Free Republic

In turning down Keystone, however, the President has uncovered an ugly little secret that has always lurked beneath the surface of environmentalism. Its basic appeal is to the affluent. Despite all the professions of being "liberal" and "against big business," environmentalism's main appeal is that it promises to slow the progress of industrial progress. People who are already comfortable with the present state of affairs -- who are established in the environment, so to speak -- are happy to go along with this. It is not that they have any greater insight into the mysteries and workings of nature. They...

"I talked to a top Romney adviser tonight who said, 'Look, if Mitt Romney cannot win in Florida ....And we're going to have try to come with someone as an alternative to Newt Gingrich who could be Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, someone.' Because there is such a desperation by the so-called party elites, but that's exactly what Gingrich is playing against," Andrea Mitchell said on NBC tonight after the debate.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let me tell you something here, folks, very quickly before we go to the thing I promised to do. The difference here at the moment is a lot of the Republican establishment -- the insiders, the Republicans who want to keep spending money -- see Newt as a disaster waiting to happen for THEM: For their futures, for their political opportunity, for their chance to win the Senate and the committee chairmanships and be in control of the money. But a large part of the Republican rank and file, a large part of the Republican base don't...

The only serious opposition to this arrogant Ruling Party is coming not from feckless Republicans but from what might be called the Country Party -- and its vision is revolutionary. Our special Summer Issue cover story. As over-leveraged investment houses began to fail in September 2008, the leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties, of major corporations, and opinion leaders stretching from the National Review magazine (and the Wall Street Journal) on the right to the Nation magazine on the left, agreed that spending some $700 billion to buy the investors' "toxic assets" was the only alternative to the U.S....

I’ve always been of the opinion that the idea there is such a thing as a Republican “establishment” is something of a myth. The GOP hasn’t really had anything approximating a ruling elite since conservatives nominated Barry Goldwater​ and booed Nelson Rockefeller off the stage at the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco. The idea that Wall Street honchos or intellectuals running national magazines have any power over Republican voters and the party apparatus is based on a misunderstanding of how contemporary American politics works. The only thing that approximates an establishment is the family who produced two U.S....

Bob is back! He brings the latest info on what's really happening in Europe, why the bank bailout will be good for a year at the most and why you need to be acquiring gold, silver and the shares of quality mining companies. Bob's been at it for over 50 years, trading the markets, acquiring precious metals and freely and lovingly dispensing advice. He has studied history and understands exactly what's going on now. He believes that the global financial elite has a plan in place to completely dominate and control all of the world's inhabitants. Unfortunately for them, the...

http://youtu.be/XsDoDRKJhd0

I’ve come to realize a hitherto hidden dimension of why it is so hard for Western establishment figures (policymakers, journalists, and academics) to understand the Middle East. It is the conflict between the thirst for good news and the reality of bad news. Being optimists (based on the relatively good course of their own societies?) and believing that positive change is really easy if people only put their minds to making it happen (ditto and also liberal thinking), they exaggerate any sign that things are getting better. Moreover, contemporary thinking trembles in horror about saying anything critical about Third World...

Step 1: The first rule of the establishment is: Do not admit you are part of the establishment! Step 2: Disarm them with praise Step 3: Moderate whoever they pick as the 2012 nominee. Step 4: Teach them about compromise. Step 5: Never forget reality

Does anybody else notice the HUGE push among the media elites (Rove, Krauthammer, et al) for Romney, now that Cain is showing powerful gains? I have to say, the more they say Romney's a foregone conclusion, the deeper my heels dig in against him. Not because he's a Mormon, but because he WANTS it too much - has been running since the last election, and I WON'T have "them" dictate who our nominee will be. Colonel, USAFR

I believe that the ruling class politicians see Palin as a real threat to their status quo, and her postponement of announcing her candidacy as a hindrance to their stopping her. One way to force her hand earlier than she intends is to move up the primaries. Anybody else see a pattern here?

According to the survey, which was released Monday, 28 percent of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they support Perry as their party's presidential nominee, with Romney at 21 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is at ten percent, with Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who's making his third bid for the White House, former Godfather's Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, all at seven percent. The poll indicates that Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is at four percent, with former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at three...

ST. MICHAELS, Pa. – Remarkably, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club still stands on what once was the shore of Cambria County’s Lake Conemaugh. Built in 1881, the Victorian-style white building trimmed in cheerful red was a social center for many of the “robber barons” of this nation’s greatest industrial era. Club members stayed either in one of the clubhouse’s 24 beautiful suites or in lakeside cottages. Eight of those “cottages” – more like Victorian mansions – remain standing in various degrees of neglect, as if awaiting their powerful owners’ return. Yet after May 31, 1889, they never came...

Our unsustainable population levels are depleting resources and denying a decent future to our descendants. We must stop the denial. A 2009 NPR story on U.S. pregnancies reported that half — yes, half — of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended. That's a lot of unintended consumers adding to our future climate change. And that's what the right calls the "liberal" side of the mass media. The politically conservative U.S. mass media cover unsustainable population levels even less. That pretty much reflects the appalling state of U.S. public education today on population. The U.S. approach to population issues across all levels...

Detroit — General Motors Co. CEO Dan Akerson wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars, and he's confident the government will soon shed its remaining 26 percent stake in the once-bankrupt automaker. "I actually think the government will be out this year — within the next 12 months, hopefully within the next six months," Akerson said in a two-hour interview with The Detroit News last week. He is grateful for the government's rescue of GM — "I have nothing but good things to say about them" — but...

Charles Krauthammer‘s substantive reasons that Sarah Palin can’t win in 2012: I think it would make no sense for her to run. I think her chances of winning the nomination are small. The chances of winning the general election are probably nil. I think, for the same reasons you articulated, 60 percent negatives. That’s almost impossible to overcome. And it isn’t as if that is forever. Hillary Clinton had very high negatives at many points in her career. But over time, they tend to soften. …The problem with her, I think, is that she is not schooled. I don’t mean...

The media is in a frenzy and elite pundits are all atwitter. Why? Because Sarah Palin refuses to let them define her. As Palin puts it, "I don't owe the media anything." The political and media elites on both left and right are rising up in anger at former Governor Sarah Palin. Stories abound, all negative, about this American citizen whose message resonates with ordinary citizens yet doesn't conform to the current political and media template. By all rights, Palin should be kowtowing to the media. Doesn't she know that? Instead, this upstart dares to ignore the unwritten rules governing...

Not so long ago, Sarah Palin gave a speech in which she praised small towns as the "real America" and as bastions of "pro-America" attitudes. She was roundly criticized and attacked by the left for her statements, and she later issued an apology stating that if people thought she meant some parts of the nation were not "real" Americans, "I don't want that misunderstood, if that's the way it came across, I apologize." Still, the left holds this against her, angry that she might think some parts of the country are more genuinely American than others, and that some might...

At any point in 2009 or 2010, news that Sarah Palin was taking "concrete steps" toward launching a presidential campaign would have sent the political world into an absolute frenzy, with Democrats rejoicing, Republican leaders panicking, and cable news channels shifting into "all Sarah, all the time" overdrive. But things are a little different now, and while a report in Thursday's New York Times that Palin is sending fresh and unmistakable signals that she may join the GOP's 2012 field is certainly generating conversation, this hardly feels like the earth-shattering, campaign-altering development we once assumed it would be. What's changed?...

This is your "what the hell?" video of the morning. Treasury Secretary Geithner is asked if he knew about the "predatory atmosphere" at the IMF. He says "this is a hard question to ask a man." Except, it's not a hard question, for a man or for anyone. "Were you aware of the culture of rape at IMF" has two possible answers: "yes, I noticed" or "no, I just didn't see it." But, of course, he can't say either because if he saw abuse then the follow-up question is going to be why he didn't do anything about it. And...

The maid came from one of the world's poorest countries and worked long hours trying to support the teen daughter she raised alone. The penthouse suite at the Sofitel Hotel was just another room; she had no idea the man she says tried to rape her was a famous French politician. The man, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, remained jailed under a suicide watch Wednesday as a lawyer for the woman sought to rebut whispered allegations that her charges were a conspiracy and a setup. Calls intensified for the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn to step down as head of the powerful International Monetary Fund, with...

Dominique Strauss-Kahn will admit he had sexual contact with the hotel chambermaid who alleges he attacked her, but insist it was consensual, his lawyers have indicated. The International Monetary Fund chief allegedly locked the maid in his suite at Manhattan's Sofitel on Saturday and forced her to give him oral sex. He was denied $1m bail and is being held at Rikers Island jail. However in a hint at what may become his main line of defence, his attorney, Benjamin Brafman, said at New York criminal court: "The evidence, we believe, will not be consistent with a forcible encounter". It...

Mitt Romney just gave a more articulate defense of Obamacare than President Obama ever has. He continues to believe that the individual mandate is a good idea, despite the fact that the “free-rider” problem is a myth. His effort to make a distinction between Romneycare and Obamacare was not persuasive: If anything, he convincingly made the opposite case, that Romneycare and Obamacare are based on the same fundamental concept. In recent months, Romney has claimed that Romneycare was a specific solution for the specific needs of Massachusetts. But in his remarks, he did not name one specific aspect of the...

Boston’s chattering classes are struggling with the stunning political defeat of one of Harvard’s most popular academics at the hands of Canadian voters, painting Michael Ignatieff’s historic loss as Liberal leader as a new low in Canadian politics. A series of editorials and articles published this week in the Harvard Crimson, Boston Globe and elsewhere have blamed Canadians for being close-minded and anti-American when they handed Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberals the party’s worst defeat in history. “Harvard sees itself as the centre of the universe, so I’m sure it felt it very deeply,” said Graham Wilson, chair of Boston...

A new Gallup poll reveals that voters who identify as more conservative, do not have college degrees and who make less than $24,000 annually are more likely to support former Alaska governor Sarah Palin over Mitt Romney for president in 2012. Romney, on the other hand, has evidently fared better with voters who describe themselves as “liberals to moderate”, have received degrees of higher learning and who make at least $90,000 a year. The split drives home the challenges facing any would-be GOP candidate: Catering to the party’s base without completely alienating those on the fence, and appealing to voters...

And you thought this weekend was going to be all about Donald Trump! Probably only one other lightening-rod VIP could have stolen the mogul’s buzz in the pro-am zeitgeist tournament known as the White House Correspondents’ weekend, and darned if she didn’t pull a surprise appearance. You betcha, she did. Sarah Palin walked into the Georgetown home of Mark Ein shortly before noon Saturday to dazzle a brunch crowd of Washington insiders and visiting luminaries. Black bell-sleeved summer dress, shiny hair. She and a clean-shaven Todd Palin posed for a few photos with hosts Wendi Murdoch and Susan Axelrod, then...

Guess who came to brunch? The hockey mom herself, Sarah Palin, attended Tammy Haddad's annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner brunch on Saturday. The former vice presidential candidate was immediately enveloped by a large crowd on a patio after making her entrance with Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren. Palin spent some time posing for pictures with both Dems and R's alike. About an hour later, she took off with Van Susteren.

The New York Sun has an article today called “Sarah Palin for the Fed?” in which they discuss how the former governor of Alaska and 2008 vice-presidential candidate has been running rings around all of Barack Obama’s high-priced, high-powered, ideologically impeccable financial men: “The big question as Chairman Bernanke gets set for his first quarterly press conference is how Sarah Palin was able to figure out sooner than everyone else that the Federal Reserve’s campaign of quantitative easing wouldn’t work. Disappointment in the Fed’s policies is being reported this morning at the top of page one of the New York...

Here’s some honesty for you: “Children are selfish, self-centred, egotistical little monsters. They are also, and often at the same time, gorgeous, loving, wonderful creatures,” writes Irish columnist, Sinead Ryan. Nor is corporal punishment evil, or ineffective, she concludes. “Finally, it is its very rarity that makes it work. It shocks a child (and indeed, many a parent), and that is the point.” Of the don’t-smack-your-darling camp Ryan states: “Smacking has been hijacked by the PC-parenting brigade, who probably frown upon the naughty step, too. They are very possibly the same parents who regularly get notes home from teacher about...

N. Korea: Elites and Prols Elites Prols

It is enough to make a grown man weep to see how tepid the House Republicans are under Speaker John Boehner. It isn't just that their pathetic excuse for federal budget cuts betrays the 2010 electoral mandate of the American people, which it does. It is that their tepid response to the massively destructive federal budget signals to the American people that the Republican Party still cannot be trusted with the reins of government. We live in a time of crisis, and the people are seeking substantive solutions to life-threatening problems. That means they want the politicians to stop their...

Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying the left will always tell you whom they fear by making that person the focus of their most virulent attacks. The left despises Sarah Palin. They say she is stupid and incapable of ever assuming the role of president. They mock her education, (B.S. University of Idaho), her small town background and her political accomplishments ( 2006 - 2009 Governor of Alaska ). When she resigned the governorship, they said she was a quitter. Just recently, the left indicted her as being responsible for the shooting of Congresswoman Gibbs in Arizona. But what of...

Now that the left's McCarthyite attack on Sarah Palin has subsided, she merely has to suffer the disdain of the intellectual elite.  Even James Taranto, admitted high-school dropout, damns her with faint praise. Now that the left's McCarthyite attack on Sarah Palin has subsided, she merely has to suffer the disdain of the intellectual elite.  Even James Taranto, admitted high-school dropout, damns her with faint praise.

.. most analysis of the Tea Party movement ignores history and sees the Tea Party as something new and rather bizarre. Yet the Tea Party is a form of populism - a perennial feature of American politics and perhaps one of its defining characteristics. American populism has its origins in the broad-based and fissiparous movement that emerged from the 1850s onwards. It reached its high point in the 1890s with the formation of the People's Party, which challenged the duopoly of the Republicans and Democrats but declined rapidly as a formal movement thereafter. Yet, like an event of nuclear fission,...

It just happened again. I spend a fair amount of time at my local coffee shop. I like to do my writing outside and, besides, it gives me an opportunity to try and initiate political conversations with the people who pass by, my hope always being to begin to enlighten them as to what conservative really believe (and not just what the Leftist media tells them.) Today the conversation turned to Sarah Palin and my new acquaintance blurted out “Oh I hate her.” Not yet knowing my politics, I’m sure that, being her in Los Angeles she expected to hear...

It’s healthy, even natural, for Americans to feel populist resentment against elites that base their status through inherited wealth and family connections. But it’s toxic, misguided and profoundly stupid to focus public hostility on leaders who achieved their positions through education, diligence and ability. Recent sniping between Sarah Palin and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer highlights the crucial distinction between rebellious attitudes that attack unfairly arrogated power and privilege and a trendy neo-populism that attacks brains. When Krauthammer dared to suggest that the former Alaska governor looked less than “presidential” while shooting caribou with Kate Goselin on her hit TLC...

Sarah Palin is as polarizing a figure in American politics as one could imagine. Adored and championed by many conservatives, elderly and rural folk; reviled and denigrated by many liberals, progressives and intellectuals. Mrs. Palin is in the news again due to her inappropriate use of the term “blood libel” in a response she made to critics who held her rhetoric partially to blame for the recent massacre in Tucson, Ariz. which severely wounded Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, once targeted for removal from office by Palin. Palin was rightfully peeved to be held in any way accountable for the violent actions...

Why do conservative elites go out of their way to trash Palin? I’ve noticed that George Will and Charles Krauthammer have taken time out of their many TV gigs to trash Sarah Palin. Other prominent conservatives seem to relish dissing the former Alaska governor. David Frum, Joe Scarborough, Peggy Noonan, David Brooks, Chris Christie; don’t forget Kathleen Parker, who parleyed her Palin envy into a CNN talk show that no one watches. This is not an attack on these conservatives. I read them all and often find a lot of worth in what they opine. I don’t understand why they...

If you listen to most media reports, the Democrats continue to sputter along after a browbeating at the polls in November while Republicans are poised to usher in a new era of governance and "austerity". But what those reports largely fail to mention is that all is not so tidy for the GOP. In fact, things are downright contentious as Tea Party Republicans struggle to take control of the party away from establishment Republicans. Nowhere is this growing rift more apparent than in the media presence and persona of Sarah Palin. And it is likely that Palin will continue to...

The incoming House Oversight and Government Reform chairman on Sunday tried to clarify his recent remarks to Rush Limbaugh where he called President Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times." ... "When you hand out $1 trillion in TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) just before this president came in, most of it unspent, $1 trillion nearly in stimulus, that this president asked for, plus this huge expansion in health care and government, it has a corrupting effect," Issa said on CNN's "State of the Union." Although TARP – the program passed in 2008 intended to strengthen the...

The ImprobablesThere are a number of improbables, anomalies, paradoxes, ironies, absurdities — call them what you wish – on the national scene that simply defy reason. We usually fault an ignorant media as culpable for creating narratives that have no basis in fact and yet are rarely questioned. Here are some of the glaring examples and you decide how the unlikely became the gospel. 1. How did 20-minutes-of-fame Julian Assange construct the façade of an idealistic crusading electronic muckraker? He seems much more likely a part P.T. Barnum showman/part celebrity narcissist. While promising to embarrass a number of banks and...

Will the seemingly nonstop criticism of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin cause the Republican Party to nominate the wrong Presidential candidate in 2012? Our Facebook partner, Positively Republican, recently posted the following question (not in the same exact words, of course) as the topic of a discussion thread: Why do people who admire Governor Palin defend her so forcefully, and almost rabidly, whenever she's attacked; and especially when she's attacked by fellow Republicans who are supposed to be their political--and ideological--allies? The short answer is that Governor Palin’s apologists react to attacks on her the way they do because they...

THE woman on the aisle seat, my neighbour on the British Airways flight, could have been any agreeable white American tourist exuding affection for India. That she turned out to be a dyed-in-the-wool Republican made her a more interesting companion on an otherwise pointlessly long journey to San Francisco. She was returning home to Phoenix where Sarah Palin is thought to have a marginal approval as a possible challenger to Barack Obama two years from now. The subject inevitably turned to Meera Shankar`s pat-down search saga. The Indian ambassador in Washington was the toast of the Obama visit to Delhi....

Who knows? Maybe President Obama will get some gumption and regain support in time for the 2012 elections. Perhaps the Republicans will triumph. But one thing is certain: Sarah Palin will play a key role. Given her influence, it is time to put three common myths about her to rest. Myth No. 1: Sarah Palin is stupid. The only thing liberal and conservative elites can seem to agree about is that Sarah Palin is a dunce. New York Times columnist Frank Rich regularly throws darts at her, and so does the conservative writer George Will. Even former first lady Barbara...

Sarah Palin never apologizes for what some attribute to her as weaknesses. Krauthammer recently criticized her as not looking very presidential because of her shows and books. But she makes it clear that she brings a different game than what some are accustomed to, and win or lose that’s what she’s going to stick with. She’s going rogue! It’s a great interview all the way through. Enjoy! Link

Michael Knox Beran, a frequent contributor to National Review and National Review Online, is the author of... the new book Pathology of the Elites which he discusses with NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez here. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: What’s so pathological about elites? MICHAEL KNOX BERAN: Elites become pathological when they mask their will to power with a philosophy of social pity. Lionel Trilling said of a character in Henry James’s novel The Princess Casamassima — an American-born woman who marries into the European nobility and becomes a social reformer — that she “is the very embodiment of the modern will which...

A huge majority of Washington's insiders say Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate, isn't qualified to be president, a Politico poll indicates. Eight-six percent of respondents considered members of the political establishment said they don't think Palin is qualified to hold the office, compared to 64 percent of the general public, results of the Politico poll released Wednesday said. Eleven percent of political establishment respondents in Washington said they believe Palin is qualified to be president, compared to 23 percent of the general public, the survey indicated. In addition, 79 percent of those classified as Washington elites said...

Funding vote to test Obama’s resolve on ending earmarksBy Alexander Bolton - 12/14/10 08:36 PM ET Senate Democrats are moving aggressively to pass a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill that will test President Obama’s resolve on opposing congressional earmarks. The 1,924-page bill would set aside funding for thousands of earmarks, according to Senate aides tracking the legislation. Obama last month called for an earmark ban, saying in one of his weekly addresses that “we can’t afford” these items inserted by members of Congress “without adequate review.” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Tuesday called on Obama to intervene in the Senate’s...

We are just south of Christmas, and the nation's insiders -- self-proclaimed blue-bloods by birth and/or worldview -- have declared open season on Sarah Palin.  Crazed left and sclerotic right have united in common purpose -- "hellbent," as Politico put it -- to rid this nation of the possibility of a presidency that would most assuredly end in "apocalyptic disaster" after which "the survivors will envy the dead" (or so says that fading leftist icon, The New Republic).  Stop her now -- or we may end up with a normal American at the helm. Sarah Palin is just too dumb...

Today global wealth is more highly concentrated in the hands of the elite than it ever has been at any other point in modern history. Once upon a time, the vast majority of the people in the world knew how to grow their own food, raise their own animals and take care of themselves. There weren't many that were fabulously wealthy, but there was a quiet dignity in having land you could call your own or in having a skill that you could turn into a business. Sadly, over the past several decades an increasingly growing percentage of agricultural land...