Free Republic

Republicans are promising to fight to the end, though they concede that there's probably nothing they can do to keep Senate Democrats from passing a health care reform bill by Christmas Eve. But Senate passage won't mark the end of the battle. Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad tells "Fox News Sunday" that in order to keep the necessary 60 Senate votes together, conferees will need to keep the Senate bill largely intact during negotiations with the House. There are major differences between the Senate version and the one passed by the House, on issues ranging from abortion restrictions to the new...

When a fellow conservative tried to cheer me up this morning by assuring me that the Senate Democrats' victory on health care was going to be a Pyrrhic one, I realized I didn't remember much about Pyrrhus. I went of course to Wikipedia. That fine reference work defines a Pyrrhic victory as "a victory with devastating cost to the victor." It also provides this quotation from Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus, describing the aftermath of the battle of Asculum in 279 BCE: "The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that...

Mariusz Pudzianowski (Pudzian [Pron: Pu-Jon]) - 5 time winner of the "World's Strongest Man" title - won his first MMA match against Marcin Najman, also a newcomer to MMA. The heavyweight bout took place in Warsaw, Poland as the headliner for KSW XII. Mariusz won the fight in 0:44 of the first round by tap-out due to strikes. The Pudzianowski-Najman fight is one of the most anticipated Polish fighting sport events in years. Before the fight Mariusz said: "Ta ręka niesie za sobą śmierć, a tej drugiej sam się boję." (English: "This hand brings death, but the other one I...

WHAT: A new study shows that molecular similarities exist between the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus and other strains of seasonal H1N1 virus that have been circulating in the population since 1988. These results suggest that healthy adults may have a level of protective immune memory that can blunt the severity of infection caused by the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus. The study team was led by Bjoern Peters, Ph.D., and Alessandro Sette, Ph.D., of La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, Calif., grantees of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The...

BYU advances in MWC tournament despite multiple dirty plays from New Mexico's Elizabeth Lambert.

Today is Monday, for anyone who is going, please look through the Zero Dollar archive and pick out any that you feel you'd want to use and handout to your reps or any politician you run into that day. For those that can't go, find the ones you like and MAIL them today to your reps so their office can get them by Friday. It isn't hard. there are almost 70 different Zero dollars to pick from that expres different problems with Obamacare and the administration in general. I've included the latest example and a link to the archive below:...

RENO, Nev. -- A fight broke out Thursday at a Reno, Nev., clinic giving shots for swine flu when someone reportedly tried to cut in line. Washoe County Health District spokeswoman Judy Davis says she didn't have any details of the incident, but it involved people in high-risk groups waiting for a chance to get the shot. A witness told the Reno Gazette-Journal that a man took a swing at a woman, then jumped on her and they fell to the ground. They left after a security guard stepped in and broke up the fight. Davis says 1,200 vaccines were...

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves. —Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965) Through a combination of ineptitude, greed, and design, our “representatives” in Washington...

Bernie's bruising battle -- over stocks! Brawls with inmate By RICH CALDER Last Updated: 6:27 AM, October 13, 2009 Posted: 2:44 AM, October 13, 2009 Bernie "The Bruiser" Madoff got into a prison-yard tussle with a fellow inmate over -- of all things -- the stock market, eyewitnesses told The Post. And, by inmates' accounts, the 71-year-old Ponzi schemer came out the winner. Madoff, serving 150 years at the Butner, NC, federal prison, was heard last week getting into a heated debate over the state of the market with another senior-citizen jailbird.

Cuba is ready to use just about everything at its disposal, from its well-oiled civil defense system to the soldiers of a totalitarian government, to keep swine flu cases to a minimum. Everything but a vaccine. As the U.S. prepares an extensive health survey for side affects from its extensive inoculation plans, Cuba’s No. 2 health official says relying on a shot to contain a world pandemic is risky as best — and demoralizing at worst. "Nobody knows if it would work," said Dr. Luis Estruch. "How safe would it be?" Cuba’s sophisticated public-monitoring system and geographic isolation as an...

The Maharaja witnessed his first in-flight Mughal-e-Azam at 30,000 feet above sea level on Saturday, as two members of the cabin crew—one male and one female—slugged it out with the pilot and co-pilot. Endangering the lives of 106 passengers and grossly violating safety norms, the airline staffers came to blows in the cockpit and galley of the Indian Airlines Airbus A-320 as the aircraft cruised over Pakistan en route to Delhi via Lucknow from Sharjah. The cabin-vs-cockpit tiff originated on the ground in Sharjah itself and then turned into a full-blown fight once IC 884 took off soon after midnight....

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1, 2009 – The war in Afghanistan can be won if forces there change the way they fight, the top military commander on the ground said today. “We must operate and think in a fundamentally new way,” Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal said in a speech at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank. In his first speech since submitting his recent assessment on the situation in Afghanistan, the general said that the fight needs to be redefined -- more focused on earning the trust of the Afghan people and less on chasing out the...

PEORIA — .More than 24 hours after a melee broke out at an apartment complex for Illinois Central College students early Sunday, police were still sorting out the details. Preliminary information from East Peoria police indicates a party Saturday night at WoodView Commons, an apartment complex at 100 WoodView Lane, grew out of control. “As best we can gather, the initial scenario is that there were some discourse between two gangs that became heightened by the playing of a certain rap song that insulted one of the gangs, and the fight was on,” Police Chief Ed Papis said Monday. “Whoever...

PETROS, Tenn. - She may be 75, but she's still a mom. Jesse Williams, 28, discovered that truism Thursday night when the mother of a man he allegedly was fighting shot him once in the leg to stop the assault on her son. According to Morgan County Sheriff's Office Chief Deputy William Angel, Williams broke into David Brandenburg's residence at 905 Back Petros Road. The 43-year-old Brandenburg was home and began struggling with the intruder. The fighting men spilled out from the house and onto the yard, where Brandenburg's mother, Ruth Robbins, heard the commotion. Robbins lives next door, Angel...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama sought to rally Americans behind the war in Afghanistan on the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States as opinion polls show faltering public support for the conflict. "Let us renew our resolve against those who perpetrated this barbaric act and plot against us still," Obama said on Friday at a somber ceremony attended by about 500 people under rain-filled skies at the Pentagon. "In pursuit of al Qaeda and its extremist allies we will never falter," he said, before laying a wreath at a memorial for those killed at...

A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics has taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu. About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars. The flight's aim was "to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it", Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. The flu is often called simply "H1N1" in Israel, as pigs are seen as unclean. SWINE FLU Swine flu is a respiratory disease thought to spread through coughing and sneezing...

We did not start this fight, the far left, the elitists in and out of America started this fight. We must finish it. America is at war with enemies from within. These enemies understand that this is war and have been fighting that way for years. Constitutional and conservative Americans are just beginning to awaken to the fact that we are under attack. We cannot view this as politics as usual. We must see this for what it is, war. At the end of any war, there are three types of people left, winners, losers and the dead. As Pat...

At a certain point, the reality that the vast majority of the American populace are politically ignorant needs to be accepted by non-Marxists the same way it has been by Marxists. Then, non-Marxists need to adapt their political strategy accordingly. Progressive/socialist/Marxists start with the premise that regular people are incapable of making decisions on how best to spend the money they’ve earned. And, because of this shortfall of the average individual, Marxists like President Obama assert that two things are necessary: A government that can manage average peoples’ labor and resources, and elitists (like Obama himself) to oversee said government....

BACKGROUND: Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) developed strategies and tactics strategies that can level the playing field. Some of these rules are ruthless, but they work. NOW: BUT, because Alinsky wrote these rules (which Obama et als follow) as guidelines for a Communist takeover, I have done some editing so they can work for us in our efforts to PREVENT this Communist takeover in America! These are just a first draft and just my opening shot. . Please be a part and add/delete/suggest changes so that we can end up with a set of basic rules which maybe can help us...

As we enjoy the quiet posts on FR thousands of freedom-loving Americans are a-twitter contemplating and texting about the massive encroachments on freedom espoused by our current, as-yet-to-be-certified-natural-born-citizen, President and his syncophants in Congress and media. It's fun to watch, but as I said to Bunny Slippers, I'm too busy practicing with my sling thing to be twittering. My 11"W Adhesive-Backed Joker Posters will be arriving soon, for posting in ACORN-infested corners and other publicly visible places. You Freepers keep up the good fight. You're on the *right* side.

WASHINGTON, July 27, 2009 – Though troop morale is high in Afghanistan, the Taliban is a tough organization and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he doesn’t expect conditions to change soon. “As everyone knows, we’ve lost a large number of people here very recently,” Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said during a Pentagon Channel podcast interview today. “It’s going to be a tough fight in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, and we’re doing everything we can to certainly eliminate any losses. “But the Taliban are a tough, tough organization, and it’s going to be that way for...

Here is video of lawmakers in South Korea getting into a melee on the floor of their parliament. The video shows a mass of lawmakers grabbing each other around the neck, and even trying to turn the pulpit type stand on the podium over. Maybe it would be good for our members of Congress to do this once in awhile! It might not make them feel better, but it sure would give us something to watch! . . . . (Watch Video)

A man has died in Blackpool after he tried to intervene in a fight between two dogs. Police said the 21-year-old victim was bitten by both animals when he tried to separate them at a house in Reads Avenue on Friday evening. The man fell over and may have banged his head, said officers. He was treated by paramedics but died later. The dogs, which were both German shepherds, have been destroyed at the direction of the owner. 'Puncture marks' Lancashire Police said the victim was attacked in the house he shared with the owner in Reads Avenue at about...

WASHINGTON, March 31, 2009 – Next to a small village in Afghanistan’s fertile Jalrez Valley, a platoon of U.S. soldiers busy themselves fortifying a fighting position, stringing concertina wire, aiming mortars, and filling lots and lots of sand bags. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Rios, right, and Pfc. Michael Halter, Company A, 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, lead a patrol down during a village assessment in the Jalrez Valley of Afghanistan’s Wardak province, March 12, 2009. This was the troops’ first stop in the village as they worked their way out from the nearby combat outpost Apache. DoD photo by...

Apparently several fights have broken out over auto worker lay offs. See below: Video on sitehttp://www.notoriouslyconservative.com/2009/03/laid-off-auto-workers-fight-it-out.html

ROCKLIN, Calif. – Police said a dispute over bowling etiquette led one man to assault another with a 16-pound ball, knocking out one of the man's teeth. They said a 24-year-old man hit a man in the face with the bowling ball during a melee involving six bowlers at the Rocklin AMF Lanes. Two groups got into a fist fight about 12:40 a.m. Thursday after two bowlers approached the lane at the same time. They couldn't agree which should go first.

In a dojo, or martial arts training area, in a poor working class suburb of Cairo, women in karate uniforms and tracksuits are learning to fight off an assailant. In this male-dominated society it is unusual to see these women in their headscarves sparring with men, but such is the concern here at the rise of sexual harassment cases that the number attending this class grows every month. Shaza Saeed, 14, is one of the new recruits. "I was on my way home from school and I was attacked - I didn't know what to do," she said. "But now...

"A Visitor From The Past"

School officials are investigating a fight that broke out during a high school girls soccer match on Tuesday between Sanger and Reedley

Kenny Hinzman says he's still disturbed everytime he watches the video of his son being attacked in the Hurricane High school parking lot. Hinzman says just before Christmas break his son was looking at a truck in the school parking lot when another student jumped him and began beating him up. He says the fight was unprovoked. "He had his football buddies out there to help him to video it and put it on YouTube. There was no officer. There were no teachers supervising outside." says Hinzman. Hurricane High School can't comment on exactly what happened that day because of...

CHICAGO – Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich says he is not guilty of any criminal wrongdoing and plans to stay on the job. In his first official statement since his arrest on corruption charges last week, Blagojevich (blah-GOY'-Uh-vich) says he will fight until he takes his "last breath." ... The Democratic governor says he intends to "answer every allegation in a court of law."

How to fight Al-Qaeda? See what the US military is doing to fight the war on terror in the Information Domain - Iraq and Afghanistan - US Army Part. 1 (counter insurgent warfare on asymetric battlefield) http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=mP29xZGIC38 How to fight Al-Qaeda? See what the US military is doing to fight the war on terror in the Information Domain - Iraq and Afghanistan - US Army Part. 2 (counter insurgent warfare on asymetric battlefield) http://au.youtube.com/watch? v=IGnxtnlKgkU&feature=iv&annotation_id=event_573945

(IsraelNN.com) As part of its ongoing jihad against Israel, the Hamas terrorist organization has adopted a new mission, recently unveiled at its booth at a digital communications exhibition in Iran: hacking Israeli websites. A new Hamas-affiliated group, calling itself "The Digital Intifada," introduced itself in late October at the second annual National Exhibition and Festival of Digital Media in Tehran, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC). The objective of "The Digital Intifada" is to develop anti-Jewish websites and encourage the criminal hacking of Israeli governmental and non-governmental websites. At...

Muir says it well.

As Civil War battles went, it was a small and insignificant affair. But in terms of story – and especially, in terms of lessons – it’s one of my favorites. The war had not yet fully turned in October of 1864. And even though Stonewall Jackson had been dead for well over a year – killed by mistake by his own men at the Battle of Chancellorsville -- the Shenandoah Valley still belonged if not to Jackson then to Jackson’s ghost, for it was there that he and his “foot cavalry” had won their eternal place in Valhalla. Jackson’s tactical...

Ok.. Election is over.. Obama has won the White House. The Democrats have picked up a good many seats both in the house and the senate. Senator Chuck Schumer spoke on FOX news recently and basically declared that the Fairness Doctrine should be returned and even hinted that people who oppose it expect the FCC to stop pornography on television.. so in a sense he comparing talk radio to pornography. My own representative has told me that he beleives that the doctrine should be examined.. and even stated that it should be applied to journalists in a email message to...

Granted things are not looking good, and I don't think McCain has a chance.. As Thomas Jefferson said A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. We should not give up. We must fight the rats..

If you don't want to wake up on Wednesday morning with the most marxist, socialist, corrupt, anti-american president we have ever had, then this message is for you. Please do not spend the next 4 days in your house or at work. Please take the day off and get busy fighting for John McCain and Sarah Palin. Even if you are not in a swing state, if you are a near a swing state, then get to one and help!!! If you are in a non-swing state, get on the phone and call the numbers at JohnMcCain.com to help convince...

ARLINGTON, Virginia, October 16 /Standard Newswire/ -- Today, McCain-Palin 2008 released its latest television ad, entitled "Fight." The ad highlights John McCain speaking directly to the American people about his bold plan of action to make the next four years better than the last eight. To do that, John McCain will fight to set a new direction by fighting for the American people. He will protect Americans' savings and investments, lower taxes, curb government spending, work toward strategic energy independence and always fight for our country. The ad will be televised nationally. To learn more about John McCain's "Pension and...

John McCain asked us at the GOP convention to stand up and fight with him. We are fighting, but why isn’t Sen. McCain?I was encouraged when I saw the news of people at his events, filled with anger and calling for Sen. McCain to fight. But then today we saw him almost endorse B. Hussein Obama. Does Sen. McCain not understand our anger? We are not mad at Sen. McCain. Even those of us who don't agree with some of his political positions share an enormous respect him for the sacrifices he has made his entire life for our country....

By Burt Prelutsky As you may have guessed, I don’t personally know the Republican candidate for president. I’ve never met him and I expect I never will. I’m sure that if I’d been in a position to fork over $5,000 for dinner at a fund-raiser, it could have been easily arranged. However, I have one unbreakable rule: If I pay $5,000 to have dinner with someone, he’s then going to have to cough up $5,000 pretty darn quick to have dinner with me. And, frankly, he’d get a lot more for his money than I’d get for mine. That’s...

I am glad that the McCain campaign and the RNC are starting to fight back hard, and they earned another donation from me with Palin's remarks on Obama's associations. Of course we can all argue on how well anything has been run at any given point, but I will be satisfied that we have done our part if we expose the facts and let America decide where to head. Take some time to make some calls for the campaign, talk to friends and family, whatever it takes. I don't want to regret not having done whatever I could personally do...

Instead of playing by Marquee of Queensberry, use the rules employed in Thunderdome.

Mail Online Holiday flight is diverted after mid-air brawl breaks out By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 4:07 PM on 15th August 2008 A holiday flight between to Crete had to be diverted after a brawl erupted among drunken passengers, it has been revealed. An eye-witness told how one man began smashing overhead luggage bins before the captain decided to land the plane in Venice. Aoife O'Reilly, 18, a student from Dublin, said the men involved were all over 30 years of age and had obviously been drinking.

An American woman fighting to get back four daughters living in the West Bank with their Palestinian father has gotten unusually high-powered help - from Barack Obama. The U.S. presidential hopeful raised the case of the Chicago-area woman in his meeting with Palestinian leaders last week, and won a promise from Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to look into the matter. And that's how the private battle between Yasser and Colleen Barghouti, which spans continents and cultures, took a public turn. In separate interviews, the two offered conflicting explanations of what brought the family to Barghouti's home village of Kobar in...

KUCHING: A misunderstanding over a small pet dog saw three stallholders attacked by a group of youths, resulting in one of the victims losing a part of his finger and sustaining a broken arm on Friday night. Prior to the 9.30pm incident at a parking lot in Kota Sentosa, where a number of foodstalls operate, a young couple and a friend went to a stall selling fried kuey teow accompanied by their small pet dog. The stall was operated by a 35-year-old man and assisted by his ‘mentally-challenged’ younger brother who is also in his 30s. Although it was unclear...

DeLAND, Fla. -- A 46-year-old man was arrested after he threw a 3-pound pack of Polish sausage at his mother, striking her in the head, police said. Gregory Allan Praeger was charged with battery on Saturday after the incident at a Hunters Creek home, according to a DeLand police report. Praeger's mother told police that her son was drinking and they got into an argument. She said Praeger picked up the pack of sausage and threw it at her, grazing the back of her head, the police report said. When police asked Praeger what happened, he asked officers if they...

Dozens of gangster girls playing hooky from school battled each other in a bloody knife fight on the streets of Brooklyn yesterday afternoon that ended with two teens hospitalized and two more arrested on assault charges, cops said.

Neolithic men were prepared to fight for their women By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 1:49AM BST 03/06/2008 Neolithic age men fought over women too, according to a study that provides the most ancient evidence of the lengths men will go to in the hunt for partners. Many archaeologists have argued that women have long motivated cycles of violence and blood feuds throughout history but there has really been no solid archaeological evidence to support this view. Now a relatively new method has been used to work out the origins of the victims tossed into a mass grave of...

Friendly gut bugs could fight diabetes Last Updated: 12:01am BST 26/05/2008 A new study suggests that microbes in the gut could help fight diabetes. Roger Highfield reports. Probiotic drinks containing certain kinds of "friendly bacteria" could help prevent adult diabetes according to a new study. Now a new insight into the disease has come from scientists focusing on the microbes in the gut, which outnumber the cells in the body and play a crucial role in extracting calories, vitamins and nutrients from food. Consuming excess calories usually spurs what scientists call insulin resistance, when cells in the body that normally...