Free Republic

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri State Fair on Monday imposed a lifetime ban on a rodeo clown whose depiction of President Barack Obama getting charged by a bull was widely criticized by Democratic and Republican officials alike. The rodeo clown won't be allowed to participate or perform at the fair again. Fair officials say they're also reviewing whether to take any action against the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association, the contractor responsible for Saturday's event. The entertainment during the bull riding contest featured a clown wearing a mask of Obama with an upside down broomstick attached to his backside....

Bo, the president's Portuguese Water Dog, arrived separately on one of two MV-22 Ospreys, a hybrid aircraft which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane.

During his recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Barack Obama said that Russia and other countries like it are ‘violating basic morality’ by passing laws in opposition to the homosexual lifestyle. After Obama was asked about his reaction to Russia granting asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Leno then delved into the issue of homosexuality and the 2014 Olympics. “Well, something that shocked me about Russia — and I’m surprised this is not a huge story — suddenly, homosexuality is against the law,” he said. “I mean, this seems like Germany: Let’s round up the Jews,...

During an August 8 appearance on CNN's The Lead, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said Russia's recent actions toward the U.S. have "reset" relations and put the two countries back on Cold War footing. According to McCain, "The Russians have reset, they've reset alright--back to about 1955."

AMES, Iowa — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is the subject of endless 2016 presidential speculation, and if he does decide to run, he’s already learned one important lesson. “You all had the opportunity earlier this afternoon to get to know my father. And as you saw, my dad is very soft spoken,” Cruz joked during a speech in Iowa this weekend. “I will confess, I am today violating what has been a cardinal rule, which is never, ever, ever follow my father at the podium.” Cruz and his father, Rafael, a Texas pastor, both addressed a gathering of Christian conservatives...

Republicans relish the idea of impoverished people across the nation dying slow agonizing deaths without access to healthcare. At least, that’s what our President believes. Holding a press conference right before his luxurious vacation in Martha’s Vineyard (which I hear is fantastic this time of year) the President said that “the one unifying principle the Republican Party has, is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health-care.” The comment was absurd, disingenuous, and indicative of Liberal’s inability to defend their ideas. The comment was made in regards to three conservative Republicans who are leading an effort to essentially defund...

During his Wednesday appearance on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show,' President Obama made three factual gaffes; one of them involved the claim that cities not found along the Gulf of Mexico are. Were Obama a Republican, these gaffes would have led news coverage for the next forty-eight hours. Not only did most of the media ignore or downplay these gaffes; the Associated Press went so far as to cover one of them up.

U.S. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama sent their warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid al-Fitr around the world, calling it "part of a great tapestry of America's many traditions." "Michelle and I send our warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid-al-Fitr in the United States and around the world," Obama said in his message. "For millions of Americans, Eid is part of a great tapestry of America's many traditions, and I wish all Muslims a blessed and joyful celebration. Eid Mubarak," Obama said. Eid is being celebrated on Thursday in the Arab world and most of the East...

Thousands of small-business owners have received letters from the Internal Revenue Service questioning whether they are underreporting their business income, a harbinger of a broader initiative aimed at boosting federal tax receipts and ensuring compliance. The program is the latest move in the agency's effort to combat what it sees as a widespread problem: failure by businesses, including mom-and-pops, to report all cash sales in order to minimize tax bills. Tax officials say the letters don't constitute an audit and instead are simply a request for more information. Some business owners and some lawmakers, however, call the new IRS program...

Larry Grathwohl, who had just come back to Cincinnati from Vietnam, was infiltrating the domestic terrorist group Weatherman, the only one to have done so. Larry saved potentially hundreds of lives when he alerted the FBI to a bomb placed near a Detroit police station and a restaurant. Bill Ayers, Education Secretary of Weatherman, told him that in the revolution, lives would have to be sacrificed. ... My interest in Bill Ayers began a few years ago when I learned about his career as a “Distinguished Professor of Education.” In reality he was working to destroy everything that was good...

Valerie Jarret is Obama’s top advisor and for the most part, that is all the majority of people know about her at all. Now we are going to show you what many have asked, and we will show you just who Valerie Jarrett really is, where she came from, what her alliances are, what her background is, what she thinks and most of all, what type of individual she really is. Once we lay out who she is, we must ask ourselves if Valerie Jarrett is the one that gave the ‘stand down’ order to those who were in Benghazi...

Barack Obama delivered one gaffe after another in his August 6 interview with Jay Leno, but the networks that usually mock every mistake or slip of the tongue made by Republicans ignored the President's verbal mishaps. ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS’s This Morning and NBC’s Today show, on Wednesday morning, all bypassed the chance to criticize Obama for: downplaying the threat of terrorism; falsely claiming Vladimir Putin once ran the KGB; placing the Atlantic coast cities of Savannah, Charleston, and Jacksonville on the Gulf of Mexico; confusing the Winter Olympics with the Summer Olympics. First up, on the August 6...

Gallup tracks daily the percentage of Americans who approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. Daily results are based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,500 national adults; Margin of error is ±3 percentage points.

What really happened to Navy SEAL Team 6? In August 2011, the elite special forces unit suffered the worst battlefield calamity in its history. A Taliban fighter shot down a Chinook helicopter carrying 22 Navy SEAL Team 6 members in Afghanistan. All 38 persons on board — the Navy SEAL warriors, other U.S. military personnel and seven Afghan soldiers — were killed. Grieving family members have been demanding answers. They may now get some as Congress finally opens an investigation. Navy SEAL Team 6 has attained international prominence for one reason: They were responsible for killing Osama bin Laden. They...

The chill in relations between the US and Russia grew still frostier yesterday as President Vladimir Putin's foreign minister told the White House to start behaving like "grown-ups". Sergei Lavrov chided the US administration two days after President Barack Obama scrapped a summit with Mr Putin when Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden, the fugitive US spy.

The White House announced that President Barack Obama will award the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, to 16 recipients including television star and businesswoman Oprah Winfrey, legendary Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and former President Bill Clinton. “The Presidential Medal of Freedom goes to men and women who have dedicated their own lives to enriching ours,” Mr. Obama said in a statement released by the White House. “This year’s honorees have been blessed with extraordinary talent, but what sets them apart is their gift for sharing that talent with the world.” Mr. Obama will award the medals...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: A fascinating little story here, folks, a column by Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post. It is headlined: "Why No One Should be Surprised that Jay Leno Asked President Obama 'Real' Questions." Now, yesterday on this program, about 24 hours ago, I observed that I think this was the first time in my lifetime that a president of the United States had gone on a late-night comedy show to address the American people about something of potentially great consequence. Shutting down 21 embassies for a week in the Middle East is not an insignificant thing. And I...

(Newser) – Now that the Supreme Court has overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, the Pentagon is reviewing a plan that would extend full marriage benefits to same-sex couples by the end of this month, according to a draft memo from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel outlining the proposal obtained yesterday by the AP. In the process, the Defense Department would ditch a previous plan that would have allowed unmarried same-sex couples access to some limited benefits after signing a declaration form. Now, troops will actually need to be legally married to get the benefits, but the military will give...

Original title: "Russia Responds To Obama Snub: "We Are Disappointed... But The Snowden Situation Wasn't Created By Us" (had to be truncated) Earlier we reported that in an act of embarassing political ineptitude not to mention detente reminiscent of the Cold War's worst days, the US president did his best Freudian transferrance attempt today by blaming Putin for his ever escalating headaches caused by one 30 year old NSA whistleblower, and cancelling bilateral talks with the Russian president. And can anyone blame him: with the US increasingly slighted by both superascedent eastern powers, Russia and China, the US finds itself...

Just watched one of the liberal Miami tv news outlets (which is all of them).....they just reported, and this is a quote, that Obama has "MAJOR SUPPORT" from Republicans after canceling the Putin summit.

US President Barack Obama will mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech by speaking from the same steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. The August 28 event in the US capital will take place on the exact spot where King delivered his famous address on the same day in 1963.

Scandal: The omnipresent power behind the throne some have called the president's Rasputin had the power to call off three strikes against Osama bin Laden. She may have used that power again the night four Americans died in Benghazi. The Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, came while America failed to mount a rescue mission despite sufficient time and assets. Included in that disaster were the unaccounted whereabouts of President Obama during eight critical hours, the lack of Situation Room photos, the failure by the president to follow up with subordinates before his trip...

The Obama administration, teachers unions and some Republicans are joining forces to gut core provisions of the education law that was one of the Bush administration's crowning achievements....No Child Left Behind, which began in 2002, focused on the low performance of African-American and Hispanic students. It required that all students, no matter their race or ethnicity, reach proficiency by 2014. Since minority students had the longest road to travel, schools placed special emphasis on their instruction, and measured the quality of their instruction by ascertaining their performance on standardized tests. .."We can meet high-standards without forcing teachers and students to...

Have you seen the latest economic indicators? I mean the ones not manipulated by the Obama administration or the mainstream media. Wall Street may be flying high, but on Main Street it looks more like Detroit every day. If you think Obama has solutions to turn it around, I've got a bridge to sell you...in Detroit. The biggest city to ever go bankrupt, Detroit, has been run by Democrats since 1962. That's over half a century of 100% Democrat rule, using the exact same policies as Obama. The city is now in ruins. Detroit leads the nation in illiteracy, welfare,...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Tuesday evening with a delegation of 36 American congressmen headed by Congressman Steny Hoyer. During the meeting Netanyahu claimed that though Iran's president said pressure wouldn't help, in the last two decades pressure was the only thing that helped. snip

The June JOLTS report, the job openings measure, was expected to print at 3,895,000. It printed at 3,936,000 after a revised print in May of 3,907,000. We are back to the recession job openings level of 2008, but going up instead of down. jolts0806213 That is the highest level in 5 years! Now for the bad news. Bill Gross at PIMCO thinks that the JOLTS print does not equate to 200,000 jobs. More like 125,000. grossjobstweet From Zero Hedge, we get this charming chart. JOLTS June 3 If we look at The House Ways and Means study on job creation...

The White House said top administration officials gathered late Saturday over a terror threat that provoked the State Department to close more than 20 diplomatic posts and issue a worldwide travel alert. National Security Adviser Susan Rice chaired a meeting with 12 administration officials including the secretaries of State, Defense and Homeland Security and the directors of the FBI, CIA and NSA

Employer retiree health care coverage, which has been deteriorating for years amid high health care costs and waning employer interest, is headed for bigger changes thanks to the Affordable Care Act, a new study shows. More than 40 percent of employers have eliminated their traditional group health coverage for retirees over the age of 65 in favor of giving these former employees a defined amount of money for them to buy their coverage on the individual Medicare plan market, according to a new survey of more than 540 companies by employee benefits consulting firm Aon Hewitt (AON). For most of...

I have to ask, think this through, what has been the reason for a series of embassies to ever close in our past history? Are we so scared of a group that was once defeated that we cower in fear like this? Or does Obama have other plans? Embassies, closed, this many, at the same time...only in time of war, folks, only in time of war

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Afternoon traffic delays can be expected Tuesday when President Barack Obama makes a brief visit to Los Angeles to appear on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”. The president is scheduled to arrive at Los Angeles International Airport at 3:25 p.m. and will be in Burbank for the show’s 4:30 p.m. taping, according to the White House. Motorists should expect a number of street closures and congestion to accommodate the president’s motorcade, although President Obama will likely be taken to Burbank by helicopter from LAX. Although routes or security operations surrounding presidential visits are never officially...

A congressional select committee could offer immunity to the CIA’s dispersed, intimidated survivors. You can always tell the depth of an event’s illegality by the measures people take to cover it up. By that measure, the conduct of President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and David Petraeus leading up to the terrorist attack that killed four Americans on 9/11 2012 must be must be so sufficiently wrongful that, if revealed, they could lead to the president’s impeachment.How else can we gauge what is apparently the most energetic coverup in modern history? We know, from several sources, that the survivors of the attack —...

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained a copy of the letter CIA director John Brennan sent to survivors of the Benghazi terror attack:

America has a two-party system. But it’s not Republicans versus Democrats. It’s the ruling class — Republicans and Democrats — against everyone else. Consider how President Obama just gave Congress its very own Obamacare waiver. Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased. Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer....

Two years ago this Tuesday, on August 6th, 2011, Muslim animals ambushed and shot down an American Chinook helicopter, the Extortion 17, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. All 38 men and one military working dog on board were killed, including 25 special operations personnel, of which 15 were members of the elite Navy Seal Team 6. As Pamela Geller wrote last month in a column published at the American Thinker: The attack on Extortion 17 came just three months after the Osama bin Laden kill, and both Obama and Biden had identified the team that took OBL out. Retribution was inevitable....

Mr. Obama is right to worry about the corrosive effect, for example on civil liberties, of perpetual war. But like all wars, this one will end only if one party is defeated or both agree to lay down their weapons. Neither appears likely any time soon, and the president’s eagerness to disengage, while understandable and in sync with U.S. public opinion, may in the end lengthen the conflict. His hope of fighting the bad guys as antiseptically as possible, with drone strikes and a minimal presence, may prove as forlorn as President Clinton’s similar effort in the 1990s, when the...

President Obama is going to announce a plan whose main goal appears to be subsidizing mortgage backed securities. Unfortunately the readers of the Washington Post article on the piece probably would not realize this fact. The article simply repeats the Obama administration's assertion that government backing is needed for 30-year mortgages to exist, which it asserted are the backbone of home ownership. "Traveling to Phoenix on Tuesday, Obama is planning to call for a new system, built in part on government backing, that will enable wide access to 30-year mortgages, which are a rarity in other countries. That will require,...

Recall reading about how Valerie Jarrett  cancelled the Bin Laden raid three times? I sure do... So NOW the story making circulation is that she was de facto Commander in Chief on the night of the Benghazi attack... and personally responsible for the bizarre lack of US response on that day: Chronology of the evening of 9/11/12:  Around 5 pm EST, secure-channel reports arrived in Washington saying that our Special Mission Benghazi consulate was under attack.  Secretary of Defense Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen Martin Dempsey summoned the President,and briefed him on the crisis, face to face. Subsequent...

President Barack Obama is proposing to overhaul the nation’s mortgage finance system, including shutting down government-backed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—a plan with bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Obama will also insist that popular 30-year mortgages be widely available to borrowers, even in a system that would rely more on the private sector than the government to guarantee loans. The president was to outline his proposals Tuesday at a construction company in Phoenix, once the epicenter of the housing crisis following the 2008 economic collapse. The housing market in the region, as in much of the country, has rebounded in...

It’s official, the United States has a Ruling Class and it is no longer being hidden or denied.  Obama and the Congress have just decided that they don’t want to play by the same rules as the rest of us. Big surprise that the Office of Personnel Management, under pressure from Capitol Hill and Obama, has said that they will issue a ruling that states government can keep making contributions to the health care premiums of members of Congress and their aides.  In other words, “we” the “serfs” will be paying for Congress and their staff to keep their “Cadillac...

Filing papers at the Circuit County Clerk’s Office can be a boring, and tedious task, but one young attorney, Thais Alvarez, observed something quite out of the ordinary that made that day’s filing anything but mundane. What sparked her interest was an elect “Obama 2012” bumper sticker, clearly visible hanging on the wall behind the protective glass window in bold view. The election had long passed. Ms. Alvarez wanted to know why the Circuit Clerk’s Office of Broward County, Florida was allowing an employee to display their personal political bumper sticker?

A statement issued Tuesday says the department has ordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government personnel from Yemen "due to the continued potential for terrorist attacks." The travel warning says U.S. citizens currently in Yemen should depart and calls the security threat level in Yemen "extremely high." A U.S. intelligence official and a Mideast diplomat told The Associated Press that the current shutdown was instigated by an intercepted secret message between al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri and his deputy in Yemen about plans for a major terror attack. Britain's Foreign Office says it has evacuated all staff from its embassy in...

<p>Jihadists in Egypt's lawless Sinai Peninsula are using U.S. weapons to carry out attacks against the temporary government in the wake of the military's ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, according to the embattled nation's Interior Ministry.</p>

Senators, representatives, and their top aides will be able to stay under the current subsidized health care system. That means they will continue to get a taxpayer-funded contribution to help pay for their health care premiums. A last-minute deal worked out before Congress went on their five-week summer vacation gets lawmakers out of the original language of Obamacare, which said members and their aides had to use its health care plans. Republicans like Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana slammed the move, calling it a "behind-closed-doors deal, announced right after Congress is safely away from the crime scene." "This is exactly...

URGENT MEMORANDUM TO: All the Better National Reporters FROM: The Coach. SUBJECT: The Appearance of Credibility. Listen people, you’re doing great work. Our guy’s holding up very well considering how rough the economy is. No jobs, sky high dependency. Best part: people don’t blame him. They think he’s an innocent bystander rather than president for the last five years. We’re getting it done! But one thing…maybe we gotta be careful not to show quite so much pompom and drool. Jackie Calmes and Michael Shear from the Times had a great sit down with the president. And who among us wouldn’t...

The Federal Reserve Bank, with a capitalization of $62 billion, has recently lost $192 billion, as interest rates have risen, according to ETF Guide and Scott Minerd, the Global Chief Investment Officer at Guggenheim Partners. This, despite attempts by the central bank of the United States to keep interest rates much, much lower "Our estimate shows that the spike in bond yields since the first quarter of this year,” writes Minerd, “has caused a mark-to-market loss of $192 billion on the Fed’s holding assets, equivalent to approximately all of the unrealized gains that the Fed had accumulated since it began...

A grassroots movement of Fourth Amendment activists is rallying across at least 20 US cities to protest illegal surveillance techniques by the American government. The protests “1984 Day,” named for George Orwell’s classic novel about an ultramodern surveillance state, have taken place across the nations, most notably in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. The rallies have been organized by a number of social media initiatives by a grassroots organization called Restore the Fourth that demands an end to “unconstitutional surveillance of digital communications.” "By rallying this Sunday, we are sending a very loud message to our...

Warnings from U.S. officials on the threat of possible terrorist strikes against Americans overseas -- and the massive closure of embassies in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia on Sunday -- may have divulged too much information, including details about the intercepted chatter and source of the information. Some intelligence officials say the disclosures may work against obtaining new information and even pose a deadly threat from militants who might kill anyone suspected of working with Western intelligence, The Washington Times reported. “There simply are not that many who would know about the attacks,” the Times quoted one...

WASHINGTON – Is the CIA trying to cover up information relating to the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans? Members of Congress are seeking an investigation into covert CIA efforts to move surface-to-air missiles out of Libya, through Turkey, and into the hands of Syrian rebels, CNN reported over the weekend. Among the many secrets still yet to be told about the Benghazi mission, is just how many Americans were there the night of the September 2012 attack. According to one source, that number was 35, with as many as seven wounded, some seriously. It is unknown how many of...

This wasn't the revolution the Tea Party had in mind. Four years ago, the movement and its potent mix of anger and populism persuaded thousands of costumed and sign-waving conservatives to protest the ballooning deficit and President Obama's health care law. It swept a crop of no-compromise lawmakers into Congress and governor's offices and transformed political up-and-comers, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, into household names. But as many Tea Party stars seek re-election next year and Rubio considers a 2016 presidential run, conservative activists are finding themselves at a crossroads. Many of their standard-bearers have embraced more moderate positions on...

In a statement marking the formal handing over of power to the moderate cleric from his hardline predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the White House congratulated the Iranian people for "making their voices heard" and calling for "change". It added that should the new government in Iran move towards meeting its "international obligations", then it would find a "willing partner in the United States".