Free Republic

Politics 2012: It hasn´t been two months since Barack Obama won re-election, but already we´re finding out things that were kept from us during the campaign. Expect to hear more in the coming months. lElections are clarifying events, we´re told. But sometimes what they clarify is merely the gap between what we were told during the campaign and the reality on the ground. Often, the two don´t match. That´s certainly true with Obama. How often in recent weeks have we learned that what we heard on the campaign trail from the Obama camp, and which were echoed by

Some interesting news has broken in the wake of the latest push for gun control by President Obama and Senate Democrats: Obama sends his kids to a school where armed guards are used as a matter of fact. The school, Sidwell Friends School in Washington, DC, has 11 security officers and is seeking to hire a new police officer as we speak. If you dismiss this by saying, "Of course they have armed guards -- they get Secret Service protection," then you've missed the larger point. The larger point is that this is standard operating procedure for the school, period....

Gun control advocates' loudest voices are most heavily protected by guns. Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg, Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel and other gun grabbing politicians are protected with secret service and/or security details that carry guns. If their argument is right, that guns kill people, it is more than appropriate that they disarm their security and themselves to demonstrate that they can live the way they are both proposing and legislating that the rest of the 99%, (not in the political 1% elite) live. If the Political 1%ers do not shed their armed protection for themselves and their own families then...

One of my favorite commentators on television is CNBC’s Rick Santelli. And today, he made a great point: when the Senate wanted to pass Obamacare, they met on Christmas eve, 2009. Somehow, the fiscal cliff isn’t that important to the Senate or House this time around. We know that President Obama is perfectly happy to let tax rates automatically increase on everyone (or at least those households earning $250,000 has above). And payroll taxes rise 2% regardless of the fiscal cliff or not. Then there are the 10+ Obamacare taxe, mostly hitting the top 2% of earners. But President Obama...

Random thoughts on the passing scene: When I was growing up, an older member of the family used to say, "What you don't know would make a big book." Now that I am an older member of the family, I would say to anyone, "What you don't know would fill more books than the Encyclopedia Britannica." At least half of our society's troubles come from know-it-alls, in a world where nobody knows even 10 percent of all. Some people seem to think that, if life is not fair, then the answer is to turn more of the nation's resources over...

News that the Treasury Department's Inspector General has opened an investigation to determine whether three solar companies inflated the cost of their work to increase the payments they would receive from the government should send shivers down the spine of the taxpayer-subsidized green energy industry.The Washington Post reports that SolarCity, SunRun and Sungevity have received subpoenas from the Treasury Department’s office of inspector general for financial records to justify more than $500 million in federal grants and tax credits the firms tapped for performing work. The probe seeks to determine whether the companies accurately reported the market value of...

President Barack Obama demands more stimulus spending to avoid the "fiscal cliff." Obama increased the national debt $6 trillion to $16 trillion. Yet the Democrats' 'cure for what ails ya' is even more spending. Obama demands around $75 billion in new spending to stimulate the economy in 2013. "Keynesian Economics" is the insane belief that the economy can be stimulated by government spending. It provides the excuse to depart from common sense that allows politicians to ignore the alarm bells. It is ludicrous mainly because our government doesn't have any money to spend. If the government had a surplus saved...

It’s already been discussed that Barack Obama’s eulogy at Senator Inouy’s memorial in Washington DC was a tribute to himself and not the late Hawaiian senator. Obama spoke for 10 minutes about himself and his life story, barely mentioning the life of Senator Inouye. But it’s worse than that. Barack Obama distorted his life story in order to include Senator Inouye in his talk. Jack Cashill at American Thinker reported:

Woo-Hoo! MOTUS already got her first-est and best-est Christmas present! The coveted Doug Ross Fab Fifty 2012 Medallion!!!! That’s right: MOTUS has now won the the prestigious award in the category “Best First Lady Blog” 4 big years in a row! As you can imagine, the competition was brutal in that category. Anyway, it’s a record! At least for me.(snip) So before MOTUS gets about her very busy day I just want say thanks to all of you in the only way I know possible: a picture of Lady M that doesn’t include either the face or the butt: Yet...

As we celebrate our narrow escape from the Mayan-Republican Apocalypse of December 21, 2012, the American media is living up to its reputation as the people's fearless truth-teller, by correctly attributing our miraculous collective salvation to Barack Obama. The consensus among the media experts and celebrities can be best expressed by this unbiased quote from CNN: "If you don't think Obama is god, you're just stupid." According to an ancient prophecy, the Mayan calendar would end on 12/21/2012 with a big comet (or other large-caliber assault weapon that the NRA protects from government control) falling off a physical cliff and...

Early in his first term, Barack Obama raised a lot of eyebrows by his (now-infamous) action of returning to the British a bust of Winston Churchill. This error was compounded by giving as a gift to the British Prime minister a gift of DVDs of classic American movies, in a format incompatible with British DVD players. A lot of time was spent either rationalizing this behaviour away, or analyzing it, but the consensus, after a time, was Officially DeclaredTM to be a mixture of "SQUIRREL!" and "Anti-Imperialist" together with references to the Brit treatment of the Mau-Maus in Africa, hints...

Maria Bartiromo challenges Maryland Democratic Senator Ben Cardin to offer specifics on what spending cuts he would be willing to support, accusing both sides of talking generally about a "balanced approach" but failing ot reach an agreement to avert the fiscal cliff.

A Wall Street Journal report detailing the broken-down status of talks between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner on the year-end “fiscal cliff” reveals that Obama threatened to use both his inaugural and State of the Union speeches to blame Republicans if there’s no deal. Negotiations reportedly came to a standstill after Boehner proposed increasing the tax rate on top earners: Mr. Obama repeatedly lost patience with the speaker as negotiations faltered. In an Oval Office meeting last week, he told Mr. Boehner that if the sides didn’t reach agreement, he would use his inaugural address and his...

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Someone needs to tell Barack Obama—it must get particularly confusing this time of year—that his own birth is not Year One, the date around which all other events are understood. His much-noted, self-referential tic was on cringe-worthy display Friday when the president gave his eulogy for the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, who served in Congress for half a century representing Obama’s birth state of Hawaii. Inouye was a Japanese-American war hero (he lost an arm in World War II, destroying his dream of becoming a surgeon), and as a senator he served on the Watergate committee, helped rewrite our intelligence...

Sen. Barrasso: Obama sees a ‘political victory’ in going over the cliffBy Alicia M. Cohn - 12/23/12 09:32 AM ET Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Sunday he thinks President Obama wants to dive over the so-called "fiscal cliff." "I believe the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes," Barrasso told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday." "He senses a political victory at the bottom of the cliff." The senator also said he believes the nation will go over the cliff, with the deadline just nine days away. Barrasso said he thinks Obama is eager to blame...

Video at link. President Obama has a very serious ego problem, and when he goes off teleprompter, it sticks out like a sore thumb. His eulogy for Senator Inouye on Friday was grotesque in its focus on the speaker, not the dearly departed. Unsurprisingly, President George W. Bush delivered a graceful eulogy for Gerald R. Ford's funeral, a model from which his successor should, but will not, learn. As David Paulin points out: A great funeral eulogy and not a single mention of "I" or "me" by President Bush. He says "us" and "we" at two points, both only in...

Obama left his lush golf get-aways and NAACP basketball sprees to depart for a Brazilian vacation. ... Obama abandoned the victims of genocide in Libya to help America's oil opposition. Why? Out with Western oil, in with Russian and Brazilian oil. Is it just coincidence that George Soros sold his Western oil stock and bought stock in Russia and Brazilian oil companies, about three months ago ? ... Last March, Soros invested in airport screeners. How did he know to do that? Insider info!

Eliminate armed guards for the President, Vice-President, and their families, and establish Gun Free Zones around them Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/eliminate-armed-guards-president-vice-president-and-their-families-and-establish-gun-free-zones/6RDGkxLK

Yes, everything is about Barack Obama. From the beginning, he has built his career on his own personal story, and the funeral service of former Hawaiian Senator Daniel Inouye at the National Cathedral on Friday apparently struck him as an opportune time to remind the world what that story was. In his 1,600-word oration, Obama even managed to work in the fact, as though someone in the universe might not have heard, that he had "a white mom [and] a black father" "and was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii." The problem, however, is not just that Obama used the word...