Free Republic

We’re pathetic. As a nation, taken together, we are the biggest collection of spoiled, helpless pansies the world has ever known. The converter boxes prove it. You know what I’m talking about. For a year they’ve been pounding it into our heads. Seriously, if you beamed down here from another planet, and based your assessment of what mattered most on what you heard the most about, it would be converter boxes. There have been countless mentions, countless little crawls across the bottom of the television screen, countless panels of “experts” waiting to answer your questions. The background is that the...

Today we get our first “obesity tax.” In New York, the governor is going to wheel out his new budget, a document that is hoped to somehow, through miraculous means, balance the state books. There is broad-based support for across-the-board cuts, but the teachers, government employees and welfare queens are screaming that their money is sacred, and it remains to be seen whether the governor will side with the taxpayers or the tax hogs. That’s the big story. But hidden away in the details is a small story that will come back to haunt New Yorkers and all Americans. It’s...

Sink or swim. That’s the American way. At least it used to be. Back before we were a welfare state. Back when you rose or fell on the basis of your own choices, when you were free to decide, and free to reap the consequences of your decisions. It was economic Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. If you were stupid or lazy, it sucked to be you. If you were smart and hard working, life could go pretty well. But we don’t do that anymore. We have gelded the stallion of American achievement. We have removed the possibility of failure,...

Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the Republican Party. When a pair of shoes is worn out, I throw them away. If I can resole them, I do. If I can’t, they go in the trash. I don’t look back, I don’t mourn them, I just dump them. Same for my political party. If it helps me serve my country, fine. If it doesn’t, to hell with it. It’s as simple as that. And as the Republican Party lies in tatters on the ground, blown to smithereens by a philosophical suicide, it is no surprise that those who claim...

For two years, the two years he was in solitary confinement, a North Vietnamese guard came into John McCain’s cell each morning and punched him as hard as he could in the side of the head. Often John McCain’s hands or feet were bound and he fell sprawling to the ground. Usually he landed on his broken shoulder, or one of his broken arms, or his broken leg. The only mornings he was spared were the mornings he was being tortured, when his elbows were tied together behind his back and his hands and forearms were swollen and black from...

Riots on Election Day? Apparently that’s what big city police chiefs are worried about. According to the news, big cities across the country are beefing up their ranks for Election Day and the day or two which follow it. It seems these various law-enforcement professionals believe there is a possibility of rioting and neighborhoods being set on fire. They think it is possible that some people will respond with violence and mayhem to the outcome of the election. Oddly, the chances of social disruption are about the same, win or lose. The fear is that if Barack Obama loses, there...

What I wouldn't give for a Mitt Romney right about now. Or a Mike Huckabee. Or anybody who had a taste for fighting and a chance of winning. Don't get me wrong, I love and respect John McCain. I have all of my life. In recent days, I have re-read his war memoir, "Faith of my Fathers." I cannot begin to express what a giant of a man this is. He and those like him have borne incredible difficulty and endured indescribable suffering in our service, and I will never forget that. He is 100 times the man Barack Obama...

John McCain is insane. I’m still voting for him, but he’s out of his freaking mind. I’m talking about his new wrinkle on the bailout fiasco. As if it and its accumulated crud weren’t enough of an offense, he’s figured out a way to make it even worse. He brought it up at the debate. Proud as a peacock, in response to the first question, he popped out his new plan. On the night he needed to draw blood – or make vacation plans for January 20th – the best John McCain could do was try to out-socialist Barack Obama....

Do you know who Joe Biden is? He's the Democratic candidate for vice president. He's the one who's not Sarah Palin. That's right. The one with the hair grafts and the over-the-top bleach job on his teeth. Anyway, yesterday Joe Biden said that paying high taxes was a demonstration of patriotism. When explaining for a Democratic operative – by which I mean “network news reporter” -- why he and Barack Obama want to raise people's taxes, he said it was a chance for people to show how patriotic they are. Which must make Democrat politicians great fans of patriotism, and...

It's not quite a meltdown, but it's close. The Barack Obama campaign is breaking historic ground as it collapses at a rate, and to an extent, unknown in American political history. I hope you'll understand if we McCain supporters just lie here and twitch in shocked glee for a little while. I hope you'll understand if there is a roar of approval as regular Americans prove that their voices are louder than the celebrities and the evening news and the big-money supporters who have bankrolled and pampered Barack Obama and his campaign. Because this is unprecedented. The campaign that began...

Have you had enough of the evening news? Has the condescending lecture of the network anchor gotten old? Are you sick and tired of "reporters" who couldn't tell the story straight if their lives depended on it? I am. I am about fed up with a news industry that fundamentally fails to do its job, and which every day strays further and further from its purpose. I'm tired of partisan lectures and propaganda dressed up like the news. I have had about all I can take of the self-important blowhards who seem to think their role is to rudely mock...

ST. PAUL – I wonder if she'll wear white? That's probably the headline in today's “New York Times,” or the question shouted by Campbell Brown. It's the natural second-day story on the governor's daughter. Inquiring minds want to know. Voyeurs like to voyeur, and we can't wait to throw the first stone. And some days you don't know who pulls the strings on whom. Do the Democrats control the media or does the media control the Democrats? Is there any demarcation at all anymore in the march of the left? Some call themselves journalists and some call themselves politicians but...

DENVER – You're kidding. That was his best shot? An arrogant rehash of lines that had been done over and over again all week at the we-hate-Bush convention? On the night of his life, when so much hung in the balance, he punted? Was he so overconfident that he didn't take it seriously? In the closing act of the Democratic National Convention, it sounded like Barack Obama had used the seeming lone speech writer who made the entire week a monotony of the same phrases coming out of different mouthes. The mantra of Denver was John McCain equals George Bush....

DENVER – He better hit it big tonight. As it turns out, the Barack Obama campaign could come down to one speech in one football stadium in one Rocky Mountain town. For all the sunshine and smiles here in Denver, if we're being honest, it's do or die for the change you can believe in. John McCain has slapped one cheek, Hillary Clinton has slapped the other and if he's not careful, Barack Obama could be down for the count. That sounds nuts, doesn't it? Every talking head in America has this guy walking on water. But the reality is...

Hillary Clinton would have won this election. Joe Biden would have won this election. Bill Richardson would have won this election. Barack Obama just might lose this election. Has anybody noticed that, in this Year of the Democrat, Barack Obama is starting to choke? In a year when voters seem fed up with all things Republican, and poll after poll pitting a hypothetical Democrat against a hypothetical Republican shows the GOP candidate getting slaughtered, Barack Obama is in a dead heat with the oldest and least-inspiring man ever to run for the presidency. Is it time to start recognizing that...

For the last several months, the price of oil has been at record highs. Over those months, the companies that sell oil have made record profits. Barack Obama sees that as evil. The rest of us see it as cause and effect. If you drill, pump and sell oil, and your overhead has remained fairly constant, and the price of your product has skyrocketed on the world market, you flunk Econ 101 if you’re mystified by the boatloads of money you’re making. But you’re top of the class in Pandering 101 if you point to those profits and ignite and...

Let him run for president of Germany. I mean, he's a citizen of the world, after all. If he wants to play act at being president, and he needs some country to lord it over, let him try Germany. Because we sure don't want him here. We don't want a man whose limited experience should give him humility, but whose ego demands supremacy. We don't want a man who thinks that because he has the audacity to speak at the Brandenburg Gate that he should have the authority to do so. In this cult of personality which has developed around...

Is Al Gore nuts? I’m serious. Is it possible that the disappointment of losing the presidential campaign eight years ago destabilized him? If you think about it, since then, he’s been a changed man. First he got fat. He went through a dramatic physical change. He put on a significant amount of weight and grew a beard and got reclusive. Then he lost the weight and found a cause. Manmade global warming. It absolutely became his theme in life. After being largely silent on the issue during eight years as the vice president and a good run in the Senate,...

Not bad for a kid from Cape Girardeau. Rush Hudson Limbaugh III didn’t do so bad passing up the family predilection for law school. Not bad at all. The word leaked yesterday that Rush Limbaugh, one-half of the defining force in A.M. talk radio, has signed a contract for $400 million. He’ll be on the air for another eight years, and he’ll be rolling in dough for every second of it. The richest man in broadcasting has made so much money he’s going to have to change his name to Oprah. And I couldn’t be happier. He deserves it. By...

In a way, it doesn't matter what the Supreme Court decides. Right will still be right, wrong will still be wrong, and freedom will still be freedom. Sometime this morning – it may already have happened by the time you read this – the Supreme Court of the United States will announce whether the Second Amendment is an individual right or a state right. At issue is whether the Bill of Rights empowers the state to organize an army to keep you subdued or whether it guarantees you the right to arm yourself against the oppression of the state. And...