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President Obama talks to WFLA-TV, NBC's local news affiliate in Tampa Bay, about his promise to "fundamentally change" Washington. Obama says he hasn't been able to change Washington the way he campaigned for, but he did say he has "made a lot of progress" with government websites. Obama told the local affiliate that he has made using the internet more effective so if someone needs a government service, "they don’t have to navigate through 50 websites, they can go to one website. So on those fronts we’ve done a lot. We’ve made a lot of progress."

There's an old sea story about a ship's Captain who inspected his sailors, and afterward told the first mate that his men smelled bad...

find myself troubled by the changes in the moral foundations of our nation.

...we are seeing citizens being invited to “participate” in various forms of meetings...to “help determine” public policy in one field or another. They are supposedly being included to get ”input” from the public ... in one of these meetings... ...you will find that there is already someone designated to lead or “facilitate” the meeting. ... Actually, he or she is there for exactly the opposite reason: to see that the conclusions reached during the meeting are in accord with a plan already decided upon by those who called the meeting. The process used to “facilitate” the meeting is called the...

CAIRO—Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei on Saturday withdrew his candidacy from Egypt's coming presidential race in protest over the autocratic governance that has persisted under Egypt's post-revolutionary military leadership. Though Mr. ElBaradei wasn't considered among the top contenders for presidential elections scheduled for this spring, his global stature makes his pullout a symbolic blow to the military leadership and its often faltering stewardship of the country's transition to democracy. Mr. ElBaradei's statement on Saturday marks the highest-profile censure of the military's governance since a leading group of generals, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, assumed power from...

Here's a dream that one year from today, Barack Obama will be leaving office at noon Sunday January 20, 2013.

TSA collected $400,000 in spare change left by passengers in airports in 2011By Keith Laing - 01/12/12 02:59 PM ET Airline passengers left more than $400,000 at airport security checkpoints operated by the Transportation Security Administration in 2011. TSA found $409,085.56 in spare change last year that was unclaimed by passengers, according to figures released by the agency. Historically, if no one comes back to get the leftover money, it stays with the TSA. A Florida lawmaker is trying to change that, however: Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) filed a bill in April of 2009 that would require TSA to transfer...

As soon as Barack Obama uttered those eighteen powerful words in his first full month as President of the United States, he created a new economic standard for his administration. Though he would presumably never be caught voicing similar goals amid the upcoming November election, the grand expectations set by Obama fittingly align with his 2008 campaign’s unattainable levels of “hope” and change.” In fact, under the watch of President Obama, poverty rates have risen to 14.3%, unemployment rates have astonishingly hit 10% (the highest since the 1980’s), and the average number of weeks unemployed has doubled since January 2009,...

BISMARCK, N.D.—North Dakota granted a fourth extension of state aid for study of a plan to build a coal-to-liquid fuel factory, while the project's developers wait to see if the political climate in Washington changes after the presidential election. Dallas-based North American Coal Corp. and Headwaters Inc. of South Jordan, Utah, formed American Lignite Energy LLC in 2007 to oversee construction and operation of the $4 billion plant at a yet-to-be chosen site in western North Dakota. David Straley, a North American Coal Corp. spokesman said a decision on whether to start construction depends on a change of political climate...

To all, GOD BLESS US ALL!! Give GOD praises for all things! Let us comfort evil with good. Changing people who are lost with love and righteousness. Showing in our walk the option of love and joy in CHRIST. Be all things to all men Please pray the LORD's PRAYER (which is the prayer we are taught to pray!! To clarify please take out your bibles that you read and please the prayer that JESUS told us to pray and read MATTHEW 6:6-13): 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door,...

Growing numbers of New Yorkers seeking food stamps have created an unwelcome spillover effect at some of New York City's job centers: overcrowding that in some cases has grown so severe, benefits were jeopardized. The crush of people grew so large at one Brooklyn center in November that the Fire Department intervened and prevented anyone from entering the building.

The Ohio General Assembly approved a measure to combine the two scheduled 2012 primaries into a single date, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Yesterday House Bill 369 repealed the change to two primaries which would have pushed Ohio's 2012 Presidential primary into June. The change from the traditional "Super Tuesday" date was deemed necessary because the new political redistricting map was not yet approved. Governor John Kasich signed the bill into law, making March 6 officially the 2012 primary date, according to the Dayton Daily News.

If President Obama reaches a 50 percent approval rating by March, he’ll be in good shape for re-election, a panel of pollsters and election observers said today. Since the middle of July, the weekly average of Obama’s approval rating has been between 40 and 43 percent, according to Gallup, which organized the panel for the media. The pollsters pointed to two recent presidents who didn’t earn a second term to make the case for the importance of a 50-percent threshold: Just before Election Day, George H.W. Bush had a 34 percent rating, and Jimmy Carter was at 37 percent. Victors,...

Durban - A new deal to "save the planet" will force the world's three biggest emitters the US, China and India to cut carbon emissions for the first time, although scientists fear it will come too late to stop global warming. More than 190 countries managed to finally agree a new climate change deal amid chaotic scenes in the early hours of Sunday morning in Durban, South Africa. (Snip) In the end the wording was decided in an extraordinary 10 minute 'huddle' between the exhausted ministers to decide the fate of future generations.

In December of 2009, a guest on an Oprah Winfrey Christmas special was asked to grade the Obama administration’s performance at roughly the one-year mark. Without hesitation, the guest responded, “Good, solid B-plus.” The response may have seemed disingenuous to viewers with an awareness that the president’s $800 billion stimulus had failed to keep the unemployment rate below 8% as promised or that Congress was locked in partisan gridlock despite Obama’s promise to usher in an era of post-partisanship inside the Beltway. Then again, considering the source of that grade—Obama—the inflated self-assessment was hardly surprising. Nor should it come as...

Occupy Wall Street is an un-American movement generated by an un-American depiction of our country. In 2008, the leaders of the Democratic Party painted the United States as a “decaying, racist, capitalist realm,” unable to provide medical care for the poor, to rebuild her “crumbling schools,” or to replace the “shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race.”

Communist Party heralds Occupy Wall Street movement Communist Party USA October 18, 2011We greet the Occupy Wall St. movement as it spreads throughout our country from large cities to small towns, led by youth and joined by people of all ages and backgrounds, giving voice to deep anger at extreme economic inequality. The unemployed, those who have lost their homes, who cannot afford education or healthcare, are joining together as the 99 percent, saying "enough is enough" to the enormous greed and arrogance of financial institutions. An epic battle is underway for the direction of our country. http://cpusa.org/communist-party-heralds-occupy-wall-street-movement/_______________________________________________ Building the...

<p>Fox News had Breaking News this AM that the "occupy wall street" proteats are not happening all over the worlds. They had a live video of Rome where they were starting fires.</p>

Depopulation of Americas may have cooled climate MINNEAPOLIS — By sailing to the New World, Christopher Columbus and the other explorers who followed may have set off a chain of events that cooled Europe’s climate for centuries. The European conquest of the Americas decimated the people living there, leaving large areas of cleared land untended. Trees that filled in this territory pulled billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, diminishing the heat-trapping capacity of the atmosphere and cooling climate, says Richard Nevle, a geochemist at Stanford University. “We have a massive reforestation event that’s sequestering carbon … coincident...

Reid defends Senate rules changeBy Daniel Strauss - 10/11/11 08:27 AM ET Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) defended his unilateral change to the Senate's rules in an op-ed published Tuesday. In the Washington Post op-ed, Reid says his decision last Thursday to change the Senate rules —informally referred to as the "nuclear option"— to stop Republicans from requiring votes on amendments once the Senate has voted to move the legislation to final passage has restored order to the chamber. "The Senate rule change we made last week has been inaccurately described, including by Marc A. Thiessen on this page,...

Midnight on St Mary Street in Cardiff and everything is exactly as expected. Half a dozen young women slump in a gutter, men urinate outside a health-food shop and, as hordes stagger between nightclubs, someone lifts up a blow-up doll with a sex toy protruding out of it. The street smells of urine and lager, police struggle to break up a fight outside the Walkabout bar and a paramedic bundles a comatose girl on to a wheelchair. But it's a quiet night for 20-year-old Naomi Jenkins. She has 'only' drunk three shots of peach schnapps, cider and three shots of...

Every Thursday, the financial markets wait with bated breath for the weekly jobless claims report. The pundits claim any number below 400,000 is reason for optimism. If the number is above 400,000, the analysts say just wait until next week. It’s not that 400,000 people seeking first time unemployment checks is somehow a mystical line in the sand, it’s just the accepted number for economic improvement. In addition to the magical Thursday number are the always expected words “revised from an initial estimate.” Somehow, the BLS always understates the initial number and then always revises it upward. Is it even...

"This president can be a transformative leader (he has that potential in my view), but only if he embraces and fights for a transformative agenda."--Sam Webb, Chairman Communist Party USA Obama State of the Union: He got the ball rolling:http://cpusa.org/obama-state-of-the-union-he-got-the-ball-rolling ________________________________________________________________________________ "We are 5 days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America"--B.H.Obama, 2008 Yahoo search results for "Fundamentally Transforming The United States Of America":http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=moz35&p=%22Fundamentally+Transforming+The+United+States+Of+America%22&SpellState=n-2204099546_q-bsN.LA3I3%2F%2FdGaQgkeauogAAAA%40%40&fr2=sp-top____________________________________________ "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek"--...

WHEATON, Illinois, September 29, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Therapists who favor normalizing homosexuality say that it is impossible to change sexual orientation, and that the attempt to change is inherently harmful. However, the final results of a long-term study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy has joined hundreds of other studies in concluding that such therapy is both possible and potentially well-indicated for many individuals. Psychologists Stanton L. Jones of Wheaton College and Mark A. Yarhouse of Regent University are the authors of the longitudinal study, which tracked individuals who sought sexual orientation change through involvement in...

OK, confession: When I saw this headline on Drudge, I actually laughed out loud. Something about the word “stink” is just funny to me. And I had no reason not to laugh because I generally agree with the sentiment the sign expresses: Obama is a master at making excuses, which does come across as a little, well, babyish. In other words, the sign doesn’t offend me.

Barack Obama seemed a little confused in his UN speech Wednesday. Obama sang the joys of non-violent change, but picked … well, an odd example or two: "The Qaddafi regime is over. Gbagbo, Ben Ali, Mubarak are no longer in power. Osama bin Laden is gone, and the idea that change could only come through violence has been buried with him."

Media Matters, a nonprofit watchdog group, has documented a Fox News report proclaiming that the costs of green jobs exceed the benefits. A recent New York Times article, pointing to lackluster programs in California, concluded that “public efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed.” A column by David Brooks in The New York Times was pointedly titled “Where the Jobs Aren’t.” In reaching for bipartisan support in his jobs speech on Thursday, President Obama avoided the word “green” altogether. But green jobs still hold considerable promise. While it’s not hard to find examples of programs that haven’t...

President Obama is politically insane. This is the real meaning of his speech Thursday night in front of a joint session of Congress. Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. By that definition, Mr. Obama is a lunatic leftist. Much of his speech called for more of the same — government activism; massive spending on infrastructure, bridges and roads; extending the payroll tax cut; and more public aid to states and municipalities. In short, he seeks to perpetuate the dismal policies of Obamanomics. He is a reckless ideologue masquerading as a...

Gov. Pat Quinn today moved to lay off more than 1,900 state workers and close seven state facilities as part of a plan to cut the state budget.The governor sought to blame state lawmakers for giving him a state budget that was $2.2 billion less than he wanted. "Members of the General Assembly cannot run away from what they did in the spring," Quinn said. "Some of them patted themselves on the back for it." "It's time for a rendezvous with reality," he added. SNIP------------- The administration is seeking to close mental health centers in southwest suburban Tinley Park, Rockford...

Obama ratings sink to new lows as hope fadesBy Jon Cohen and Dan Balz, Tuesday, September 6, 12:05 AM Public pessimism about the direction of the country has jumped to its highest level in nearly three years, erasing the sense of hope that followed President Obama’s inauguration and pushing his approval ratings to a record low, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. More than 60 percent of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy and, what has become issue No. 1, the stagnant jobs situation. Just 43 percent now approve of...

You and your fellow U.S. taxpayers own 248,000 homes, the result of record numbers of people defaulting on government-backed mortgages, according to a Bloomberg Businessweek story that quotes a Cleveland housing expert. With even more homes moving toward default, the magazine says, “Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration are looking for a way to unload them without swamping the already depressed real estate market.” They've even issued a public plea for ideas to help do this; you have until Sept. 15 to send ideas to reo.rfi@fhfa.gov. Bloomberg Businessweek says the government's call for ideas is a sign...

I did a quick search on free republic and didn`t see anything about this 2 day old story. Apparently a study was done for the Climate Institute and they have found a link between mental illness and climate change. At first I thought OMG what a crock . But then I thought of ALGORE. Bingo. It`s true. ALGORE is the living walking talking proof that liberalism is a mental disorder. Dr. Savage is right on again.

President Obama coasted into the White House thanks in part to the youth vote, individuals aged 18-29 who bought into his vague promise to bring change. During Mr. Obama’s term in office, however, many of this group - known as Millennials - have been forced to learn how to subsist on pocket change. This isn’t quite what they were expecting when they turned out in historic droves in 2008. According to a recent poll commissioned by Generation Opportunity, 57 percent of Millennials participating said they will learn more about the policy positions of presidential candidates in the 2012 election than...

President Obama appealed to the patriotism of Congress as he urged members to act together to put people back to work. The president is vacationing on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, but he recorded his weekly Saturday radio and Internet address earlier in the week while in Alpha, Ill., during an economy-focused Midwestern bus tour.

Alternate headline: “Blogger can’t believe Obama’s job approval still as high as 39%.� Entrenched economic despair, chaos on Wall Street, the S&P downgrade, and Democratic disgruntlement over the debt-ceiling deal, yet somehow only now for the first time is he in the outskirts of Bushville with sub-40% approval. The way we’re going, I half-expect the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man to show up tomorrow in Manhattan — and even that probably wouldn’t bump The One down below 35%. Even so, notes Philip Klein, “No president since Harry Truman has been reelected with approval ratings this low, this late into his first term.�...

President Obama faced an imposing figure Monday as he tried to reassure Americans that the U.S. economy will rebound, and overcome a downgrading of its credit rating: the 2008 version of himself. The president’s pitch Monday—all that’s needed is a little “common sense and compromise”—was a far cry from the soaring rhetoric and optimism of his candidacy three years ago. And the first voters after Monday’s statement—Wall Street investors—weren’t entirely sold. The Dow Jones average fell 634 points Monday, with Obama’s words doing little to stop the downward momentum. Right now, Obama is facing his toughest challenger, and that is...

So I was driving the NY Thruway up to Saratoga this past weekend and I saw a few old Obama 2008 bumper stickers. As I saw each one I thought to myself, "How stupid must that person be not to have removed it yet." But then I passed a car with one of those old stickers with a new one that had another with nothing more than "2012" on it pasted next to the old one. A white, 40 something woman was driving. And it hit me. She is a government employee. She is quite happy about what is going...

Hospitals in Massachusetts will reap an annual windfall of $275 million due to a loophole enshrined in the new health care law. Hospitals in most other states will get less money as a result. The disclosure was buried in a regulation that Medicare issued late last week. Hospital association executives in other states are up in arms over the news, which comes at a time when they are girding for more cuts under the newly signed federal debt deal. "If I could think of a better word than outrageous, I would come up with it," said Steve Brenton, president of...

After Obama quipped earlier this summer that shovel-ready jobs weren’t as shovel-ready as “we expected,” it seemed that a central tenet of the 2012 campaign was probably going to be something along the lines of, we just haven’t had enough time. At his Chicago fundraiser last night, that’s exactly the stance he took, even going back to blaming George W. Bush:

Equities markets fell precipitously in New York as data highlights continued weakness across the board, from labor markets to manufacturing. Europe, falling off a cliff as authorities try to limit contagion, while Berlusconi tells investors Italy’s markets are sound, haven’t helped either. All three U.S. equity indices were trading deep in the red, having approached losses of 3%.

When I said 'change we can believe in' I didn't say 'change we can believe in tomorrow.' Not change we can believe in next week. We knew this was going to take time because we've got this big, messy, tough democracy," President Obama said at a campaign fundraiser in Chicago on Wednesday night.

"It's been a long, tough journey. But we have made some incredible strides together. Yes, we have. But the thing that we all ought to remember is that as much as good as we have done, precisely because the challenges were so daunting, precisely because we we were inheriting so many challenges, that we're not even halfway there yet. When I said 'change we can believe in' I didn't say 'change we could believe in tomorrow.' Not change we can believe in next week. We knew this was going to take time because we've got this big, messy, tough democracy,"...

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011 | Posted by Jillian Curtin Romney Video Slams Obama in Chicago Just in time for President Obama’s 50th birthday celebration fundraiser Wednesday evening, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney’s campaign has released a new campaign video detailing the “change” that has come to Obama’s political hometown of Chicago since his election day in 2008. Spokeswoman for the Romney 2012 campaign, Andrea Saul, posted the video on her Twitter feed, which was then picked up by MittRomneyCentral a “grassroots blog/forum/community dedicated to promoting Mitt Romney for President in 2012″.

Neanderthals died out in Western Europe after a surge of modern humans arrived from Africa and made them a minority in their own land, researchers claim. The swarm of Homo sapiens onto the continent more than 40,000 years ago left the Neanderthals, who had thrived in the frigid conditions for 300 millennia, outnumbered by a massive 10 to one.

Poverty: The gap in wealth between white Americans and minorities is the widest it's ever been, a new report says. Could it be that the government, while intending to help those in need, in fact ends up hurting them? New Census data show that the recent economic crash has erased decades of minority gains in wealth. The net worth of whites is now 20 times higher than for blacks and 18 times higher than for Hispanics, both records. For white households, the median net worth (assets minus liabilities) in 2009 was $113,149. That compares to $6,325 for Hispanics and $5,677...

How is Barack Obama handling his job as president? This is not a scientific poll Good 40% 95524 Poor 39% 91913 Fair 21% 48706

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to certify that gays can serve openly in the armed services

Bristol Palin told Fox News her mother has made up her mind about running for president, but Sarah Palin told The New York Times she's still thinking about it. According to the conventional wisdom, it may be too late for her to run. Ms. Palin's done no fundraising, hasn't built a campaign team. Republicans who supported her are drifting to active campaigns, chiefly that of Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. The conventional wisdom is more conventional than wise. Candidates start early to build name recognition and need a campaign organization to get supporters to the polls. Sarah Palin has 3.2...

CAIRO (AP) — The tens of thousands of Egyptians whose chants for faster change are ringing through Cairo's Tahrir Square months after they brought down Hosni Mubarak got a stern warning Tuesday from the ruling generals not to disrupt daily life in what some activists are calling a second revolution. The crowds again packing the powerfully symbolic square that was the center of the 18-day uprising in January and February defied the military council and staged a sit-in there for a fifth straight day, shutting down the heart of downtown Cairo and blocking access to a major government building. Under...

Thirty years ago this fall, on October 18, 1981, a charismatic academic with rather limited government experience and with a one-word slogan, “Change,” was elected prime minister of Greece. His name was Andreas Papandreou. Greeks may now wish that 30 years ago they had had a Tea Party movement. Things could have turned out differently. Thirty years ago, Greece was in an enviable position on the matter of national debt, with its debt just 28.6 percent of GDP. Few advanced countries can manage that kind of debt-to-GDP ratio. By the end of Papandreou’s first term in office, that ratio had...