Free Republic

First published on FrontPage Magazine. By Enza Ferreri The UK is facing its greatest risk of blackouts since 2007/08 in the coming winter. The National Grid, responsible for balancing the country's supply and demand of energy, last week has given this warning because Britain’s reserves of electricity have halved in 12 months. The UK and the USA are in the same boat here. Both countries have governments that have – or pretend to have - fallen for the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory hook, line, and sinker. The Obama Administration’s regulations to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants,...

I hate to be rude and I hate to be crass, but you know what, ladies and gentlemen, I've had it. I am sick and damn tired of of voting for a party that mocks me, torments me, and worst of all, collaborates with the fascist pigs in the Democrat party to destroy The United States of America in the name of "bipartisanship". In short, I no longer consider myself a member of the Republican't party. I'm done. The GOP can take a long walk off a short pier. I have had more than my share of being the political...

It's official: Obama has won and conservative Republicans have lost. The US Senate just approved legislation to end the so-called government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. The bill funds the government through January 15th, raises the debt cap, give back-pay to furloughed workers, and has only two tiny crumbs of concessions that essentially do nothing. The first is that Obamacare will verify the income of those signing up for it, but as the website and program itself is so riddled with junk, that'll likely never happen. The second bit of nothingness is that a bipartisan budget committee will form...

Certain prisoners to get health coverage under ObamaCare Prisons could relocate medical costs to the federal government LOS ANGELES — Soon certain prisoners who need medical treatment could get it through Obamacare. Watch the video (go to link) for more information.

Some 250 people from about a dozen states converged in Arizona late last week for a series of trainings and civil disobedience actions in an attempt to shut down the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Beginning on Friday, activists—many of them undocumented—chained their bodies to deportation buses and blocked the entrance to an immigrant detention facility. The convergence, organized by the Puente Arizona and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), culminated in what was essentially a big party on the driveway of an ICE office building on Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Although House Democrats revealed a new comprehensive immigration...

Buried inside the new stopgap spending bill are several pork project goodies, including nearly quadrupling the maximum price of a dam project on the Ohio River that is turning into a boondoggle — up to nearly $3 billion. The bill also includes $174,000 of taxpayer money being sent to the widow of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg. The death gratuity, which has been paid to widows of other lawmakers in the past, raised hackles since Mr. Lautenberg was a multimillionaire, while the government is $16.7 trillion in debt. But lawmakers did nix one provision that was in an early draft...

WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) released the following statement in advance of an expected vote in the Senate to reopen the federal government and temporarily increase the government’s statutory borrowing authority: This is a massive relief for tens of thousands of families and businesses in Connecticut and millions more across the country. The bipartisan compromise reached in the Senate today will send federal employees back to work and restart the critical services that veterans, seniors, small business owners, and countless others rely on every day from the federal government. But this deal should be no cause for celebration - keeping...

“Congress Set to End Fiscal Impasse as Boehner Concedes“ Sigh. So what was the reaction in financial markets from the surrender by Mitch McConnell (RINO-KY) and John Boehner (RINO-OH)? Particularly after the “terrifying crisis” that Democrats, the media and Gall Street professionals were screaming about? First, the 10 year US Treasury yield fell 6 basis points in the afternoon. Hardly an earth shattering change from the alleged “brink of default.” ust10psurr Second, US Credit Default Swaps are at 40, almost the same as Australia and New Zealand. Which, as far as I know, have NOT been on the brink of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, there's so much out there that seems on the surface to be inexplicable. The problem in this country, as a majority of people recognize, I mean, look at this poll here. Look at this. It is a poll from the Pew Research Center. The bottom line: 81% of the people in this country are dissatisfied. Eighty-one percent are dissatisfied. Do you think they're dissatisfied with Ted Cruz? Do you think they're dissatisfied with the Tea Party? Do you think they're dissatisfied with the opposition to Barack Obama? The Republican Party obviously thinks so, but...

According to a Washington Post report Wednesday morning, 59-year-old Janice Baker officially became the first confirmed enrollee in the Delaware Obamacare exchange that opened, as most other exchanges did, on October 1. Having tried to sign up online and via telephone starting on October 1, and continuing her efforts over the course of more than two weeks, Baker was repeatedly frustrated by error messages online and hours of waiting on the phone. She finally succeeded after deleting all temporary data, browsing history, and cookies on her computer. According to the report, Delaware Health and Social Service officials were so happy...

The standard critique of President Obama’s foreign policy is now generally well-known—mercurial, paradoxical, and passive. “Leading from behind” seems at odds with the traditional American commitment to ensure—preferably with allies or, if need be, alone—the continuance of the postwar global system of sovereign borders, free trade, safe commerce, and open communications. Many of Obama’s recent foreign policy initiatives have resulted in a diminished United States and they have found little success. The reset with Russia earned us a strange sort of contempt from Vladimir Putin. Moscow almost gratuitously thwarts the U.S., gloating that we offer loud self-righteous sermons to others...

(CNSNews.com) - Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a spokesman in the Office of Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, is refusing to say whether the Department of Defense would attempt to stop a civilian Catholic priest, who had been a contract chaplain for the military, from administering the last rites to a serviceman on a U.S. military base. “I feel no particular compulsion to answer outlandish, hypothetical questions in a yes/no fashion nor does the Department, generally, answer hypotheticals at all,” Breasseale said in an email. “Further, it is a matter of long standing Department policy to not address matters that are...

The Senate Judiciary committee will vote on either Wednesday or Thursday whether to confirm Robert Wilkins, President Obama’s nominee to the prestigious D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals -- the court often referred to after the Supreme Court as the “second highest court” in the country. President Obama has spared little rhetoric in threatening Republicans should they dare defeat or delay Wilkins’ nomination. When Wilkins was nominated in June, Obama accused Republicans of being “cynically” engaging in “unprecedented”obstruction of judicial nominations. Democrats claim that any fair consideration would guarantee Wilkins’ quick confirmation. After all, as they point out, Wilkins was quickly...

Senate leaders on Wednesday struck an 11th-hour agreement to avoid a U.S. debt crisis and fully reopen the federal government, putting lawmakers on track toward ending a stalemate that worried investors world-wide and provided striking evidence of congressional dysfunction. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), in a statement released Wednesday afternoon, said House Republicans will allow the Senate deal to come up for a vote. "Blocking the bipartisan agreement reached today by the members of the Senate will not be a tactic for us," Mr. Boehner said.

Psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow appeared on Fox News Wednesday to psychoanalyze President Barack Obama, claiming the president won’t negotiate with House Republicans because his father “abandoned” him and his grandmother “didn’t trust men of color.” Steve Doocy of “Fox & Friends” introduced the segment by showing clips of the president referring to the shutdown as a “hostage” situation. Doocy asked Ablow if Obama’s “language” reveals anything about his personality. So, the average person might hear partisan rhetoric, but what do you hear in the words the president’s using?” Doocy asked. “Well, in the words ‘hostage taking… being held for ransom,’...

President Barack Obama plans to host Iraq’s prime minister at the White House on Nov. 1. …

I thought that all revenue bills had to start first in the House of Reps... Is Reid's move unconstitutional?

I don't seem to ever recall Democrats turning on their own like several "Republicans" have recently. I wonder how things would have turned out in the fight to defund, delay, alter ObamaCare if so-called Republicans would have listened to Reagan, when he underwent so many personal attacks during his 1966 campaign for governor, which led to the Eleventh Commandment: "Thou shatlt not speak ill of any Republican. Reagan said "It's a rule that I followed in that campaign and have ever since." McCain and others seem to like to evoke Reagan, but don't appear to follow what he said. In...

Let's start the count down. I hope I make it that long financially, emotionally and physically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=DTZT8i5e2Rs

Yesterday we briefly interrupted our battle with the Tea Party Anarchists to  present the Medal of Honor to retired Army Captain William Swenson. The long overdue medal was awarded to former Captain Swenson for repeatedly risking his life in Afghanistan's Battle of Ganjgal to rescue his fallen comrades. It only appears that Lady M is floating in space For the occasion, Lady M selected one of her recycled frocks, this one a little Rachael Roy number from way back in 2009; as you can see it still fits as well as it did 4 years ago! Even though we’ve, uh,...

FULL TITLE: 'Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett 'was the architect of President's handling of the shutdown because she was the one to tell him not to negotiate' Republicans have largely been blamed for the ongoing government shut down but a new theory points the finger at President Obama's longtime advisor Valerie Jarrett. Author Ed Klein believes that Jarrett was the 'architect' of the approach that President Obama has taken with the budget battle. The New York Post reports that Klein says that it was during a late-night strategy session that Jarrett held with the President in the residence where they came...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – Amid a government shutdown, looming U.S. default and partisan bickering in Congress, President Barack Obama was still able to focus on one of the more positive, “cool” things about his job. In a round of interviews with local television stations addressing the threat of a Thursday deadline for raising the U.S. debt limit, President Obama told WABC-TV’s Diana Williams that their respective daughters both share the view that celebrity friends are one of the “coolest” perks to the job. “My daughter asked me to ask you, what is the coolest thing about being president?” asked Williams. “She...

Another morning, another gridlock. No deal from Obama and Congress with the default clock ticking. To paraphrase the old Wendy’s commercial, “Where’s the (default) beef?“ Credit default swaps for the US? Up slightly this morning, but still the lowest in the Americas. sovcds101613 And the US CDS “smile” remains (inverse hump in the CDS curve). uscdscurve101613 Zero Hedge has the hysterical headline that “Repo Soars To 2013 Highs On Default Fears, Bifurcated Collateral Market.” True, but compared to 2008, it is a drop in the bucket. repost101613 And the US Treasury 10 is up slightly today, not the massive default...

<p>Washington (CNN) – There is no daylight between his vote against raising the debt ceiling as a senator in 2006 and his call for Congress to increase the limit in the next 10 days, President Barack Obama said Wednesday.</p> <p>“Nothing has changed,” Obama told WFLA in an interview. “I voted against a debt ceiling increase at the time because I had some concerns about what President (George W.) Bush was doing.”</p>

Psst. Anic-Pay! Bloomberg‘s Megan McArdle (who has been on an incredible roll lately**) takes issue with the idea that the Obama administration needn’t panic about Obamacare, as long as it can get its glitch-plagued health care exchanges up and running by the end of the year. Wrong, she suggests. It’s time to panic. Now. Why? Because the exchanges are the way to sign up young, healthy people and prevent the fabled “death spiral,” in which only older, sicker people sign up for insurance, causing rates to rise and healthier people to drop out, causing rates to rise even more, etc....

A New York Times investigative article based on two dozen interviews with industry insiders and confidential Obama Administration documents reveals that the catastrophic $500 million Obamacare rollout "has deeply embarrassed the White House" and has the technology companies involved "publicly distancing themselves" from the Obamacare fiasco. "These are not glitches. The extent of the problems is pretty enormous," an insurance executive who participated in Obamacare conference calls told the Times. "At the end of our calls, people say, 'It's awful, just awful.'"

Talking Points: If ObamaCare's liberal friends are calling its launch a "failure," an "inexcusable mess" and "beyond the pale," why are ObamaCare's Republican enemies completely tongue-tied about this unfolding train wreck? Earlier in the week, former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs called ObamaCare's launch "excruciatingly embarrassing." The Washington Post's Ezra Klein, one of ObamaCare's most shameless boosters, said it was a "disaster" and that the administration deserves "all the criticism they're getting and more." Jon Stewart suggested that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius lied about why the law's individual mandate couldn't be delayed. True, these liberals have a...

The Democrats government shutdown is in its third week and it is beginning to look like it will continue, at least past the debt ceiling. Negotiations continue over how to reopen the government, but there is a certain amount of exasperation starting to show. The Republicans in the House of Representatives have offered plan after plan to end the government shutdown, but they have all been rejected by the Democrats. Their latest plan was threatened with a veto from President Obama, before it could even make it to the floor of the House. I can't help but wonder if Rush...

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the frantic stop-and-go effort in Congress to avoid a debt default and end a government shutdown is "a mess" as a gloomy mood descended over the White House with time running out to a Thursday deadline. Obama, who is to meet Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday, and his Democratic backers stressed there is still time to avoid a historic default even as efforts to reach a deal in Congress floundered on Capitol Hill. "My expectation is that it does get solved, but we don´t have a lot of time," Obama told...

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - One lawmaker in the eye of the storm that is the government shutdown offered his encouragement to residents in the Tennessee Valley Tuesday night. Texas Senator Ted Cruz spoke at a dinner held by the Huntsville Republican Women. He gave a speech and then took questions from the crowd, via a video link from Washington. Cruz had been scheduled to appear in person but the turmoil in Washington kept him there. During the event, Cruz took the opportunity to blast the Obama administration on a wide range of issues. "We're seeing the constitutional rights of law-abiding...

House Republicans on Tuesday narrowed their attack on Obamacare to the issue of fairness, insisting that President Obama and his top political appointees all have to buy their insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges as part of a new bill to end the government shutdown and extend the federal debt ceiling. GOP leaders hope to put the bill on their chamber’s floor for a vote later Tuesday, with little time to spare before the Thursday deadline the Treasury Department has set for when it will run out of maneuvering room under the current $16.7 trillion debt ceiling. The new...

<p>Klein — who wrote a provocative biography about Obama last year entitled “The Amateur” — said White House insiders refer to Jarrett as “The Night Stalker” because she is the only presidential aide who frequently spends time in the family quarters and dines with the Obamas.</p>

President Obama understands "the frustrations of the American people" more than anybody else. At least, that's what he told WABC in an interview: "One thing that I've shown is that if I say I'm prepared to compromise on something, I can deliver votes and we can get it done," Obama said. "So, look: Nobody shares the frustrations of the American people more than I do because I see day in and day out the damage that something like a shutdown does."

ANN ARBOR, MI, October 15, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic priest in Georgia has filed a lawsuit after he was barred from even volunteering to offer Mass at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. Father Ray Leonard, who is contracted to serve as base chaplain, and Fred Naylor, one of Father Leonard’s parishioners and a retired veteran with over 22 years of service, launched the suit Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Priests have been prohibited from offering Mass at military bases in the wake of the government shutdown, despite provisions in the Pay Our...

PAYSON, AZ - Republican Rep. Brenda Barton of Payson compared President Barack Obama to Adolph Hitler on her Facebook page Monday in a post urging county sheriffs to revoke authority from the National Parks Service “thugs” who are enforcing the federal shutdown on national parks lands. “Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of De Fuhrer… where are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service Rangers authority to arrest??? Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?” she wrote. Fuhrer is a German term for leader that is...

Defense: The firing of two nuclear commanders in a week adds to a body count that suggests we have either the most corrupt and incompetent general staff in history or our military is being reshaped for other purposes. The Obama administration, which has fired no one over scandals such as its Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running operation, its criminal negligence in the terrorist attack on our Benghazi diplomatic mission, or the use of the IRS to target and intimidate political foes, seems to have a curious obsession lately about ethics and competence in the U.S. military. Last week the Air...

The Washington Monument syndrome is describe the tendency of government agencies in the United States to cut the most visible or appreciated services provided by the government when faced with budget cuts. And protect massive waste (since no one would miss the massive waste if it was cut). Such as closing National Parks and Monuments. What are government agencies hiding? The fact that agencies have large concentrations of non-essential personnel. Even Time.com recognizes that most of Federal government in non-essential. The interest payments on Federal debt is a small percentage of Federal current expenditures (11.5% at the end of Q2)....

HONG KONG - Perhaps the only people who have managed to find a silver lining in the ongoing US government shutdown are Chinese intellectuals. Of course, Americans view the impasse as a sign of political dysfunction. But to many Chinese commentators, it also reveals certain strengths. Since the shutdown began nine days ago, Chinese social media have been full of wistful, almost admiring remarks about how the shutdown could only happen in a democratic country with a resilient economy and responsive political representation. "The government's closed - is this bad?" wrote Chen Zhiwu, a user on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo....

The hallmark of the Obama era is government of, for and by crisis. Elected amid (or possibly because of) a financial crisis, the Panic of 2008, President Obama has spent his time in office lurching from disaster to disaster. Obama’s reflexes, praised instinctive timing and audacious as a candidate, turn out to be poorly suited to high office. Obama has been mostly reactive and mostly captive to events. Veering here and there is part of being president. The world is big and dangerous and governance is hard. But watching Obama govern is like watching a distracted man flipping through television...

<p>On September 11th 2001, America’s big bloated money-no-object bureaucracy and its obsolete brain-dead 1970s hijacking procedures utterly failed the citizens of this country. Nevertheless, on Flight 93 brave freeborn citizens acted as an ad hoc militia and did the job their government had proved incapable of doing.</p>

ANN ARBOR, MI, October 15, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic priest in Georgia has filed a lawsuit after he was barred from even volunteering to offer Mass at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. Father Ray Leonard, who is contracted to serve as base chaplain, and Fred Naylor, one of Father Leonard’s parishioners and a retired veteran with over 22 years of service, launched the suit Monday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

The media, members of Congress, and the President of the United States have gleefully disseminated misinformation about what would happen if we do not raise the debt ceiling by October 17th. The biggest blow these lies encountered was when Moody’s, one of the nation's top credit rating agencies, released a memo on October 7th stating: “We believe the government would continue to pay interest and principal on its debt even in the event that the debt limit is not raised, leaving its creditworthiness intact...The debt limit restricts government expenditures to the amount of its incoming revenues; it does not prohibit...

Question: If Ted Cruz and John Boehner were both on a sinking ship, who would be saved? Answer: America. Harsh? Look around you at what is happening to America and you will see harsh. I am not talking about closed parks and monuments. I am talking about the funds cut to nearly 9 million mothers and young children for food, breastfeeding support and infant formula. That is harsh. Making a war against babies is harsh. And for what? Because Cruz, Republican senator from Texas, has grown so drunk on the sound of his own voice and so besotted with illusions...

While the media and Democrats scream about the Titanic sinking of government default, there is scant evidence in financial markets of it. Here are two curves as of 1pm EST, the US Treasury yield curve and the US credit default swaps curve. The Treasury curve is upward sloping while the CDS curve is downward sloping. Actually, the CDS curve has an inverted hump. ustcdes1015E It does look like a bomb crater rather than a typical CDS curve. If we look at 1 month ago, we see an upward sloping CDS curve. 1moyccds And if we compare the current curves compared...

Several weeks ago I posted a piece on FrontPage Mag entitled “The Muslims Are Coming!” about a recent documentary following a troupe of Muslim standup comics as they toured the country, enlightening all the middle-American clods who have somehow gotten the crazy impression that Islam poses a threat. I harshly attacked this concept; my take was that the world has an Islam problem, not an Islamophobia problem, and that claiming otherwise and slapping a happy face on the issue is insulting and pointless. The film’s producer and co-director Dean Obeidallah, who is also one of the featured comedians, unsurprisingly took...

Political Director of ABC News, Rick Klein, pleaded with Wall Street financiers to “manipulate the markets on behalf of President Obama’s efforts to stand against GOP resistance.” “Government spending is what’s been lining their pockets for generations,” Klein observed. “How can they sit by and allow upstarts like Senator Cruz to interfere? They’ve got to use their financial power to provoke a major slide in stock prices. Sure, they might have to take some temporary losses, but they should consider it an investment that will ensure that government cash continues to flow to them in the future.” Klein noted that...

According to a new study conducted by Texas Tech University Professor Dr. Michael Giberson for the Institute for Energy Research, the government and wind lobby aren't telling taxpayers the whole truth about how much wind energy really costs. The study comes as the wind lobby is set to receive another extension on massive subsidies with little results to show for it. "As Big Wind's lobbyists fight tooth and nail to extend the wind Production Tax Credit, it is important that we look at the true costs of wind power to taxpayers and ratepayers," IER President Thomas Pyle said about...

Leadership: Iran's back to chanting "death to America," China's calling for a "de-Americanized" world, Russia kicks us to the curb in the Mideast and Venezuela hauls off five of our sailors. And what does the White House say? The sharp rise in anti-American incidents from antagonistic regimes stands in stark contrast to the environment three decades ago, when Ronald Reagan was president. As Beltway intelligentsia derided the Gipper as an "amiable dunce," the world's leading troublemakers saw the U.S. president entirely differently: as someone they'd rather not tangle with. That's why Iran's ayatollahs dropped the U.S. diplomatic hostages they'd been...

Class: Because of George Mason University’s screwy scheduling (no class today because Monday’s classes are now Tuesday classes because of Columbus Day), we can’t have our discussion of the impending US default. Here are two curves as of 1pm EST, the US Treasury yield curve and the US credit default swaps curve. The Treasury curve is upward sloping while the CDS curve is downward sloping. ustcdes1015E If we look at 1 month ago, we see an upward sloping CDS curve. 1moyccds And if we compare the current curves compared to President Obama’s inauguration date, we see an upward sloping CDS...