Free Republic

From what I have seen the administration is full of young people who’ve seen the movie but not read the book. They act bright, they know the reference, they’re credentialed. But they’ve only seen the movie about, say, the Cuban missile crisis, and then they get into a foreign-policy question and they’re seeing movies in their heads. They haven’t read the histories, the texts, which carry more information, more texture, data and subtlety, and different points of view. They’ve only seen the movie—the Cubans had the missiles and Jack said “Not another war” and Bobby said “Pearl Harbor in reverse”...

The World Health Organisation has retracted its claim that a number of Greeks were injecting themselves with HIV to get about $950 in monthly health benefits. WHO spokesman Glenn Thomas on Tuesday told Al Jazeera that the global health authority had no evidence to support a statement published in its recent report that about half of new infections in Greece were self-inflicted to claim the money.

While the "knockout game," where minorities sucker punch whites and Asians, has been happening for at least two years, it has finally been allowed to become a news story in the legacy media in the past week. This crime trend has been documented in a book by Colin Flaherty called White Girl Bleed a Lot, published in 2012, where dozens of examples have been catalogued. I have been to the Wikipedia entry for this book in the past week, but today I notice that a complaint has been filed against the Wikipedia entry in order to get the page deleted....

At the IMF Research Conference on Nov. 8, Larry Summers gave a succinct presentation that explained what may be the most pressing economic matter of our time. The speech is being widely praised (by Krugman and others) for being a brilliant and thorough elucidation of an issue that's underdiscussed.

“So here’s the deal: since 1993 there has been a federal law requiring states to recover at least some of the costs of Medicaid-covered medical care for anyone 55 years old and up, from the estates of those covered. States enforce this law, with their own laws and policies added in, differently in every state. But the general principle is there. Up until now the usual consequence has been things like this: Medicaid puts a lien on the house of someone in a nursing facility who has run out of money, and after they die, the heirs find they have...

CAIRO – A Russian warship has docked in Egypt's port of Alexandria in a move that officials said was aimed at bolstering Cairo's relations with Moscow ahead of one of the highest level visits by Russian officials to the country in decades.

Over the past year, unionized restaurant workers across numerous fast-food chains but mostly at McDonalds, expressed their dissatisfaction with compensation levels by striking at increasingly more frequent intervals - a sentiment that has been facilitated by the president himself and his ever more frequent appeals for a raise in the minimum wage. Unfortunately, as we have pointed out previously, in the context of corporations that have given up on growing the top line (as virtually all free cash goes into stock buybacks and dividends and none into growth capex), and in pursuit of a rising bottom line, employee wages are...

PARIS — There was nothing extraordinary about the casually dressed businessman waiting on a Paris train platform except, it turned out, for the envelopes he carried — stuffed with 350,000 euros in cash, and seized by French customs agents as he prepared to depart for Belgium.

DETROIT — The last time there was a white mayor of Detroit, the Vietnam War was just ending and the nation was getting used to a Supreme Court decision called Roe vs. Wade. But now this city, which is in the midst of a trial to determine whether it is eligible for bankruptcy protection, is set to elect its first white mayor since 1974, Mike Duggan, and by an overwhelming margin. Recent polls show Duggan up by a nearly 2-1 margin over his opponent, Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon, in a city that is 82% African American.

The one thing to emerge from the debt ceiling crisis has been to highlight the short-term debt focus. Every Thursday the US government has had to sell $100 billion of new debt rolling over short-term with 3 month bills. This may have helped to bring down long-term rates and it reduced the interest expenditures, but it has introduced extreme vulnerability to a sudden loss of lenders’ trust as lawmakers debate whether to raise a cap on public borrowing. U.S. Treasury will unveil its new borrowing strategy that will signal the shift in interest rates has arrived. The extreme short-term debt...

Now that the federal debt and spending cans have been kicked down the road until after the first of the year, a number of people have contacted me to see if the recent showdown will be repeated when the next days of reckoning occur. In this case, while history might rhyme, knowledgeable insiders are predicting that this fall’s walk up to the precipice is not likely to be duplicated. There will be a spending showdown of a kind – but the debt ceiling fight should be entirely different. Some of the reasons this is the case are mundanely political. Others...

In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the Obamacare HHS grandfather rule. The Republicans were warning the current HHS regulations would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it. The HHS own regulatory rules were predicting this outcome. The Republicans were referencing HHS Rule 34553 which can be found on page 17 of this pdf and predicted insurance companies would cancel their coverage. On a party line vote, Democrats killed the resolution, which would have protected people from losing their...

Link to video: Colorado ObamaCare Navigator Hasn't Signed Up A Single Person Due To Sticker Shock

A 2009 study concluded that golden rice is effectively converted into vitamin A in humans. A 2012 study that fed 68 children ages 6 to 8 concluded that golden rice was as good as vitamin A supplements and better than the natural beta-carotene in spinach. Recently, scientists gathered evidence from Mozambique and Uganda that vitamin A enhanced sweet potatoes are, in fact, improving people's lives. Children who are eating them do have more vitamin A in their blood. Based on other studies of the effects of vitamin A, nutritionistsare confident that the boost is big enough to improve the health...

Two additional things that I haven't seen discussed often (if at all) or which are given only flippant service -- but which could easily bankrupt you. Actuarial Value. This is a complicated way of saying "what percentage of total health care expense" is the policy expected to cover? For a bronze plan (the least-expensive, but still expensive policy) the answer is 60%. You may have heard the "actuarial value" but you probably didn't understand what it meant. Let's put some numbers on this. Assuming you will pay $300 a month for your "bronze" plan under Obamacare, or $3,600 a year....

The White House is meeting with CEOs of health plans on Wednesday, according to two insurance industry sources. The insurance executives are meeting with Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and chief of staff Denis McDonough, the sources told POLITICO on Tuesday evening. The White House didn’t immediately confirm the meeting. Insurers have a lot riding on the success of Obamacare enrollment — which is being stymied by pervasive technical problems with the federal website, HealthCare.gov. HHS has announced stepped-up efforts to resolve the signup problems. The White House hasn’t announced how many people have successfully enrolled, although insurers have described it...

Yes, finally Healthcare.gov has been patched. If you would like to sign up for Obamacare, go to the following link and click "Apply now." Healthcare

While speaking at Wizard World Nashville Comic Con, Bruce Campbell confirmed that there will be an Army of Darkness 2 and he will be in it. “The last one was twenty-two years ago. I just haven’t been racing to do it. Sam Raimi is just a little bit busy making the biggest movies in Hollywood. I used to be busy. Now I’m not. That’s why I’m here. He then joked, “Ash would have to stop occasionally from chasing some deadite to catch his breath. Maybe we could do that, I guess. That would be exciting. Fight in a walker. That...

The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a "capital levy" -- a one off tax on private wealth -- as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). There have been illustrious supporters, including Pigou, Ricardo, Schumpeter, and, until he changed his mind - Keynes. The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be...

In the midst of a domestic crisis, it is easy to forget that the rest of the world is watching. Now that the U.S. federal government has shut down for the first time since the mid 1990s, the talk of the town is the political problems of the world’s largest economy and sole superpower. In China, most media reports about the shutdown have been merely informative, but every now and then they offer a rare insight into what the Chinese have learned about America’s shortcomings. “As far as the Chinese populace is concerned, the government shutdown is like the Arabian...