Free Republic

COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama has suffered the second embarrassment over oil imports within the space of a week. Brazil, whose offshore deposits of oil were sought by the Obama administration, has signed contracts with China for the product. According to the Washington Times, Brazilian offshore crude may number about 38 billion barrels. Obama went to Brazil last month to put in a bid for the oil, offering loans and other support to develop the oil in an "environmentally responsible matter," The Hill reported at the time. Republicans criticized that initiative, pointing out Obama has placed roadblocks in the way...

This is how we know who the children of god are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not LOVE his brother. LOVE One Another. 1 John 3:10 In November all of the Obamedia were crowing how their messiah had taken Speaker Bonehead to the cleaners over the tax cut bill. Was Speaker Bonehead dumb like a fox when he lost that battle while sticking a ticking bomb buried in the middle of it. Now that bomb has exploded and...

The U.S. is considering a proposal to transfer a top Taliban commander out of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as part of a potential step toward peace talks with the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. A senior U.S. official confirmed to Fox News that Mullah Mohammed Fazl is among the prisoners being considered for release. Held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, Fazl was suspected in sectarian killings of Shiite Muslims before the U.S. invasion that toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001. The U.S. alleges he was a top Taliban official who at one point commanded thousands of troops...WikiLeaks...

Officials from the policy-neutral National Payroll Reporting Consortium, Inc. have expressed concern to members of Congress that the two-month payroll tax holiday passed by the Senate and supported by President Obama cannot be implemented properly. Pete Isberg, president of the NPRC today wrote to the key leaders of the relevant committees of the House and Senate, telling them that “insufficient lead time” to implement the complicated change mandated by the legislation means the two-month payroll tax holiday “could create substantial problems, confusion and costs affecting a significant percentage of U.S. employers and employees...” The NPRC ... represents organizations that provide...

A Teen-age President in Search of an Adult Identity Barack Obama keeps looking for a presidential identity not his own. In 2008, he wished to be JFK — whom he often referenced as a youthful and charismatic figure supposedly similar to himself. So we heard references to Obama’s father’s arrival to the U.S. during the golden Kennedy Camelot years. Caroline Kennedy herself came out of seclusion to assure us that Obama had the same Kennedy zest, and she flirted with a Senate run to help restore the lost age of grandeur. And at the Brandenburg Gate, Obama would have liked...

Barack Obama and his minions — Suha-bussing Hillary Clinton who disses Israel every chance she gets and Ambassador Howard Gutman who thinks Islamic anti-Semitism began at a Tel Aviv felafel shop a week ago Thursday (he should read Andrew Bostom) — love to put pressure on our supposed ally… but on Iran’s despicable mullahs not so much. So it should be no surprise that our president is pushing back on last week’s Senate vote for stronger sanctions on Iran. Via Reuters: The Obama administration is urging US lawmakers to soften proposed sanctions targeting Iran’s central bank, Senator Mark Kirk said...

You Lie Obama has failed in every category of government that can be measured. Under his incompetent financial stewardship the increase in the National Debt has now increased to 4.2 BILLION dollars a day. His refusal to repeal the Dodd-Frank Business Destruction Law is consistent with the incompetence and complete lack of responsibility that Obama has repeatedly demonstrated since occupying our White House.

Truck Full of Equipment for Obama Bus Tour Stolen in Virginia: Report Presidential seals also in stolen vehicle Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 | Updated 8:20 AM EDT A truck carrying President Obama's Presidential seals, podiums and $200,000 worth of audio equipment is stolen north of Richmond. Angie Goff A truck carrying President Obama's Presidential seals, podiums and $200,000 worth of audio equipment is stolen north of Richmond. A van containing President Obama's teleprompter and podium were stolen from a Virginia hotel parking lot on Monday, NBC12 in Richmond reports. The truck was parked at the Virginia Center Commons Courtyard Marriott...

You've heard it before, but it's worth repeating as a reminder of just how puffed-up Barack Obama got back in 2008: I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best...

NBC News' newest broadcast journalist just keeps out doing himself. Enjoy tonight's must-see moment.

Former Vice-President Al Gore says he takes encouragement from the so-called “Arab Spring” protests against tyranny that have sprung up in the Muslim countries of the Middle East. “If young people can stand up against a government that shoots them down in the street, then I think there’s hope that the young people of America can rally against the oppressive and incompetent Obama Regime here,” Gore surmised. “I don’t believe that President Obama would dare call on troops to fire on American protestors. But even if he did the American people might finally get the message that they made a...

UPDATE: Dow down 460 at 2:00 est. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is taking a beating as President Obama continues to speak. Towards the beginning of his speech, the index was down 375 points. As I write now it is down 450. Obama's blaming of everyone else and trotting out the same old "solutions" are not helping. The S&P average is down a total of 5% on the day. The NASDAQ is also down 5% on the day. This is becoming a run. We need leadership now. In addition, between the time he announced the speech and gave it, the...

If I were caught in an earthquake, I'd be pretty shell-shocked. But Sebastian Alegria, a 14-year-old Chilean high school student, decided to hack together a twitter alert system that's already a year ahead of the Chilean government's own planned project. Alegria's rudimentary yet effective system comes from having survived Chile's own earthquakes last year and seeing the devastation that covered Japan earlier this year. Keen on finding an inexpensive solution for early earthquake detection, he rigged an Arduino and domestic earthquake detector to tweet seconds before detectable seismic activity. Tweeting from @AlarmaSismos, it has already successfully detected every major earthquake...

There is a laundry list of issues that may lead to Barack Obama being a one-term president. There's his massive, debt-financed spending plans designed to boost the economy that, of course, failed. There's his seemingly incoherent foreign policy. There's his complete grasp of how jobs are created. But there is another issue that is waiting to explode. Obama's administration has been involved in the idiotic plan of allowing American guns to be sold to Mexican drug dealers. These guns were used to kill an American Border Patrol Agent. So... what did Obama know, and when did he know it? Rep....

The number of Obama supporters seems inversely related to his time in office. Many wonder what happened to "The One We Are Waiting For." Obama assumed office in difficult economic times. After a couple of years of excuses -- which included "the problems were worse than we knew" and the generic, all-purpose "it's Bush's fault" -- Obama now owns the original problems and new ones of his own doing. An incomplete report card on his "accomplishments" would include the following:

The local idiot democratic party elites did something that affects me personally (and millions of other taxpayers, of course) and so, I want payback. This video is the first in a series that takes this crappy town as a microcosm of what's happened and is happening to America. You might want to check it out.

The president's Council on Jobs and Competitivenes held a meeting in Durham, NC on Monday and the president was in excellent spirits.He even told a joke highlighting his own incompetence: President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness met today in Durham, NC at Cree Inc., a company that manufactures energy-efficient LED lighting. One of the Council's recommendations to President Obama was to streamline the federal permit process for construction and infrastructure projects. It was explained to Obama that the permitting process can delay projects for "months to years ... and in many cases even cause projects to be abandoned...

The Republicans swept November’s midterm election by making it highly ideological, a referendum on two years of hyper-liberalism — of arrogant, overreaching, intrusive government drowning in debt and running deficits of $1.5 trillion annually. It’s not complicated. To govern from the left in a center-right country where four out of five citizens are non-liberal is a prescription for electoral defeat. Which suggested an obvious Republican strategy for 2012: Recapitulate 2010. Keep it ideological. Choose a presidential nominee who can best make the case. But in the last few weeks, the landscape has changed. For two reasons: NY-26 and the May...

Therefore, my brothers, you whom I LOVE and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lored, dear friends! Exhortations… Phil 4:1 By any measure we have a copy of the Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal gummit expansion which extended the Great Depression. If you were to really find the true unemployment figures they are likely within a few points of the worst years of the Depression at 25%. We are seeing the home foreclosure rates are the worst since those years as well as the rising prices of food which is putting more...

Computer errors prompted California prison officials to mistakenly release an estimated 450 inmates with "a high risk for violence" as unsupervised parolees in a program meant to ease overcrowding, according to the state's inspector general. More than 1,000 additional prisoners presenting a high risk of committing drug crimes, property crimes and other offenses were also let out, officials said. No attempt was made to return any of the offenders to state lockups or place them on supervised parole, said inspector general spokeswoman Renee Hansen. All of the prisoners were placed on "non-revocable parole," whose participants are not required to report...

The Pentagon mistakenly posted online plans for its new office building in Alexandria, showing exactly how big a bomb would have to be to destroy the facility. The 424-page Army Corps of Engineers document detailed the bomb-proofing design of the Mark Center...into which 6,400 defense workers are expected to move this fall... "If a bad guy can get his hands on that information, then he can know to bring a little bigger bomb," said Kirk Martini, a professor of structural architecture at the University of Virginia... Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said the corps' error is further evidence of the Army's...

....As Yemeni President and American ally Ali Abdullah Saleh fights for his political life, Al Qaeda operatives are taking advantage of the void and have already stepped in to fill the power vacuum...Al Qaeda leaders like top propagandist and spiritual leader Anwar Al-Awlaki are ecstaticabout the recent developments in Yemen and across the Middle East. The New York Times reported: "Counterterrorism operations in Yemen have ground to a halt, allowing Al Qaeda’s deadliest branch outside of Pakistan to operate more freely inside the country and to increase plotting for possible attacks against Europe and the United States, American diplomats, intelligence...

Of all the disturbing and problematic aspects of Obama's post-American military odyssey, what fascinates me is that Obama would rush to half-hearted war with Moammar Gaddafi -- of all people. After seeing the dreadful force of the U.S. military unleashed on his fellow ruthless dictator Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi was crying uncle before George W. Bush could twist his wrist. In December of 2003, Col. Gaddafi announced to the world that he would be voluntarily abandoning his nuclear weapons program. "Libya has said it will give up its programmes for developing weapons of mass destruction and allow unconditional inspections," reported BBC...

The current military intervention in Libya by the West has been marketed with the claim that its purpose, as French President Sarkozy put it, is “to protect the civilian population from the murderous madness of a regime that has forfeited all claim to legitimacy.” Behind this humanitarian idealism, however, lurk a host of questions and dangers, reflecting wishful thinking rather than a prudent foreign policy. First we should acknowledge that the intervention is an American show. The French and British, and perhaps a few Arab nations like Qatar, may provide some warplanes and a few missiles, but the bulk of...

Relief supplies left undelivered from firms to quake-hit areas OSAKA, March 17, Kyodo Many relief supplies offered by food makers and other firms to areas struck by last week's devastating earthquake in northeastern and eastern Japan have not yet been delivered, sources familiar with the matter said Thursday. The situation was attributable to confusion in commodity distribution and difficulties in making arrangements between the government and quake-hit areas, the sources said. Nissin Food Products Co. said Sunday it will supply 1 million cup noodles to quake-hit areas but has been able to send only 600,000 so far. Its rival Acecook...

... If (Gaddafi) wins the current civil war, he will kill his enemies. A bloodbath is coming...He can be stopped, though. When President Ronald Reagan retaliated for the La Belle attack by bombing Libya, Gaddafi got the message and quieted down. When Gaddafi saw that America went after Saddam Hussein’s (suspected) weapons of mass destruction, he rid himself of his own. He even paid reparations for the Pan Am 103 bombing. Moammar Gaddafi is a madman, but not mad. ...it would be productive if the Obama administration got its marbles out of its mouth. Its pronouncements thus far have been...

Obama’s ignorant roosters are coming home to roost. The primary fallacy with the left is they are far more impressive intellects in their own minds than in reality. (snip) Obama is never going to survive his mountain of screw ups, built up by his legion of liberal egomaniacs

Legend has it Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned. True or not, the story serves as a fitting analogy for current events. The world is on fire. Meanwhile, President Obama dithers and fiddles. From the Middle East to the American Midwest, people are angry and up in arms. In the Middle East, one country – Egypt – has already experienced regime change at the hands of street protesters, and another is embroiled in a civil war. Unrest has broken out in almost all of the Arab countries in the region. In the United States, Democrats, progressives, socialists and other far-left...

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your LOVE for all the saints, Eph 1:15 All the stops are being pulled to avoid the Obama Depression settling into the discussion. This economic disaster would be tragic if it wasn’t intentional. From the moment he and his radical buddies took over the helm of this great ship of Freedom they have pushed to destroy the capitalistic model and replace it with a communist dictatorship and now we have the results. As gas becomes a scarcer and scarcer commodity everyone will be punished equally...

With a thousand Libyans (and perhaps many more) dead already from the Qaddafi regime’s attacks on its own population, and with reports of thousands of mercenaries and militiamen streaming toward Tripoli, President Obama finally spoke to the nation about this violence on Wednesday afternoon. He announced solemnly that he was sending Secretary of State Clinton to Geneva to visit the U.N. Human Rights Council and “hold consultations”—next Monday! But fear not: Undersecretary of State Bill Burns is apparently traveling sooner than that to “several stops in Europe” and then even in the actual Middle East, to “intensify our consultations.” This...

Our public servants have become the master. Federal, state and municipal governments across this great land have gone mad with power. Instead of facing the facts and engaging in an adult conversation with the taxpayers, we get crap like this... PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Two children were killed in a fire in the city’s Olney section Tuesday, and now an official from the firefighters’ union is questioning if Philadelphia’s cost-cutting “brownouts” of fire companies played a role. If government officials cannot manage cuts and downsizing without risking the lives and safety of citizens they’ve sworn to serve, they need to...

I was shocked when I saw this number. The gravy train is really over for public employee unions. Citizens are sick to death of their strikes, threats of strikes, whining, caterwauling, and incompetence. It wouldn't be this bad probably, if government, at any level, worked. But Americans look at the cluster fark that government has become and wonder why we are paying these bozos so much? Politico: "A new poll from the Washington-based Clarus Group asked: Do you think government employees should be represented by labor unions that bargain for higher pay, benefits and pensions ... or do you think...

"He had very tough things to say about the United States," said Ben-Eliezer, a member of the Labor Party who has held talks with Mubarak on numerous occasions while serving in various Israeli coalition governments. "He gave me a lesson in democracy and said: 'We see the democracy the United States spearheaded in Iran and with Hamas, in Gaza, and that's the fate of the Middle East,'" Ben-Eliezer said. "'They may be talking about democracy but they don't know what they're talking about and the result will be extremism and radical Islam,'" he quoted Mubarak as saying. Meanwhile, Doug Schoen,...

The Obama administration took the rare step Thursday of correcting its own intelligence chief [Clapper] after the official claimed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular." ...During a televised interview in December alongside other top security officials, Clapper was stumped when asked about a major set of terror arrests in Great Britain. ...

Did you see Ben Bernanke's testimony before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday? It was quite a show. Bernanke seems to believe that if he just keeps on repeating the same mantras over and over that somehow they will become true. Bernanke insists that the economy is getting much better, that quantitative easing will lower long-term interest rates, that all of this money printing by the Federal Reserve is not causing inflation and that the Fed knows exactly what needs to be done to dramatically reduce unemployment inside the United States. So is anyone out there still actually buying what...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The regime. And Egypt. First let's go to audio sound bite number three. We have a montage here of the regime's flip-flops and mixed messages on Egypt. This is an anatomy of a botched foreign policy. What you're gonna hear here is the illustration of the definition of incompetence. JOE BIDEN: (January 27, 2011) Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a n-number of things. I would not refer to him as a dictator. MRS. CLINTON: (January 30, 2011) It's not a question of who retains power. That should not be the issue. You cannot keep...

President Obama signed the START nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia this morning. Despite the great attention the president has devoted to this treaty -- and the vast coverage of the treaty negotiations by the media -- the White House refused to allow reporters or TV cameras in the room. Still photographers were the only representatives of the free press permitted to record the historic moment. Those cameras captured President Obama signing the documents, seated at the Resolute Desk. Behind him stood Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,...

Sacramento - An incompetent prison psychiatrist was kept on the state payroll at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of dollars, while a state worker with a drinking problem stuffed confidential documents in her desk and took other papers home to avoid doing the work, according to a semi-annual report released by the California State Auditor on Tuesday. The audit, the result of tips to a state whistle-blower hot line, found eight instances of what Auditor Elaine Howle called substantiated allegations of improper governmental activities. Instances of improper spending and incompetence by workers created costs of just over...

1. Dupnik - (v.) to attempt to cover up one's own duplicity or guilt by publicly and loudly deflecting blame onto others that had no demonstrable involvement. "When my boss questions my lack of task completion, I dupnik my co-workers in order to avoid a reprimand." 2. Dupnik (n.) a buffoon, simpleton, uninformed individual that runs his/her mouth without rhyme or reason and has no idea of what they are talking about. Usually a self professed expert, short on knowledge, but is full of cr*p. dude A: That tech at the apple store had no idea of what she was...

The American dream of home ownership didn't exactly exit the last decade on a high note, with the mortgage sector on still-shaky ground, the housing market stagnating and foreclosures at historic highs. So it was gratuitously devastating for Andre Hall of Pittsburgh -- who was in the process of reclaiming a foreclosed property, no less -- to return from the holidays to discover that the city had accidentally demolished his property.... "I don't come for a week over the holiday, and as soon as I come back, I see a backhoe on top of the house," he said. "Why did...

An extra 250 megalitres are being pumped into the system every day, Northern Ireland Water said today, but most of it is being lost in leakages from burst pipes. About 32,000 properties will be affected today but the situation is improving in Belfast. Ministers in Northern Ireland are to hold an emergency meeting to discuss how to help the tens of thousands of people who have been left without running water for days. The Stormont executive is due to meet as pressure mounts on ministers to sack senior managers of Northern Ireland Water (NIW) over their handling of the leaking...

Uniting Behind a Cause by Ari Bussel and Norma Zager There is no better example of “taking the key and throwing it away” than the way we deserted Jonathan Pollard. Most all of us at least. Pollard, who admitted to spying for Israel, has been in top security American prison since 1986. If only he were charged and found guilty more recently, under a President who loathes Israel, than when Ronald Reagan was the 40th US President (1981—1989). Three months ago, following a long sting operation by the FBI, ten Russians were charged spying for Russia in the United States....

In a radio interview for The Steve Malzberg Show, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) continued the political haymaking that has attended the latest Wikileaks document dump. King told Malzberg that President Obama isn’t as upset “as he should be” over the leak, and came close to suggesting that Obama and members of the administration view Wikileaks founder Julian Assange as some kind of hero. He makes this leap by comparing Assange to Daniel Ellsberg, and asserting that Obama’s “political upbringing” makes it “difficult to take action against someone who is the logical descendent” of Ellsberg....

<p>So WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is guilty of "a reckless action which jeopardizes lives." That's according to John Kerry, on this week's unauthorized release of a huge tranche of State Department cables. Confronted with a previous Wiki-avalanche, the senator took a more sanguine view: "However illegally these documents came to light," he intoned in July, "they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan."</p>

A 30 year old Youngstown man facing 13 years in prison on a plea agreement has escaped after being allowed 3 weeks at home prior to his sentence commencing. Lexter Williams and 3 others, burst into a Livingston St home on January 22, 2009, demanding money and valuables from the occupants. While the others held the men at gunpoint, Williams, who was also armed, took a female into the basement and raped her. Williams was charged with 5 counts of Aggravated Robbery, 4 counts of Kidnapping, and 1 count each of Rape and Having Weapons While Under Disability, which could...

Go to the Link HERE.Stream the one minute report--by hitting the white triangle in center of page, showing Obama meandering throughout Asia country by country, but ending on the tone that "his Asian trip basically accomplished little", and saying that President Obama now heads into a weakened situation back home with the emboldened and multiplied Republicans waiting for him in D.C.Most computers can stream this short JNN video, voice over is in Japanese but good visuals of Obama "in action"; it will be up for a day or two.

ABC News: Obama Strikes Out in Asia

The Afghan war looks as if it will outlast the Obama presidency, and if it does the largest single reason will be Obama’s choice of Robert Gates as secretary of defence. Gates worked under William Casey, the director of the CIA at the time of the Iran-Contra scandal. His nomination by Ronald Reagan to head the CIA was thwarted by suspicions of his complicity in covert operations in Nicaragua. * * * [T]he charge of elitism against Obama finds some basis in fact. He shares with his economic advisers the view that wealth is created by the banks and money...

wonder why a Yale professor of English, David Bromwich, would put his fastidious critique LINK of our “fastidious” president in the oh, so chic London Review of Books. It certainly isn’t to convince voters. Still, the truth is that I agree with some of his 4500 word essay. And the rest? Well, it is instructive to read. And paradigmatic of the left’s new antagonism to Barack Obama. Which is an expression of its shock that, as candidate for president, he was reckless with his promises, cynical, and intoxicated by his own words. I don’t think that he lied exactly.

With his characteristic inability to carry his thoughts to a logical conclusion, President Obama seems to have missed that his constant denigration of his own country and apologies for its actions (which, in fact, required none) diminish not just the USA, but its leader, as well. Apparently, he thought such conduct would make him appear greater than us, when, in fact, it only reduces his own power abroad. So, the man we were told by his supporters would restore American stature abroad has diminished our standing and his in one stroke. He seems not to understand that in cutting us...