Land Grab by the Federal Government

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

 FNC  -  By Glenn Beck


“The reason I got so frustrated Tuesday night is because the house in on fire — it's an inferno. We need firefighters! Eric Massa told me he was going to help make a difference. Instead we got tickle fights and valuable advice like get out and vote — enough about him.”


Government is staging a full-fledged control assault on this country and, as much as I wish this weren't true,we are the ones left to fight it. Because apparently there aren't enough on the inside willing to do so.

Look at this: It's a map of how much land is owned in America by the federal government. They own nearly 650 million acres of land — almost 30 percent of the land area of the United States.

But look at how it's distributed: It's overwhelmingly in the West. Nevada is almost 90 percent federally owned land. Alaska is nearly three quarters federally owned. Compare that to the East. States are in the single digits. Even Texas is only 2 percent federally owned land.

Why isn't government rushing to "protect" land in, say, Connecticut or New Jersey? Let me show you this: our national resources in comparison to federally owned land. It seems the land we are protecting is also the most oil and natural resource rich land.

Here's another map: Shale oil is found around the world but the largest deposits by far are in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Last year, government went after 9 million acres of land in the West in the name of saving the wild horses and stopping any activities that "would destroy the area's special character."
Right.

If we tapped these areas, we could be closer to energy independence. You want to pay off the debt? The West is Fort Knox.

The house is on fire! Why wouldn't they drill there instead of crossing their fingers and hoping someone creates a car that runs on magic fairy dust? I'm not even saying for oil — natural gas! Natural gas.

SHOW INFO:  Airs Weekdays at 5 p.m. ET / 2p.m & 11 p.m. PT

We are going to go down in the world history books as a suicidal nation. When we lose everything, do you think Russia won't come over here and protect this land and resources better than we do? It's a suicide mission. We as citizens must stop hoping for change. We must pray for it and demand change. This course is unsustainable.
Here's the latest land grab and we only know this because of a memo that was leaked: The Obama administration is pursuing 13 million acres through 11 states in the West in the name of "national monuments." Maybe we'll get one of Chairman Mao? How about Stalin? He was good at controlling the lands, I hear. And they are doing this without telling anyone. It's executive order. They don't care about what you think about it.
Here's another one: Do you like to fish? Well, enjoy it while you can because it looks like special interests once again are trumping common sense and the voice of the people. A new report says it's a move to appease environmental groups and, just like before, without the consent of the people and by executive order.
 
We told you he would do this. Heck, The New York Times said he'd do it. The report claims that Obama will "no longer listen to the public" as he tries to prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing on some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes and even some inland waters. So, because a couple of environmentalists want to save the fish, people could lose rights.

Do you remember the song, "This Land Is Your Land"? Here are the last couple of verses:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?


The song was originally written in 1940, by the way, by Woody Guthrie — communist. It's a song about a progressive utopia land with no ownership of property. Because some have it and some don't. And we all think of this as an American song.

The song goes to indoctrination, but that's another story — land grabs are where we are at. It's grab all the rights you can. Health care — the Soviets used to call it maintenance. It sounds so tender, so loving that way, doesn't it? I can almost picture the caring hospitals in the Soviet Union, where they perform "maintenance" on the human body. It's like a Jiffy Lube for people.

You don't have a right to a commodity. What you do have a right for is life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.

Oh, but you are just too stupid to understand all the benefits you will receive from health care. It's not going to be Jiffy Lube for people, it'll be great! How great? It's futuristic and it's a surprise:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)


SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)


Now, I'm not a salesman, but usually the old "buy it first, then look what's in the box" tactic doesn't work. That's the Pelosi clip everyone will be focusing on today, but here's the real clip that deserves attention:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)


PELOSI: I don't know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future. Not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America. Where preventive care is not... is not something you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention. It's about diet, not diabetes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)
It's about diet not diabetes? No, that is not very exciting — that's very frightening. That is about the future that Orwell used to write about. I don't want government controlling my diet. I like being able to decide whether or not I stuff my face with Doritos. And how does a health care bill help me eat right? Will there be food police ready to cuff me if I take an extra doughnut? Here in New York they have proposed a salt ban.
Look, government cannot make people healthy. If I want to stuff my face, I am going to stuff my face. If I'm going to have a heart attack it's my fault. And if the firemen have to lift me on a crane from my house, I should be billed.

There's a place in New York City that makes twice-fried cherry pie. It was banned because it had trans-fats. This pie was made for you and me. Want fatty-fat fat pie? Go to the ChipShop in Brooklyn: 383 5th Ave. You could drop dead of a heart attack, but you'll have a smile on your face. Eat one while you still can!
Because progressives know you will make the wrong choice for the collective, they have to either guide you to it or drag you to it. We'll all be healthier if they pick our menus every night.

You are being bypassed. Do you see what's happening here? The president can't achieve what he wants by going through the proper channels — so he's just going through the backdoor: reconciliation; executive power.

One man, taking it on himself — no Congress, no process, just him and his pen:

• Health care reform has been debated; America doesn't want it. But President Obama is just using reconciliation to jam it through. And this isn't just some meaningless bill. We are talking about something you'll never get rid of — ever.

• A fishing ban would put people's jobs at risk in the middle of an economic crisis — done through executive powers without consulting the public.

• A 13 million acre land grab for monuments in the West. We only find out through a leak. And Obama's using the Antiquities Act of 1906, which is supposed to be "confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care." No one but progressives want this. No problem, just use executive order.

It's an all out assault for power and it doesn't stop with just land or even health care. There's more.

— Watch "Glenn Beck" weekdays at 5 p.m. ET / 2p.m. & 11 p.m. PT on Fox Cable News Channel

This land is your land, this land is my land...or is it?

Glenn mentioned the Woody Guthrie classic American hit song on TV last night, and so many people were shocked to learn that this song is actually communist propaganda. Glenn goes over the words to the song, and once your brain stops mindlessly singing and actually processing the lyrics, it's quite shocking. For good measure, Glenn also reads the 'American' classic 'Born in the U.S.A' lyrics by Springsteen. What do the songs actually mean? Glenn explains on radio today. ( Transcript, Insider Audio)


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Posted:  Knowledge Creates Power

5 Thoughts On the Baucus Bill

Why has it been so hard for Democrats to come together on some kind of healthcare legislation?

The Senate Finance Committee is poised to vote today on Chairman Max Baucus' health care plan.

If one had to bet, one would bet that the Democrats are likely, in the end, to "get something." Public option? Probably not. Universal coverage? Definitely not. "Bending the curve" on costs? Definitely not. But that's OK, because "muddling through" is always a good option in a democratic society. The joke floating around Washington is that if a piece of paper bearing only the words, "Health Care Reform Act of 2009" floated onto Barack Obama's desk, he would happily sign it and take credit for it: mission accomplished.

But the question is, why has it been so hard for the Democrats? After all, there's a Democratic president who campaigned on health care reform and who won in the biggest landslide for a Democrat in more than four decades. And, not only that, the Democrats have huge majorities in both houses of Congress.

So why the difficulty? I can think of five reasons, which are full of implications for this bill as it struggles to come to life in the years ahead.

#1. Obama Has Already Shot His Fiscal Wad

The first reason is the simplest: Obama shot his fiscal wad on Wall Street bailouts, auto takeovers, and stimulus packages. As Obama said when speaking about the nation's fiscal situation on May 22, "Well, we are out of money now."

And as I wrote in June for U.S. News & World Report:

When confronted with a choice between health care for the poor and the near-poor on the one hand, and the continued overstuffing of the overclass on the other hand, Obama made a decisive choice: He chose the overclass. He put rich people first.

It's a first-class-first process ably described by the economist Mancur Olson, and any number of economists way to Olson's left--the rich belly up to the food table ahead of everyone else, eat everything they can till they are done, and then the middle class and the poor are left to fight over the crumbs.

#2. Obamacare Is Actually Welfare In Disguise

The second reason for the difficulty is the public perception that the current plan is a welfare plan in disguise. The common jibe among Republicans is that Obamacare will degrade coverage for 250 million or so Americans so that it can function as a voter-registration plan for 30 or 40 million Americans. Benjamin Barber-type “Strong Democracy” is popular enough -- if you are inspiring the broad middle to take greater control of their own lives in an Andrew Jacksonian sense -- but if the thrust of contemporary liberalism proves to be just a veil ill-concealing yet another welfare program, well, the middle class is unlikely to like it. As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan long lamented, in recent decades, the national Democrats have seemed mostly incapable of thinking of a plan for helping the middle working class, as opposed to the poor or some other avant-garde group. (Or the rich, see reason #1 above.)

#3. Big Doubts About the Government's Ability to Run Health Care

The third reason is the manifest failure of government to prove its competence. A century ago, Max Weber could write, with a straight face, that the reason for the rise of bureaucracy was its "technical superiority." Times have changed. Today's federal government is not exactly bureaucratic, of course. Policymaking has been substantially outsourced to judges, lawyers, and outside activists--and contractors seem to be doing a lot of the in-house work. But by any name, or in any form, the business of the federal government does not smell sweet to most Americans.

When today's liberals say that "health care management" is the answer, with them, of course, doing the managing, some Americans think "death panels," and plenty more are skeptical that any kind of government management can work.

#4. Welfare-state Liberalism vs. Multiculturalism

The fourth reason is the breakdown in the mutuality that is needed for a welfarist, communitarian ethos to flourish in a nation. That breakdown was incapsulated in "The Heckle Heard 'Round The World," that is, Rep. Joe Wilson's "You Lie!" catcall against President Obama when Obama said, in his September 9 speech to Congress, "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." Whereupon Wilson erupted.

Let's step back from the theatrics of that incident and think about the basics of the plot: A white Southerner rudely calls out an African-American for saying that illegals -- most of whom are Hispanic--would not be covered. Whereupon Wilson apologizes, but more profoundly, the Senate Finance Committee takes extra measures to make sure illegals aren't covered, thereupon lending credence to Wilson's shouted charge.

The point here is not to defend Wilson or his manners. Instead, the point is that the Democrats, trying to manage their rainbow coalition, feel electorally vulnerable on the question of whether or not their health care plan will cover illegals -- and with good reason. Everyone knows that they want to cover illegals, as a matter of social justice, and everyone who thinks about public health realizes that some provision needs to be made so that nobody is walking around coughing up tuberculosis on the streets. Like any other contagious disease, TB is completely agnostic about legal vs. illegal.

The broader issue crunching down on the Democrats is welfare-state liberalism vs. multiculturalism. As Harvard's Robert Putnam has noted, along with many others, the communitarian ethos that upholds the welfare state is based substantially on ethnic trust and national commonality, and those bonds of affection and unity have a way of breaking down amidst multiculturalism. Welfare states thrive in homogenous countries, they are smaller and less expansive in heterogenous countries- - and as for really heterogenous countries, well, they have a way of becoming ex-countries, viz. the USSR, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and so on.

#5. Americans Want CURES Not "Reforms"

The fifth reason for the Democrat's difficulty is the basic flaw in the intellectual model: "health insurance reform" is not the goal of most Americans. What the American people really want is cures. You don't go to the doctor because you can, because the government has given you some card entitling you to low-tech care. Nor do you go to the doctor to show off the intellectual ingenuity of your health care savings account. Instead, you go to the doctor to get better. Ask yourself: Where in the Obama pitch is there any discussion of actually curing anything? (One doesn't hear much "cure talk" among Republicans, either, but they, being the minority, aren't the issue right now. In the next Congress, or the one after that, they might regain the majority; we can revisit them then.)

The story of 2009 is the apotheosis of the left-liberal idea--inflected by "Club of Rome"-ish environmentalism and residual enthusiasm for barefoot doctors--that we have enough health, or maybe even too much health. So don't worry about the creation of health; in fact, the creation of new medicines needs to be restrained, in the name of "cost control. The main imperative is the redistribution of health, not the creation of health.

At Serious Medicine Strategy we think that redistributionist ethos is bad politics and even worse for medicine, but the Democrats now have their moment.

James P. Pinkerton is a Fox News contributor. Read his commentary on health care reform at Serious Medicine Strategy

Senate Passes Baucus Bill With One GOP Vote

Insurance Companies to DEMS: Health Care Legislation Will Drive Up Premiums

Czar Watch! FOX Nation Exclusive Video! Who Are These People? | The FOX Nation

24 Czrs Are Pictured Here... Latest Count is Closer to 34. Nobody Knows Who They Are: What They Do; And Why! The Circumvent the Checks and Balances Created by the Founding Fathers and Are Accountable to No One, But Obama... Scary?? Definitley!!!

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Scientist: Global Warming Claims a Lot of Hype

Lawmakers who described the alleged effects of global warming are spreading a lot of "eye wash," a top climate scientist says.

Photo: UCLA Shutterbug New Hampshire Jan 2009

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax, S. Fred Singer, a renowned climatologist and professor of environmental sciences emeritus at the University of Virginia, discussed the background behind the recent open letter to Congress he and six other scientists sent to members of the House and Senate.

In the letter, the scientists cited a letter sent by the Woods Hole Research Center, which exhorted Congress to act quickly to avoid a global disaster due to alleged global warming.

Singer said the Woods Hole group “put on a sort of scary exaggerated kind of letter to Congress ahead of the vote in the House in an obvious attempt to stampede them into voting for the Waxman-Markey [cap and trade environmental] bill.

Singer explained: “We thought it would be useful to write a letter that would provide a balance. The instigator of the letter was Harold Lewis, a retired professor of physics at the University of California in Santa Barbara.” Lewis, he said, “provided the initial draft, several of us made comments and seven of us signed our names to it."

Lewis sent the letter "to every member of Congress ... and it was also sent to a number of bloggers and others who are generally sympathetic" to the group’s point of view.

“The letter itself is self-explanatory,” Singer said, noting that it did not “give much detail."

“Two of us, Richard Lindzen and myself, are actively working on climate issues. The others are renowned physicists – people of some stature, members of the National Academy and others who have a good amount of scientific judgment but who have not directly published or been pre-eminent in climate research.”

Asked if it is not established that the earth is cooling, Singer explained that “The earth is either always warming or cooling; one cannot tell which it is unless one specifies the time interval.

“It's like the stock market: it is rising or falling. Both depend on whether it's a week or a month or a year. It's the same with the temperature – if we start during the last Ice Age 15,000 years ago, then the temperatures have warmed. If you start from the Little Ice Age, which ended 200 years ago, it certainly has warmed.

“If you start from 1998, however, then it has not warmed – it has cooled. So it depends on the time interval. People argue about this, and much of the difference between groups comes about when you don't specify the time interval. There's no question that the climate has not been warming in the last 10 years."

Reminded that there were members of Congress standing up in the debate and talking about the terrible things that are happening now as a result of global warming, Singer said: “That's all eye wash. That's not true. That's simply hype.”

He went on to explain that “Nothing untoward is happening. The ice is not melting any faster, the sea level is not rising any faster. Hurricanes are not increasing in intensity or frequency; there's been no impact. Those things are always hard to measure. It depends on statistics. The easiest thing is to specify temperature, because it's easily measured and there is relatively little disagreement on what temperature stands for.”

He then went on to challenge what he called former Vice President Al Gore’s “mantra” that he says Gore’s "been handing out for years now – that the science is settled. That is simply not true.

“When you have 31,000 scientists signing the Oregon petition saying they disagree with the current wisdom that humans are producing increased warming, it speaks for itself. It's true that the 31,000 are not all climate scientists. There are not that many in the world.

“However, it does show you that the science is not settled. Among climate scientists there is a split. There are those who believe in models, and those who believe in observations. And there are some who don't believe in both, and some who don't believe in any.

“The modelers believe that the models correctly describe what's going on in the atmosphere, and they trust their models to predict the future. And the models all predict increased global warming. Some more, some less. There are plenty models in the world, and they all get different results. We don't know which one of them is correct, if any, or even if any of them is correct.

Then there are those – sometimes called the skeptics, but we prefer to call them the realists – who believe in the observations, who believe that the atmosphere tells us what's going on. The models try to describe what's going on in the atmosphere, but they don't succeed. It's extremely difficult – the atmosphere is very complicated. For example, the models can't really describe clouds. Yet clouds are very, very important. So that's the basic split.

“When the observations show that the climate has not been warming in the last 10 years, which contradicts the models, who are you going to believe? The models or the observations. Obviously, we believe in the observations.

“When you ask the other side to debate on this issue they either won't debate; or if they do debate, they say, ‘Well there must be something wrong with the observations.'”

Singer agreed that it is a case of "do you believe what the models tell you, or do you believe in your lying eyes?"

Friday, July 3, 2009 10:17 PM
By: Phil Brennan - 2009 Newsmax

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

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Power Grab

The Obama administration is engaged in the most sweeping power grab in modern American history, but few people seem to care. In barely four months, we've witnessed the president and his minions taking over insurance companies, banks, and car companies, forcing private companies to sell off assets, appease unions, and stiff bondholders. Administration officials have insisted some companies take government handouts even if they don't want them and told others they can't pay back the money they've borrowed until the government gives them permission. Now, the president has decided he'll appoint a "compensation czar" whose job it will be to decide what constitutes fair pay for corporate executives. Why stop there? And, of course, they won't.

The latest move -- the appointment of Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg to oversee pay of the top employees at seven companies that have taken government funds -- may not seem radical, but it is. Earlier this year, in response to public criticism of the retention bonuses paid to some executives at the troubled insurance giant AIG, the administration proposed capping executive pay at $500,000 at firms receiving government assistance through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. But Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner abandoned that plan when he finally figured out that the execs would simply bail on the company, leaving the government without experienced and talented hands on deck.

So now the administration is moving to Plan B: Forget about pay caps per se but appoint a government overseer to set pay individually. Until now, in publicly traded companies that job fell to the board of directors and its compensation committee, whose legal and fiduciary responsibilities entail acting on behalf of shareholders. Directors are elected by the people who own the company: from individuals who own a few shares of stock to institutions and mutual funds that may own millions of shares.

The government, primarily through the Securities and Exchange Commission, oversees the board's stewardship, while other entities play a role as well. The securities exchanges -- the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, etc. -- also have rules that govern the conduct of boards of directors, including restrictions on who sets executive compensation. The compensation committee at publicly traded companies must be composed of entirely of independent directors -- those who have no direct ties to the company or its management either by current or, in certain instances, former employment, for example.

Compensation committees act independent of management, but they don't act in a vacuum. They often hire compensation consultants (who must have no ties to the company) to advise them on the best pay practices. They evaluate their pay structure compared to other companies of similar size and complexity or who are in the same line of business. They evaluate the performance of key executives against financial results, the achievement of personal and company objectives, and other criteria. It is a long and arduous process (I know, for more than a decade I've served on and now chair the compensation committee of a NYSE company).

And the rules governing disclosure of executive compensation have become much stricter in recent years, especially since the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley, federal legislation that passed in the wake of Enron and other recent corporate scandals. The law now requires that, in addition to a Compensation Committee Report on executive pay, management must produce an extensive compensation discussion and analysis to be included in proxy statements sent to all shareholders. The information includes a table showing exactly how much the CEO, chief financial officer, and three highest-paid employees in the company earn, including bonuses, stock options and grants, and what benefits and perquisites they are entitled to and their cost. Similar information is provided for director compensation. If shareholders don't think they're getting their money's worth from these executives or directors, they can dump the board of directors at the next election. Or at least that's how it is supposed to work.

But enter the Obama administration to rewrite the already extensive rules. Now one man -- the compensation czar -- is going to oversee this process at seven major corporations. And who oversees him?

From the president on down, the Obama administration is filled with people who have little or no idea how the market works. Most have never drawn a paycheck in the private sector, much less had to meet a payroll or make a profit. But they're convinced they know how to run things, down to the last detail. There's no word adequate to describe the sheer arrogance of this group.

by Linda Chavez - Chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity and author of Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics

Source: Townhall.com

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

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100 Days of Devastatingly Swift Success

April 29, 2009  |  Vol. 4, No. 17

by Newt Gingrich

To mark President Obama's 100th day in office, I'm going to say something you might find unexpected, even shocking:  

President Obama's first 100 days have been spectacularly successful.
President Obama is the strongest domestic Democratic President since Lyndon Johnson. His ability to get Democrats in Congress to give him things that undermine their own power is impressive.  

In just 100 days, President Obama has been devastatingly effective in moving forward swiftly the most radical, government-expanding agenda in American history.

Successfully Moving to a European Model of Government Control

At home, in everything from his economic policy to his energy policy to his just-announced science policy, President Obama has successfully moved the country from a traditional American model of entrepreneurship and private initiative to a European model of regulation and government control.  

Abroad, he has succeeded in his apparent goal to be the un-George W. Bush; replacing aggressive, if sometimes flawed, American leadership with a humbled, weakened America on the world stage. 

Judged by these standards, President Obama's first 100 days have been a remarkable success.

Getting Congress to Give Him Things That Undermine Their Own Power

The Obama record in the first 100 days includes three instances of spectacular political impunity:

• Under the guise of "economic stimulus" he was able to pass a $787 billion gift for his liberal special interest base. And he did it so quickly that no member of Congress was able to read it before they voted.
• After campaigning on a pledge to end earmarks, he signed an appropriations bill loaded with 8,000 earmarks - and paid no political penalty.
• President Obama has kept congressional Democrats marching with him in lockstep. House Democrats tow the party line an amazing 94 percent of the time and Senate Democrats vote Democratic 91 percent of the time.

Two Historic Bureaucratic Power Grabs

In these first 100 days, the Obama Administration has achieved two historic bureaucratic power grabs:

• President Obama has transformed the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) into giant engines of unsupervised spending. Together, they've spent the equivalent of the entire federal budget for 2007, without having to disclose where the money went.
• Just two weeks ago, the President presided over an unprecedented bureaucratic power grab when his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. This seemingly innocuous decision opens the door to wholesale regulation of American life by government. The threat is so great that politicians and activists are using the specter of an out-of-control EPA to force Congress to pass a $1 trillion to $2 trillion energy tax in the form of cap-and-trade legislation.

In Foreign Policy, Weakness and Self-Delusion

The Obama 100 days record also includes remarkable weakness and self-delusion overseas:

• In an attempt to overcome anti-Americanism abroad by agreeing with it, President Obama has gone on a global apology tour, labeling America as "arrogant, dismissive and derisive" in front of foreign audiences.
• President Obama has unleashed a domestic war over the meaning of guilt by caving in to the anti-American left and leaving the door open to prosecuting Bush Administration officials over the interrogation of terrorists who plotted to kill Americans.

All Other Obama "Accomplishments" Are Only a
Prelude to His $3.5 Trillion Budget

But all these successful expansions of government at home and retractions of American leadership abroad are merely a prelude to President Obama's looming crowning achievement: His 2010 budget which remakes our health care system, remakes our energy system, raises taxes and forecasts an amazing $9 trillion increase in the national debt.  

As I write this, Democrats in Congress are fashioning a deal to pass the budget's provisions on health care by preventing Republicans and moderate Democrats from having a voice in the debate.  

Think about that. The Obama-Reid-Pelosi political machine is going to pass legislation that fundamentally affects every single American - as well as 17 percent of our economy - by cutting the elected representatives of half of all Americans out of the process.  

If they succeed, the budget will be President Obama's most enduring - and devastating - accomplishment.

Will the Future Bring Change We Can Believe In?
Or a Change in What we Believe?

One thing is clear at this point in President Obama's presidency: His control of Washington Democrats has been so masterful, and his policies so successful, that he has officially claimed ownership of the American economy.  

Going forward, it won't be possible to continue to place blame on former President Bush and the Republicans. If President Obama fails, it will be his failure and his alone.  

As for us, the "success" of the first 100 days of the Obama presidency raises a threatening possibility.  

As my daughter and columnist Jackie Cushman put it, if we're not careful, instead of change we can believe in, we're going to have change in what we believe.  

It's something to ponder for the next 1,361 days.

  Your friend,

   Newt Gingrich

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