Free Republic

Accepting that when the counting of the votes is compromised no one can beat the thief, and to have real elections in the future the GOP will have to take greater care in the tabulation of votes, (or no size turn out will be able to win) here are the replies to the lies that were never presented, and would have delivered even more votes to the GOP: 1. The 1% lie: Those in the 1% are the winners in life, the ones we all want to be, the ones people come from all over the world to have a...

Obama was handily favored every single day of the race. The closest thing to a game changer (by far) was the early disastrous debate in early Ocrober. But at no point, did Romney's odds of winning hit 50%. And by the middle of October, Obama was back on the re-ascent. Sandy didn't change anything. The 47% tape didn't change anything. Benghazi didn't change anything. Paul Ryan's selection didn't change anything, and so forth. Romney didn't lose because of a glitch in his election day Get Out The Vote app, which is something a lot of folks are talking about right...

University of Wisconsin students and employees have unlimited ride passes. There are concerns the bus passes are being used fraudulently. So, beginning Monday, an employment or school photo ID will be required. UW-Madison employee and student bus passes are non-transferable. So, if the users don't have their IDs, the passes will be confiscated and a 1-day pass will be offered.

A provocative documentary about media ownership in the US, featuring input from Julian Assange, will have its Australian premiere today at the Canberra International Film Festival. Director and producer Jean-Philippe Tremblay, who spoke to The Canberra Times from Cuba on Friday, said the film aimed to raise questions about media ownership in every democratic country, but focused on stories from the US media landscape. ''We have really focused on the media monopolies held by five media conglomerates - News Corp, Time-Warner, Disney, Viacom and General Electric - and they dominate most of the media in the US and a lot...

A provocative documentary about media ownership in the US, featuring input from Julian Assange, will have its Australian premiere today at the Canberra International Film Festival. Director and producer Jean-Philippe Tremblay, who spoke to The Canberra Times from Cuba on Friday, said the film aimed to raise questions about media ownership in every democratic country, but focused on stories from the US media landscape. ''We have really focused on the media monopolies held by five media conglomerates - News Corp, Time-Warner, Disney, Viacom and General Electric - and they dominate most of the media in the US and a lot...

Just had a rather strong and lengthy earthquake here in East Tennessee. The event started with a sudden shake, then a pause, then a lengthy quake of significant magnitude, I would estimate to be in the range of 3 to 4. Is this event connected to shaking in other areas? How is that mountain side in the Azores(?) which is capable of sending a massive tsunami toward the East Coast fairing? Ant word from other freepers out there?

The Washington Post did a terrible job if it was attempting to hide its joy over Four More Years for their superstars the Obamas. "The Reliable Source" gossip column on Thursday repeated its usual pitter-patter love for "style superstar" Michelle and her stylist Meredith Koop: "Four more years! . . . of exquisitely coordinated Obama family fashion. The president’s first term made a style superstar out of Michelle Obama, but have you noticed? The entire first family has a way of turning out in the same palette almost every time they’re photographed. It’s a subtle color-coordination that manages not to...

U.S. President Barack Obama (silhouetted in car window) and his family return after his re-election, to the White House in Washington, November 7, 2012. MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited newly re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama to visit Moscow next year.​​Mr. Putin’s outstretched hand contrasts to the cold shoulder offered President Obama four years ago, at the time of the American’s first election. At that time, Europe was swept with Obama-mania. But the Kremlin responded to Barack Obama’s election by announcing that Russia would install missiles in Kaliningrad, Russia’s westernmost territory. Alexander Romanovich, a Duma deputy who is...

Biden: 'We've got to get this economy working' before considering 2016 By Justin Sink - 11/09/12 05:26 PM ET Vice President Biden said Friday that his focus was on helping President Obama to improve the economy, not the potential 2016 run he hinted at on the campaign trail earlier this month. “There’s plenty of time to think about 2016,” Biden told the Wilmington News-Journal. “We’ve got to get this economy working. If three years from now the economy is not working, it’s not going to be worth doing much. This is all about making Barack an incredibly successful second-term president....

Estimated Unprocessed Ballots for November 6, 2012, General Election STATEWIDE: Vote-By-Mail: 2,314,609 Provisionals: 922,446 Other*: 97,440 Estimated Total Remaining: 3,334,495 Updated: 11/9/2012 5:00 p.m.

Did the cuckolded husband of Paula Broadwell send a letter to a New York Times advice column back in July that revealed he knew of her affair with David Petraeus? That intriguing possibility has been raised after canny observers dug out the July 13th edition of Chuck Klosterman's 'The Ethicist' and pointed to extraordinary coincidences between one readers letter and the now scandalous love tryst. Writing about a deepening relationship he knew his wife was having with a 'government executive' whose job 'is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership' the anonymous man offers up what could be considered...

 Though many of the state margins were narrow President Obama ran the table winning every swing or battleground state with the possible exception of Florida where votes are still being counted as of 5:30 this morning.President Obama also won the popular vote by 2 million votes.  The President won 303 electoral votes to 206 for Romney. We knew about 11 pm that the President had won when Ohio was called for him.Democrats also held the Senate.  Elizabeth Warren won with a good margin in Massachusetts. Claire McKaskill won in Missouri beating Akin-he of the legitimate rape comment. Joe Donnelly...

The attorney general’s job or a seat on the Supreme Court wasn’t officially on the menu last night as Gov. Deval Patrick had dinner at the White House with President Obama. Or so Patrick says. “In a different time and place and under different circumstances, I’d like to work in the administration, but that’s not this time,” Patrick said yesterday while at the ground-breaking for the new $244 million rebuild of the Fore River Bridge on the Quincy-Weymouth line.

Weekend Edition Why I don't vote… and you shouldn't either Saturday, November 10, 2012 My good friend and intellectual mentor, Doug Casey, recently shared the five reasons why he doesn't vote. He typically re-publishes these thoughts every four years. Perhaps you've seen them before. While I agree with Doug in principle… I have a wholly different rationale for not voting. Given this week's election, I thought I'd tell you about it. The reason I don't vote (and you shouldn't either) is… Our current system of governance is nothing more than tyranny, and it's on track to destroy our country. Like...

I reached out to a senior military source who has worked with Petraeus, (P4) as he's referred to within the service, and who helped provide background information for Broadwell's book. I'll call the officer "James Downing"). A transcript of our conversation follows: BI: Did anyone know about the affair before today? James: I'm not sure anyone really "knew", per se. But it's one of those things that, as soon as the announcement was made, I knew in an instant who it was. Everything made sense. Who had exclusive access to him? Who wrote the hagiography on his life? Who framed...

The Congressional District 2 showdown between Republican Martha McSally and Democrat Ron Barber has gone into overtime - and it could come down to instant replay. McSally holds a minuscule lead of less than two-tenths of a percentage point over Barber - a 400-vote difference in a race in which more 228,000 votes have been tabulated, with several days of additional vote counting to go. What remains are an estimated 70,000 votes in Pima County, about 27,000 of them provisional ballots that need to be verified and the rest early ballots that were dropped off at polling places or delivered...

An article in Foreign Policy magazine a couple of weeks ago caught my eye: Terry Anderson explained why the world still needed war correspondents. Anderson was writing about Austin Tice, the freelance journalist recently kidnapped in Syria, and the dangers of the trade in general when going to a war zone. Terry Anderson? A familiar figure among historians of the Lebanese civil war; a journalist most famous for a long period when he didn't write a single word. Terry Anderson had been the AP's Beirut bureau chief for two years when he was abducted by armed militias in Ain al-Mreisseh,...

On 30 October 2012, a recession forecasting model developed by Marcelle Chauvet and Jeremy Piger reached what appears to be a critical threshold for anticipating a recession in the U.S. in the very near future.   The Reformed Broker's Joshua Brown comments (HT: Abnormal Returns): Do you see the percentages on the left side of the chart? 20% is the line in the sand. We've never hit that level and NOT had a recession. In 2006 we got close (18%?) but that particular Great Recession would be a year and half in the making. Note that we're back at that...

A lot of people say Obama is anti-business, but there’s one part of the American economy that is delighted that he got reelected. No, I’m not talking about bankruptcy lawyers or corrupt lobbyists, though those would be good guesses.The real winners from Obama’s re-election are America’s gun manufacturers and gun sellers.Not that I’ve looked at any data. I’m just basing this on the comments I’ve heard over the past few years and the up-tick in such comments in the past 36 hours.But I’m quite confident that the overall firearms industry has profited from Obama’s tenure.Anyway, the great economist Frederic Bastiat...

Oregon’s economy retreated in September, dampened by one of the sharpest monthly jobs losses since the recession. A University of Oregon gauge that tracks the state’s economic activity edged down to a reading of –0.66, meaning the state is expanding slower than its normal pace since 1990.