Free Republic

Vetting: Desperate, Obama supporters portray all who look into his past as "birthers." Now they ridicule efforts to find how a pot-smoking slacker got into Columbia and Harvard. But Obama's college records are a legitimate campaign issue. Mysteries abound, chiefly concerning his transfer to Columbia and ascension to Harvard. Voters, moreover, have had the benefit of knowing other recent Democrat White House hopefuls' course work and grades. If there's nothing to hide, why not release these academic records? Why is the White House stonewalling? An objective press corps ought to be curious. But it has by and large refused to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mitt Romney's campaign says President Barack Obama's policies aren't working in large part because Obama lacks executive leadership experience. Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom says Americans turned over the world's largest economy to someone who had no prior executive leadership experience. In contrast, Fehrnstrom points to Romney's role in running the 2002 Winter Olympics and his term as Massachusetts governor.

The drumbeat quickens. Economic titans from Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, to George Soros….the beast that broke the Bank of England…..are saying the run through 2012 will be a repeat of 2008 only much worse. I won’t repeat what got us here. The history and the how are available on both this website and hundreds of others. Whether the working of a divine plan or the mere machinations of evil men, the world’s economic order is about to fold. We are in the mother of all bubbles. It is a toxic mix of fiat currency, inflated asset values,...

Obama adviser Axelrod: Romney not 'qualified to call himself a job-creator’By Kevin Bogardus - 06/03/12 11:15 AM ET David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama’s reelection campaign, said Sunday that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney does not have a record of a “job-creator.” Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, Axelrod said the former Massachusetts governor shouldn’t be considered an expert on the economy. Romney’s record in government and in the private sector was not about creating jobs, according to the Obama adviser. “No one’s arguing whether Mitt Romney’s qualified to be president. What we’re arguing is whether he’s...

President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is spending record amounts of money for online advertising and more than twice as much as his Republican rival, a CNN analysis of campaign finance data shows. In the first few months of 2012, Obama's campaign bought nearly $16.4 million worth of online ads after spending almost $2.2 million last year -- even though he didn't face a Democratic challenger. That means he is on pace to spend a record amount on digital ads, according to ad spending experts. The campaign for Mitt Romney, who survived a heated primary race to become the presumptive Republican...

This month, the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the national individual mandate portion of President Obama’s healthcare bill. We’ve had universal healthcare here in Massachusetts since 2006, so how’s it working out for us? WE PAY LESS:

With friends like this.... If he could somehow get hold of his hair, Barack Obama would surely be pulling it out right now. Obama has made it clear that the direction for his re-election campaign is to attack Mitt Romney on Bain. Obama camp doubles down on Bain attacks (CBS News) Attempting to drive home the message that Mitt Romney is a corporate executive concerned with the bottom line and not American jobs, the Obama campaign released a new video on Monday attacking Romney and Bain Capital for laying off workers at an Indiana office supply factory. It's a loser....

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is seen as more 'mainstream' than President Barack Obama according to a Rasmussen poll posted on Sunday morning: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely U.S. Voters finds that 52% say it’s more accurate to describe the putative Republican nominee’s views as mainstream, while 30% regard them as extreme. Eighteen percent (18%) are undecided. When it comes to the president's political views, 45% of voters say they're in the mainstream, but an identical 45% say it's more accurate to describe them as extreme. This same poll, however, showed that voters are equally...

...Romney aides believe that cooperating with Democrats and media figures who are demanding a Trump disavowal would most certainly lead to more calls for more disavowals of other figures in the future -- leaving Romney spending as much time apologizing for his supporters as campaigning for president. ... Has David Gregory, moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," repudiated his colleague Al Sharpton, the MSNBC host with a decades-long record of incendiary statements and actions?

MAY 30, 2012 The Chicago Way Obama’s coterie of insiders is worth a closer look this time around. By John Fund Every president comes to Washington with a coterie of outside advisers, friends, and fixers they’ve picked up during the course of a career. Eventually one or more of them becomes controversial. Richard Nixon had Bebe Rebozo. Jimmy Carter had his brother Billy and Bert Lance. Ronald Reagan had Mike Deaver. Bill Clinton had many trailing after him — they became the menagerie implicated in Whitewater and Monicagate. But Barack Obama’s inner circle has almost completely escaped close scrutiny since...

June is usually a sleepy month during any presidential election, but not this year. Two events this month will not only affect the outcome of the presidential election, but also have a dramatic impact on the direction of the country, no matter who wins in November. On June 5, Wisconsin voters will decide whether or not to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The vote will be the culmination of an 18-month campaign by big labor to thwart Walker's public sector union reforms, which are already loosening the stranglehold that the unions had on state and local budgets. With just a...

Alan Krueger, head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that the country has added jobs for 27 months in a row, including 4.3 million jobs in the private sector. The economy still has a few bright spots. Americans bought cars and trucks a strong pace last month, giving automakers their best May since 2008. Underscoring the challenge for Obama with five months to go in the campaign, a May poll by The Associated Press and GfK, a research company, showed that 52 percent disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy while 46 percent approved. Some financial analysts...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Mitt Romney picking up 48% of the vote, while President Obama attracts 44%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and five percent (5%) are undecided.

In 2008, Barack Obama took aim at the “pew gap,” the overwhelming Republican edge among voters who regularly attend church. The Democratic presidential nominee came nowhere near closing it, but he didn’t have to. He just needed an extra percentage point or two among traditional GOP constituents, and he got it. The Democratic National Committee is promising a repeat performance in 2012. But some religious leaders and scholars who backed Obama in 2008 are skeptical. They say the Democrats have, through neglect and lack of focus, squandered the substantial gains they made with religious moderates and worry it will hurt...

© Miri WTPOTUS January 16, 2012 While I researched and wrote this article over the past week, The Post & Email published a story about a citizen who has challenged Mitt Romney’s eligibility for the presidency. The citizen argues that Mitt Romney’s father, George W. Romney, was a Mexican citizen according to Mexican law, by virtue of his birth in that country. The citizen further argues that it is incumbent upon Mitt Romney to prove that his father naturalized in the USA by the time of Mitt’s birth, in 1947.

Today’s four words: Et tu, Mo Do? Not again! The president who started off with such dazzle now seems incapable of stimulating either the economy or the voters. His campaign is offering Obama 2012 car magnets for a donation of $10; cat collars reading “I Meow for Michelle” for $12; an Obama grill spatula for $40, and discounted hoodies and T-shirts. How the mighty have fallen. Hey MoDo! They’re all high quality products! ...Cook told Maraniss that she thought Obama’s desire to “play out a superhero life” was “a very strong archetype in his personality.” Well, that certainly does explain...

In February 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder said America is a “nation of cowards” on race because we don’t talk about. So let’s talk about it. Voter ID Progressives are up in arms over the prospect of voters being required to show something at the polls they must show regularly to function as a productive member of society – a photo ID. It’s because progressives, particularly progressive Democrats, have a vested interest in preventing as many people as possible, especially minorities, from becoming productive members of society. Productive members of society – and those who aspire to be – don’t...

An overwhelming 85% of Indian Americans support Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, according to a poll conducted earlier this year. The results of the study, which were published in early May, also revealed that only 67% of Indian Americans polled voted for Obama in 2008. Mr. Obama’s life story seems to resonate better than Mitt Romney’s with many Indian Americans. In the study, which was conducted by Lake Research Partners, on the question of Obama vs. Romney, the ratio was a staggering 76 to 8 in favor of Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama has shown strong support for Indian...

Come on now. Is Obama really a “psychopathic megalomaniac”? I learned of Obama’s problems today. Not from Ron Paul supporters. Not from Glenn Beck‘s Drudge wanna-be news site The Blaze. I read about Obama’s psychosis from left wing Democrats. Everyday I get emails from former members of Move On, a pro-Democratic Party group that was famously active during the build-up to the Iraq War in 2003. They’re complaining about one man: President Obama. In these emails, one thing is apparent. When it comes to the left wing liberals, Obama is being left behind. The left was mostly raptured into political...

In a recent campaign speech, Obama said: “See, the question is not whether things will get better — they always do… The question is whether together, we can muster the will — in our own lives, in our common institutions, in our politics — to bring about the changes we need.” This is a revealing statement. It reveals the assumption of all liberals and socialists, Obama included, that the money will always be there. Will a wrecked economy improve? “They always do.” This implies that the economy will get better, no matter what the government does to it. Tell this...

Doctor Roy wrote: I know you have problems with the other two but what's the problem with shared sacrifice?Dear Comrade Doctor,There is nothing wrong with shared sacrifice if it’s the type of sacrifice Winston Churchill talked about when he told England he had “nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”But that’s not what Obama is talking about. He’s talking about rewarding one sector of society, for example the flat-earth society which posses as global alarmists, against the poor and middle class who have to pay more for energy because of Obama.Let me ask you this: Who the hell...

After 25 years in Washington, nearly half of it as the highest-ranking woman in American politics, Nancy D'Alesandro Pelosi has learned the art of when to attack and when to pull back. The Democratic House minority leader, in an interview in her hometown last week, was asked about former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown's recent comment that President Obama has "lost his mojo" on the campaign trail and shows "no life, no personality and no real enthusiasm." Her answer was typically diplomatic. "I don't agree," she said. "I love Willie, but maybe he hasn't been to any of the public...

It is amazing to already witness the unraveling of the democrat party. Usually a party waits until after the election to dust itself off and chart its new direction. However, with the month by month downward spiral of bad economic news with the election just months away, the democrats are already warring over its future. Nothing made this clearer than Bill Clinton himself and his DLC wing of the democrat party. DNC vs. DLC. Many of the leaders of the democrat party have realized they can only go so far left before going down the socialist cliff with no hope...

A simple way to help prevent voter fraud and election abuse is for states to purge voter rolls. What does this mean? Getting rid of names on voter rolls of people ineligible to vote such as illegal aliens, dead people, duplicates, etc. For nearly a year, Florida election officials have asked the Department of Homeland Security for access to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement database in order to take illegal aliens and non-citizens off Florida voter rolls. Not surprisingly, DHS has been dragging its feet and has yet to comply with the request and now, the Department of Justice is...

You would think $1 trillion in spending stimulus and $2.5 trillion of Fed pump-priming would produce an economy a whole lot stronger than 1.9 percent GDP, which was the revised first-quarter number. And you’d think all that government spending would deliver a whole lot more jobs than 69,000 in May. But it hasn’t happened. The Keynesian government-spending model has proven a complete failure. It’s the Obama model. And it has produced such an anemic recovery that frankly, at 2 percent growth, we’re back on the front end of a potential recession. If anything goes wrong -- like another blow-up in...

Romney can clinch the election by detailing an energy policy that restores jobs, prosperity, and American economic leadership. “To be credible, a reform agenda must have some reform substance.” Energy, the life-blood of the economy, is the Achilles heel of President Barack Obama. Mitt Romney can win the November election if he concentrates his campaign on a sensible energy policy.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: First it was Cory Booker, who said that Obama's attacks on Romney and Bain Capital he didn't like. They were nauseating. This kind of politics he doesn't like. Then Fast Eddie Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, echoed Cory Booker, ripping into Obama for attacking Romney and Bain. And Lanny Davis, Mr. Bill Clinton defender, goes on TV and totally rips Obama for the campaign of blaming Romney and Bain Capital. And the latest, Deval Patrick, governor Massachusetts; the latest is now Bill Clinton. And you may not have heard this 'cause it was on CNN last night...

The United States will move the majority of its warships to the Asia-Pacific in coming years and keep six aircraft carriers in the region, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday, giving the first details of a new U.S. military strategy. Speaking at an annual security forum in Singapore, Panetta sought to dispel the notion that the shift in U.S. focus to Asia was designed to contain China's emergence as a global power. He acknowledged differences between the world's two largest economies on a range of issues, including the South China Sea. … Some Chinese officials have been critical of...

Washington (CNN) - The race for the White House remains very close, according to a new national poll, partly because neither President Barack Obama nor Republican challenger Mitt Romney have a clear advantage on issue number one - the economy. A CNN/ORC International survey released Friday also indicates that Obama supporters are more energized right now than those backing Romney. According to the poll, 49% of registered voters say that if the November election were held today, they would vote for Obama, while 46% say they would cast a ballot for Romney, the unofficial GOP presidential nominee. The president's three...

President Barack Obama says he'll fulfill his campaign promises once he wins, because Republicans won't be obsessed with beating him. President Barack Obama cited a Republican "fever" as the reason why he hasn't been able to make progress on deficit reduction or immigration reform at a Minneapolis fundraiser today. The remarks are one of Obama's sharpest Republican critiques — equating their recent activism with illness — and are sure to draw condemnation from the right. From the pool report: Most of the talk was standard campaign speech, but the president did say he hopes that Republicans will be more cooperative...

The shelf life of President Obama’s Bain Capital strategy appears to be rapidly shrinking. Less than two weeks after Newark Mayor Cory Booker caused the Obama campaign plenty of heartburn by calling on it to “stop attacking private equity ,” the biggest name in Democratic politics (outside of Obama) has lodged his own torpedo. Bill Clinton, in an appearance on CNN last night, said that Mitt Romney has a “sterling business career” and that the campaign shouldn’t be about what kind of work Romney did. (VIDEO AT LINK) “I don’t think we ought to get into the position where we...

Bill Clinton: Praising Romney's business record doesn't connote endorsement By Rodney Hawkins (CBS News) PATERSON, N.J. - Former President Bill Clinton, seeking to contain the political damage from his earlier praise of Mitt Romney's "sterling" business background, said on Friday that his remarks shouldn't be construed as an endorsement. Appearing on CNN on Thursday, Clinton said of Romney: "A man who's been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold." Conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh crowed that the former president had "basically endorsed" the presumptive GOP nominee. But at a rally in Paterson to support Rep. Bill...

Even in the bluest of blue states, he’s now treading water at 48 percent, still comfortably ahead of Romney but unable to grab a majority even in Cali. Big deal or no? Banish the thought from your mind that Romney has a chance of winning there. He doesn’t — although don’t hold me to that if we get another three or four jobs reports that look like today’s. No, the potential significance of this and the reason why there’s some buzz about it among righties on Twitter is that it’s circumstantial evidence that The One might be starting to collapse...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new financial report from GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney shows that his wealth remains near $250 million, about the same as last The new financial report from Romney describes sales of a large amount of stocks managed through his blind trust. Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul stressed that the trust manages investments for Romney and his wife, Ann. The new report shows that Romney still made millions of dollars over the past year in lucrative bank notes and investment funds, including nearly 40 different funds associated with his former company, Bain Capital.

It is time to call the 2012 election. President Obama cannot win. He will likely lose big, in a very lopsided election. Pundits will claim to be surprised when the outcome becomes apparent. They should not be, as the signs of such a result are everywhere, despite the mainstream media's attempts to suppress them. There are numerous reasons why Obama will lose. Incompetence, likeability, and duplicity are a few. Obama has alienated too many in the electorate, including large numbers who supported him the first time. In 2012, many will vote against him or (even better) just stay home. How...

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- President Obama celebrated the values of communities petitioning government at a White House reception honoring Jewish American Heritage Month. "We don’t just celebrate all that American Jews have done for our country; we also look toward the future," he said. "And as we do, I know that those of you in this room, but folks all across this country will continue to help perfect our union; and for that, I am extraordinarily grateful." Obama focused a large portion of his remarks on the 150th anniversary of an order that was issued by General Ulysses Grant, which expelled...

In another blow to Obama’s reelection bid, consumer confidence, which has been low throughout Obama’s presidency, stumbled badly last month after economists initially predicted confidence would go up. The number indicates that the onslaught of people and politicians abandoning the S.S. Obama continues unabated. In recent weeks, allies of Obama have defected from his campaign message if not from his person. Forget about polls numbers for a moment. Consumer confidence is the number that tells you what is really behind the defections.     "Consumer Confidence fell in May,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board, “following a...

After a day spent waging bi-coastal combat with the Obama campaign, Mitt Romney's team in Boston earned the highest compliment Rush Limbaugh has ever paid them Thursday afternoon: "I'm telling you," he said. "This is not the McCain campaign." Once-skeptical conservatives knew exactly what he meant. In the eyes of many on the right, John McCain's 2008 presidential bid was a disaster not because he lost, but because he refused to fight. Conservatives believe McCain bought into a liberal media narrative that personal attacks on Barack Obama were unseemly and even racist. The conservative caricature of Candidate McCain that emerged...

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Co will cut nearly a quarter of its U.S. pension obligation by transferring the management of its pension plans for 118,000 white-collar retirees to a third party and offering lump-sum buyouts. The two moves unveiled on Friday will cut $26 billion from the automaker's massive U.S. pension liability of nearly $109 billion. GM's pension overhang is a top concern for investors. It was one of a handful of issues left untouched during GM's U.S.-financed bankruptcy restructuring three years ago. GM retirees represented by the United Auto Workers union are not affected by Friday's announcement. Hourly...

Anyone want to try defining “overnight” for me, just so that we have a rule of thumb going forward? On Inauguration Day, I would have accepted “2009″ or even “his first two years in office” as plausible answers. Instead, five months out from election day, somehow dawn still has yet to break. His braintrust is now actually on the cusp of arguing, in all seriousness, that it’s unfair to judge him on what’s happened in the jobs market over the course of his entire first term. What do you do when America’s just taken an economic gut punch, with a...

Another month or two of downbeat jobs reports like Friday's, and the 2012 electoral advantage will shift to Mitt Romney. At the moment, the election is still a coin flip.  But even before the latest evidence of slowing job growth, President Obama was no better than a 50-50 pick to win reelection (as noted Democratic pollster Peter Hart put it recently).  And with economic storm clouds building, it’s easy to imagine that Obama could be the underdog before too long. “If the May report is a harbinger of what's coming, Romney’s message that ‘We can do better, but Obama can't’...

Over the last few days, since Romney clinched the GOP nomination for President by going over the 1,144 committed delegates needed with his win in the Texas Primary on Tuesday, May 29, 2012, a number of new endorsements have come in for Romney's bid for the Presidency. These include George Shultz, former Secretary of State; Condoliza Rice, former Secretrary of State and National Security Advisor; Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate; and Nancy Reagan, wife of President Ronald Reagan. Here's what each of them had to say on the date they endorsed Romney: NANCY REAGAN endorses Mitt...

(Reuters) - President Barack Obama's administration called on Congress to do more to help the economy create jobs, with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis saying May's rise in the unemployment rate was unacceptable. "Congress has to take some action because while we see the unemployment rate where it is, it's not acceptable," Solis told the CNBC network on Friday.

In Ohio, President Obama has sold his programs to bolster workforce training and bring jobs back from China. In Michigan, he has promoted the bailout of the automakers. In Nevada, he talked up his proposals to help underwater homeowners stay afloat. Against a gloomy economic backdrop and a Republican opponent blaming him for it, Obama is selling his stewardship of the economy one state at a time, tailoring his message to regional conditions. He has little choice: New unemployment numbers released Friday, with a tiny shift for the worse, show the same persistently sluggish pace of much of the past...

U.S. employers created 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year, and the unemployment rate ticked up. The dismal jobs figures could fan fears that the economy is sputtering. The unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent from 8.1 percent in April, the first increase in 11 months. The Labor Department also says the economy created far fewer jobs in the previous two months than first thought. It revised those figures down to show 49,000 fewer jobs created. Weak job growth could damage President Barack Obama's reelection prospects.

President Obama and Mitt Romney are running neck-and-neck in three key battlegrounds -- Colorado, Iowa and Nevada -- according to a new slate of NBC News/Marist polls of registered voters. A majority of voters in each state feel optimistic about the state of the economy, and say the worst of the storm is in the rearview mirror...

The White House aimed Tuesday to squash comparisons between Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and the administration's financial support for green energy companies that have struggled, including the bankrupt solar firm Solyndra. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney sought to draw a distinction Tuesday, the same day an outside group knocked President Obama as the "public equity" president who wastes taxpayer dollars on risky companies like Solyndra. “There is the difference in that your overall view of what your responsibilities are as president and what your view of the economic future is,” Carney said at a press briefing when...

Last night, Resistance 44 launched its website and one of its first videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-n_wRpqIanA). What is Resistance 44? Resistance 44 is a nationwide network of young activists committed to facilitating a radical culture shift from a generation indoctrinated to embrace mob mentality to informed, politically active individual thinkers. It was formed to counteract Generation 44, President Obama's youth movement. Mission Resistance 44 will make history and fight progressivism at the polls by generating the largest turnout of informed young voters. For far too long, we have been spoon-fed the progressive culture from the likes of Hollywood elites and sensationalized news...

The potent mix of voters that has powered Democratic presidential victories in California for a generation overwhelmingly supports President Obama's bid for reelection, forming a demographic wall blocking Republican Mitt Romney from the biggest pot of electoral votes available in November.

Did Trump recently state that Obama was "born in Kenya and raised in Idonesia" ? SAN DIEGO (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney isn't taking a position on supporter Donald Trump's return to the controversy over where President Barack Obama was born. Romney said Monday evening that while he doesn't agree with all the people who support him, he appreciates their help to get him at least 50.1 percent of the vote in November. Romney's comments come about 24 hours before appearing at fundraiser in Las Vegas that Trump is hosting. Earlier this week Trump again stated that Obama...