Free Republic

The big banks claim that they have paid back all of the bailout money they received, and that the taxpayers have actually made money on the bailouts. However, as Barry Ritholtz notes: Pro Publica has been maintaining a list of bailout recipients, updating the amount lent versus what was repaid. So far, 938 Recipients have had $607,822,512,238 dollars committed to them, with $553,918,968,267 disbursed. Of that $554b disbursed, less than half — $220,782,546,084 — has been returned. Whenever you hear pronunciations of how much money the TARP is making, check back and look at this list. It shows the TARP...

The US Treasury has sold its remaining stake in Citigroup, in a deal which it says will make a $12bn (£7.6bn) profit on its overall investment.Citigroup was one of the worst victims of the financial crisis, and the US government stepped in with $45bn of bail-out cash in 2008 and 2009.The money was part of the $700bn Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp).On Monday, the government sold off its remaining shares in the bank for $4.35 (£2.75) each."By selling all the remaining Citigroup shares today, we had an opportunity to lock in substantial profits for the taxpayer," said Tim Massad, acting...

Dinesh D’Souza says in his new book that Barack Obama is an anti-colonialist. Stanley Kurtz has a new book, Radical-in-Chief, which says Obama is a socialist. The new book Dupes by Paul Kengor tells the unvarnished truth. And that’s because he makes use of material we started releasing back in February of 2008 about Obama’s communist mentor, Communist Party USA member Frank Marshall Davis. New Zealand blogger Trevor Loudon broke that story and we confirmed it. I hate to say, “We told you so,” but Herb Romerstein and I held a briefing in May 0f 2008 in Washington, D.C. releasing...

D'oh! The producer for television show "The Simpsons" had a holy cow after learning that the Vatican considered Homer Simpson a Catholic. Executive producer Al Jean told Entertainment Weekly on Monday he was in "shock and awe" when he heard the assertion, saying, "I guess it makes up for me not going to church for 20 years." The headline in the semi-official Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano, recently read: “Homer And Bart Are Catholic,” and backed it up by arguing the family prays before meals and that the show explores issues such as family, community, education and religion in a...

Throughout American history, citizens have been duped. It’s a word as old as the republic itself. George Washington, in his “Farewell Address,” warned about “dupes”—that is, those who, unwittingly, allow themselves to be deceived or misled by active adversaries of the United States. That process accelerated after the Bolshevik Revolution and into the Cold War, when duping was done on a remarkable scale by crass propagandists in the Communist movement, with America’s liberals/progressives the prime target. Yet, the story does not stop there: Many of the same Americans manipulated during the Cold War have resurfaced in the battle against radical...

...Rev. Manning read a letter from a KGB/CIA operative who has fallen out of grace with the agencies and has been pretty much pushed out to fend for himself. So he has nothing to lose. SHARON: Did he work for the KGB or CIA, or both? MIKI: He was a double agent. From what I understand, this letter was also put out there on the internet, but I haven’t seen it. His name is Mikhail Kryzhanovsky. He was involved in a program called “Millennium Hilton Conspiracy.” He claims that Obama was a CIA operative in Pakistan and Afghanistan and traveled...

At 18, Ben Taber soaked up the stadium-size vibe of Barack Obama's nomination with a sense of wonder as he joined an unprecedented wave of young voters that would help carry their candidate to the White House. By the time he turned 20 this week, that emotional and philosophical bond with the president had been tempered by a steep learning curve about governance, and a stern reality check about the scope and pace of hope and change. "For the most part, the general tenor of this administration is something I like," says Taber, who worked as a U.S. Senate intern...

Beirut : The new US administration has deluded Arabs and Muslims into believing it would chart a course away from the policies of the Bush era, a leading Shi'ite religious authority said. Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Hussain Fadlallah, who spoke earlier this year of the "sincerity" of US President Barack Obama's message to the Muslim world, criticised US policies across the Middle East and in Afghanistan and urged Arabs and Muslims to forget the US president's "foggy" words. "It appears that the American administration, which deluded Arabs and Muslims into believing it would tread a path different to that of...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

Saudi Arabia on Monday rejected linking Muslims with fascism, days after U.S. President George W. Bush spoke of a "war with Islamic fascists". "(Saudi Arabia) warns of accusing Muslims of terrorism and fascism without considering the history of the pure Islamic civilization," the cabinet of the major U.S. ally said in a statement after a meeting chaired by King Abdullah. The Saudi cabinet statement said: "What Islam is being charged with today, such as fascism, is primarily the result of Western cultural heritage. "Terrorism has no religion and no nationality," said the statement, carried by state media. It made no...

Iraq's embassy to Canada lashed out at the Christian Peacemaker Teams Friday, calling them "phoney pacifists" and "dupes" after the antiwar group responded to the rescue of three of its kidnapped activists by condemning the U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq. The Iraqi embassy called CPT "willfully ignorant" and "outrageous," and accused the Chicago-based group of being on the side of anti- democratic forces in Iraq. "The Christian Peacemaker Teams practises the kind of politics that automatically nominate them as dupes for jihadism and fascism," the embassy's statement said. A British-led special forces team on Thursday rescued three CPT members, who...

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The president of the U.S. bishops blasted a recent episode of the cable television comedy "South Park" that he said showed Mary in "a tasteless and ugly fashion."In a Dec. 14 letter to Tom Freston, co-president and chief operating officer of Viacom International, parent company of Comedy Central, the cable channel that shows "South Park," Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., said the channel showed "extreme insensitivity" in choosing to show the episode.The episode, which first was shown Dec. 7 and had repeat showings in the week following, was titled "Bloody Mary." During the episode, a...

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Thousands of supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched in Caracas on Saturday to support the leftist leader in his dispute with Mexico's president over U.S. free trade proposals. State workers, unionists and students, many wearing red T-shirts, waved flags and anti-U.S. placards as they marched through the capital accompanied by trucks blaring revolutionary songs, Venezuelan folk ballads and Mexican mariachi music. Venezuela and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors on Monday after Chavez called his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, a "lap dog" of U.S. imperialism for his close ties to Washington and told him, "Don't mess with...

The Democratic party appears to have finally come up with a way to explain why so many of its elected leaders gave President Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq. Three simple words: "We were duped." A parade of top Democrats have contended in recent days that they would have been antiwar in 2002 had they known then what they now believe to be true: that the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence in order to build a bogus case for war. In pursuit of that theme, Senate Democrats on Tuesday successfully demanded that their GOP colleagues quit stalling and...

The British authorities investigating the London terrorist bombing have put forth an intriguing theory. Did the four young Muslim men know they were destined to become suicide bombers? These young men had gone to Pakistan to “study” Islam. What they got tangled up in was Islam in its purest form—murderous and radical. It doesn’t seem to take much influence from the experts in death to convince peaceful and law-abiding people to become mass murderers for Islam. But convincing the new father of an eight month old baby to die for Islam? That might take a little more time. An 18-year-old...

I have NEVER been a fan of Jesse Jackson. But when he can get the biased liberal anti-Terri media - to report the words, Terri's starvation is "immoral" and an "injustice," -- as he did today -- then I have to thank him. I just called his office in the Chicago area; told them I have not been a supporter of his, but I thank him for standing up for Terri. RainbowPush: ph: 773-373-3366 info@rainbowpush.org

(Note to Admin Moderator: if trolls join this thread to disrupt it or cause problems for FR, please immediately remove stupid, foolish, numbskull, airheaded, threatening, nonsensical comments.) ===================================================== Apparently, I am in the middle of a controversy regarding the brutal murder of Nick Berg by the Islamofascist terrorist b*st*rds. I received the following FReepmail today from a salon.com reporter and spoke to him off the record. I will either call him back on the record or he can use my comments here on the record. Salon.com inquiry, your post on the "enemies list" From (redacted) | 05/12/2004 11:45:13 AM PDT...

Hans Blix tells crowd at UT the use of pre-emptive force sets a dangerous precedent By Nicolas Brulliard AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Thursday, April 29, 2004 Former chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix sharply criticized the intelligence presented by the United States in the buildup to the war in Iraq and warned against the use of pre-emptive force in a Wednesday night speech at the University of Texas. "A pre-emptive strike must necessarily rest on intelligence that indicates the danger to be occurring, the attack to be countered," Blix said. "And it is not hard to see that the intelligence that underpinned...

<p>April 22, 2004 -- Most Americans continue to believe Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when the war began, a new poll yesterday showed. The Harris Poll found that 51 percent believe Iraq had WMD, compared with 38 who don't believe the White House claim, a leading rationale for the U.S. invasion. The numbers have barely changed since February, when the last poll was conducted, despite the fact that weapons of mass destruction have yet to be uncovered.</p>

In Spite of Media Coverage, Widespread Belief in Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraqi Links to Al Qaeda Remain Virtually Unchanged Wednesday April 21, 11:44 am ET ROCHESTER, N.Y., April 21 /PRNewswire/ -- A new Harris Poll finds that public perceptions of the facts that led up to the invasion of Iraq remain almost unchanged in spite of a barrage of media reports that might have changed them. For example: -- A 51% to 38% majority continues to believe that "Iraq actually had weapons of mass destruction," virtually unchanged since February. -- A 49% to 36% plurality of all adults...