Free Republic

Few are the men and women in American public life who haven't heard Mr. Dooley's famous aphorism: "Politics ain't beanbag." John Boehner, currently serving out his community service as speaker of the House, appears to have been meditating on Mr. Dooley's cautionary wisdom. At the Ripon Society last week he said the Obama administration was trying "to annihilate the Republican Party." Better late than never, Speaker Boehner now sees that Barack Obama's notion of political competition is Mad Max inside the Thunderdome: "Two men enter, one man leaves." Last week during the president's second inaugural address, if one can employ...

No matter what vulgar things Kathy Griffin does on CNN's live New Year's Eve broadcasts, the folks at the supposedly most trusted name in news continue to invite her back. On Monday night's program, after first telling co-host Anderson Cooper "I'm going to tickle your sack," she shortly after midnight actually kissed his crotch (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary): Roughly eleven minutes into the program which began at 10 PM, Cooper commented about how on Twitter folks were suggesting that there should be a game that whenever he giggles nervously during the show, contestants have to take a...

Princeton University Professor Dr. Cornel West appeared on the Tavis Smiley radio show on Thursday where he weighed in with his thoughts on how the media and lawmakers are responding to the tragic massacre of teachers and children in Newtown, Connecticut. West expressed his frustration over how eagerly the media demanded a conversation about gun laws after Newtown, but seems unmoved by endemic gun violence in America’s cities where the victims are primarily minorities. “We can’t just shed tears for those on the vanilla side of town,” West said.” They are precious, but they are no less or more precious...

Still a BFD

President Obama, in Los Angeles for a fundraiser, offered this observation on his wife's exercise routine, via the pool report: “Michelle outdoes me in pushups as well,” he said, after saying that she’s taken some criticism on her technique “because she doesn’t go all the way down” – a line that he let hang, naughtily, provoking laughter.......

Sandra Fluke said Rush Limbaugh has not called her personally to apologize for referring to her as a “slut” and a “prostitute” last week. Fluke, a Georgetown law student who testified last month to Democrats about the new contraception mandate in the healthcare reform law, also said she wouldn’t welcome a personal call from Limbaugh. “No [he has not called],” she said during a Monday appearance on “The View.” “And let me be clear that I think his statements on the air have been personal enough about me so I'd rather not have a personal phone call from him,” she...

First CLASS, What Next? In a Friday bad-news dump that was a whopper even by its own standards, the Obama administration added to the announcement of a near-record annual deficit and an escalation of undeclared war in Uganda the news that the CLASS Act, an ill-conceived adjunct of the Affordable Care Act, is no more. The upshot is this: Obamacare just got a whole lot more expensive than advertised, and there is reason to believe that its Democratic architects have long known this would happen.The Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act was the brainchild of the late senator Edward...

The Obama administration will not implement a controversial piece of the healthcare reform law, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Friday. Sebelius said the department will not continue trying to implement the CLASS program, which was intended to provide insurance for long-term care. Republicans charged that the program’s financial structure was unsustainable, and Sebelius conceded as much Friday. “We have not identified a way to make CLASS work at this time,” she wrote on the Huffington Post's website. Sebelius said HHS will “suspend” implementation of the program. The department recently reassigned the people it had placed in the...

What ever happened to class? Link

White House Says It Wasn't Responsible for Picking Rowdy Basketball Arena for Arizona Memorial Service Thursday, January 13, 2011 By Fred Lucas Washington (CNSNews.com) – White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the White Houes was not responsible for choosing a basketball arena, as opposed to a church or a smaller auditorium that might be more conducive to a solemn event, for Wednesday's night's memorial service in Tucson, Ariz. The McKale Memorial Center, an athletics facility at the University of Arizona, was packed with a reported 14,000 people, who repeatedly broke out in cheers and screams of a...

New Delhi: Michelle Obama is the boss at home - so what if husband and US President Barack Obama is the most powerful man in the world. "When you and the president have a fight, who makes up," a student asked the US First Lady at the National Handicrafts and Handloom Museum in New Delhi. "I always wait for the President to say sorry because I am a woman," Michelle Obama responded with a smile. Narrating the exchange, museum chairperson Ruchira Ghosh added that Michelle Obama came across a figurine at the 'bhoota' (ritual art from Karnataka) gallery and said...

As the Media Research Center reported last month, there are some truly sick, hate-mongering liberal radio hosts in America today, and one of the most disgusting is Mike Malloy. On Friday, this vile miscreant with a microphone said on the air that Liz Cheney should be planning her father's funeral rather than offering her opinions to the American people. This comes three months after Malloy told his listeners that he hoped former Vice President Dick Cheney would die in the hospital. On this day, the subject was Liz's comment concerning a Barack Obama quote about America being able to absorb...

Ten months back, at the very end of September, I posted online a brief piece entitled Obama’s Wrecking Crew, in which I drew attention to a column in The New York Post in which Charles Gasparino reported two items of interest. First, that the titans of Wall Street – men such as Morgan Stanley’s John Mack, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Greg Fleming (once at Merrill Lynch), JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein – were beginning, in private, to express grave misgivings concerning the Obama administration’s stewardship of the economy. And, second, that these insiders were also telling him...

It seems like a nice gesture – an e-mail message from a loving wife, urging thousands of people to join her in wishing her husband a happy 49th birthday by signing an electronic birthday card. But in Washington, D.C., nothing is that simple. The wife, in this case, is First lLdy Michelle Obama, and the message is being sent by the Democratic Party to people on its list nationwide. And underlying the birthday wishes, the message is political: The electronic card to Barack Obama also is a Democratic Party fundraiser.“Every year, our family tries to come up with a fun...

Top Republican says Emanuel gave him the finger By Jordan Fabian - 07/07/10 09:13 AM ET Rep. Darrell Issa (Calif.), a top House Republican, described a colorful chance encounter with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in an interview published Wednesday. Issa, the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has been a thorn in the side of the Obama administration on many issues, particularly on claims that that the White House offered Senate candidates jobs to get out of primaries against candidates backed by the White House. In a profile, the New York Times detailed Issa's...

(CNN) - According his official schedule, President Obama did not attend the May 25 memorial service in Jackson, Mississippi for the workers who died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion because he was en route to a fundraiser for Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-California, in San Francisco. At Thursday's White House briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked why Obama did not attend the service. The president's spokesman answered, "I'd have to look at the schedule. I don't know the answer."

Comedian George Lopez Tuesday called Sarah Palin "la cabrona" (b***h in Spanish) on his late night television show. During the opening monologue of his TBS program, Lopez said, "I usually don't let politics upset me, but this is crazy. Sarah Palin, la cabrona."

(We criticized) Barack Obama when he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. Americans do not bow to royalty. When the royal is the ruling tyrant of a despotic regime, the wrong is compounded. Obama's bowing to the King was deeply offensive. When the story emerged from the shadows of the Internet,(Ben Smith) ran an item on Politico with the White House denying the bow. "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah," said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Bill O'Reilly ran a bemused segment on...

We still don’t know what was behind the killings at Ft. Hood this afternoon, in which 11 soldiers and the killer died, but President Obama’s rushed press conference was surprising in its flippancy nonetheless. Before he got to the issue on everyone’s mind — namely the deaths of Americans in uniform — the president gave a “shout-out” to government bureaucrats gathered for a previously scheduled conference at the Interior Department, complete with appreciative chuckles. He treated the event like a pep rally rather than a tragic occasion with a wider audience than those gathered in the room. I wonder how...