Free Republic

Deceptive Chimp Hides Ammo, Blasts Unsuspecting Zoo Visitors - (Santino just 1 second before the throw.) A chimp that creates hiding places for rocks he throws at zoo visitors reveals for the first time that humanity's closest living relatives can plan to deceive, researchers say. These findings could shed light on the evolution of higher mental functions such as planning, investigators added. The chimpanzee known as Santino is the dominant male of his group at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. Intriguingly, past research showed the ape calmly gathered stones from his enclosure's moat and pieces of concrete he pulled off an...

Over the past three years, President Obama has demonstrated his willingness to lie about anything and everything if it leads to the acquisition and retention of maximum power for himself and his cohorts. Obama follows a pattern of overloading the system with deception, making responses to every individual distortion impractical or outright impossible. While Obama's opponents spend their precious time addressing each new lie, Obama keeps the focus off the end-zone, and seizures of power previously unthinkable are accomplished. At some point, citizens grow weary of hearing that their leaders are out for their ill, that political policies are nothing...

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Once upon a time the Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation helped to maintain a certain focus. America and its European allies were supposedly upholding capitalism and freedom against Soviet Communism. Then the Soviet Union broke apart and we got our hands on the “peace dividend.� Money could be diverted from weapons to social programs. The West was free to pursue its own socialism – leading to bankruptcy. In 1990 a Soviet dissident named Sergei Grigoryants, who was twice imprisoned by the KGB, gave a speech in which he warned of the deceptive reality behind of the collapse...

Stumping for his “Buffett Rule” tax increase in Florida today, President Barack Obama said the following: “For those people who make under $250,000 a year – like 98 percent of American families do – then your taxes don’t go up.” – Barack Obama, April 10, 2012 But since taking office, President Obama has signed into law at least seven new or higher taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year. President Barack Obama’s central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” against “any form of tax increase” on families making less than $250,000 per year – was shattered when he...

President Barack Obama’s central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” against “any form of tax increase” on families making less than $250,000 per year – was broken two years ago today when he signed the Affordable Care Act into law. The healthcare law contains at least seven tax hikes that unquestionably violate Obama’s pledge. Documentation of Obama’s promise is as follows: Speaking in Dover, New Hampshire on Sept. 12, 2008, candidate Obama said: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income...

The jobs-killing Obamacare law contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. Many of these tax increases fall on families making less than $250,000--a direct violation of candidate Obama's promise not to raise "any form" of taxes on these families. In less than a week, the second anniversary of Obamacare being signed into law will take place. The Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments about the constitutionality of Obamacare next week. Out of the 20 new or higher taxes in Obamacare, here are the four that most hurt young adults and children. Every single one of...

This was the winning photo of the year in Turkey in 2010 – a battered and bloody Israeli soldier aboard the Mavi Marmara. Nine people were killed onboard the Gaza-bound Turkish ship after IDF troops who raided it encountered violent resistance by “peace activists” armed with an assortment of weapons. The “peace activists” threw stun grenades and beat the Israeli soldiers with pipes and chains. In August 2011 the Obama Administration warned Israel to apologize to Turkey over its bloody interception of a Gaza aid flotilla in 2010, or risk strained ties with Washington. There were also reports that Barack...

According to Sharia law, if one's father is Muslim, one automatically becomes Muslim. "Most of the Muslims I know (me included) can't seem to accept that Obama is not a Muslim." Many in the media are indignant with Reverend Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Invited on "Morning Joe" last Tuesday to discuss Christian persecution, Graham was asked whether he thought President Barack Obama was Christian or not. Although Graham concluded that Obama "has said he is a Christian, so I just have to assume that he is," he appeared skeptical, suggesting Obama's policies disagreed with Christian...

Democrats in Washington State’s House of Representatives have unveiled their budget proposal – HB 2127 – which they claim closes a $1 billion budget shortfall without raising taxes or borrowing money. In reality, the budget does raise taxes, and relies on accounting gimmicks to solve their $1 billion spending problem. The budget proposal, along with SB 2728, would allow counties in Washington State to add a 6-perent utility tax that in many instances would wind up on taxpayers’ cell phone bills. Washington State already has the 2nd highest national tax burden on wireless, with a combined state and federal rate...

We haven’t written on this item yet because, well, it’s so easy to kick ‘em when they are down. But we’ll deign to indulge just this once: The global warmists are at it again. Remember ClimateGate? They call this one FakeGate. James Taylor at Forbes sums it up nicely today: . . .

President Obama released his FY 2013 budget [Monday] morning. By his own numbers, his budget raises net taxes over the next decade by $1.56 trillion (Table S-9, page 225). As a percentage of the economy, tax revenues would rise all the way to 20.1% of GDP in 2022, far higher than the historical tax revenue average of 18.3% of GDP (Table S-1, page 205). Here are some of the tax lowlights: All 20 of the new or higher taxes in Obamacare are assumed to take place. That means that there will be a 3.8 percentage point surtax on investment income....

One of our letter writers, and we love you all, complained that our Sunday column wasn’t civil enough for his liking. “While columnist Mark Landsbaum cannot be accused of harassing the president…” Whew. At least we aren’t a harasser. But the writer had his complaints:...

In December 2010, Congress enacted a 2 percentage point payroll tax reduction, bringing the FICA rate down from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent as a part of the legislation extending unemployment benefits and preventing tax rates from rising. All throughout the debate Democrats billed the reduction as a temporary move, slated to expire on December 31, 2011. Congress is considering whether to extend this rebate. Because it was always a temporary measure, opposition to this extension cannot fairly be called support for a tax increase. There is ample evidence that Democrats always believed the payroll tax rebate to be temporary....

Don't be conned into nominating Mitt Romney.

By avoiding the contentious question of Obama's "natural born" eligibility, America's academic establishment has also stifled discussion on the inextricably related issue of citizenship law in our country, in the greater context of immigration reform. The first instance of academia's cloak-throwing was noted in an American Thinker article which described the revision made by Professor Larry Solum to his scholarly paper that addressed Senator McCain's eligibility, "Originalism and the Natural Born Citizenship Clause." The original version was published in 2008. Without saying it explicitly in his footnote of explanation, Solum's revision implied, subtly, that he also supported the eligibility of...

A Jefferson County judge today set a Monday hearing on a lawsuit challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship and right to be on the 2012 ballots in Alabama. Circuit Judge Helen Shores Lee will consider a request by Mark Kennedy, chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party, to dismiss the suit filed against him on Dec. 14 by Birmingham resident Albert E. Hendershot. The hearing will start at 9 a.m. Jan. 9 in Lee's Birmingham courtroom. Hendershot wants Lee to issue an injunction blocking Obama from being certified as a candidate in Alabama. His suit claims he has "staggering evidence" that Obama...

Despite a referendum from House Republicans, the National Labor Relations Board is moving forward with its Ambush Election rule. The NLRB finalized the rule yesterday, making cosmetic changes to the original proposed rule. Unsurprisingly, the Ambush Election rule still silences workers and burdens employers. Here’s what DC’s labor experts are saying about the rule: “With the unemployment above 8 percent for almost three years, the NLRB Final Election Rule is another slap in the face at out-of-work Americans. The rule, which reduces the time before elections for union representation and prevents employers from presenting the facts to their workforce, will...

The Democrat hyperbole regarding the payroll tax debate has obscured the actual events leading to the current standoff: the GOP-led House is the only body that has passed a comprehensive tax and spending cut package that ensures American families and employers will not see a payroll tax hike for the entirety of the coming year. The President's allies in the Senate have instead offered a short-term extension of the payroll tax holiday, refusing to confront the expiring tax relief head on. Beyond the poor policymaking represented by short-term fixes, the tax relief the Senate bill ostensibly provides is undermined by...

Earlier this fall, Senator Carl Levin's (D-Mich.) Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report claiming that the 2005 low-tax repatriation year was not effective. ATR deconstructed that report at the time. Not content with his first series of logic and policy errors, Senator Levin is back for more. Today, his committee will issue a follow-up report that basically patches on another point to his first study: much of the money that could be repatriated back to America is already here. Here is the logic: The report admits that $1.4 trillion is available for a round of repatriationIt points out that...

On Thursday, December 8th, the IRS held a secret meeting regarding a new tax policy. The hearing was required by law, as the IRS was proposing new legislation, but the IRS did everything in its power to keep it from the public. It only announced the meeting on the 7th, one day earlier, and only allowed people who signed up in advance to attend. Even then, they were not allowed to speak. The hearing was on the issue of “return free” or “simple return” filing, a proposal under which the IRS would file taxes for the taxpayer and send them...

...Brown was unable to pass the largest state tax increase in U.S. history earlier this year because legislative Republicans, whose votes were needed due to California's 2/3rds vote requirement to raise taxes, kept their pledge to constituents to oppose any and all efforts to raise taxes. So Brown is now going out to collect signatures, with financial backing of government sector unions and Hollywood, to put an income and sales tax hike on the ballot. (Side note: Brown should hire ATR to consult him, because as we told him back in January, his tax hikes wouldn’t get through the legislature...

A Divine Blessing By Ari Bussel “The Lord will give strength to His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.” Psalms 29:11 Israelis, is seems, need a lot of strength. Fatah and Hamas, two names for the same ill, have reconciled their “differences.” I would be hard-pressed to find any such differences, as in essence they both strive to eliminate the Jews from the Jewish homeland and to erase any historical connection thereof. Fatah, though, is the favorite child of the world, while the other is still referred to as a “terrorist organization.” At the very least it...

[Will post rest of the article in a comment, 300 word limit at it again.] ...1990 Budget DealIn the 1990 budget deal (also known as the "Read My Lips" deal or the "Andrews Air Force Base deal"), President George H.W. Bush agreed to raise taxes by $137 billion from 1991-1995 in exchange for a reduction in projected CBO outlays of $274 billion (hence, a 2:1 ratio of spending cut promises to tax increases). The tax increases all went through. Most notably, as stated above, the top marginal income tax rate was raised. But there were dozens of other tax hikes...

...Democrats can cut spending without demanding higher taxes. It’s just too bad Meet the Press moderator David Gregory failed to point out that Kerry’s statement was grossly inaccurate, nor did anyone on Morning Joe feel the need to correct Kerry’s factually incorrect statement when re-airing the clip this morning. If you really want to know why the supercommittee was unable to come to an agreement, American Enterprise Institute’s Jim Pethokoukis has a great post up this morning explaining how the Democrats' tax hike obsession killed the prospects for any deal: It’s like the 1990s never happened and the 1970s never...

9-9-9 Plan | Prejudiced and Convoluted?- By: Larry Walker, Jr. -"A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform." ~Russell B. Long -Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan, which involves eliminating the 15.3% payroll tax, of which every dime is presently committed to current Social Security and Medicare payments (and then some), fails to address the main problem with modern day governing – the budget. Since it was just barely 3 months ago when our nation faced its first ever credit downgrade, any tax reform proposal which doesn’t lead to a balanced...

Today, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act (PDF), a third bill unveiled in Congress this year to allow states to tax Internet and out-of-state sales. The bill aims to level the playing field between online and brick-and-mortar retailers. Currently, under the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Quill v. North Dakota, online retailers not based in a state do not collect and remit the state’s sales tax. While the legislation contains improvements over the previously introduced Main Street Fairness Act, the Marketplace Fairness Act would result in an automatic tax increase...

Emerging plays show appetite for deceptionBy Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune reporter November 7, 2011 Our lives, a character notes in Zayd Dohrn's new play, are marked by a "consuming subconscious hunger for nothing." A few moments later he clarifies: "Satisfaction is a myth. Desire is endless." Spoken by a new age flimflam man, played in terrifically slippery fashion by Mark L. Montgomery, those words are the kind of facile observation that nevertheless rings true, and they are the key to Dohrn's exploration of self-help, self-control and self-destruction that he has titled, appropriately enough, "Want." **SNIP** Dohrn, who teaches writing at...

Just as a brand new book further exposes the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)(which scam I dissected here, and in more disturbing detail here), and on the heels of the weekend surprise of a 2005 memo showing President Obama’s cooling/warming/population zealot of a ‘science czar’ John Holdren is the kind of guy Mitt Romney turns to to develop his ‘environmental’ policies, we’ve exposed the Obama administration and IPCC have cooperated to subvert U.S. transparency laws, run domestically out of Holdren’s White House office.

...I understand political motives behind these sorts of measures, but it makes horrible economic sense. Yet Obama has once again chosen politics over the economy. Within the President’s “American Jobs Act” lies a provision that mandates all iron, steel and other manufactured goods must be domestically produced as part of around $80 billion in infrastructure spending. Such protectionist measures raise costs for consumers and businesses. When businesses are forced to pay more for products, that increase gets passed on to consumers, who are then forced to forgo spending elsewhere. In other words, by protecting one industry, countless others are losing...

...Far from “balanced,� his plan falls entirely on the backs of taxpayers and fails to address the government’s real deficit problem—overspending—by proposing fake or improbable spending cuts. Spending Cut Gimmicks ($2.5 trillion) $1.1 trillion in war “savings� – The President counts money that was never going to be spent on wars that are scheduled to end. This is like claiming the government is still saving money from World War II, Korea and Vietnam simply because we are no longer engaged in them. Takes credit for debt deal savings – The President attempts to take credit for the $1 trillion in...

...President Obama, who in April 2010 deemed a VAT “something that would be novel for the United States”, announced on Monday his intention to nominate Princeton University’s Alan B. Krueger to head the Council of Economic Advisors. In a 2009 blog post for the New York Times, Krueger wrote: “Why not pass a 5 percent consumption tax to take effect two years from now?” Even when pressed, the Obama White House has never ruled out a VAT. As the timeline below illustrates, those in and around the White House have been flirting with a VAT from the earliest days:December 18,...

Ed Schultz used a deceptive edit to misinform his audience about the content of Gov. Rick Perry's speech in Iowa yesterday. Schultz claimed that Gov. Perry was calling President Obama a "black cloud hanging over America" when in fact, the governor was talking about the national debt.

The S&P’s downgrade of America’s credit rating has caused those on the left and right to immediately lambast the debt limit deal reached last week for insufficiently tackling the nation’s debt (side bar: S&P warned weeks ago that even in the event that a deal was reached, it would still want to dole out a slap on the wrist of the country’s credit rating. Moreover, the downgrade was based on $2 trillion amateur error that greatly distorted the baseline S&P used. Also, these same credit rating agencies that are now supposedly unquestionably intuitive offered gold-plated ratings to the firms that...

<p>Just reported that in this debt deal is indeed a BIG TAX HIKE!</p>

China’s ongoing difficulties with the protection of intellectual property took a bizarre turn last week, as international news sources discovered a major distributor of fake Apple products. While knock-off electronics being sold in China is hardly news, what makes this incident unique is the way in which the fraud artists went about selling them: they created an entire imitation Apple Store. The Property Rights Alliance has detailed China’s ongoing problems in our annual Intellectual Property Rights Index. The fake Apple store included the signature logo, décor, and uniforms for employees. Indeed, even many employees of the business thought that they...

Today, during a live interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said the following:“Shame on you, Grover Norquist. Let's have some patriotism! Let’s have some people that come forward and say ‘We understand when you are borrowing 41 cents of every dollar, it’s time for everybody to contribute and that includes the wealthiest among us that he apparently is so beholden to for whatever reason, that he will accept no change.”Conrad’s comments echo the Sept. 18, 2008 sentiments of then-candidate Joe Biden. As reported by the Associated Press -- “Biden calls paying higher taxes a...

On June 7, 1995, KFOR-TV broadcast its first story in which witnesses Magazine Cover featuring Jayna Davis: Oklahoma Woman identified the disgruntled Gulf War veteran, Firefighter with child bombing victim Timothy McVeigh, drinking beer with a swarthy, soft-spoken foreigner in an Oklahoma City tavern. Those brief moments of television history launched Jayna's decade long quest to unveil the Middle East's hand in the heartland massacre. In 2001, she founded a non-profit corporation, Journalists' Committee for Justice, Inc, which has carried on the mission to seek justice for those who perished. In April 2004, Nelson Current Publishers released the New York...

...To drive this home, Vernuccio brings to light the withering union’s latest pitch to recruit members by encouraging SEIU members to practice the following tactics to cause employers to fold to Big Labor demands. 1. Destroy Business Relationships 2. Drain Employers Bank Accounts 3. Ruin Public Image 4. Attack Family Members 5. Imprison Your Boss For instance, Vernuccio writes, “In May SEIU drove 14 busloads of protesters to the quiet suburban home of Bank of America’s deputy general counsel, Greg Baer. Intimidation was the whole point of this exercise…only Mr. Baer’s teenage son was home. Terrified, he locked himself in...

...This is why a VAT is so dangerous. According to Hollings, a VAT with a rate as low as 6% would be enough to eliminate the entire corporate income tax and still leave the government with $506 billion left to spend. Over a decade (which is how tax hikes are scored), this would probably be a net tax hike approaching $6 trillion. This with a very low-rate tax system. The government would do with this extra tax money what they do with all extra tax money--spend it. A VAT is a horrible idea for America, and precisely for the reasons...

...This statistic does not show what Bruce pretends it shows. Corporate income taxes are paid by a subset of businesses called “C” corporations. But the share of total U.S. business income reported by C corporations has plunged in recent decades with the rise in other business structures, particularly LLCs and S corporations. In a 2007 article in Tax Notes, PwC economist Peter Merrill showed that the share of total U.S. business income reported by C corporations fell from 71 percent in 1987 to just 49 percent by 2004. C corporations are less important business structures than they used to be,...

When someone is acting suspiciously at an airport, subway station or other public space, how can law enforcement officers determine whether he's up to no good? The ability to effectively detect deception is crucial to public safety, particularly in the wake of renewed threats against the U.S. following the killing of Osama bin Laden. UCLA professor of psychology R. Edward Geiselman has been studying these questions for years and has taught investigative interviewing techniques to detectives and intelligence officers from the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the Marines, the Los Angeles police and sheriff's departments, and numerous international agencies....

Conspiracy man James Corbett makes the case that Bin Laden was already dead and that it was a psy-ops ploy to a new 9/11 style attack. Looks crazy. The man sounds demented. He does make it interesting though...

U.S. food prices have been rising in the last year, but it seems like the growth is just beginning.

Last June, we broke the story titled “Planned Parenthood’s missing millions” that fo- cused on $1.3 billion of government money received by Planned Parenthood from 2003 to 2008, which was left unaccounted for when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on the expenditures of federal funds by the abortion giant. Our question to Planned Parenthood was: Where are those missing millions? The Florida-based political “fact checker” Politifact joined with Planned Parenthood in a March 25 report headlined “Planned Parenthood funding: Did the GAO really find millions missing?” It attempted to exonerate the abortion giant’s lack of transparency in...

It has by now become glaringly apparent to all but the most obtuse or thoroughly indoctrinated among us that a majority of the members of the mainstream media (I call them cockroach media, but we’ll come back to that later) are socialists in outlook and practice. As Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote in an article for Pajamas Media on August 28, 2010, “We now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that our formerly august mainstream media is replete with socialists.” Well, excuse me. Not at all to diss Kyle-Anne, who does good work, but that information has been around for a...

Media Matters for America is a well funded, well organized and effective truth killing machine. Here are three short films I’ve made in the past few days to expose their techniques. Yesterday, I did a film showing how Media Matters used deceptive editing techniques on the Fox / Bill Sammon story. This story has been all over the left wing blogosphere – if you haven’t seen the original piece that MMfA did, it’s here. Gotcha journalism at its worst. Here’s my video on it.

And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.(Revelation 6:1-2)In John’s vision, we have been escorted into the very throne room of God himself, and we have beheld wonderful, and mysterious things. God has granted this vision to his servants,that we may know the things which must...

The koran tells its subjects 'War is deciet' Look around he world tonight, Arab nations across the Middle East are in open revolt against every flavor of dictatorship. Strongmen, pseudo-royalty and thugs from across the region are all failing. Whats really going on here? We are being told they want freedom. We are being told they want to grow up and emerge from the darkness of dictatorship. Nothing could be further from the real truth. Remember, 'war is deciet' Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do! Foolish and cowardly AA gunners waste their ammo racing around in...

Today former Congressman Ernest Istook testified before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee about the $105 billion slush fund in advance appropriations liberals tucked inside Obamacare. The $105 billion bypasses the traditional yearly budgeting process and is spread throughout the 2,700 page legislation. It took the Congressional Research Service (CRS) seven months to identify all the disparate funds and it was not until February (11 months after the bill passed) that all of the funds could be totaled up. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been beating the drum to raise awareness of this unprecedented level of advance spending. But...