Free Republic

Barack Obama The "bowing" controversies. Calling Kanye West a "jackass." Seeing a number of his first picks for prominent positions having to withdraw their names from consideration. That silly Beer Summit. Gate-crashers strolling in to a state dinner. Gifting the British PM with 25 DVDs that aren't compatible with European players. The "Special Olympics" bowling joke. Probably not the most dignified first year in presidential history.

Four days late, Barack Obama will interrupt his Hawaii vacation and finally speak to the nation today about the Christmas Day terror attack on America. However, he will be hiding from the American people and a media that might (might) ask uncomfortable questions by releasing a taped statement rather than making a live address.Reports are that he will tape his remarks at the nearby Marine base he has been using for his gym workouts, golfing and beach outings. Obama is staying at a $8.9 million estate that rents for an estimated $4000 per night. The White House Web site still...

The 2009 political year began on a high note of "change" and "hope" and ended in a thud of stalemate, despair and public fury over the economy, health care reform and the war in Afghanistan. No wonder it may go down as the year of the angry voter. Americans will remember 2009 as much for the grassroots protests - at "Tea Party" rallies and town hall meetings crashed by conservatives to demonstrations by public-option-favoring anti-war progressives - as the Beltway grudge matches that characterized President Obama's first year in office. In California, residents endured months of bitter, partisan battles in...

I am home alone my wife is working and my kids are all doing their own thing, so I am reading a book " Christian faith alone is capable of combining tradition and renewal Tradition alone leads to petrification;renewal alone leads to dissolution,artificial planning and tyrannical centralization ."

COPENHAGEN — Has Copenhagen collapsed? That seems to be the growing sentiment inside the city's Bella Conference Center, where officials, environmentalists and even delegates to the international climate conference began streaming out Friday evening. What began with excitement and anticipation two weeks ago ended Friday night with disappointment and anger for thousands. "This is a sad day for my country," said Mama Konate, chief delegate from the West African nation of Mali. "We have worked very hard to reach this agreement. And now it seems over. Without a deadline, I don't know if we will ever finish." The conference, the...

Barack Obama stepped into the chaotic final hours of the Copenhagen summit today saying he was convinced the world could act "boldly and decisively" on climate change. But his speech offered no indication America was ready to embrace bold measures, after world leaders had been working desperately against the clock to try to paper over an agreement to prevent two years of wasted effort — and a 10-day meeting — from ending in total collapse. Obama, who had been skittish about coming to Copenhagen at all unless it could be cast as a foreign policy success, looked visibly frustrated as...

RUSH: It is a crying shame, ladies and gentlemen, that that economic speech at Brookings that President Hoax and Change just gave was not in primetime. Hoax and Change. It's a shame it was not in primetime so all of America could have the choice of listening to his latest version of "I inherited and I am great." That is the theme of his speeches, I inherited, and I'm great. He dumped all over the Bush administration. TARP was flawed, his treasury secretary designed it! His tax cheat secretary designed it! It was flawed? My God, it is unbelievable what...

Barack Obama's faux populism is beginning to grate, and when yet another one of those "we the people" e-mails from the president landed on my screen as I was fishing around for a column subject, I came unglued. It is one thing to rob us blind by rewarding the power elite that created our problems but quite another to sugarcoat it in the rhetoric of a David taking on those Goliaths.In each of the three most important areas of policy with which he has dealt, Obama speaks in the voice of the little people's champion, but his actions cater fully...

I just checked my pay statement for next year. FITW increased 28.4%!!!

The 2008 presidential race was widely trumpeted as the "Youth Election," and for good reason. Inspired by Barack Obama's relative youth and his message of "hope" and "change," young Americans flocked to the then-junior senator from Illinois. It is doubtful that he could have become the most powerful man in the world without them. What did the young get for their critical outpouring of support? Though most of his youthful backers would be hesitant to admit it, the President has betrayed them on three issues of great importance to their wallets and sympathies: health care reform, the federal budget and...

When the unemployment rate hit a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October, it captured national attention, but little has been said about the racial disparities among job seekers. The unemployment rate for blacks is a whopping 15.7 percent and 13.1 percent for Latinos compared to 9.5 percent for whites. When the recession started two years ago, the black unemployment rate was 8.9 percent compared to the national rate of 4.9 percent. Influential black leaders have now begun pressuring President Obama, the country's first black president, to take action, saying they want him "to move forward" because in some communities,...

We’ve become a nation where perhaps civilization’s ultimate political achievement — freedom and democracy, fueled by a free-market economy — has become seen as an entitlement that is automatic, immutable, and self-maintaining. Left uncorrected, that assumption will soon be proven wrong: disastrously so. The perfect storm has hit us: A Democrat majority in both houses of Congress, at a time when a young, vibrant minority who is also a gifted speaker came along with promises of “Hope” and “Change.” Unfortunately, the “Change” he referred to meant “fundamentally changing the United States.” While millions of voters assumed he meant “Life as...

Pfizer (PFE) has laid off 26,300 employees since 2005, and hopes eventually to lay off a total of 30,900 through 2012, according to its 10-Q filing with the SEC. The company had several rounds of layoffs before its acquisition of Wyeth in an attempt to get $6 billion in annual savings out of its business model. The company has said it wants to ax about 19,500 jobs to make the Wyeth merger work. The new company will have about 130,000 workers. The layoffs are ongoing, Pfizer said: In the third quarter of 2009, we reduced our workforce by approximately 1,100...

When Barack Obama became president on Jan 20, the nation's unemployment rate was 7.2%. Using "crisis" and fear to pass their ridiculous "stimulus" plan (which was designed to stimulate Obama's parties' favorite constituents) the Obama administration promised that if the stimulus bill was passed, then unemployment rate would not go above 8%. By February, the unemployment rate had exceeded the Obama administration's unemployment projection for the entire year.

It was within moments of capturing KSCO's signal that I began to hear an engaging commentary by their owner, Kay Zwerling. Kay's premise was, "If I had told you that within the first 200 days of Barack Obama's presidency...?" And her short list of political atrocities began. Kay wondered aloud, who would have believed that within the first seven months of the new administration, 90% of all mortgages in the United States would be backed by the federal government (placing the taxpayer at risk for over $5 trillion dollars, I might add). The U.S. government, she said, would also become...

The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent -- a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. -- meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time. And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving...

PHILIP ELLIOTT (AP) - Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON White House officials told agencies across the government Tuesday they should take care to avoid even the appearance that politics played a part in the award of federal grants. The advisory came in response to an embarrassing incident last month in which a National Endowment for the Arts official asked artists on a conference call to coordinate with the Corporation for Public Service on ways to help bolster President Barack Obama's public service agenda

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration supports extending three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are due to expire at the end of the year, the Justice Department told Congress in a letter made public Tuesday. Lawmakers and civil rights groups had been pressing the Democratic administration to say whether it wants to preserve the post-Sept. 11 law's authority to access business records, as well as monitor so-called "lone wolf" terrorists and conduct roving wiretaps. ... As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama said he would take a close look at the law, based on his past expertise in constitutional law....

I just watched David Axelrod, the top ranking political advisor in the White House, and Robert Gibbs, the President's spokesman on "Meet the Press" and "This Week" respectively. Neither of them was willing, even after repeated questioning, to offer a single negative word about Van Jones. Not one word. A 9/11 Truther and defender of Mumia-Abu Jamal is not radical enough for this White House to distance itself from the man in any way. Again and again, this White House has been offered chances to condemn the man's views and they have willfully and quite deliberately refused. Compare this to...

Calling President Obama's Executive Order on Ethics for Executive Branch personnel "the strongest ethics standards in U.S. government history," White House counsel Norm Eisen on Friday announced 10 more waivers for Obama administration officials.

The purpose of this website is to tell America that former Obama supporters are no longer proud of their decision. We want everyone to contribute a story of themselves or about someone they know that tells America that they are sorry they voted for Obama.

Voter Fraud: Republican leaders want to defund and criminally investigate ACORN. Why should taxpayer dollars fund a "nonpartisan" organization that proclaims "Obama needs ACORN, and we need Obama."That the greatest attempt at voter fraud in the nation's history is being funded in large part at taxpayer's expense is more than a bit ironic. House Minority Leader John Boehner wants it stopped and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, wants the group allegedly behind the fraud, ACORN, criminally investigated and prosecuted. ACORN calls itself a "nonpartisan" group seeking to register minorities and the poor. But its political arm has endorsed Barack Obama, who...

Public Discourse: The candidate who told his supporters "to argue with them and get in their face" now finds the shoe on the other foot. So they're taking names and encouraging you to turn in your neighbors.So this is hope and change — telling American citizens who in a democracy disagree with you that they are mind-numbed robots participating in mob action and expressing "manufactured" outrage. Considering that upward of 80% of those hooligans like their doctors, like their insurance and like their care, anger over your government-run health care was not that hard to assemble. It was not that...

Note: the following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _____________________________________________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 30, 2009 President Obama Names Medal of Freedom Recipients 16 Agents of Change to Receive Top Civilian Honor WASHINGTON – President Obama today named 16 recipients of the 2009 Presidential Medal of Freedom. America’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom is awarded to individuals who make an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. This year’s awardees were chosen for...

On Friday, Democrats moved one step closer to giving free health insurance to the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal aliens when they successfully defeated a Republican-backed amendment, offered by Rep. Dean Heller, R-Nev., that would have prevented illegal aliens from receiving government-subsidized health care under the proposed plan backed by House Democrats and President Barack Obama. The House Ways and Means Committee nixed the Heller amendment by a 26-to-15 vote along straight party lines, and followed this action by passing the 1,018-page bill early Friday morning by a 23-to-18 margin, with three Democrats voting against the plan. The Democratic plan...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Michigan became the first state in 25 years to suffer an unemployment rate exceeding 15%, according to a report released Friday by the government. The state's unemployment rate rose to 15.2% in June. It was the highest of any state since March 1984, when West Virginia's unemployment rate exceeded 15%. Friday's report from the U.S. Labor Department also showed that unemployment topped 10% in 14 other states and the District of Columbia. Over the month, jobless rates increased in 38 states and the District of Columbia. Unemployment rates decreased in 5 states and 7 states had...

Thirty years after Jimmy Carter's malaise speech, we return to the days of rising joblessness, an unresponsive economy, deference to dictators, gutting the military and an energy policy tilting at windmills... As history repeats itself on the anniversary of the speech MSNBC's Chris Matthews wrote, we wonder if the "Hardball" host, who has worked for four Democratic politicians, is still getting tingles up his legs. The Democratic Party apparently has learned nothing in the past three decades. Will we see a return of the misery index? The only thing that's different is the sweater.

North Korea’s recent underground detonation of a nuclear weapon and multiple missile launches, as well as its declaration that the 1953 armistice that effectively ended the Korean war “no longer applies,” have presented President Barack Obama with just the sort of “generated international crisis” then-vice presidential nominee Joe Biden promised supporters would come along to “test” the foreign policy neophyte in his first months in office. Unfortunately, the statements and actions Obama has taken so far in response to the communist state’s latest series of provocations suggest he has little idea how to deal with such a situation - particularly...

I posted this video trailer of the upcoming remake of the movie "V".I was surprised as to how much it seems to refer (consciously or unconsciously) to the Obama phenomenon.Thought some of you might be interested!

What if an American President campaigned as a pragmatic centrist, promised tax cuts to 95% of the American people and pledged himself to a new era of government honesty, openness and bipartisanship, but never had any of those intentions? The result might be a cabinet full of tax cheats, political cronies and lobbyists, and a president peddling an overstuffed budget of liberal dream-schemes at a time when the American economy can least afford an extra nickel for folderol or fiddling. Meanwhile Rome is burning. President Obama rolls the dice and grabs a can of kerosene. This president's budget, plus the...

Imagine that last fall before being elected, Barack Obama had outlined the positions he has embraced since being inaugurated as president. An honest campaign speech could have gone something like this: "As we approach Election Day, the American people should not waste the crisis we find ourselves in. "Consequently, if elected, I promise to get us over the Bush financial meltdown with a stimulus program that will borrow $787 billion -- which, of course, will add to the already sizable budget deficit (nearly $500 billion) projected in the Bush administration's last budget. "By March of next year, my new $3.6...

Hope and Change? You can't be serious. As Americans wake up from our media-induced post-election haze one thing seems abundantly clear - Obama's campaign trafficked in hope, but his presidency is focusing on hopelessness.

For three days in December 2007, Kenya slid into chaos as ballot counters steadily took what appeared to be a presidential election victory for the challenger and delivered it to the incumbent. As tensions mounted, Kenneth Flottman sat in Nairobi and grew increasingly frustrated. He had in his hands the results of an exit poll, paid for by the United States government, that supported the initial returns favoring the challenger, Raila Odinga. Mr. Flottman, East Africa director for the International Republican Institute, the pro-democracy group that administered the poll, said he had believed that the results would promptly be made...

Where's the hope? Like the little old lady in the Wendy's commercials from the 1980's, voters who supported Barack Hussein Obama in his bid for "hope" and "change" last year would be justified in asking that question. The rest of us are starting to.....

Gannett newspaper, therefore link only per FR posting rules. Link: here

I was reading in the net like I always do and I came across something really disturbing.As someone born in Ecuador with friends and relatives in Latin America, I’m terrified watching how people in the United States are being manipulated just like people in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador to put a Marxist in power. The similarities between Rafael Correa’s campaign for president of Ecuador and that of Obama for U.S. president are amazing. Correa had no experience but was young, charismatic and had good speaking skills. Correa’s slogans were the same as Obama’s: CHANGE, YES WE CAN, etc. Once...

In Tokyo last week, over a thousand people signed a new petition asking the Japanese government to permit marriages between human beings and cartoon characters. “I am no longer interested in three dimensions. I would even like to become a resident of the two-dimensional world,” explained Taichi Takashita. “Therefore, at the very least, would it be possible to legally authorize marriage with a two-dimensional character?” Get back to me on that Tuesday night. We’ll know by then whether an entire constitutional republic has decided to contract marriage with a two-dimensional character and to attempt to take up residence in the...

Oh, for the love of crumbcake, this is getting so creepy.I have been saying for weeks that Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism has really helped my understanding of Barack Obama. I have pointed it out in three other posts:Barack Obama is a 1920s-style fascist Early 20th century "progressivism" has returned... Barack Obama: I AM America Every time I do, I think to myself, oh dear, this is going to sound overwrought. I do it anyways, because truth is truth, and the truth is that Barack Obama talks about himself and his plans in the same transcendent, populist, cult-of-personality terms as...

Another Democratic official charged in satanist sex crimes By Ray Gronberg : The Herald-Sun DURHAM -- Police say they've arrested and charged a third person in connection with an ongoing rape and kidnapping investigation. Diana Palmer, 44, is charged with being an accessory after the fact, Durham Police Department spokeswoman Kammie Michael said Wednesday afternoon. Palmer is first vice chairwoman of the Durham County Democratic Party. Her arrest came five days after police arrested the party's third vice chairwoman, Joy Johnson, 30, and Johnson's husband, Joseph Scott Craig, 25. Craig faces three counts of second-degree kidnapping, one count of second-degree...

The House of Representatives have just passed a budget that gives us our first good look at “Hope and Change.” According to The Las Vegas Journal Review, this budget advocates a base level of expenditure on government agencies greater than $1 Trillion. The LVJR offers a stark opinion on both the short-term and long-term impacts of this budget. By a vote of 214-210, the House on Thursday passed a budget blueprint that pushes total spending on government agencies above $1 trillion -- yes, that's a "t," folks -- for the first time in the nation's history.The budget includes a major...