Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Like the song goes, "something going on over there". What's happening in the New York 23rd Congressional District may have national significance. It's looking like a political earthquake in progress, and it has a San Francisco flavor to it....In San Francisco style, a Republican abandoned her own party's candidate and chose a liberal Democrat, saying it was the best choice for her district. (Recall the hundreds of San Francisco republicans who were strong early financial supporters of Democrat Mayor Gavin Newsom and his defunct run for California governor over the Republican candidate.) Didn't make much difference....

PITTSBURGH — For President Barack Obama, it's almost as if the election campaign never ended. Just look at his travel schedule. The same states that Obama targeted to win the White House are seeing an awful lot of the president, Vice President Joe Biden and top Cabinet officials. Only this year, the taxpayers are footing the multimillion-dollar tab for the trips, and Obama officials are delivering wheelbarrows of economic stimulus money — also compliments of taxpayers. An Associated Press review of administration travel records shows that three of every four official trips Obama and his key lieutenants made in his...

If you ask Americans about campaign finance reform, most likely they’ll answer something about the need for it because “there’s too much money in politics,” not realizing that to many the freedom to donate to the political candidate of their choice is a right equated with everything else granted by the First Amendment. It’s quite possible those free speech advocates will soon be pleased as a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform package may be overturned by the Supreme Court. In what began as a quite innocent case brought out as a clarification request by the producers of...

WASHINGTON - Organized labor gave more money to congressional campaigns than any other interest group at a time when overhauling health care and easing the ability of unions to organize sit atop Congress’ agenda. Union political action committees shelled out $11 million to lawmakers during the first six months of this year. Ranking second were health care interests, which gave $9.5 million from Jan. 1 through June 30, according to a CQ MoneyLine analysis of the latest filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). While labor PACs were the top contributors in the previous election cycle, the health care industry...

OK sorry for the vanity, but I'm darn frustrated at what I just saw on my favorite channel - FNC. I've been a daily, loyal viewer since they came online and first begin their uphill struggle against then-dominant CNN. No fair weather viewer here. When I'm not watching FNC, usually I've got Fox Business Channel in the background. So it takes a lot for Fox to tee me off like this. But I'm plenty teed off: (Embarrasingly obvious) Republican 2012 candidate wannabe Mike Huckabee, is filling in for BOR today. So far so good. Huckabee works for Fox, fair and...

National Popular Vote (NPV), a California-based group formed in 2006 to persuade states to join a compact to award their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote tally for president, unveiled a new and potent argument on behalf of the proposed reform. “An overlooked benefit for many so-called ‘battleground states’ will be the reduction of candidate visits to their states,” said John Koza, chairman of NPV. “If the popular vote were the decisive factor, candidates would spend more time in the denser parts of the nation. Other communities wouldn’t be worth a visit. They’d be spared the...

WOODLAND HILLS - As he launched a radio ad campaign Tuesday for his budget measures on the May 19 ballot, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said failure to approve the package would worsen the state's already-dire fiscal crisis. "If they don't pass, we will be facing a $50 billion problem," Schwarzenegger said at a meeting with Daily News editors and reporters. "It will mean massive cuts in education, hospitals, prisons. These are things people don't want to see cut." Schwarzenegger's campaign committee, Budget Reform Now, began its advertising campaign Tuesday for the six ballot measures - Propositions 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E...

Shock Treatment by: Heather Latham, March 20, 2009 At 27, Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., is currently the youngest member of Congress. Being a Republican in a predominantly Democratic state, he found that communication to all groups is the key to success. While campaigning for office as a state representative, he was told to ignore certain demographics since they never vote Republican. When he would visit these groups, he would be met with people who had never before been approached by a Republican. He says, “When you write off a demographic, you’re most…certainly set for defeat—and I don’t care what demographic...

There are a lot of unbelievable similarities between Carter's 1976 and Obama's 2008 campaigns. Let's see if their rulerships look similar in the coming months.

NEWLAND, N.C. -- Barbara Aycock thought the phone call she received in July, about a meeting for supporters of Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama here, had to be a prank. Sparsely populated Avery County, deep in the Appalachian Mountains, has voted Republican every presidential election in its 97-year history, usually with more than 75% of the vote. There's seldom a Democratic candidate running for county office. With the help of a massive database of potential Democratic supporters, though, the Obama campaign found Ms. Aycock and a group of more than 40 volunteers in the county. "They started coming out of...

An Extensive Relationship with Domestic Terrorists Most of the recent reports concerning Obama’s relationship with known terrorists are focused upon unrepentant Weather Underground domestic bomber William Ayers. That’s because it is now clear that Mr. Obama has been far less than forthcoming in his efforts to explain his lengthy in-depth relationship with a man he originally said he hardly knew. If this was his only relationship with known terrorists, his original story might have been more plausible. Had he been more honest in answering these questions, investigative journalists might have found some other way to spend their time. But Obama’s...

A talk radio host in Pittsburgh was reprimanded by his employer on the air for being too critical of Barack Obama. KDKA-AM 1020 host Kevin Miller was silenced after his executive producer P.J. Kumanchik read a statement by CBS Radio accusing him of being unfairly biased against Obama. Then he offered the listeners to Miller's show an on-air apology saying "We want to apologize to listeners who have found your show offensive." Then Kumanchik offered Obama three hours of airtime on KDKA in Miller's time slot. Miller, a Marconi Award nominee and former Army Reserve journalist, was accused of featuring...

In a rally last week in Waukesha, Wisconsin, there was anger. The anger was clearly based on a genuine fear that Barack Obama will become the next president of the United States, and along with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, will take our nation in a direction so far to the left, that the system of government our founding fathers envisioned will be totally unrecognizable. And they are looking to John McCain and Sarah Palin to have the cojones to take Obama and the Democrats to task on it. Barack Obama is a socialist, perhaps even a Marxist. His political...

Journalists are trained to “follow the money” – to uncover who donates how much to what campaign, especially in the midst of a presidential election. When Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld testified before the House Oversight Committee Oct. 6, the media criticized his wealth and spending amidst financial turmoil in his company and on Wall Street. But conspicuously missing was the story of Fuld’s political contributions. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Fuld has donated to Democratic candidates over Republican candidates by a margin of almost 5-to-1 in the last 15 years. He has given $106,400 to Democratic candidates...

Last Friday's debate between John McCain and Barack Obama proved to be a let down to most rational thinking conservatives. Sure, it would have been easy to claim victory as some on the right side of the political spectrum did. But in analyzing the debate from a critical perspective, McCain just didn't measure up. Not that he didn't score several points on foreign policy and national security issues. This is McCain's strong suit. He vigorously defended the war in Iraq, the dangers posed by Obama's plan for a quick withdrawal without a clear plan for victory, and the threat from...

The last two weeks have been a wild ride for the United States economy and for the presidential campaigns. The stock market has taken a tremendous beating, and financial institutions once thought of as solid, have now reached the verge of collapse under the weight of bad decisions and lack of oversight. The government has taken an unprecedented step at a bailout plan that will cost up to a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, while offering no guarantees that it will stop the bleeding. Treasury Henry Paulson, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said that our nation's still frozen credit markets...

The drumbeat. It's always there. Day and night. Rain or shine. Winter or Summer. Sunday or Monday. It comes at you from every direction. It comes over the TV, the radio, at work, at school, in music, in the newspapers, from the politicians, in conversation with others, even in church. It wears you down. It robs you of the will to resist its message.

Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson was an appalling attempt at smearing her, even to the point that some in the mainstream media even took Gibson and ABC News to task on it. From the outset, it was clear that Gibson planned to paint her as completely inept and unqualified. The very first question, asking Palin if she hesitated when McCain offered her a spot on the ticket, dripped with condescension. Here was Gibson, looking professorial with his glasses down at the end of his nose, eyebrow cocked, as if to portray her as a liar, or so self-assured as...

Money Track at Political Base Data aggregated from the FEC. All records are based on $200+ contributions to campaigns except for the 2008 Presidential campaigns, which include sub-$200 transactions as well.

Republican presidential running mates John McCain and Sarah Palin roared into Virginia yesterday in their first appearance together in this vital battleground state. Sans their opponent’s usual big-name band opening act to pull in crowds, the McCain-Palin rally drew an estimated 23,000 or more from across Virginia. Crowds packed into a hot and humid Van Dyke Park in Fairfax City to cheer for their candidates. According to the campaign press office, this was the largest McCain-Palin rally to date. Sen. Fred Thompson fired up the crowd as the lead-in to the main event with red meat jabs at the media,...

On Shepard Smith program tonight, there was a clip of Obama on campaign trail saying this: "you take a PIG, and put lipstick on it, it's still a pig" Smith said Obama was referring to Palin in the comments. NOTE: Brit Hume said today that 3 democrat Senators , who Hume showed in a picture at Obama event are the ones investigating TROOPERGATE, which is OUTRAGEOUS...why are Obama supporters "heading up" that investigation, that is a conflict of interest. That too needs to be addressed.

There's a huge buzz in the conservative community. Republicans are finally on board with John McCain's candidacy, what with his excellent accounting of himself at Rick Warren's Civil Forum at Saddleback and the addition of Sarah Palin to the ticket. We should feel excited, even proud to be Republicans again. We appear to have finally found our way, recovering from the mistakes that were made which led to the Democrats taking over both houses of congress in 2006. But lately I've been sensing a certain feeling of cockiness. Democrats, we are told, are running scared. Palin has the Obama camp...

A few months back I wrote a blog post in which I gave several reasons why I would not support John McCain for president. I had and still have several issues with which I disagree with McCain. However, since that posting, several factors have changed my stance. The biggest thing that has led me to re-evaluate my position is that fact that Barack Obama has emerged as the most dangerous candidate to ever run for the presidency. His political ideology is so far to the left as to be considered Marxist, and his ties to unsavory characters such as William...

John McCain's latest campaign ads attacking Barack Obama on his celebrity status and his messianic persona are hitting their marks. Obama has helped to paint himself as the second coming of Jesus Christ...and now those chickens are coming home to roost. His arrogant, elitist attitude has struck even some of his most ardent supporters as over-the-top. McCain, for his part, has up till now, refrained from going after Obama on his exaggerated sense of importance. Instead, he has preferred to paint Obama as just "not getting it" when it comes to such issues as the Iraq war, negotiations with Iran...

John McCain is making it increasingly difficult for conservatives to support him. His lack of passion and enthusiasm for this race has left many dumbfounded. The mainstream media's love for Barack Obama has kept McCain out of the spotlight for the longest time, and this past week with Obama on his "magical mystery" tour, McCain was virtually nowhere to be seen. One exception was when Obama was giving his "citizen of the world" speech in Germany. McCain made an appearance at a German restaurant...in Ohio. How lame is that? On those notable occasions when he pops his head out of...

There is no such thing as a bad time to salute our nation's soldiers This note ought to come under the heading of dumb, stupid or insensitive. Why would a person, least of all a presidential candidate, travel all the way to a war zone and not take time to salute our troops? And this is the man who wants us We the Peoples to believe that he deserves to be our nation's Commander in Chief. And his big ol' inept excuse? He did not think it would be appropriate to use campaign money to visit the troops! What an...

Understanding American voter sentiments heading into the 2008 Election cycle is no easy task. Voters seem to be all over the board on how they feel about the issues, the candidates, and what they think we should do about each issue is even stranger. In studying current Rasmussen Report detailed numbers, Americans seem to struggle with remaining on task all the way through their thought processes. Many voter positions appear quite counter-indicated, contradictory and even downright confusing, or should I say, confused. Obama and McCain are clearly in a dead heat statistical tie in the race for the White House....

We are in the eye of the hurricane; past the primaries and caucuses, not quite to the conventions, debates and the general election. This should be a time for both candidates to be pounding home their messages. Barack Obama is getting all the support he needs from the mainstream media. They love him, adore him, worship him. He is the second coming of Christ, or so it is believed. But what of John McCain? During the primary season, when McCain had already wrapped up the Republican nomination, and Clinton and Obama were duking it out, several pundits were saying John...

Barack Obama is on fire. The presumptive democratic nominee for president has thoroughly defeated Hillary Clinton in the race for the White House, the two of them have apparently kissed and made up, she's now on the campaign trail hawking his wares, and all is right with the world as far as the Democratic National Committee is concerned. All polls seem to indicate that Obama is beating his republican rival John McCain. McCain himself has indicated that he is the underdog in this race, and has a lot of work to do between now and November. Obama is the oncoming...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va., June 17, 2008 – The U.S. military now incorporates a joint-force strategy to combat enemies who practice unconventional warfare around the globe, a senior officer said today at the kickoff of the 2008 Joint Warfighting Conference. The success of Operation Desert Shield, a joint military effort that forced Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991, convinced America’s enemies that unconventional, or asymmetrical, warfare was the best way to confront U.S. forces, Army Lt. Gen. John R. Wood, deputy commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command, told conference attendees. “We have a strategy; it is joint,” Wood said. “In...

Hillary Rodham Clinton ended her historic bid for the White House on Saturday and enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama. Yeah, right. She actually suspended her campaign, allowing her to hold on to her delegates and technically remain a candidate. She does so in the hope that something might happen which would change the minds of the superdelegates that have fallen over like dominoes for Obama. And what, pray tell would make that happen? Another scandal, perhaps. One so devastating to the Obama camp that it would cripple his candidacy. There are rumors of a DVD which may soon surface, purportedly of...

The Teflon candidate, Barack Hussein Obama, has resigned from his church following the latest scandal involving another preacher delivering racially charged comments. In this case, it was a guest speaker, a Roman Catholic priest, no less. Controversies surrounding the church have created persistent distractions to his campaign, so say his staffers. The problem is, this means nothing. It never has. The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Reverend Otis Moss and now Rev. Michael Pfleger, whose videotaped guest sermon at the church Sunday showed him taunting Hillary Clinton and saying she felt “entitled” to the presidency because she’s white would have decimated the...

When President Bush addressed the Israeli Knesset last week, he hit the nail directly on the head with his remarks about some who would seek to appease terrorists. Bush said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it...

If I had any doubts about whether to vote for John McCain in this year's presidential election, those doubts were laid to rest this past week when McCain sat down for an interview with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. McCain solidified for me the fact that he is not a true conservative and not worthy of my support. McCain proved that on some of the most crucial issues, he will let down a base of constituents that are looking for answers. O'Reilly addressed the question of rising gasoline prices. Anyone with a brain in their head knows that only two...

The Indiana and North Carolina primaries loom large this week for Hillary Clinton. Recent polls show that she is in a virtual dead heat with Barack Obama. Obama's problems with his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright just will not go away, as much as he would like them to. Wright continues to make news because he wants to remain in the spotlight. Wright, at first incensed that Obama finally tried to sever all ties with him over his incendiary remarks, now is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame by appearing on programs such as Bill Moyers, and making speeches...

The fact is - most Americans would love to pull the lever for none-of-the-above! 50% of American voters have been pulling that lever for years now, having already thrown in the towel on elective self-governance by not voting at all. The other 50%, who still vote, cast their votes against the other candidates, not for any of the clearly under qualified misfits that now run for the highest office in the land. (snip) In the end, a vote for Hillary is only a vote against Obama and McCain. A vote for Obama is only a vote against Clinton and McCain...

Just when you thought that Barack Obama would be able to put the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy behind him, the albatross around his neck became even heavier when Wright decided to return to the spotlight. First, he agreed to a sit down interview with PBS's Bill Moyer, in which he says his fiery comments were taken out of context and used in a devious manner by the media to discredit him. Wright is also scheduled to appear Sunday in Detroit at the NAACP's 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund dinner. And a prominent Muslim leader from a Detroit suburb has...

Barack Hussein Obama never ceases to amaze us with his comments regarding the very people he claims to want to attract to his campaign. His most recent case of foot-in-mouth disease was evidenced last Sunday when he made disparaging remarks about the voters of Pennsylvania. Obama was speaking to a group of wealthy California donors in San Francisco. He said that residents of small-town America “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” out of bitterness over lost jobs. When his opponents, Hillary Clinton and John McCain jumped all over the remarks as arrogant, Obama...

We at America Talks are launching a concerted effort to see to it that Barack Hussein Obama is not elected the next president of the United States. He is a dangerous individual who would do great harm to this country. Obama's associations with people of questionable character, his friendship with a racist pastor whose comments he claims he disavows, his plans to negotiate with and placate terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, leads us to believe that his not an honorable man who is looking out for the interests of our nation. Obama's questionable past, his embellishment of his father's legacy, his...

There is no disputing the insanity in the amount of money spent on political campaigns in America and no explaining it either. If the average American really is poor and desperate for change, where is all this money coming from? And would these Americans still be poor if they didn't waste a billion dollars trying to fill a $400k a year job? (snip) As of current FEC campaign filings, Americans have so far thrown a record $790 million at the 2008 presidential election since the campaigns started 14 months ago. The cost of selecting our next president could easily hit...

My notes on this from the Clinton call weren't clear, but USA Today posts the audio, which is. On the Clinton call earlier, Mark Penn said, "We believe that [the Pennsylvania primary result] will show that Hillary is ready to win, and that Sen. Obama really can’t win the general election." He later revised it to say that losing Pennsylvania would raise questions about Obama's ability to win. But it's a pretty strong thing to say.

Hillary, 'most secretive politician in America'? Posted: Wednesday, March 05, 2008 6:34 PM by Domenico Montanaro Filed Under: 2008, Clinton, Obama From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan and Domenico Montanaro The Obama campaign is stepping up the rhetoric. Campaign Manager David Plouffe went so far as to call Hillary Clinton the "most secretive politician in America today." The tough talk underscored not only the negative shift in tone of the Obama campaign in the past 24 hours, but just how contentious this fight for the nomination is becoming. Part of what the Obama campaign would like the focus to be on is...

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By now, every political junkie knows that Hillary Clinton made a $5 million donation to her own primary campaign in the days leading up to Super Tuesday. Should the personal cash infusion make her supporters nervous? Maybe. Certainly the Clintons can afford such a payout, but by dipping into her own pockets, Hillary joins the dubious ranks of the self-financers, for whom GOP dropout Mitt Romney is this year's poster boy. True, self-financing did wonders for Michael Bloomberg, who spent a reported $148 million on his two New York City mayoral campaigns, but experts say that paying your own way...

Barack Obama has made a historic presidential run this cycle primarily on the basis of changing the political culture in Washington. His unbelievable success has ironically set a trap for a potential general-election run. Obama has to choose now between keeping his word, or conveniently breaking it and exposing himself as just another self-serving politician: A year ago, at the beginning of his bid to secure the clean-up-Washington mantle, Barack Obama made a pact with John McCain that, if the two were to be their party's nominees, each would accept public financing for the general election. That agreement sounded far-fetched:...

In a message to supporters sent just before 11 p.m. Friday night, Representative Ron Paul, a long-shot G.O.P. candidate from Texas, basically conceded that he’s not going to win the party’s nomination. That said, he’s scaling back his campaign — but not entirely. He said: With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do...

OMAHA, NE -- Barack Obama called Mitt Romney's candidacy "ineffective" on the day that the former MA governor dropped his bid for the presidency. Romney, who dropped out of the race for president today in Washington, said in his exit speech that the GOP must unify and not allow Democrats to allow the country to "surrender to terror." "Well my reaction to Mitt Romney's comment that's the kind of poorly thought out comment that lead him to drop out," Obama said during a press avail on his campaign plane. "It's a classic attempt to appeal to people's fears that will...

With all of the primaries going on in the past month, you may have noticed that the presidential candidates are starting to get a little snarky with each other. What you may not know is that mudslinging isn’t exactly a new tactic. And I’m not talking as recent as Nixon and Kennedy… nope, the nasty rumors and talk of mistresses and morals go as far back as George Washington. In case you’re wondering exactly how down-and-dirty these campaigns got, consider the fact that this is the only election in history where a vice president has run against the president he...

McCain is loathesome. And, it's not just fellow Republicans who despise him. But, if the hard core GOPers want to hate their front runner, who are we to stop them: But Sen. McCain still confronts a problem both in the remainder of the nomination race, and, if he wins, in the fall: He is simply loathed by many fellow Republicans, often for the very bipartisanship and maverick streak that attracts independents. His biggest, and perhaps final, test comes Tuesday, when 21 states hold contests -- most of them open only to Republican voters. "So it is over. Finished. In November,...

"This has nothing on the nearly $1 million that Hillary Clinton has had to give back as a result of the Norman Hsu scandal," he told The Los Angeles Times. "I would put Sen. Obama's record of fighting for lobbying and ethics reform up against anyone in this race."