Free Republic

With food and gasoline prices generally lower than 2008, are you planning a bigger Thanksgiving? Yes, more family members will be attending this year. Yes, We are traveling this year. No, our Thanksgiving will be the same as most years. No, we are still cutting back because of the economy. We are volunteering this year to help others. We don't really celebrate Thanksgiving. No Opinion

An anti-tax recall movement against Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Hesperia, has failed to gather enough valid signatures to go to the ballot, the California secretary of state's office announced Friday. "I'm elated. I'm euphoric," Adams said Friday. "People generally don't like recalls," he said. "I'm up for re-election in June, in the primary. Voters will have their say then." The recall effort was launched after Adams provided one of three GOP votes needed in the Assembly to pass temporary income tax increases last February. Tim Whitacre, who is active in Orange County GOP circles and managed the recall campaign, could not...

Former Marine Nick Popaditch, aka the Cigar Marine, is running for the Republican nomination to challange the incumbent Democrat in the California 51st Congressional race for 2010. He needs your support. The district is heavily Democratic and he faces an uphill struggle but this Marine is one tough opponent. This man is a true war hero, not some "Swift Boat" wannabe. His slogan, "A Marines word is his bond", says it all. He gained national popularity when he was photographed atop his tank turret smoking a cigar at the fall of Baghdad. Later in the war he was seriously wounded...

Conservative Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who is emerging as a top contender for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, is gaining some attention this week for his comments in defense of President Obama. As first reported on the Huffington Post, Huckabee said some of the recent criticisms of Obama have been unfair and even "shameful." Huckabee made the comments to the Hudson Union Society. "When he [Barack Obama] was at Dover the other day, and went there to pay respect for soldiers, I heard a lot of people on the Right say "Aw, that's just a cheap photo-op."...

Senator Lieberman would be the most liberal member of the Republican caucus, however, he would be a member we could depend on in regards to health care, national defense, and other issues. While Senator Lieberman would 85% of the time vote with Democrats on most domestic issues, he would be a strong opponent of weakening our national defense, and he causes hatred in progressive circles which Republicans can't match. I am proposing that Senator Lieberman caucus with the Republicans, as though he has numerous Democratic leanings, he also has Conservative streaks which fit into his "Independent" label, however, he is...

The Commonwealth Foundation's Nathan Benefield points out that Pennsylvania legislators, judges and executive branch people get an automatic cost-of-living adjustment in their pay using the consumer price index (CPI) for Philadelphia as the measure for inflation. Will fancy that, the CPI is down 0.15% this year. Does the pay of our solons and mandarins go down?

I bought my copy of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue on the way home from work today. There was a giant stack of the book available at Costco, but I had already called ahead to Barnes and Noble, where I had some other shopping to do. At Barnes and Noble, to my surprise, the book was prominently displayed, but not *too* prominently. That is, it was on the central table as one entered the store, but not *facing* the entrance. You had to look for it. From all appearances, a number of copies had already sold by the time I arrived...

Sarah Palin finally dishes up the goods on the failed Campaign. I tend not to follow political events that have no bearing on me or the future of the country. So I have pretty much ignored the flap between Palin and McCain until now. But I will weigh in on some key issues that I think are relevant and why I believe McCain and his political strategist Steve Schmidt need to shut the hell up. McCain lost and will no longer lead this country in any way shape or form. Palin may still and will be a force in this...

After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, private meetings in the back rooms of the Capitol, murky obfuscation, misleading statements and outright mistruths, and other varieties of objectionable behavior, the Speaker of the House of Representatives finally maneuvered the enormously expensive and power-grabbing health care reform bill through to passage by a thin 220-215 vote. True, the exuberance displayed when the 218th vote was cast, marking passage, was untoward, but the majority party seemed not to care. And surely they were joking when they claimed a lone Republican “aye” vote made the effort “bi-partisan.” Nancy Pelosi’s health bill (H.R. 3962)...

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer column by Michael Smerconish was a textbook conservative complaint about the cowardice of political correctness. It looks like someone wet his finger and put it in the air.

Are you more likely to stay informed of National and World events today than you were one year ago? Yes, new media sources--blogs, websites, etc.--make it easier to stay informed. Yes, events in the past year compel me to stay informed. No, I've always been fairly well informed. No, I've aways avoided the news. My news watching has not changed. No Opinion.

Republican Party chairman Michael Steele told Republican National Committee staff to immediately put an end to providing RNC employees with insurance for elective abortions. After learning of the abortion coverage from a news report, late Thursday evening Steele issued a statement: "Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose. I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled." According to RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho, Steele then instructed staff to let their insurance carrier know that the RNC wished to opt out of the...

The FCC Licenses of state run mainstream media outlets like ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, NY Times, and others should be challenged and aggressively uncovered for their treachery in both conspiring with the Democrats, daily, to shape the news, rather than report it. "Hijacked Iranian Ship was a Dirty Bomb Meant for Israel on Yom Kippur This amazing story reveals that Iranians planned to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" off Israel's coast on Yom Kippur. This was to be the long-anticipated Iranian attack on Israel. Not the expected rocket attacks (which could be intercepted by the Israelis) but an...

Looking for a scapegoat for her poor showing in New York’s 23rd Congressional race, Dede Scozzafava has chosen every liberals favorite, Sarah Palin. Scozzafava in an interview slammed Sarah Palin for “attacking” her, when in reality Palin only endorsed her opponent Doug Hoffman. But then again to liberals if you don’t support them you’re attacking them. I love the way the media is describing Dede Scozzafava even now; they say she’s a “moderate” Republican. CNN describes her as the “face of moderate republicanism”; refusing to call Scozzafava what she is, a liberal. Sarah Palin simply chose principle over party; Dede...

An unsettling view of the Fort Hood victims as human sacrifices at the altar of political correctness.

Last month’s Gross Domestic Product advance report showing positive productivity of 3.5 percent was certainly one piece of good news in this time of financial strife, the first positive GDP figure in over a year. Those that believe that the recession has ended are emboldened by this figure, since one measure of the end of a recession is two consecutive quarters of positive growth. Another positive sign is the performance of the stock market, which has gained back about 45 percent of its losses since the financial crisis began. A recovery in the stock market, economists tell us, precedes the...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin says she's back on Twitter. Palin took to the social networking site earlier this year, tweeting about state government, national politics and everything in between. When she quit as Alaska's governor in July, she promised to keep her fans updated through tweets. But that didn't happen, and Palin instead posted regular updates on her Facebook page, which has nearly 1 million followers. In a Facebook posting Monday announcing more dates on her book tour, Palin said she'll provide Twitter updates from the tour. Her Twitter feed is SarahPalinUSA.(continued)

A friendly letter to Michael Steele Dear Mr Steele, Based on their recent votes in favor of the $1.2 Trillion “UN-affordable ILL-health Against Americans Act”, I would assume that ALL, I repeat EVERY BIT, of RNC support for Sen. Olympia Snowe and Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao has been categorically and irrevocably DENIED from this day forward. However, I and millions of other Americans, are still waiting to hear from the esteemed Chairman of the RNC that this action has been taken NOW as a clear message to ANY other RINOs that this behavior will NOT be tolerated by the Republican...

How to proceed in getting Supreme Court to sit? http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/10/does_the_supreme_court_still_s.html

An excellent, straightforward, and easy to understand explanation of what we can expect our lives to be like under the new Health Care Reform plan H.R.3962.

Not only was Congressman Joe "Grandma Doesn't Need That Pacemaker, And We Don't Like Children Anyhow" Sestak (D-7Pa.) among the 220 votes last night for socializing American medicine, he was also among the 194 opposing the Stupak Amendment that would have kept the public tax-supported plan from covering abortions. Approval of the Stupak Amendment was required for the socialism to proceed. I guess we know where Joe's priorities lie -- socialism is good but abortion is better.

FReep this poll: Will passage of the Health Care Reform bill have a positive impact for the United States? Yes, It's a move that's long overdue. Yes, the public option will help lower health care costs. No, the new system will result in reduced availability of benefits. No, It's a big move toward socialism that will do more harm than good. No opinion

Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats in the House are about to pass possibly the worst piece of legislation ever to come out of Washington and force it on the general public of America. The 2009 House version of Health Care Reform for the country. Take note of the word reform, because it actually means takeover, as in government takeover of the health care industry. This is the bill from Hell! Almost 2000 pages of legislative language that glosses over, covers up, and side steps every major issue and concern that has been brought out in the debate....

Please FReep this poll: Do you believe the economy will get better in 2010? Yes, the economy it turning around and things look positive. Yes, things can't possibly get any worse. No, the economy will not truly recover until unemployment begins to drop. No, things will get worse before they get better. The economy will stay the same. No Opinion

Lessons from Virginia for the GOP By Ed Gillespie Thursday, November 5, 2009 After losing Virginia's governorship for the first time in eight years, some Democrats are trying to console themselves that Virginia is at its core a "red" state. This ignores not only that they won back-to-back governorships but also that Democrats defeated a sitting senator in 2006, took control of the state Senate in 2007 and won an open Republican Senate seat and three House seats in 2008 while carrying Virginia's electoral college votes for the first time since 1964. Some in the White House are trying to...

Today Rush Limbaugh gave out his own list of Top 10 Republican Moderate Moments. You can see a liberal example of the Top 10 at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/11/top_ten_moments_in_moderate_go.html

Belief in manmade climate change has dropped off in recent years and support for cap and trade measures also is losing steam. This latter trend is picking up speed as it becomes more obvious that climate scientists are sharply divided on whether humans play any role in global warming/global cooling/climate change. However, the U.S. Congress races blindly on with plans to enact sweeping, intrusive legislation, undaunted by either the lack of convincing evidence that human activity affects the environment, or the public’s increasing disaffection with this legislation. ... Each house of Congress has its own version of this legislative misadventure,...

Please FReep this poll.

Until now, the healthcare debate has included very little in the way of specifics. The President, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Reid all preferred to speak of healthcare in a broad sense. Even the Senate bill was not a true bill, but rather an outline of what should be in a bill. With the House releasing its 1990 page juggernaut document on health reform, we can finally look at some specifics; and with specifics we can judge the veracity of the preceding debate. Throughout the last three months, Barack Obama has repeatedly shown up on our TV screens and told the...

Vice President Joe Biden and the woman who ran against him last year did some long-distance sparing today. Biden, at a rally for New York congressional Democratic contender Bill Owens, took a verbal shot at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who's a supporter of Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman in Tuesday's crazy special election for New York's 23rd district (where Republican nominee Dede Scozzafava has dropped out and endorsed the Democrat). Using energy as an issue with which to score some rhetorical points, Biden said that "the fact of the matter is, Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy is...

We hear a lot today about our struggling economy, even about the failure of capitalism; we are told that our economic system, not just our economy, is broken. However, the notion that our system, that the American system is broken must be rejected. Our economy and our banking system were mismanaged to the brink of disaster by a special interest beholden congress. But is our free enterprise system broken? No, not until politicians silence Middle America; not until the people return the same bad apples back to the congressional barrel. The economic brinkmanship embodied in massive spending bills threatens to...

Cap and Trade will be a disaster for what is left of manufacturing in this country. Right now, the Rust Belt is just rusty. With Cap and Trade, the rust will inevitably turn into dust. And, for what? Because some politically-driven environmentalists have trumped up a phony belief that mankind is completely killing the planet?

At a time when our economy is struggling to produce jobs, the left is still intent upon keeping Americans from earning a livelihood. On Saturday, Democratic Representative Gabriella Giffords held a public hearing on a proposed copper mine in her district in Southern Arizona. But rather than being a public hearing designed to share information on the project, some felt it was more accurately a public hearing designed to present only one point of view. Not surprisingly, Ms. Giffords, all four panel members and all but one speaker were against the project. In a letter to the editor, one attendee,...

Just weeks after overwhelming votes in the House and Senate to protect tax payers by barring federal funding to ACORN, Democrats have found a way to throw a life-line to their de facto campaign organization. Democrats on the House Committee on Financial Services adopted an amendment by Maxine Waters that will allow ACORN and other activists groups to share a regulatory role over our financial institutions.

Why is it that a country that has produced some of the most beloved authors, prolific inventors, and has advanced the fields of science, medicine, and technology, recently found itself at the epicenter of moral and financial decline? Our current president has become the butt of Marxism jokes in the same week that he is appeasing Islam– how sad for America and its people. Yet, I fear it is our people that have become complicit in this deterioration, for more often than naught, we take for granted our freedoms and the responsibilities tied in to those freedoms. One of our...

Corporate CEO salaries have been a target of criticism for a long time, and that criticism increased during the mortgage banking collapse, when bank CEOs also became targeted for doing a lousy job. The heads of large companies do make huge salaries, as shown by this sample from the 2008 AFL-CIO CEO Pay Database: Robert A. Iger, The Walt Disney Company, $51 million; Lloyd C. Blankfein, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., $42.9 million; Mark V. Hurd, Hewlett-Packard Company, $34 million; and Rex W. Tillerson, Exxon-Mobil Corporation, $32 million. There are a few reasons for this criticism, including envy and not...

Is Congress about to sell out the American people in the name of progress and change? The healthcare debate is the epicenter of a larger fight, one that resurfaces every few decades; one that began with the writings of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. The role of the Federal Government in our lives is growing quicker than Congress can print the money to support it. Are there no better options than those that we are faced with today? The current debate is misguided. If you take out abortion funding, it is still a bad bill. If you take out illegal...

Try making sense of President Obama’s foreign policy and you might start wondering what it is that guides this Administration. Most of our leaders have followed a few guiding principles, whether it be promoting freedom and democracy, containing the spread of communism, or resisting terrorism. Whether right or wrong as judged by history, each American President has sent a clear message to the world that America was squarely on the side of freedom. What about Obama? Candidate Obama stressed that he would change the “failed policies of the past eight years.” He said he would do this on the economy...

Just a heads up that it looks like Karl Rove is on GOP.com. Here's a link to his profile Karl Rove

"Why do people hate you?" asked little Terrance to the President of the United States. His answer is the most interesting part of the conversation, however: Well, now, first of all. I did get elected president, so not everyone hates me, nah. I got a whole lotta votes. I wanna make sure everyone understands. Here, once again, we witness the president dismissing honest disagreement and opposition to his ultra left wing government takeover to being "poke(d) a little bit" so that we can "keep him on his toes". Or, as he more succinctly puts it, it's just "politics". Let us,...

Peggy Noonan had a great OpEd in today's issue of the Wall Street Journal entitled It's His Rubble Now. In it she describes the huge disparity in approval ratings and overall demeanor between George W. Bush post 9/11 and Barack Obama post 01/20/09. In the aftermath of 9/11 Bush didn't stand before the American people making excuses. Nor did he stand around pointing fingers at previous administrations, scrambling to find a scapegoat. He stood before international media and vowed to keep America safe and he did just that for the remainder of his administration. Comparatively, Obama seems content to stand...

In his on going effort to demonize Fox News Channel, President Barack Obama and his advisers attempted one of the most egregious abuses of executive power in it's short history - and only one of the firsts, no doubt - by attempting to ban Fox News White House correspondent Major Garrett from interviewing one of the mysterious White House "czars". The White House's "war on Fox News" has even involved senior advisers telling other media outlets that they "ought not treat" Fox as a legitimate news organization: White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN on Sunday that President...

While exiting the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin was asked by a bystander, “What have you given us, a republic or a monarchy?” His answer: “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” This year the celebration of America’s independence comes at a time when we are in danger of failing to keep that Republic. The continued troubles of auto makers, insurers, and banks in the wake of bailouts shows that throwing money at noncompetitive companies, choked with bad debt and overburdened by labor contracts, is not the answer. What our leaders have done, in the guise of economic stewardship, is...

In a Daily Beast op-ed the former Bush speech writer says Sarah Palin is still the class of the 2012 field, and she's not going away anytime soon. Why? Because the rank and file are fed up with the establishment Republicans who have almost drained all of the "Grand" out of the Grand Old party, and they see Palin as the cure for the disease they carry. A few excerpts: The latest news in Washington is that the conservative Minnesota governor (and potential 2012 presidential contender) has caught the eye of the city’s top Republican gurus. You remember them. The...

The Land of Make Believe. Those words form the title of a great song and the name of some amusement parks. But they also describe President Barack Obama’s perception of the health care reform process. Mr. Obama recently announced from The Land of Make Believe that all of the objections to the health care reform plan have been heard: "This is another milestone on what has been a long, hard road toward health insurance reform. In recent months, we’ve heard every side of every argument from both sides of the aisle." Annuit Coeptis

President Obama visited my home town of New Orleans last week, promising more federal aid and fewer bureaucratic snafus for a city still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina. His message was echoed by several senior members of the President's cabinet as they toured the hard-hit region. And yet, I think most of my fellow New Orleanians, while delighted with his visit, were underwhelmed with the President's rhetoric. Too many of us have heard this message before. Instead of promising more federal funding to rebuild New Orleans, I would like to see President Obama promise less. That's right, less!...

Many people reading the op-ed piece in The New York Times co-authored by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) titled “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation)” might scratch their head at this odd alliance of political personalities. Some would give up reading after a couple of paragraphs, since the article proceeds from the deeply flawed premise that man’s activities produce harmful air pollutants in sufficient quantities to negatively affect Earth’s environment. Those who listen to only one side of the climate change argument hold this position. They accept as fact a theory with at least as...

Earlier this week, the Senate Finance Committee approved the health care bill proposed by Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.). Without a doubt, this bill will increase government spending and increase taxes for Americans ..... We need more people to voice their opposition to the Democratic leadership. Will you help us get this message out?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UBFkzGMADU

The Dow crossed back over 10,000 today and many in the media are touting an economic recovery. But the signs of a robust economy are low unemployment and a strong middle class. What is being done to make sure that those two indicators are going to follow the market? President Obama offered only platitudes on the economy during the election. Since he has been in office, he has continued to talk about putting Americans back to work, rebuilding the economy, and securing our economic future. On the economy, just as on healthcare, Obama seldom gives details. Today we have little...