Free Republic

The gorgeous and lovley Ivanka Trump is interviewed on Fox News: She's asked: How do think this President is doing? "I'm fearful for my grandchildren.....America wants to hear about jobs, not anti-business rhetoric"

RNC: Obama playing on 'class warfare and race'April 28, 2010 The Republican National Committee Tuesday night accused President Obama of making "an appeal based on class warfare and race" after Obama outlined his party's midterm strategy of returning people who voted for the first time in 2008 to the polls in November.Obama, in a video released this week, spoke in the demographic terms more commonly -- though very commonly -- used by political consultants, saying Democrats must appeal to "young people, African-Americans, Latinos, and women who powered our victory in 2008 [to] stand together once again." The Wall Street Journal...

the Congressional Budget Office has released data estimating that by 2016, 3 million Americans earning less than $59,000 a year will face a penalty for not having health insurance. An additional 900,000 earning more than that will also pay the penalty. To be clear, these numbers underestimate the full cost of the mandate. To start with, the estimates don't include those Americans who will decide to purchase insurance in response to the mandate. If somebody otherwise wouldn't choose to purchase insurance but because of the mandate ends up paying thousands of dollars in of premiums, that represents a cost, too....

One more small detail they forgot to tell you about in the health care bill: Taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes — in 2019 alone — because of healthcare reform, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’ official scorekeeper for legislation. The new law raises $15.2 billion over 10 years by limiting the medical expense deduction, a provision widely used by taxpayers who either have a serious illness or are older.

The Duchess of York flicks back her distinctive auburn hair and leans towards the camera. 'The world is changing,' she confides earnestly. 'The future never more uncertain, with an increasing population and a scarcity of national resources.' The words 'Deforestation', 'Terrorism', 'Global Warming', 'Credit Crunch' and 'Famine' flick alarmingly across the screen. 'The demand for well-paid jobs that are spiritually enriching is far outstripping supply,' she continues in Sloaney vowels. 'I want to give my children a chance - the best possible chance.' All rather confusing, given that her children - Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie - are fifth and sixth...

Katie Couric may be getting a taste of her own populist medicine. When the Dow hit 10,000 last October, she (and other network news personalities) used the opportunity to bemoan massive payments to Wall Street bankers. But now the populist sentiment has turned on her. She faces dramatic pay cuts as CBS News downsizes Couric, shown in a, er, file photo at right, "makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year! It's complete insanity," one CBS News insider told the Drudge Report. "We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step...

Obama announces economic aid for struggling middle class families WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is offering new ideas meant to help struggling people pay bills and care for their families, aiming to help a middle-class he says has been "under assault for a long time." Obama and Vice President Joe Biden outlined a series of proposals that will be in Obama's budget next month. They include a doubling of the child care tax credit for families earning under $85,000, a program to cap student loan payments for people carrying a big college debt burden and aid for families taking...

the new Medicare payroll tax hasn't even become law yet, and it's already on its way to being hiked for the second time. The tax was set at 0.5 percent in the orginal Senate bill, and then got raised to 0.9 percent in Harry Reid's final version that passed the Senate. And now the NYT tells us, its going to rise once again. This would actually follow the historical pattern of payroll taxes. The Social Security tax has been raised 20 times since first being implemented in 1935, from 1 percent to 6.2 percent, while the Medicare tax has gone...

How Americans vote is strongly linked to their religious identities, but it is not an independent influence that transcends race, socio-economic class and gender... Thomas A. Hirschl, Cornell professor of development sociology and first author... James Booth, Cornell professor of biological statistics and computational biology, and Leland Glenna, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University (who has a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School) -- found, for example, that "white support for Republicans is fractured by religious tradition, biblical authority, social class and gender," while black support for Democrats is equally strong across religious tradition, biblical authority, social class and gender,...

Rosenberg: Class Warfare Coming Your Way Joe WeisenthalNov. 16, 2009, 11:28 AM With the Dow just a couple of good days away from hitting 11,000, David Rosenberg's message is as harsh as ever. ---- CLASS WARFARE COMING YOUR WAY We have to admit that we cannot recall a time when the potential returns in Canada looked so attractive compared to the U.S. while the risks are so much lower — fiscal, economic, financial and political. Now we see that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is planning a slate of tax rate hikes on the upper class (defined to mean anyone...

Yet, they cannot comprehend what would motivate Middle America to distrust its government, for it surely does, as Ron Brownstein reports in the National Journal:

As the first family departs for Martha’s Vineyard, Patricia Williams says the trip illuminates their delicate relationship with the black upper class—a clubby world of debutantes and BMWs. When President Barack Obama appointed Valerie Jarrett as his senior advisor and Desiree Rogers as White House social secretary, there was, among the mainstream media, a bit of muffled gasping about from where on earth such designer-clad doyennes might have emerged. In what hidden universe do black people exist who can actually distinguish a fish knife from a shoe horn? And are there more of them? In what hidden universe do black...

Especially in the last four years, though throughout his presidency, the Democrats effectively painted the Bush presidency as in bed with fat cats at the expense of the middle class. How often did we hear the mantra of "tax cuts for the rich"? How often did we hear the Democrats bemoan the "skyrocketing costs of health care" under Bush? How often did we hear about "stagnating wages for the middle class"? Even though the economy was largely booming up until his last year of his presidency, the Democrats were still able to paint the Bush administration as anti middle class...

It sounds so simple: Just tax the few to pay for social programs that benefit the many. Yet no political idea — embodied by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call to tax the wealthy to cover health care for everyone else — has ever proved more contentious. The country was founded on the principle of unlimited and unbounded opportunity. Despite what poll questions often appear to say, class warfare language, outside the Democratic primary electorate, has always been politically counterproductive, because it divides Americans from one another and from their own aspirations and dreams. And class warfare could be especially problematic...

The other day, we were watching a rerun of The Last Comic Standing on TV. We were bored, and there was nothing much on but this program and Floyd getting drunk, forgetting what country he was in (again), and deciding to make paella on some Norwegian fjord. Anyway, two comics in a row made "jokes" about babies. The first talked about killing babies, and the next about punching out babies. As a new father, I was so gratified when the guest judge, Steve Schirripa (of The Sopranos), gave both comics the boot. He simply would not have it--jokes about hurting...

The campaign to expose MPs' Commons expense claims has become so personal that it has started to resemble a McCarthy-style witchhunt, a Tory backbencher said today. ...

Recommendation: read When Fussell wrote in 1982 (and published in 1983), he said that acknowledging the class divisions that exist in America exist was poor form and that doing so would likely lead to argument. Florence King wrote, “The subject skims across our minds like a hair blown across the face: a constant ticklish irritation, invisible but very much felt.” Class distinctions are as alive as ever and the subject is as taboo now as then—our fierce egalitarian heritage guarantees this—but a certain amount of fun can be had in their study. We’ll look at changes in the specific indicators...

In his history-making appearance on the Tonight Show, President Barack Obama stunned the nation with his offhand crack “I bowl like one of those retards in the Special Olympics.” During last Fall’s presidential race, Obama inspired titters by scoring a 37 in a bowling match in Pennsylvania. He says, though, that he’s been practicing in the White House alley and has recently scored as high as 129 in a single game. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs asked that Americans “show some class by not mocking the President’s lack of skills or his choice of words in describing them. The President has...

DAWN WALTON Globe and Mail Update Calgary — Former U.S. president George W. Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq, said “risk takers,” not government are needed to salvage the world economy and offered his advice to current U.S. administration during a luncheon speech in Calgary. In his first public address since U.S. President Barack Obama moved into the White House, Mr. Bush was greeted with a standing ovation when he took the podium by close to 2,000 guests who paid $4,000 per table. “This is my maiden voyage. My first speech since I was the president of the United...

Alaska governor Sarah Palin strode through the produce section of Juneau's Fred Meyer supermarket Saturday morning, smiling and waving with an entourage of youngsters in tow. "These are my children, Willow, Piper and [11-month-old] Trig," Palin told an excited group of Girl Scouts. Then Palin, 45, motioned to a baby bundled in a hoodie, held and bottle-fed by Piper. "And this is my grandbaby Tripp," she said of the infant son of her daughter Bristol, 18. "He's only 2-months-old. It's kind of surreal!," she added. Palin was taking a break from governing the nation's largest state to help Juneau's Girl...