Free Republic

NOVEMBER 10, 2012 Why I Despair The central problem is that America, knowing Obama, gave him a second term. By Charles C. W. Cooke An apocryphal tale tells of an American who claimed to own George Washington’s axe. “Three times,” he exclaims, the axe has “had its handle replaced, and twice had its head replaced!” This is a joke that has been rendered in more serious form by philosophers throughout the ages — perhaps most famously in Plutarch’s Life of Theseus – and it may be time now to consider it in relation to the United States. People and countries...

DO NOTHING Post election musings. I am sick. Sick that this country has sunk so low. Ronald Reagan could not win today against slick Santa. At least he could not win in a presidential year election. There is too much at stake now for the takers in a land of bread and circuses. There are two electorates today: a Presidential electorate and an off-year electorate. The takers are too lazy to come out and vote in the off years. Or they don’t understand its importance. That’s when we win seats in Congress. So I say to Boehner, DO NOTHING. Hey,...

A new analysis of the largest of pterodactyls suggests they were too big and their muscles too weak to vault into the air and fly. Instead, they were right at the upper limit of animal flight and needed a hill or stiff breeze so they could soar like hang gliders. The new analysis was done on the enormous pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus from Late Cretaceous rocks of Big Bend, Texas. Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of about 35 feet (10.6 meters), or about the wingspan of a F-16 fighter. It was among the last pterodactyls to look down on dinosaurs 65 million years...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has issued a directive blocking persons from donating food to the homeless in his city. “It's not that we question the generous intent of these donations,” Bloomberg reassured. “It's just that we have no way of guaranteeing the quality of the donated food. The risk is that donor ignorance could result in excessive amounts of salt and fat in the diets of these unfortunates.” If those operating homeless shelters or the homeless themselves do not turn away food donations, NYC police are authorized to seize food items before they can be consumed. While there...

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We the OppositionPart I can be found here. It provides some of my thinking behind this, Part II. Jim Gourdi at Conservatives on fire wrote yesterday, Obama won and we lost. There are lessons WE must take away from this election. One lesson is that the Republican party is not what in many parts of the world is called the OPPOSITION. They are not the opposition. We are. The virtuous conservative and libertarian Americans are the opposition. We have no party that represents us. Yes, there are some small third parties; but, it would take years for a viable third...

The White House and CIA are firmly denying a report that President Obama believes Mitt Romney wants CIA Director David Petraeus as his running mate. And one GOP source doubts Petraeus would even accept. The Drudge Report raised eyebrows when it posted a piece Tuesday (August 7, 2012) alleging President Obama "whispered" to a "top fundraiser" this week that Romney is courting the general-turned-spy. Drudge did not identify the source of the report, citing only an "insider." Shortly after the report went live, White House press secretary Jay Carney tried to torpedo any rumors that Obama made the hushed comment...

DuPont Co. plans to cut 64 jobs in the Richmond area as part of a larger corporate restructuring announced in October. The affected jobs are salaried positions, a company spokeswoman said Friday. DuPont notified state officials through a WARN act notice, which said the cuts would by occur by Dec. 31.

Featured Term (selected at random):NECESSARY CAUSE An agent that acts according to compulsory tendencies of its nature, and not freely or from conscious intent. It is a naturally determined agent that cannot not act the way it does. See Also: CAUSE,See Also: EFFICIENT CAUSE,See Also: FINAL CAUSE,See Also: FIRST CAUSE,See Also: FORMAL CAUSE,See Also: FREE CAUSE,See Also: MATERIAL CAUSE,See Also: MORAL CAUSE,See Also: SECONDARY CAUSE All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

While there had been speculation that the BLS may delay the release of its October nonfarm payroll number until after the election, it turned out there was no reason to worry. Perhaps this is because the number, while at stall speed, was not quite as horrible as some had expected (even if the change in average hourly earnings did tumble to new all time lows) and so boosted Obama's reelection chances. There was, however, another closely tracked number which perhaps is far more indicative of the economic "growth" in the past 4 years, which certainly had a delayed release. The...

“Now we’re going to have a hearing next week, and the man who knows the facts, David Petraeus — he’s the only man who can really tell us what the CIA knew, what they did, why they did it, how they did it — he’s not going to testify. This is a very convenient way to get the administration out of a very very difficult situation,” Mr. Giuliani said on Greta van Susteren’s show. “But this is inevitable. This is like Watergate. This is all going to come out. It may take a month, it may take five months. But...

The Church – The Bride of Christ Posted on February 11, 2011 by mmvc Many of you will have encountered Michael Voris, the Catholic layman with a mission, from his 5-minute videos entitled “The Vortex”. Through these regular short episodes, Voris aims to inform and educate fellow Catholics and those looking in from the outside. He exposes “lies and falsehoods” in the Church in a no-nonsense, no-holds-barred kind of way. Some love both his clean, crisp style and his message, while others are less fond of the messenger, but largely agree with what he has to say. And then there...

Karl Rove is feeling the heat. The face of the historic $1 billion plan to unseat President Barack Obama and turn the Senate Republican, Rove now finds himself the leading scapegoat for its failure. And he's scrambling to protect his status as a top GOP money man by convincing disappointed donors to his Crossroads groups that he did the best he could with their $300 million. Sources tell POLITICO that some donors have called Crossroads officials to ask how their polling could have been so far off, while others are openly grumbling that the groups should have spent more on...

Full title of petition: "Peacefully grant the State of Louisiana to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government." Posted on Drudge. As the founding fathers of the United States of America made clear in the Declaration of Independence in 1776: "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to...

Should we put it on life support and hope that it survives or attempt to displace it gradually with something better?Yesterday, I received a gracious e-mail from the Obama-Biden campaign thanking me personally for all that I had done: Friend -- I hope you saw Jim's note with the video of President Obama thanking supporters and staff. I wanted to single you out especially because you've gone above and beyond in your support of the President. (Emphasis added.) I only wish I could have done even more to support his defeat; after all that he had done, it was past...

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Friday vowed to subpoena outgoing CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus if he won’t testify voluntarily about the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Gowdy said that while he regretted the “personal ramifications” of Petraeus’ sudden resignation over an extramarital affair, it would not stop Congress from hearing from him about the assault on the consulate that left four Americans dead. “The fact that he’s resigned and had an affair has nothing to do with whether or not he’s gonna be subpoenaed to Congress,” Gowdy said on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”...

The reporter-source relationship can blossom into something more intimate and more troubling, as evidenced by the Suzy Wetlaufer-Jack Welch affair. But other types of close ties between journalists and newsmakers can also pose nettlesome problems. It was a cozy reporter-source relationship in the extreme, a clear conflict of interest and a deliciously scandalous affair that produced gasps and gossiping among journalists. The editor--not just a lowly reporter--but the top editor of the Harvard Business Review had become romantically involved with the married former General Electric chairman, Jack Welch, after she interviewed him for a story. Now, Suzy Wetlaufer did what...

Ronald Kessler of Newsmax has more details on the Petraeus affair. They are rather sordid, and raise more questions about the timing of his resignation: [A]n FBI source says the investigation began when American intelligence mistook an email Petraeus had sent to his girlfriend as a reference to corruption. Petraeus was commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan from July 4, 2010 until July 18, 2011. The investigation began last spring, but the FBI then pored over his emails when he was stationed in Afghanistan. … Given his top secret clearance and the fact that Petraeus is married, the FBI continued...

One of Microsoft’s latest patent applications is a humdinger. It proposes to turn the Kinect camera into a snitch for movie studios, reporting back just how many friends you’ve got in your living room and what they’re watching. Think that sounds alarmist? Here’s what it actually says: “The users consuming the content on a display device are monitored so that if the number of user-views licensed is exceeded, remedial action may be taken.” It’s that blatant – a system to spy on private viewing habits. If put into practice, Microsoft’s plan could mean that the film you’re watching suddenly stops...

On Tuesday only one precinct had less than 113% turnout. “The Unofficial vote count is 175,554 registered voters 247,713 vote cards cast (141.10% ). The National SEAL Museum, a St. Lucie county polling place, had 158.85% voter turn out, the highest in the county.” The Supervisor of Elections, Gertrude Walker, had this to say concerning the 141% voter turnout: “They may have had something like that in Palm Beach County, but we’ve never seen that here.” So maybe Allen West wasn’t crazy to ask for a lock-down on the ballot boxes and machines in this county. According to the report...