Free Republic

What is peculiar about this particular right-wing rebirth is the speed with which it is happening. We had the crash last year, as in 1929. The financial gods were duly dethroned, the banks started to fail, and the mighty were humbled, as per the time-honored script. A market-worshiping Republican Party went down in an avalanche of obloquy. A scary new populism made the cover of Newsweek back in March. But then we skipped a step. Some new version of the Bonus Army never marched on Washington. No Huey Long materialized to haunt the wealthy and we have endured no wave...

Most Americans don’t realize we have elected a president whom we know very little about. Researchers have discovered that Obama’s autobiographical books are little more than PR stunts, as they have little to do with the actual events of his life. The fact is we know less about President Obama than perhaps any other president in American history and much of this is due to actual efforts to hide his record. This should concern all Americans. A nation-wide network of researchers has sprung up to attempt to fill in the blanks, but at every opportunity Obama’s high-priced lawyers have built...

The message was clear. The sign carried by a 51-year-old man last week outside a raucous town hall meeting on healthcare in Hagerstown, Maryland, read "Death to Obama". Just to emphasise his point, a second message was also scrawled on the cardboard placard. "Death to Obama, Michelle and 2 stupid kids," it stated. Welcome to the disturbing new face of the radical right in America. Across the country, extremism is surging, inflamed by conservative talkshow hosts, encouraged by Republican leaders and propagating a series of wild conspiracy theories. Many fear it might end in tragedy. Obama has been labelled as...

Just how long was the New York Times sitting on this article? Click here to read the whole thing The Corner: During the campaign, I wrote a piece called “Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia? — The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.” So now, nearly six months into the Obama presidency, the mainstream media has finally done a bit of the candidate background reporting it declined to do during the campaign — other than in Wasilla — and whaddya know? The New York Times unearthed a 1983 article called, “Breaking the War...

<p>The Obama administration worked in recent days to prevent President Manuel Zelaya's ouster, said a senior U.S. official. The State Department, in particular, communicated to Honduran officials on the ground that President Barack Obama wouldn't support any nondemocratic transfer of power in the Central American country.</p>

A new video posted on the Internet featuring inebriated American Jewish youth in a Jerusalem bar spouting hate-filled sentiments has garnered massive exposure and caused a firestorm in the media and the Jewish world. In the video, filmed on June 3 and titled "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem on the Eve of Obama's Cairo Address," the visitors to Israel are asked their opinions on President Barack Obama and his relationship to the Jewish state. "You're all about talking to the Arabs," says one. "You're going to Cairo making a speech to the Muslim world trying to get them to love...

CARACAS, June 2 (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday that he and Cuban ally Fidel Castro risk being more conservative than U.S. President Barack Obama as Washington prepares to take control of General Motors Corp. During one of Chavez's customary lectures on the "curse" of capitalism and the bonanzas of socialism, the Venezuelan leader made reference to GM's bankruptcy filing, which is expected to give the U.S. government a 60 percent stake in the 100-year-old former symbol of American might. "Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful...

President Obama would eliminate new funding for advanced-generation equipment to detect nuclear weapons and radiological materials at U.S. borders and ports and around New York City in his 2010 budget, homeland security officials said. The decisions, outlined in Homeland Security Department budget documents and briefings Thursday, mark a turn away from a priority of the administration of former president George W. Bush, who with former vice president Dick Cheney championed development of new technologies that could lead to a ring of domestic sensors of weapons of mass destruction.

WASHINGTON -- The Obama White House doesn't "subscribe to the legitimacy" of the 100-day metric for presidential progress, but is still mighty satisfied and well-versed it the new president's accomplishments. "This isn't Biblical," a senior White House adviser said of the 100-day marker. "You don't do 100 days and rest." Even so, this senior official, a long-time adviser to the president who spoke on the condition he not be quoted by name, said "you would be hard-pressed to find another administration that's done so much in such a short period of time. It's been a very productive 100 days." For...

(snip) Q: I want to ask you about the interrogation memos that you released last week; two questions. You were clear about not wanting to prosecute those who carried out the instructions under this legal advice. Can you be that clear about those who devised the policy? And then quickly on a second matter, how do you feel about investigations, whether special -- a special commission or something of that nature on the Hill to go back and really look at the issue? THE PRESIDENT: Well, the -- look, as I said before, this has been a difficult chapter in...

RUSH: Now, as we mentioned, Hugo Chavez gave our president, Barack Obama, an American-bashing book, blaming America for all of the problems from colonialism to the CIA to all the economic problems, all the political problems of the Western Hemisphere. He gave Obama the book. There's a picture of Obama smiling, accepting the book, looking at the cover of the book. And, of course, the book shot up the Amazon list. I think he looked at the cover of the book because he had a copy. He probably had a copy of the book already, says, "Jeez, how do I...?...

A laid-back President Obama brushed off the anti-U.S. bombast of several Latin American leaders and joked about Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez's camera crush. "I think it's just that President Chavez is better at positioning the cameras," Obama said at the end of the three-day Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday. Chavez, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Bolivia's Evo Morales launched into standard tirades against U.S. imperialism, but Obama let them vent without retort.

Just after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a present this morning of a book that criticizes the role of the United States in Latin America -- "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano -- its Amazon sales rank was No. 54,295. Just a few minutes ago it was No. 20. - Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller UPDATE: At 4:54 pm EDT - rank is #17. UPDATE: At 5:42 pm EST - rank is #14.

uthorities are looking at an investment firm co-founded by the head of President Barack Obama's auto task force as part of an investigation into an alleged "pay to play" scheme to secure New York state pension business, but the White House is standing by its man. Steve Rattner, the head of the auto task force, co-founded the investment firm Quadrangle Group in 2000. According to documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission, in January 2005 Quadrangle paid a fee of more than $1 million after receiving an investment from the New York State Common Retirement Fund. As part of the...

BY MOST people’s standards Barack Obama has had an excellent week. He enjoyed a counter-Carter moment when navy commandos rescued an American hostage, leaving three kidnappers dead. He gave a measured speech on the economy. And, to cap it all, he gave his daughters a Portuguese water dog named “Bo”. What’s not to like? Plenty, according to some people. Mr Obama may be widely admired both at home and abroad. But there are millions of Americans who do not like the cut of his jib—and a few whose dislike boils over into white-hot hatred. The American Spectator, which came of...

How's this for hope and change: U.S. officials flying to Cuba, not to interrogate prisoners at Guantanamo Bay but to meet with the Castro brothers in order to ease the 50-year tensions between the two nations. The aging, ailing, cigar-smoking icon Fidel Castro had three members of Congress visit with him today in Havana, which resulted in the bearded one asking, "How can we help President Obama?" In an effort to improve the relationship between Cuba and the U.S., Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Bobby L. Rush (D-Ill.) and Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.) were the first U.S. officials to meet with...

Prague - The anti-missile shield project would be unnecessary if Iran gave up its military nuclear programme, U.S. President Barack Obama said in his address in Prague today. "If the Iranian threat is eliminated, we will have a stronger basis for security and the driving force for missile defence construction in Europe will be removed," Obama said. However, he pointed out that Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile activity poses a real threat not just to the United States but to Iran's neighbours and to U.S. allies. "The Czech Republic and Poland have been courageous in agreeing to host a defence...

Five minutes of explanation to James Madison, and he’ll have a pretty good idea what a motorcar is (basically a steamboat on wheels; the internal combustion engine might take a few minutes more). Then try to explain to Madison how the Constitution he fathered allows the president to unilaterally guarantee the repair or replacement of every component of millions of such contraptions sold in the several states, and you will leave him slack-jawed. In fact, we are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside. The last Treasury secretary brought the nine largest banks into...

Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the goverment's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), is now calling for the firing of the nation's top bank executives if the economy is to have any chance of recovery. Warren says that letting banking leaders off the hook for the mess their companies are in will plunge the country into an even deeper hole. In an interview last week, Warren said: "The management of the institutions receiving subsidies from the government must be replaced."

US President Barack Obama on Friday announced he would push for a nuclear-free world at Sunday's summit with the European Union (EU) leaders. "The spread of nuclear weapons, or the theft of nuclear material, could lead to the extermination of any city on the planet," Obama told an audience of young people at a town hall meeting in Strasbourg. "This weekend in Prague, I will lay out an agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons," Obama said ahead of a summit of NATO leaders in the French city and in Baden-Baden, Germany. The comments came two...

Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, pulled in more than $2.7 million in speaking fees paid by firms at the heart of the financial crisis, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America Corp. and the now-defunct Lehman Brothers. He pulled in another $5.2 million from D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund for which he served as managing director from October 2006 until joining the administration. Thomas E. Donilon, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, was paid $3.9 million by the power law firm O’Melveny & Myers to represent clients including two firms that receieved federal...

President Barack Obama's unprecedented critique of past American behaviour towards Europe aroused predictable ire among his conservative foes and praise from liberals in the US. Phone lines to Right-wing talk radio shows were buzzing with angry attacks on the commander-in-chief for alleged "treachery". Mr Obama may be rebuilding some frayed alliances abroad but his comments are the latest blow to his erstwhile aspirations of developing a post-partisan political atmosphere at home. His references to American "arrogance" and its "dismissive" attitude were viewed by some commentators as an unwarranted attack on his homeland while travelling abroad. In a speech in France,...

As President Barack Obama works to sell the American people on a sweeping agenda of domestic spending and policy changes, he’s relying on three men who have gone through neither Senate confirmation nor cable news spin cycles. Data from pollsters Joel Benenson and Paul Harstad has become increasingly important to shaping the White House’s message as the crucial battle over the president’s budget intensifies. “The pace [of polling] is picking up,” said one source familiar with the data. In addition, David Binder, a San Francisco-based focus group expert, also has been traveling the country taking the national temperature on issues...

Barack Obama showed the world a profoundly new style of American leadership yesterday. Obama emerged from the G-20 summit in London, where the leaders of the world's largest economies agreed to what he called "an unprecedented set of comprehensive and coordinated actions," talking about his commitment "to respecting different points of view and to forging a consensus instead of dictating our terms." His approach struck a very different note from his predecessor, the would-be Texas cowboy whose "with us or against us" attitude led to unilateral foreign adventurism and a diminishing of America's standing in the world.

The White House said that US President Obama and Saudi King Abdullah first talked face to face in G-20 summit and they discussed cooperation regarding global economic crises, regional political and security issues and cooperation against terrorism. White House stated that "The leaders reaffirmed the long-standing, strong relationship between the two countries". Obama also reiterated his support for Saudi Peace Initiative which was first came to agenda in 2002. The initiative calls Israel to withdraw from all territories occupied in Six Day War including Jerusalem.

GRANTS PASS, Ore.—The Obama administration has notified a federal court that it will not defend the Bush administration's decision to cut back protections for the northern spotted owl. In a motion filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., lawyers for the Department of Interior said they based the decision on an inspector general's report finding political interference in owl protections by a former deputy assistant Interior secretary, Julie MacDonald. If the spotted owl measures developed by the Bush administration are withdrawn, it would become difficult for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management to go forward with plans to...

WASHINGTON, April 1 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama strongly supports legislation that would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate cigarettes, the White House said on Wednesday. The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote later Wednesday on the bill, which would authorize the FDA to oversee the multibillion-dollar tobacco industry, including its advertisements and product designs. The measure will "yield major benefits to the public health," the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement. (Reporting by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says the Obama administration has indeed abandoned the term "global war on terror." Clinton says that while she hasn't seen any specific orders, the new administration in Washington simply isn't using the phrase. The term was a rallying cry for President George Bush after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. But the use of the term "global war on terror" is widely disliked overseas.

The American International Group, more commonly known as AIG, has become the poster child for the financial bailout. The company has received $170 billion from the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve since September 2008, and recently landed in a world of hurt when it was revealed that some $165 million of that money was given as bonuses to its employees — many of whom worked in the insurance giant’s financial arm. As AIG CEO Edward Liddy told a House Financial Services subcommittee earlier this month, “The payment of large bonuses to people in the very unit that caused so much...

Walking a tightrope between keeping its environmental pledges and trying to help struggling U.S. automakers, the Obama administration announced today the first increase in fuel economy standards for cars in more than 25 years. But to the dismay of environmentalists, the new standard doesn't go as far as a proposal that the Bush administration offered in 2008 but quickly abandoned. The move increases fuel economy standards for light vehicles in 2011 to 27.3 miles per gallon, or 8 percent over the 2010-model-year requirement. New cars will have to meet a standard of 30.2 miles per gallon. The standards will save...

In a country long divided by race, Barack Obama argues that Americans generally have been colorblind in judging him. Yet old racial stereotypes and Internet-fueled falsehoods flourish about the first black president. In Obama's first two months in office, a New York tabloid took heat over a cartoon appearing to portray the president as a monkey; a California mayor resigned after distributing a picture of watermelons on the White House lawn; and an e-mail making the rounds refers to Obama as "the magic mulatto," with exaggerated ears and nose. Disproved and disputed claims about his religion and citizenship, namely untruths...

Mr. Junk Science Goes to Washington... North Dakota is experiencing record cold temperatures this year. In fact North Dakota is experiencing a one state deep freeze: But, that didn't stop Barack Obama from blaming global warming for the massive floods in North Dakota this week. The Scientific American reported: President Obama says potentially historic flood levels in North Dakota are a clear example of why steps need to be taken to stop global warming. Heavy rain and blizzards have caused eight rivers in the state to swell to flood levels and emergency management officials are warily watching the Red River,...

President Obama announced today that his administration is going to be offering the auto industry an aid package that will require General Motors and Chrysler to make "pretty drastic changes." The aid package for the companies will be unveiled in the next several days, he said. "We will provide them some help," Obama said during an online "town hall," the first event of its kind. "I know that it is not popular to provide help to autoworkers -- or to auto companies -- but my job is to measure the costs of allowing these auto companies just to collapse." The...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Alex Alexiev, adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute in Wash. D.C. FP: Mr. Alexiev, welcome to Frontpage Interview. During the last election campaign you wrote that if Barack Obama emerges victorious “the loudest cheers could come from the sworn Islamist enemies of our civilization.” What are your views of President Obama’s policies with respect to radical Islam so far and do you still believe that the Islamists have a reason to be happy with the new administration? Alexiev: With a caveat that it is still too early in the new administration’s tenure to form a...

BAGHDAD — Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s Parliament, on Wednesday criticized the United States in harsher terms than any other leading Iranian figure has done since President Obama extended his videotaped olive branch to Iran last week. The president’s video took the form of congratulations on the Iranian New Year. “Our problem with America is not an emotional problem that could be solved by sending congratulations,” Mr. Larijani said. “America must know that this is a complex problem that goes back 30 years.” He said “the Americans stood against the Islamic State of Iran by supporting Saddam in his...

Bloomberg. Title and link only. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8yCQsJfpb24&refer=home

President Barack Obama campaigned on the noble promise of bringing the country together and uniting citizens around common goals. Yet, with just two months in office under his belt, he has made some radical decisions. The most prominent of his extreme choices are those surrounding the issue of abortion, personified by his recent selection of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. The liberals in Congress are praising this nomination and are hoping to confirm her quickly and without fuss. Sadly, it seems that some pro-life Republicans are unconcerned about placing a strident pro-abortion activist...

(CNSNews.com) – The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that President Obama’s budget and deficit projections are too low. The president’s budget will incur $9.3 trillion in federal deficits between 2010 and 2019 --$2.3 trillion higher than Obama had originally claimed. The CBO’s latest analysis, released Friday, showed that the president’s proposed budget will increase the deficit to $1.8 trillion in 2009; $1.4 trillion in 2010; and $970 billion in 2011 -- falling to $658 billion in 2012 before rising again to $1.2 trillion in 2019. The total deficit from 2010 to 2019 was pegged at $9.3 trillion. The deficit...

Forthcoming legislation would wrest cybersecurity responsibilities from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and transfer them to the White House, a proposed move that likely will draw objections from industry groups and some conservatives. CNET News has obtained a summary of a proposal from Senators Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) that would create an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor, part of the Executive Office of the President. That office would receive the power to disconnect, if it believes they're at risk of a cyberattack, "critical" computer networks from the Internet. "I regard this as a profoundly and...

WASHINGTON — The number of significant pro-Iran lobbyists has grown and key players have gained access to the new administration of President Barak Obama, a report said. The Center for Security Policy said veteran Iranian lobbyists, several of them former government officials, have been granted access to the Obama administration. "A complex network of individuals and organizations with ties to the clerical regime in Teheran is pressing forward in seeming synchrony to influence the new U.S. administration's policy towards the Islamic republic of Iran," the report, titled "Rise of the Iran Lobby," said.

The Obama administration has ordered an end to use of the phrase "Global War on Terror," a label adopted by the Bush administration shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday. In a memo sent this week from the Defense Department's office of security to Pentagon staffers, members were told, "this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.'" A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, from whom the direction reportedly came, told the Post there was no guidance given from...

Obots already leaving bad reviews without reading it. Typical idiots. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Barack-Obama-and-Larry-Sinclair/Sinclair-Publishing-LLC/e/9780578013879 2 Comments Vicki Monday, March 23, 2009 at 6:03 pm Yeah, you seen that? Also, Citizen Wells said he wrote a message telling them his history with Larry, and how he believed him, and what Larry has went through. Today, that comment was gone as well as all the other positive comments….. Now that’s censorship in Obamaland.. What’s Obama afraid of? As if we don’t already know… Well…. here is a petition to sign for anyone interested… ****** DangerB Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 6:19 pm The Obamatrons are...

"He wanted to have dinner and our diaries didn't quite match."

Talk about a low blow. Filling in for conservative talk-show host Laura Ingraham, Tammy Bruce blasted First Lady Michelle Obama for comments she made during a visit to a Washington D.C. classroom last week. During that visit, the first lady recalled trying to get good grades as neighborhood kids criticized her for "talking like a white girl." In light of those remarks, Bruce made fun of Obama for her use of a "weird, fake accent," much "like Hillary did when talking to black people. What?! What is that?" "That’s what he’s [Barack] married to," Bruce said. "…You know what we’ve...

MSNBC host David Shuster, who usually touts the liberal line on "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," filled in on Monday's "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" and came to Barack Obama's defense against comments made by Dick Cheney. Shuster played a clip of Sunday's "60 Minutes," where the President responded to allegations by the former Vice President that he is making the country less safe. The cable host asked guest and Huffington Post blogger Lawrence O'Donnell, "Basically, Obama is saying Cheney claims the founding fathers and American principles that were forged during wartime are failures. Is the President flirting here with calling Cheney un-American?"...

WASHINGTON — The United States must look for a way out of the war in Afghanistan, President Obama said, in a signal that the military build-up in Afghanistan will not be open-ended and will lead to the eventual withdrawal of American and NATO troops from the country. “There’s got to be an exit strategy,” Mr. Obama said in a wide-ranging interview shown Sunday on “60 Minutes” on CBS. “There’s got to be a sense that this is not perpetual drift.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's aides say the administration will work with Congress on his budget proposal, but energy independence is not subject to wheeling and dealing. Obama planned to make the case Monday for a budget proposal that invests billions in research designed to reduce climate change and guarantees loans for companies that develop clean energy technologies. Obama has tied his first budget proposal as president to a renewable energy program to help the United States move toward energy independence.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A public furor over big bonuses paid by firms bailed out with U.S. taxpayer money is fueling resistance to President Barack Obama's ambitious plans to extend government intervention in the U.S. private sector. Republican opponents say his commitment of huge sums to try to revive the ailing economy is driven by a philosophical belief in greater government intrusion in many areas, from healthcare to education, dubbing it socialism. Obama is pursuing these policies just 13 years after President Bill Clinton, a fellow Democrat, disarmed Republican opponents by declaring: "The era of big government is over." As the...

"Government's view of the economy can be summed up in a few short sentences. If it moves, tax it.If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." ~Ronald Reagan.

Let's agree from the outset that political correctness for the sake of political correctness can be a real bore. So I write this with some trepidation. But I don't think it's being politically correct to say it was truly wince-inducing and disappointing to watch President Barack Obama on the Jay Leno Show deprecate his bowling abilities by referencing the Special Olympics. Here's the exchange: LENO: Now, are they going to put a basketball -- I imagine the bowling alley has been just burned and closed down. THE PRESIDENT: No, no. I have been practicing all -- (laughter.) LENO: Really? Really?...