Free Republic

Obummer said this morning that his policies have saved or created 1 million jobs. NOTE: No one can verify this fuzzy math. Obummer's HOPE and CHANGE = VAGUENESS and AMBIGUITY at best which does not bode well for Americans. With rel unemployment at 10% (many contend it is much higher) and rising this guy is now suggesting a December Jobs summit at the Whitehouse so they can TAAAAALK about job creation some more. Pathetic, just PATHETIC!

Former President Bill Clinton told a room full of Democratic senators Tuesday that passing health care reform — which he failed to do 15 years ago — is not only a moral issue but also “an economic imperative.” Clinton argued that even “the most cold-hearted person” ought to support health care reform simply from an economic standpoint. He reminded Democrats of the political momentum their failure to pass reform in 1993 delivered the House of Representatives to the Republicans the following year… Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Clinton described the ongoing tea party protests against the Democratic agenda as a...

Okay, we are all disgusted, dispirited, angry, and not sure of what to do next. Evidently, the Tyrants in the democrat party do not care if we have Tea Party's, they mock us. They don't care if they lose some elections, they mock us. They persecute our leaders and they mock us. How can we hit back? Tea Party's are good, but they have been relatively inaffective. We are ignored or mocked. Let's consider hitting these bastards where it will really count, let's call for a national strike by the people! Not a union strike, this is an American people...

Like many Americans, I’m very concerned about the efforts underway to rush through the 2,000 page Pelosi health care bill this weekend. Why the rush? That’s a lot of pages to read. Why not give everyone the chance to read it and debate it? How much will this bill cost us? It’s unclear because the figures coming out of Washington keep changing – and always in the direction of costing more, not less. The latest numbers show it will cost more than a trillion dollars over the decade, but when has a government program ever come in on or under...

Tuesday night the plans of Barack Obama and the democrat/communist party took some severe blows in New Jersey and Virginia. A strong message was sent by the American people that we are not pleased with Obama’s perverted vision for America. That he and his democrat/communist party are on the wrong track. So who is the focus of White House greaseball David Axelrod? Sarah Palin! That’s right, Palin; the so-called supposed insignificant, washed up “quitter.” I mean that’s what the democrat/communists and their lap dogs in the media shout all day every day. For such an insignificant woman, Sarah sure does...

For all that's transpired since his election as president, public opinion has not moved on the big issue, the current economy. The question a year later is how long Obama's got until it goes up, or he goes down – possibly with his party in tow. Health care reform draws a divided public response as well, with support for a variety of initiatives coupled with significant concern that they could do more harm than good. Some of Obama's best ratings lately have been in handling international affairs, contrary to questions during the 2008 campaign about his readiness for the global...

IBD has a very important article on the fool Biden and how Governor Palin could not be more correct on US energy needs and reserves. This is the most significant security issue facing America and demonstrates why the left is so dangerous and anti-American. Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe...

WASHINGTON – Ignoring a Republican boycott, Senate Democrats pushed a precedent-setting climate bill through a key committee Thursday. Rep. Barbara Boxer, chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, had delayed the crucial vote for days because of a Republican protest over whether the cost of the legislation had been fully examined. But the California Democrat moved quickly to pass the bill, which for the first time would set mandatory limits on heat-trapping gases, without any of the seven GOP senators on the panel present. The measure cleared the panel on a 11-1 vote. Boxer said the Republican demand...

Whenever Ayn Rand met someone new—an acolyte who’d traveled cross-country to study at her feet, an editor hoping to publish her next novel—she would open the conversation with a line that seems destined to go down as one of history’s all-time classic icebreakers: “Tell me your premises.” Once you’d managed to mumble something halfhearted about loving your family, say, or the Golden Rule, Rand would set about systematically exposing all of your logical contradictions, then steer you toward her own inviolable set of premises: that man is a heroic being, achievement is the aim of life, existence exists, A is...

President Obama is pursuing a "radical" agenda that is putting the economy and national security in peril, talk show host Rush Limbaugh told "Fox News Sunday," giving the young president failing grades across the board and standing by his sustained criticism of the administration. The conservative radio host assailed the administration for its economic stimulus package, health care reform plan and alleged uncertainty over the way forward in Afghanistan. In a wide-ranging interview, he called Obama a "child" driven by his "out-of-this-world ego." And he predicted that Obama, who built a broad-based majority over Republican candidate John McCain a year...

AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE By Anne C. Heller Illustrated. 567 pp. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday. $35A specter is haunting the Republican Party — the specter of John Galt. In Ayn Rand’s libertarian epic “Atlas Shrugged,” Galt, an inventor disgusted by creeping American collectivism, leads the country’s capitalists on a retributive strike. “We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it,” Galt lectures the “looters” and “moochers” who make up the populace. “We have no demands to present you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise...

Is the New IRS Wealth Squad Coming for You? Smart Money, Oct. 27, 2009 Being wealthy has its downsides, chief among them the higher risk of an IRS audit. Now, amid the continuing debate over whether the government is doing enough to combat financial fraud, comes news that gives the uber-wealthy – or maybe even the “merely” wealthy – yet another reason to fear Uncle Sam’s attention. In a speech before the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, or AICPA, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman announced the recent formation of a new unit, dubbed Global High Wealth Industry Group, which will focus on the...

Ayn Rand has drifted in and out of favor, but she may be more relevant today than ever before.In my experience, people who've read Ayn Rand's books either love them or hate them. I'm one of the few who fall somewhere in between. When I first read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in the 1980s, I was blown away. Those books portray the power of the free individual in ways I had never thought about before. Since then, I've grown more critical of Rand's outlook because it doesn't include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any...

Mafioso, Goon Squad, Communist, Nazi, Jihadi, Democrat politics as usual--whatever you want to call the thuggish tactics of the Obama administration, the very public threats they are making to the news media to not follow the lead of Fox News in questioning Obama's policies and personnel is a direct threat to the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.This morning on the Sunday talk shows, speaking on behalf of President Barack Obama, senior Obama advisers David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel carried on the war initiated by White House communictions director Anita Dunn last week on CNN.Axelrod appeared on ABC News' This...

The headline in Investor’s Business Daily, Sept. 16, 2009: “45% of Doctors Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul.” The headline in the Boston Globe, Sept. 28, 2009: “States risk it, raise tax on rich.” The problem with four of nine U.S. doctors saying they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” is that “the number of doctors is already lagging population growth,” reports IBD. Add millions of new patients to a shrinking supply of doctors and the obvious result is an English-style queue, longer waits in pain, and a centrally directed rationing of service....

Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal. Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.

I want to know how the situation covered on Hannity today is not cause enough for armed insurrection by the people of California against the tyranny of Washington DC. I want to know how governor Schwarzenegger has not called out the national guard and by force of arms turned the water on. I want to know how any rational human being can look at the starving of an area, the destroyed landscape, the human misery caused by artificially starving an area of a natural resource and defend it. I want to know if our government would accept such actions committed...

... Most recently the worldview that I am describing has colored much of the conservative outrage at the prospect of health care reform, which some have called a "redistribution of health" from those wise enough to have secured health insurance to those who have not. "President Obama says he will cover thirty to forty to fifty million people who are not covered now--without it costing any money," fumed Rudolph Giuliani. "They will have to cut other services, cut programs. They will have to be making decisions about people who are elderly." [...] In these disparate comments we can see the...

WASHINGTON – The capital was rocked today by a taxpayer march and rally that could be the biggest protest ever – potentially dwarfing the Million Man March and the Promise Keepers Rally. Though crowd estimates vary from as low as 60,000 to 70,000 according to ABC News to a high of 2 million by London Daily Mail, photographs and videos of the march and rally demonstrate its enormity. The taxpayers stormed Washington, D.C., today, taking their fight against excessive spending, bailouts, growth of big government and soaring deficits to the front door of the U.S. Capitol. All week citizens have...

It's clear that President Barack Obama's $787-billion stimulus hasn't worked as advertised, but some economists are worried it could backfire and cause something much worse. According to a new study by economists Charles Rowley of George Mason University and Nathanael Smith of the Locke Institute and endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan, the Keynesian tactics employed by Obama "will ultimately hamper the long-term growth potential of the U.S. economy and may risk delaying full economic recovery by several years." The study accuses the president of making Depression-era mistakes. Stephen Moore, member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and senior...

Conservatives are taking too much solace in the precipitous drop in Barack Obama's approval ratings, and too many of us are overconfident that his administration is merely a replay of the hapless presidency of Jimmy Carter that was easily swept out in a landslide election. Today's situation is far different, far more conducive to our political adversary's political power, than that which faced Carter. And Obama is an entirely different breed of cat. He's more ruthless, more tactically savvy, and has far more dangerous objectives. A drop in his poll ratings isn't as serious a setback for him as similar...

If you are not familiar with Atlas Shrugged, this short video in context with the current times and the tea party movement may help explain all the interest.

Just before Thanksgiving last year, a group of former aides to Mitt Romney convened at his salmon-colored Belmont home, many of them gathering for the first time since Romney had disbanded his presidential campaign some nine months before. Romney had invited them for a post-mortem of the election weeks earlier, the type of dispassionate assessment that the Harvard Business School alumnus so enjoyed. But over cookies, they found few of the metrics for success that Romney prized -- Republicans had been decisively thumped at all levels -- and his attention shifted from 2008 to the future.

FOND DU LAC, Wis. – Union workers at Mercury Marine put their jobs at risk Sunday when they rejected a package of wage and benefit concessions the boat engine maker said it needed or it would move their work to a nonunion plant in Oklahoma. Union leaders did not immediately release Sunday's tally but said the vote was "overwhelming" to reject what the company called its final offer. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Local 1947, represents 850 workers at Mercury Marine, the largest employer in the eastern Wisconsin city of Fond du Lac and the world's largest...

If that's correct, I can't think events in 2009 will do anything to diminish the flow. What I wonder is: Where did those 2 million go? Britons, Canadians, Europeans, etc, who seek "greener pastures" generally wind up in the U.S. For most of us immigrants, this is the last stop on the tour: There's nowhere else to go. So where on the planet do a couple of million Americans go to find somewhere "greener"?

BACKSTORY At a Little Rock restaurant, after Mr. Clinton was elected president, Emanuel ticked off a list of disloyal Democrats and other political enemies, stabs the table with his knife screaming, ''Dead!'' ''Dead!'' ''Dead!'' after each name. Seven months after moving into the West Wing as Obama's COS, Emanuel is emerging as perhaps the most influential White House COS in a generation. But with his prominence in almost everything important going on comes a high degree of risk. As the principal author of Mr. Obama’s do-everything-at-once strategy, he stands to become a figure of consequence in his own right if...

Mark Lloyd has recently been appointed “Chief Diversity Officer” at the Federal Communications Commission. Conservative groups believe his installation is merely another way to impose the dangerous principles contained in the Fairness Doctrine. Lloyd is a longtime Democrat activist who has strategized about ways to censor conservative media under the guise of “local accountability.” In 2007, he co-wrote a report that called for, among other things, the restoration of local and national caps on the ownership of commercial radio stations and fines for commercial radio station owners if their stations didn’t air enough “progressive” content. Those fines would go directly...

Sales of the Russian-American writer’s books, especially Atlas Shrugged, have surged each time financial markets have wobbled and governments have stepped in. The 1957 epic includes a 30-page monologue on the virtues of individualism, self-interest, and radically free markets, and at one point this year, it was outselling Barack Obama’s “Audacity of Hope.” But some notable adherents, such as Alan Greenspan, are having second thoughts about Rand’s ideas. We’ll speak with Jennifer Burns, professor of history at University of Virginia, and author of the upcoming “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.”

Part III: A is AChapter IX: The GeneratorSynopsisDr. Robert Stadler flees New York by car, listening to the broadcast from the Wayne-Falkland Hotel. Following John Galt’s one sentence, the air goes dead and every radio station on the dial is off the air. He has been on the road four days and is now barreling through Iowa. He had proved his uselessness to Mr. Thompson, who is now considering taking hostages to pressure Galt into working for the government. Dr. Stadler’s name is at the head of that list. Now Stadler is headed for the Xylophone, which he intends to...

BuzzCharts spent much of 2003, 2004, and 2005 rebutting the media mantra that the U.S. was experiencing a “jobless recovery.” While unemployment rates bobbed between the upper end of 4 percent and the lower end of 6 percent, the press sang dirges about the “worst job market since Herbert Hoover.” So why is it that nobody seems to mention a “jobless recovery” anymore, especially with the unemployment rate marching toward 10 percent? The data now confirm that we really are in a jobless recovery. Unemployment just hit 9.5 percent, with few signs of a momentum reversal. And we just...

What do Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius and Jon Huntsman have in common? All were governors who resigned this year to pursue other opportunities, and did so without a peep of criticism from journalists or their fellow pols for "quitting" on the peoples of Arizona, Kansas and Utah, respectively. I write not to belabor the news media's double standards with regard to Democrats and Republicans, or between other politicians and Sarah Palin. I want to highlight an observation made by Princeton Professor Angelo Codevilla: "The distinctions between Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, are being overshadowed by that between what we...

The push for conversion to plug-in electric cars will do nothing to stop carbon emissions, a report by the GAO warns, throwing cold water on a push by Democrats to get more plug-ins on the road. In fact, the problem could be made worse as demand goes up at coal-fired electrical plants. Plus, the need for batteries may just have the US changing the dictators to which we’re chained, as IBD reports...

Despite a number of differences I have with Ayn Rand on issues of religion and philosophy, her 1957 magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged," definitely steered me away from the leftist upbringing I had, and introduced me to the world of conservative ideas and authors: Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, Isabel Paterson, and many others. Universally panned by literary critics of the day, "Atlas" was, nevertheless, a bestseller in 1957, and continued to sell about 100,000 copies a year for 51 consecutive years. 52 years later -- just after the inauguration of zerobama -- "Atlas" has apparently tripled its sales...

Conservatives who love their country, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and human liberty have had enough. Word came last night that a massive protest is planned in order to send Washington a message. On July 30, conservatives are 'going Galt,' named after Ayn Rand's famous character John Galt from her novel Atlas Shrugged, and thus refuse to show up for work. They plan to 'call in conservative.' From the Eastside TeaParty blog: "You knew this day was coming with a government ramming a socialist agenda down everyone’s throat.This may be the only way to wake our leaders up and...

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine Monday signed a 2010 budget making his state the latest to squeeze the rich for extra cash.

After the Internet, the next big thing will be cheap and clean energy. Coal, oil and gas pollute and are increasingly expensive: We need alternatives. Because nuclear energy (stored among particles inside atoms) is millions of times more dense than chemical energy (stored among atoms in molecules), nuclear reactors belong high on our long list of energy alternatives. Nuclear energy is released during fission and fusion. During fission, large elements like uranium are split into smaller elements. During fusion, small elements like hydrogen are combined into larger elements. These two processes have occurred naturally since the beginning of time --...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – House Democratic leaders are furiously lobbying their members and moderate Republicans to support a landmark energy bill in the face of resistance from some conservative members of their own party, and staunch opposition from the GOP — roadblocks that are making it difficult to find the 218 votes necessary to pass the measure, according to Democratic leadership aides. A vote on the Clean Energy and Security Act, which would restrict emissions of green house gases and require use of alternative energy in an effort to slow the effects of global warming, is scheduled for Friday. The legislation's...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-four percent (34%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -2. That’s the President’s lowest rating to date and the first time the Presidential Approval Index has fallen below zero for Obama (see trends).

The New American recently warned that Americans who oppose policies emanating from Washington are being tarred as right-wing extremists and even potential terrorists by the Obama administration's Department of Homeland Security as well as by the New York Times and other liberal media organs. This push to demonize and even criminalize political dissent appears to be accelerating. Earlier this month, New York Times columnists Frank Rich and Paul Krugman wrote pieces laying the blame for the murder of an abortionist and a U.S. Holocaust Museum security guard at the foot of President Barack Obama's critics. Both have received figurative high-fives...

Subject: Have you seen this ?? This guy's video on youtube has been so popular that Obama called him personally. He said that he was very disturbed with the video and invited him to the White House.. Obama also said he wanted the White House to handle the Press and not to talk about the video or the White House visit. That's interesting. Watch it now. This may be the best six minutes invested in your future You may have to turn your Sound Control up some. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA

The Democratic Party's attitude to elections is admirable: Win. And recent history has shown it will do anything to do so. When, if not now, will Republicans develop such a fighting spirit? Democrats invest - with taxpayer money, mind you - in groups like ACORN that, among other sordid tactics, seek out Skid Row bodies and wheel them to polling places. All the Democratic National Committee needs are vans and smelling salts. Pop culture and the "education system" have done the rest, making "D" the default choice on Election Day. Democrats brazenly take policy positions - think government services and...

What will it take to get developing nations to sign up to a global climate agreement? A critical part of the answer, it seems, is cold, hard cash. Wealthy nations are considering just how much poor countries should be paid to help combat global warming. Countries in poorer parts of the world like China and India are demanding that wealthier regions like the European Union and North America fund their efforts at developing clean energy technologies and help them adapt to the effects of climate change caused largely by accumulated emissions from the industrialized West. Money to fund these efforts...

You want a blatant example of the Old Media's over-the-top, gobsmacked love affair with Obama? Well, one would be hard pressed not to see Time Magazine's latest piece by Nancy Gibbs as a perfect example of the media ignoring all ills and of projecting only what is wonderful onto the dearly beloved as this piece represents. The lionization of Obama is bad enough, but the selective memory of the writer is even more appalling. Writer Gibbs begins her column trying to "place" Barack Obama in a "cultural map." Most famous people are remembered for a certain place that formed their...

OBAMA'S JUSTICE DEPT WILL ALLOW NON-CITIZENS TO REGISTER TO VOTE IN GEORGIA Any shot for Americans to take back this country from the hard left in 2010/2012 is looking increasingly dim .... Obama Justice Department Decision Will Allow Non-Citizens to Register to Vote in Georgia (hat tip Clyde) Decision Bars Georgia From Continuing Voter Verification Process Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel issued the following statement following the U.S. Department of Justice’s denial of preclearance of Georgia’s voter verification process Atlanta - “The decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to deny preclearance of Georgia’s already implemented citizenship verification...

Cannot post due to copyright rules. Here's the link.

No link allowed, story here .

Part II: Either-OrChapter X: The Sign of the DollarSynopsisThe Comet rolls across Nebraska with Dagny’s private car in the consist. Dagny hears the shout of the conductor throwing a hobo off the vestibule of her car, but she rescues the hobo and asks him to be her dinner guest. He vaguely remembers her as “the lady who ran a railroad”, and he has been roaming the country for the past six months looking for work. Jobs are being hoarded for the friends of Unification Board members, and he is heading west to avoid them. Farmers aren’t happy to feed hobos,...

Francisco's 'Money' Speech from "Atlas Shrugged" Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil – and he's the typical product of money." Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile. "So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist...

LOS ANGELES — Even as he conceded there is still much hard work to do, President Obama was in a boastful mood Wednesday night, telling a star-studded crowd at a fundraising dinner that he "would put these first four months up against any prior administration since FDR." The president, speaking to a dinner that included Hollywood A-listers like Kiefer Sutherland, Marisa Tomei, Jamie Foxx, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg, lauded the legislation he has signed since taking office but added that he is "not satisfied."