Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The latest grim data on unemployment has dealt a new blow to President Barack Obama as he struggles to maintain his party's majority in Congress in November elections. Obama, who has been hurt by the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, has been scrambling to highlight his economic management in helping lift the US economy out of its worst slump in decades. But the latest data released Friday showed the recovery is sputtering: A Labor Department report showed 131,000 jobs were lost in July and the unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.5 percent, .. The private sector created...

CHICAGO: US President Barack Obama will celebrate his 49th birthday in the company of his friends in Chicago and not with his wife and two daughters. The White House said that Obama will leave Washington for Chicago on Wednesday and will stay at his home in Kenwood for the night, Chicago Sun-Times reported. First lady Michelle Obama will not be with the president. She will leave next week for Spain, travelling with daughter Sasha, 9. Malia, 12, for an overnight camp. Obama, born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, was last in Chicago with his family over the Memorial Day...

This summer has not been kind to this president. A CBS News poll released on Tuesday found that “a majority of Americans have a negative impression of the economy and expect the effects of the recession to linger for years.” One of the most stinging findings: “Only 13 percent of Americans say Mr. Obama’s economic programs, among them the stimulus package, have helped them personally. Twenty-three percent say they have hurt, while 63 percent say they have had no effect.” Ouch. That’s an abysmal favorability return on an enormous financial investment. A Gallup poll released on Friday found that satisfaction...

Does Obama use cocaine? He's been touching his nostrils like he did in this video for as long as I can remember yet few seem to notice.

Last week, while many of us were distracted by the oil belching forth from the gulf floor and the president’s ham-handed attempts to demonstrate that he was sufficiently engaged and enraged, Gallup released a stunning, and little noticed, report on Americans’ evolving views of homosexuality. Allow me to enlighten: 1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive “gay and lesbian relations” as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word “relations.” So quaint.) 2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold...

Here is your laugh for today!

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama launched an extraordinary attack on the Supreme Court on Saturday, saying a ruling on corporate donations to political campaigns this week "strikes at democracy itself." Obama's broadside was triggered by a 5-4 ruling by the court's justices on Thursday that removed long-standing campaign finance limits and allowed corporations to spend freely in campaigns for president and Congress. In the ruling, the court's conservative majority said the limits had violated corporations' constitutional right to free speech. The ruling is expected to unleash a flood of money into this year's congressional elections. Obama's fellow Democrats face...

CHEYENNE — Wind energy development in Wyoming garnered unprecedented attention this year as the state wrestled with regulation, taxation and environmental protection issues. Developers brought online about 400 megawatts of wind-generated energy in Wyoming in 2009, pushing the state's wind industry past the 1,000-megawatt capacity mark for the first time. Karyn Coppinger of the Wyoming Power Producers Coalition, a trade group, said 2009 was a pivotal year for the industry because of the state's attention to wind policy questions. During the 2009 session, the Legislature allowed a sales tax exemption for wind projects to sunset, and lawmakers created a task...

Berlusconi 'Suffers Blow To Face' Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly been struck in the face after leaving a meeting in Milan. He was reportedly left bleeding from the mouth. It was not clear whether the injury was caused by a punch or an object thrown by a protester.

Robin Williams went out on a limb defending Chicago's Olympic bid, and now Rio de Janeiro wants to sue him. Williams told David Letterman during an appearance on the Late Show that he wasn't surprised Rio won the bid instead of Chicago. "Chicago sent Oprah and Michelle Obama," Williams said. "Rio sent 50 Strippers and a pound of blow. It wasn't really fair, you know?" Williams' comments have been replayed several times on news shows across Brazil on Tuesday, while city mayor Eduardo Paes says Williams is envious of Rio's achievement.

A friend of the daughter of Vice President Joseph Biden is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows Ashley Biden snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware. An anonymous male "friend" of Biden took the video, said Thomas Dunlap, a lawyer representing the seller. Dunlap and another man claiming to be a lawyer showed The Post about 90 seconds of 43-minute tape, saying it was legally obtained and that Biden was aware she was being filmed. The Post refused to pay for the video.

New York Times "visual op-ed" columnist Charles Blow remains giddy over Republican failures in his latest column, "Three Blind Mice." Blow's mice (aka "the axis of drivel") are Republican governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, RNC chairman Michael Steele, and talk show giant Rush Limbaugh (the latter of whom controls "Limbaugh-tomized minions of the far, far right"). All these insults are packed into one puny-sized column in Saturday's edition, accompanied by a graph (that would be the "visual" part) demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that among citizens at large, the newly elected President of the United States is more...

The Recording Industry Association of America suffered a legal setback this week in a music piracy case where a judge ruled that the sole act of making a music file available in a "shared folder" does not violate copyright laws. In Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA made the legal assertion that a "sound recording" that is ripped to a computer and stored in any kind of a shared folder is unauthorized. This was an interesting statement because a shared folder can be a very broad category that wasn't entirely made clear by the RIAA.

One thing that has never been successfully outsourced is Bluegrass music. Which is kind of ironic because it has a tradition of fearlessly covering any and every other style with good old all American virtuosity. She's a very special girrrrrrl...

DES MOINES — Senator Clinton will head to New Hampshire a wounded candidate after finishing a disappointing third place in the Iowa caucuses won handily last night by Senator Obama. The freshman Illinois senator pulled away from his top two rivals after a year-long race that had looked too close to call through the final day, winning by eight points with 38% of the vote. With 97% of the 1,781 precincts reporting, a former North Carolina senator, John Edwards, took 30%, and Mrs. Clinton took 29%.

WASHINGTON - The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to restore stability and democracy in a turbulent, nuclear-armed Islamic nation that has been a critical ally in the war on terror. While not entirely dependent on Bhutto, recent Bush administration policy on Pakistan had focused heavily on promoting reconciliation between the secular opposition leader who has been dogged by corruption allegations and Pakistan's increasingly unpopular president, Pervez Musharraf, ahead of parliamentary elections set for January. In Washington and Islamabad, U.S. diplomats urged that Jan. 8 elections should not be postponed...

Judge's stand on Norfolk man's sentencing heads to Supreme Court By TIM MCGLONE, The Virginian-Pilot © September 29, 2007 Last updated: 12:10 AM U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson ignored federal rules. The Virginian-Pilot file photo NORFOLK Derrick Kimbrough is a Gulf War veteran who, until three years ago, worked in construction and stayed out of trouble. After Norfolk police caught him with a small amount of crack cocaine and a handgun, he pleaded guilty in federal court to four felonies. The U.S. Attorney’s Office sought a prison term between 19 and 22 years. U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson...

CHARLES CITY, Iowa - Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton made one thing very clear to Iowa voters Friday: She's serious about campaigning in their state. "I'm going to be in Iowa so often I'm going to be able to caucus for myself," Clinton told attendees at town meetings here. It was Clinton's first visit to Iowa since the leak of a detailed memo from her deputy campaign manager, who advised her to skip the state's caucuses in January and focus time and resources on states where she is faring better. Polls in Iowa have shown her consistently trailing rival John Edwards...

Bombers blow themselves upFrom correspondents in Casablanca April 11, 2007 07:45amDeadly raid ... police look for evidence on the body of one of the bombers / AFP Three men blow themselves up to avoid capture Fourth gunned down after brandishing sabre Police and civilians killed and hurt in blasts THREE bombing suspects have blown themselves up after a police raid on a house in a Casablanca slum in which a fourth man was shot dead. The carnage began when police launched a dawn operation in the el Fida district of the Moroccan city looking for suspects involved in a bomb...

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