Free Republic

Everything shrinks in a recession: GDP, investment portfolios, even the products on store shelves. Consumer goods companies know that customers won't go for price increases during a downturn. Instead they often use a different tactic to offset things such as new competition or the rising cost of raw materials: cutting quantity while maintaining price. Yet it may not be obvious that your ice cream or OJ containers have shrunk. Manufacturers must note new specs on packaging, but the changes don't have to be advertised (ever seen a now smaller! label?).

Barack Obama's global stature has taken a catastrophic fall, as evidenced by his latest trip overseas. Even the New York Times cannot avert its eyes from the disastrous decline in his (and therefore America's) influence: Obama's economic view is rejected on world stage:

Another exclusive Pajamas Media crowd estimate. The widely publicized, heavily subsidized “One Nation” rally was Saturday in Washington, D.C. As has been openly admitted by the organizers, which included the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and Obama’s perpetual campaign organization Organizing for America, this rally was held in the same place and at basically the same time of the day as Glenn Beck’s 8/28 “Restoring Honor” rally, specifically to demonstrate the depth of support for the president’s program. The convention organizers had a number of advantages, perhaps the greatest being that the buses bringing in demonstrators were apparently subsidized by the rally...

BROCKTON, Mass. — A decade ago, Brockton High School was a case study in failure. Teachers and administrators often voiced the unofficial school motto in hallway chitchat: students have a right to fail if they want. And many of them did — only a quarter of the students passed statewide exams. One in three dropped out. Then Susan Szachowicz and a handful of fellow teachers decided to take action. They persuaded administrators to let them organize a schoolwide campaign that involved reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym. Their efforts paid off quickly. In 2001...

Scientists at Rice University and Hewlett-Packard are reporting this week that they can overcome a fundamental barrier to the continued rapid miniaturization of computer memory that has been the basis for the consumer electronics revolution. In recent years the limits of physics and finance faced by chip makers had loomed so large that experts feared a slowdown in the pace of miniaturization that would act like a brake on the ability to pack ever more power into ever smaller devices like laptops, smartphones and digital cameras. But the new announcements, along with competing technologies being pursued by companies like IBM...

Songbirds in the US are getting smaller, and climate change is suspected as the cause. A study of almost half a million birds, belonging to over 100 species, shows that many are gradually becoming lighter and growing shorter wings. This shrinkage has occurred within just half a century, with the birds thought to be evolving into a smaller size in response to warmer temperatures. However, there is little evidence that the change is harmful to the birds. Details of the discovery are published in the journal Oikos. In biology, there is a general rule of thumb that animals tend to...

The debate over full body security scans just got a lot more graphic, thanks to Democratic political strategist and frequent flyer James Carville. Speaking on The Tony Kornheiser Show Friday, Carville laid out, or unzipped, his vision for airport security. But the consummate talker couldn't help sharing too much information. "Let me buy a [security] pass ... so that they can scan me and and search me and measure my penis, then let me get on the plane," he said.

It’s the Winter of George! Chubby “Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander plans to drop some pounds this year, so he’s signed on as a spokesguy for Jenny Craig. “It’s like someone’s clubbing me over the head it’s so obvious I should be doing this,” the funnyguy told People. “It was a deadly combination of ‘I’m fat’ and they work,” he said of the program and why he’s committed to it. The former KFC spokesperson says he was drawn to the weight loss program after watching footage of his recent appearances in film and television. “I just got to a point where...

Stocks rallied to start the week thanks to a better-than-expected ISM services sector report and a Goldman Sachs upgrade of big banks, including Wells Fargo, Comerica and Capital One. But all is not right in either the economy or the banking sector, according to Christopher Whalen, managing director at Institutional Risk Analytics. In fact, Whalen says most observers are drawing the wrong economic conclusions from the stock market's robust rally. "Why is liquidity going into the financial sector? It's because the real economy is dying [and] everyone is fleeing into the stocks and bonds because they're liquid at the moment,"...

HART TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) - Police say a naked 14-year-old boy taking a walk with a large white poodle assaulted a woman in Oceana County.

MELBOURNE: Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage. Vegans and vegetarians are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish. Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system. Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin. The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) professes that “the consequences of America’s over commitment in Iraq are far broader and more insidious than Republicans will admit.” As a case in point, Reid cited the recent riots in the Congo. “While our resources have been sapped fighting a foolish war we didn’t need to start, greater evils are being perpetrated around the globe,” Reid said. “In the Congo, the forces of darkness have conspired to shrivel the penises of countless innocent men.” A wave of panic and attempted lynchings led police in Congo to arrest 13 suspected sorcerers for using black...

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft. Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur. Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo's sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of...

Congrats your marriage September 1 !!!!!!

Hundreds of naked people formed a "living sculpture" on Switzerland's Aletsch glacier Saturday, hoping to raise awareness about climate change. The photo shoot by Spencer Tunick, the New York artist famous for his pictures of nude gatherings in public settings worldwide, was designed to draw attention to the effects of global warming on Switzerland's shrinking glaciers. "The melting of the glaciers is an indisputable sign of global climate change," said the environmental group Greenpeace, which co-organized the event...

Borrowing from Harry Potter, this video parody titled "Rovemort And The Sorcerer's Stonewall" and starring Jason Alexander was released today by the Campaign For America's Future. I wish I could say it was clever or fun, but it's so heavy-handed about Rush Limbaugh, Brit Hume, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Dubya that even a liberal like me finds it off-putting. (Surely Hollywood can help progressives put together more subtle and arresting footage than this!) The video is part of a national campaign to "expose the right's strategy of obstructing reform while attacking the 'do-nothing [Democrat-controlled]...

<p>ZURICH, Switzerland (AP)-- Wanted: volunteers willing to take their clothes off and have their picture taken on a freezing cold Alpine glacier. The appeal by New York artist Spencer Tunick, famous for taking pictures of thousands of naked people in public settings worldwide, is intended for a photo shoot to highlight the effects of climate change on Switzerland's shrinking glaciers, environmental group Greenpeace said on its Web site Wednesday. Greenpeace said if global warming continues at its current pace, most Swiss glaciers will disappear by 2080. The photo shoot, which follows Tunick's previous shoots in London, Mexico City and Amsterdam, will take place in August at an undisclosed location in Switzerland. Prospective candidates from further afield will have to start making travel arrangements now. "We aim to make this a climate friendly event, so please come by public transport and don't fly," Greenpeace said.</p>

Rebuilding Military Requires Sacrifices But Can Be Done, Experts Say By Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Staff Writer June 27, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Asserting that the U.S. military is "stretched thin," policy experts debated Tuesday whether the country can afford to rebuild the military to necessary levels and how it should be done. "We should spend whatever it takes to make sure we're secure, but by doing it in a very candid way," Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. "Funding the military in the next decade is going to be very...

CHICAGO -- For more than a century, Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary has quietly prepared teenage boys for the priesthood, largely unchanged as the city transformed around it from gritty industrial center to gleaming modern metropolis. But another kind of change finally caught up with Quigley. The 102-year-old seminary -- housed in a Gothic-style building that looks like it belongs on a square in Europe instead of in a tony Chicago shopping district -- will close its doors for good in two weeks because of a shrinking student body that has seen just one graduate ordained in the last 17 years....

The numbers tell the story. Time magazine wanted to talk theology with Mel Gibson recently on the set of The Passion, his new movie depicting the last hours of Christ. Asked what he thought about the effects of the Second Vatican Council on the Catholic Church, the Braveheart of Catholic traditionalists said, "Look at the main fruits: dwindling numbers and pedophilia." Gibson's post Vatican II ergo propter Vatican II argument would be enough to drive any high school logic teacher crazy. Is the Council responsible for all the Church's ills, including the priestly sex-abuse crisis, that have arisen since the...