Free Republic

"We hope, but we are not very confident or we are very sanguine about it, but we hope that the Obama administration, the US administration, will live up to its commitment to stop the Iranians getting the bomb before it is too late. Few months ago there was tremendous debate going on, the controversy between what Prime Minister Netanyahu said about the need for drawing a red line, and the American position. Namely the Israeli position was that the red line should be a point from where the Iranian has achieved enough enriched uranium, plutonium in order to cross the...

There is much debate regarding how Republicans ought to handle the fiscal cliff. They are in a showdown with President Obama as to who will blink first. So my suggestion to them is to take a page from Obama's playbook and kick the can one more time. They should extend the status quo for one more month, to February 1, 2013. The reason behind this strategy is that President Obama is legally required to deliver a budget in January. What that would do is force him to commit his budget to paper. He would be forced to blink. The Democratic...

President Barack Obama has dramatically upped his demands in the fiscal crisis negotiations: He wants Congress to levy twice as much in extra taxes from Americans as he urged during the election campaign, give up its control over the nation’s debt limit, and fund an immediate $50 billion stimulus for his political priorities. In exchange, Obama offered to consider — but not necessarily accept — GOP proposals for cutting $400 billion from Medicare and other programs strongly favored by off-year voters. That listening session would take place sometime in 2013, giving the president plenty of time to wrap the unpopular...

Republicans find themselves in the unenviable position of being forced to agree to raise taxes on those earning more than $200,000 (the actual cutoff for those Mr. Obama refers to as “millionaires and billionaires”) or risk being blamed for a tax increase on all taxpaying Americans. They will probably agree, which means it’s a politically unavoidable policy, not a good policy. Why does Obama insist upon raising taxes? Not because he believes it will improve the economy, and not because he believes it will increase receipts to the Treasury. The proposed taxes would bring in about $80 billion a year,...

Obama Ethics, Year 4Obama just now writing rules to govern the last 4 years of drone killingsCommunity Organizer to the WorldDid Obama followers mimic Nazi hand-sign?More voters choosing one party to run their stateIt's 3am and nobody's there Islamists Kidnap, Threaten to Murder Homosexuals in Libya11/26/2012ObamanomicsIn a surprise move, Intrade shuts down for U.S. TradersDisagreeing with Obama can ruin Christmas, says White House reportAre 401K's next: Natinalized Retirement?Trying to Turn Obama Voters Into Tax AlliesObamacareObamacare headed back to the Supreme CourtIt's 3am and nobody's thereSandy Victim Promised 'Immediate Help' by President Obama Still in the ColdPalm scanners get thumbs up in...

No more tax increases: Why Grover Norquist is right Richard Moore Investigative Reporter There was quite a dust-up in the Republican Party this past week when Georgia U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss uttered the unthinkable and said he would no longer adhere to the famous Taxpayer Protection Pledge conceived by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. Chambliss was blunt in renouncing his commitment not to vote to raise taxes: “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge. If we do it his (Norquist’s) way then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a...

I see the fiscal cliff has given us an opportunity to return to Big Guy’s WINNING! negotiation strategy that I call the  “How about you give me your new car for my old shoes?” scuffle. For some reason it’s been working for him for a long time. Portrait of a young man with an old sole…and a big plan Maybe it’s because those old shoes always come in handy for kicking the can down the road. Assuming there is a road…at the end I mean. Danger: road may end at the cliff’s edge (Snip)Charles Krauthammer explains how Big Guy’s 2%...

Reports are pouring out of Washington about the Fiscal Cliff negotiations. A lot of people observing the negotiations are outraged by what is going on. Instead of being outraged, and there is plenty of time for outrage; we should take a look at what is going on. If you analyze the negotiations, it tells you a lot about what is going on in Washington and what may happen. What is going on inside these negotiations?

Managing expectations is his day-to-day position against people who believe the mayor can solve all of Detroit's problems is the hardest thing he deals with every day. That’s according to an interview Detroit Mayor Dave Bing did with CNN where he talked about the community's deep problems and how he plans to solve them. "We are in an environment, I think, of entitlement, we've got a lot of people who are city workers, who for years and years, 20, 30 years, think they are entitled to a job and all that comes with it," Bing said. He added: "Nobody wants...

EDEN, N.C. — KDH Defense Systems in Eden will lay off up to 280 employees in January. President & CEO Dave Herbener said employees were sent a notice warning of the layoffs. Herbener said most of the positions affected are in the production and administrative departments. When asked if the company was doing well in business, Herbener said “the company is healthy.” However, two military contacts will soon be ending, leaving a gap in production for the first part of next year. Herbener said their law enforcement contracts are growing and if more “opportunities become available,” those same employees could...

(Reuters) - The Obama administration's opening bid on Thursday in negotiations to avert a year-end fiscal crunch included a demand for new stimulus spending and authority to unilaterally raise the U.S. borrowing ceiling, a Republican congressional aide said. The proposal, made by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to congressional Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, was seen as offering little the Republicans could agree to and was greeted with laughter, the aide said. "We can't move any closer to them because they're not even on our planet," the aide said. "It was not a serious proposal."-snip-In the maiden bargaining session, Geithner, the...

......[George] Washington spoke truly: a democratic form of government, republican or otherwise, is only as virtuous as the citizens who form it. Institutions of liberty, equality, and mutual respect cannot be sustained in, let alone re-imposed upon, a society that has generally forsaken every single virtue named in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and has in turn filled the soul's moral void with hatred, envy, gluttony, sloth, covetousness, lust, and collectivism's unique license to pillage, namely its presupposition that individual men -- that is, other men -- do not really exist. The entire moral and intellectual structure of the West has rotted...

Via Pat Dollard: 'Well, there are many constitutional provisions for recourse on this and I think that they have to be contemplated. ...this administration -and this candidate- and this president was forced to see signs from people reminding them that they will not forget the seven hours of hell that the murdered Americans went through before they perished in Benghazi! And it’s the same thing with the Camp Bastion attack, which I’ve raised questions about on behalf of murdered Marines in that case and the lack of security, questions about rules of engagement that have been compromised by this...

If you thought President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had given up on closing Guantanamo Bay and bringing jihadists to American soil, think again. Two troubling developments on the Gitmo front should have every American on edge. The first White House maneuver took place in October, while much of the public and the media were preoccupied with election news. On Oct. 2, Obama's cash-strapped Illinois pals announced that the federal government bought out the Thomson Correctional Center in western Illinois for $165 million. According to Watchdog.org, a recent appraisal put the value of the facility at $220 million. Democratic...

A painting depicting President Obama in a religious pose is now on display at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, and it’s garnering some protests from those who think it’s blasphemous. Artist Michael D’Antuono originally planned to display the piece in an art installation in New York’s Union Square on the president’s 100th day in office, but so many protesters contacted him about it–he received over 4,000 emails–that he canceled the event. It’s something he says he regrets now. “I always regretted cancelling my exhibit in New York because I feel my First Amendment rights should override someone’s hurt feelings,”...

At the November 29, 2012, Preliminary Injunction hearing in Sibley vs. Alexander, Dinan and Lightfoot – a class action lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court against the three District of Columbia Electors of the so-called Electoral College – Barack Hussein Obama, II, refused to produce his original Short-Form “Certificate of Live Birth” and his original Long-Form “Certificate of Live Birth”. These documents are the sole evidence that Mr. Obama has proffered to the American People to establish his Article II, §1, eligibility for the Office of President. I had subpoenaed those documents for the hearing.  As a result, I today filed...

Larry Summers, chair of the White House National Economic Council when the 2009 stimulus was developed, suggested that President Obama will eventually tax and regulate junk food to drive people to eat more healthily — although he dinged First Lady Michelle Obama’s healthy foods initiative.“I think there is no question that the way Americans eat and what Americans weigh is a big contributor to health problems and it’s a big contributor to health costs,” Summers said on Morning Joe today.It’s not the agenda now, but I think at some point you’re going to see tax measures and regulatory measures that...

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Gun sales hit an all-time, one-day record one week ago, driving Black Friday retail sales and actually overwhelming the FBI’s background check center twice. What’s causing the gun-buying zeal? The answer is simple – the actions of a man who hates private ownership of guns, Barack Obama. He’s been doing it for a long time. His election in 2008 drove gun sales through the roof. And now it’s happening, again, because he is supporting the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty that requires member states unable to disarm their populaces to be placed under the jurisdiction of the U.N. Office of...

In the heated fiscal cliff discussions, Congressional Republicans are failing to use the only card that has been dealt to them: go off the fiscal cliff. President Obama’s big fiscal cliff announcement this week that Congressional Republicans should cave to the Democrats’ demands of letting the Bush-era tax cuts expire for top income earners has left few Republicans actually considering the president’s absurd proposal. If the Republicans in Congress feel that since Barack Obama won reelection, they must cave to all his fiscal demands, they’ve proven themselves stooges. Still and all, Republicans have agreed to raise revenues but Democrats have...