Free Republic

You can see why markets and governments both like to blame Lehman Brothers for the "Great Contraction". Such wishful thinking shields investors from the nasty reality that deeper forces are at work: it absolves officialdom from its own destructive role in fixing the price of credit too low for 20 years, luring us into debt. As my colleague Jeremy Warner puts it, Lehman no more caused the economic convulsions of the last year than the assassination caused the First World War. There was the little matter of a rising Germany then, and rising China now. Both scrambled the international system,...

DISTRICT HEIGHTS, Md. - A toddler is in critical condition after being bitten by his family's pit bull Tuesday. Paramedics arrived at a home in the 1900 block of Addison Road South around 9:30 a.m. and found a boy with severe injuries to his face, head and eye, Prince George's County Fire and EMS spokesman Mark Brady says. "As as a result of these injuries, paramedics transported the child to a specialty center in the Baltimore area," Brady says. On the way to the hospital, a man who was accompanying the boy "became confrontational and demanded to be let out"...

Bears beware. The New Deal of 2008 is in the works. The US Treasury is about to shower households with rebate cheques to head off a full-blown slump, and save the Bush presidency. On Friday, Mr Bush convened the so-called Plunge Protection Team for its first known meeting in the Oval Office. The black arts unit - officially the President's Working Group on Financial Markets - was created after the 1987 crash. It appears to have powers to support the markets in a crisis with a host of instruments, mostly by through buying futures contracts on the stock indexes (DOW,...

The foundation marked Gormley’s achievement with a donation of books — seven volumes of the journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition — to the Tomlinson Library at Mesa State College. The journals of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark... were edited by Gary Moulton and published by the University of Nebraska Press. They are known among today’s historians as the best and most current version of the duo’s journey through the American West. Mesa State College Library Director Elizabeth Brodak said the fact that the books are forms of primary source material... “Anyone who wishes to get that flavor for...

A Tulsa man will be honored this week for saving another man's life. Back in April, Michael Cook came to the rescue when a pitbull attacked his neighbor. The News On 6’s Chris Wright reports Cook will receive the Citizen Appreciation Award from Tulsa police on Tuesday, an honor his neighbor says he more than deserves. Marvin Battle walks with a cane these days, but says considering what happen to him on April 25th, he can live with the limp. "I can't bend my leg. I have to go through physical therapy,” said Battle. “I've been on a lot of...

There is almost no chance that China will become the world's hegemonic superpower, or that the Chinese yuan will dislodge the US dollar as the key reserve currency in our life-times. It is ageing faster than any nation in history. Indeed, there is a risk that China’s demographic structure will implode long before the great mass of China’s interior ever become rich. This was more or less the conclusion of a closed-door session of Chinese experts at the Davos gathering, regrettably on “Chatham House” rules so none can be named. Those who fret about Chinese chauvinist-militarism certainly have a point....

In the ancient world books were rare. If you had a book, you were probably wealthy. If you got your hands on a book, you had to remember what you read because you might not ever see that particular book again. There would be public readings of books so that more people could hear them. People had to read aloud, actually, to help their memory. The more senses you could involve, the easier it was to remember the material. This holds true today! But, in the ancient world, everyone who read, read aloud. There is a famous moment recounted by...

'Someone in a Position to Know Told Me' J$P Instant Transcript! Eric Burns tells Shepard Smith that he knows the identity of Deep Throat. From Studio-B with Shepard Smith, February 18 2005: SHEPARD SMITH [FOX NEWS]: Well it's a mystery that's gripped the nation for large periods of time over the last three decades. Who was it that tipped off the reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate scandal, leading to the collapse of the Nixon White House? Fox's media analyst Eric Burns says he knows. How do you know? Who is it? ERIC BURNS [FOX NEWS]:...

Long time Freeper Ambrose appears to be banned or supended. Anyone know why? http://www.freerepublic.com/~ambrose/in-forum See this DUmmyland thread for a clue

HANAU, Germany — A buzz of anticipation rifled through the crowded gymnasium. In a few minutes, a Band of Brothers six-pack would pop in for a brief visit before heading off for a historic reunion in Bastogne, Belgium. Michael Abrams / S&S Col. Tracy Williams, left, commander of the 104th Area Support Group, talks to Earl McClung, center, and Darrell "Shifty" Powers of "Band of Brothers" fame. McClung, Powers and four other members of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division spoke in Hanau, Germany, on Wednesday. Darrell “Shifty” Powers looked not the least bit fazed...

George W. Bush received more votes in Tuesday's election than any presidential contender in the history of the United States, and I would like to believe Michael Moore was partly responsible. Here, after all, was not simply a film director whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" emitted a vile propagandistic stink, indicating something contemptible in the mind-set of its creator, but someone who went trotting about Europe telling the adulatory press that Americans "are possibly the dumbest people on the planet."

Tonight on the Grapevine, Foxnews discussed CBS News reporting on the "massive" conservative revolt against Bush, despite their own polling results which showed Bush with overwhelming Republican support. The question was then asked, "Where did CBS get the idea the conservatives were rebelling? The answer...from the New York Times." They then went on to discuss Ambrose's (they didn't credit him unfortunately) discovery that the NYT's used the same source calling him first a Republican and then two weeks later an independent to support their claim that conservatives were ditching Bush.Nice job Ambrose. You didn't get the credit on Foxnews, but...

ST AMBROSE IS THE FIRST DOCTOR AND CALLED THE PASTORAL DOCTOR. HE PLACED THE CHURCH FIRST WITH EACH MEMBER AS HIS HIGHEST PRIORTY. SERVICE TO EACH MEMBER AND DEFENDING THAT HONOR WAS HIS DAILY AND CONTINUAL AIM THROUGHOUT HIS LIFETIME. AMBROSE IS ALSO CALLED THE "PATRON OF THE VENERATION OF MARY". HE FIRMLY MAINTAINED THAT POPULATION INCREASES IN DIRECT PROPORTION TO THE ESTEEM VIRGINITY IS HELD. HE LAID THE FOUNDATION FOR MARIAN THINKING IN THE WEST. NEARLY EVERONE KNOWS THAT IT WAS DUE TO ST MONICA'S PRAYERS AND ST AMBROSE THAT ST AUGUSTINE FOUND GOD AND WAS BAPTIZED BY...

<p>NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Stephen E. Ambrose, whose best-selling books made America's aging World War II veterans hometown heros again, died early Sunday at a Bay St. Louis, Miss., hospital.</p> <p>Ambrose, a longtime smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in April.</p>