Free Republic

The nation's hospitals agreed last night to contribute $155 billion over 10 years toward the cost of insuring the 47 million Americans without health coverage, according to two industry sources. The agreement that three hospital associations reached with White House officials and leaders of the Senate Finance Committee is the latest in a series of side deals that aim to reduce the cost of revamping the nation's health-care system and to neutralize influential industries that have historically opposed such reforms... Most of the savings -- about $100 billion -- would come through lower-than-expected Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals, said...

In 2007, the federal budget deficit was $162 billion (1.2% of gross domestic product). For 2009, the budget deficit is projected to be 11 times larger: $1.752 trillion. This World War II-like deficit (12.3% of GDP) is not all on President Obama. Much of it is due to policies put in place by President Bush, Hank Paulson and last year's Congress. President Obama's "stimulus" bill will certainly raise the deficit, but, to be fair, it is not the predominant digger of this year's large fiscal hole. Nonetheless, contrary to the spin of big-government types, these deficits are not just temporary....

Well folks Britney Spears, the queen of comebacks has done it again. After the previous years' meltdown which lead to her being hospitalized twice at UCLA as well as her being placed under emergency guardianship, Britney Spears is back again like a boomerang. Already there is talks of a movie deal and perhaps another sleazy album. But the road back up has been long and hard and although she is now seeking treatment for "Bipolar" disorder, psychiatrists in charge of her care may be doing more to undermine her mental health than promote it. Britney Spears was incarcerated in UCLA's...

CAVUTO: Let me ask you. This comes at a time when there are all sorts of rumors in Washington that you and the president, though you started hitting it off — he had this dinner for you, I think, the night before inauguration, and then he was talking about how crucial your support was on the troop drawdown in Iraq — and then it seemed like the wheels kind of came off the goodwill wagon. What has happened here? MCCAIN: Neil, I am the loyal opposition.I work with the president, as I did on the Iraq issue. I will work...

Sarah Palin will be elected President in 2012, no matter what happens two weeks from now. She will, most likely, rise up when John McCain declines to run for re-election or, failing that, on her own as a direct candidate. PALIN 2012, YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST .... As endorsed by the Dodger!

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru. Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon". "A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

CHICAGO (AP) -- Perhaps no one took greater comfort in the Republican Party's third straight loss of a long-held House seat this week than Barack Obama, who says the results point to clear limits in the effectiveness of attack ads he expects this fall. The Democratic presidential candidate played a prominent role in all three special elections to fill vacant GOP seats, and he landed on the winning side each time. In recent contests in Louisiana and Mississippi, Republicans or their allies ran TV ads linking the Democratic House nominees to Obama, warning that a vote for them was a...

The new year is only a couple of weeks old. This is 2008 an election year, yet the MSM is already calling it over for several candidates. Among them Fred Thompson. Why are they calling for him to drop out? It's because of his message. The only candidate that does not seem to have special interest backers or a huge war chest. One that speaks more common sense then the others and is smarter than the others. Fred did not spend 2007 stomping the nation drumming up delegates. This is the reason the MSM and many so-called right/conservative pundits are...

Why the smart money is on Duncan Hunter OK, so you’ve got a thousand dollars burning a hole in your pocket and you want to make a statement with it at the same time as getting 40X return on your “investment”, you want $40,000 for that $1000 bet, like Hillary did in her Pig Belly futures or whatever it was. You’re going to decide between putting it down on Hunter or Thompson over at Intrade because these are the 2 most conservative candidates in the race. https://www.intrade.com/ Which one do you choose? Let’s start with the guy who has 3...

Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) whose bid for the presidency in 2004 was damaged by attacks on his vaunted Vietnam War record by a group called “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” says he is now ready to refute their allegations. “We have put together a powerful and irrefutable rebuttal to the scurrilous charges made against me by these right wing fanatics,” Kerry asserted. Kerry declined to disclose any of his reputedly irrefutable proof at this time saying that “the American people have not yet shown a sufficient measure of regret and contrition for voting against me. They disrespected me—a decorated veteran—and...

In a new outburst of antiwestern sabre-rattling, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has threatened Britain with “revenge” for the Falklands war of 1982. The belligerent Latin American leftist warned last week that his recent build-up of sophisticated Russian and Iranian weapons would be used to destroy the British fleet if it attempted to return to the South Atlantic. Speaking on his weekly television show Alo Presidente (Hello, Mr President), Chavez denounced what he described as Britain’s “illegal occupation” of the Falklands and repeated his call for a regional military alliance against Britain and the United States. “If we had been...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement after Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid signed a bill that implements the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission and makes our country safer and more secure: "Democrats have again kept their promise to the American people and showed why Americans trust them to keep the country safe," Dean said. "Even with Republicans blocking them every step of the way, Democrats implemented the recommendations of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission. President Bush and his Republican allies wasted years playing politics with our security. Republicans ignored these recommendations,...

Among athletes who obsess about their weight, we cyclists are second to none. Training rides are filled with conversations about weight lost or gained and the latest diet regimens and food fads. Resolutions are made and broken. We all know the formula: 10 pounds of extra weight on a 5 percent grade slows your ascent by half a mile an hour. It has a ring of Newtonian finality to it. F = MA. The Force needed to turn the pedals equals Acceleration times that Mass on the saddle. But most of the guys I ride with are like me: in...

It’s fall, the temperature is falling, the leaves are turning and with November here, we have some repeats to watch on the cable networks. The History Channel will show one of their favorites, ABC’s documentary “Beyond Conspiracy” featuring Peter Jennings and a computer animation which shows a bullet that hit President Kennedy’s back four inches below his collar but then the bullet allegedly exited his neck after nicking the upper part of the knot of his tie, and then it goes down at approximately a 25 degree down angle to hit Governor Connally in his back. It’s amazing what computers...

Widely prescribed anti-psychotic drugs do not help most Alzheimer's patients with delusions and aggression and are not worth the risk of sudden death and other side effects, the first major study on sufferers outside nursing homes concludes. The finding could increase the burden on families struggling to care for relatives with the mind-robbing disease at home. "These medications are not the answer," said Dr. Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which paid for the study. He said better medications are at least several years away. Three-fourths of the 4.5 million Americans with Alzheimer's disease develop aggression,...

"We have great admiration for you and leadership," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at a press conference on Wednesday following their meeting in Ramallah. Rice added that the US was "very concerned" about the plight of the Palestinians and pledged to improve living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She said that the US would "redouble efforts" to help the Palestinians. The secretary of state went on to say that the US was aware of the hard work that needed to be done in order to achieve a two state solution...

Gov. Schwarzenegger’s opponent Democrat Phil Angelides won’t back down on his pledge to return California National Guard troops stationed in Iraq. Angelides spoke at an anti-war rally attended by about 200 people at Sacramento City College Thursday. Public opinion polls this week indicate Angelides trails Schwarzenegger by double digits. Angelides expanded on his call for the return of California Guard troops, calling the Iraq war a fool’s errand and condemning Gov. Schwarzenegger for supporting the re-election of President Bush. Despite a free lunch, fewer than 200 students attended the rally. In a statement released by the Schwarzenegger campaign, Devore characterized...

Iran unveiled its first locally manufactured fighter plane Wednesday during large-scale military exercises, state-run television reported. The report said the bomber Saegheh is similar to the American F-18 fighter plane, but "more powerful." It also said the plane was "designed, optimized and improved by Iranian experts." State TV said the Iranian air force had commissioned the Saegheh plane after many test flights in the past year. Television footage showed the airplane taking off and launching two rockets. The plane had a small cockpit and only one pilot. "Saegheh is capable of launching both rockets and bombs," the report said. General...

President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy. Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA to include Canada, setting the stage for North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada. President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and...

The Times-Standard SAN FRANCISCO -- Actor and comedian Tommy Chong entertained more than 500 National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws conference-goers Friday. ”If more people were stoned there would be less violence in the world,” Chong said. Chong was introduced by NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre. ”It was Tom Chong the man that was wrongly sentenced to nine months in jail when everyone else paid a fine,” St. Pierre said. “I'm so proud and happy that Tommy is joining us today.” Chong took the stage to a standing ovation. ”I would like to thank what's his name,”...

It's a shame that Joseph Heller, author of "Catch-22," is no longer alive and laughing at human folly because he'd love "Saddam's Delusions," an amazing article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs. Heller's masterpiece is a darkly comic story of absurdity, brutality and insane military bureaucracy. So is "Saddam's Delusions." "Catch-22" is fiction, of course, but "Saddam's Delusions" is all too true. It's a 25-page distillation of a 230-page Pentagon study of the last days of Saddam Hussein's regime, based on thousands of secret Iraqi government documents and interviews with dozens of captured Iraqi officials. Written by military analysts...

Introduction: Campaigning and the Shapes of Time There is a natural inclination to look back with the benefit of hindsight to find fresh patterns in history. Thus, for example, the period 1870-1990 can be viewed as Europe's "Hundred- Year Civil War," a perception not necessarily obvious to those engaged in that "war" at any particular time; and the Japanese have seen the Second World War from their viewpoint as variously a part of a "Hundred Years War,"1 a "Seventy-Five Year War," a "Great Pacific War" and a "Great East Asian War." More recent operations against Islamic extremists have been seen...

Felipe Luciano becomes vice president of news for the progressive radio network Air America (WLIB, 1190 AM) with several premises. First, "All those years of talk about a 'liberal bias' in the media has pushed our national media to a right-wing slant. "What was once an independent voice has become afraid to take a stand. Everyone is afraid what happened to Dan Rather will happen to them. That's why we see almost no investigative journalism." To that timidity, says Luciano, Air America offers an essential alternative. Second, "You should never talk down to your audience, because they're much more interested...

Dr. Levin is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege. He earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania, a B.A./M.A. in English language and literature from Oxford University, an M.D. degree from Penn and a Ph.D. in history from Princeton University. He is a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and maintains a private practice in psychiatry. Dr. Levin has written extensively on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. His articles have appeared in The New Republic, The Boston Globe, The Washington Times, and The Jerusalem Post. On the...

In Unruly Gaza, Clans Compete in Power Void By STEVEN ERLANGER GAZA CITY - Tawfiq Abu Khoussa is the spokesman for the Palestinian Interior Ministry in Gaza.... But when some of Gaza's many gunmen fired shots at his office, Mr. Khoussa did not seek protection from the Palestinian police or security services. He called gunmen from his own powerful hamulla -his clan or tribe - to protect him. .. ....the mess in Gaza is real, and it presents fundamental problems for Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority he inherited from Yasir Arafat. After 38 years of occupation, Israel pulled its...

Come Monday, Sept. 19, fans of New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd, Paul Krugman, and David Brooks will have to break out their credit cards. Sept. 19 is the launch date of TimesSelect, a new subscription service designed to diversify the newspaper's revenue stream beyond traditional Web site advertising. The popular Op-Ed columnists are the main selling point behind the $49.95 a year subscription. (The service will be free for the paper's home delivery subscribers). The paper's news, features, editorials, and analysis will remain free, as will interactive graphics, multimedia, and video. TimesSelect subscribers will also have the ability to...

French Woman to Ordain Herself a Catholic Priest, Facing Automatic Excommunication The Associated Press LYON, France Jul 2, 2005 — A French woman defied a threat of excommunication by the Roman Catholic Church and held a ceremony proclaiming herself a priest on Saturday. In a small ceremony on a boat, Genevieve Beney was joined by other women from around the world who have taken similar dramatic action to draw attention to the church's policy against women priests. "This is not a rupture with the Roman Catholic Church," Beney said in a statement read aloud before she boarded the boat.. The...

For some historical background link to http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1335495/posts Don't blow me off too fast. I am pretty up to speed on my radical (alleged) Indian groups and their activities.

After spending Christmas Day in a liberal home I can report that this was not a happy holiday for liberals. There was at least one thing to celebrate, though: the courage of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom in standing up to the bigots and allowing people to do what comes naturally: fall in love and get married. Otherwise things did not look too good to my liberal neighbors. They saw hate everywhere they turned; one woman admitted to waking up most days and wanting to cry. How could Americans elect a president like George W. Bush? It just didn’t make...

Posted tonight 11/30 >>WE ARE GOING TO WIN THIS, I GUARANTEE YOU.... Kerry will be in the White House as long as we keep up the pace we have been at the last few weeks. We need to keep the emails going, keep the protests going...as long as we do this more and more leaders will fall in line as they see the movement grow. I can't say this enough: 1) Protest, Protest, Protest If you have time to attend any protest in your area, DO IT. Get out there. Especially in Ohio and Florida. We did one in CO...

Throughout the 2004 campaign, Sen. John Kerry maintained his proposed health-care plan could not be labeled as "socialized health care." Arguably, his plan would have at least partially de-privatized the American health-care system. Only through massive insurance pools in which everyone had a vested interest would Kerry have been able to fulfill his bold promise to expand coverage to "96 percent of Americans and 99 percent of all children." But a majority of voters refused to buy into Kerry's health-care plan. This plan introduced us to the "collectivist" ideology that acts as the driving force behind so many socially liberal...

When Senator John Kerry finally came out of hiding on Friday, Nov. 19, and posted a new message on his Presidential campaign Web site, who was holding their breath? An army of barefoot, pajama-wearing bloggers—and their general, the host of MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. "Regardless of the outcome of this election," intoned Mr. Kerry in a video clip linked to the site, "once all the votes are counted—and they will be counted—we will continue to challenge this administration." "It looks like an M.C. Escher drawing," Mr. Olbermann said in an interview the following Monday. "Is it past or future...

''No one would be more interested than me in finding out that we really won, but that ain't the case," said Jack Corrigan, a veteran Kerry adviser who led the Democrats' team of 3,600 attorneys who fanned out across the country on Election Day to address voting irregularities. ''I get why people are frustrated, but they did not steal this election," Corrigan said. ''There were a few problems here and there in the election. But unlike 2000, there is no doubt that they actually got more votes than we did, and they got them in the states that mattered." http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/11/10/internet_buzz_on_vote_fraud_is_dismissed/

JOHN KERRY'S IRAQ DELUSIONS~PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE 2 POURQUOI JOHN KERRY EST DANGEREUX POUR L'AMÉRIQUE   by Mia T, 10.09.04 IRAQ DELUSIONS (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) UNFIT #23: THUMBSUCKER SERIESJohn "One Position on Iraq" Kerry's 1971 Replay (viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE) NEW! compleatjohnkerry.blogspot.com NEW! unfitforcommand.blogspot.comjohnkerryisdangerousforamerica.blogspot.com KERRY DOESN'T HAVE THE JUDGMENT TO BE PRESIDENT Senator Kerry's contradictions on Iraq are the wrong signal to send to our troops on the ground, to our coalition partners, to the Iraqi people and to the terrorists seeking our destruction. On the eve of Prime Minister Allawi's visit...

Anyone who follows the developments in the Arab Islamic world will be struck by the complete absence of self-knowledge and introspection that characterizes these vexed cultures. Almost every problem is attributed to hostile external forces. The poverty and underdevelopment that plague most of the Arab world are the result of malicious machinations of Americans and Jews. This is no less true of the disaster in Darfur. Last week UPI reported that the Sudanese foreign minister Mustafa Osman Ismail had told journalists in Cairo that his government possessed "information that confirms media reports of Israeli support (for the rebels in Darfur)."...

When I think of spies in the Defense Department, I think of the pitiful debt-ridden Ron Pelton, who worked for 14 years at the National Security Agency, quit in 1979, and began selling secrets to the Soviets until he was arrested in 1986. I heard it was to complete construction on a home he had been building for years and years. Construction projects can be like that

The cigar seemed to be the same as any other. These was a rush of hot smoke, but it was followed by a familiar, yet disturbing sweetness. It was like setting fire to a packet of grape Kool-Aid and taking a deep breath. Not an experience most people would remember fondly. But candy-flavored cigars, like the grape one I bought at a neighborhood grocery store, have become the hippest thing to hit the streets since neck tattoos and color-coordinated cell phones. The experience, said a crowd of teenage boys and girls gathered on the corner near the store, is far...

Sen. John Kerry made his first forays into Cambodia during the Vietnam War as a Navy lieutenant on clandestine missions to deliver weapons to anticommunist forces. When he returned last week, the mission was official, but dicey nonetheless. At the request of the United Nations, Kerry is trying to broker a compromise on how to try leaders of the former Khmer Rouge regime, whose late 1970s reign of terror claimed the lives of some 1.7 million Cambodians. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen wants to control any court looking into genocide charges, but U.S. and U.N. officials have demanded an international...

BOSTON - John Kerry bounced the ceremonial first pitch during last night's Red Sox-Yankees game at Fenway Park, but he said he was just going easy on the National Guard soldier and Iraq war veteran standing in as catcher. "I held back," Mr. Kerry told reporters early this morning, on the plane ride after the game. "He was very nervous. I tried to lob it gently."

IT IS THE prerogative of former presidents to write self-serving memoirs casting themselves in heroic terms. We don't begrudge Bill Clinton, who presided over an administration of significant accomplishments in many areas, a book-length (or even a two-book-length) highlighting of the ups, and a breezing-over of the downs, of his presidency. Yet Mr. Clinton's new book, "My Life," is also part of a long effort on its author's part to deny, and not just breeze over, his profound disrespect for the law when it inconvenienced him. In Mr. Clinton's alternate universe, in which many Democrats have also decided to live,...

Baghdad – Saddam Hussein failed to anticipate the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and even after hostilities had started, deluded himself that he was winning the war and could clinch a negotiated settlement through French and Russian mediation. According to newly uncovered secret documents, the former Iraqi regime never contemplated its imminent defeat and continued to function normally under Saddam's direct control, even as American tanks were closing in on Baghdad. While much has been made about intelligence failures in the West, it seems that Saddam's own senior officials, diplomats and spies offered him such a warped vision of the outside...

Abortion Provider's New Chaplain Posits Pro-Choice Jesus Pro-Lifer Says Planned Parenthood's Pastor Contradicts Mainstream Christianity By Jim Brown and Jenni Parker March 11, 2004 (AgapePress) - A conservative Protestant activist says he is appalled but not surprised that a United Methodist minister has been hired to serve as chaplain of the nation's largest abortion provider. The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has selected Pastor Ignacio Castuera to fill the newly created position and communicate "the theological justification for choice, sexuality, and contraception." Castuera serves as pastor at St. John's United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, California, and has been a...

<p>LAST WEEK I suggested that President Bush had reached a tipping point in his credibility with the broad public and the press. I speculated that we would soon see newsmagazine covers depicting Bush in trouble. Well, Time magazine obliged. Its new cover depicts a two-faced Bush and asks: "Does Bush Have a Credibility Gap?"</p>

Democrats Abroad Japan Press Release Submitted by Heather on 9 February, 2004 - 05:59 UTC. - For Immediate Release - "Dean Takes Tokyo, Sweeps Past Kerry on Third Count" A record 156 participants gathered at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Yurakucho Tokyo, on Sunday 8 February for the Democrats Abroad Japan Caucus. The purpose of the Caucus was two-fold: firstly to elect delegates to the Democrats Abroad Convention in Edinburgh in March, members of which will in turn be elected to the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and secondly to propose and debate resolutions to be adopted...

<p>It was Dec. 10, the day before John F. Kerry's 60th birthday, and one of the darkest of his presidential campaign.</p> <p>The polls indicated the onetime front-runner trailed by 25 percentage points in New Hampshire. There was disagreement among Kerry campaign staffers on strategy: Should they tacitly play down his presidential dream and try to salvage Kerry's home-state reputation by campaigning more heavily in neighboring New Hampshire, or bet big and devote more resources to Iowa?</p>

the quote from Hotline is in the "Full Story" below. Why Senate Dems :: "At the beginning of the current Congress a year ago, there was a lot of skepticism that we could take back the Senate in 2004. We heard it not just from our friends in Labor, political pundits and donors, but also among ourselves." A Democratic majority in '04 seemed "out of reach. Bush was strong, our presidential prospects were uncertain and our Senate candidates unknown." Bush and Karl Rove envisioned their "Dream Team" of Senate recruits, including: Jennifer Dunn in WA; Mike Huckabee in AR; Ed...

War, by its very nature, does not make much sense. In recent days, though, the war in Iraq — and how it began — is sounding more and more like something out of "Alice in Wonderland." You think of the White Rabbit that started Alice down the slippery slope into Wonderland. And the Mad Hatter's tea party. And the Red Queen screaming "Off with their heads!" And then you think of David Kay, the former chief arms inspector, telling a Senate committee last week that "we were all wrong" and that somebody should look into how our pre-war intelligence came...

The chief inspector who led the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is offering a terrifying view of the last days of Saddam Hussein that confirms the wisdom of deposing a dictator who had descended into madness. David Kay leaves a post that gave him an up-close and personal look into Saddam's mind and arsenals, saying he believes Iraq did not have nuclear, chemical or biological weapons before America's invasion - but not for a lack of trying. Indeed, Kay says, Saddam was perfecting a weaponized version of the deadly poison ricin and trying to restart a...

McAuliffe Says Democrats Are In The Best Shape They've Ever Been Tue Jan 20 2004 10:39:37 ET DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe asked on CNN if the direction of the Democratic Party will determine the direction of the party. McAuliffe said: "Clearly, whoever the nominee of the Democratic Party will -- and I am -- no one in America wants a nominee more than I do. We're in the best shape we've ever been in. Millions in the bank, new headquarters, new voter files. I need a nominee, no question about it. But that nominee will then have one message. He...

Mexican-American separatists don't believe U.S. has Saddam A Mexican-American separatist website, La Voz de Aztlan, is claiming the U.S. capture of Saddam Hussein is a hoax. The pro-Arab and viciously anti-Israeli organization also sees a spontaneous uprising of popular support for Hussein throughout Iraq – a phenomenon unnoticed by news organizations throughout the world, including those in Arab countries. According to the site, "extreme doubts have arisen throughout Islam that the released pictures by U.S. occupation forces of the 'captured Saddam' are of the Iraqi leader. Thousands of Iraqis, who knew Saddam, are claiming that it is one of Saddam's...