Free Republic

<p>Thank you, FR, for the truly marvelous entertainment (as I haven't been laid in so long I get no other entertainment other than watching people on here like a perv stalker) . While lurking tonight (the internet version of peeping in your windows) for the first time in ages, the amount of schadenfreude I'm experiencing is bordering on orgasmic (which is the closest I've gotten to the real thing in years).</p>

"Negative ads work" has long been political conventional wisdom, but now we have a new case study to prove it. Mitt Romney says he lost the South Carolina primary because he was "vastly outspent with negative ads" by Newt Gingrich—which isn't true, by the way—and implied that he's winning in Florida because of his own negative ads against Gingrich. How can you tell the mud-slinging works? The top four searches for "Gingrich" are "Callista," "Newt ethics violations," "Newt wives," and "Newt scandals," The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza reports, results he says "prove that the negative ad barrage from Romney and...

When asked about his electability, Newt invoked Ronald Reagan, who was once thought unelectable — his first invocation of Reagan during the debate last night. If Mitt Romney were a yard dog, he might have fired back, “Hey, Newt, whose record are you running on — yours or Ronald Reagan’s?” Mitt Romney is not a yard dog. But he did a damned good job at the debate anyway, turning in a winning performance after his abysmal one in South Carolina. He laid several gloves on Newt, and Newt — who wore a nasty facial expression most of the night —...

A great summary!

As we listen to President Obama, Occupy Wall Street, and much of the mainstream media working themselves into a lather over inequality in America, one thinks of “Harrison Bergeron,� the 1961 short story by Kurt Vonnegut that posited a society based on perfect equality, “not only equal before God and the law . . . equal every which way.� The government employed a “Handicapper General� to ensure that no one was smarter, more athletic, or more productive than anyone else. Beautiful people were forced to wear masks, athletic people had to carry weights, and intelligent people wore radios in their ears to interrupt...

Unto the manor born, as they say: Romney’s speech was billed by his advisers as his closing argument before the GOP nomination fight kicks off in earnest with the Iowa caucuses on January 3. But you would be forgiven for thinking it sounded more like the opening salvo in a general election. Romney drew no explicit or, really, implicit contrasts with any of his Republican rivals, training his fire exclusively on the Democrat in the Oval Office. His focus reflected a strategy from which his campaign has rarely deviated all year long. But it was also born of a confidence...

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a slight lead over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney among Virginia Republicans in the race for president, according to a new poll. The Quinnipiac University poll, released Wednesday morning, shows Gingrich at 30 percent and Romney at 25 percent among Republican voters. No other candidate tops nine percent. In a head-to-head matchup, Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, left, and former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Gingrich tops Romney by a larger margin, 47 percent to 39 percent...

"Is he a socialist?” asks FOX News’s blunt television host Bill O’Reilly. “I prefer to use the term that ‘he’s just over his head,’” the former governor of Massachusetts responds with what he must have thought was a safe answer. “Yeah, but you gotta’ look at his economic plan, and that economic plan was top down, federal leadership getting us out of the recession — we spent trillions of dollars–and people say, ‘Listen, the guy’s a socialist!‘ It’s class warfare; that‘s what he’s going to wage against you if you get the nomination,” O’Reilly says, gesturing towards Romney. “You’re a...

Businessman Herman Cain is the favorite of Tennessee voters for the state’s March 6 presidential Republican primary election, but female voters are far less likely to support him. That pattern is unlikely to change in light of allegations of sexual harassment against him, according to a new poll by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Vanderbilt University. Cain was the choice of 22 percent of 823 likely primary voters polled Oct. 28 through Nov. 5. The poll was conducted as the sexual harassment claims started to arise. Yet Cain’s support did not change much as the story...

They are the lucky babies whose friends and families will never forget their birthday. Each was born as the calendar turned to 11.11.11 - which only happens once every 100 years. Layker Poppy Pamela Funnell was born in Wishaw Hospital, Lanarkshire, to delighted new parents Paul and Siobhan Morrison - who by an incredible coincidence also celebrated her birthday today. It was a thrilling moment for children turning 11 too, as well as the hordes of couples who decided to make this unique date even more special by choosing it for their wedding day. Bristol twins Ben and Lucie Hulin...

When Republicans took control of the House in January, they pledged to make deep cuts in federal spending, and in April they succeeded in passing a bill advertised as cutting $38 billion from fiscal 2011's budget. Then in August, they pushed for a deal to cut an additional $2.4 trillion over the next decade. Some analysts have blamed these spending cuts for this year's economic slowdown. But data released by the Treasury Department on Friday show that, so far, there haven't been any spending cuts at all. Higher Spending, DeficitsIn fact, in the first nine months of this year, federal...

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain has joined other candidates in boycotting the Nevada caucus unless the state moves its caucus date back to appease New Hampshire. Cain's New Hampshire campaign co-chair Jack Kimball confirmed the decision Friday. "Mr. Cain believes Nevada is making a bad problem worse, exacerbating a situation started by Florida moving it's primary into January," Kimball said. Read more: http://www.wmur.com/new-hampshire-primary-extended-coverage/29487020/detail.html#ixzz1amrmWsD2

According to the survey, which was released Monday, 28 percent of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they support Perry as their party's presidential nominee, with Romney at 21 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is at ten percent, with Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who's making his third bid for the White House, former Godfather's Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, all at seven percent. The poll indicates that Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is at four percent, with former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at three...

Michelle Bachmann and/or her senior staff have decided that the path to short-term success is to insult Palin and to present Bachmann as the only viable alternative to establishment Republicans. First it was Ed Rollins publicly insulting Palin almost at the very moment Bachmann announced her run; at the time I left open the possibility that Rollins had gone rogue, but Bachmann herself never made it right and Rollins still is the brains behind her campaign. Next was this report of what is going on in the run up to the Iowa straw poll: ”I like Sarah Palin a lot,”...

Vote In The Online Iowa Straw Poll

All last week, global warming-obsessed media were rife with reports about record-breaking heat. Problem is, according to the National Climatic Data Center, and marvelously reported by the Hockey Schtick Sunday, almost no temperature records were actually broken: [T]he NOAA database of all-time Max Temperature...shows that there were no records broken on July 17, July 18, July 19, or July 20th. A total of 4 stations broke records on July 21, 20 on July 22, and 10 on July 23, 2011. That's right. There were only 34 new all-time daily temperature records set during last week's "record-breaking heat." (Snip) As you

In the first town hall of his freshly announced presidential campaign, Mitt Romney yesterday reaffirmed his view that global warming is occurring and that humans are contributing to it, a position that has been rejected in recent years by many Republicans as the issue has taken on a greater partisan tinge. "I don't speak for the scientific community, of course," Romney said. "But I believe the world's getting warmer. I can't prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that . . ....

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) - Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney broke with Republican orthodoxy on Friday by saying he believes that humans are responsible, at least to some extent, for climate change. "I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that," he told a crowd of about 200 at a town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire. "It's important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may be significant contributors."

In her new biography of Ann Dunham, A Singular Woman, New York Times reporter Janny Scott corrupts Barack Obama's nativity story even more than a cynic might have thought possible. In so doing, Scott follows an ignoble media tradition that deserves exposure as does the story that it corrupts. At the very first moment of his national acclaim, the 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama established the foundational myth of his political ascendancy. Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., had grown up in Kenya "herding goats." His mother, Ann Dunham, Obama traced to Kansas, as he always...

As liberals grapple with the reality that the nation's welfare state is financially unsustainable, they've renewed the myth that all would be swell if President Bush hadn't squandered the surpluses that were projected a decade ago. This argument received a boost over the weekend with an article by the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery, who wrote: "The nation's unnerving descent into debt began a decade ago with a choice, not a crisis." The reality is a bit more complicated. To start with, it's important to emphasize that the projected surpluses were just that -- projections. As the Congressional Budget Office cautioned...

To read economic and political commentary with any kind of frequency is to be bombarded daily - and hourly for that matter - with breathy articles about a United States groaning under deficits that surely signal bankruptcy, Social Security checks that eventually won't clear, and of course a looming financial crisis. A recent New York Times column by noted deficit scold David Stockman naturally referenced America's "desperate" financial situation. Much of this commentary is well written, it's certainly popular, but it's also total nonsense. To understand why we must first consider the marketplace for U.S. Treasuries, which is the deepest...

Congressman James Clyburn seeks to dispell a common urban stereotype.

Myth 1: Spending cuts will derail the economy. Fact 1: The academic literature shows that successful cases of fiscal adjustment relied overwhelmingly on spending cuts, not tax increases..... Myth 2: We can’t balance the budget without raising taxes. Fact 2: We can balance the budget simply by holding spending constant..... Myth 3: Paul Ryan’s plan will dramatically cut spending. Fact 3: Ryan’s plan reduces spending between FY2011 and FY2012. After that it reduces the growth of spending. But overall spending grows by $1.1 trillion over 10 years under Ryan’s plan.....

Obama concedes he's not a NBC, in Obama vs. Keyes 2004 Debate WITNESS COMES FORWARD, HISTORY OF INTERNET “RUMOUR” DOCUMENTED UPDATE: Oct. 21, 2009 — Second Witness Comes forward, gives testimony to The Post & Email by John Charlton (October 15, 2009) — It was a moment little noticed and soon forgotten; the import of it was not at that time understood; but the evidence that it [...] WITNESS COMES FORWARD, HISTORY OF INTERNET “RUMOUR” DOCUMENTED UPDATE: Oct. 21, 2009 — Second Witness Comes forward, gives testimony to The Post & Email by John Charlton (October 15, 2009) — It...

The signs are that Mitt Romney is running for president. With several Republicans edging ever closer to formally declaring their presidential candidacies, Romney told New Hampshire Republicans on Saturday that he’s the candidate who can beat Barack Obama on the central issue of the economy. ((snip)) A key hurdle for Romney among GOP primary voters will be distinguishing the health-care reform he instituted when his was Massachusetts governor from the nationwide plan championed by Obama.

I am looking for information for an article I am working on. In the 1970s in Mobile County, Alabama (where I was raised), there was a weekend where a lady's voice could be heard on a CB radio - perhaps asking for help following an accident. Almost everyone in Saraland was out looking in every ditch for this supposed victim. Turns out to have been a hoax. It actually made the local news. If you know anything about this, please let me know. Thanks for any help.

When Mitt Romney returns to New Hampshire on Saturday to make his first public appearance since prior to the 2010 midterm election, he will have two key Republicans from the North Country and Lakes Region behind his likely presidential bid. Veteran Executive Councilor Raymond Burton of Bath and state Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley of Wolfeboro told the Primary Status they will endorse the former Massachusetts governor should he run, as is expected. They cited his background in the private sector and experience as governor as the best formula for growing the economy, creating jobs and reducing the deficit. Neither...

With all the interests, political grandstanding, and cheap punditry surrounding the union demonstrations in Wisconsin, it’s no surprise that a mythology has developed around Gov. Scott Walker’s proposals. Here are some of the most common myths being propagated, and the countervailing facts. MYTH: Wisconsin is not actually facing a deficit. Rachel Maddow on her February 17 show said, “Despite what you may have heard about Wisconsin’s finances, the state is on track to have a budget surplus this year. I am not kidding.” FACT: Maddow wasn’t kidding, but she was wrong. She evidently derived her conclusion by reading to page...

With $2.3 billion in Recovery Act tax credits allocated for green manufacturers, President Barack Obama and other Democratic politicians have high hopes for green technology. But their expectations clash with both economic theory and practical experience in Europe. Green programs in Spain destroyed 2.2 jobs for every green job created, while the capital needed for one green job in Italy could create almost five jobs in the general economy. Wind and solar power have raised household energy prices by 7.5 percent in Germany, and Denmark has the highest electricity prices in the European Union. Central planners in the United States...

A new report calls “The 90 Percent Myth,” which refers to the number of illegal guns in Mexico coming from the United States, “more political rhetoric than empirical fact.” We couldn’t agree more. NSSF has been trying to stamp out “The 90 Percent Myth” ever since ATF misstated the number in testimony at a congressional hearing in 2009. A prompt clarification issued by ATF couldn’t put the proverbial genie back in the bottle. Unfortunately, “The 90 Percent Myth” has been widely promoted by Mexican officials and wrongly cited in U.S. news stories, although a Fox News study of the “90%...

For several years now, STRATFOR has been closely watching developments in Mexico that relate to what we consider the three wars being waged there. Those three wars are the war between the various drug cartels, the war between the government and the cartels and the war being waged against citizens and businesses by criminals. In addition to watching tactical developments of the cartel wars on the ground and studying the dynamics of the conflict among the various warring factions, we have also been paying close attention to the ways that both the Mexican and U.S. governments have reacted to these...

The Obama administration is claiming that the president has been out in front of the crisis in Egypt. The facts prove otherwise. He has been behind the curve and has badly damaged American interests -- perhaps irretrievably so. Barack Obama's campaign was built on spin and speeches. His presidency has used these tools to present a false image. In this case, his chief spin maestro, David Axelrod, has been peddling the story that Barack Obama has been "out ahead of this" ("this" being the crisis in Egypt). Politico Journalist Josh Gerstein was skeptical and fact-checked Axelrod's boastful claim. Press Secretary...

“The country is pretty unified behind the idea that President Obama found the right words, the right tone at the right time,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos announced Monday night in touting how a new ABC News/Washington Post poll found “78 percent approve of how he handled” the Tucson shooting, in contrast to Sarah Palin, “not so much, only 30 percent approve of her response.” When Stephanopoulos noted “the support for stricter gun control has dropped over the last few years,” anchor Diane Sawyer expressed astonishment: “Stricter has dropped?” Instead of detailing that trend, Stephanopoulos concentrated on some specific policies with overwhelming...

The 112th congress is the first congress in half a century without a Kennedy on board. And the first glimpse of a Republican landslide came with the backlash over the "Kennedy seat" in Massachusetts. As it turned out, it wasn't the Kennedy seat, it was the people's seat. And it wasn't the Kennedy congress, it is the people's congress. What was once a family on the verge of creating an expansive political dynasty in two branches of government, barely had enough clout to convince A&E not to air a scandalous miniseries about their family. Which is a pity, because the...

Just for the record: I was not sleeping through all those years of religious education lessons, nor was I drifting off during my beloved European history classes. Nevertheless, I had never heard of the Papessa Giovanna (Pope Joan) until I moved to Rome, into the same neighborhood where the only female Pope’s secret is said to have been discovered and where she is to have been buried. According to the legend, in the 9th century a young English woman disguised herself as a man, taking the name Johannes Anglicus, and became a monk. In July 853 A.D., with Papal elections...

AOL Opinons editor John Merline notes that the deficit commission titled its proposal “The Moment of Truth,� and perhaps rarely for a government effort, it actually delivers on its advertising. The report exposes six truths about the federal government and its spending addiction. Perhaps even more importantly, it exposes a couple of key myths about the Obama administration and its agenda: 2) Health reform’s cost savings apparently were bogus. Remember how Democrats boasted that health reform would cut the budget deficit by $170 billion over the next decade and far more after that? The deficit commission must not have gotten...

What do you get when you try to check out Mao Tse-Tung's infamous "The Little Red Book" from the library? A visit from Homeland Security agents. At least that's what happened to a senior at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, according to the Standard-Times newspaper of New Bedford, Mass. The college student was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao's tome on communism. Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the college library's interlibrary loan program. The student,...

Destroying the myth of the Clinton surpluses. This is going to be short and sweet. William Jefferson Clinton often claims to have left a budget surplus that George W. Bush and the Republicans recklessly squandered. The claim is parroted by the media and Democratic politicians in an attempt to show Republicans were irresponsible. The truth is that the Clinton surplus was nothing more than a numbers game. The following excerpts are from Craig Steiner’s Site and there are links to the government sites where the data that support the article may be found : Time and time again, anyone reading...

James S. Robbins, who has been a contributor to National Review Online since the September 11 terrorist attack, is author of a new book, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive. The book, as he describes in an interview with NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, is an effort to bury a myth and crush a continuing source of inspiration to America’s enemies. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: You call the Tet Offensive a “powerful symbol divorced from its reality” and describe it as a having become “more than a battle; it is a legacy, a legend, a continually replicating story line.” How...

Soy does not lower cholesterol, does not prevent heart disease, and does not deserve an FDA-approved soy heart-health claim. This amazing announcement comes from none other than the American Heart Association (AHA) published in the Jan. 17, 2006, issue of its journal Circulation. Athletes at Risk Not long before this announcement, University of Colorado researchers reported in the January issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation that soy worsens cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease that is very much on the rise, afflicting 1 in 500 Americans. Cardiomyopathy, defined as a weakening of the heart muscle or change in structure...

[snip] In addition, Romney is presenting a more "easygoing and accessible" image instead of again offering up "the formally dressed, perfectly coiffed, carefully rehearsed candidate" of the 2008 campaign, according to the Globe. "Mitt is doing a better job at low-keying it,'' former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Steve Duprey told the newspaper. "He would be wise to stay with it right through a presidential primary.'' Romney has been spending the summer at his $3.5 million home on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee, where he drives a Chevy Silverado truck and can be seen in jeans, not suits. (That's an image...

The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, known as the Bush tax cuts, are set to expire Dec. 31, and the fight over what to do is increasingly heated. Should the tax cuts expire, as some Democrats have said? Should they be extended, as most Republicans maintain? Or does the answer lie somewhere in between, as the Obama administration, led by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, has argued in recent weeks? The cuts lowered tax rates across the board on income, dividends and capital gains; eventually eliminated the estate tax; further lowered burdens on married couples, parents and the working...

"The NAACP believes the tea party is racist. The tea party believes the NAACP is racist. And Pat Buchanan got into trouble recently by pointing out that if Elena Kagan is confirmed to the Supreme Court, there will not be a single Protestant Justice, although Protestants make up half the U.S. population and dominated the court for generations. Forty years ago, as the United States experienced the civil rights movement, the supposed monolith of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance served as the whipping post for almost every debate about power and status in America. After a full generation of such debate,...

This article spells out why Mitt Romney is NOT a conservative and has no business running on a GOP ticket in 2012. Think hard before you cast a vote for this well coiffed socialist

Gun regulation is as American as Wyatt Earp, the legendary frontier lawman who enforced Dodge City's ban on gun-carrying within town limits. But two years ago in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court decided for the first time that the Second Amendment grants a personal right to keep and bear arms, a decision that cast doubt on the future of gun control regulations in this country. Now, the court is considering a challenge to Chicago's ban on handgun ownership -- a regulation that has been in place for nearly 30 years. Would a repeal of the ban have...

People often compare China’s urbanization to Western industrialization in the 19th century. In both cases, a large population moved from the country to the city. Society advanced from agricultural to industrial via manufacturing on a massive scale. However, there is a key misconception about China’s manufacturing power. In the United States and Europe, the manufacturing industry was created due to technology innovation. For example, railways came into existence because of the invention of the steam engine and automobiles were created because of technology breakthroughs in automobile engines. In China, the manufacturing industry is being created in response to global demand....

A Bright Day for Team Chuck Written by Melanie Morgan    Thursday, 20 May 2010 05:50 The latest PPIC poll is out and shows Carly Fiorina with 25%, Tom Campbell with 23%, and Chuck DeVore with 16%. The margin of error is +/-5% The previous PPIC poll showed Fiorina with 24%, Campbell with 23%, and DeVore with 8%.Here's what you need to know: Chuck DeVore has doubled his support from the last PPIC poll -- and he's within the margin of error of the front-runner.The distance from the first to third is narrowed into the single digits -- ground easily...

It is always dangerous when a politician “goes off script.” Sometimes the truth comes out, like Barak Obama talking to Joe the Plumber about “spreading the wealth around. “ Sometimes, things go a little aglee, leaving the candidate with egg on their face, like every other time that Joseph Biden opens his mouth. And sometimes… sometimes things go very wrong indeed…

A common theme in science fiction involves a highly advanced society in which people no longer understand the basis of science and technology. In such societies science is often just a series of beliefs that are to be accepted without question like in a religion. The Startrek episode "Spock's Brain" dealt with a society in which the people had little understanding of anything, even though the women lived in a climate controlled environment underground with sophisticated technology that required Mr. Spock's brain to operate. Installing Spock's brain had required one of the women to put on a machine that temporarily...

Health Care is only Sleight of Hand allowing Government Takeover. To hear people discuss it you would swear that the government is concerned about human life. Get out of here. Our government could end thousands of deaths each day by eliminating tobacco sales. Now that would be controversial. Instead they tax it heavily for a nice little profit and ignore the dirty secret that they could care less about: American lives or should I say American deaths. What government cares about is more government. Governments like the ones our president wants to be like have killed millions of people. The...