Free Republic

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...