Free Republic

The Obama administration gave corporate giant General Electric—the parent company of NBC--$24.9 million in grants from the $787-billion economic “stimulus” law President Barack Obama signed in February 2009, according to records posted by the administration at Recovery.gov. Despite getting $24.9 million from U.S. taxpayers, GE decreased its U.S.-based employees by 18,000 in 2009, according to the company’s 2009 annual report. According to Standard & Poor's, GE took in $156 billion in revenue in 2009. GE was the primary recipient of 14 stimulus grants, a spokeswoman for Recovery.gov confirmed to CNSNews.com. These 14 grants provided GE with $24.9 million in tax...

As US President Barack Hussein Obama continues on his seemingly endless quest to appease Muslims, with instructions to NASA to ‘find a way’ to reach them, Iftar dinners at the White House and the US State Dept.’s sponsorship of Ground Zero Mosque Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s forthcoming ’speaking tour’ of Muslim countries (without knowledge of what exactly he’ll be talking about); it emerges that that his administration is also planning to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on the restoration of dozens of Muslim sites around the world... Throughout his administration, Obama has been fervent in his support of Islam and...

ISLAMABAD: The worst floods in the living memory of Pakistan remained an obvious topic of concern for the diplomatic corps in Islamabad throughout the week as Europeans and especially UN officials questioned the response of the Muslim world to a mammoth disaster wreaking havoc in the second-most populated Muslim country of the world. Few gatherings of foreign emissaries rallied around the unending phases of floods happening in across the country, devastating over 15 million people and destroying over two million acres of standing crops while washing away millions of homes and state structures in over 70 – 37 directly and...

SNIPPET: "The United Nations has created a super agency for feminists, but one female leader thinks it's unnecessary. The U.N. General Assembly recently voted to consolidate four different groups into a single one that could eventually be fueled by a $1 billion a year, and many of those dollars would come from the U.S." SNIPPET: "Many countries where abortion is limited or illegal have been pressured by to legalize it. That is currently being played out in Kenya, where a constitution before voters is pushing for legalized abortion. The United States is pumping money into that campaign as well."

PHOTO CAPTION: "Correspondents say the deal is part of Washington's attempts to counter anti-US sentiment in Pakistan" SNIPPET: "US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has announced aid projects worth $7.5bn (£5bn) for Pakistan at the start of talks in the capital Islamabad. The package, agreed by Congress last year, is part of Washington's attempts to counter anti-American sentiment in the country, correspondents say. The five-year deal includes projects for two hydro-electric dams and renewable energy sources."

All around, there are Democrats telling us their prospects for November are looking up. Things aren't as bad as Republicans say! Health care is becoming more popular! The country wants financial reform! People still like Barack Obama! Isn't Joe Barton awful! They're fooling themselves. The basic indicators of voters' intentions -- their general mood and attitude toward the policies of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid -- are clear and solid. Unless those indicators change, and most experts believe that would take a huge, unforeseen event that fundamentally alters the political equation, Democrats are in for serious losses this November....

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-unexpected-urgent-refugee-and-migration-needs-related-somal Home • Briefing Room • Presidential Actions • Presidential Memoranda The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 09, 2010 Presidential Memorandum--Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related to Somalia and Food Pipeline Breaks for Refugee and Other Displaced Populations of Concern Globally Presidential Determination -- June 8, 2010 No. 2010-10 MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE SUBJECT: Unexpected Urgent Refugee and Migration Needs Related to Somalia and Food Pipeline Breaks for Refugee and Other Displaced Populations of Concern Globally By the authority vested in me by the...

SNIPPET: "PBS’s Tavis Smiley recently claimed that “every single day in this country” Christians commit terrorist acts. Interviewing the heroic ex-Muslim freedom fighter Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Smiley repeated common leftist dogmas about how Christian terrorists are more numerous and violent than Muslim terrorists, and have committed more terrorist acts inside the U.S. than Muslims have. Smiley’s views are silly, but they’re also ultimately misleading and dangerous, as they divert attention from the genuine threat from Islamic jihadists and, by sapping our civilizational self-confidence, weaken our ability and will to resist those jihadists. On the show, Hirsi Ali was speaking about...

SNIPPET: "An investigative report by Israel National News published on Thursday revealed that whenever the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Gaza requests an influx of US dollars to pay its staff, the coastal strip's Hamas rulers end up making a killing. It is curious that UNRWA requests the transfer of US dollars, as it did this week when it called for $12.5 million for staff salaries. The bulk of that money is provided by US taxpayers."

When she showed up for a private dinner in Palm Beach, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi walked into the home of businessman and Democratic moneyman George Cloutier with a security detail 12 strong, mostly US Capitol Police. There were four additional Palm Beach cops. And two sheriff’s deputies. Oh, yes! Two police boats in the Atlantic Ocean, across the street from Cloutier’s house. And with 18 guests at the dinner last weekend, the wingding had fewer guests than lawmen! Pelosi Pelosi shepherded the groundbreaking reform from bill into law last month, and she and some of her Democratic colleagues...

SNIPPET: "The leadership of the Tea Party Express PAC came to the National Press Club on Thursday to herald its early successes and to unveil its expanded list of 2010 electoral targets." SNIPPET: "In an effort to show that the Tea Party Express PAC is not a “tool” of the Republican Party, but instead is an independent political force, Russo announced that the PAC is getting behind one conservative Democrat who has opposed President Obama’s agenda: Rep. Walt Minnick (ID-01). The decision to get behind Minnick is attention-grabbing because Republicans have fielded a strong candidate in that race: Iraq war...

The prospect of recovering the government's assistance to GM and Chrysler is heavily dependent on shares of the two companies rising to unprecedented levels, the report said. The government owns 10 percent of Chrysler and 61 percent of GM. The shares "will have to appreciate sharply" for taxpayers to get their money back, the report said. Treasury Department officials have acknowledged that most of the $23 billion provided by the Bush administration is likely to be lost. But Meg Reilly, a department spokeswoman, said there is a "reasonably high probability of the return of most or all of the government...

If at first you don’t succeed, spend and spend again. That seems to be the Obama administration’s motto as it contemplates a new round of stimulus spending – a sequel to February’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the staggering, $787-billion stimulus package that so far has delivered little in the way of economic recovery. To be sure, the administration is publically talking down the possibility of a second stimulus, at least for now. The Financial Times reported last week that “administration officials think further stimulus might eventually be needed but they do not want to have this fight now.” One...

The revolution will not be televised: it's been blinking along on a giant bakery sign in St. Louis, Mo., instead. Fed up with his congressman's vote on a sweeping climate-change bill that passed the House of Representatives on Saturday, the proprietor of McArthur's Bakery took to his street sign and posted a clear message to all passersby: "Russ Carnahan voted to ... close us and other ... small business." David McArthur, vice president of the 52-year-old family operation, a Gateway City institution, is one of a growing number of business owners and taxpayers nationwide who are mobilizing against the so-called...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One of the people named this week to President Obama's new Task Force on Tax Reform is a member of the AIG board of directors. Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University, has been on the board of American International Group since 1988. He also was a prominent economic adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Asked about the AIG connection, a senior administration official said Friday that the White House declined to comment on the story. Like the others named to the tax reform task force, Feldstein also serves on Obama's Economic...

Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the "$2 trillion dollars in savings" that "we have already identified," $1.6 trillion of which President Obama's budget director later admits is the "savings" of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 — 11 years after George Bush ended it, and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely. Forget all of this. This is run-of-the-mill budget trickery. True, Obama's tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto...

Moderate senators from Barack Obama's Democratic Party are forming a bloc to argue against his high spending plans to revive the economy, as the administration is increasingly forced on the defensive. As senior members of his economic team have been grilled by Congressional committees about the $3.6 trillion (£2.5 trillion) budget unveiled last week, a meeting of 14 Democrats was convened by Evan Bayh, senator for Indiana, to discuss how the president be might reined in. "I do think that before we raise revenue, we first should look to see if there are ways we can cut back on spending,"...

Just how massive is President Barack Obama's proposed $3.6 trillion budget? The current federal budget consumes 20 percent of America's gross domestic product. Obama's proposed budget consumes 22 percent. That's an extra 2 percent of a more than $14 trillion economy -- in just one budget. Obama's budget is so large that it has succeeded in uniting Republicans and Democrats -- against it. Politico.com reported on Wednesday that a group of 14 "moderate" Democrats, including New Hampshire's Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, is working behind the scenes to cut a significant amount of spending out of the President's proposals -- both the...

In the last five months, according to the Federal Reserve Board, the money supply in the United States has increased by 271 percent. It has almost tripled. Have car sales tripled? Home purchases? Consumer spending? Corporate investment? Not only have they not tripled, they have all declined more sharply than they have since at least the recession of 1981-82, and perhaps since the Great Depression. So where is the money? If it isn’t being spent, where is it? It is being parked, squirreled away. Consumers are using it to pay down their credit card balances, pay off their mortgages, reduce...

At the House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the Obama Budget yesterday, Republicans vociferously objected to President Obama’s devastating new taxes on energy found throughout the budget that would drive our already fragile economy down. Crippling taxation on the small independent oil and gas producers and Obama’s “cap and trade” policy would at once burden families across the country with staggering gasoline and electricity costs, drive manufacturing jobs overseas and sound the death knell for domestic oil and gas production at a time when there is no transitional source of energy. Ranking member Dave Camp (R-Mich.) told me in...