Free Republic

If your parents live long enough there comes that awful moment when you look at them and realize: they’ve grown old. Suddenly, they’re unsteady on their feet. They tell bizarre, wince-inducing jokes. They’re the only ones grinning - and grinning weirdly at that. That’s how I felt watching John McCain on Tuesday night. What happened? Remember when he burst onto the national scene in 2000? Remember all those New Hampshire Republicans, independents, even Democrats who fell in love, who said they had never supported a candidate with such passion? McCain was the bad boy/fly boy war hero turned wry, caustic...

With the rumor mill buzzing that a discontent Elisabeth Hasselbeck may vacate her cushiony seat on The View for the cool, hard Eames chair of Fox News, it's up to den mother Barbara Walters to restore order on the set of her chat show. True to form, Walters has eschewed hugging it out in favor of a more clinical approach; according to the Chicago Sun-Times, she's had to schedule a staff meeting to deal with the increasingly hot-under-the-collar Hasselbeck: BIG RIFT ON 'THE VIEW': A longtime staff member on ''The View'' chatfest says, ''It's not as bad as during the...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQadAAlK9c4

OBAMA/BIDEN: SAME OLD CHANGE I awoke Saturday to find Delaware Senator Joe Biden on the ticket. As I slurped my first cup of coffee and rubbed my sleepy eyes, the enormity of this began to sink in: The Agent for Change We Can Believe In just changed his motto to: "Same Old Change". I will not hide who I am in order to paint false pathos, to pretend (like Claude Rains in "Casablanca") that I am "shocked, shocked to find gambling go on" at Ricks Place, and feign that Senator Obama's choice for the person to be a heartbeat from...

Here's where I guess we say, "BLACK HAWK DOWN ON POSTVILLE." Yup, after $10,000,000 spent on the absurd raid on a kosher meat plant in May, only about 300 illegal aliens supposely deported and given zero jailtime (even though many were multiple deportees), here's what's happening at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa: Buh-bye, Hispanic illegal aliens. Hello, "semi-legal" Muslim Somalian extremists...

Look and listen, it's true.

Three women were killed and at least 30 more people were injured when a bulldozer driven by a Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem trampled over pedestrians and vehicles and plowed into two buses in downtown Jerusalem at around noon Wednesday. Magen David Adom reported of casualties on Rashi, Jaffa and Sarei Yisrael streets. The driver, who reportedly had a criminal record and was the holder of an Israeli (blue) identification card, was shot dead by a SWAT officer near the old Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The terrorist was identified as 31-year-old Hossam Dawiath, a father of two from the village...

The broadcast networks have grown older than ever -- if they were a person, they wouldn't even be a part of TV's target demo anymore. According to a study released by Magna Global's Steve Sternberg, the five broadcast nets' average live median age (in other words, not including delayed DVR viewing) was 50 last season. That's the oldest ever since Sternberg started analyzing median age more than a decade ago -- and the first time the nets' median age was outside of the vaunted 18-49 demo. Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox....

In a campaign year marked by flare-ups surrounding comments that have offended one group or another, John McCain and Barack Obama have moved on to the next sensitive battleground: the question of McCain’s advanced age. As some Republicans see it, Democrats are deliberately talking in code about the presumptive 71-year-old GOP nominee as part of an attempt to highlight his age.“It is code; there is no question it is,” Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who helped lead President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign, said when age surfaced as an issue. “They are trying to raise doubts.”MSNBC host Joe Scarborough repeatedly...

Half a million elderly men lead lonely lives with no friends and no contact from their families, a report warned yesterday. It found that one person in five with an elderly father is no longer in touch with him. One in four claims to be too busy to maintain contact. Divorce and family break-up has left millions of men without ties to their children and with few or no family links, said the charity Help the Aged. Retirement deprives many of the company of work colleagues and others are left alone by bereavement or their own poor health Of the...

A float in a German parade.... SO, you think the world isn't watching the fiasco in the USA ?

I was supposed to ask her questions like "where are you most likely to disagree with your mom or your dad?" or "did you ever call your mom at 3 am and how did she react?" But all I could think of was that: "I am...standing in front of Hill and Bill's kid...in a red Mary Kay Cosmetics Collection dress...I'd just bought that day at the Goodwill...how weird is that?" Yes, Chelsea Clinton made it to the infamous "Red Dress" Party. Not to be confused with that other annual "Red Dress" fundraiser, this is the "Red Dress Party," a mondo-alcohol-fueled...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Rep. John Murtha said Wednesday that Republican Sen. John McCain is too old to be president. Murtha is 75, four years older than McCain. He says they are nearly the same age, and the rigors and stress of running the country is too much for guys their age. "I've served with seven presidents," Murtha told a union audience. "When they come in, they all make mistakes. They all get older." "This one guy running is about as old as me," he said, drawing laughter and applause. "Let me tell you something, it's no old man's job."...

There's another side to Alicia Keys: conspiracy theorist. The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter tells Blender magazine: "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other. 'Gangsta rap' didn't exist." Keys, 27, said she's read several Black Panther autobiographies and wears a gold AK-47 pendant around her neck "to symbolize strength, power and killing 'em dead," according to an interview in the magazine's May issue, on newsstands Tuesday.

A speech to end the war (A Must-Read) > > > WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT TO TURN ON THE TV AND HEAR ANY > U.S. PRESIDENT, DEMOCRATIC OR REPUBLICAN, GIVE THE FOLLOWING > SPEECH? > > My Fellow Americans: As you all know, the defeat of the Iraq > regime has been completed. > > Since Congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, > our mission in Iraq is complete. > > This morning, I gave the order for a complete removal of all > American forces from Iraq. This action will be complete within...

Getting Forgetful? Then Blueberries May Hold The Key ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2008) — If you are getting forgetful as you get older, then a research team from the University of Reading and the Peninsula Medical School in the Southwest of England may have good news for you They have found that phytochemical-rich foods, such as blueberries, are effective at reversing age-related deficits in memory, according to a study soon to be published in the science journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine. The researchers working at the Schools of Food Biosciences and Psychology in Reading and the Institute of Biomedical and...

WASHINGTON - A great old war hero - arms man gled by battle and known as an acerbic straight shooter - is picked by Republicans to be their nominee to make darned certain that a Clinton doesn't get back into the White House. John McCain? No, Bob Dole in 1996. And it didn't work out very well for Republicans. Dole lost after a campaign vexed by senior moments such as when the nominee fell off a stage, or when he referred to the Los Angeles Dodgers as the Brooklyn Dodgers. All along, President Bill Clinton showed extreme deference to Dole,...

LOS ANGELES — John McCain has been called an American hero. But is he a natural born citizen? A federal judge in California has been asked to determine if the Republican presidential candidate, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936, meets the legal test to qualify for the nation's highest office. The Constitution requires that only "natural born" citizens hold the presidency, a term on which the Founding Fathers did not elaborate. McCain has said there is no question about his eligibility, an assessment echoed by former Solicitor General Ted Olson, who is examining the issue for...

Scripps Howard Editor: Conservatives Should Be Like JFKIt is getting tiresome already, but we are starting to see a new kind of story on this issue of McCain and his tiff with the conservative wing of the GOP and that is the shut-up-and-take-it style of commentary, the style were conservatives are told to throw away their principles and just vote McCain anyway. I am sure that you all have noticed that John McCain is not the conservative's hero? There has been story after story expounding on how McCain has a lot of cajoling to do before principled conservatives will...

"I just read in an Indian depredation claim I copied from the National Archives last summer that Black Kettle was understood by everyone in 1868 as being a spy for the raiding Indians. He would profess peace and all the time he was gathering information he would later share with the Dog Soldiers to assist them in their raids, etc." Dr. Jeff Broome, author of the very important book "Dog Soldier Justice", the most accurate depiction of the Indian massacres of 1868 "Some of the raiders came from Black Kettle's camp. As was the case on numerous previous occasions, his...

HARLAN, Iowa -- From his days of campaigning in Downstate Illinois, Sen. Barack Obama has been asked plenty of times about his views on gun ownership. But the Illinois Democrat and presidential candidate added a new wrinkle Saturday night while campaigning in conservative-leaning western Iowa, when he said his Chicago-native wife, Michelle, recently commented that she could see why rural folks might want to own guns. Here was Obama's discussion of gun ownership and his wife's thoughts during a campaign stop at a middle school: --snip-- "And by the way, Michelle, my wife, she was traveling up, I think, in...

MOST of what we know about dinosaurs has been pieced together from fossilised bones and teeth. But the unearthing of a mummified dinosaur in the US, with preserved skin and apparent soft tissue, has the potential to unlock biological secrets millions of years old.The remains of the duck-billed hadrosaur are in such good condition - with its skin almost entirely intact - that it has already revealed the creature ran faster and was far more muscular than previously thought. But the remains could offer an even greater insight into the evolution and biology of dinosaurs. [snip]

Finding 2,500-year-old bonesOn land for pumping station, investigators get a surprise Saturday, December 1, 2007 3:08 AM By Theodore DeckerTHE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Justin Zink works at the site where a prehistoric skeleton was uncovered on the grounds of the Columbus Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant. On the site beside the Scioto River, the archaeologists had found fire pits dating to about 550 B.C., shards of pottery, even traces of an ancient building. This week, Ryan Weller and his team found something more: a human skeleton, buried on the riverbank by his or her loved ones as long as 2,500 years ago....

It's fun to repeat things. I posted a food memories thread last year. Let's revise it and talk about old-fashioned recipes.

There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood. During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another. Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition...

Few people in US history are as tarnished as the pioneers, these settlers, poor immigrants or gamblers, families, preachers, who settled the West and created modern America. Indian killers, racists, stupid? That's what we call them today. Their hatred of the Indians came only because they were racists, it is said. What did they endure? Who was their enemy? Here is a story of the West - and how we quickly forgot what the West really was, and whom the settlers were fighting against. Surviving in the Plains with such an enemy makes these settlers true American heroes. watch the...

Police in Colombia have captured the man they regard as the country's top drug baron, Diego Montoya. He was arrested in his western home province of Valle del Cauca. Mr Montoya - known in Colombia's underworld as the "boss of bosses" - appears on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's "10 Most Wanted" list. He is accused of producing tons of cocaine for the US market. Officials say he helped found the Norte del Valle cartel based near the city of Cali. The BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Bogota says Mr Montoya's capture is a huge coup for the government and...

Projectile points look old, old, oldSecond site - Archaeologists suspect fluted obsidian tools date almost to the last ice age Wednesday, September 05, 2007RICHARD L. HILL The Oregonian Staff Archaeologists working in south-central Oregon's sagebrush steppes have found signs of some of the region's earliest inhabitants. Researchers from the University of Oregon and U.S. Bureau of Land Management have uncovered four fluted projectile points and related artifacts at a remote site near Riley. The obsidian points could be 12,000 years old, but the archaeologists are being cautious about giving an exact age until they're able to obtain radiocarbon dates from...

Durham police have arrested a 93-year-old man on cocaine-trafficking and related charges. William C. Tinnen was arrested Thursday during a raid at 204 Teel St., police said in a news release issued today. Police spokeswoman Kammie Michael said she assumed police had a tip that drug activity was taking place there. In addition to trafficking, Tinnen is charged with possession of cocaine with the intent to sell or deliver, possession of drug paraphernalia and maintaining a dwelling for the sale of drugs. Officers also confiscated three firearms from the house. Tinnen's bond was set at $200,000.

Aboard the presidential jet, a grinning Hugo Chavez put a hand on Sean Penn's shoulder, praised his acting and added: ''And he's anti-Bush!'' The Venezuelan president revelled in his role as host to the Hollywood star as they flew across the country on Friday and travelled through the countryside in a military jeep with Chavez at the wheel, stopping to greet cheering supporters. The Oscar-winning actor has previously condemned the Iraq war and called for US President George W Bush to be impeached. But he revealed little about his thoughts on Venezuela, saying he came as a freelance journalist after...

One sunny day in JANUARY 2009, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue , where he'd been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton". The Marine replied, "Sir, Mrs. Clinton is not President and doesn't reside here". The old man said, "Okay," and walked away. The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Hillary Clinton". The Marine again told...

Talk of lewd tapes, hidden cameras, forged documents and blackmail dominated the first courtroom hearing yesterday for a Navy doctor accused of secretly filming U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen having sex in his house. Two former midshipmen accused Cmdr. Kevin Ronan, who served as a physician for academy athletic teams and as the brigade medical officer, of taping three midshipmen having sex with their girlfriends and four other midshipmen alone and naked.....

An American member of Al-Qaeda warned in an Internet video that US President George W. Bush should withdraw all his troops from Muslim land or face attacks worse than September 11. Adam Gadahn, a convert to Islam who has been indicted for treason by a US jury, issued a list of demands and warned they were not up for negotiation. "Your failure to heed our demands means that you and your people... will experience things that will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Virginia Tech," he said in the video posted on...

MELBOURNE, Australia - A gay bar has won the right to turn away heterosexuals and even lesbians to provide a non-threatening atmosphere for the men partying inside. A tribunal in Australia's southern Victoria state granted Melbourne's Peel Hotel an exemption to equal rights laws, saying it was needed to prevent "sexually based insults and violence" aimed at the pub's patrons. In her findings, the tribunal's deputy president, Cate McKenzie, said Monday that to allow large numbers of straight men and women and lesbians into the bar could "undermine or destroy" the convivial atmosphere that the Peel Hotel sought to create...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on an overseas trip to embrace an audience and a topic for which President Bush has shown scant affection: "Old Europe" and global warming. Pelosi, D-Calif., and seven other House members left Saturday for meetings with scientists and politicians in Greenland, Germany and Belgium on ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The trip comes shortly before a climate change summit next month involving the leading industrialized nations and during a time of increased debate over what should succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 international treaty that caps the amount of...

Government seeks terrorist label for arsonists 08:32 AM MST on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 By JEFF BARNARD / AP Environmental Writer EUGENE, Ore. (AP) -- Chelsea Gerlach was 16 when she attended an Earth First! gathering in Idaho, where she met an instructor in monkey wrenching - sabotage in the name of protecting the environment - who called himself Avalon. According to federal prosecutors, she developed a crush on William C. Rodgers, and joined his cell of the Earth Liberation Front in Eugene known as The Family, which later became responsible for 20 arsons around the West that did $40...

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely...

BREAKING...

Helen Walton Dies At 87 Matriarch 'Devoted Much Of Her Life To Others' This article was published on Thursday, April 19, 2007 11:23 PM CDT in News By Anita French & Michael Tilley The Morning News Email this story Print this story Comment on this story Related Photos The matriarch of the world's most successful and largest retail company has died. Helen Walton, the wife and key business partner to Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, was 87.

Posted on Fri, Apr. 13, 2007 4600-year-old skulls from Iraq to get CT scanRon Todt The Associated Press PHILADELPHIA - A pair of 4,600-year-old skulls from Iraq will be given a CT scan that promises to reveal the faces of two of the dozens of sacrificial victims found decades ago in the remains of an ancient Sumerian city. The procedure will be done Sunday at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania on the skulls of a young woman adorned with gold ornaments and a man wearing a copper helmet, both found in the southern Iraq city of Ur in...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson officially announced his bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination Sunday, telling ABC's "This Week" he is confident about his chances. "In Iowa, the polls last week came out that I was in fifth place and moving up and at 5 percent," he said, adding that things are starting "to coalesce, and I feel very, very optimistic about my future." The former four-term governor of Wisconsin set up a presidential exploratory committee in December and filed a statement of candidacy in January. His campaign spokesman said last month that...

68 and 78 Year Old Women Beaten and Raped in Separate Home Invasion Attacks Suspects In Pasco Attacks Sought Posted Mar 28, 2007 by Clarisa Gerlach Updated Mar 28, 2007 at 06:29 PM From The Tampa Tribune ZEPHYRHILLS - Pasco County deputies continue their search for two men today after an elderly woman was kidnapped from her home, raped and dumped with her vehicle yesterday in a quarry off an isolated road, authorities said. “We will not stop until we have these guys in jail and that there have been a number of really good leads in the case,”...

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry signed into law Tuesday a bill that gives Texans a stronger legal right to defend themselves with deadly force in their homes, cars and workplaces. Both chambers of the Legislature overwhelmingly approved the measure earlier this month. The bill, backed by the National Rifle Association, states that a person has no duty to retreat from an intruder before using deadly force. "The right to defend oneself from an imminent act of harm should not only be clearly defined in Texas law, but it is intuitive to human nature. You ought to be able to protect...

Like newspapers and television news, public radio has a graying audience. "We have learned in focus groups with younger listeners that they are interested in many of the topics that NPR covers, but often find the programming boring or staid," a perhaps too candid confidential NPR document states. This same NPR memo calls the network "a national institution of weight, merit and immeasurable value to our democracy" -- a heady self-assessment to be sure. Enter "NPR Zack: A New Space for Younger Listeners." "We thought Zack is exactly the kind of name NPR staffers would give their male children," one...

A bone which came from the penis of a walrus (Os penis) and is believed to be 10,000 to 12,000 years old, was discovered in a gravel mine by Lambafell in Ölfuss in south Iceland a few weeks ago. Sigurdur Sigurdsson, a veterinarian, handed the bone over to the Museum in Thorlákshöfn at a special ceremony last weekend, RÚV reports. The bone was found at an altitude of 285 meters above sea level. Sigurdsson said it is unprecedented that a bone from a sea animal is discovered at such a high altitude. Barbara Gudnadóttir, the cultural representative of Ölfuss, told...

OK, www.Livingto100.com says I’ll make it to 92. That means several more decades - I’m already too afraid to tell you my age - of trying to keep up with the Joneses - or, more accurately, with Mrs. Jones, who might steal my job. Let’s see. Botox: $450, three times a year; face-lift, $5,000 and up; eye-lift, $2,500 and up; Restylane for creases, twice a year, $550 to $1,000 a syringe; collagen for lip-plumping, $400 to $850 a syringe; liposuction of the jaw line. What? Whatever it is, it’s at least $2,000. Then there are fat injections, chemical peels, lasers,...

The Shill Media are offering up the usual pabulum about presidential contenders, disgorging reportage about the vapid and venal that's more soap opera than scoop. With mock surprise they speak of the presidential aspirations of Rudy, Lady Macbeth and Brokeback Obama, as they treat platitudes and political sloganeering as if they were less empty than the minds that regurgitate them. But amidst the din of this much-ado — about-nothing quest for copy, the media have missed — perhaps quite conveniently — the only truly scintillating story of the 2008 election. Radio talk show host Michael Savage is mulling a run...

ADMIN MOD: THIS SHOULD SATISFY REQUIREMENTS prayers needed for arizonan PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JASON OKON SPENT A YEAR IN IRAQ AND WAS STABBED IN HIS FRONT YARD BY AN ILLEGAL ALIEN. HE IS CURRENTLY IN CRITICAL CONDITION IN A DRUG-INDUCED COMA. HE HAS A WIFE, 2 CHILDREN, AND ONE ON-THE-WAY. THE ONLY STATION IN TOWN THAT HAS ACCURATELY DESCRIBED THIS AS AN ATTACK BY AN ILLEGAL ALIEN, WAS FOX 10. THIS IS HOPEFULLY GOING TO BE CLASSIFIED AS A HATE CRIME. APPARENTLY JASON ASKED THIS INDIVIDUAL IF HE NEEDED HELP AND THIS MAN STABBED HIM. APPARENTLY HE WAS TARGETED DUE...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter today called on President Bush to forge an agreement with Congress on "sharing power" on the Iraq war, just as the Senate prepares to debate resolutions opposing the president's plans to send additional troops. "It's premature to decide that question. First we've got to see if we can work out with the president an agreement on sharing power. He has shown signs of being willing to do that," said the Pennsylvania Republican, who will join a group of fellow Republican senators in meeting with President Bush later this week.