Free Republic

The human race has prospered by relying on forecasts that the seasons will follow their usual course, while knowing they will sometimes be better or worse. Are things different now? For the fifth time now, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claims they are. The difference, the IPCC asserts, is increased human emissions of carbon dioxide: a colorless, odorless, non-toxic gas that is a byproduct of growing prosperity. It is also a product of all animal respiration and is also essential for most life on Earth, yet in total it makes up only 0.0004 of the atmosphere. --------------- (snip) ------------------...

The Washington Monument syndrome is describe the tendency of government agencies in the United States to cut the most visible or appreciated services provided by the government when faced with budget cuts. And protect massive waste (since no one would miss the massive waste if it was cut). Such as closing National Parks and Monuments. What are government agencies hiding? The fact that agencies have large concentrations of non-essential personnel. Even Time.com recognizes that most of Federal government in non-essential. The interest payments on Federal debt is a small percentage of Federal current expenditures (11.5% at the end of Q2)....

What this means is that should Congress fail to increase the debt ceiling this week, come November there will literally be millions of people in the United States who will have exactly zero dollars transferred to their EBT cards. What will happen to the nearly 50 million people who depend on these benefits to survive? Think this past weekend and multiply it across the entirety of the United States of America. In the State of Utah the immediate effect of the USDA’s contingency plan will be a freeze in benefits for 100,000 people. Richard Phillips, a homeless man who depends...

Culture: Slavery's stain on American history cannot and should not be whitewashed. But neither should it be portrayed as worse than it was to serve a political agenda. And yet this is what Hollywood is doing with its slate of horror films about slavery and its legacy. "The Butler" — which claims to be "based on a true story" — opens with a stomach-turning scene of white cruelty. A boy picking cotton on a Georgia plantation watches his mother dragged off to a shack where she's raped by a white landowner, who not long after the assault coldly walks up...

A man who attempted to sign up for Obamacare online was told that a fine of over $4,000 dollars a year for refusing to take out mandatory health insurance could be taken directly from his bank account, and that his drivers license would be suspended and a federal tax lien placed against his home, according to an entry on the HealthCare.gov Facebook page. Will Sheehan claims that when he tried to sign up for Obamacare and then register to opt out, he received an ominous warning. Sheehan’s full Facebook post reads;If true, the implementation of Obamacare is going to be...

Perhaps this one of the most important discussion threads ever regarding Legacy Media manipulation. We sincerely hope you will take the time to digest the content, think about the ramifications to what is here, and then share the information with others. This is not a matter of opinion, the CNN stories are documented, attributed and cited. They are factual. Everything is verifiable within the embedded links and citations. Believe it or not, just creating this discussion thread is risky. We are unable to expand.

Father Ray Leonard, who serves as the Catholic chaplain at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia, filed suit Monday against the Department of Defense, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, the Department of the Navy, and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus. DOD is prohibiting Father Leonard and the other Catholic priests from administering the sacraments and providing other services to their congregations even though two weeks ago Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, a law that instructed DOD to maintain on the job and keep paying contract employees who were supporting the troops. DOD took this action because Hagel determined--after consulting...

<p>On September 11th 2001, America’s big bloated money-no-object bureaucracy and its obsolete brain-dead 1970s hijacking procedures utterly failed the citizens of this country. Nevertheless, on Flight 93 brave freeborn citizens acted as an ad hoc militia and did the job their government had proved incapable of doing.</p>

On Tuesday, Mediaite White House correspondent Tommy Christopher added another chapter to his ongoing self-promotional crusade masquerading as a career in journalism. And this time, it didn’t involve a shameless ploy to be an invited guest on whatever incarnation of Chris Hayes’ show MSNBC is currently airing. During Tuesday’s White House briefing on Tuesday, Christopher, whose name isn’t really “Tommy Christopher,” asked a question about President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law that incorporated his personal experiences with health insurance after his 2010 heart attack. ...more (w/video)...

In 2004, a stranger started showing up at White House press briefing, asking “ringer” type questions, clearly designed to make ideological statements in favor of the Bush administration and at the media’s expense rather than to seek information. His name was Jeff Gannon (or so we thought), and he worked for a relatively low-profile conservative website called Talon News... ...So anyway, let me juxtapose that with Mediaite’s left-wing columnist, Tommy Christopher, at today’s White House briefing. Here, he offers Jay Carney a wisecrack at the expense of the Republicans and another at the expense of the reporters seated in the...

The most pitiful part of what’s happening right now isn’t the cave itself, which was predictable since day one of the quixotic “defund” effort, but the fact that they’re going to drag it out another day or two to the bitter end purely for theatrical purposes. There’s a 99 percent chance that Reid will reject whatever emerges tonight from the House, leaving Boehner to float a clean debt-ceiling hike tomorrow and let Pelosi and the Democrats bail him out, but in order to marginally reduce the upset among grassroots conservatives, he’s going to push this to the last possible moment....

Last month, the House reported a bill out of committee that attempted to define who is a journalist. An uproar followed quickly. "After the committee hearing I realized that I had been going about it in the wrong way," said Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton, D-Huntington Woods. "I started to realize that we were dealing with a very profound issue that would have serious ramifications. So I went back to the drawing board." The problematic portion of House Bill 4770 was amended this week and no longer defines who is a journalist. The substitute language was adopted Tuesday, and the bill...

The criminal homicide rate for the general population has been added to more accurately compare to the murder plus manslaughter rate for those with a Minnesota carry permit. Minnesota is one of a few states that track crimes committed by Concealed Carry permit holders.  When the Minnesota law was passed, an annual report of crimes committed by permit holders was required.  The Minnesota permit is simply a permit to carry, the law does not discriminate between carrying concealed and carrying openly.  Reports for the law are available for 2003, and 2005-2012 in pdf files.   The number of people...

While the media and Democrats scream about the Titanic sinking of government default, there is scant evidence in financial markets of it. Here are two curves as of 1pm EST, the US Treasury yield curve and the US credit default swaps curve. The Treasury curve is upward sloping while the CDS curve is downward sloping. Actually, the CDS curve has an inverted hump. ustcdes1015E It does look like a bomb crater rather than a typical CDS curve. If we look at 1 month ago, we see an upward sloping CDS curve. 1moyccds And if we compare the current curves compared...

Political Director of ABC News, Rick Klein, pleaded with Wall Street financiers to “manipulate the markets on behalf of President Obama’s efforts to stand against GOP resistance.” “Government spending is what’s been lining their pockets for generations,” Klein observed. “How can they sit by and allow upstarts like Senator Cruz to interfere? They’ve got to use their financial power to provoke a major slide in stock prices. Sure, they might have to take some temporary losses, but they should consider it an investment that will ensure that government cash continues to flow to them in the future.” Klein noted that...

"It seems that President Obama's paid political operatives are out in force today. And you know why? Because the men and women in this room scare the living daylights out of them," said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) after interruptions from activists calling for family unity through immigration reform. Jacqueline Garcia’s grandfather was the sole breadwinner for the family of four. Her parents were not in the picture. But her younger brother, her disabled grandmother, and Jackie were a tight-knit family and all depended on the grandfather. At 16, Jackie, a U.S. citizen, is an honor student in her Phoenix high...

Stringent state rules require school districts to lay off employees based on flawed rankings, according to a new study. And the state's report card might be punishing school districts and education employees who are doing a good job. The Michigan Department of Education is required by state and federal laws to rank schools to try to measure their quality. The MDE developed "Top-to-Bottom" rankings, which are broadly based on student proficiency (50 percent of a school's grade), student growth (25 percent) and achievement gap (25 percent). But the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and many school officials say the Top-to-Bottom...

Leadership: Iran's back to chanting "death to America," China's calling for a "de-Americanized" world, Russia kicks us to the curb in the Mideast and Venezuela hauls off five of our sailors. And what does the White House say? The sharp rise in anti-American incidents from antagonistic regimes stands in stark contrast to the environment three decades ago, when Ronald Reagan was president. As Beltway intelligentsia derided the Gipper as an "amiable dunce," the world's leading troublemakers saw the U.S. president entirely differently: as someone they'd rather not tangle with. That's why Iran's ayatollahs dropped the U.S. diplomatic hostages they'd been...

Christie’s numbers are actually better than those of Jersey rock-star Bruce Springsteen, of whom Christie is a big fan...

Class: Because of George Mason University’s screwy scheduling (no class today because Monday’s classes are now Tuesday classes because of Columbus Day), we can’t have our discussion of the impending US default. Here are two curves as of 1pm EST, the US Treasury yield curve and the US credit default swaps curve. The Treasury curve is upward sloping while the CDS curve is downward sloping. ustcdes1015E If we look at 1 month ago, we see an upward sloping CDS curve. 1moyccds And if we compare the current curves compared to President Obama’s inauguration date, we see an upward sloping CDS...

In May 1940 the world faced a menace unlike any it had ever seen. After a decade of economic body blows, much of the world was weary. With the carnage of WWI only 20 years past few people had the stomach to fight for much of anything. It was only with great reluctance that in September 1939 the British and the French declared war on Germany after they invaded Poland with the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, even after the declaration, after years of appeasement most British felt that there was little they could do to stop Adolph Hitler. Things were indeed...

Mark Levin's Plan is excellent but how long do we have? Secession, civil war? Only OBAMA wants that to happen.

Monday, October 14, 2013 The Battle of the Redskins Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog Over the summer, those two legendary sources of sports coverage, Salon Magazine and MSNBC, or as they are known in some places the S Word and the M Word, announced that they would begin referring to the Washington Redskins football team as the R Word. Ordinarily liberals would not be too eager to call a team with 40 black players, a black quarterback and a passionate black fan base a hyphenated euphemism. But there are only so many politically correct causes out...

As we see our nation falling into the lawless and immoral abyss, amazingly many are wondering how these things can be? They are all pointing fingers at each other but who is truly the engine and one behind the controls of this madness which is sweeping our land and world? The key to comprehending the day and hour in which we live is to see things from Almighty God’s HEAVENLY and ETERNAL perspective (John 17:17, Eph. 6:12, Col. 3:1-2). The world in which we live in is governed by a highly fallen intelligent order of supernatural beings (called fallen angels)...

“It is the Responsibility of the Patriot to protect his Country from its government.” (Thomas Paine). Where is it written that a Warrior going into battle with an evil enemy should be protected from the cheap verbal abuse of those he seeks to destroy? Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying: "The Pioneers get all the arrows." So too do our wimpy RINOs when they try to get off of their doormats and save America from an incompetent, spendaholic Administration. Do our Doormat RINO Politicians expect that the "Leftstream" Liberal Media will NOT inundate them with a continuous barrage of negative...

The House's latest plan to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown won't pass the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Tuesday. “It’s unproductive and a waste of time,” Reid said. “The House legislation will not pass the Senate.” Senate leaders are working on a deal that would end the shutdown, fund the government through Jan. 15 and raise the debt ceiling until February. House Republicans met Tuesday morning to discuss preempting the Senate by passing their own plan to raise the debt ceiling and end the shutdown. The House bill would delay Obamacare's medical device...

The shortcomings of ObamaCare continue to seep into the light, putting the lie to virtually every claim made by Barack Hussein about his namesake “healthcare” scheme. But one part of the law remains as much a mystery now as when it was written. Section 1555 of the Affordable Care Act is quite short. It reads: “No individual, company, business, nonprofit entity, or health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage shall be required to participate in any Federal health insurance program created under this Act (or any amendments made by this Act), or in any Federal health insurance...

The rhetoric is really heating up. California Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi (she of “You have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it” fame) is throwing around the world “sabotage” concerning any disagreement with President Obama. uscds101513 And the 10 year Treasury yield rose 3 basis points. ust10101513 And, of course, President Obama nixed ANY deal. Huh. If Pelosi thinks this is sabotage and will lead the US to default, its odd that CDS prices are falling.

The White House appeared to reject a proposal by House Republicans Tuesday morning to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling, calling the proposal "a partisan attempt to appease a small group of Tea Party Republicans." "The president has said repeatedly that Members of Congress don’t get to demand ransom for fulfilling their basic responsibilities to pass a budget and pay the nation’s bills," said White House spokesperson Amy Brundage. The White House also announced that the president and Vice President Biden would meet with House Democratic leaders at the White House at 3:15 Tuesday afternoon. Attendees will...

Squirrels are known for two survival skills: hoarding, and stealing other squirrels’ stashes. h/t BFH on iOTH, who suggests we could substitute “ObamaVoters” for “squirrels” Both skills were on display in Louisiana last Saturday night when an EBT system “glitch” temporarily eliminated card limits. Thanks to the fact that the card holders all have Obamaphones, they advised all their social network friends with EBT cards of this manna from heaven. Soon all the squirrels hustled down to their local Walmart where they were seen hoarding everything from, well, soup to nuts: It was like Christmas…only free! Shoppers abandoned carts at Walmart...

Oh those wacky Tweeters are at it again with: #ObamacareTshirtSlogans. Here are some of the offerings this morning... #ObamacareTshirtSlogans I never said you could keep your doctor If You Like My Health Insurance You Can Keep Paying For It For Me Singlepayer Exemptions for the 1% The best reason to buy Identity Fraud Insurance. You didn't infect that. You can keep your Doctor....except he's retired If It's Good Enough For Your Family, It's Good Enough For....nevermind My grandma went up before a death panel and all I got was this stupid t-shirt Until death do you part Good news: Healthcare...

When a true constitutional conservative is on the ballot—who is a fearless Christian, to boot—you know the forces of the Left will come out in a fever trying to destroy him. Such is the case in the Republican primary runoff for US Congress in southern Alabama’s 1st District. A little over a month ago, I wrote about this race (a special election to replace a quitting congressman) which has received national attention because candidate Dean Young created a pledge to fight for real marriage and asked his fellow Republican primary candidates to sign it. Not one of the others signed...

Over the weekend, Auburn University’s student body elected Molly Anne Dutton the school’s 100th Miss Homecoming, and boy what a story this young woman has to tell. A couple of decades ago, Dutton’s biological mother, who was living in California at the time, was the victim of a sexual assault that resulted in her becoming pregnant. She was given an ultimatum by her husband: either abort the baby, or face divorce. Lifeline Children’s Services, a Birmingham-based Christian adoption agency, got involved and helped the woman through her courageous decision to keep the baby and put her up for adoption instead...

What do you call it when the man holding the Office of the President of the United States thumbs his nose at the veterans of America who have bled, died and lost friends in fighting against threats to the American Constitution and the American people, and yet, supports with weapons and financial aid the sworn enemies of America? I believe it is the dreaded “T” word. However, don’t take my word for it, view the evidence for yourself. According to the United States Constitution, Article 3, Section 3″ “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War...

Ravenna Public Schools teacher Dusty Fairfield estimates he’s given $25,000 in union dues to the Michigan Education Association over his career. In August, he used the state's right-to-work law to leave the MEA. Now Fairfield is one of a group of teachers MEA President Steve Cook refers to as "freeloaders." Although he left the MEA, Fairfield said he gave a financial contribution to his local union. Over the years, he said he invested heavily in the MEA, but felt the union wasn't always working in his best interests. For example, Fairfield said the MEA representative who negotiated on his behalf...

Sen. Mark Pryor ((D-Ark.) said he expects the Senate and White House to announce a deal Tuesday that could pass the upper chamber by Wednesday. Pryor said he and a group of a dozen lawmakers drafted the framework — which Senate leadership based their deal on — with the intent of gaining as many as 80 votes to put pressure on the House to act. “It should have bipartisan support in the House,” he said. “And one of the goals we really set out in our group is we said look we don’t want 60 votes. We wan to get...

<p>AFP - France's mainstream political parties were Monday scratching their heads over what to do about a surge by the Front National (FN) after a breakthrough by-election win for the far-right party.</p> <p>The ruling Socialist party and the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), the party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy, face humiliating reverses in municipal and European elections next year if the FN can sustain its current standing in the eyes of an electorate thoroughly fed-up with record unemployment, rising taxes and a perceived increase in crime and insecurity.</p>

<p>A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.</p>

There is a deal being negotiated by Senators Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell that is purported to be a possible way to end the impasse in Washington and reopen the government. The fact that all legislation that deals with revenue is supposed to come from the House notwithstanding, I couldn't but wonder what these two yokels were coming up with. Thus, I started reading a few of the details with some interest. I wanted to see what we may be getting ourselves in to, if they are able to negotiate a final deal to end the government shutdown. What I...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Wikipedia’s article on Obamacare is a heavily censored, utopian puff piece that ignores Obamacare’s real world problems Wikipedia’s Obamacare article ignores almost every single criticism of Obamacare that has been reported on by the news, and of the few that it does mention, it severely understates the problem. Some of these criticisms did get added to the article, but they were deleted.So, some crazy person suggested, on the article’s talk page, that a few specific criticisms be added to the article, such as the healthcare.gov website not working, the large number of employers who have switched...

MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday called for increased protection for Russian weapons manufacturers’ intellectual property rights on the global arms market. “The world arms market is rife with examples of illegal copying of others’ designs, and we have encountered these problems on past occasions,” Putin said at a meeting of the Russian Commission for Military-Technological Cooperation with Foreign States. “Our task is to ensure a high level of protection for our science-intensive goods and intellectual property, and defend the rights of Russian producers, companies and inventions’ creators,” Putin said. The president also urged...

WASHINGTON, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – A US-funded laboratory in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, accused by a prominent Russian official Monday of developing biological weapons, has been repeatedly touted by US officials as a key tool in guarding the region against dangerous infectious diseases. “This laboratory has the potential to become a regional center for disease surveillance, research, as well as biosafety and security,” US Sen. Richard Lugar said in a speech last year at the christening of the laboratory that bears his name in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, several months before he retired from the Senate....

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Yahoo! News article on acne shows a model who does not have any acne Yahoo! news recently published this article on acne.The article shows this picture of a model – who does not have any acne: By comparison, this picture, from medicinenet.com, is of a real person who has real cystic acne:

Coal, propelled by rising use in China and India, will surpass oil as the key fuel for the global economy by 2020 despite government efforts to reduce carbon emissions, energy consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie said on Monday. Global coal consumption is expected to rise by 25 percent by the end of the decade to 4,500 million tons of oil equivalent, overtaking oil at 4,400 million tons, according to Woodmac in a presentation at the World Energy Congress. The two Asian powerhouses will need the comparatively cheaper fuel to power their economies, while demand in the United States, Europe and the...

North Korea has drastically increased the import of luxury items under the rule of new leader Kim Jong-un, according to an analysis released by Yoon Sang-hyun, a ruling party lawmaker. The report examines North Korea’s import of luxury items between 2010 and 2012. “A relevant organization in the country analyzed the circumstance of North Korea’s import of luxury items,” Yoon, a member of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, said at a parliamentary inspection yesterday. “The analysis says even under the rule of Kim Jong-un, the import of North Korea’s luxury items is surging every year, reaching record-breaking...

Officials, clad in tidy uniform and beret, have name tags reading “English, “Chinese V” and “Japanese” in the chest section of their jacket. This is the image of tourism police who will appear at major tourist attractions in Seoul starting from Wednesday. Tourism police is a police organization that will be exclusively in charge of handling illegal activities targeting foreign tourists, including overcharging of service fees. The Culture, Sports and Tourism Ministry and the National Police Agency said on Monday that 101 tourism police officers will start activities at major tourism hotspots across Seoul from Wednesday. The tourism police will...

If you ever wondered why we recommend prepping, and stockpiling food and emergency supplies, one look at what happened this weekend Springhill and Mansfield, LA should tell you everything you need to know – and will give you a glimpse at what this country will look like during a nationwide crisis. Over the weekend, the debit system that allows people on government assistance to buy food, temporarily went down. The resulting chaos is a small glimpse at what I believe will happen, should the government plunge this country into some sort of economic collapse. A couple of Walmarts in Louisiana...

Net outflow in direct investment reached 120 U.S. billion dollars in the past eight years as Korean companies` overseas investment expanded while foreign investors` domestic investment plunged. Various investment indicators compiled by the government also show the Korean economy facing the worst investment position since its bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Sluggish corporate investment incurs massive economic losses as it adversely impacts production, employment and consumption and eats into growth potential in the longer term. The past eight years of net direct investment outflow led to loss of 1.67 million jobs. According to the Bank of Korea and Statistics...

skip to main | skip to sidebar Obama Foodorama The Blog Of Record About White House Food Initiatives, From Policy To Pie Friday, October 11, 2013 The White House In Shutdown: First Lady Michelle Obama's Kitchen Garden Is Wrecked Photos: The showcase plot is filled with unharvested vegetables and weeds, and wildlife running amok...Washington, DC - The first government shutdown in seventeen years has had a dramatic impact on First Lady Michelle Obama's world-famous Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn, currently bursting with more than thirty kinds of vegetables, including Presidential pumpkins awaiting harvest just in time for Halloween. ...

An Iranian court sentenced a Korean to seven years in prison for taking photos of security facilities. The Iranian government notified the Korean Foreign Ministry two months after the arrest. Democratic Party lawmaker Park Byeong-seog on Monday said the 44-year-old man identified as Kim was arrested in October last year and sentenced to seven years in jail in September this year. He was found guilty of spying on security facilities by taking photos of police stations, foreign embassies, military facilities, and border signs with the alleged purpose of delivering them to a foreign government. The court did not specify which...