Free Republic

Well said. Your mention of “The Matrix” is accurate. Just take the blue pill and everything will be wonderful ...

Palouse worms? You gotta be kidding me.

Are you sure that isn’t spelled “Pelosi worms”?

I’ve read the entire thread and haven’t noticed any explanation of why the Japanese grow cubical watermelons. In Japan, especially in the cities, space is at a premium. Shipping space, grocery store shelf space, and refrigerator space. A lot of people live in tiny apartments and they use refrigerators that are about the size of a dishwasher. They love watermelon, but the usual spherical or ovoid melon is viewed as a tremendous waste of space.

Japanese farmers were told that if they could grow a square watermelon, they could charge a premium price. So they put on their thinking caps and figured out a way. Watermelons are grown in a box, and they assume the shape of the box.

The Justice Department is investigating ACORN and has been for some time. Of course, Eric Holder is now the attorney general. I think we know how that will turn out.

Senator Patrick Leahy leaked classified information so many times that he was nicknamed “Leaky Leahy.” But there was never any sanction against him, except removal from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

I wonder whether anyone in the mainstream news media will remember this series of events and draw a comparison in print. ... No, of course not. What was I thinking? They’ll never mention it. They’ll just focus on the bad Republicans.

Bad, BAD Republicans. Go to your room.

Big deal. He sells bongs.

This is a great article that reveals many things about the author but, more importantly, it reveals a lot of things about the inner workings of the Larouche organization, where he worked for many years. Nobody can expose the truth as well as an insider.

If you want to know more about Larouche, his dangerous way of thinking, and how he promoted himself and demonized his opponents, read this article.

Yoo and Bybee exploited a legal loophole in their memos. The harsh interrogation tactics they recommended did not satisfy any legal definition of torture. Therefore they were legal.

In particular, since the detainees subjected to the harsh interrogation techniques (such as waterboarding) that they would not be killed, even the “fear of death” clause in the UN Convention Against Torture was not satisfied.

Where is he washing dishes, in the meantime?

Ward Churchill? His wife is named Natsu Saito and she's a law professor at the University of Georgia. They've been making it on her salary. Also, it appears that she's been picking up a few of her husband's favorite self-promotion tricks.

http://www.pirateballerina.com/blog/entry.php?id=546

Also, if you're Ward Churchill, you wouldn't have even the slightest bit of trouble getting cheap speaking gigs at colleges and coffee houses. Pack enough of them into every month, stay at the Motel 6 and drive an Enterprise rental car instead of staying at the Ritz Carlton and flying first class, and it's a living. Hell, you might even convince yourself that you're a "man of the people."

The reason Beirut was chosen is that it’s a Middle Eastern country with liberal publishing standards and it isn’t Israel.

Groucho, the whole franchise needs an overhaul. A new team logo is the proverbial lipstick on a pig.

My resolute belief is he is inept and indecisive.

If he had taken action earlier, when the pirates still had the Maersk Alabama, then he would have proven himself to be a capable leader. But the crewmen of the Maersk Alabama took the ship back all by themselves, without any help at all from the Obama-led military. It's as if they knew they weren't going to get any help.

By the time Obama took action, 95% of the hostages had gained their own freedom and our forces had a numerical superiority of about 250-to-1 over the remaining four pirates. Not to mention the immense technological and firepower superiority of a United States Navy destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, plus a Navy SEAL team over four pirates with rusty AK-47s in a leaky lifeboat.

In terms of total force superiority, by the time the end of the chess game happened, our forces probably had a force superiority of 5,000-to-1. It was like an armored division attacking the Gangster Disciples. And out on the ocean, there's nowhere for the Gangster Disciples to hide.

Cass Sunstein is an under the radar nomination by Obama. He’s going to be in charge of enforcing regulations against industry and he’s an animal rights activists.

How do you feel about hamburger at $12.00 a pound? if you can get it at all?

Read up on Portland, Oregon, liberal showcase of the urban future. ( I forget what the architects call this neo-Bauhaus, neosocialist movement.) They surround you with city-county government, then shut down all development in the ' burbs so you can't build or move there. They restrict new housing to inside the city -- condos and apartments, of course. And you will walk or take mass transit or pedal your bicycle to work, because that's the way the good little drones of the future will do as they're told.

I have a good friend who's a tree-hugging liberal. I went to college with him. He and his wife bought a big, older home near the downtown Portland area and they are thriving. They're one block away from a bus stop, he still rides a bike even though he's in his '40s, and they rent out all of the upstairs bedrooms (with free high-speed Internet and cable TV) to college coeds, secretaries and nurses. Four major rules:

1. No overnight guests.

2. If you don't clean up after yourself in the bathroom, you're moving.

3. If you do anything that brings the cops to the door, you're moving.

4. No noise after 10:00 PM.

These people are thriving. It isn't the kind of life that my wife and I would care to live. But they seem to be happy, and making a lot of money. Different strokes for different folks.

http://www.gainesville-times.com/news/2009/jan/15/woman-shoots-burglar/

“The third suspect is described as a Black male in his 20’s, approximately 5’6” tall, thinly built, and was wearing a gray sweater, light colored pants, and gray shoes.”

What a surprise.

Good morning, PJ. The increased skepticism may have something to do with a global weather service issuing October temperature readings for nearly all stations in Russia that duplicated the readings for September. (Note for the lurking DUmmies: in the Northern Hemisphere, temperatures in September are warmer than temperatures in October.)

Notice that the mainstream media (WJLA) has carefully avoided providing any description of the third suspect, who remains at large and presents a threat to the community.

Our platoon CO, a well-respected lieutenant, got a promotion and we lost him. He was replaced by a youngster fresh from the Academy. The platoon sergeant introduced the new CO when he arrived and the new CO said, “good morning men, my name is Lieutenant ______________. I will never ask any of you to do anything that I would not do myself, gladly.”

From that moment on, his name was “Lieutenant Gladly.”

Pearl Harbor
9/11
The stock market crash of 1929
The Spanish Flu epidemic at the end of World War I
The explosion on the USS Maine

What is #1?

My guess is Beck's.

Something not right here. I’m 6’0” and weigh#340. Had many MRIs. No problem.

At 5'0" and 275 pounds, this woman's waist size is probably much larger than yours. It's the waist size (and chest, and shoulders, and hips) this is the issue here. You're probably shaped like a barrel. But she's probably shaped like a basketball.

Another thread here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2163027/posts

I'm happy for you and your firm. However, that doesn't not in any way negate the decades of intellectual property theft that the Chinese have perpetrated.

No, it doesn't. The communist philosophy gives absolutely zero respect to the entire concept of intellectual property: all new inventions belong to "the people," meaning Chinese government.

Billions of American dollars have been lost to Chinese intellectual property theft.

More like hundreds of billions of dollars, and millions of jobs. You'll get no argument here.

Personally, I go out of my way to not buy anything made in China. They already lost me a long, long time ago.....

I don't blame you one bit. The only thing I'm saying is that things are finally starting to change. China has reached a point where the communist philosophy is starting to give way to a more pragmatic approach. They realize that there's more money to be made by rehabilitating their image as an outlaw nation. Particularly in a case where it's one Chinese factory against another Chinese factory -- even if one of the two factories is owned by an American corporation -- Chinese courts will enforce intellectual property rights. This encourages more foreign investment in China, when the foreign investors have reason to believe they'll be playing on something approaching a level playing field.

Make no mistake: China is very capable of making very hi quality stuff.

No doubt about it. They're duplicating what the Japanese did after World War II, but on a much larger scale.

(Tu-4, an exact copy of the B29)

Damaged American B-29 bombers, trying to find a safe place to land after a bombing raid on Japan, occasionally flew north to the Russian port of Vladivostok. But because the Russians hadn't declared war on Japan and were maintaining neutrality, the planes were seized and the crews "interned" in camps. They were eventually allowed to "escape" and find their way home through Iran, but the Russians kept the planes.

Of course we sent them lots of Lend-Lease, but not the B-29.

I have a Dremel tool in front of me, made in China. Except it isn’t a Dremel tool, just a very good imitation. Very rugged. Cost me half what a Dremel would have cost. ... There are uncountable stories of Chinese counterfeiting, poor quality, thievery, and outright fraud every day.

Here's how it works. Some guy (who speaks with a New Jersey accent, hint hint) pulls up to the construction site and says to the foreman that he's on his way back from a trade show. He has all of these brand new power tools, and he doesn't want to pay extra to haul them home on the plane, and he's willing to sell them for 50 cents on the dollar ... Expert counterfeiting, all the way down to the labels.

Especially since the west insists on giving them fully working factories to reverse engineer!

The biggest victim in this regard was not a Western company but Toyota of Japan. They had a contract with the Chinese to build parts for new Toyotas. Unfortunately for Toyota, whoever drafted the contract failed to put in a clause about what would happen to the factory equipment and tooling upon termination of the contract. As you might have expected, the Chinese violated the agreement and then Toyota terminated the contract. But that meant they had just given a fully operational factory with quality Japanese tooling to the Chinese.

This notion that they are suddenly worried about their reputation in this area is just more Chi-com propaganda ...

My perspective is also up close and personal. I realize it's a new development (past 12-18 months), and our firm doesn't try to brag about things like this, but we have brought successful patent infringement lawsuits against Chinese manufacturers in Chinese courts. It helps that we are also doing a little bit of our manufacturing in China. The people in charge aren't stupid. They realize that Chinese jobs, and the possibility of future investments, could be lost.

So - - - if you don’t believe the Chinese vehicle is better than the Humvee, just ask the designer of it. He’ll tell you.

It may very well be true, but if it is true, building that vehicle in an American factory would cost significantly more than building a Humvee. It's not very hard to multiply all the dimensions by 1.1 or even 1.01, to get higher ground clearance and greater cargo capacity. Of course, they don't have to deal with such Congressionally imposed refinements as passenger restraint systems and emission controls ...

I saw no evidence of it when we went to China for Nortel. They confiscated our RF test gear and we sat in a hotel room for almost three weeks waiting to get it back. They could have just as easily bought it on the open market and copied it. It was commonly available test gear, nothing secret. When we did get it back it was obvious it had been disassembled, inspected and reassembled, only nothing worked.

They do everything on the cheap. Look at it from their perspective. Why should they have to go out and buy it when these Nortel guys just delivered it to them free of charge?

The HMMWV went into service in 1984. The Chinese are copying it 20 years later and this is somehow impressive?

Under international law, patents expire after 20 years. It means that if your company spent the millions of dollars to develop something like antilock brakes or GPS, and hundreds of thousands more to obtain worldwide patent rights, your market share and your employees' job security will only last 20 years before somebody in Malaysia can build it for 20 cents an hour. You can either lower your prices cheaper than theirs, or you can go back to the drawing board and develop something new.

The article says it has 75 patents. Curious that the Chi-com copycats are suddenly concerned about patents.....

They're trying to rehabilitate their image as an outlaw nation on the issue of intellectual properties. What they're doing is known as "patent breaking." Thomas Edison was a very prolific patent breaker. He carefully examined a competitor's patent application, helpfully published by the patent office years before the patent was granted, and developed a way to "work around" the patent with a similar device that would not infringe his competitor's patent. The Chinese are doing this.

By the way, Zarqawi’s previous terrorist training camp was in Afghanistan. All of this is such common knowledge that it’s in Zarqawi’s Wikipedia biography. And still the left-wing moonbats claim there’s no connection between Hussein and Al-Qaida.

Hussein was a megalomaniac. Nothing went on in Iraq that he didn’t want to control, particularly anybody with weapons and military style training. Imagine an independent armed militia group with a training camp in Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia. Would Hitler or Stalin have allowed it to exist?

Zarqawi was in northern Iraq, running a terrorist training camp, at the time of the invasion. His previous assignment was running a terrorist training camp, under the supervision of a guy named Osama bin Laden. He had sworn an oath of personal loyalty to bin Laden. Although the organization in Iraq was called “Ansar al-Islam,” after the invasion Zarqawi gave up the facade and renamed it as “Al-Qaida In Iraq.”

This was in one of the no-fly zones, but Hussein could have done something about it on the ground. he had an enormous army, and here was a terrorist training camp operating in the open.

This video was being circulated at least six months ago. It might even be older than that. It was taken in Iraq and it’s definitely a malfunctioning round.

7 C. Milk ( I prefer whole...yeah, I know about the fat, but as my Culinary instructor said, “Fat equals Flavor”!)

Like my momma always said: "Forrest, God put calories and cholesterol into food to make it taste good."

“The Great Raid” is an amazing story. The Japanese had already started murdering American POWs in the Philippines because they were afraid the POWs would provide valuable intelligence if they live long enough to be liberated. These murders were exceptionally brutal, and we knew enough about it to know that if we didn’t take action, another 500+ American POWs would meet a terrible fate.

Prince and his men were taking enormous risks. He didn’t deserve the DSC. He deserved the Medal of Honor. Godspeed.

do they have any articles about drug use by fags?

The point here is a strategy called "misdirection." Don't mention the drug use and unsafe sex by homosexuals. Instead, keep talking and talking and talking about drug use and unsafe sex in the military, in small-town America, in suburbia, and anywhere else they can find it. Make an entire mountain range out of a molehill. That way, when drug use and unsafe sex by homosexuals gets mentioned by someone beyond the reach of the Gay Mafia, the sheeple shrug and say, "Why not? Everybody's doing it."

I live in suburban Chicago. I need no reminders. On the other hand, spring is one day closer.

Death traps. Plane's didn't get pretty until World War 2, and even then the prettiest (and best) Gallic bird, the Dewoitine D.520 was ugly compared to the Spitfire.

I'm partial to the Reggiane 2005.

I think this was on Daily Kos a couple of weeks ago, Congressman. Have you been moonlighting on us?

Good points. Add to that the fact that the Democraps are far more responsible for the subprime mess that caused all this. It was the Dems that funded ACORN and helped them pressure banks to lower their lending standards. It was the dems who made deals with Fannie and Freddie to get them to lower their lending standards so they could buy the banks crappy loans. It was the Dems who kept telling us that Fannie and Freddie were going to be fine, right up until their bad decisions caught up with them. And it was the Dems, primarily, who played this game in order to run political ads claiming they were helping the little guy become a home owner. Granted, Bush took credit for that too, but he played little part in the wheeling and dealing Congress did on behalf of ACORN.

All very good points that I touched upon in my last post. Lowering the lending standards was a recipe for disaster. It takes an adequate income, and a desire to pay what you owe, to make a mortgage work. Hundreds of thousands of mortgages were being made to people who didn't have both of those qualities. When there was a rash of defaults, it triggered failures in other sectors of the lending community.

What really had me worried was the short-term commercial credit, which was endangered for a few weeks in October. Do you buy gasoline at a gas station, or groceries from your local grocery store? Short-term commercial credit put the gasoline in that underground storage tank and the groceries on those shelves.

no offense, but lay off the CNN propaganda. W’s economy was six years of growth, low unemployment, and great resilience through 9/11, the following downturn, and the down economy in 2007/early 2008 from the housing bubble. We stayed positive growth from 2002 until the last Q of 2007, and then quickly got back to a decent growth rate. Until this past Sept, we were still growing despite the energy costs, housing problems, etc.

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a nonprofit organization, has identified 33 recessions in the past 151 years. That's an average of one recession every 4.6 years. So it would have been very surprising if we didn't have at least one recession during the past eight years, and more likely two.

Sure enough, we had two recessions: one in 2001, and one in 2008.

The left-wing moonbats like to blame Republicans, and in particular, George W. Bush. But the so-called "geniuses" in the Democratic Party should get most of the blame. Allowing uncontrolled growth in the 1990s, coupled with the failure to respond effectively to terrorist attacks, led directly to the sharp recession that started immediately after 9/11 and ended when we invaded Iraq. Loosening up mortgage terms and conditions, so that low-income minority families with bad credit could still buy a $250,000 home, led directly to the recession we are now experiencing.

Pinging a few people who have expressed an interest in economics in the past.

It seems strange to me that Obama could take time away from his vacation in Hawaii to make comments about Blagojevich and the appointment of Roland Burris, but can’t say a word about the most difficult foreign policy challenge that he will face in the early months of his administration.

Just another demonstration of why Obama is not ready for prime time.

Libel law is very flexible around the edges, particularly here in America. Sarah Palin is a public figure and for that reason, anything goes.

Conservatives must take their gloves off and expose the Muslim Messiah, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of the waste in DC.

I think the best opportunity for this is the confirmation hearing for Obama's attorney general nominee, Eric Holder. He has links to several very shady episodes in Democratic Party lore: the Marc Rich pardon, the Elian Gonzalez case, the David Koresh compound and, of course, Rod Blagojevich.

The problem is that evangelical Christians are very law abiding folk. The solution is to pass laws that evangelical Christians are likely to break, such as draconian gun control laws, or the prohibition of home schooling. Then enforce the hell out of the new laws.

This is just another example of the way the mainstream media are playing the Obama symphony. Whenever a serious question arises, they carefully bury it under some meaningless fluff story.

During the presidential campaign, there were very serious concerns about Obama’s own lack of qualifications, his links to such controversial figures as Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko, and his ties to the Chicago political machine (which led to his vocal support for the re-election of Governor Rod Blagojevich). But the mainstream media chose instead to carefully explore the “issue” of whether Bristol Palin was Trig Palin’s mother, and the burning question of Sarah’s $150,000 wardrobe.

I hope this is of interest.

It was, Frank. As they say at Alcoholics Anonymous, "Thanks for sharing." Many of us are addicted to fond memories in the same way an alcoholic or junkie is addicted. They provide us comfort, and tearing oneself away from them causes withdrawal.

Some people please God a lot more than others. I've known a few people like that, and I'm grateful to be reminded of them. A few, God bless them, are still around.

Isn’t Tufts University the headquarters for homosexual “friendly” indoctrination of the Massachusetts public school system?

In some cases, particularly the US military, the reputation has been gained through the use of technology. Individual soldiers in the US Special Forces and Navy SEALs, for example, are no better trained and motivated than their contemporaries in many other armies. But we’ve got better gadgets.

(I realize that I’m going to p**s some people off for saying that ...)