Free Republic

What a coincidence! Obama just happened to find three friendly veterans in a booth at a Portland diner this week. It was a “surprise stop.” At least, that’s what local King5 told us.

Popular progressive online magazine Salon.com recently announced a content sharing partnership with Middle East focused news website Mondoweiss.net, a publication that has been described as a “virulent pusher of anti-semitic tropes,” and a “website that spouts anti-Semitism.” “Salon is proud to feature content from Mondoweiss, a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, and the evolving debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” reads a release on Salon’s website. Criticizing the collaboration, blogger Elder of Ziyon referred to the move as “the mainstreaming of Jewish anti-semitism,” while he and others pointed to the site’s “obsession” with “Jewish...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Are You Better Off Today Than You Were Four Years Ago? Yes!Posted By Abraham Katsman On July 25, 2012 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 32 Comments Ever since Ronald Reagan posed the simple but clarifying query to voters — “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” — Presidential challengers have dusted off the question, hoping to use it as successfully as Reagan did.  With President Barack Obama presiding over a stagnant economy, high unemployment and accelerating deficits, Gov. Mitt Romney doubtless expects this question to resonate with voters.Yet, the answer...

A new jobs training oversight report by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) found that a federally-funded Oklahoma Job Corps program spent around $76,000 per person to help youth secure minimum wage jobs. The report, released Tuesday, comes 18 months after a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that found that billions of taxpayer dollars are being poured into job training programs that benefit those who run them, not the unemployed workers they are supposed to assist. "Taxpayers should be appalled Congress has done nothing to reform these programs for more than 18 months," said Sen. Coburn. Sen. Coburn said he wanted to...

Senate Dems pass middle-class tax-rate extension in close voteBy Bernie Becker and Ramsey Cox - 07/25/12 05:06 PM ET Senate Democrats narrowly pushed through a measure to extend tax rates for family income up to $250,000 for a year, as both parties continued their election-year messaging war on taxes. By a 51-48 tally, Democrats overcame two defections to win passage of a measure that would also raise the top rate on capital gains and dividends, as well as continue several targeted tax provisions that Democrats say help the middle class. Vice President Biden presided over the tally. He was in...

With VP Biden Presiding, Senate Passes Democrats’ Tax Cut Plan Vice President Joe Biden made the rare move to come to Capitol Hill this afternoon and fill his seat as “president of the Senate,” presiding over the Senate as they cast two votes on dueling tax cut plans. In the end the vice president did not need to cast a tie-breaking vote, and the Democratic tax cut plan passed by a vote of 51-48. “The bill is passed,” Biden announced from the chair. Sen. Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sen. Webb, D-VA., voted against the Democrats plan. No Republicans voted with the...

The U.S. has never before had a President who thinks so little of the American people that he imagines he can win re-election running on the opposite of reality. But that is the reality of President Obama today. President Obama's own 2013 budget shows that as a result federal debt held by the public will double during Obama's four years as President. That means in just one term President Obama will have increased the national debt as much as all prior Presidents, from George Washington to George Bush, combined. But this 2012 election is defined for the voters by the...

Emigrant Bank was recently identified to receive a waiver that would allow the bank to opt out of rigorous Dodd-Frank requirements. These of course are the same new rules and regulations that Barack deems essential to the nation. Yet when the bank’s owner, Howard Milstein, who is a close friend and was a bundler for President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, protested that the new rules would seriously crimp operations of his bank, the Obama Administration worked with members of congress to grant him a waiver from the new rules. Other financial institutions and banks have consistently and vehemently argued that...

Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929, marked the beginning of the Great Depression, but for Barack Obama, last Friday was Black Friday because the U.S. Department of Labor announced that only 69,000 jobs were added in May, well below expectations that it might reach 150,000. The official unemployment rate ticked up to 8.2 percent, but it is actually far closer to 15 percent. The news means that Obama's hope of being reelected ranges between slim to none. Beyond the current numbers, on Friday CNS News reported that 766,000 more women are unemployed than when he took office in 2009.

The sorry saga continues, as the Obama administration is intent on getting their way in everything and by any means possible. In January of 2011 I reported that the EPA had revoked the permit for an already-in-use coal mine in West Virginia, the Spruce Mine to be specific operated by Arch Coal, citing “violations of the Clean Air Act.” This unprecedented action struck fear in the hearts of not only coal companies who have invested millions of dollars and time into securing the necessary permits, but other business owners as well. After all, why would they want to invest in...

The global economy's foundations are weakening, one by one. Already hobbled by Europe's debt crisis, the world now risks being hurt by slowdowns in its economic powerhouses. The U.S. economy, the world's largest, had a third straight month of feeble job growth in May. High-flying economies in China, India and Brazil are slowing, too...

Japanese stocks opened sharply lower Monday, with stocks hit across the board in reaction to weak U.S. jobs growth and Wall Street losses, as well as gains for the yen hitting exporters. The Nikkei Stock Average -2.03% shot down 2.1% to 8,259.51 in the early minutes, while the broader Topix lost 2.2% to 693.51, falling below the 700 level to hit lows reportedly not seen since the 1980s. With the Japanese yen up significantly against the U.S. dollar and euro, shares of globally exposed firms were among the leading decliners. Toshiba

June is usually a sleepy month during any presidential election, but not this year. Two events this month will not only affect the outcome of the presidential election, but also have a dramatic impact on the direction of the country, no matter who wins in November. On June 5, Wisconsin voters will decide whether or not to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker. The vote will be the culmination of an 18-month campaign by big labor to thwart Walker's public sector union reforms, which are already loosening the stranglehold that the unions had on state and local budgets. With just a...

Alan Krueger, head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, pointed out that the country has added jobs for 27 months in a row, including 4.3 million jobs in the private sector. The economy still has a few bright spots. Americans bought cars and trucks a strong pace last month, giving automakers their best May since 2008. Underscoring the challenge for Obama with five months to go in the campaign, a May poll by The Associated Press and GfK, a research company, showed that 52 percent disapproved of Obama's handling of the economy while 46 percent approved. Some financial analysts...

If between now and Election Day unemployment numbers improve, particularly if they dip below the 8% barrier, you know President Obama, with an MSM assist, will be out there pounding his chest about the number of jobs "he created." But when the unemployment numbers remain weak? Well, that's not Obama's fault. Just ask Mike Allen of Politico. On today's Morning Joe, trying to explain Obama's early campaign stumbles, Allen declared that certain factors, including the bleak job numbers, were "beyond the control" of Obama. View the video here.

Formerly a left-wing activist who moved in the same circles as Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda, Father Robert Sirico shifted rightward on economic policy decades ago after debating a friend who believed in free markets. “Throughout my life, even when I have been terribly mistaken in my ideas, I have always been open-minded and honest in looking at opposing viewpoints,” Sirico said, recalling his ideological transformation. “So when I met a friend of a friend who had completely different ideas about how the economy functions and how society flourishes under the rule of law and economic liberty, I engaged him...

“I simply make the point, as an editor might say, to check it out; do not buy into the BS that you hear about spending and fiscal constraint with regard to this administration. I think doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.”— White House spokesman Jay Carney, remarks to the press gaggle, May 23, 2012 The spokesman’s words caught our attention because here at The Fact Checker we try to root out “BS” wherever it occurs.  Carney made his comments while berating reporters for not realizing that “the rate of spending — federal spending — increase is lower under President...

What would happen if Congress had to apply the regulations in Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and other corporate accounting law to its own balance sheets? Instead of talking about trillion-dollar deficits, USA Today reports from its analysis, we’d be talking about five times that amount: The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the...

Four Words: Fuzzy Logic all around The Wons’ grueling campaign schedule continued… Three fund raising events for Big Guy, plus the Air Force Academy commencement speech, yesterday. And one for Lady M in Cleveland where she greeted the little people who worked diligently last time around to make sure that everyone had a chance to vote, at least once. And then they ran this iconic photo of the adorable little boy, rubbing Big Guy’s head to see if it felt like his own nappy (can I say that?) hair, or, maybe, just for “good luck”: Fuzzy Like Me

Four Words: Fuzzy Logic all around The Wons’ grueling campaign schedule continued… Three fund raising events for Big Guy, plus the Air Force Academy commencement speech, yesterday. And one for Lady M in Cleveland where she greeted the little people who worked diligently last time around to make sure that everyone had a chance to vote, at least once. And then they ran this iconic photo of the adorable little boy, rubbing Big Guy’s head to see if it felt like his own nappy (can I say that?) hair, or, maybe, just for “good luck”: Fuzzy Like Me