Free Republic

President Barack Obama turned up the heat on the GOP Saturday, sounding a now-familiar refrain about obstructionist tactics by congressional Republicans and holding up as an example a pledge by one senator to block presidential nominations until the president gives in to his demands. “We weren’t sent here to wage perpetual political campaigns against each other. We were sent here to serve the American people. And they deserve better than gridlock and games,” Obama said in his weekly address to the nation. “One senator gumming up the whole works for the entire country is certainly not what our founding fathers...

In what The Washington Post called "a bold act of political defiance," President Obama Wednesday announced the recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Cordray's nomination had been blocked by a Senate filibuster. There was no way he was going to win approval in 2012. Enraged Republicans denounced the appointment as an affront and a usurpation of power, for the Senate had not formally gone into recess. The White House airily dismissed the Republican rage, saying no Senate business is being conducted during the Christmas-New Year break, and to argue that the Senate is still...

(WASHINGTON) — President Barack Obama is pushing his economic message in Ohio, brandishing his presidential megaphone in a politically important state to make certain his appeal to the middle class is heard amid the boisterous start of the Republican campaign for the White House. Obama was traveling Wednesday to the most Democratic congressional district in Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, a day after Mitt Romney won Iowa's Republican presidential caucuses by just eight votes. Obama's trip signals the White House's intent to keep the president in the public eye even as the political world focuses on the GOP's selection process. The...

Republicans muscled a budget through the House of Representatives in April that they said would take an important step toward reducing the federal deficit. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies. Democrats pounced. Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care "because Republicans voted to end Medicare." Rep. Steve Israel of New York, head...

The New York Times reports an interesting dispatch from President Obama's re-election campaign: Newt Gingrich is a genuine threat that they plan to take seriously. “Look, for the longest time, Gingrich was not really a factor in this race, he was left for dead at the checkout counter at Tiffany’s,” said David Axelrod, a chief adviser to the president’s re-election bid. “Now he is resurgent and he could be the nominee.” According to the Times, the campaign plans to portray Gingrich as "a symbol of the past" and the “godfather of gridlock.”

Channeling his inner Teddy Roosevelt, President Obama on Tuesday gave a feisty speech in Osawatomie, Kansas that sought to rebut Republican arguments that he is waging class warfare...[Snip] We’ll leave the politics to others, but how accurate were some of his facts?  “I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory. Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did they get us? The slowest job growth in half a century...[Snip] Inserting the words “for the wealthy” was interesting phrasing by...

White House Budget Director Jack Lew on Friday warned that the negotiations on the 2012 omnibus spending bill are going poorly and could soon lead to a “crisis” that shuts down the government. Appropriators are negotiating a nine-bill, $900 billion omnibus package, but the White House and Republicans are at odds over rider provisions attached to the spending bills, including ones related to abortion and the environment. Funding for the government runs out Dec. 16, leaving little time to resolve the disputes.  Lew said President Obama is prepared to veto an omnibus with ideological riders in it.  “I don’t think it is in...

Does Mediaite have an editor screening its content before it goes up online?  In a 24-hour period, that lefty news site published one story defending Vice President Joe Biden’s charge that Republicans want rape to increase if they don’t align with the President’s “jobs� plan, and another article claiming that Biden, in fact, never did use a rape reference.  First we have some dude named Nando Di Fino, whom I’ve never heard of before.  He argued that Biden’s assertion about rapes surging really isn’t that “crazy� after all.  “He was basically showing that as you cut police, crime goes up,�...

President Obama on Wednesday sought momentum for his $447 billion jobs package by emphasizing he would push the Senate to quickly take up the veteran employment component of the bill. Obama promised to keep fighting for the veterans and service members in the audience. He tied his commitment to another pledge to keep fighting to pass the jobs bill, even in bits and pieces. “These are tough times for America, but we’ve faced tough times before. And nobody’s tougher than America’s armed forces,” he said. Obama, concluding a three-day bus campaign promoting his job-growth ideas that has included stops in North...

One-third of the Obama re-election campaign's record-breaking second-quarter fundraising came from sources associated with the financial sector, the Washington Post reports. That percentage is up from the 20% of donations that came from Wall Street donors in 2008, and contradicts reports that a growing Wall Street animosity towards the Obama administration may jeopardize his re-election bid. Obama's $86 million haul set a record for incumbent fundraising at this point in an election campaign. While the campaign has downplayed the larger donations by emphasizing that the average donation was $69, it also released a list of contributions by "bundlers;" those who...

As the rest of the 2012 Republican presidential field ganged up on Texas Gov. Rick Perry during Thursday night’s GOP debate, illegal immigration was the evening’s hottest-button issue — particularly the granting of in-state tuition rates to children of illegal immigrants in Texas. Now Perry’s defense seems to have struck nerve with National Review columnist Mark Steyn. Filling in for Rush Limbaugh on his radio program Friday, Steyn, the author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon,” took issue with Perry’s response to those attacks. Rick Perry “has basically adopted the Democratic line now on the whole illegal immigration issue,”...

What If the Tea Party Wins? They Have a Plan for the Constitution, and It Isn’t Pretty Download this issue brief (pdf) Read the issue brief in your web browser (Scribd) In the Tea Party’s America, families must mortgage their home to pay for their mother’s end-of-life care. Higher education is a luxury reserved almost exclusively to the very rich. Rotten meat ships to supermarkets nationwide without a national agency to inspect it. Fathers compete with their adolescent children for sub-minimum wage jobs. And our national leaders are utterly powerless to do a thing. At least, that’s what would happen...

News reports suggest that on Thursday night, the president will tell Republicans in the House and Senate that they should put “country before party” and endorse his proposals for job creation. The “country before party” line has become Obama’s new theme in the wake of the debt crisis, and the passion with which he invokes it indicates it’s something he actually and truly believes in. And it’s utter nonsense. Offensive nonsense too. Obama isn’t truly asking Republicans to put country before party. He is asking them to elevate the interests and ideas of the Democratic party higher than their own...

The oddball media slander of the tea party, now routine, shows more than a little calculation along a rather perilous historical line. In the 1920s, in advance of the collectivization of private farms, Soviet leadership stigmatized as "class enemies" a productive set of landowners known as "kulaks." [Snip] In the beginning, the Soviets attempted to turn peasant farmers against the kulaks by denouncing them, in Mr. Lenin's illiberal words, as "bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine." [Snip] Before he was through, Stalin and his progressive pals killed off at least 5 million of these...

Not knowing who the eventual Republican presidential nominee will be in the 2012 election, President Obama's supporters are taking the opportunity to blast all of the GOP candidates, using aggressive language to argue that the crop of contenders is either uninterested or incapable of helping Americans. Much of the criticism is focused on describing the candidates as lackeys to the Tea Party, which establishment Democrats have classified as right-wing zealots bent on destroying the U.S. snip "In a Republican field that has already pledged allegiance to the Tea Party and failed to present any plan that will benefit the middle...

Following the president’s veto threat this morning, senior White House officials launched a full-on assault against the Republican “Cut, Cap and Balance Act” this afternoon, describing it as “extreme, radical, and unprecedented.” On a conference call with reporters this afternoon, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said the legislation “essentially enshrines into the constitution the Ryan plan on steroids.” “Unless House Republicans are willing to raise revenues, significant revenues, something they have refused to do, it would require much deeper spending cuts than in the Ryan plan. This would result in even more devastating cuts to clean energy, education and...

...Demagoguery, at its best, requires good oratory and charisma — which is why Jimmy Carter was such a dismal failure at it, despite his half-hearted demonization of three-martini lunches and private yachts at a time of a record misery index that saw high unemployment, out-of-control inflation, and usurious interest rates, coupled with a neutralist foreign policy that had led to Russians in Afghanistan, Communist takeovers in Central America, and American hostages in Teheran. Carter’s mock-serious delivery was so droll, his presence so wooden, that his fist-pounding against “them” turned into caricature. Under a more skilled practitioner such as Barack Obama,...

Daley: D.C. 'dysfunction' hurts jobs By: Mike Allen July 10, 2011 10:23 AM EDT White House Chief of Staff William Daley told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour on “This Week” that questions about whether political leaders “have the guts to stand up and do the tough things” is “one of the wet blankets on this economy.” Daley, speaking after House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) pulled the plug on a $4 trillion bargain that would have reformed entitlements in conjunction with raising the debt ceiling, said President Barack Obama will continue to push for the biggest deal possible. “This president is committed to...

On Cavuto now, quoting Obama. Host is asking guests what they think. In related news, Obama calls people earning $250,000 "jet owners." "Calling DSM-IV; will DSM-IV please pick-up the red emergency phone..."

As voters around the country wince at rising gas prices, panicked Democrats, in a rush to cover the failure of their all-or-nothing bet on the alternative energy industry have started singing a familiar tune – blame the oil and gas industry.  Instead of facing the reality of his owned failed policies, President Obama is calling for an end to the "tax giveaways" he claims amount to $4 billion in “subsidies” to the energy industry.  This tactic isn’t surprising given the effect that rising gas prices have on the President’s approval ratings and his obsession with re-election.  But, less than truthful...

Pelosi rips Ryan's budget By Jordan Fabian - 04/05/11 11:10 AM ET House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) took to Twitter Tuesday to criticize House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) budget plan. While Ryan was still holding a press conference rolling out his plan to slash $5.8 trillion from current spending levels over ten years, Pelosi slammed the budget, keying in on its drastic Medicare and Medicaid reforms. The #GOP Ryan budget is a path to poverty for America's seniors & children and a road to riches for big oil #GOPvalues #GOP Path to Poverty budget eliminates guaranteed benefits...

Many have implicated heated political rhetoric in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, but the connection between viewing and acting is complex Glock 19 pistol Access to firearms is a risk factor for violent crime. Jared Lee Loughner allegedly used a Glock 19 pistol such as this one in a Tucson, Ariz., shooting rampage. It wasn't long after the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others in Tucson, Ariz., that speculation emerged about a possible connection between the shooting and the contemporary U.S. political environment. In a news conference after the January 8 attack, which left six dead, Pima...

Within hours after Jared Loughner's killing spree, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman went straight for the gutter, proclaiming, with no evidence whatsoever, that Loughner's act was in all likelihood "political," and going on to blame Republicans for the murders. I denounced Krugman's vile blog post here. We now know that Loughner's murders were not political. He was deranged and had no coherent political philosophy. To the extent that he had any political beliefs at all, his friends describe him as left wing. He thought the Bush administration was behind the September 11 attacks. He has been more or less...

(CNN) – President Obama said early Tuesday that he hopes Republican leaders "realize that there will be plenty of time to campaign for 2012 in 2012." [Snip] "My hope is that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will realize that there will be plenty of time to campaign for 2012 in 2012. And that our job this year is to make sure that we build on recovery," Obama said. [Snip] Obama did not specifically address the GOP's plans, but acknowledged, "there's gonna be politics, that's what happens in Washington" when asked if he expects a chilly reception from the new Republican...

Link only- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-23/bill-clinton-says-u-s-republicans-agenda-represents-hysterical-tirades-.html

MILWAUKEE – A combative President Barack Obama rolled out a long-term jobs program Monday that will exceed $50 billion to rebuild roads, railways and runways, and coupled it with a blunt campaign-season assault on Republicans for causing Americans' hard economic times. GOP leaders instantly assailed Obama's proposal, which is also likely to be met with reluctance by many Democrats to approve additional spending and higher federal deficits just weeks before elections that will determine control of Congress. That means the plan has low odds of becoming law this year. Administration officials said that even quick congressional approval would not produce...

Is it me or is he stooping to the level of the paid sheeple in the audience by talking like he's some kind of jive *ss?

Remarks of President Barack Obama on the Economy—As Prepared for Delivery Milwaukee Laborfest Milwaukee, Wisconsin As Prepared for Delivery— Hello, Milwaukee! Thank you to the Milwaukee Area Labor Council and to all of my brothers and sisters in the AFL-CIO for inviting me to spend this day with you – a day that belongs to the working men and women of America.

<p>"Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time and they're not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That's not in my prepared remarks, but it's true," he told a crowd largely consisting of union members.</p>

That's what's been at the heart of all our efforts: building our economy on a new foundation so that our middle class doesn't just survive this crisis – but thrives once we emerge. That's why we passed health insurance reform that will make coverage affordable; reform that ends the indignity of insurance companies jacking up your premiums at will or denying you coverage just because you get sick; reform that shifts control from them to you. But there are some folks in Washington who see things differently. When it comes to just about everything we've done to strengthen the middle...

As expected, Glenn Beck's 8/28 "Restoring Honor" rally sent the leftist media and their spokespeople into a state of frenzied incoherence. The rally was framed as "controversial," before a single word was uttered. The rally had to be a racist event because it was scheduled at the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th anniversary of MLK's "I have a dream" speech. Among the far-left critics, the Rev. Al Sharpton provides a clear window into leftist thinking on the matter. According to Sharpton, the rally was a "distortion" of King's speech because conservatives like Beck really don't understand what King's speech was...

Harrisburg, PA (LifeNews.com) -- In a ruling involving a mentally disabled man whose legal guardians sought the power to end his medical care, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has determined that state law requires life-preserving treatment for people who are not near death and have not refused treatment. The Alliance Defense Fund and allied pro-life attorneys filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of 53-year-old David Hockenberry, who has had acute mental disabilities since birth, arguing that his legal guardians should not be allowed to deny him life-preserving treatment while he is not terminal or unconscious.Hockenberry’s guardians unsuccessfully attempted to deny him...

Democrats again used former President George W. Bush as a foe in their latest TV ad campaign, driving home the point Republicans would restore policies that helped create the economic downturn. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) released a new cable ad Friday that harped on their campaign message that the November midterm elections will be a choice between Democratic policies that will bring the country out of the recession versus Republican policies that helped created it. No Republican is used in the ad aside from Bush -- who is shown saying "you can fool me but you can't get fooled...

As far as politics go, President Barack Obama and John Boehner have virtually nothing in common. And that makes him a perfect Republican for the White House to vilify. The president and the House Republican minority leader don’t agree on stimulus spending or on tax cuts, and Boehner wants to repeal two of Obama’s signature accomplishments: the new health care law and tighter Wall Street regulations. On Wednesday, Obama visits Ohio — Boehner’s home state — to talk about the economy, and he may throw a few jabs at Boehner, whom Obama has called “out of touch.” But political scientists and strategists...

Here is a man whose every word and deed is easily explicable once you know the single essential thing about him: He is a member of a fascist splinter group that believes it is the salvation of the Catholic Church. This schismatic crackpot sect is headed by Mel Gibson's father, Hutton Gibson, a nutty autodidact with a sideline in Holocaust denial. Like many ultra-conservative Catholics, the Gibsons, père et fils, have never forgiven the Vatican for lifting the charge of deicide against the Jews in 1964. Less well-remembered, perhaps, is the interview in which he announced that his wife of...

thatstheguy07 — May 17, 2010 — Since this video has been getting so many views, and ppl have been asking the same questions, I figured Id explaion a ciuple things here. This video was sent to me by someone on facebook. I dont know who the guy is, what the aftermath was, or which crossing this was at.

WASHINGTON -President Barack Obama on Saturday pinned blame on Republicans for making life harder for the unemployed and for those who could lose their jobs without new federal intervention. He did so even as he sought to distance himself from the "dreary and familiar politics" of Washington. Capping a week in which the administration scored a victory — a $20 billion fund to be paid by BP for the victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill — Obama reserved his radio and Internet address to focus on the work that didn't get done. His main concern was the rejection...

he little history I was taught in grade school characterized Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a benign, fatherly figure sitting in his wheelchair, snuggled under a lap rug and in his familiar, folksy voice speaking confidentially to his fellow citizens during his famous fireside chats. As close to royal rule as America ever came, four terms--12 years and 82 days--Roosevelt, instead of leading America through a difficult time, politicized it. And many, who study history and economics would argue, prolonged the suffering of the American people. Yet the image stands. In fact, Roosevelt, in his effort to seek election to the...

Folks, our country is in big trouble. What kind of man do we have in the White House? President Obama is a Harvard-educated lawyer. Thus, since he attended such a renowned school, I can only conclude that Obama willfully and knowingly distorted/lied about the plight of Hispanic-Americans in Arizona and the state's immigration law when he said, "...but now suddenly if you don't have your papers, and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you're gonna be harassed, ..." Obama's statement simply is not true. The Arizona law goes into effect only after a subject has or is...

Earlier this week, President Obama addressed a crowd of gushing students and selected guests at Arcadia University in a suburb of Philadelphia to promote his final push for healthcare reform. It was a beautiful day for late winter, magnifying the gathered group's existing enthusiasm and after the usual "I/we love you(s)" from the crowd the President wasted little time before turning to his usual tones of demagoguery. A moment or two into the speech, the President characteristically accused the Insurance Companies of arbitrarily causing the extra inflationary costs of healthcare coverage and for other ills of our healthcare system: See,...

Obama is the Evil Insurance Company CEO He Rails AgainstMarch 8, 2010 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We just played the sound bites of Obama ripping into the insurance companies for arbitrarily raising rates. Arbitrarily raising rates is the last place arbitrarily rates go up in the insurance industry. That's the last place. The insurance company actuarial figures are the most comprehensive statistics kept in any industry for any reason. There's nothing arbitrary about it. But what's Obama ever done to lower anybody's costs? How much have your taxes gone up since the Democrats controlled Congress? How much has the deficit gone...

The Obama team’s disregard for big pictures — Bush in front of the Statue of Liberty on the first anniversary of 9/11, Clinton visiting a refugee camp in Macedonia during the Balkan war, Reagan looking over the wall into the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea — is part of the current administration’s scorn for things as they have traditionally been done, which they typically lump into the category of “politics as usual.” “We don’t want to participate in the artifice of politics that have turned so many people off,” Dan Pfeiffer, White House director of communications, told The...

President Obama is coming to St. Louis on Wednesday to push his “angry mob unpopular” nationalized health care bill. But, you won’t get to see him. HE’S LOCKING THE DOORS ON THE ST. LOUIS PUBLIC. President Obama and Missouri Democrats including Senator Claire McCaskill, Governor Jay Nixon and Russ and Robin Carnahan want to ram their toxic health care bill down your throat but THEY DON’T HAVE THE GUTS TO FACE THE PUBLIC!

President Barack Obama said his healthcare plan takes into account "every single serious idea" on cost containment from both parties. Obama made the remark in a stump speech Monday in Glenside, Pa., where he sought to address GOP criticisms that his health plan doesn't do enough to contain rising costs. Obama, who appeared with Sens. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) and Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), argued he's incorporated serious Republican proposals to contain rising healthcare costs. "You keep on hearing from critics and some of the Republicans on these Sunday shows say, 'Well, we want to do more about costs,' " Obama...

EXCERPTS "That 49 percent chance of failure could devastate Obama's presidency, weaken Democrats heading into the fall midterm elections and trigger an even fiercer, more debilitating round of finger-pointing inside the administration," writes Peter Baker of the Times, in a profile of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. (snip) Not everyone is convinced of Emanuel's effectiveness, however. Emanuel could have done more to sway Democratic lawmakers to support the president's plan, one unnamed Democratic congressman told Baker: "We need a little less ballerina and a little more L.B.J.," he said. "For all the reputation of being able to bust...

ABC News: Neither [President Barack Obama or HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius] mentioned that the Senate health reform bill, which is the basis for Democrats' last best chance at comprehensive reform, would give the insurance companies millions of new customers required by law to buy health insurance. It would also require insurers to cover everyone, regardless of age, gender or pre-existing condition. To help pay for the new insurance requirements the government would give to people money to buy insurance - $336 billion over the next ten years. That money, ultimately, would have to go to... drum roll... insurance companies.

This week, the Obama administration announced it will create a new poverty-measurement system that will eventually displace the current poverty measure. This new measure, which has little or nothing to do with actual poverty, will serve as the propaganda tool in Obama’s endless quest to “spread the wealth.” Under the new measure, a family will be judged “poor” if its income falls below a certain specified income threshold. Nothing new there, but, unlike the current poverty standards, the new income thresholds will have a built-in escalator clause: They will rise automatically in direct proportion to any rise in the living...

Obama's Health Care Plan: What Do You Think? Posted by Stephanie Condon After debating health care reform for more than a year, President Obama says it's time for Democrats to deliver. Hotsheet has followed every step of the process, from early speculation about the process of reconciliation to the raucous protests from the plan's opponents. Democrats are expected to use reconciliation within weeks, allowing them to bypass a Republican filibuster and pass a final bill with a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate. Republicans, meanwhile, insist they cannot support the measure and that the American public does not...

Obama: Health plan 'not about' politics, partisanship Making his final sales pitch for his health care plan, President Obama scorned politics and distanced himself from the partisan conflict that derailed the effort before, saying "that's not what this is about." "I'll leave it to others to sift through the politics," Obama said. "Because that's not what this is about. That's not why we're here."

President Obama, launching a last-ditch push to pass health care legislation in the next 10 days, left no doubt Monday that he was ready to roll over any opposition by taunting Republicans that they had 10 years to fix health care and didn't