Free Republic

The terror attack on Christmas Day has brought out all sorts of revelations about just how pathetic our terror fighting abilities truly are. I mean this deal was a comedy of errors and it was only by the grace of God almighty himself that this Islamic mad man’s Underbooms© failed to explode and take the plane down. Not only was Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab on several watch lists, and from a real hotbed of al Qaeda terrorist activity, the guy’s own father warned the embassy that his son had become radicalized by militant Islamic fanatics. Never mind Abdul showed up...

Sarah Palin's oldest daughter appears to have lost her bid to keep a bitter legal dispute with her 1-year-old son's father confidential. An Alaska judge last week denied Bristol Palin's request to keep the legal proceedings of her custody dispute with Levi Johnston closed. Palin, 18, filed a petition in early November seeking sole custody of her son, Tripp, and child support payments. She had argued that the scrutiny the case could attract would turn it into a "media circus" that potentially could cause her son embarrassment as he grows older. "In this day and age of the internet, media...

I think it’s fairly obvious that had it not been for the Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, Barrack Obama would not be President of the United States today. Soros, who made most of his billions through the currency speculation which he first commenced during the post-war hyper inflation in Hungary in 1946, has become the world’s top financial supporter of statism and socialism. He is a “soft fascist”, as author Mark Levin would say, that is to say, someone who would foist a socialist totalitarian government on us by incremental steps. American liberty, our most sacred possession, is in severe peril....

The fallout is already coming from this year's Supreme Court Caperton decision on judicial bias, and it isn't good. A new rule on judicial recusal in Michigan shows how the decision could expose nearly every judge to charges of prejudice. In Caperton v. Massey, the Supremes set out a new standard requiring judges to recuse themselves if there is a "probability of bias" in a case. That was a marked departure from historical standards, which required a judge to step off primarily when he had a direct financial interest. Under the new rule, created by the Michigan Supreme Court to...

A retired Florida couple would appear an unlikely source to have given $83,000 in campaign donations over a five-year period to members of Congress from all over the country. Both in their 80s, they lived in a $118,000 Daytona Beach house they didn't own; they each voted only twice since 1992; and they seemed to lack the financial means to make the contributions. Yet, both were listed as having given dozens of donations to lawmakers, nearly half of which went to members of the House Appropriations Committee - legislators who were especially important to their then-son-in-law, superlobbyist Paul Magliocchetti, who...

With a h/t to Sissy Willis for one of these items. First, today via the AP. Can we significantly help solve our energy problems with natural gas? An unlikely source of energy has emerged to meet international demands that the United States do more to fight global warming: It's cleaner than coal, cheaper than oil and a 90-year supply is under our feet. It's natural gas, the same fossil fuel that was in such short supply a decade ago that it was deemed unreliable. It's now being uncovered at such a rapid pace that its price is near a seven-year...

Energy: An oil company wants to invest its profits in clean-burning American natural gas. A Hungarian billionaire and a "green" politician want to stop it. This is the real Climate-gate scandal. While the greenies of the world united in Copenhagen to talk about the weather, emitting a Third World-country-size chunk of greenhouse gases to gather there, the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil, was doing something about it. On Dec. 14, Exxon agreed to buy XTO Energy, a natural gas firm, in a deal valued at $41 billion. XTO is one of the leaders in something called "fracking" technology, in...

As republican senators at last get a chance to read the health crimes bill being rammed through by the politburo, Obama’s boss, unrepentant Nazi collaborator, George Soros is poised to celebrate a major triumph in the advancement of his euthanasia agenda. “The bill changes some Senate rules to say we can’t vote in a future Congress to repeal the IMAB (death panels). A senate rules change would require 67 votes for cloture on the bill, but the parliamentarian decided it’s a ‘procedural change’ not a ‘rules change’ so they only need 60… Makes no sense. Anyway, it’s likely we could...

A vast reservoir of clean-burning natural gas could be available at reasonable cost in the coming years, freeing us from some of our dependence on imported energy. Yet there are those who consider such a development a threat. A small group of billionaires (and mere multimillionaires), formed under the aegis of the Democracy Alliance, has amassed a great deal of political influence in America on behalf of the Democratic Party and Democratic politicians. Among the more important members of this "club" are George Soros and his liberal allies, Herbert and Marion Sandler. The latter two are billionaire beneficiaries of the...

**** Bank failures now total 140 in 2009 **** LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK, Dec 18 (Reuters) - OneWest Bank, formerly failed mortgage lender IndyMac, bought the assets of First Federal Bank after it was closed by U.S. regulators, in a deal that may bolster the case for private investment in banks. California's First Federal was one of seven U.S. lenders closed on Friday by regulators, bringing the total number of U.S. bank failures this year to 140. The 39 branches of First Federal -- formerly controlled by FirstFed Financial (FFED.PK) -- reopen on Saturday as OneWest Bank FSB. In addition to...

With a mere investment of $780,000 Soros and his allies were able to suborn free elections in the states of Montana, West Virginia, Missouri, Oregon, in 2008, and in Minnesota, Ohio, New Mexico, Nevada and Iowa, in 2006. How did he achieve so much with so little? He founded a 527 group which funded candidates in one kind of race in which the victor has the most influence over election integrity, and in which there is so little political competition: the Secretaries of State. In each State the SoS job is entrusted with overseeing the protection of free and fair...

The recent Swiss referendum vote to ban the building of minarets seemed to confirm a trend: Europeans are becoming increasingly strident in their attempts to "protect" their culture against Islam. However, a newly published report by the Open Society Institute (OSI), a think tank set up by billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros, details the complex relationship between Muslims and non-Muslim Europeans and reveals that the suspicion is mutual. Muslims believe they are being shut out of European society. About 20 million Muslims live in the European Union, mostly in capital cities and large industrial towns; they already make up...

Snarky PhotoChop scenes: George Soros threatens Obama; Illinoismo is announced; Obama curses Glenn Beck

Google.com dedicates its main page today to honoring the 150th birthday of L.L. Zamenhof, founder of Esperanto, with an Esperanto flag icon

An investigation into e-mails that seemed to have disappeared from the Bush White House has resulted in restoration of 22 million of the missing messages and a deal to uncover what could be millions of other e-mails that allegedly fell through cracks in the archiving system, two nonprofit groups said Monday. However, an untold number of official e-mails from President George W. Bush's era will probably never be recovered because it would be extremely costly to do so, lawyers involved in lawsuits brought by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said. "While we have...

(CNSNews.com) – Mark Lloyd, the chief diversity officer and associate counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), says he is not carrying out a “secret plot funded by George Soros” aimed at getting rid of conservative talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Lloyd, the keynote speaker at a Monday forum sponsored by the Media Access Project (MAP), also said that there was a “right-wing smear campaign” against him. "I am not a Czar appointed by President Obama," said Lloyd. "I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or...

FCC Official Says He’s Not Carrying Out ‘Secret Plot Funded by George Soros to Get Rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck’ Monday, December 14, 2009 By Matt Cover, Staff Writer (CNSNews.com) – Mark Lloyd, the chief diversity officer and associate counsel at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), says he is not part of a “secret plot funded by George Soros” aimed at getting rid of conservative talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Lloyd, the keynote speaker at a Monday forum sponsored by the Media Access Project (MAP), also said that there was a “right-wing smear campaign” against him. "I...

Leftist George Soros has reached a new low, as he is looking to give a good name to the Sharia loving Muslims of the UK. Sure Muslims there consider themselves British, as they think that they own the place. Calling for war from the Sharia Courts is a perfect example of this. Next time mind your own business George, some of us actually know what is going on there.

A couple of days ago, we blogged about the "Progress Report" released by the Center for American Progress on the influence of conservative and libertarian billionaires on politics and policy. We pointed out at the time that it seemed a curious tack for CAP to take, especially since the think tank itself was funded by billionaire George Soros and billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler. But we learn from Brian Doherty of Reason Magazine that this effort at attacking billionaire opponents of Obama probably originated in the White House, and that the history of CAP includes an interesting connection with Nancy...

People such as George Soros and Michael Moore certainly talk a good game, but the next Mother Teresa they are not. Mother Teresa never criticized the free-market system; wealth just wasn't for her. Soros and Moore are quite the opposite. They will never take a vow of poverty and dedicate themselves to helping the poor. They just want our civilization to take a vow of poverty and become poor. This has caused many to wonder: How can someone preach socialism while being the most rapacious "capitalist" imaginable? Well, I have a theory about this. It has often been observed that...

YOU WILL NEVER GUESS WHO WAS A GUEST AT OBAMA’s FIRST STATE DINNER….. Mr. Ratan Tata [The chairman of the Tata Group - India's biggest conglomerate] A story emerging out of Britain suggests “follow the money” may explain the enthusiasm of the United Nations to pursue caps on carbon emissions, despite doubts surfacing in the scientific community about the validity of the underlying global warming hypothesis. A Mumbai-based Indian multinational conglomerate with business ties to Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman since 2002 of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, stands to make several hundred million dollars in...

COPENHAGEN -- George Soros arrived on the scene here yesterday to once again save us from ourselves. The guy has tons of money and has no doubt whatsoever that global warming is cooking the planet and that it's all the fault of human industry and innovation. But, as usual, he wants you and me paying for this boondoggle. Not surprising from a guy like Soros, who has never created anything. It's almost like "Revenge of the Nerds." Only now, when all the rules of nature are suspended to accommodate quack science, can all the losers finally sink their loser teeth...

George Soros has funded a wide variety of efforts to propagate the view that Climate Change poses perils to the planet and that this mandates measures that include so called clean fuels. His efforts include his sponsorship of think tanks, for example, The Center for American Progress (CAP) - easily the nation's most powerful think-tank - that serves as Barack Obama's "Brain". The CAP has served as an employment agency to fill important government positions, including those that push the climate change story (Van Jones, for example). Of course, Soros is the sugar daddy of the Democratic Party whose members...

George Soros, the billionaire left-wing philanthropist and convicted inside trader, joined the caravan of elites at the international climate summit in Copenhagen this week. He used the opportunity to explain that he had a solution to financing the fight against global warming. It would require about $100 billion to pay for projects in the developing world. There was just one barrier: The U.S. Congress. "It is possible to substantially increase the amount available to fight global warming in the developing world,” he said. “All that is lacking is the political will. Unfortunately the political will will be difficult to gather...

Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters nationwide say they’re at least somewhat angry about the current policies of the federal government. That figure includes 46% who are Very Angry. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 27% are not angry about the government's policies, including 10% who are Not at All Angry........ The data suggests that the level of anger is growing. The 71% who are angry at federal government policies today is up five percentage points since September. Even more stunning, the 46% who are Very Angry is up 10 percentage points from September.

An interpretive evaluation of the Copenhagen Climate Change Treaty Draft from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change working group dated September 15th, 2009, Page 122, Item 17, is presented below, and should concern every citizen in the United States. This section shows several anomalies, other than simple spelling errors. It indicates foremost, unclear yet emphatic proposals that if left unchecked will radically shift responsibility from unsuccessful countries to successful countries. It fails to show a method of delivery, or specifics to apply any form of real action, opening the door for both gross interpretation and unjustifiable control. If...

...Mr Soros believes that developed countries should hand over their “special drawing rights” – international foreign currency assets distributed by the IMF – as loans to help poorer nations tackle climate change...

NEW YORK (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union has lost a quarter of its yearly donations after a major donor cut off $19 million in annual donations because of economic difficulties. David Gelbaum, a wealthy California conservationist, said he was indefinitely stopping the donations that had made him the New York-based group's largest anonymous donor

In 1998, when the Clinton White House found itself in the middle of the Lewinsky scandal, one of its key defense strategies was to attack the conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife as the dark power behind the allegations against the president. The Clinton camp believed Scaife to be "the Goldfinger of the right-wing conspiracy," as Newsweek put it in a February 1998 report.Now it's the Obama White House that is in trouble. The president isn't engulfed in scandal, but his political fortunes are waning, with historically low job approval ratings for this point in his term and an administration struggling...

"COPENHAGEN — As climate treaty negotiators continued to tussle over how much rich countries should pay to help poor ones deal with climate risks, preserve forests and adopt non-polluting energy technology, the financier George Soros appeared on the sidelines Thursday to identify a new pot of $100 billion that could help pay the bills."

COPENHAGEN -- The $10 billion a year proposed by rich nations to help the poor adapt to climate change is "not sufficient" and the gap between what's offered and what's needed could wreck the Copenhagen climate conference, American billionaire George Soros said Thursday. The investor-philanthropist, one in a line of international notables visiting the 192-nation meeting, told reporters he had developed a partial solution. Mr. Soros suggested shifting some International Monetary Fund resources from providing liquidity to stressed global financial systems to a new mission of financing projects in developing countries for clean energy and adapting to climate change.

COPENHAGEN — The $10 billion a year proposed by rich nations to help the poor adapt to climate change is "not sufficient" and the gap between what's offered and what's needed could wreck the Copenhagen climate conference, American billionaire George Soros said Thursday. The investor-philanthropist, one in a line of international notables visiting the 192-nation meeting, told reporters he had developed a partial solution. Soros suggested shifting some International Monetary Fund resources from providing liquidity to stressed global financial system to a new mission of financing projects in developing countries for clean energy and adapting to climate change.

How many times have we heard or read stories about Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, and its alleged influence over the government? A public company with more than 100,000 employees, Halliburton had revenues of $13 billion in 2001. However, George Soros is a human Halliburton who will be in a position if John Kerry is elected president to pull the strings. He is reportedly worth $7.2 billion. But his role in buying the White House for John Kerry has received generally positive coverage. Soros, we're told, is a "philanthropist" committed to "democracy." The Republican Party, by contrast, is...

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.

History's most notorious Georgian-turned-Russian, the politically astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." The lesson has not been lost on the increasingly notorious Hungarian-cum-American George Soros. A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field. This is, of course, the same Soros, the same hyperpolitical left-wing philanthropist who makes no secret of...

History's most notorious Georgian-turned-Russian, the politically astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." The lesson has not been lost on the increasingly notorious Hungarian-cum-American George Soros. A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field. This is, of course, the same Soros, the same hyperpolitical left-wing philanthropist who makes no secret of...

Barack Obama staged another photo op Tuesday night when he delivered his Afghanistan speech to cadets at West Point for the purpose of screwing with their heads. Obama’s message was: I’m sending more troops to Afghanistan, but only for a few days. Deal with it. As always, the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world studiously avoided use of the word “victory” in expounding on our wartime objectives. Rumor has it that Camp Victory will soon be renamed “Camp of Successful Resolution”. The president justified his dithering over whether to send the troops requested by his...

(snip) Trey Grayson, a Republican candidate for US Senate, was the keynote speaker on the issue of global warming last year at Eastern Kentucky University as part of the National Focus the Nation event. Now, why is that such a big deal? Well, the Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for Focus the Nation is none other than Van Jones. Yes, that's right, the self-proclaimed communist Obama hired to be the Green Jobs Czar that had to tuck tail and resign at midnight. WHOA Now, let's back up a bit. Here's a bit of history on Focus the...

This probably won't surprise anybody. I only took time to search for this because I was asked by someone if GS has his hands in public radio and I couldn't find a direct answer. Well, I found it. I'm not surprised Soros has given money to NPR, what does surprise me is that I didn't see any conservative blogs with this. I'm also surprised that I could find it directly on NPR's site, though it's not often mentioned. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5476317 -----Mr. Soros, thanks so much for being with us. Mr. GEORGE SOROS (Financier, Soros Fund Management): It's my pleasure. SIMON(speaking to...

An Iranian-American scholar, Kian Tajbakhsh, is facing a new charge of spying. A judge read new charges against him of “spying for the George Soros foundation,” a reference to the Open Society Institute, a pro-democracy group founded by Mr. Soros, a prominent financier and philanthropist. He was sentenced in October to 15 years for working as a consultant for the Open Society Institute, which the indictment identified as an adjunct of the C.I.A. Tehran has accused the Open Society Institute of trying to stage a “velvet revolution” in Iran along the lines of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the...

The White House Commie has done more to damage America in less than one year than 270 years of Nixons could ever have done! We need a real President, an American Patriot to undo the damage done by this treasonous imposter.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s abominable plot to try self proclaimed 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) in a New York criminal court is an affront but not inscrutable. Team O is, as in all other policies, doing the bidding of Obama’s boss, unrepentant Nazi collaborator, George Soros; he’s been a rabid critic of the war on terror for years. Soros has always thought we made much too commotion about 9/11, which he insists is just a “single event”. He 9/11 sees as no more iniquitous than making prisoners wear underwear on their heads. As an active contributor to the Final...

When it became known that George Soros, a multi-billionaire Marxist, spent a ton of money to get him elected, people said it didn't matter. When he started appointing czars that were radicals, revolutionaries, and even avowed Marxists and Communists, people said it didn't matter. When he stood before the nation and told us that his intentions were to "fundamentally transform this nation" into something else, people said it didn't matter.

A parody of A Christmas Carol... [Obama] “Hey! Who’s there?” [Ghost #1] “Barry, I am the ghost of Presidencies Past.” . [Obama] “You look kinda like Reagan. Go away.” [Ghost] “No, Barry, I have some things to show you.” Nearby, a sleep apnea machine makes Darth Vader noises as it clings to the face of a slumbering Michelle. Barry feels himself leaving his body and taking on a ghostly form. [Ghost] “Don’t be alarmed. You’re going to have a vision.” [Obama] “The only nighttime visions I have are of cute little Brazilian chicas with nice hardware. Knock it off and...

Want to know how does the left really feels about free speech? Look no further than Huffington Post editor and co-founder Arianna Huffington. Huffington appeared on MSNBC's Nov. 19 "Countdown" to discuss a report by the Anti-Defamation League that alleges Fox News host Glenn Beck is "the most important mainstream media figure who has repeatedly helped to stoke fires of anti-government anger" and therefore endangering society. "It would be nice to think of Glenn Beck just as a joke, as fodder for this show and the "Daily Show" and others that point out how stupid some of this stuff is,"...

Perhaps this is why Obama is taking such a soft approach to terrorists: NEW YORK — “A disbarred lawyer convicted in a terrorism case should report to prison by Thursday after an appeals court upheld her conviction, a judge said Wednesday. U.S. District Judge John G. Koeltl said 70-year-old Lynne Stewart should surrender by 5 p.m. Thursday to begin serving a two-year, four-month sentence for her 2005 conviction. Koeltl had allowed her to remain free on $500,000 bail while she appealed her conviction. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction on Tuesday and said she should begin...

(snip) "We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret," said Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein. "We apologize." Blankfein had told a British newspaper the other day that Goldman was doing “God’s work”. That caused a firestorm online. (snip)

-snip- SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) represents 3.91% of the fund's reported portfolio. The fund held 2,450,320 shares as of September 30th, up 2,445,420 since the fund's last filing. -snip-

Left-wing media matters Cliff Kincaid, November 17, 2009 A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Robert W. McChesney has said that “media reform” should be part of the march toward socialism in America and that capitalism has to be dismantled “brick by brick.” Van Jones, the ousted communist “Green Jobs Czar” of the Obama Administration, served with McChesney on the board of Free Press, a George Soros-funded organization, in 2007 and 2008. Despite its socialist orientation, Free Press is financially supported by extremely wealthy individuals such as George Soros, the leftist billionaire, and Marcy Carsey, one of the creators...

BILLIONAIRE investor George Soros' hedge fund increased the value of its holdings by $US2 billion ($2.14bn) over the past three months, boosting his stake in the telecommunications and financial sectors. Soros Fund Management reported holdings of $US6.2bn as of September 30, up from $US4.2bn as of June 30, according to a filing today with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr Soros significantly increased his positions in AT&T and Verizon Communications by 3.4 million shares and roughly 4m shares, respectively. Mr Soros now holds 4.2m shares of AT&T, valued at $US113 million as of September 30. The fund owns more...