Free Republic

Dr Dave Football Prognosticator With His Weekly Picks 13 Detroit at 19 Chicago Lock Of the week 1:00 PM FOX Soldier Field 24 Cincinnati at 13 Cleveland Lock of the week 1:00 PM CBS Cleveland Browns Stadium 17 Seattle at 28 Indianapolis Lock of the week 1:00 PM FOX Lucas Oil Stadium 26 NY Giants at 13 Kansas City Lock of the week 1:00 PM FOX Arrowhead Stadium

French President Sarkozy sees Obama as very naive and arrogant. Sarkozy is worried about the Western world with such a flawed president leading America.

That's my Ann!

Barack Obama’s Gallup approval rating of 52 percent may well be lower at this stage of his presidency than any US leader in recent times with the exception of Bill Clinton. But he is still worshipped with messiah-like adoration at the United Nations, and is considerably more popular with many of the 192 members of the UN than he is with the American people. The latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey of international confidence in Obama’s leadership on foreign affairs shows strikingly high approval levels for the president in many parts of the world – 94 percent in Kenya, 93 percent...

Ever since Glenn Beck took to the Fox television airwaves recently to offer a bizarre reading of the art commissioned 70 years ago for New York's Rockefeller Center, I've been puzzled by the graphic design element of his 9-12 Project. The logo (pictured) for his affiliated groups' rally in Washington, D.C., this weekend derives from century-old communist, socialist and other left-wing designs. Those were the motifs he railed against in his Rockefeller rant. For the logo, three raised and clenched red fists are superimposed over the U.S. Capitol. Obviously the bloody fist represents the tea-baggers' themes of unity and resistance....

GAO lists Postal Service as a troubled agency in need of immediate action WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Government Accountability Office on Tuesday added the Postal Service to its list of high-risk federal agencies in need of change. The post office has been struggling with a sharp decline in mail volume as people and businesses switch to e-mail both for personal contact and bill paying. The agency is facing a nearly $7 billion potential loss this fiscal year despite a 2-cent increase in the price of stamps in May, and cuts in staff.

A Fox News Channel commentator, Glenn Beck, said he believed President Barack Obama was a racist. Beck made the statement during a guest appearance on the "Fox & Friends" morning show. He said Mr Obama had exposed himself as a person with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture". His remarks came during a discussion over Mr Obama's reaction to the arrest of the Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates junior Mr Gates is black and was arrested for disorderly conduct by a white policeman over a misunderstanding about a break-in at his home. A spokesman for...

A new literature review, published by The Lancet, emphasizes the great proportion of HIV/AIDS cases among men who have sex with men (MSM) in sub-Saharan Africa, a fact often ignored in the fight against AIDS in Africa. The study concludes, however, that the solution to the problem lies in greater openness to homosexual practices from the African nations and better access to interventions, a solution that experts from the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) have called "simplistic." The review, principally authored by Dr. Adrian D. Smith of the University of Oxford, calls for greater acceptance of...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--A social researcher who has studied sexual behavior for 24 years believes the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has sound reasons for maintaining its prohibition against gay scoutmasters. A homosexual cannot automatically be considered a child molester, said Judith Reisman, president of the Institute for Media Education in suburban Louisville, Ky. But with 17-24 percent of boys being abused by age 18, nearly as many as the 25 percent of girls, there is cause for concern, she said. Since heterosexuals outnumber the homosexual population about 44 to 1, as a group the incidence of homosexuals molesting children is...

How should the Catholic community respond to men and women who think that a person's sex change operation would solve their problem? Catholic teaching in this area is clear. It is impossible to "change" a person's sex. Hormone treatments, cosmetic surgery and surgery to mutilate the sex organs do not change a person' sex. Confusion in this area has come about because people tend to defer to scientists, particularly in areas where their personal experience is limited. Therefore, when doctors, including those from the prestigious Johns Hopkins, have promoted "sex change" operations for physically normal men who believed they were...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJsSb4qtILhg&refer=worldwide Link only, per the rules of King Bloomberg I's news service.

"M*A*S*H"'s Major Charles Winchester has stepped out of the tent. Actor David Ogden Stiers tells Gossipboy.com, "I am [gay]. Very proud to be so." Later in the interview, he said, "I wish to spend my life's twilight being just who I am."

If you ask anybody why they got into this business and they say it was for the money, they are either certifiably insane or no longer in the business. Funny. Few in journalism call it a business. We like to think we forfeited bigger paychecks to pursue something that is essential: speaking truth to power, comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable. And there is a lot of truth to that. Most people in newsrooms are idealistic. They think of their work more as a vocation than a job. But at the end of the day, we produce something - journalism...

Few things in this life are more politically divisive than guns. Generally speaking, liberals hate them and conservatives love them. Yet both history and experience teach us that few things are as integral to freedom as guns. Therefore, when liberal politicians push for more gun control, freedom-loving Americans panic because they know that an assault on guns is an assault on freedom. Our Founding Fathers were confident of the connection between guns and freedom, and they were convinced that the American people were freer than others because of the right to keep and bear arms. Said [1] James Madison: “[The...

LOL, OK, I haven't watched Nightline in years. But after waking up from a dose of sleep after a long day's work this evening, I was suddenly confronted with Nightline. Presenting the view of "many" in the media and society concerning the current presidency of Barack Obama, after the first 100 days. This "balanced" (my emphasis) survey of "well known personalities" (using Nightline's terms) of the American mindset included: Nancy Pelosi, Bill Mayer, Ali Wentworth, Paul Krugman, Arianna Huffington, Al Sharpton and Cokie Roberts with Jim Cramer, George Will, and Newt Gingrich barely sprinkled in to allow the word "balanced"...

BREAKING NEWS... Kansas Gov. Kathleen Seblelius has won approval from a divided Senate panel to become secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama administration ... The head of the Family Research Council says he hopes the latest revelation about the "blood money" Health and Human Services secretary nominee Kathleen Sebelius received from Kansas abortionist George Tiller will cause senators like Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts to reconsider their support for her appointment. Family Research Council (FRC) and other pro-life groups have obtained a copy of a 2002 letter [PDF] in which notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller claims that...

John Dean, a President Nixon staffer as Watergate was about to unfold, told his boss, "There is a cancer on your presidency." Would any member of President Obama's staff dare tell him any such thing today? -snip- At no point until now has the birthplace of a president been anything more than a local chamber-of-commerce item of pride (where I come, from they're still arguing whether President James Polk was born in Tennessee or North Carolina!). All of a sudden the question of President Obama's birth place threatens to undermine his very eligibility to serve, and to toss America into...

Men who drive expensive cars really are more attractive to women, according to a study by university researchers. Psychologists proved what car-dealers have boasted for generations the car one drives is key when it comes to turning a woman's head. The university team showed women pictures of the same man sitting in two cars - a £70,000 silver Bentley Continental and a battered Ford Fiesta. The women, who were aged between 21 to 40, picked the man sitting in the Bentley ahead of the same man in the Ford. Dr Michael Dunn, of the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff,...

The White House's top budget official declared on Sunday that "fundamentally, the economy is weak" while saying the administration's own financial predictions could need a revision by midyear. Peter Orszag, President Barack Obama's Office of Management and Budget director, said in television interviews that the economic downturn has been years in the making but cautioned that the new administration wasn't yet looking at a second economic stimulus package. Orszag said the already-in-place $787 billion stimulus should have a chance to work before officials ask Congress to consider a sequel.

Clinton sees possible North Korea power struggle By Arshad Mohammed 13 mins ago SEOUL (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday raised the possibility of a power struggle in North Korea, saying that made it more urgent to find a way to end the secretive state's nuclear weapons program. Speaking to reporters as she flew to South Korea, Clinton said "the whole leadership situation is somewhat unclear" in North Korea, whose leader Kim Jong-il is widely believed to have suffered a stroke last August. "If there is a succession, even if it is a peaceful succession ......

[...] [W]hy do academics spend time and money investigating what seems like blindingly obvious common sense? [...] This year’s classics — Students who watch hundreds of television adverts for junk food are more likely to eat snacks of unhealthy food and put on weight, according to the University of Alberta’s centre for health promotion studies — Call centre staff who try to be your friend by using your name – dubbed synthetic personalisation – are irritating, concluded Oxford University researchers — Parents whose children will not eat vegetables can succeed in disguising them in other dishes by mushing them up,...

BOSTON - Gay and bisexual men in Massachusetts continue to be the hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic with a significant percentage of new cases appearing among minority men. That’s according to a new report by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health that found while the state has had success battling the disease among injection drug users and heterosexual men and women, it has had less success among gay and bisexual men. More than half of HIV infections between 2004 and 2006 were among gay and bisexual men even though they make up less than 10 percent of the population.

[Full Title: Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Will Increase Prevalence of Homosexuality: Research Provides Significant Evidence] An accumulation of research from around the world finds that societies which endorse homosexual behavior increase the prevalence of homosexuality in those societies. The legalization of same-sex marriage--which is being considered by voters in several U.S. states--is the ultimate in societal endorsement and will result in more individuals living a homosexual lifestyle. Extensive research from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the United States reveals that homosexuality is primarily environmentally induced. Specifically, social and/or family factors, as well as permissive environments which affirm homosexuality, play major environmental roles...

Remember during the campaign how this whole economic mess, according to the Obama camp, was the fault of the Bush administration and the past 8 years? They had all those excellent slogans… we can’t afford four more years of the same… remember? I don’t want to say that a lot of people bought that crap, but anytime you tried to talk about actual economic history and how this mess evolved, most people glazed over and muttered “past 8 years… more of same… must change.” Well, just this Sunday while enjoying a piping hot cup of joe and a danish, I...

Posted by Wayne Allyn Root at Root For America We’re handing our country over to a man with no experience. No experience as a businessman, or as a government official. All because we dislike George W. Bush. America wanted ABB (Anything But Bush). Well congratulations! We’ve now elected a man to govern America whose entire experience ‘governing’ is having served less than 4 years in the US Senate. During which time he never put his name on one bill of any significance. He never even held a meeting for the committee that he chaired! He arrived in Washington as a...

(excerpt) "At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace." One speaker likened "Zionist settlers on the West Bank" to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been "blinded by ideology." (excerpt) "Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian rights activist in Chicago who helps run Electronic Intifada, said that he met Obama several times at Palestinian and Arab American community events. At...

Rep. says 'Liberals hate real Americans' By: Ryan Grim October 21, 2008 02:26 PM EST Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), has conceded that he did tell a North Carolina crowd that "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God," even though he initially denied making such a statement. Now he says he didn’t mean it that way, and he was just trying to rev up a campaign rally. “I genuinely did not recall making the statement and, after reading it, there is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way. I actually was...

Warming up a crowd in North Carolina Saturday, Republican Rep. Robin Hayes offered the diagnosis that “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.” His remarks came shortly after he had said he would “make sure we don’t say something stupid, make sure we don’t say something we don’t mean.” Hayes had followed Rep. Patrick McHenry, also a North Carolina Republican, who laid out the choice between McCain and Obama. “It’s like black and white,” yelled someone from the crowd. HT: ThinkProgress Update: Hayes spokeswoman, Amanda Little, says that Hayes absolutely denies making the comments that...

Believing in God makes people nicer, a major study has concluded. After analysing three decades of research, scientists say religion encourages individuals to be more helpful, honest and generous. But believers acting for the greater good may be doing so to enhance their own reputation among friends and acquaintances, according to the review published today in the journal Science. Dr Ara Norenzayan, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, Canada, said the debate over whether religion improves behaviour has too often been driven by opinion and anecdote. 'We wanted to look at the hard scientific evidence,' he said. Published...

The following are the reasons why tonight I fear for my country: Normally reliable GOP states like Virginia and North Carolina appear at risk in the polls Young voters are being strongly courted and are flocking to the Democratic candidate [...with the] presidential elections just weeks away, there are unprecedented efforts to turn out young voters and indications that they are paying closer attention to the campaigns than they have in years. ...at least 2.6 million new voters between the ages of 18 and 29 have been registered – the vast majority via the internet. The New Voters Project has...

Recently the Obama campaign and its surrogates have been putting forth the preposterous proposition that Jesus Christ was a "community organizer", and that Pontius Pilate was a "governor". The obvious connection they want us to make is that Barack Obama is like Jesus Christ, and Sarah Palin is like Pontius Pilate. I guess one could possibly draw those conclusions if they knew nothing about Jesus Christ or community organizing. However, when one examines the facts, one could very well come up with the exact opposite conclusion. First let us begin with a working definition of "community organizer" and see if...

Sorry sight last night, post-Palin speech, seeing the Fourth Estaters pooh-pooh Republican charges that the media are pro-Obama. But perception is reality in politics, and according to a new SurveyUSA poll, this limited to Washington State registered voters, folks believe the press is pressing for the Democrat candidate. When asked "Is the media rooting for Barack Obama? Rooting for John McCain? Or trying its best to be fair to both?" 52% said "for Obama," 8% said "for McCain," 35% said "being fair to both." Interesting: 28% of Democrats, 28% of liberals, and 42% of moderates chose "for Obama." It would...

Cannot post due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2008/07/is-the-media-trying-to-elect-obama.html

The list of people Sen. Barack Obama probably wishes were passive, rather than active, supporters of his bid for the presidency is growing. Already on the list are the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Rev. Michael Pfleger. Obama may be ready to add retired Gen. Wesley Clark. Clark, not a stranger to foot-in-mouth disease, on Sunday took a shot at Sen. John McCain's fitness to be president. Stressing that he views McCain as a hero, Clark said of the Republican candidate for president, "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification for...

BUSH'S AMERICA: 100 PERCENT AL-QAIDA FREE SINCE 2001June 11, 2008 In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised. I generally don't write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents. Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and...

Say it ain't so. Barack Obama has worked hard over the last 18 months to convince Americans that he is the untraditional politician – immune to special interests, loyal to his faith, close to the people, guided by principle. SNIP And now Obama goes and does something foolish that shows he is a traditional politician after all and may suggest that his religious convictions are not all that firm: He quits Trinity SNIP Not because he is uncomfortable sitting in the pews all those years but because other people were uncomfortable that he sat in the pews all those years....

Some things just don't need a lot of introductory material. This is the case with the VIDEO below. Andrew McCarthy is the author of "Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad." He was the federal prosecutor responsible for leading the investigation of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Lou Dobbs had a talk with Mr. McCarthy about Bill Ayers and his relationship with Obama. McCarthy: "Yeah, well he's denying the relationship, but I think more importantly what he's trying to obfuscate is that there's a trajectory to all of this and there's...

From the Phillies 2008 campaign: Libertarian Presidential candidate George Phillies today condemned claims that the Libertarian Party is a right-wing conservative Party. "Libertarians are not conservatives," Phillies said. "It is an act of fraud, a violation of our party's statement of principles, to lure conservatives to join by lying to them. Claiming our party is 'true conservative' is dishonest, and will wreck our party. "Yes," Phillies continued, "there are issues where we agree with conservatives. There are also issues where we agree with progressive liberals. For voters: If you agree with us on issues you care about, please vote for...

A new study out of the University of Texas argues that beautiful women want it all when it comes to picking a mate. In fact, the more beautiful a woman is, the higher her standards. But, perhaps surprisingly, the study did not find that to be the case when it comes to men. It takes more than being a hunk for a man to want everything. He must also have status and the potential to be a good provider before he is likely to demand the best. On the surface it sounds like just another study showing that men are...

Turnabout is fair play, as Barack Obama and his campaign found out today. Ten days after demanding the resignation of Geraldine Ferraro for her “divisive” comments on race, Ferraro launched another broadside at the Obama campaign. Calling Wright a “racist bigot,” she criticized Obama for his own failure to address divisiveness: Former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro said today that she objected to the comparison Sen. Barack Obama drew between her and his former pastor in his speech on race relations Tuesday.In the speech, Obama sought to place the inflammatory remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a broader context,...

DENVER -- A Colorado Springs lawmaker referred Wednesday to unmarried, pregnant teenagers and the fathers as "sluts" who should be made to feel ashamed for their lack of morals. Rep. Larry Liston’s remarks were made during a discussion with health care professionals at a Republican legislative caucus lunch about Colorado’s high teen pregnancy rate. "In my parents' day and age, (unmarried teen parents) were sent away, they were shunned, they were called what they are," Colorado Springs Republican Rep. Larry Liston said during the meeting in Denver. "There was at least a sense of shame." "I think it’s wrong. They’re...

Shoes off at airport security checkpoints. Forms that are hard to understand. Complaints that go unheeded. Perhaps it's no surprise that a new survey shows Americans are less satisfied with government services than those provided by the private sector. The survey, scheduled for release today, measures an array of federal programs and services for the American Customer Satisfaction Index, produced by the University of Michigan and other groups. The government scored 67.8 on the index's 100-point scale. The score was lower than the overall score for all industries and economic sectors, by 7.4 points, and below the index's rating for...

The three main minorities in the United States -- blacks, Hispanics and Asians -- have little trust for each other and hold prejudiced views about Americans of different ethnic origins to their own, a poll showed Wednesday. "This extraordinary poll reveals some unflattering realities that exist in America today," said Sandy Close, head of new America Media (NAM) which sponsored the poll together with ethnic media groups. Forty-four percent of Hispanics and 47 percent of Asians are "afraid of African-Americans because they are responsible for most of the crime," the survey of 1,105 adults drawn from the three ethnic groups...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - People who experience the anxiety, racing heartbeat and rapid breathing of a panic attack have a higher risk of a heart attack or stroke, researchers said on Monday. "Our study adds panic attacks to the list of emotional states and psychiatric symptoms that have been linked to excess risk of cardiovascular disease and death," wrote study author Dr. Jordan Smoller of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Previous research found people with persistent feelings of depression, anger and hostility are at higher risk of heart attack, according to the study, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The...

Rock stars -- notorious for their "crash and burn" lifestyles -- really are more likely than other people to die before reaching old age. A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population. Between 1956 and 2005 there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians examined by researchers at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University. As well as Presley, the toll of those dying before their...

Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks. And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are. "Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview. Researchers led by Todd report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found...

MONTHS ago, I observed on my blog that I think John Edwards is a phony — a make-believe Man of The People. It’s not so much that he’s lying when he says he wants to help One America — the Deserving Poor, whom he wants to vote for him — get what it has coming to it from the Other America (that of the Really Rich, to which he disarmingly admits he belongs). I think he believes it. But I don’t, and here’s why: Strike One: Sept. 16, 2003. The candidate was supposed to appear on a makeshift stage on...

Cannabis users are 40% more likely than non-users to suffer a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia, say UK experts. Writing in the Lancet, a team led by Dr Stanley Zammit from Bristol and Cardiff Universities said young people needed to be made aware of the dangers. In an additional article, experts said up to 800 schizophrenia cases a year in the UK could be linked to cannabis use.

A single joint of cannabis raises the risk of schizophrenia by more than 40 per cent, a disturbing study warns. The Government-commissioned report has also found that taking the drug regularly more than doubles the risk of serious mental illness. Overall, cannabis could be to blame for one in seven cases of schizophrenia and other life-shattering mental illness, the Lancet reports. The grim statistics - the latest to link teenage cannabis use with mental illness in later life - come only days after Gordon Brown ordered a review of the decision to downgrade cannabis to class C, the least serious...

NORTH COUNTY -- A new study shows that day laborers on street corners and in hiring halls make up less than 1 percent of the work force, and that most are in the country illegally. As local anti-illegal immigration activists intensify their protests over day labor sites, a new statewide study suggests that public attention on this matter is out of proportion to the number of day laborers in California. The number of people who stand on street corners looking for work make up 0.02 percent of the state's total work force, according to the study by the Public Policy...