Free Republic

July 24th, 2016.Josef Konsumer, a home-based employee and portfolio manager for ICBC/CiticorpChase, a Chinese-owned multinational investment bank, wakes up to hear his alarm clock go off at 8am, and gets out of bed, his 47-year old body aching from an aggressive personal trainer session from the day before. His morning double espresso with frothed skim milk and mocha is already waiting for him, thanks to his new Korean-made LG RoboCafe, which brews and extracts a perfect crema every time using pre-portioned, mess-free nitrogen-sealed pods imported from Brazil. He considers nudging his wife, Mindy, to get up and make him breakfast,...

The one thing we can credit liberals for is their very creative minds. They have this ability to imagine whimsically how the world can be refashioned to suite their various constituencies and accompanying agendas. In all of these lofty goals liberals are extremely adept at selling a goal by glossing over the negative consequences of their advocacy. In glossing over the negatives, they sell the goal as having magical abilities to solve all kinds of problems, in the real world we call this a panacea. Panaceas are born of wishful thinking by people who lack the ability, knowledge, skill or...

Henry Paulson is about to be given an $800 BILLION dollar blank check in the form of an increased Federal Debt Ceiling which he can spend on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac IN ANY WAY HE CHOOSES, INCLUDING BUYING THE CRAPPIEST LOANS THEY HAVE AND STICKING A ONE HUNDRED PERCENT LOSS, $800 BILLION WORTH, ON YOUR TAX BILL. A huge percentage of the debt issued by Freddie and Fannie - about $1.5 trillion worth - is held by foreign central banks. Paulson is proposing to bail out the Chinese and Japanese governments with our tax money! Paulson SAYS he will...

Left-wing pressure groups like the Center for Responsible Lending played a role in bringing down Indymac, according to commentator Jerry Bowyer. Around the same time Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York) questioned the financial viability of the California-based bank, an event the Office of Thrift Supervision said gave "the bank a heart attack," the Center for Responsible Lending exacerbated the situation. As Bowyer writes: Indymac has been under attack from the hard left. The Center for Responsible Lending issued an attack on Indymac within a few days of Schumer's letter. CRL is part of a small army of left of center...

This letter of mine appears in today's edition of the Washington Times: Upset that Virginians' taxes were not recently raised to construct more roads, State Delegate Brian J. Moran, Alexandria and Fairfax Democrat, declares that "Government has an important role to play in strengthening our infrastructure, developing our economy and creating new jobs" ("Virginia's transportation conundrum," Op-Ed, Tuesday). Not so fast. Infrastructure that we today naively suppose must be supplied by government has in the past often been supplied by the private sector - supplied so well, indeed, that these private-infrastructure projects helped to spark the Industrial Revolution in 18th-century...

* The economy is by far the No. 1 issue on most Americans' minds. Gas prices are a close second. The two issues are intimately related. But the spike in oil prices this year is just the tip of the iceberg. Due to similar developments in supply and demand, electricity prices are set to skyrocket next year. While American oil consumption has grown only 15% since 1973, electricity use has shot up 115%. Right now the U.S. has 760 gigawatts of power to meet consumption. We will need 135 gigawatts of new capacity over the next decade to keep the...

Fox News just released their Opinion Dynamics poll showing that Barack Obama's lead over John McCain has shriveled to just 1%, echoing repeated tracking polls by Gallup and Rasmussen that also show Obama with the narrowest of leads. In the poll, Fox News and Opinion Dynamics also found that ...

Isn’t it interesting how just a small drop in gasoline consumption – coupled with polls that show almost 60% of the American public favor greatly expanded drilling (and President Bush’s largely symbolic canceling of the existing executive order limiting drilling) – can cause such a large drop in the world market price of oil? Obviously the market-makers for petroleum think that America may, at long last, be starting to get serious about drilling our way out of our dependence on foreign countries that hate us. The price has dropped today to $126 from a high of $146.

Once again MSNBC president Phil Griffin is claiming that his cable outlet is not liberal on purpose. (I know what you're saying, if you believe that he has a bridge to sell you) In an interview with a TV reviewer for the Kansas City Star, Griffin once again made the claim that the extreme leftward tilt that MSNBC has taken over the last few years was a complete accident and that they aren't "tied to ideology" like Fox News is. Griffin also attacked Fox News saying that, "you can't trust a word they say." It all started when Aaron Barnhart...

In a 2 way race, NBC reports that Barack Obama earns 47% of the vote, with McCain earning 41% and 12% of registered voters remaining undecided. NBC claims that these results were based upon a simple question asking which candidate respondents would vote for. But where the polling data becomes perplexing is when NBC asks ...

Lots of people love venerable Tiger Stadium. Few love it more than I do. I attended hundreds of Detroit Tigers games there – from the day in 1975 when I saw Hank Aaron just miss a home run as a Milwaukee Brewer, to the day in 1999 when Todd Jones, the Tigers’ closer then and now, struck out Carlos Beltran to finish off the Kansas City Royals and close the door on Tiger Stadium’s tenure as home of my favorite team. But just because people love it doesn’t mean it’s a priority of the nation to preserve it. Don’t try...

Inflation figures are always a little slippery, but the government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe has managed the virtually impossible feat of generating a hyperinflation that has exceeded that of the Wiemar Republic of the 1920s. From The Rand Today: As the woes continue in Zimbabwe, the central bank’s governor in Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono said today, “Statistics provided by the CSO (central statistical office) indicate that it is now at 2.2 (million percent).” This referring to the rate of inflation in the country. This is clearly the highest rate of inflation in the world. And this figure released of 2.2m%...

The New York Times suffered a 16.4 per cent decrease in June advertising revenues and warned on Wednesday that the effects of high oil prices, a slowing economy and the housing crisis were likely to weigh on its prospects for some time. “I think it’s clear that many of the advertising budgets are tightening up,” said Janet Robinson, chief executive of the New York Times Company, predicting a “tough” second half of the year. June performance followed an 11.9 per cent decline in May advertising revenues, and suggested that an already deep erosion in newspaper advertising could be accelerating. Ms...

In the early- to mid- 1970’s, the current crop of liberal alarmists were coming to the fore and feeling their oats. There was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the book which singlehandedly led to the elimination of DDT. And finally, there was the grand-daddy of them all, Paul Erlich’s The Population Bomb, an updated salute to Malthus. I can still remember the words on the cover: “While you were reading these words, people will die of starvation, most of them children.” It seems that the world was eating itself out of house and home, beyond any possibility of rescue. It is...

Much like monetary policy, the energy policy in this country has been absent from the political forefront until recently. For many years, our policy has been self defeating. We somehow managed to bar ourselves from drilling offshore and in places like ANWR, and then we wondered why our dependence on foreign oil was becoming such a problem. McCain's answer is, of course, to finally open up these areas to drilling, much to the chagrin of the environmentalists. Bush even got in on the deal, trying to score political points for his legacy by allowing offshore drilling. That's all great, but...

Reports on automobile sales were almost uniformly weak across Districts. Sales were especially poor for large vehicles such as trucks, SUVs, and some minivans. Indeed, auto dealers in the San Francisco District were increasingly reluctant to accept trade-ins of trucks and SUVs due to a lack of a wholesale market for these vehicles...

Fannie Mae acquired twice as many homes through foreclosure in the first quarter as it sold, regulatory filings show. ... Late payments on the company's home loans, a harbinger of foreclosures, almost doubled in the past year. Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two biggest U.S. mortgage finance companies, owned a record $6.9 billion of forelosed homes on March 31, compared with $8.56 billion held by all 8,500 U.S. commercial banks and savings and loans...

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is installing software which monitors diversity in all law firms it uses, regularly and just-in-time. Those firms falling short of Wal-Mart's diversity target numbers will be terminated. That move by Wal-Mart, which sets policy for how global supply chains are managed, will in itself radically change the composition of law firms - and eventually law schools.

On the campaign trail Senator Obama has been quick to invoke the names of the great Democratic Presidents: Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy, but in reality, perhaps its time that Obama opens a history book and begins to learn why these men were great leaders. Obama's position on Iraq has morphed from a 4 year long stance of 'we cannot win, bring our troops home' to a position of 'we are winning, time to redeploy our troops to Afghanistan'. First,...

When you buy a new PC today, unless you hunt down a Linux system or you buy a Mac, you're pretty much stuck with Vista. Sad, but true. So, when I had to get a new PC in a hurry, after one of my PCs went to the big bit-ranch in the sky with a fried motherboard, the one I bought, a Dell Inspiron 530S from my local Best Buy came pre-infected with Vista Home Premium. Big deal. It took me less than an hour to install Linux Mint 5 Elyssa R1 on it. As expected, everything on this 2.4GHz...

St. Louis—In what could be the biggest disaster since Hurricane Katrina, Budweiser—after being sold to Belgian based InBev—has immediately plans to change the formulation for their beer. The change comes to reflect a European style of beer, giving it a more “fruitier and nuttier taste,” a veritable Bud “spritzer.” The beer, known to the common working class man, will now appeal to the most erudite of Americans. The “King Of Beers” will indeed have a flavor made for a king, flushing years of perfection down the toilet.

Explaining the status of the economy to a closed-door fundraiser last week, President Bush said, "Wall Street got drunk." "There's no question about it," Bush said. "Wall Street got drunk, that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras. It got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments." Bush made the remark at a closed-door fundraiser for Republican Pete Olson, who is challenging Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Texas) No cameras were allowed in the fundraiser, but an...

I'm certainly glad that Senator Obama has taken the time to finally pay some respect to our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. In what was technically to be a fact-finding mission, paid with taxpayer funds, the Senator overstepped his authority on Monday by engaging in political negotiations without any granted authority to do so. But the Obama campaign, preoccupied with creating the appearance of foreign policy savvy, failed to utilize his new-found leadership role to further American interests in the Middle East. Back at home, middle class Americans continue ...

Islamist Radicals Working To Implement New Golden Rule: He Who Has the Gold, Makes the RulesWhile liberal pols’ and journalists’ antagonist in their ongoing demon of the week drama is currently oil speculators, other more insidious market actors could be in action causing deeper and more lasting harm.According to a recent post on the Terror Finance blog by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen, the war on Islamic Fascism should also include an understanding of Shari’a finance and its role in subverting Western economies. Money quotes: Rising oil prices and the West’s dependency on Middle East oil, combined with...

In the last few days, oil prices have dropped twenty dollars a barrel due to the Republican surge against oil speculation. Below is the timeline. Why is McCain talking about Iraq? Republicans to head to ANWR- 7/9/2008 http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/09/republicans-to-head-to-anwr/Bush lifts executive ban on offshore oil drilling- 7/14/2008 http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/14/bush.offshore/index.html Feds release almost 4 million acres in Alaska for drilling- 7/17/2008 http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/17/feds-release-almost-4-million-acres-in-alaska-for-drilling/U.S. govt to propose rules to develop oil shale- 7/21/2008http://uk.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idUKN2145471820080721

In a bid to “kill two birds with one stone,” Democrats in congress have introduced the Transportation and Housing Options for Gas Price Relief Act of 2008. This bill calls for the federal government to issue every American a “good pair of walking shoes” and mandates that “large appliance boxes be set aside as temporary housing for those who lose their homes due to mortgage defaults.” “The beauty of this plan is that the housing will be portable,” said an enthusiastic Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore). “People will be able to live closer to jobs they can walk to. We will...

The phrase, “Let them eat cake,” is often attributed to Marie Antoinette, but some believe that Jean-Jacques Rousseau also used the phrase when writing about a French Aristocrat insensitive towards peasants who could not afford bread at the time. Whoever quoted the line is for history to figure out, but it would seem that this is the same bit of advice that Americans are getting from Congressional Democrats daily. While Americans struggle daily with the high price of gasoline and demand that Congressional Leaders and the President do something long lasting to address the problem in poll after poll. Congressional...

Last night on Anderson Cooper 360, two CNN political analysts charged that Senator Obama overstepped his authority as a United States Senator in acting as a negotiator with the Iraqi government and publicly disclosing statements made during those interviews. During an interview with Anderson Cooper, David Gergen, CNN's Senior Political Analyst stated,...

Gasoline is at over $4 a gallon in late summer of an election year. Once upon a time, incumbent congressmen and senators would have reacted to this about as well as Dracula to sunlight and crucifixes. And they would have rushed to get prices lower by the first Tuesday in November, so as to best protect their precious re-elections. But not this year. Democrats have stopped all attempts to increase domestic drilling with the ruthless efficiency of The Terminator. On its face, this would seem to be an insane and suicidal move. Even with a biased mainstream media giving them...

THE OLD GRAY B*TCH: CENSORSHIP AT THE NEW YORK TIMES Published July 22nd, 2008 The New York Times, which last week printed an op-ed piece by Senator Obama on the Iraq War, has rejected an article on the same subject by Senator John McCain. Says editorial page editor, David Shipley, “It would be terrific to have an article from Sen. McCain that mirrors Sen. Obama’s piece.” (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/07/mccain-oped-not.html) As our Black brethren might say, “Say what???” Since the “paper of record,” “the old, gray lady,” has now become a senile, old, corrupt, censorial b*tch determined to dictate rather than report and...

Chevron Pipelines Attacked In Nigeria and Columbia; FARC May Be Responsible In Columbia Monday, July 07, 2008 In the ongoing matter of Chevron and Nigeria comes a report from UPI declaring that "Nigeria attack cripples Chevron". Moreover, the same report points a finger at militant groups like the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND). And while there's no recorded link between MEND and Chevron accuser Larry Bowoto, it seems the two have similar aims: to cripple Chevron's presence in the region, as well as that of Royal Dutch Shell. Consider this UPI report: Chevron Corp. has declared...

Jul 21st, 2008 The RNC agrees to remove the Republican Elephant from CafePress’ Endangered Species List - Grand Old Party Ensues! Some of you may have seen some of the media coverage (maybe here, here, or here) regarding the Republican National Committee’s recent complaints about our shopkeepers’ use of the terms “GOP,” “Grand Old Party,” “Republican National Committee,” “RNC,” and various elephant designs. To sum it up: back in February, the RNC demanded that CafePress “cease and desist from allowing vendors to utilize the federally registered trademarks of the RNC” and threatened legal action. While we’re open to working...

< > Say you have the ability to trade in a 10 MPG SUV for a 20 MPG crossover, or a 25 MPG car for a 50 MPG hybrid. Which switch is better for the environment? As it turns out, the former, even though one might be tempted to say that the former only improves efficiency by 10 MPG while the latter improves it by 25. Assume a 100 mile trip. The SUV will consume 10 gallons versus 5 gallons for the crossover for a net savings of 5 gallons. The car will consume 4 gallongs versus 2 gallons for...

Former Vice President Al Gore (D) offered the opinion that global warming, not terrorism, is the biggest threat to America. The former VP said that it is imperative that the nation go “green” before it is too late. “Terrorists may kill thousands,” Gore said. “Warming will kill billions and destroy civilization. If the government doesn’t take immediate action, the survival of the United States as we know it is at risk.” Step one of Gore’s proposed plan of action calls for the federal government to establish a “carbon-offsets” reserve. The reserve, modeled on the “Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” would have the...

According to new sources, Barack Obama will be meeting with Palestinian officials in Ramallah during his current Middle East Tour. After visiting with Israeli officials, Obama will be escorted by Israeli defense forces until security is handed over to...

Of all the themes that recur in this column, one fills my inbox with angry e-mails like no other. It is the notion that you can and should take control of your own life and your economic destiny. It’s my deeply held conviction that if you learn how to do the right things and make good decisions, you will never need to participate in any “recession.” People hate this. Every time I say it, I get barraged with indignant feedback from people who tell me I don’t understand how tough it is. This was never more true than after my...

There is a crisis that no one is talking about. It’s not the energy dependence crisis, the spending crisis in our federal government, the imaginary-though-fragile economic crisis nor the mainstream media’s it’s-not-a-crisis-but-we-are-going-to-make-it-look-like-one banking crisis. America is being sold off to foreigners at a discount. That’s a crisis. The latest incident of this dismantling of America was the hostile takeover of Anheuser-Busch (AB) by the Belgium beer company InBev. Most corporate merger observers saw this as just another premium payday for the stockholders of AB. But my memory of what used to be The Pillsbury Company caused me to see this...

In perhaps the most distasteful and contrarian effort yet, stories are surfacing through news agencies this morning of a private congressional talks that would actually raise the Federal Gas Tax by ...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sharon Young has designed and sold political buttons and T-shirts for about 15 years now. But maybe she’s been barking up the wrong tree. Her newest creation — campaign buttons for canines — is leading the pack. Patriotic Pets buttons come with slogans such as "Bark Obama for President" and "100 percent McCain9." "I’ve never seen anything like this," says Young, a Smithville, Mo., resident and founder of www.politicalshop.com. "I think it’s probably the biggest product line we’ve ever had. It’s at least a conversation piece. It’s the only one out there."

Denver—With the Democratic National Convention approaching, it appears that Denver will stop at nothing to get the homeless off the streets during the convention. The actions have created a swarm of homeless to descend upon the city. Some of the ideas being floated by Denver city officials include sending the homeless to the movies, to the zoo, and even sequestering them in local homeless shelters.

Tuesday’s action in amending Regulation Short Sales HO) listed 19 banks and financial companies for which naked shorting was effectively banned for 30 days. Such a limit was long overdue but why limit the restriction to just 19 companies and just 30 days? Naked short selling (selling shares short that are not first borrowed, which is required to execute a legal short) is endemic and the SEC has turned a blind eye to it since the agency was created. This recent action is a knee-jerk reaction but a clear example of too little way too late. The question is will...

So people at Pfizer are pretty upset about what's going on with their Sr VP HR and her frequent helicopter trips to her cozy cottage in Maryland. And since I dug up some information about Pfizer's infamous party jet back in 2006, I figured I'd use this data to find out how often Mary had been hopping back and forth between her private home and Pfizer's offices on Manhattan Here they are the N numbers for Pfizer's airplanes (see FAA to verify this info.): (more)

Economist spots the "Alice in Wonderland" potential of the governments Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae rescue plan: ...the Federal Reserve said Fannie and Freddie could get financing at its discount window, a privilege previously available only to banks. The absurdity of this situation was highlighted by the way the discount window works. The Fed does not just accept any old assets as collateral; it wants assets that are “safe”. As well as Treasury bonds, it is willing to accept paper issued by “government-sponsored enterprises” (GSEs). But the two most prominent GSEs are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In theory, therefore, the two...

With gas prices as high as they are, wouldn't it seem reasonable to cut gas taxes or maybe just temporarily suspend them with a "gas tax holiday"? Well the Democrat Congress says "no way!" Instead what we are hearing this weekend are ideas the Democrats are brainstorming on how to raise gas taxes! Seriously! The American Road & Transportation Builders Association wants the Democrats to raise gas taxes by 11¢ per gallon and raise it annually to keep up with the rate of inflation. (You know to make sure we get that tax increase automatically every single year!) The Democrats...

Great 15 minutes of inspiration. This guy truely gets what capitalism is all about.

Few things warm my heart more than a story about political incorrectness and cigars. Love these guys. Dutch smokers are flocking to a religious movement known as "The Only and Universal Smokers Church of God" following a ban on tobacco smoking indoors. Michiel Eijsbouts, founder and "Smokelighter" of the church he founded in 2001, has insisted that the Dutch smoking ban in place does not apply to members of his church under national and European human rights legislation. "We think we have all the marks of a religion," he said. "We will have to find out what the secular...

Citigroup chairman Win Bischoff has warned that house prices in Britain and the United States are likely to keep falling for another two years. Bischoff told the BBC in an interview that he expects it will take two years for the markets to stabilise...

...So let me get this right... We have no respect for and refuse to associate ourselves with a Vietnam Veteran who lost 3 limbs in service to this great nation, has served as a member of Congress and whom works for a company who provides treatment too and develops new technologies to treat our wounded soldiers. Meanwhile, we will proudly associate ourselves with and allow fundraising from...

Shortly after I became a daily visitor to the internet, I discovered Steven Den Beste.  To this day, I stand in awe of his intelligence.  Steven was one of the most widely read writers, at that time, blogging prolifically on science, politics, warfare, engineering and anything else that crossed his mind.  A phenomenally analytic and literate mind possessing the ability to reduce the complex to the simple and expose the complexities of apparently simple subjects. Den Beste impressed a wide variety of people and drew enormous attention to his website, USS Clueless.  As one would expect, he also drew the ire and contempt...

Demand, Supply, and Prices It's clear enough that even if the US economy comes to a halt -- and the Democrats seem determined to make that happen -- the demand for oil by China, India, and other growing nations will go up exponentially; and that greater demand without increased supply will keep the price of oil high and even drive it higher.Speculators already believe that and are bidding up the price of oil futures. I have seen estimates that the supply/demand price of oil is under $100/ bbl but that speculators have driven it to the present levels. I don't...