.asp Gotta feel sorry for this poor old gal, how can the "system" be so cruel?? Wonder if ACORN got her out to vote .... ??! WELFARE AIN'T WHAT IT USED TO BE... Sharon Jasper has been victimized. She has been rabidly wronged. She has become a Section 8 carcass. The victim of ever changing public housing policies. Sharon Jasper has spent 57 or her 58 years dedicated to one cause and one cause only and has nothing to show for her dedicated servitude. She has lived in Section 8 housing all but 1 of her...

Obama's Stimulus by Phyllis Schlafly, February 27, 2009 Under the subterfuge of helping the economy, Barack Obama's stimulus plan legislates vast new spending programs to finance liberal policy goals that are unnecessary and undesirable. The flow of taxpayers' money will be so gargantuan as to make Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society expansion of the welfare state look puny. Barack Obama revealed his long-term goals in a radio interview on Chicago's WBEZ-FM in 2001. Asked about the Earl Warren court decisions that started long lines of activist decisions in many areas, Obama argued that the Warren court didn't go far enough:...

WASHINGTON - Big government is back - and so are big taxes. President Obama unveiled a mammoth, $3.6 trillion budget yesterday that would dramatically boost federal spending almost across the board - and pay for it with tax hikes of $1 trillion on individuals and businesses over the next decade. Experts immediately tagged the new president's supersized spending plan the most sweeping government overhaul since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s. Marty Regalia, the chief economist at the US Chamber of Commerce, called it "the biggest return to the welfare state that we've seen in decades." The budget would...

.... welfare reform has been a staggering success. I recently spoke with a member of middle management with the Illinois Dept. of Human Services. He told me welfare reform had literally freed up millions of those who were formerly dependent on a welfare check to now truly be able to seek their human potential. This was not a political pitch I was hearing because this DHS official would benefit from more Illinois residents being on the welfare rolls. You see, the more people dependent on his office, the more power he has. It's a simple equation that many have manipulated...

So what exactly is the common political ground that Kennedy bluebloods share with the 90 percent of America's blacks who vote for Democrats? A careful look shows the deep internal contradictions of the Democratic Party and the complexity of the political psyche of black Americans. Ironically, despite Democratic Party rhetoric about economic inequities and wealth and income gaps in America, those gaps are more pronounced inside the Democratic tent than inside the Republican one. According to exit polls from November's election, Barack Obama captured the vote of America' richest and America's poorest. Fifty-two percent of those with incomes over $200,000...

At last a prominent liberal has admitted what most of us already knew: that liberals may love to have the government spend your money on their favorite causes, but they are tightwads when it comes to giving their own money – or even their own time to charities. Once again another study affirms that conservatives give more money and time to charitable causes than do liberals. This fact has become known despite the predilection of many Hollywood liberals to hire public relations staffs to publicize their “good deeds” in Sunday magazines like “Parade” and “USA Weekend”. Now if only some...

Perhaps it's the crippling effect of the "Great Society Initiatives," or the systemic levels of cerebral toxification induced by a never-ending inculcation of victimization, or maybe it's undetected concentrations of amobarbitol in their drinking water – but whatever the primary causal factors, there remains a resistance against a truly inclusive cultural modernity that exists among far too many blacks. Said resistance refuses to be assuaged or put to death – and having a black man elected president has, if anything, only strengthened their resolve. The depth of this animus continues in ways that can only be described as irrational and...

BookTV/C-Span2 HEADSUP!!! Tune in at 11:15 PM EASTERN or set your TIVO/DVD Recorder. FR's own "LS" and his latest work-product (book) will be the topic of a segment on BookTV (45 min. in duration). IF you miss this first broadcast, please go to the BookTV/C-Span2 page linked for future date/time of rebroadcasts.

While the state has seen demographic shifts in suburban school districts, the isolation and intense concentration of minority students in the 31 Abbott school districts is worse today than it was 20 years ago.  That's the basis for a "friend of the court" brief filed jointly by the New Jersey Black Issues Convention and the Hispanic Directors Association, two influential umbrella organizations. They are among nine groups challenging the state's overhaul of the school funding formula that guaranteed additional aid to the state's neediest districts. Locally, Paterson, Passaic and Garfield are classified as Abbott districts.   The court is scheduled...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama opposes offering reparations to the descendants of slaves, putting him at odds with some black groups and leaders. The man with a serious chance to become the nation's first black president argues that government should instead combat the legacy of slavery by improving schools, health care and the economy for all. "I have said in the past - and I'll repeat again - that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed," the Illinois Democrat said recently. Some two...

Like most white, middle-class Americans, I was astounded, shocked and disgusted by the comments and beliefs of Reverend Wright, and, given the applause and cheers, he mirrored the beliefs of most in his congregation. I thought, “well, maybe the people in this church hate America this much, but this has to be a tiny sample of what black people think”. Then, for weeks afterward, I watched black talking head after black talking head appear on various cable news channels – some disagreeing with the Obamas and Wright, but many agreeing with them – that America is a terrible country, for...

As a retired college professor I may live in a bubble of comfort, but I realize full well that millions of Americans live in poverty and hopelessness. It is truly unfortunate that every scheme advanced by liberals over the years aimed at helping people out of poverty has failed so miserably. AFDC Welfare has created millions of fatherless children to their detriment and to the great detriment of society as a whole. AFDC should be converted into a temporary emergency program for new recipients. In my last column I discussed the total failure of the Section 8 Housing program, and...

We could write columns for the rest of our lives just enumerating the failures of programs inspired by liberals and liberal philosophy – the Great Society, the destruction of families by Welfare, affirmative action, the destruction of our public education system, forced busing, shutdown of drilling for oil and stopping the building of more nuclear plants, dealing with Islamic terrorists in the criminal justice system, etc., etc. Today I want to focus on liberal programs in the area of housing.

Hunger pains — Wapello County leads the state in food assistance By MARK NEWMAN Courier staff writer OTTUMWA — Numbers rarely tell the whole story. But when it comes to the well-being of children, decision makers need something to go on. The Child and Family Policy Center, a not-for-profit agency based in Des Moines, recently issued its “Iowa Kids Count” report — information collected from every county in Iowa to show the trends affecting children, from infant deaths to high school graduation rates . “Currently, one in seven children in Iowa lives in poverty and one in three is eligible...

The number of Washington residents living in poverty is up sharply since 2001, with increases in every county except Garfield, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. The agency reported this week that 12 percent of the people in the state were living in poverty in 2005, the latest year for which figures are available. In 2001, just 9.9 percent of the state's population was in poverty.~snip~ The largest county, King, had the largest number of poor people at 167,720 in 2005. That amounted to 9.6 percent of the population, up from 7.5 percent in 2001.

On a rainy afternoon two days before Thanksgiving, Dawn Haynes was driving when she spotted the family of five sitting on the steps of Gospel Baptist Church. Three adults and two children were huddled under an awning, clutching luggage and looking lost. Mystified, she stopped her car. They told her they were former New Orleanians and that the family had been evicted from its northwest Houston apartment after losing federal housing assistance. Haynes was shocked. ''I haven't thought about the people from Hurricane Katrina being homeless before, until I came across this family," said Haynes, who lives in Acres Homes...

Older Americans tend to think of Social Security as something we ought to be able to afford. Indeed, many seniors tell themselves that when Washington pours extra cash into the New Deal pension program, the action is something like investing in a new Volvo. The purchase may look extravagant but is, in reality, deliciously necessary. This attitude is also held by some of our most respected pension officials. The longtime Social Security Administration commissioner Robert M. Ball wrote on this page recently that "it's the essence of responsibility, in my view, to insist on no benefit cuts" ["A Social...

THE ARGUMENT Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. By Matt Bai. 316 pp. The Penguin Press. $25.95. With the possible exception of the Republicans, is there a major political party more stupefyingly brain-dead than the Democrats? That’s the ultimate takeaway from “The Argument,” Matt Bai’s sharply written, exhaustively reported and thoroughly depressing account of “billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake Democratic politics” along unabashedly “progressive” (read: New Deal and Great Society) lines. Well-financed and influential groups ranging from the Democracy Alliance to the New Democrat Network to MoveOn.org may be taking over the Democratic Party,...

WASHINGTON ? Its front entrance now touts President Bush's education policy, but the Education Department headquarters will one day honor Lyndon Baines Johnson and his work to improve U.S. schools. Bush signed legislation Friday naming the agency's offices after the follow Texan, with 17 members of the Johnson family looking on. Johnson's children, Luci Baines Johnson and Lynda Bird Johnson Robb and their spouses, their children and grandchildren gathered at the Oval Office for the signing that was not open to reporters. First lady Laura Bush also attended. Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady, was unable to attend but...

<p>A woman used her 4-week-old baby as a weapon in a domestic dispute, swinging the infant through the air and striking her boyfriend with the child, authorities said.</p> <p>The baby was critically injured in the attack early Sunday, said District Attorney Bradley Foulk.</p>

Family photos line the walls of Raynard Brown's tidy Orange home. A good home, his mother calls it, with two working parents who believed in the value of education and the power of after-school activities to keep kids from hunting down trouble. But Cynthia Brown found she couldn't compete with another, more seductive influence in her son's life, not when it grabbed him up so young, molding his behavior since the age of 11. That's when Raynard Brown first came home wearing the signature colors of the Bloods street gang. Over the next eight years, Brown rose to the rank...

Why is the father of The Great Society ignored? Sure, he messed up with Viet Nam, but that's blamed on W anyway, but he made sure to transfer zillions of dollar$$$ from your back pockets to the back pockets of other people. What's up with that?

A recent article about John Edwards made me think of that movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's about a man who goes through a painful break-up with his girlfriend. Rather than deal with the pain of losing the love of his life, he has a doctor erase all memories of her. I suspect the last 40 years have been so traumatic for John Edwards that he has decided to go to the same doctor.

Sounding like a born-again social conservative, president Lyndon B. Johnson stepped to the podium and made this stirring pronouncement: “When the family collapses, it is the children that are usually damaged. When it happens on a massive scale, the community itself is crippled.” And with his usual modesty, LBJ later hailed that 1965 Howard University commencement address as his “greatest civil rights speech.” A few months later the Moynihan Report came out. Despite its commonsense focus on strengthening the Black family, civil rights leaders raised a stink that Mr. Moynihan was trying to “blame the victim.” Floyd McKissick, director of...

A toppled candle destroyed the home and belongings of an out-of-work nurse and her 10 children During the late-afternoon confusion, a candle flame grew Monday into a potentially deadly blaze in the home where Kerren Laitaille had been raising her 10 children. In a matter of minutes, the fire destroyed family pictures, most of their clothes, beds, just about everything they owned. Everything, that is, except their faith. “It’s shown me I’m blessed with my kids and shown me people do care and are there for you,” Laitaille said Wednesday morning in her all-too-temporary home: a room at Hawthorn Suites...

On Feb. 13, the federal government stopped paying hotel bills for roughly 12,000 families nationwide who lost their homes to damage caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Once as high as 85,000, the number of hotel rooms being paid for by FEMA is down to 8,000. By March 6, FEMA says the hotel subsidies will be completely cut off. At the Country Hearth Inn & Suites near Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, people carted their belongings through the lobby and into the cars of family members and friends. Some were headed to new FEMA-subsidized apartments or trailers. But a few lagged behind,...

In his Inaugural Address in 1965, Lyndon Johnson, coming off one of the great landslides, spread out the plans for his Great Society. It was the heyday of liberalism, and those were days of hope. After civil rights, education topped the agenda. On April 11, at the grammar school he attended, LBJ signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the first federal education law in U.S. history, focused on disadvantaged children. And after 40 years and trillions of tax dollars plunged into public education at all levels, how stands public education? Well, it depends. Sam Dillon reports in Sunday's New...

Leftists have devised a simple yet amazingly effective formula to engender social discord: break up the family, marginalize fathers, and then blame the whole mess on men. The pattern can be traced back to LBJ’s Great Society which spawned welfare programs that withheld benefits as long as dad was around. Then came Roe v. Wade, which disenfranchised fathers from the most fundamental decisions involving their unborn young. Next, no-fault divorce laws set the stage for widescale child custody awards to moms. And finally draconian child support programs sent low-income dads shuffling off to debtor’s prison. Judging by Census Bureau reports,...

Probably the single greatest problem between blacks and whites in America is that we are forever witness to each other's great shames. This occurred to me in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, when so many black people were plunged into misery that it seemed the hurricane itself had held a racial animus. I felt a consuming empathy but also another, more atavistic impulse. I did not like my people being seen this way. Beyond the human mess one expects to see after a storm like this, another kind of human wretchedness was on display. In the people traversing waist-deep water...

Slavery has been a part of man’s history since the beginning of recorded time. The pharaohs of Egypt used hundreds of thousands of African slaves to build the pyramids. The Romans used slaves from all over their empire to build their magnificent structures. The ancient Greeks used slaves to build the Parthenon and other palaces and temples. The Great Wall of China was built by Chinese slaves. When the Americas were discovered, slavery migrated with the people to the new world and was accepted like all the rest of the “old” world traditions. This acceptance lasted even through the drafting...

Failure of an Idea—And a People In his 1935 State of the Union Address, FDR spoke to a nation mired in the Depression, but still marinated in conservative values: “Continued dependence upon welfare,” said FDR, “induces a spiritual disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole our relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” Behind FDR’s statement was the conviction that, while the government must step in in an emergency, in normal times, men provide the food, clothing and shelter for their families. And we did, until the war pulled...

What is it that bends and twists the soul of man in New Orleans such that he shoots at his rescuers, steals televisions while others drown, and then blames all and sundry for not helping enough? Biloxi and the rural areas of costal Louisiana and Mississippi have similar ethnic makeup and are equally hard-hit; yet they were not witness to the self-imposed parts of New Orleans’ devastation. The answer lies in the peculiar political economy of dependency in New Orleans, home to some of America’s last remaining old-style housing "projects," home to legions of life-long welfare recipients and home to...

I nearly fell out of my Barcalounger Sunday morning, watching The McLaughlin Group. The old Jesuit had Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Tony Blankley, and Clarence Page (who is black) sitting around. They were talking about Hurricane Katrina, of course. Suddenly, McLaughlin turned to Page and said: “Why the correlation between black and poor?” Good grief, I thought, you can’t ask that. People get taken off the air for less. Poor Clarence Page didn’t know whether to spit or wind his watch. He mumbled something that wasn’t even close to being an answer. McLaughlin, realizing his gaffe, quickly and deftly steered...

It took exactly one month — until the president's prime-time news conference of Oct. 11, 2001 — to refute the notion that 9/11 "changed everything." When a reporter said "you haven't called for any sacrifices from the American people," he replied, "Well, you know, I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before." And that was before the sacrificing became really hellacious with the requirement that passengers remove their shoes at security checkpoints. The idea that Katrina would change the only thing that matters — thinking — perished...

LBJ's Great Society: 40 Years Later 1964 was a very busy year for Lyndon Johnson. First he rammed through Congress the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving him war powers in Vietnam. Next he signed into Law the now famous or infamous, depending on ones political slant, Civil Rights Act. He called this ambitious undertaking his "Guns and Butter" program. The first part of this equation to go sour was the war effort. Johnson treated the war like a political problem that he could solve by twisting the arms of Ho and Giap the same way he had got things done in...

Minneapolis Freepers! I'll be speaking for the Center for the American Experiment next week in your city. *On Thurs. 9/15 I'll be at St. Olaf College in Northfield at 10:15, and do a lunch there. *Same day, I'll do a reception at Providence Academy, Plymouth (6:00) and a lecture from 7:00-8:15 afterward. *Friday, 9/16, I'll be in Minneapolis for talks at St. Johns Juniversity in Collegeville at 10:15-11:30 and at 11:30-1:00 will do a lunch at St. Johns sponsored by Students Fostering Conservative Thought. Please come out, say hi, and I'll sign your copies of "A Patriot's History of the...

After the Flood By William A. Mayer - Editor & Publisher, PipeLineNews.org September 6, 2005 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews - Our species always looks for meaning in disastrous events. It's as if the human need to make sense of nature's random acts can - by force of will alone - create lessons not necessarily in evidence, and therefore soften the blow of conditions beyond our control. There are however some great truths to be learned from the devastation of Katrina, though they are not very reassuring. This event has the look of an accident scene; a grinding...

New Orleans Police Chief Edwin Compass said Friday that hurricane rescue efforts were hampered when relief workers came under attack by the city's criminal element, prompting conditions that resembled "urban warfare." "We have never had an urban warfare battle like this on any front in the history of our nation," Compass told NBC's "Dateline." "You're fighting in buildings that are pitch black with darkness. These individuals have root - the criminal element have looted all the gun shops and gun stores in this city, so they're armed, they're dangerous." Federal Emergency Management Agency Chief Michael Brown, under fire for his...

John McWhorter is right to say that we ought to pause and remember the Watts riots of 40 years ago and ponder their implication for America's present and future ["Burned, Baby, Burned..." FR post here]. I take strong issue, however, with the conclusions he draws from his review of the events in Watts and South Central Los Angeles in 1965. I think the difference between McWhorter and me arises in large measure from our profoundly different perspectives on the event. He writes that he was born two months after the riots occurred and that his conclusions are based on his...

Can anyone tell me when was the first time that congress took the SS surplus into the general fund.

For those who look closely, signs of desperation on the part of liberal Democrats are everywhere. I am not sure when they finally came to the realization people are figuring out what they are really about, but they know it's happening. And they are afraid of the truth more than anything. They are so afraid they will say and do anything to blur reality so the average person won't know their positions are baseless. For instance, Rep. John T. Salazar, D-Colo., said last week: "Creating private accounts will only hasten the demise of Social Security, by draining trillions of dollars...

Another mystery, is partially solved. Hillary Clinton's graduate thesis is missing. The topic was rumored to be Johnson's Great Society, but it was on the left wing Radical Saul Alinsky. Alinski promoted deseption in organizing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky. It fits in with her "makeover". Here is a quote from Alinsky: “Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins – or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so...

GWB may be the GOP's LBJ. With a historic electoral victory at his back, George W. Bush is now being compared to some pretty consequential presidents. Lincoln and FDR--as war presidents--immediately come to mind. But there is another, more obvious, comparison that strikes to the heart of why the left hates this president with such intensity. GWB may be the Republican LBJ. This isn't meant with any disrespect to Mr. Bush. Nor are the two simply comparable because they both came from Texas, came to power after each man's party prevailed in a narrow electoral victory (LBJ served out the...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

If the polls are to be believed, this could be the last day of John Edwards's presidential campaign. But before we bid him adieu, it's time for one last ladling of praise and blame. Edwards deserves some praise because he is the only major candidate who talks consistently about the poor. The problem is that he talks about poverty in an obsolete way, which suggests he has learned nothing from the past 40 years. Edwards talks about poverty in economic terms. He vows to bring jobs back to poor areas and restrict trade to protect industries. He suggests that if...

In a case that could bolster a long-running federal grand jury probe into Northeast Florida's construction industry, an undocumented Mexican worker permanently paralyzed on a job site is filing suit today in Jacksonville against homebuilding giant D.R. Horton. Jorge Gomez, 23, was injured Nov. 11 when a large beam fell on him and broke his neck at a D.R. Horton site in a Julington Creek subdivision, according to the lawsuit. The accident left him a quadriplegic. As an illegal alien, Gomez has no workers compensation insurance and has run up $500,000 in medical bills at Jacksonville's Memorial Hospital, which continues...