Free Republic

If you aren’t confused yet about what the economy is doing, you haven’t been paying close enough attention to recent news reports. Take, for example, last Friday’s employment report in which the Labor Department announced the nation’s unemployment rate in December was “unchanged at 7.8 percent” from November’s level. That’s easy enough to understand — until you look back at the November report when “the unemployment rate edged down to 7.7 percent.” How, you might be asking, can December be unchanged at 7.8 percent when November was 7.7 percent? Didn’t the jobless rate go up 0.1 percent from one month...

Record unemployment and fraying social welfare systems in southern Europe risk creating a new divide in the continent, the EU warned Tuesday, when figures showed joblessness across the 17 EU countries that use the euro hit a new high. Official data showed eurozone unemployment rose to 11.8 percent in November, the highest since the euro currency was founded in 1999. The rate was up from 11.7 percent in October and 10.6 percent a year earlier. … The figures illustrate the daunting tasks confronting the European Union. While the threat of a collapse of the eurozone due to too much government...

As the curtain fell on 2012, and America’s implacably inane “fiscal cliff” melodrama played out, all was symbolism and posturing. Following the last minute deal, the President led the nation in New Year’s revelry with a press conference that was a frenzied verbal caricature of the Republican opposition. Regular readers will recall my past Jeremiads about the unfeasible condition of American public debt: an annual federal deficit of almost 10% of GDP, largely paid for through a fraudulent shell game in which the Federal Reserve purports to buy its parent’s (the U.S. Treasury) bonds by the cyber-issuance of notes, compounded...

Republican Gov. Chris Christie may have “prayed” for Superstorm Sandy because it has provided political cover for his failed economic policies, the Democratic leader of the state Senate said Monday. Senate President Stephen Sweeney, the state’s most powerful elected Democrat and a possible contender for his party’s nomination for governor, said Christie’s jobs plan before the late October storm was a disaster and now the reconstruction will provide an economic boost through thousands of new construction jobs. … “His jobs package is a hurricane,” Sweeney said during a press conference on Monday, the day before Christie was set to deliver...

Bloomberg reports that when the Texas Legislature begins its 2013 session it will face a problem that most states will kill for. Texas will likely have a budget surplus of around $8 billion. The question arises, how to spend it? How Texas arrived at a surplus In 2011, when it looked as if Texas was facing a multi-billion-dollar budget deficit, the Texas Legislature cut spending, especially funding for education, Bloomberg notes. However, partly because of the fracking boom, revenues from the sale of oil and gas soared, bringing in unexpected tax revenues. The jobless rate also declined sharply, currently down...

Former Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy says he’s established a group to lobby against legalized marijuana. … The Providence Journal reports that Kennedy’s group, Project SAM—for Smart Approaches to Marijuana—will instead lobby for increased treatment for marijuana and drug abuse. …

Isn’t this just cozy? Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (D) is working both sides of the Export-Import Bank. Not only does Richardson sit on the bank’s advisory committee, he’s also a board member of one of its loan recipients. The U.S. Export-Import Bank recently steered hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loans to Spanish green energy conglomerate Abengoa, which happens to share an advisory board member with the bank. The Ex-Im Bank approved a $78.6 million direct loan to Spain-based Abengoa in December. It also approved a $73.6 million direct loan to a wind farm in Uruguay, which...

Most Israelis define themselves as “right wing,” according to a new survey from the Israeli Democracy Institute. Another 21% self-define as centrist, and 17% term themselves leftists. Regarding voting, 50% said they plan to vote for right-wing parties, both religious and secular. Thirty percent said they plan to vote for centrist or left-wing parties. The rest were undecided.

Average wholesale (spot) prices for natural gas fell significantly throughout the United States in 2012 compared to 2011. The average wholesale price for natural gas at Henry Hub in Erath, Louisiana, a key benchmark location for pricing throughout the United States, fell from an average $4.02 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) in 2011 to $2.77 per MMBtu in 2012. This was the lowest average annual price at Henry Hub since 1999. A mild 2011-12 winter, sustained high natural gas inventories, and rising natural gas production in the Marcellus and Eagle Ford basins contributed to lower average spot natural gas...

WASHINGTON - Interstate 270 is considered one of the most choked roads in the Washington region, but solutions for the gridlock are few and far between. Figures from the Maryland Department of Transportation show about 114,000 cars use I-270 daily, and that number is expected to jump to 200,000 in the next 10 to 15 years. "Everyone who is familiar with 270 knows it is jammed up in the morning rush hour and evening rush hour," says Gus Bauman, who studies transportation and funding and who chaired a Maryland Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation Funding. One proposal to ease congestion...

Iran’s Foreign Ministry says it is hopeful the appointment of former Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel to lead the Pentagon would improve relations between Tehran and the U.S. … Hagel was nominated Monday and faces tough confirmation hearings. Critics have said he is hostile toward Israel and soft on Iran. …

America’s front-page fight over gun rights versus gun prohibition could be tumbling foolishly toward a revolution, if one were to believe respected long time conservative commentator and one-time presidential candidate Pat Buchanan. His remarks may be either cautionary or cockamamie; you be the judge. With so much talk right now about gun control and outright bans, and resistance growing by the hour as could be seen by the reported rush on Oregon gun permits, one might think the nation is rushing toward "Arms-ageddon." Buchanan, speaking on “The McLaughlin Group” over the weekend, suggested rather forcefully that if gun prohibitionists don’t...

There are now two Americas. One America cherishes individual liberty, respects the Constitution and honors the ideals and traditions that made the United States a great country. The other America, composed of liberal fascists, hates all those values and is pursuing an agenda that will lead to tyranny and oppression.

One of the reasons that President Barack Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner had difficulty agreeing to a "grand bargain" on deficit reduction and avoiding the "fiscal cliff" was that both men disagreed on the nature of the debt problem. Boehner believes that government spending is the problem while Obama believes the problem is the rising costs of health care, not government spending. During those negotiations, Obama repeatedly told Boehner that "we don't have a spending problem," Boehner recalled in an interview with The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore.

On the last day of 2012, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen inadvertently clarified two huge matters regarding the left. The first was the ignorance about conservatives and conservatism that permeates the left. The second was the primary reason decent people identify with the left: the effective caricaturing and demonizing of the right. Were it not for caricature and demonization, most otherwise intelligent and decent people would not be on the left. This is what Cohen wrote in his column, "Republicans Adrift:" "It is conservatism that is both intellectually exhausted and nearly indefensible. It is the movement of the ideologically ossified,...

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Fox. He says Obama is doubling down again, will demand $1T in additional taxes and no spending cuts as debt limit fight begins.

The feds are grilling state Senate Democratic insiders as part of an explosive probe into an alleged Aqueduct casino bid-rigging scandal, The Post has learned. Investigators are asking questions about the roles of then-Senate Democratic leaders John Sampson and Malcolm Smith and others who were accused of helping the Aqueduct Entertainment Group (AEG) land a multibillion-dollar casino contract three years ago, sources said. The state ultimately rescinded the contract in 2010 amid a state inspector general’s probe into claims of favoritism. The IG’s office referred its scathing findings to federal authorities for potential prosecution.

The Piers Morgan deporation petition is going to be addressed because it passed the threshold of 25,000 votes. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2975918/posts There are 14 more days to get the required number of signatures on the petition to establish a gun-free zone around the pResident and send the Secret Service home is in the final stretch. This petition illustrates the insanity of gun-free zones, and the hypocrisy of a politicians surrounding themselves with armed guards while insisting that our children be soft targets. We have to fight the gun-grabbers on every front or they are going to win. This is just another front.

As the son of a woman, the husband of a woman and the father of daughters and granddaughters, I celebrate the record number of females who are now United States senators. However, I do see some differences in the way these and other women are treated, depending on their party, policies and beliefs. Diane Sawyer broadcast a celebratory report last week on ABC's "World News Tonight" on which she gushed about the "record number" of 20 female senators. Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., also praised the Senate female population. Senator Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she won't be satisfied until there are...

Americas: Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is dying of cancer in Havana, in a live demonstration of Cuba's vaunted socialized medical care. He went there instead of Brazil because he wanted to make a political statement. What irony. As party cronies hover at his bedside, Cuban officials bark orders to the government in Caracas, and red-shirted Chavistas hold vigils, all signs are pointing to an imminent exit for the Venezuelan leader who controls a huge part of the world's oil. He's going out exactly as he wouldn't have liked — helpless and at the mercy of doctors, a far cry from the...