Free Republic

NO SPACE FOR COMPLETE EXPLANATION, CAN ONLY POST EXCERPTS. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE BY CLICKING ABOVE LINK : Potentially fatal flaws come in many forms. But three crop up the most when you talk to experts: excessive debt, superior competitors and the inability to keep up with technological change. 1. Palm With the Treo, Palm (PALM, news, msgs) was an early pioneer of the move to smart phones. So it doesn't seem right that stronger competitors such as Apple (AAPL, news, msgs) and Research In Motion (RIMM, news, msgs) are now going to crush it. But that seems to be Palm's...

Update by Daniel: From ABC's "20/20" tonight:

Inquiring minds are interested in figuring out how long it might take to get back to "full employment" defined as 5%. John Mauldin touched upon this theme in Welcome to the New Normal. John's analysis stopped short of making actual projections as to when full employment would return, or the detailed path it would take to get there year by year. However, I thank John for providing a nice starting point for discussion. In Scarred Job Market Expected to Weigh on Economy The Wall Street Journal offers this look at how long it would take to return to employment levels...

My apologies if this a duplicate. I didn't see this posted. I couldn't help but notice on ABC's 20/20 'report' on the Fort Hood shooting last night, that they went out of their way to blame "stress" for the shooting despite the fact that the shooter had never been deployed anywhere, nor had he ever been on the battle field. Although they did touch upon his islamic jihadi tendencies of late, they didn't dare point to that as the motive. They also only gave a brief (literally 10-15 seconds) mention of the heroic woman (Kimberly Munley)who stopped the killer's rampage...

I have an article that talks about “the secrets plans” Islamic are using to over throw westerners and England by the year 2020. This article will help the couples who is currently being persecuted for debating with a Muslim women in their privately own hotel. I have no way of reaching them. Maybe you could forward this to their lawyers. After you read the article, you will realize that it is part of the Muslim’s scheme, all planted. If you would like this article emailed over to you, please let me know by email. If I can help in anyway,...

NEW YORK – A government that is constitutionally required to offer each citizen a "useful" job in the farms or industries of the nation. A country whose leadership intercedes to ensure every farmer can sell his product for a good return. A nation that has the power to act against "unfair competition" and monopolies in business. This is not a description of Cuba, communist China, or the USSR until 1991. It's the vision of the future of the U.S, as mandated by a radical new "bill of rights" drawn up and pushed by President Obama's newly confirmed regulatory czar, Cass...

Nasa will not be able to meet its target of sending humans back to the Moon by 2020, or even dream of landing on Mars, because it is suffering from chronic underfunding, a presidential review panel has warned. The US space agency needs at least another $50 billion (£30 billion) over the next decade if it is to come close to delivering on its vision for retiring the space shuttle, completing construction of the International Space Station and launching ambitious new voyages of discovery. Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. He believes a new lunar mission would be pointless...

Canadian Health Care: A Viable Model? John Stossel discovers some dead-serious drawbacks to socialized medicine.

This was originally televised back in April, but was repeated again tonight: [20/20 Video] Too bad Lesley Stahl couldn't utilize footage of 20/20's "Virginia Tech" gun experiment (which looks to have been aired the same weekend as the 60 Minutes ep) to buttress her "more gun control/guns are bad" push: [Video's At Site] I think there are some good points and merit in the 20/20 scenario staging; however, their experiment itself, I think, is far from empirical and nonbiased. For one, the "intruder" is already at a clear advantage given he's a trained firearms instructor firing with the accuracy of...

Gun control advocates look desperate. Last Friday night, on April 10, ABC aired a heavily promoted, hour long “20/20″ special called “If I Only Had a Gun.” It is ABC’s equivalent of NBC’s infamous exploding gas tanks in General Motors pickups where NBC rigged the truck to explode. With legislation in Texas and Missouri advancing to eliminate gun-free zones at universities, perhaps this response isn’t surprising. The show started and ended by claiming that allowing potential victims to carry guns would not help keep them safe –- not even with hundreds of hours of practice firing guns. No mention was...

“Time is our worst adversary in dealing with active killers. We’re racing what I call ‘the Stopwatch of Death.’ Victims are often added to the toll every several seconds.” -- Ron Borsch, a 30-year law enforcement veteran who manages the South East Area Law Enforcement Regional Training Academy in Bedford, Ohio. Photo: Oleg Volk, www.olegvolk.net“If I only had a gun,” ABC’s recent segment of “20/20,” treated viewers to a biased and deeply flawed “study” promoting the opinion that armed citizens are incapable of stopping active killers in mass homicides. On Monday, “Myths of Armed Self-Defense” exposed “20/20’s” fallacy of the...

Do you think it's a good idea to be armed during a mass shooting? Diane Sawyer and the producers of ABC's 20/20 aren't so sure. In fact, on Friday, April 10, 2009, Sawyer spent a full hour trying desperately to prove how dangerous guns are and how ordinary people can't possibly defend themselves with firearms. The show's snarky title: "If I Only Had A Gun." Slanted information filled the report, seemingly pulled from the press releases of the Brady Campaign, with not a single dissenting opinion. The most egregious slight of hand was a rigged experiment that struggled to show...

ABC’s 20/20 did a hit piece on the Second Amendment and armed citizens on Friday night. The show responded to the growing sentiment that “if I only had a gun,” maybe an armed citizen could make a difference in a spree shooting such as the incidents at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. In reality, it ought to be called “if I had ONLY a gun.” Picking people without concealed carry permits to represent the armed citizen and rigging the scenario to ensure that they don’t defeat your narrative is propaganda, not journalism. Several college students are selected to represent...

How do you hit the broad side of a barn in a news report when you can't see the core issues? How did we know the report would be misleading and terribly lacking? As you know, I write for non-gun owners. I furnish analysis and facts more on the issue of liberty and citizen authority than guns themselves. Guns, liberty, and our sovereign authority over officials in this country are inextricable, and I have shown why over the years. The armed citizen is not an opinion concept, it is and always has been a safeguard of our way of life....

ABC 20/20 Agrees: Matthew Shepard Murdered During Robbery, Not Hate Crime The 1998 Matthew Shepard murder, portrayed as a hate crime because Shepard was homosexual, was in fact a bungled burglary and not motivated by hate, according to a new ABC 20/20 investigation, which confirms a MassNews exclusive published at the time. However, ABC did not reveal that this legend was begun by Pinch Sulzberger (using the power of both the New York Times and the Boston Globe which he had just inherited) to begin his plan of imposing homosexual “marriage” across the entire nation, beginning in Massachusetts. According to...

The prostitute at the center of the salacious scandal that brought down former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and generated national headlines is going to dish on her life as a pricey escort. ABC says Ashley Alexandra Dupre sat down with Diane Sawyer on the program "20/20." Dupre reveals how an "upper middle-class, girl next door got into the profession and the psychological journey she continues to experience."

AP spewing stuff, but still what will war with China look like...

Despite funding uncertainty, NASA is on track to return humans to the moon by 2020 and set up a lunar outpost to serve as a springboard to explore Mars, officials said Monday. "Our job is to build towns on the moon and eventually put tire prints on Mars," NASA's Rick Gilbrech told reporters here, one year after the US space agency unveiled an ambitious plan to site a solar-powered, manned outpost on the south pole of the moon. "We have the International Space Station; we're going to have a lunar outpost, and someday, certainly, somebody will go to Mars," said...

John Stossel's 20/20 special "Whose Body is it Anyway?: Sick in America" is a fantastic piece of television journalism in what I see as a pretty sad age for that profession. I've always liked Stossel, not because his views often align with my conservative sensibilities, but because he just makes sense. I think that's why liberals hate him so much. There's a veritable mountain of good stuff in this piece, but his overriding point is that the individual should be in control of his or her health care, not the insurance companies and certainly not the government. Amen and amen!

Governments need to scrap subsidies for biofuels, as the current rush to support alternative energy sources will lead to surging food prices and the potential destruction of natural habitats, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development will warn on Tuesday. The OECD will say in a report to be discussed by ministers on Tuesday that politicians are rigging the market in favour of an untried technology that will have only limited impact on climate change. “The current push to expand the use of biofuels is creating unsustainable tensions that will disrupt markets without generating significant environmental benefits,” say the authors...

The New York Times and Washington Post editorialize about America's "stinginess." Former President Jimmy Carter says when it comes to helping others, "The rich states don't give a damn." Standing outside the White House, the singer Bono told the press that America doesn't do enough to help the needy: "It's the crumbs off our tables that we offer these countries." It seems obvious to Bono and President Carter that America offers "crumbs" because the governments of most other wealthy countries distribute a larger percentage of their nations' wealth in foreign aid. Yes, the U.S. government gave out $20 billion last...

Litchfield, Conn., is the kind of place a lot of people might choose to raise a family. Among its other appealing qualities, Litchfield has a microscopically low crime rate, as in other suburban communities across America. 'The Grip of the Devil' But no town can be protected from all things evil. Some time ago in this peaceful community, wife and mother Pat Reading felt as though she were possessed by satanic spirits. In a series of exorcisms, a local bishop tried to free her from what they saw as the grip of the devil. Reading's then-teenage daughter Michelle Reading witnessed...

April 25, 2007— This past Christmas, Riley Grant received a present that can be described as bittersweet — a video game that allowed her to morph a digital body into anything she wanted. Almost immediately, Riley, a 10-year-old transgender girl who is biologically a boy, adopted a virtual female persona. If only life were so easy, that she could punch a button and turn into a girl. "She has a birth defect, and we call it that. I can't think of a worse birth defect, as a woman to have, than to have a penis," Riley's mother, Stephanie, told Barbara...

Rudy Giuliani made the first serious blunder of his presidential campaign in a "20/20" interview that was broadcast on Friday. No, not the bit about wife, Judith, having a "secret" husband before marrying and divorcing Bruce Nathan, then wedding Rudy in 2003. That other bit, when Rudy told Barbara Walters that he would allow his wife to sit in on Cabinet meetings if he wins the White House: "If she wanted to. If they were relevant to something that she was interested in. I mean that would be something that I'd be very, very comfortable with." The First Lady hopeful,...

Republicans give a bigger share of their incomes to charity, says a prominent economistIt's been a tough month for conservatives, with the Republican Party losing control of both houses of Congress, but a new book being released this week may help brighten their spirits.  In Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism (Basic Books), Arthur C. Brooks finds that religious conservatives are far more charitable than secular liberals, and that those who support the idea that government should redistribute income are among the least likely to dig into their own wallets to help others.  Some of his findings...

Here's some TV tidbits. This past Friday I watched a "20/20" episode I can't get out of my mind. A young, vulnerable teen is forced to strip for an alleged search then for three hours is continually humiliated and forced to do unspeakable things. This while her horrible boss at McDonald's allows it to go on although the teen begs her for mercy. It really happened. And a whole bunch of people were so despicable, stupid and immoral that it boggles the mind. And the real perpetrator walked off completely free.

Reminder--Airing tonight 10PM ET/9PM Central on ABC

China is ready to increase imports of electricity from Russia to 60 billion kWh by 2020, Nikolai Voropai, director of the Melentiev Energy System Institute, said. At the request of Unified Energy System of Russia the institute and a number of other scientific institutions carried out an evaluation of the possibilities in Siberia and the Far East to export electricity to China, he said at an energy roundtable as part of the IV Baikal Economic Forum. In 2008 China may increase consumption of Russian electricity to 10 billion kWh, by 2010 - to 20 billion-22 billion kWh, and by 2012...

Is anyone watching 20/20? It's a pretty good episode. They are exposing teachers unions. Pretty good stuff I'm supprised this is on ABC.

Over time national elections in the USA have evolved into serving two distinct functions. The first is obvious, it's to re-elect representatives. The other, less obvious, is to finance mass media with infusions of advertising dollars. The second, less apparent function, is why campaign finance reform will never get very far. And I also believe it's why the Electoral College will be eliminated in the years ahead. When people of either party talk about leveling the playing field with campaign finance reform one party always blames the other when it fails to be implemented. I blame the media. The history...

A new book by David Horowitz and Richard Poe has enraged the Left and alarmed many conservatives. It exposes the machinations of a radical clique working at the highest levels of government and finance to undermine American power. That book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party. It hit the New York Times bestseller list in its first week in print. Here to tell us about The Shadow Partyis co-author Richard Poe, our esteemed colleague at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, where he serves as director of research. Mr....

The other evening I watched the television news program "20/20." This particular show featured a segment called "Stupid in America." As I watched, it wasn't the higher test scores European students received compared to Americas that stood out to me, although this was alarming, it was the way the whole school system was run. The show explained that the money to educate a child in Europe is "attached" to the child. This "attached money" gives parents the opportunity to send their children to a school of their choosing. It allows for parents to select the kind of education they want...

Education increasingly determines the outcome of economic competition, on both the individual and collective levels. Yet educational competition is lacking in the United States, where many schools remain mired in a pattern of academic failure that puts our nation - and our children - in long-term economic peril. The school choice movement aims to provide that competitive spark through charter schools, tax credits and vouchers. Like any initiative that takes on an entrenched bureaucracy, it has met intense resistance and experienced setbacks, including the recent Florida Supreme Court ruling scrapping that state's voucher program. That opinion, it should be noted,...

Are kids in the United States being cheated out of a quality education? In a special report airing this Friday on ABC's "20/20", John Stossel reveals the surprising truth. American high school students fizzle in international comparisons, placing well behind other countries, even poorer countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea. American kids do pretty well when they enter public school, but as time goes on, the worse they do. Why? School officials complain that they need more money, but as Stossel reports, most of the countries that outperform us spend less per student than we do. There...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democrats launched a plan on Monday for energy independence by 2020 that seeks to relieve historically high oil and gas prices by cutting reliance on foreign sources of energy. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) Pennsylvania's Gov. Ed Rendell said greater use of renewable energy, mass transit and domestic fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel could cut oil and gas imports. A plan they unveiled on Monday is called Energy Independence 2020. President George W. Bush is seeking more domestic production of oil by pushing Congress to include opening...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 - The Navy wants to increase its fleet to 313 ships by 2020, reversing years of decline in naval shipbuilding and adding dozens of warships designed to defeat emerging adversaries, senior Defense Department officials say

ANKARA, November 11 (Itar-Tass) -- Turkey plans to send its first astronaut on mission by the year 2020. An agreement to the effect was signed between the U.S. Department of Defense and the Turkish Air Force in Ankara on Thursday, Radio Turkey said. NASA would assist the training and give technological support in joint aerospace projects with Turkey. The training of Turkish astronauts will start in 2008. When the studies are complete in 2015, the future astronauts will take a NASA exam and one of them would go on mission under the U.S. space program.

News from the Energy Saving Trust Households in 2020 could be purged of their modern luxuries and forced to revert to simpler standards of living unless action is taken now to reduce escalating levels of carbon dioxide emissions, according to independent research commissioned by the Energy Saving Trust. A panel of experts have predicted two alternative scenarios for life in 2020 within the report - '2020 Futures: Energy and Waste in an Age of Excess'. The bleaker outlook predicts that without a concerted effort to curb our individual carbon dioxide emissions and create a more sustainable future, the home comforts,...

With the shuttle fleet grounded and the International Space Station staffed by a skeleton crew, NASA is set to unveil plans on Monday to take people and cargo to the moon.Even before the official announcement, there is criticism from Capitol Hill over the reported $100 billion cost of the lunar program, given U.S. government commitments to the Iraq war and the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. "This plan is coming out at a time when the nation is facing significant budgetary challenges," Rep. Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat on the House Science Committee, said in a statement. "Getting agreement to move...

Not a big fan of the guy but hey, its not everyday a prophecy guy gets on a major news network. If I can remember I'll post what he says. Hopefully he won't pull a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson.

In 2020, America Will Still Dominate Global Economy A new study by the Deutsche Bank Group holds good news for the United States, with the latest forecasts showing that America will continue as the key driver of the global economy, its currency will remain the most trusted, and its demographics will be the envy of the world. But for Europe, the prognosis is not so promising, explains the president of Deutsche Bank France in this op-ed from French newspaper LeFigaro. By Jacques-Henri David* August 25, 2005 Le Figaro - Home Page (French) What will the world’s economy look like in...

Al-Qaidas agenda 2020 It is considered as one of the best connoisseurs of the Qaida: The Jordanian journalist Fuad Hussein asked Vordenker of the terror network after their long-term strategy. A scenario of the fright came out - and the illusion. REUTERS Osama is shop: Filters phases up to the Kalifat Amman/Berlin - something must appear trustworthy to the philosophers of the terror at this man. Is it the common time, which Fuad Hussein and the jordanischstaemmige chief terrorist Al-Sarkawi spent before some years in the prison? The political prisoner Hussein had nevertheless negotiated at that time the release of...

In case you missed it, the DLC gave Evita a leadership role in developing a strong policy agenda to turn the red states blue. In the image of Martin Luther King, SHE HAS A DREAM! They can make America safer,create a real opportunity society, help parents instill srtong values in their children nad reform America's broken political system. 1. "We will be better protected from terror here at home and more capable of deafeating it, wherever it exists, with a unified,coherent strategy focused on eliminating terrorists wherever we find them,improving homeland defense, and delivering a message of hope and freedom...

A futuristic world, complete with autonomous household companions, android medics and even robot entertainers, will greet visitors to the Prototype Robot Exhibition in Japan from 9 June, 2005. The exhibition forms part of the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan, which runs from 25 May to 25 September. Several utility robots, including autonomous garbage collectors, vacuum cleaners and security guards, are already patrolling the wider Expo. But the Prototype Robot Exhibition gives academics and commercial researchers a chance to showcase a more distant vision of robot utopia. The exhibition features a mock-ups of homes, streets and workplaces from the year...

NEW YORK – After numerous allegations about liberal bias at the broadcast networks, an intriguing hourlong "20/20" grants airtime for five religious conservatives to explain their belief in Christianity's central miracle, the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. ABC's "Resurrection" program airing 10 p.m. EDT Friday also brings on liberal theologians to dismiss the Easter story as a misunderstanding or a myth rather than literal history. The timing of "Resurrection," with correspondent Elizabeth Vargas, is odd and indicative: Odd because it comes nearly eight weeks after Easter (three weeks if you're Orthodox). However, this allowed for rousing scenes...

Transcript of Dr. Steven Greer's Interview on Coast to Coast AM Radio with George Noory April 4/5, 2005 Note: This interview was requested by George Noory. Coast to Coast AM Web site George Noory (GN):From the City of Angels off the Pacific Ocean, good morning, good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, around the world. I'm George Noory. Welcome to America's most listened to late night talk show, Coast to Coast A.M... Next hour - did you know that trillions of dollars are being siphoned off by government black ops groups? Guest Catherine Austin Fitts tracks them all...

It would be the perfect media match, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton versus First Lady Laura Bush for president in 2008. Not possible, you say? Mrs. Clinton, after all, is almost certain to be running for her party's nomination. After her recent hilarious and deft comic performance at the recent White House correspondents' dinner in the nation's capital, Mrs. Bush, already far more popular than her husband, is now clearly the most well-liked woman in America.

The bien pensants at Yale Law School, are engaged in a Soros-funded conference to write us a new Constitution.(I guess they think we are too stupid to know we need one or what it should contain): Yesterday Yale Law School grad ('00) Leah Mesfin wrote to alert us to this weekend's doings at the law school. Leah noted that she'd started reading us in connection with our coverage of the Republican convention this past September. She wrote: Recently I got an invitation from the YLS to register for an upcoming conference at YLS called "The Constitution in 2020." Their plan...

With the publication of Jane Fonda’s autobiography, the public in general and veterans in particular have once again been insulted by her contentless “apology” for a single episode in her multi-faceted junket to Hanoi in July 1972. Fonda’s charade on “60 Minutes” the other night was simply a robotic reprise of what she has been repeating as a mantra for years in words carefully crafted by her spin doctors. In our 2002“Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam, Erika Holzer and I wrote the following: "[After the Vietnam War ended], Fonda went on with her life – garnering more...

In light of this issue's report on the Idarat al-Tawahhush and its view on the secondary importance of Afghanistan in al-Qaeda's global struggle, a further window into al-Qaeda's strategic thinking is provided by a Jordanian analyst Bassam al-Baddarin. Writing on March 11 for the Arabic language daily al-Quds al-Arabi, his article ‘Al-Qaeda has drawn up working strategy lasting until 2020,' puts together from the assorted writings of al-Qaeda's ‘strategic brain' Muhammad Makkawi, what appears to be a coherent long-term strategy. It seeks to explain the series of events since September 11 2001, the events in Afghanistan and Iraq, and potentially...