Free Republic

Progressive group Think Progress has been putting on a bit of poverty theater over on Twitter. If you look up #livethewage you’ll find a number of progressive Congressmen pretending to live on $77 worth of groceries for an entire week. It’s all theater, meant to shock people into supporting an increased minimum wage. Thus sardines and saltine crackers are a regular purchase, for no other reason than they’re meant to shock us. In reality, these Congressmen shock us by their inability to budget or shop sales. In one case, Rep. Barbara Lee budgeted $5 for toothpaste. My wife can buy...

In one of the clearest statements by the White House that they are completely engulfed in their own worldview, the State Department on Sunday cited both Daily Kos and Think Progress while defending Secretary of State John Kerry's offensive apartheid statement. This previous Friday, Mr. Kerry stated that Israel risked becoming an "apartheid state" if they did not give in to Palestinian demands during peach talks between the two groups. The State Department quickly went on defense to protect the asinine statements. Jen Psaki, spokeswoman for the State Department, tweeted out two articles in which other people had warned that...

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI, March 26, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-life group's involvement in the Michigan race for the U.S. Senate is bringing abortion into what had previously been a race focused on the economy, the low popularity of President Obama in the state, and the Affordable Care Act. On a website highlighting the pro-abortion record of Michigan Rep. Gary Peters, D-MI, the expected party nominee for U.S. Senate, Michigan Right to Life (MRTL) said that Peters “wants to make sure abortion is accessible and cheap for his daughters.” The statement is based on what Peters posted on Facebook on January...

Bad news for burrito lovers: Chipotle warned in its latest annual report that climate change might lead it to leave guacamole out of its burritos and bowls. The chain blames the possible change on higher prices. “In the event of cost increases with respect to one or more of our raw ingredients we may choose to temporarily suspend serving menu items, such as guacamole or one or more of our salsas, rather than paying the increased cost for the ingredients.” The company acknowledged such a move would be a massive disappointment to some of its customers. But, as ThinkProgress points...

Freshman Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) dismissed a question about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate Thursday, calling it a “dead issue” that he doesn’t “give a sh*t” about. Mullin took a question during a town hall meeting in his Oklahoma district from a woman who identified herself as a “birther princess” and asked about “Obama’s identification fraud.” “You’re talking about the birth certificate?” Mullin responded, according to video of the exchange posted by liberal website Think Progress. “We lost that argument on November 6. We had four years to get that proven, we didn’t, we re-elected him, so that’s a dead...

Mehdi Nedder knew the suspected Islamic terrorist, Mohamed Merah, only “slightly,” says the Associated Press. But what he knows about him now has him slightly more worried. Merah, 21, killed seven people in Toulouse, France, including three children, who just happened to be Jewish, and three French paras, who just happened to be soldiers, before he was finally killed in a shootout with police. He bragged he had brought France to its knees according to various newswire accounts.  "This person doesn't represent me," said Nedder. "What worries me is what society will say tomorrow in the bakery shops, at the...

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

The costs of Obamacare are not just hitting businesses this year--they are also hitting the government, and public employees as well. Virginia, for example, is about to limit part-time employees to 29 hours per week in order to avoid triggering Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide health insurance to those working 30 hours per week or more. The state cannot afford the $110 million annual cost of insurance. Elsewhere, public institutions are taking similar steps to limit part-time work. In Ohio, Youngstown State University recently announced a 29-hour-per-week part-time limit, and placed employees on notice that they would be fired if...

THE DEAD BABY MEDIA If the text on that one is too small for you, it's a CNN piece headlined, "Why the Syrian regime is killing babies." There's not much to add to that. The Syrian regime may be killing babies, but CNN killed journalism. With some help from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the BBC. Anyone who has spent time in the Middle East knows quite well that parading around dead bodies is part of the Muslim ceremony of rallying for the next attack. These aren't funerals, these are corpse parades and the corpses are often...

Wonder how the left was able to mobilize so quickly on the Rush Limbaugh boycott? According to the architect behind it, Media Matters online strategy director Angelo Carusone, the project was actually created in 2009, but stayed inactive until the Sandra Fluke controversy boiled over (via Legal Insurrection): I started Stop Rush in 2009, 2010, and when I went to register the domain, I saw that Rush owned StopRush.com…. The Beck work was working, and I kind of froze the Rush work, and experimented with it a little, to get a sense of who Rush’s advertisers were and what their...

Two of the Democratic Party’s core institutions are challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade. The Center for American Progress, the party’s key hub of ideas and strategy, and Media Matters, a central messaging organization, have emerged as vocal critics of their party’s staunchly pro-Israel congressional leadership and have been at odds, at times, with Barack Obama’s White House, which has acted as a reluctant ally to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government. The differences are ones of tone – but also of bright lines of principle – and while...

The Center for American Progress (CAP), the George Soros funded Democratic messaging machine, runs the aggressive Think Progress website. Think Progress is obsessed with attacking the Tea Party movement as racist, the Koch Brothers as evil manipulators, and Clarence Thomas as corrupt. Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias helped ignite the false story that Sarah Palin’s electoral map was connected to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Think Progress is the public face of CAP, dominating news cycles with its relentless attacks on anyone who opposes Obama. CAP, which was run for years by former Clinton adviser John Podesta, now is run by...

Iran’s Khomeinist news agency, Press TV – long recognized for its Jihadist-supporting broadcasts – has published what is being referred to as a veritable “hit piece” against many leading U.S. media companies, commentators, antiterrorism experts, legislators, and at least one presidential candidate – calling several by name – in what the news agency considers to be “The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” And what observers fear may reveal a more sinister motive.

...As it would happen, what the folks at Think Progress find to be so damning is nothing more than an incorrect assumption, if not outright lie. During question time at the town hall, the aforementioned audience member incorrectly portrays the Pledge as a promise to Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. The spending interests on the Left repeatedly try to misinform the public with this tired and patently false claim. ATR noted the following earlier this year when similar lies were lobbed at Republican state legislators in California: "Critics wrongly contend that California legislators who signed the Pledge...

Over the weekend, a liberal journalism group reported that Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser "allegedly grabbed fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley around the neck in an argument in her chambers last week." The report said details of the incident were "sketchy" and came from three sources who insisted on anonymity... The report was done by the liberal Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, working with Wisconsin Public Radio. The Center recently unveiled a project, funded by the Open Society Institute, to "shine a light into the operations of Wisconsin's government." It hired Bill Lueders, a longtime news editor for Isthmus,...

The Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor has been digging up the dirt on the deep-pocketed lefty media mogul George Soros’ funding of media operations, and Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly invited him on to discuss Gainor's latest piece in which he says there are ‘nearly 30 Soros-funded media operations that are part of the ‘War on Fox’.” O’Reilly asked Gainor’s opinion on the most important media operation that Soros funds. “I would say that’s probably Think Progress,” Gainor told O’Reilly. “It’s part of the Center for American Progress.

Newt Gingrich is facing criticism for yet another idea he has floated during his presidential campaign -- that the country bring back tests for voting, which were banned by the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as a tool used to suppress African-American voters. Now, Think Progress reports, none other than Tea Party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL), an African-American, is disagreeing -- and referring to the sort of discrimination that his own parents faced.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - An African-American political advocacy group is targeting "Celebrity Apprentice" star Donald Trump in the aftermath of what many feel are racially tinged political comments made about President Obama. On Thursday, the organization ColorOfChange launched a Twitter-based campaign to persuade black "Celebrity Apprentice" cast members Star Jones and Lil Jon to denounce Trump for what the group terms "race-baiting." Trump has made headlines in recent weeks by repeatedly questioning whether Obama was born in the U.S. Obama released his longform birth certificate April 27 with the hope of settling the matter, but the issue has been...

The south is still realizing the full extent of the damage caused by this week’s storms. Nearly 300 people are dead. The country is rallying in support of the devatated areas, and President Obama (who must have learned something from ignoring Nashville’s flood last year) is set break character to visit the very red state today. Anyone with a soul feels pain for those affected. Thousands have lost everything. Lives were destroyed. Think Progress (via Da Tech Guy) has instead chosen to adopt the Pat Robertson model and claim Divine Justice for those redneck Republican climate change deniers in the...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan called for ending oil subsidies Thursday, further complicating Republican efforts to stay on message about rising gas prices. The Wisconsin Republican told constituents at a Waterford, Wis., town hall meeting that he agreed that federal oil subsidies ought to end. “We’re talking about reforming the safety net, the welfare system; we also want to get rid of corporate welfare. And corporate welfare goes to agribusiness companies, energy companies, financial services companies, so we propose to repeal all that,” Ryan said in response to a question about oil subsidies. A video of Ryan's town hall...