Free Republic

We’ll see how long this pledge lasts. As part of his New Year’s resolutions, conservative talk host Glenn Beck returned from the holidays with a new policy: no one can mention President Obama anymore on his show. “Anybody who brings him up, besides me, is fired,” Beck said of the new policy. Astonished by the severity, co-host Stu Burguiere asked if staffers could get by with just mentioning that “the president said,” to which Beck said it would be evaluated on a “case-by-case basis.” Instead choosing to refer to the president as “that man” or “that guy,” Beck explained the...

This is a guest post by Senator Ima Librul (D., Utopia) on the fine art of growing pineapples. I am a Librul and justly proud of the great good we are doing for the entire World. This is my creed: it is irresponsible to be concerned about the future when our own leaders and our other experts tell us that only good things will happen if we do exactly as they say. The brightest and best, we are never wrong! Don't think. Don't question. Just follow our Dear Leader. My small garden had thirty pineapple plants. Twenty of them had...

With 12 million Americans out of work the government agency responsible for advancing opportunities for profitable employment has gone on a frantic year-end spending spree, doling out tens of millions of dollars to foreign causes that won’t put a dent in the nation’s unemployment crisis. In the last few weeks of 2012, the Obama Department of Labor (DOL) generously dedicated nearly $40 million to global initiatives unlikely to help workers in this country. The money will go to efforts that strengthen unions and help combat child labor in African, central and South American countries. This includes $10 million to combat...

When an economy is booming and jobs are plentiful, a “do no harm” approach to public policy will suffice. If GDP were expanding at a 4% annual rate and the unemployment rate were 5% and the national debt were low, then the fiscal cliff deal might be tolerable rather than terrible. While it won’t create any jobs or add to growth — just the opposite in fact — and it will only cut the national debt by a rounding-error amount, passage does avoid an across-the-board income tax hike and probable recession.So that’s something. But good enough? Not really. Avoiding...

After spending months telling Americans that the fiscal cliff deal was the most important thing facing their nation, Barack Obama has gone back to his vacation. Within a few hours of the bill's passage last night, he was enjoying the comforts of Air Force One, en route to Hawaii. Heaven forbid he’s forced to sacrifice any more of his multi-million dollar getaway.

The scene in "Sleepers" where Tommy Marcano and John Reilly encounter Sean Nokes in a Hell's Kitchen Pub fourteen years after their last encounter...

Appearing shortly after the House voted to pass a fiscal cliff deal Tuesday night, President Barack Obama called the bill a "first step" toward deficit reduction, but warned that he will not go through the same battle with Republicans over the debt ceiling. "Thanks to the votes of Democrats and Republicans in Congress I will sign a law that raises taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans," Obama said. "Tonight’s agreement further reduces the deficit by raising $620 billion in revenue from the wealthiest households." But, he added, "the fact is, the deficit is still too high." "I believe there's...

President Obama will kick off the new year the same way that he kicked off the old year: by demanding that the wealthy pay their “fair share” in taxes. But while millions of small-business owners, struggling entrepreneurs, inventors, and investors brace for a double whammy of fiscal-cliff tax hikes and new Obamacare taxes, the class-warrior-in-chief’s richest pals are getting a pass.It’s a golden pass for liberal millionaires and billionaires who support higher Obama taxes for everyone but themselves. Meet the Democratic tax evaders of the year.Google. The left-wing Internet giant provided Silicon Valley’s biggest campaign-finance boost to Obama, with...

My, we’re certainly feeling our tiger blood today aren’t we?      (snip)Butt like they say, there’s nothing like the smell of WINNING in the morning(snip)       How can you not WIN when you’re made of tiger blood and Adonis DNA?That’s a potent formula guaranteed to bring your weak enemies to their knees(snip)     (snip)     From each according to his means, to each according to his ego’s need Congratulations Barack! Now that you’ve WON-WON, what are you going to do? “I’m going to Hawaii!!! To finish my vacay, play a little golf, have a little...

American President Barack Obama’s step-grandmother underwent emergency eye surgery in an Israeli-run hospital in Equatorial Guinea last week. Sarah Onyango Obama, the president’s father’s third wife, lives in the remote Kenyan village of Nyang’oma Kogelo and suffered from an unspecified optical ailment. … The procedure was successful and Obama is making a full recovery, Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Sunday. …

President Obama is headed to Hawaii. Again. The White House announced late Tuesday that Obama — who was forced to cut his Christmas vacation short last week to return to Washington — would be traveling back to Hawaii, where he would be reunited with the first family.

Are you ready for a wild 2013? It should be a very interesting year. When the calendar flips over each January, lots of people make lots of lists. They make lists of “resolutions”, but most people never follow through on them. They make lists of “predictions”, but most of those predictions always seem to end up failing. Well, I have decided to put out my own list of predictions for 2013. I openly admit that I won’t get all of these predictions right, and that is okay. Hopefully I will at least be more accurate than most of the other...

Speaking Jan. 1 at the White House at 11:20 p.m., less than an hour after the House voted 257 to 167 to approve new tax hikes, President Barack Obama announced that he will assert the authority to raise the debt ceiling for spending approved by Congress. “One last point I want to make,” said the president flanked by Vice-President Joseph R. Biden Jr., whose Capitol Hill summitry closed the deal on a “fiscal cliff” compromise. “I will negotiate over many things, I will not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay the bills, they...

On Nov. 11, a mere five days after the presidential election, the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam pushed off from Fort Lauderdale for a Caribbean jaunt. Aboard were nearly 600 emotionally tattered Republicans, most of whom had been expecting a Republican victory of Rovian proportions — surely they had all read Karl’s prediction in The Wall Street Journal — and now were about to cruise 750 miles to nowhere, just like the party they so adored. The Nieuw Amsterdam was 86,000 tons of painful metaphor. The cruise was sponsored by National Review, the magazine founded by William F. Buckley and for...

For President Obama, the fiscal deal passed by Congress on Tuesday finally ends four years of debate with Republicans about raising tax rates on the wealthy. But it seemed to reopen a debate within his party about the nature of his leadership and his skills as a negotiator. While Mr. Obama got most of what he sought in the agreement, he found himself under withering criticism from some in his liberal base who accused him of caving in to Republicans by not taxing the rich more. Just as Speaker John A. Boehner has been under pressure from his right, Mr....

President Barak Obama left Washington D.C. tonight and is flying to Hawaii to rejoin his family on vacation.

Grover Norquist, the Americans for Tax Reform president and anti-tax activist who has become a key figure in the ongoing negotiations on the fiscal cliff, took to Twitter as the House was voting Tuesday night to give his blessing to the deal: "The Bush tax cuts lapsed at midnight last night. Every R voting for Senate bill is cutting taxes and keeping his/her pledge." "Congress about to make permanent most of the temporary tax cuts that Democrats voted against in 2001 and 2003. Permanent beats temporary."

Tucked inside the "fiscal cliff" deal is a provision repealing the CLASS Act, a giant unfunded mandate that was part of President Obama's health care law. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program was a priority of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, and was designed to create a program for long-term care for the functionally disabled. Mr. Obama halted the program, saying he couldn't find a way to make it cost-effective. But he had objected when Republicans tried to repeal it outright, saying he wanted to keep it on the books and try to amend it...

Mychal Massie is a respected writer and talk show host in Los Angeles. The other evening on my twitter, a person asked me why I didn't like the Obama's? Specifically I was asked: "I have to ask, why do you hate the Obama's? It seems personal, not policy related. You even dissed (disrespect) their Christmas family picture." The truth is I do not like the Obamas, what they represent, their ideology, and I certainly do not like his policies and legislation. I've made no secret of my contempt for the Obamas. As I responded to the person who asked me...

Federal workers are bracing for furloughs that could start to take place in the next few months if Congress doesn't replace massive budget cuts scheduled to begin Wednesday. Even as a fiscal cliff deal was beginning to emerge Monday afternoon, lawmakers and the president still lacked agreement to stop measures carving some $110 billion in spending power from federal budgets each year over the next decade through automatic cuts. President Obama dubbed the sequester cuts akin to "using an ax instead of a scalpel" on the budget in a Monday speech, while announcing a deal was close. "Some of these...