Free Republic

On a day when the U.S. Labor Department announced worse-than-expected jobs numbers and an unemployment rate that’s stuck at 9.6 percent, Republican congressional candidate Randy Demmer was talking jobs at a North Mankato window manufacturer. “Job creation is what people want to see,” said Demmer, a state representative who’s hoping to unseat Democratic Congressman Tim Walz on Nov. 2. Demmer, a former farmer and business owner from Hayfield, said the Democratic-controlled federal government has passed health care reform and is attempting to pass a new national energy policy that has left business owners uncertain about future insurance and energy costs....

Pat Fleet's "AT&T" is one of the most recognized sounds in the United States. Described as a "mega star" of phone voices by Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline and affectionately called "Ma Bell" by telephone workers, Pat has been the voice behind literally tens of thousands of telephone recordings since 1981 - speaking to millions of callers daily with coin and credit card requests, explaining services or just thanking them for using AT&T... Her digital studio and online ordering over the internet make recording & delivering voice-overs whenever you need them incredibly easy.

The dust-up this week between President Barack Obama and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), ostensibly about Wall Street regulation, revealed more about the two parties’ midterm campaign strategies than anything else. With polls showing voters deeply concerned about the economy and government spending and souring on Democrats, Obama and his party are seizing on gaffe after GOP gaffe, intent on making the election anything but a referendum on the majority.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has indirectly re-entered the picture at the Blagojevich corruption trial. Government witness John Harris, Blagojevich’s onetime chief of staff, said he received a call from an intermediary for Emanuel on Nov. 10, 2008, six days after the presidential election. The intermediary was John Wyma, a lobbyist pal of Blagojevich and Emanuel. And the message Harris said Wyma was asked to deliver was that President-elect Barack Obama “would be thankful and appreciative” if Blagojevich would appoint Obama’s friend Valerie Jarrett as Illinois’ new U.S. Senator.

WASHINGTON, June 2, 2010 – The military services have geared up their summer safety campaigns, encouraging troops and their families to enjoy the season without becoming statistics during a period historically marred by a spike in off-duty accidents. Mourning at the grave of Air Force Tech. Sgt. Audra Britt are, from left, her sister, Anika Lee; her son, Nathaniel Alexander Britt; her brother, Air Force Staff Sgt. Aron Lee; and his daughter, Kennedy Misarah Amaya Lee. Courtesy photo  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Ninety-five servicemembers died last year during the “Critical Days of Summer” season that kicks off Memorial...

Obama administration encourages the very culture it deplores Major policy changes can have long-term cultural implications. Major changes can impact behavior almost immediately, but the real cultural implications are a result of the often subtle changes in individual attitudes. With the Obama administration, I believe we will see such cultural changes. I am an entrepreneur. I started with a little 100-seat restaurant almost 32 years ago. My wife and I, along with many good people, built our company the old-fashioned American way. We worked night and day,

RUSH: Well, well, well, well, well, look at this. This is from MyFoxPhoenix.com, AP: Refried beans found smeared on Arizona Capitol windows! "The conflict over a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration in Arizona intensified Monday as vandals smeared refried beans in the shape of swastikas on the state Capitol's windows."

Does anyone regularly use the web to send a text message to someone's cell? I'd like to, but I don't want the recipient to start getting a bunch of junk texts, because I use one of the wrong "Free texting" sites. I did a Google search, but wasn't sure how to filter the bad from the good. Does anyone know of a reputable site for this purpose?

White House officials are retooling the administration's communications strategy to produce faster responses to political adversaries, a more disciplined focus on President Obama's call for "change" in Washington and an increasingly selective use of the president's time. The messaging adjustments are the result of an end-of-the-year analysis in which White House advisers said the president's communications team had not taken the initiative often enough and had allowed drawn-out debates in Congress, and relentless criticism by Republicans, to drown out his message. "It was clear that too often we didn't have the ball -- Congress had the ball in terms of...

SAN FRANCISCO, - A group of California fishermen who sent a message in a bottle two years ago said they were delighted when someone found the bottle and even sent a reply. The fishermen, from the San Francisco and Monterey Bay areas, said they tossed the bottle into the water just south of San Diego in August 2007 with a message about Bob Dubcich, a friend of theirs who died from a rare form of cancer, KSBW-TV, Salinas, Calif., reported Monday. The men said they enclosed $20 with the note to increase the chances of someone coming forward after finding...

FRiends, I almost posted this last night...but since that giant walking wanker Robert Gibbs pulled his little stunt today, I thought we ought to take it a step further. Here is my hand today: I may change it tonight or tomorrow or some time in the future, but I would suggest we all put some messages on our hands...at least for a little while. Some conversation might be generated, and you might find more people agree with you than you think! :)POST your pics to this thread, and let's have fun!

Six months ago, network executives were complaining that the White House was costing them tens of millions of dollars by pressing them to carry presidential news conferences in prime time. Problem solved: President Obama hasn't held a full-scale news conference since July. Instead, he answered a dozen people's questions last week on YouTube, most of them easily finessed and -- extra bonus! -- no annoying follow-ups of the kind posed by real, live journalists. It would be hard -- impossible, actually -- to argue that Obama hasn't been accessible to the media, not with his constant television interviews. The man...

Apparently the fellows in al Qaeda took as a personal insult Secretary of Homeland Anxiety Janet Napolitano's comment Sunday that their role in the foiled Detroit airliner bombing wasn't clear but would be investigated. Yesterday, al Qaeda's ascendant franchise in the Arabian peninsula saved Secretary Napolitano the trouble of plowing through all the layers of the national-security bureaucracy for an answer. The terrorist organization put out a pointed statement not only claiming responsibility but also mocking the U.S.'s ability to stop them. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, they said, "dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services...

The Time Traveler appeared suddenly in my study on New Year’s Eve, 2004. He was a stolid, grizzled man in a gray tunic and looked to be in his late-sixties or older. He also appeared to be the veteran of wars or of some terrible accident since he had livid scars on his face and neck and hands, some even visible in his scalp beneath a fuzz of gray hair cropped short in a military cut. One eye was covered by a black eyepatch. Before I could finish dialing 911 he announced in a husky voice that he was a...

English is the language of America. America brought the internet to the world. Thanks to Obama we will probably be the country that finances the start of the New World Order. I can't quote any statistics but my guess is that more Jews speak English than any other language in our present day. So using basic English I practiced a little gematria using A=1 and B=2 up to Z=26. I came up with this 666 Holloween message. The generation that sees an Israel reborn will see the coming of Christ. In numbers that's 33+108+49+48+15+64+72+56+29+33+61+21+77 = 666 That's thirteen words. 13...

America is made up of hard-working people and that means you can't always get off to attend a Tea Party, even if you're lucky enough to find one in your own community. That's why we're putting together the biggest Tea Party possible, right here on the Internet. It's going to be the BIGGEST DAMN TEA PARTY this country has ever seen...and I want everyone to bring a SIGN! Send us a photo of you holding the message you'd like to send to Washington. Make it original, make it interesting and make it a JPEG format and send it to Dave...

America is made up of hard-working people and that means you can't always get off to attend a Tea Party, even if you're lucky enough to find one in your own community. That's why we're putting together the biggest Tea Party possible, right here on the Internet. It's going to be the BIGGEST DAMN TEA PARTY this country has ever seen...and I want everyone to bring a SIGN! Send us a photo of you holding the message you'd like to send to Washington. Make it original, make it interesting and make it a JPEG format and send it to Dave...

Lincoln's Gettysburg AddressThe Daniel Chester French Victory atop the Memorial to the First Division of the Army, the Big Red One, outside the White House (monument details here). Photo by Mike's AmericaMemorial Day first started as Decoration Day when citizens of the reunited Northern and Southern states began an annual observance of the 600,000 lives lost during the American Civil War. (history of the holiday here) So it is perhaps fitting that we take Lincoln's Gettysburg Address delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863 as the text...

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Darin Winkler was out walking the banks of the Spokane River with his kids last weekend when he saw something that looked... Well, let me put it this way: After you hear this story, the song "Message in a Bottle" may be stuck in your head for days. "Spring and high water brings up various kinds of things on shore," said Winkler, who lives in the River Run subdivision on the Spokane River, just south of Spokane Falls Community College. "We saw an old flattened basketball and a bunch of bottles. Mostly they were whiskey bottles,...

How do you play nice with a rogue terrorist state that calls your country "the Great Satan" and vows to exterminate all Jews? Obama is trying desperately to find a way: TEHRAN, Iran – The Iranian government brushed aside a Persian New Year's message Friday from President Barack Obama offering to resolve years of hostility, saying it wants concrete change from Washington before it's ready to enter a dialogue. Obama released the video to coincide with the major Iranian festival of Nowruz, a 12-day holiday that marks the arrival of spring and the beginning of the new year on the...