Free Republic

**SNIP** The president says that he is "under no illusions" about the situation in Syria, where government forces and rebel groups have clashed for two years. But he says Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime continues to weaken and will eventually come to an end.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report that said that the labor force participation rate (LFPR) dropped to 63.6%, the lowest rate since Jimmy Carter was in office. Essentially that means that of the population of 16 year and older, 37.4% of them decided not to work or not to seek work. That’s 88.8 million people! To put that in perspective, when George Bush took office the LFPR was 67.2% and eight years later it was 1.5% lower at 65.7%. It has dropped 2.1% in Barack Obama’s first four years, the most precipitous drop in workforce participation...

NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous said Sunday, perhaps unwittingly, that black Americans “are doing far worse” than when President Obama first took office. “The country’s back to pretty much where it was when this president started,” Mr. Jealous told MSNBC host David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” “White people in this country are doing a bit better. Black people are doing far worse.”

Here's what the NRA members said: 93 percent oppose a law requiring gun owners to register with the federal government. 92 percent oppose gun confiscation via mandatory buy-back laws. 92 percent oppose a federal law banning the sale of firearms between private citizens. 91 percent of support laws keeping firearms away from the mentally ill. 89 percent oppose banning semi-automatic firearms, often "mistakenly called assault rifles." 82 percent approve of the idea of "qualified armed security professionals in every school." 79 percent agree that President Obama's "balanced approach" to guns means regulations that "will take away our 2nd Amendment rights."...

The 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board (i.e. the so-called “death panel”) included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) has run into a bit of problem: Very few want to join. Jonathan Gruber, for example, helped lay the groundwork for Massachusetts’ health-care law and played an important role in making “Obamacare” the law of the land. So you’d think he’d be an obvious choice for the panel, right? “No way,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “Maybe if it was a part-time gig. But full time? I can’t see it.” And he’s not alone. “It is supposed...

The Kapolei Golf Club laid off 14 out of 110 employed at the course recently. The employees were from various departments. "After careful consideration and full review of operations, we had to make the difficult decision of reducing our staff at Kapolei Golf Club," said Micah Kane, chief operating officer of Pacific Links Hawaii, in a statement. "This shift enables Pacific Links Hawai'i to operate at optimal efficiency and better provide the high quality of service that our customers have come to expect and solidify the future of our remaining employees. We do not anticipate any further staff cuts." Other...

Okay, everybody who reads NRL News Today knows I am a sucker for kids in general, little kids in particular. Over the weekend, National Right to Life received by email a letter Alexander G. had written to President Obama.His mom wroteGood morning,My 7 year old son was inspired to write a letter to the President requesting “to make a new law that will protect the babies”. I can only imagine the amount of correspondence you are receiving daily; however, with my wonderful and hopeful boy standing right behind me at the moment, I am humbly asking you to please read...

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joe Biden won’t be running for president in 2016--bet on it. I already have, and I’m going to owe a lot of people dinner if I’m wrong. Not to spoil anybody’s fun, but all of this speculation will probably lead nowhere. I’m going to explain my reasoning and then try very hard to refrain from writing anything more about this until, well, at least six months from now. The most obvious factor militating against runs by these Democratic power players is their age. Biden would turn 74 right after Election Day 2016, and Clinton would turn...

A Chinese company will take charge of sensitive military and battery technology following the Treasury Department’s decision on Tuesday to permit the sale of a U.S. company that was bankrolled with tax dollars to the Shanghai-based Wanxiang firm. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approved the $256 million sale of A123 Systems’ operation, despite warnings from military insiders and lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the sale presents a danger to national security. A123 Systems, which went bankrupt despite the Obama administrations’ $249 million in green energy funding to produce advanced lithium ion batteries, controls 91 patents...

If there are truthers and birthers, should there now be a new term for those who are doubting President Obama’s claim that he goes skeet shooting “all the time”? And should that term be “skeeters”? If so, count CNN’s rising young star Erin Burnett among the gadflies. During a segment on Monday night, Burnett took over two minutes to dissect the president’s shooting claim — and she found it wanting. “Obama the skeet shooter,” she began. “Yeah, I’m not making this up. I mean, if someone is, it isn’t me.” She then played the clip of CNN’s Jessica Yellin confronting...

There is no war on terror for the Obama White House, but there is one on Fox News. In a recent interview with The New Republic, President Obama was back to his grousing about the one television news outlet in America that won’t fall in line and treat him as emperor. Discussing breaking Washington's partisan gridlock, the president told TNR,"If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News...for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it." Alas, the president loves to whine about the media meanies at...

This is just a general rant about the person occupying the White House. When will it be enough! I read in the Examiner this morning that he says Miami won the NBA Championship because they played against him. I know he supposed to be cracking a joke but good golly, does it always have to be about him? Does anyone not see this narcissism? Then there is a story about his take on football, about how unsafe it is. And players agree with this guy and fall all over themselves because if the president talks about it, then it must...

Didn't see this posted....but was wondering if anyone is watching/listening? I was listening to Rush, but he was cut off for this pandering...ugh

Sarah Palin's break up with Fox News should not have been, well, breaking news, as she had publicly complained in August on Facebook that the network had canceled her appearances at the Republican National Convention. And going back even further, Palin didn't give Fox the scoop in October 2011 when she announced she wasn't going to run for president. Still, the news of the Fox split overtook Twitter and the news cycle by storm. One thing I've learned in my years covering Palin, which began on Aug. 29, 2008, when Sen. John McCain stunned the country by selecting her as...

Drones over sovereign countries killing innocentsGoing to war without Congressional approval. Assassinating American citizens. And now Gitmo to remain open for business. The State Department on Monday reassigned Daniel Fried, the special envoy for closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and will not replace him, according to an internal personnel announcement. Mr. Fried’s office is being closed, and his former responsibilities will be “assumed” by the office of the department’s legal adviser, the notice said. The announcement that no senior official in President Obama’s second term will succeed Mr. Fried in working primarily on diplomatic issues pertaining to repatriating...

So argues Ralph Benko at Forbes, in a column yesterday that takes a (ahem) different view of the strategies employed by the House Republican caucus and the Speaker over the last few weeks. Benko may score on a few of his points, too: In retrospect, at the Battle at Fiscal Cliff, Boehner took President Obama to the cleaners. He did it suavely, without histrionics. While Obama churlishly, and in a politically amateurish manner, publicly strutted about having forced the Republicans to raise tax rates on “the wealthiest Americans” Boehner, quietly, was pocketing his winnings. Dazzled by Obama’s Ozymandias-scale sneer most...

While the title says it all, I thought a goodbye was in order. While I've been a FReeper for well over a decade, I must declare that it is time to part ways. While I have the greatest respect for a great many of you, the days where I can in good conscience remain silent about the issues that set me apart from the rest of FReeperdom have past. For clarity, or perhaps catharsis, I'm not entirely certain which, I'll lay them out on the table an call the ZOT™ down upon myself. The racism: I just can't handle it...

While American taxpayers bail out failing companies via the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), behind the scenes the Obama Treasury Department is awarding their top executives with millions of dollars in raises even though Congress passed a law forbidding it. It’s an inconceivable scheme that rewards bad behavior with big bucks from taxpayers who have no say in the matter. In fact, the U.S. Treasury was forced by Congress to create rules against it yet a new federal audit reveals the agency repeatedly violates them to enrich the very people responsible for the companies’ failures (and need for...

I hate to criticize a fellow pilot, but when one engages in such sky-high hypocrisy, well . . . On Morning Joe today, former Obama car czar Steve Rattner, a very successful hedge fund manager, decried "climate-change denier[s]." This is the same Rattner who, at last report, owned a "15,000-square-foot mansion on Martha’s Vineyard, to which [he] flies regularly on a Dassault Falcon 2000 jet [see file photo] he pilots himself." Rattner wrung his hands over the fact that we're "putting millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every day." But just earlier this week, the New York Times...

President Barack Obama is set to reject the key compromise at the heart of a bipartisan deal on immigration reform announced by eight Senators yesterday. The president, who will deliver an address later today in Las Vegas, NV outlining his own immigration ideas, is reported to oppose linking a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants, a Democrat demand, to stronger law enforcement and better border security, a Republican demand. The president will apparently argue that the administration has met reasonable goals on enforcing current immigration legislation, and that additional security will merely create new obstacles to legalizing the roughly 12...