Michael Reagan

Making Sense: Once a Democrat, always a Democrat

By Michael Reagan Sen. Arlen Specter hasn’t really switched parties; he’s simply realized he cannot win the Pennsylvania Republican primary election. And he cannot win the Republican primary because he has become a tax and spender -- characteristics Republicans have tired of. He started off as a Democrat, switched to the Republican Party, and has now simply confirmed his loyalty to the Democratic Party he never really left. Despite the hand wringing of some so-called Republican strategists, the Grand Old Party is better off without sheltering this fox in their Senate henhouse. What the mainstream media overlooked - they actually cheered Specter when he announced his...

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Making Sense: Obama says we’re dangerous, rightwing extremists

Do you reject “federal authority in favor of state or local authority,” or “government authority entirely”? Are you “dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration”? If so, you are a dangerous, rightwing extremist according to Obama’s Department of Homeland Security, which bans the use of the word “terrorist” unless it’s applied to us rightwing extremists who, for example, are so extreme as to view the grisly murder of the unborn in their mothers’ wombs as cold-blooded murder. Are you a veteran returning from Iraq or Afghanistan after risking life and limb to protect your fellow Americans? If...

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Making Sense: Mr Obama’s Traveling Circus

While the United States writhes in the agony of seeking a way out of the current financial mess, President Obama, his wife and a cast of 500 aides and hangers-on took the show on the road, crisscrossing the old world well-equipped with a supply of the trusty teleprompters needed to render him eloquent. Accompanied by a horde of worshipful media ever-present to record his every spiel, Obama the ringmaster wowed the rubes at every stop -- from the British Isles ,where he gave the queen an iPod modestly featuring some of his own spellbinding (and ghost-written) speeches; to La Belle France where Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the president’s glamorous wife (who has shamelessly recorded every...

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Killing The Goose That Lays The Golden Eggs

It helped create an America that stood like a Colossus on the world scene, envied all across the globe as an economic powerhouse where the most humble citizen willing to put his shoulder to the wheel could prosper, yet today our vaunted system of free enterprise is on its death watch. The goose that lays the golden eggs is on the chopping block, and Barack Obama and his sorry conglomeration of far-out liberal confederates now polluting the government are wielding the axe. America’s industrial heartland, the storied fruited plain, is about to become the world’s largest ghost town as many of the nation’s most talented and wealthiest citizens contemplate fleeing for the...

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Don’t get angry, get even

When the members of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis) wanted to use anger as a political weapon, they burned the Reichstag and blamed it on the Communists. It’s an old tactic -- when you are in trouble, create a crisis and then create a straw man to blame for the crisis. We are now seeing it played out as a giant insurance company, AIG, is given the role of straw man. It’s working. I’m mad, you’re mad, and our anger over the mess created by Washington politicians and their Wall Street buddies is now being diverted away from Capitol Hill and toward AIG and a handful of executives, some of whom got huge bonuses as their company was being bailed...

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Making Sense: Obamas embryonic stem cell OK can kill

What President Barack Obama did when he reversed President George W. Bushs executive order banning embryonic stem cell research was based not on solid science, but his desire to cater to the anti-life, pro-abortion forces and their media allies who helped elect him. In doing this, he created the potential for an outbreak of potentially fatal cancerous tumors caused by the therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells. Moreover, he killed another Bush presidential order that funded some of the most promising research on the creation of embryonic-like stem cells from harmless but potent adult stem cells. What President Obama did when he rescinded President Bush's federal ban on certain lines...

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This Tiger Is Not Dead

There’s an old adage that explains that one does not shoot arrows at dead tigers. If there is a fusillade of arrows flying in the direction of a tiger you can be sure of two things: the beast is very much alive and is seen as a dangerous threat to the people manning the bows. We are now watching this played out in the current scandal of a White House expending energy -- better spent on reviving the economy -- on an all-out and not-so-covert attack on a single talk-show radio host, Rush Limbaugh. This should come as no surprise. President Obama opened the campaign against Rush by advising Republicans to pay no heed to anything Limbaugh tells them. Earlier, there were those veiled...

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Making Sense: Wheres the beef?

Our swooning media were enraptured by President Barack Obamas soaring rhetoric in his address to Congress despite the speechs total lack of substance. They never bothered to ask Wheres the beef? in all those oratorical flourishes. In this case, the beef is the money it will take to pay for his grandiose plans and programs, and that money is allegedly lining the pockets of those who dare to earn $250,000 or more a year. No matter that if you took every last cent of their earnings you would still not have enough to begin to pay for the ultra-exorbitant spending agenda he laid out in his speech. The bill for that extravagance will be paid by our children and grandchildren. As he described...

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Where the Money Isn’t

Willie Sutton is wrongly believed to have said he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.” He never said that, and anybody who says it now would also be wrong. A bank’s principal function is twofold -- to be a depository for their customers’ money and to make profits by lending money and charging interest on the loans. Thanks to a process known as fractional banking, some of the money they lend is the money their customers deposit with them plus a multiple provided by the Federal Reserve. Simply put, the Fed allows banks to lend more money than they have on deposit. This is inflationary in that it adds to the amount of money in circulation by...

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Requiem for a Republic

It is not true that grown men don’t cry. I’m grown and I’m on the verge of tears. A Republic I have loved all my life is being is being murdered and the crime is an inside job. If you hear a whirring sound in the background it is my dad Ronald Reagan, who loved and served this nation, spinning in his grave as his latest successor plunges a carving knife into America’s vital organs. In his wildest dreams Ronald Reagan never thought that a president of a United States, now in the throes of a serious economic crisis, would adopt a solution to the problems of our economy that would not only worsen the situation, but set in motion the beginning of a transition of the...

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When Crimes Become Mistakes

You can’t help but wonder if Democrats ever pay taxes. It seems from the headlines that the way it works is that Democrats levy taxes but only Republicans have to pay them. For a president who said he was going to preside over the most ethical administration in history, Barack Obama has shown an astounding talent of being able to find appointees who mistakenly manage to forget to pay their taxes. Just look at Timothy Geithner, for example. The new Treasury secretary -- the man who oversees the IRS -- forgot to pay $34,000 in taxes. Tom Daschle had to pay $128,203 in back taxes and $11,964 in interest after he learned he was going to be nominated as secretary of the Department of...

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Making Sense: Unclogging the Liberal $ Pipeline

After decades of watching their extravagant, wooly-headed, far-left programs languish in never-never land, Democrats are now realizing their once-forlorn hopes for a return to the good old days. Massive giveaways for their pet socialist schemes -- and payoffs to labor unions and other financial supporters -- will now be the order of the day. This time they are outdoing their New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society overspending extravaganzas, cobbling together an $825 billion package they laughingly call a stimulus program, allegedly designed to put unemployed Americans back to work and get the economy back on track. The Wall Street Journal calls the gift package “A 40-Year Wish...

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Great Orator, Poor Speech

I was talking to Peter Robinson, who helped write the immortal "Tear Down This Wall, Mr. Gorbachev" speech delivered in Berlin by my dad, Ronald Reagan. He told me he went back to the archives for 1981 and pulled out a couple of my dad’s quotes from the 1981 inaugural address and compared them with a couple of quotes from Barack Obama’s inaugural address. He noted that while my dad said it was "morning in America," with Obama it almost went back in tone to Jimmy Carter’s infamous "malaise" speech, which pictured an America down in the dumps. For Obama it was more like "mourning" in America. You can hear echoes of that...

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Smart Power or Just Dumb Policy?

Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton told fellow senators during her confirmation hearing that the United States needs to follow a foreign policy of what she called “Smart Power.” Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? And just what does it mean? It means whatever you want to think it means. It’s not a policy; it’s just a slogan that sounds good. And who would want to be labeled an opponent of “smart power” even if they hadn’t the vaguest idea of what it means? What the honorable members of the Senate need to do is delve a little deeper into the kind of foreign policies Mrs. Clinton and Team Obama propose to implement or have followed....

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If I Were President

Who needs gigantic bailouts when there are far less costly and more effective ways to deal with the economic crisis, such as those I’d use if I were president of the United States. To begin with I’d give the economy a powerful shot in the arm by eliminating a lot of federal taxes that are hobbling economic growth. There is a better way to boost our economy than the socialistic programs now being both used and considered. It’s called free enterprise, and it works by loosening the death grip now strangling America’s small business community, which provides the majority of jobs in this country. I’d start by reinstating the tax deductibility of the interest...

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