Free Republic

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. climate legislation would hike gasoline prices about 13 cents a gallon as oil companies push the price of carbon permits on to consumers, according to report by Point Carbon, an independent consulting company that tracks global carbon and energy markets. Point Carbon analyst Emilie Mazzacurati said oil companies would face substantial carbon permit costs under the legislation because they would get few of the permits the government would distribute to companies during the first years of a cap-and-trade program. But that should not hurt integrated oil companies very much, she said, because they could largely...

There is full employment — yet no one is working. No one is working — yet the factory quotas are fulfilled. The factory quotas are fulfilled — yet the stores have nothing to sell. The stores have nothing to sell — yet people got all the stuff at home. People got all the stuff at home — yet everyone is complaining. Everyone is complaining — yet the voting is always unanimous. Economic justice: America is capitalist and greedy — yet half of the population is subsidized. Half of the population is subsidized — yet they think they are victims. They...

Welcome to Obamaland was published in January 2009, just as the new president was taking office. It predicted that Obama would turn the American eagle into a sick turkey.

SNIPPET: "Lula and Chavez have established a "strategic relationship," and recently agreed upon a joint Brazilian-Venezuelan oil venture worth billions of dollars. Lula and Chavez have joined with Daniel Ortega, the returned Nicaraguan Marxist dictator, to form an anti-U.S. Latin American military alliance - all with Russian assistance - funded by the region's abundant oil reserves. Brazil is engaged in its own arms build-up and Lula is determined that Brazil will become at least a first-rate regional power. Unfortunately, Lula is establishing Brazil as an anti-American military power by aligning with nations hostile or potentially hostile to the U.S. Lula...

THREE thousand Britons a year die because of a lack of lung cancer treatment, it emerged yesterday. Vital areas of care are "woefully inadequate" and there are shortages of key surgical staff, according to new research. A review has revealed a shambolic postcode lottery where treatment varies from one part of Britain to another. In some areas, fewer than one in TEN patients get any kind of treatment at all and there are "huge variations and vast inequalities" in others, the UK Lung Cancer Coalition reported after a review of services. There are only 44 thoracic surgeons - specialists in...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVN2MMuiedI&feature=sdig

House Republicans Find 111 New 'Bureaucracies' in Health Care Bill In its latest attempt to portray Democrats' reform package as an unwieldy expansion of federal government in the health care sector, the House Republican Conference circulated what it called a list of "new boards, bureaucracies, commissions and programs" created in the House health care bill. House Republicans claimed Monday that the health care reform bill pushed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi would create a whopping 111 new "federal bureaucracies." In its latest attempt to portray the Democrats' reform package as an unwieldy expansion of federal government in the health care sector,...

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

The Berlin Wall that came down 20 years ago this month was an apt symbol of communism. It represented a historically unprecedented effort to prevent people from "voting with their feet" and leaving a society they rejected.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Health insurer Humana Inc. rode its strong government business in posting a 65 percent jump in third-quarter profit Monday, as bulging membership and premiums from Medicare Advantage overcame a lackluster commercial segment hampered by the weak economy. Louisville-based Humana said its quarterly revenue rose 8 percent as enrollment in its Medicare Advantage offerings grew 11 percent from a year ago. But the company saw enrollment in its plans sold to employers fall by 7.6 percent from a year ago, contributing to a pretax loss in its commercial segment. Slumping enrollment in employer-sponsored health coverage plans has been...

You can tell that the White House isn't expecting such a great election day -- Democrats are down in recent polls in the governor's races in both Virginia and New Jersey -- both by how much officials are insisting the outcomes have no relevance to the President and how much they're trying to change focus to the conservative in-fighting in the special election for an upstate New York congressional seat. The White House is setting the stage for a bad day tomorrow, pre-spinning any losses as irrelevant. On Friday White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “Whatever the results are,...

Democrat leadership in the House wants to pass a government run health care bill before Veteran's Day, and it's up to us to make sure this prescription for socialized medicine doesn't pass. If you can come to Washington to look your Member straight in the eye and tell them to keep their hands off your heatlh care, do it. If you can't make it to Washington, go to your Member's district office. And, if you can't do that at least call and email. Also, Americans for Prosperity is organizing a House Call to legislators district offices on Thursday at noon,...

More than 1.4 million Californians were working part-time in September, not out of choice but because their hours had been cut or it was the only job they could find and they needed the money, reports the state Employment Development Department. That's a nearly 72% increase from a year ago when 840,000 Californians settled for part-time work. The biggest jump has been in workers who have settled for part-time jobs because they can't find full-time work. Their numbers have soared 83.3% since September 2008.

Trying to appeal to voters in New Jersey’s urban centers, President Obama made his second campaign stop of the day for Democratic Governor Jon Corzine at Newark’s Prudential Center. The President began by describing the economic challenges facing American families, but he took pains to remind the audience that the worst recession since the Great Depression “didn’t start on Jon’s watch…didn’t start on my watch…[there’s] a little amnesia about how we got into this mess.” He then went into a drawn-out mopping metaphor that drew laughs: “I’m more than happy to go ahead and do the work required to get...

While President Barack Obama still faces stiff headwinds on a range of major legislation on his agenda, he has been signing into law a slew of smaller initiatives that had gathered dust on the Democratic wish list for years. Many of the bills had been blocked by Republicans who considered the measures unnecessary expansions of government or too costly. But facing Democratic majorities in Congress, conservatives are picking their battles and in many cases letting the legislation roll through. Last week, Mr. Obama signed defense-policy legislation that included an unrelated measure widening federal hate-crimes laws to cover sexual orientation and...

A new video of Jeremiah Wright has surfaced, showing Barack Obama's pastor of 20 years praising Marxism and discussing his ties to communists in El Salvador and Nicaragua and the Libyan government. Equally important, Wright is being introduced in the video by Robert W. McChesney, co-founder of Free Press, an organization which has come under scrutiny for its links to the Obama Administration and dedication to the transformation and control of the private media in the U.S. In an article in the socialist Monthly Review, "Journalism, Democracy, and Class Struggle," McChesney declared, "Our job is to make media reform part...

A year ago I argued that to repair America's ripped social fabric, Barack Obama had to move forward on healthcare, a higher minimum wage, imaginative ways to keep families in homes that were being foreclosed and investments in public works on a vast scale to stem the tide of unemployment that would inevitably follow a financial collapse. And that he had to juggle many of these reforms simultaneously. Such transformations couldn't occur overnight, but the impetus for them had to come in the first months of the new administration – when Obama's popularity was high, when the calamitous malfunctioning in...

In October, for the third straight month, 39% Strongly Disapproved of the president’s performance. The number who Strongly Approved fell two percentage points to 29%, the president’s lowest full-month total to date. That leads to a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10, also a new low for Obama. Also in October, the president’s total approval slipped a point to 48%. His total disapproval remained stable at 51%. During October, 55% of Democrats Strongly Approved of the president’s performance while 64% of Republicans Strongly Disapproved. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 21% offered Strong Approval while 44% Strongly Disapproved....

An estimated 200 anti-socialism protesters carried signs and waved at passing motorists for more than two hours yesterday afternoon as they have almost every Saturday for six months at the intersection of Highways K and N in O’Fallon, Mo. Among those participating were three first-generation Americans who took time to share powerful messages every freedom-loving American should hear. Those messages appear in this video.

Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, will confirm over the next few days that Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group, both of which are majority-owned by the taxpayer, will be split up. (snip) Under the deal, the new institutions will not be allowed to be taken over by any purchaser which currently owns a British retail bank. Ministers will stop this happening using their powers as controlling shareholders in Lloyds, RBS and Northern Rock, rather than by new regulations. Instead, likely purchasers will come in from the US, Australia or the Middle East. The Daily Telegraph revealed that nearly...

WASHINGTON – Fifty-seven people in northeast Indiana got a job – or were spared a pink slip – so far this year because of the government’s stimulus program, the government reported Friday. It was the smallest job gain or employment preservation reported in the state’s nine congressional districts. Vice President Biden said the program created or saved an additional 400,000 jobs – the harder-to-count jobs created as a result of extra economic activity – putting the total more than 1 million. The government does not distinguish between jobs that were created because of the program and the jobs people didn’t...

The White House said Friday that the $787-billion stimulus package had created or saved about 1 million jobs so far -- a number that is hard to verify because of the guesswork involved in determining whether businesses had retained workers due to the stimulus who otherwise would have been laid off. Peter Morici, an economist and professor at the University of Maryland, said that claims of jobs saved were "not verifiable. It's only verifiable in the loosest sense." Morici added: "The impact of the stimulus is less than the president is claiming and more than the Republicans will admit. It...

OSLO (Reuters) - Climate negotiators from 175 nations meet in Spain next week for a final session to try to break deadlock between rich and poor and salvage a U.N. deal due in Copenhagen in December. All sides agree progress has been too slow since talks began in 2007, spurred by findings by the U.N. Climate Panel that world emissions would have to peak by 2015 to avoid the worst of desertification, floods, extinctions or rising seas. "Time has almost run out," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told delegates in a video message. "In Barcelona,...

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says Congress’ federal stimulus program has saved or created 8,356 jobs in the University of California system, a claim that comes as a surprise at UC Irvine, Orange County’s largest employer. “We can’t figure out where the governor’s office got the data to support saying 34,000 jobs have been saved in the CSU and UC systems. No such data has been forwarded by our campus to the state,” said Cathy Lawhon, director of media relations at UCI. “Basically, the state cut to the UC system was $815 million. The stimulus money totaled about $700 million, which didn’t...

With Democrats poised to lose the governor's race in Virginia, and to possibly lose the governor's race in New Jersey and a special election for a House seat in New York, the White House has started insisting any pending losses will not have any significance. "Whatever the results are I don't think they portend a lot in dealing with the future," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday, pointing to the fact that Democrats won the Virginia and New Jersey governors' races in 2001 despite a very popular President Bush, with Republicans picking up seats in Congress...

USSR, 1959: I am a "young pioneer" in school. History classes remind us that there is a higher authority than their parents and teachers: the leaders of the Communist Party. The story of young pioneer Pavlik Morozov is required reading. Pavlik reported his father to the secret police for disobeying government regulations. His life exemplified the duty of all good Soviet citizens to serve their government. From the first year in school, all of us are made aware of our ethnicity (ethnic Russian, Jewish, Asian, etc.) and class (proletariat, intelligentsia), around which society is structured. This inherent divisiveness makes it...

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – Deposed President Manuel Zelaya and his opponents have agreed to a U.S.-brokered deal that he said will return him to power four months after a coup shook faith in Latin America's young democracies. The power-sharing agreement reached late Thursday calls for Congress to decide whether to reinstate the leftist Zelaya. While the legislature backed his June 28 ouster, congressional leaders have since said they won't stand in the way of an agreement that ends Honduras' diplomatic isolation and legitimizes presidential elections planned for Nov. 29. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said Friday that the two...

Sometimes I worry that our country will become more like the former Soviet Union. Americans will wait in lines for hours in order to receive bread for the week. I wonder what it would be like to run out of toilet paper and not be able to run to the store to stock up on what I grew up believing were necessities. Mostly, I am angered that I'm living paycheck to paycheck...tethered to a house not worth the mortgage I own, unable to advance my earning potential because there is no free money for a middle-aged white person who gives...

Supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to distinguish themselves on America’s college campuses—not for their reason and logic, but for their incredible ill manners and an almost pathological inability to engage in civil discussion. Last week, a factually-challenged attack on intelligent design was published in The Nevada Sagebrush, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nothing new in that; I see ill-informed articles on intelligent design all the time. But after my colleague Rob Crowther posted a short comment suggesting that readers might actually want to hear from intelligent design proponents themselves (imagine that!), the Darwinist thought-police came out...

House Minority Leader John Boehner appears with a copy of the Democrats’ version of the health care bill during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Harry Hamburg) Washington - The health care overhaul bill produced by House Democrats would impose an array of new taxes, fees and government mandates on major players in the health industry, including insurers, doctors and drugs and medical devices makers. In most cases, the pain has been meted out with an eye toward raising the money needed to finance President Barack Obama's plan for reshaping the health system but...

This cartoon is still timely today, especially today.

Barack Obama's suicidal, messianic leadership progressively renders America unrecognizable, our heritage, freedom, and liberties being buried progressively under a steaming pile of government control masquerading as do-goodery. In Segment 2 of Evil Conservative Radio from 10/27/09, EC points this out and divorces himself from the spineless Republican leadership who pathetically pretend to represent the conservative majority in America

Many years ago, at a certain academic institution, there was an experimental program that the faculty had to vote on as to whether or not it should be made permanent. I rose at the faculty meeting to say that I knew practically nothing about whether the program was good or bad, and that the information that had been supplied to us was too vague for us to have any basis for voting, one way or the other. My suggestion was that we get more concrete information before having a vote. The director of that program rose immediately and responded indignantly...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unveiled a retooled health care overhaul plan Thursday intended to bridge differences among Democrats and open a history-making floor debate on extending health insurance to nearly all Americans. Speaking on the West Front of the Capitol surrounded by Democratic lawmakers, Pelosi, D-Calif., said the House's version of a health care reform bill will include a government-run insurance option and extend coverage to 36 million uninsured Americans. She said the bill will lower patient costs and reduce the national deficit. "The Affordable Health Care Act will ensure, again, affordability for the middle class, security for our seniors,...

Pravda indicates that because of America’s decline she is forced be friends with all world powers, Russia included. Pravda points out that America is changing from a leadership role in the world to a more humble and submissive posture in line with other world governments. Is this the turning point in world history? One where one socio-political philosophy is dimming from the world stage to be replaced with another? Pravda certainly suggests so. Pravda reminds us that approximately 400 years ago [t]he Western European society discovered a new hierarchy of values. Feudalism that valued service and chivalry was replaced with...

The More They Know Darwin, The Less They Want Darwin-Only Indoctrination According to an international poll released by the British Council, the majority of Americans — 60% — support teaching alternatives to evolution in the science classroom. The percentage is the same for Britons, despite the fact that both countries have been inundated with pro-Darwin media coverage in this super-mega Darwin Year. Of course, the British media reporting this are chagrined. Britain is the birthplace of Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, and the official-sounding British Council, the UK group behind the “Darwin Now” campaign that commissioned the Ipsos...

Why is President Barack Obama in such a hurry to get his socialized medicine bill passed? Because he and his cunning circle realize some basic truths: The American people in their unimaginable kindness and trust voted for a pig in a poke in 2008. They wanted so much to believe Barack Obama was somehow better and different from other ultra-leftists that they simply took him on faith. They ignored his anti-white writings in his books. They ignored his quiet acceptance of hysterical anti-American diatribes by his minister, Jeremiah Wright. They ignored his refusal to explain years at a time of...

It has always been understood, sometimes whispered, that Geroge Soros, the great beneficiary of markets, hates them. The truth is now out in the open. John Stossel reports, via FT, that Soros will give $50 million to start a new think-tank to counter "the unwavering belief in unchecked free markets, which remains pervasive in universities." Soros says: "The ideologists in the free markets are still in command and I think they'll be very difficult to remove because they have tenure." If anything proves that one has to question Soros' analytical ability, it is this statement. The leading economic textbook in...

Domestic oil refiners kept up their attack of climate legislation, saying a Senate bill under consideration could increase gas prices. Domestic oil refiners kept up their attack Wednesday of climate legislation, saying a Senate bill under consideration could increase gas prices. The group, among the fiercest critics of the measure, said the proposal could add 77 cents a gallon, or around 30 percent above today’s prices. Democrats on a key Senate panel shot back, saying the industry’s estimate is based on an inflated projection of the price of permits companies will have to hold to cover their carbon emissions. A...

Another celebrity romance falls to pieces: By Guy Adams Wednesday, 28 October 2009He's crossed swords, over the years, with all the usual right-wing suspects, from car-makers to gun owners to Wall Street executives, health companies, and George W Bush. Now Michael Moore has picked a fight with a hero of the international left. The documentary-maker has caused outrage among Hugo Chavez's supporters by using a late-night chat show to tell a humorous anecdote about meeting Venezuela's socialist President in a luxury hotel suite during the recent Venice Film Festival . His two-minute yarn, told to ABC host Jimmy Kimmel...

With lots of cable news shows, the feast of the 2008 election has lead to famine in 2009. Countdown with Keith Olberman’s ratings are in the famine range as well, with October year over year ratings down 53% in the cable news target adults 25-54 demo, and down 53% in average viewership. Although I don’t have a trend chart, October is also Olbermann’s lowest rated month so far in 2009 in both 25-54 and average viewers.

Tyranny: In his latest absurdity, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is dictating three-minute showers and no singing. Claiming it's to save water, his act is nothing but a "green" fig leaf to cover his socialist mismanagement. 'Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour," Chavez ranted on his Sunday TV show "Alo Presidente." "No, kids. Three minutes is more than enough. I've counted, three minutes and I don't stink." His words echo those of environmental extremists, blaming shopping malls, El Nino, tourists and sabotage. But the water and electricity shortages are his own doing, and the scope of...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

Man, the lefties must really be hating Liebeman nowadays: “We’re trying to do too much at once,” Lieberman said. “To put this government-created insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayers, for the premium payers and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”… Lieberman did say he’s “strongly inclined” to vote to proceed to the debate, but that he’ll ultimately vote to block a floor vote on the bill if it isn’t changed first… “I can’t see a way in which I could vote for cloture on any bill...

Washington is captivated by the Senate melodrama over the so-called public option, salivating at the ring of Harry Reid's political bell (see below). But the most important health-care questions continue to be about the policy substance—particularly those that Democrats don't want asked. Foremost among them is: How will ObamaCare affect insurance premiums in the private health-care markets? Despite indignant Democratic denials, the near-certainty is that their plan will cause costs to rise across the board. The latest data on this score come from a series of state-level studies from the insurance company WellPoint Inc. At the request of Congressional delegations...

The Treasury Department is in talks with GMAC Financial Services Inc about a possible third cash infusion to the company, an Obama administration official confirmed on Tuesday night. The official declined to say how much additional money was under discussion for GMAC, which already has received $12.5 billion of taxpayer funds. The Wall Street Journal said the government may have to inject another $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion into the Detroit-based lender. GMAC is the traditional lender to General Motors Co. dealers and customers and is taking over the auto loan business of Chrysler. With the U.S. auto industry still...

The Ford Fusion was rated higher in reliability this year than its counterparts- Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. The only car in the family sedan category with better ratings compared to Fusion was the Toyota Prius, the magazine said yesterday. “It’s rare for Consumer Reports to see family sedans from domestic carmakers continue to beat the reliability scores of such highly regarded Japanese models,” David Champion, senior director of the Yonkers, New York based magazine’s Automotive Test Center, said in a statement. World class production Ford’s reliability will translate into future gains as it will help the company capture a...

"More than 500 officers smashed their way into thousands of safety-deposit boxes to retrieve guns, drugs and millions of pounds of criminal assets. At least, that's what was supposed to happen. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate" Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1222777/The-raid-rocked-Met-Why-gun-drugs-op-6-717-safety-deposit-boxes-cost-taxpayer-fortune.html#ixzz0VDacv0T6

This week's poll Should the Obama administration be able to set limits on pay for executives at companies receiving bailout money? Yes 77.40% No 22.60%

Prominent antitheist and self-styled “atheist” Richard Dawkins has written a new book, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Ironically, he admits about all his previous pro-evolution books: “Looking back on these books, I realized that the evidence for evolution is nowhere explicitly set out, and that it seemed like a good gap to close.”. Naturally, CMI is preparing a book to answer Dawkins’ latest. In a chapter about alleged bad design, Dawkins had a section about the loss of wings and evolution of features like halteres, the little drumstick-like stabilizers behind the one pair of wings on...