Free Republic

The ruling class continues to live high on the hog at the expense of the rest of the country -- staggering national debt, 10th Amendment and Great Recession be damned. The figures that follow are more consistent with an aristocracy, monarchy or plutocracy than our constitutional republic. Home prices According to the Washington Post, the Washington DC area experienced "the highest year-over-year home price gains in the nation this fall, as real estate values slumped in nearly every other metropolitan area." The article cited Standard & Poor's latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices released last week. From October 2009 to October...

Barack Obama has a substantial record of using thug-like language: ** Obama: “They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun” ** Obama to His Followers: “Get in Their Faces!” ** Obama on ACORN Mobs: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!” ** Obama to His Mercenary Army: “Hit Back Twice As Hard” ** Obama on the private sector: “We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“ ** Obama to voters: Republican victory would mean “hand to hand combat” ** Obama to lib supporters: “It’s time to Fight...

I need to know the rules for the Democrat’s class warfare. I understand that we are supposed to hate the rich, but which rich? I don’t understand the rules that separate friend from foe. We are supposed to hate successful manufacturers. But we are supposed to love a man who came to the Senate as a pauper, then used his position to become a multi-millionaire. We are supposed to hate Wall Street Bankers. But we are supposed to love a sleazy ambulance chaser. We are supposed to hate Paris for inheriting millions from a daddy who made it big in...

WASHINGTON (AP) - After meeting with President Barack Obama Thursday, Democratic leaders in Congress said they plan to hold a series of politically charged votes to extend middle-class tax cuts while letting tax cuts for the wealthy expire. Excerpted per FR posting rules.

...Christian Lander’s low-key but excellent “Whiter Shades of Pale” is a sequel to his first book, “Stuff White People Like” (2008)...Lander’s books are about that demographic slice of educated (or self-cultivated) people who are drawn to places where the good cheese stores, coffee bars, bookshops, art movie houses and indie bands are — places where, as importantly, there are plenty of other people pretty much like themselves. Needless to say, this bunch is easily satirized, and few people alive are as deft at this as is Lander...The conceit of Lander’s books is that he’s explaining, like some cross-cultural docent, the...

George W. Bush has come out of his self-imposed media blackout to promote his new book, Decision Points, which goes into full release on November 9th. Oprah Winfrey will air a pretaped interview with the former President on that day, but has a preview of the appearance out already, via The Right Scoop. In this clip, Bush tells Winfrey that he refrains from opining on Barack Obama’s performance because he wants to treat the current President the way he wished other former Presidents had treated him. Also, he elects to stay out of the “swamp” of punditry when Winfrey asks...

Consumers' right to file class actions is in dangerIf AT&T has its way before the Supreme Court, any business that issues a contract to customers would be able to prevent them from joining class-action lawsuits, taking away arguably the most powerful legal tool available to the little guy. By David Lazarus November 5, 2010 It hasn't gotten a lot of press, but a case involving AT&T that goes before the U.S. Supreme Court next week has sweeping ramifications for potentially millions of consumers. If a majority of the nine justices vote the telecom giant's way, any business that issues a...

Hidden in ObamaCare, Section 8002, is a new payroll tax that will hit paychecks of American employees beginning 01/01/2011. It was placed in ObamaCare to make the legislation appear to cost almost $100 billion less than the true cost. That’s according to Ron Greiner of StopObamaCare101.com,a national medical insurance expert. The program is called the Community Living Assistance Services and Support Program (ironically dubbed: “CLASS Act”). Even the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee (Senator Kent Conrad D-ND) called it, “A Ponzi Scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of.” (Charles...

Autonation CEO Succumbs To Obama Derangement Syndrome: Says President Is Playing The Class Warfare Card To Divide America Joe Weisenthal Sep. 15, 2010, 8:01 AM Oh hey look! It's another CEO outraged that Obama plans to raise taxes on the rich. This time it's Autonation CEO Mike Jackson who says on CNBC that the President is playing class warfare to divide Americans. Apparently returning tax rates for the richest Americans to where they were prior to Bush -- which actually we don't think is a great idea -- is class warfare. All of these CEOs keep bashing Obama, which is...

OGUNQUIT, Maine – Former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura surprised participants in the third annual “Run for the Fallen” Sunday. Dozens of runners took part in the event to remember the 65 servicemen and women from Maine who have died overseas since 2001. When the run ended, people gathered at Fort Williams Park in Cape Elizabeth for a lobster bake. They were surprised with a visit from former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura. They wanted to thank the runners and organizers for this tribute to the fallen. The Bushes spoke with the families of...

How about them political elites, huh? Five million bucks for Chelsea Clinton's wedding, 15K just to rent the air-conditioned shitters -- huge chrome and glass babies with hot water and everything. No gas masks and waxy little squares of toilet paper for those guys. Yes, it looks big time from the cheap seats. But the truth is that when we are looking at the political elite, we are looking at the dancing monkey, not the organ grinder who calls the tune. Washington's political class is about as upwardly removed from ordinary citizens as the ruling class is from the political...

Imagine you are one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s top political strategists. The polls show your party needs a game-changer, something that will transform what looks like a losing political hand into a winner. “I know,” you shout, “let’s push for a large tax increase on the ‘fortunate few’ — the 2 or 3 percent of the population with so much money they won’t even miss a few thousand bucks. The other 97 or 98 percent will feel no pain, and we’ll be able to call ourselves deficit hawks when all those billions start rolling in.” On paper, this strategy...

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A new UCLA study suggests that disparities in cardiovascular disease risk in the United States are due less to race or ethnicity than to socioeconomic status. In the study, published in the August issue of the journal Annals of Epidemiology, researchers from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and colleagues found that there are large differences in risk by socioeconomic status within racial and ethnic groups — with the poorest individuals having the highest risk — but that there are few differences in risk between racial and ethnic groups. "Most ethnic differences in cardiovascular risk are really due...

Rush Limbaugh recently dedicated a substantial portion of his show to an incredible article by Angelo M. Codevilla in the current American Spectator: America's Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution. (Here's the text of Limbaugh's monologue.) Here's how important I think this article is: It makes me think of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. Published in January 1776, Paine's most portentuous work "fixed" in written words (like a fly is "fixed" in amber) a lot of things that people intuitively knew and felt but had never heard boldly stated in clear, plain English. And once the words had been...

Are you ready for the next massive taxpayer bailout? Many of the same lawmakers who infuriated taxpayers by bailing out Wall Street, the auto companies, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recently created a new program virtually guaranteed to require bailouts. And unlike those one-time bailouts, this one will become an annual taxpayer expense. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act is a new long-term care insurance program. The concept had floated around Washington for years before Congress inserted it into the Obamacare health law — most likely to provide a $70 billion piggybank that could be raided...

In his recent American Spectator article "America's Ruling Class- and the Perils of Revolution" (July/ August 2010), Professor Angelo Cordevilla observed that most of the voters who identify themselves as Democrats are reasonably satisfied that the Democratic Party represents them well, but only a fourth of the voters who call themselves Republican feel they are well represented by the Republican Party. While the Democrats may voice opposition to their elected leaders on select issues, they are more likely to overcome their stands on individual issues and vote the party line at election time. Many Democrats think their party sold out...

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment...

As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S. economy's "systemic collapse." In this, President George W. Bush and his would-be Republican successor John McCain agreed with the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. Many, if not most, people around them also agreed upon the eventual commitment...

FOR MOST of my life, I've been pretty much a "make love, not war" type of North Jersey woman. The very thought of owning, much less firing, a gun was as far from my mind-set as voting for a Republican or rooting for the Boston Red Sox. So why did I enroll in a National Rifle Association basic pistol class? I was pretty disgusted with all of the vitriol spewed last summer by the more extreme right-wing politicians, some of whom urged their supporters to become "armed and dangerous." With all of the shouts from the Tea Party crowd about...