Free Republic

<p>The Democrats are right, there are two Americas. The America that works and the America that doesn’t. The America that contributes and the America that doesn’t. It’s not the haves and the have nots, it’s the dos and the don’ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, contribute to society and others don’t. That’s the divide in America .</p>

I first fell in love with America 49 years ago. I flew from the UK to Denver visit my parents in Christmas 1965, and it was love at first sight. I fell in love with America, the land; I fell in love with America, the people. And I fell in love with the American way of life, the unconsciously optimistic approach to life and work and the future. I applied for citizenship as soon as possible and my naturalization certificate is dated January 3, 1975. So, in just about a week, I'll have been a U.S. citizen for 40 years....

It is becoming clear that the probable fate of Air Asia 8501 is that it is at the bottom of the ocean after losing controllability at high altitude in heavy thunderstorm activity. Fair enough, except none of those things should have made the least difference to a safe landing. Pilots encounter thunderstorms every day worldwide. It’s a routine part of the job. So why did this one make a difference? The problem is not the thunderstorms but with modern aviation practices. As a retired high time international airline pilot, I feel qualified to give you a look at the practices...

After reading about the gruesome murders of two New York City police officers, I was reminded of my early years as a cop. On a cold, blustery night in February 1964, at the tender young age of 21, I walked my first “beat” as a rookie in a high-crime area of Brooklyn. After graduating from the four-month Police Academy course, I was assigned to the 79th Precinct in the middle of the predominantly African-American section known as Bedford/Stuyvesant. Officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos were murdered on the same street where I walked that first midnight-to-8 am tour of duty....

Pilgrim’s Progress Published in NWFDaily News Nov 13 2011 Published again in NWFDaily News as "The True Story" Nov 28, 2013 As the story goes the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in the winter of 1620. Indians taught them how to fish, hunt, and plant corn, bringing forth an abundant harvest giving rise to the first Thanksgiving. That however was not quite true. Indians did indeed help the colonists, but harvests weren’t bountiful and many died of starvation and disease. The problem lay in the Mayflower Compact, which dictated a form of government whereupon property was communally owned and cultivated...

It’s been said that only death and taxes are certain. But the “death tax” is anything but certain now. There’s no estate tax this year -- costing the Treasury billions -- because Congress allowed it to expire. With less than a fortnight before Congress’s August recess, United for a Fair Economy held a press conference call with a wonderfully eclectic mix of participants --including former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, heiress and filmmaker Abigail Disney and hedge fund pioneer Julian Robertson -- all urging reinstatement of “the most progressive tax in the code and the only national...

Irena Sendler, a candidate for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, is credited with saving 2.500 Polish Jews from the Holocaust.

Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that currently apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said. Mr. Frank said the compensation restrictions would apply to all financial institutions and might be extended to include all U.S. companies. “There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today. The provision will be part of a broader package that would likely give the Federal Reserve Board the authority to monitor systemic risk in the economy and...

January 3, 2009: The Israeli attack on Hamas forces in Gaza on December 27th, hit fifty targets within 220 seconds. The fifty Israeli aircraft assembled off the coast, and delivered a well rehearsed attack designed to take out Hamas targets before key commanders could get away. Israeli intelligence had discovered Hamas plans for such an Israeli attack, which involved key Hamas personnel immediately dispersing to hiding places. These included hospitals, where the Hamas men would dress in staff uniforms and blend in. Other safe havens included nursery schools, and other places where the Hamas officials would be surrounded by lots...

The collapse on Wall Street is now decimating Main Street, Ocean Parkway, Mountain View Drive and I-80. Since January the economy has shed 760,000 jobs. In September alone, monthly mass layoff claims for unemployment insurance jumped by 34 percent. General Electric, General Motors, Chrysler, Yahoo! and Xerox have all announced major layoffs, along with the humbled financial titans Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. Fully one-quarter of all businesses in the United States are planning to cut payroll over the next year. State governments are facing a tax revenue shortfall of roughly $100 billion in the next fiscal year, 15...

On the eve of what may be the most important election of our time, the financial catastrophe that many believe will most influence Tuesday's vote remains only partially covered by the major media. Though IBD has run many articles and editorials on the so-called mortgage meltdown, one of the most complete timelines of the debacle was written by an independent scholar and published this week by the Web magazine American Thinker. Because the issue is so important, we are running this 7,300-word history in its entirety. Presidential candidate Barack Obama has put free-market capitalism at the root of the current...

Last Monday I wrote on this page that the US Government's rescue of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac probably marked the low-point of the global credit crisis and was “unqualified good news for the US economy”. Four days later, I wrote that this very same rescue “signalled the complete failure of the biggest, most dynamic, most innovative markets that have ever existed in the history of capitalism — the Wall Street stock market and the market for US bonds”. Are these statements absurdly contradictory? Or did something change dramatically in those four days? Or was I just talking rubbish?

MINNEAPOLIS -- As residents of New Orleans were fleeing Hurricane Gustav, top Republican party officials donned pink boas and swigged vodka shots at a wild whirl of corporate and lobbyist-paid parties this weekend in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Many corporate sponsors and their lobbyists carried through with plans for lavish entertainment of GOP lawmakers and others despite calls from the campaign of Sen. John McCain that Republicans should tone down the convention festivities. "We will be contacting corporations and others to ask them to be respectful of events in the gulf," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said Sunday afternoon. Yet, last night...

The mantra of the free market has gained such a hold on Americans that Sen. John McCain recently aired an ad exclaiming, as if it's a given: "Higher taxes, more government spending, so fewer jobs." A similar obvious "truth" for many Americans these days, in the words of Rush Limbaugh, is that "the government can't create wealth; it can only destroy it or confiscate and redistribute it." If it is true that higher government taxation depresses job creation and that the government can't create wealth (only the free market can), it becomes rational for struggling workers to vote Republican on...

DENVER -- When Barack Obama feeds rhetorical fishes and loaves to the multitudes in the football stadium Thursday night, he should deliver a message of sufficient particularity that it seems particularly suited to Americans. One more inspirational oration, one general enough to please Berliners or even his fellow "citizens of the world," will confirm Pascal's point that "continuous eloquence wearies." That is so because it is not really eloquent. If it is continuous, it is necessarily formulaic and abstract, vague enough for any time and place, hence truly apposite for none. If Socrates had engaged in an interminable presidential campaign...

Russia invades Georgia. China jails dissidents. China and India pollute at levels previously unimaginable. Gulf monarchies make trillions from jacked-up oil prices. Islamic terrorists keep car bombing. Meanwhile, Europe offers moral lectures, while Japan and South Korea shrug and watch - all in a globalized world that tunes into the Olympics each night from Beijing. "Citizens of the world" were supposed to share, in relative harmony, our new "Planet Earth," which was to have followed from an interconnected system of free trade, instantaneous electronic communications, civilized diplomacy and shared consumer capitalism. But was that ever quite true? In reality, to...

On a planet 4C hotter, all we can prepare for is extinctionThere's no 'adaptation' to such steep warming. We must stop pandering to special interests, and try a new, post-Kyoto strategy We need to get prepared for four degrees of global warming, Bob Watson told the Guardian last week. At first sight this looks like wise counsel from the climate science adviser to Defra. But the idea that we could adapt to a 4C rise is absurd and dangerous. Global warming on this scale would be a catastrophe that would mean, in the immortal words that Chief Seattle probably never...

One year ago, it seemed reasonable to hope that the mortgage crisis would be contained. Since then, just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. The crisis has spread through the financial system and is metastasizing into a global slowdown. It cries out for a bolder government response than we have seen so far. So here is a test for candidates McCain and Obama: Which of you would provide it? When the mortgage market crashed, it was plain that billions of dollars of real estate loans would not be repaid, leaving enormous holes in financial sector balance sheets....

On July 17, Nobelist and Academy Award winner Al Gore issued a stirring challenge to our nation to produce 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and carbon-free sources within 10 years. Gore asserted, "The quickest, cheapest and best way to start using all this renewable energy is in the production of electricity. In fact, we can start right now using solar power, wind power and geothermal power to make electricity for our homes and businesses." This massive push for no-carbon electricity production would help prevent climate change and cut our dependence on foreign oil. Of course, great-souled visionaries...

For the first time in weeks Sadr City saw no fighting Sunday, day one of yet another hastily brokered cease-fire between U.S.-backed Iraqi forces and the Shi'ite Mahdi Army militia. Word of the pact emerged Saturday night, when an aide to Mahdi Army leader Muqtada al-Sadr said a deal had been reached to end roughly two months of street fighting in eastern Baghdad. Soon afterward, U.S. and Iraqi officials endorsed the agreement, which came as Iraqi forces working with U.S. troops were signaling plans for a new push to break from areas where they had remained stuck for weeks. Details...