Free Republic

More than 900 residents met U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop's promise to approve only a health care bill that "improves on a status quo that is unacceptable" with a mix of cheers and boos at a packed town hall meeting in Farmingville Thursday night.

Thursday, August 20, 2009 Local investors bid to own Philly newspapers A group of local investors led by real estate executive Bruce Toll is offering a plan valued at $92 million to purchase the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and philly.com, and lead the organization out of bankruptcy. According to a release, the new ownership group would include the Carpenters’ Union Pension Fund and Penn Matrix Investments. “Today, Philadelphians once again stepped up in a big way. The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com filed a reorganization plan that will allow the company to emerge successfully from bankruptcy while...

This is no time for jokes or trivial banter. The stakes are getting higher by the nanosecond. As tensions are inflamed at health care town hall meetings across the country, a dangerous trend of Hitler comparisons, Stalin comparisons, and all-around dictator comparisons to President Barack Obama is taking shape. The most probing question at this juncture might be uncomfortable to some, but it must be asked: Do conservative, hard-right demagogues, whose hatred for President Obama has hardly ever been subdued, secretly hope for--and are hard at work toward--the assassination of the nation's first Black president. The sheer thought that a...

By now you know of the atrocity committed by SEIU union thugs against Kenneth Gladney, a slight, mild-mannered man who sold pins and flags at Russ Canahan's August 6th healthcare town hall in St. Louis. The St. Louis Tea Party immediately organized a demonstration against the St. Louis offices of SEIU, placing the blame for Gladney's injuries exactly where they belonged -- on the head's of Barack Obama and his union goons. See: http://stlouisteaparty.com/ See the extended reporting on the St. Louis Tea Party here: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/politics/story/8F86C6EBA6731CBC8625760C00194F9D?OpenDocument

Well, well...in observation of the finest traditions handed down to him by his compadre, Hoo-goh Chavez, our Presidente de por vida, Barack Obamanente, managed to cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war fairly quickly. Major props to him for organizing his brown shirts (in this case, "purple" shirts) so quickly. Seems the sunny-dispositioned folks from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), called to action by the White House, were able get to Missouri representative Russ Carnahan's public town hall meeting the other night just in time to beat up a black man giving away "Don't Tread on Me"...

Barack Obama told a crowd of supporters in Philadelphia back in 2008, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” He added, “That’s the Chicago way.” Last night in St. Louis, Missouri, a local conservative found out first hand about the “Chicago way.” Kenneth Gladney, a black conservative from the city, was handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags after a Russ Carnahan town hall meeting on health care in Mehlville. This didn’t go over well with the Obama supporters and union thugs who attended the meeting. They punched him in the face, kicked him in...

Remember kids, it's the health care protesters who are being organized in a top-down manner. Because whatever Team Lightbringer says during their afternoon unicorn rides must be true. To recap: anyone who protests at a health care pimping rally is is part of a well-funded, super organized mob, according to our friends on the left. (You can practically feel the hopenandchange permeating the entire process now, right?) And on the other side...it's just a sincere, merry band of innocents. Top White House officials counseled Democratic senators Thursday on coping with disruptions at public events on health care this summer, officials...

From: Margarida Jorge To: HCAN Field PartnersRE: HCAN—Responding to Right-Wing Attacks in the Field - August 4, 2009Since early February, we’ve seen increasing numbers of militant right-wing activists attending public meetings acrossthe country targeting Members of Congress and President Obama. Now in the August recess, the “tea-bagger” protesters and right-wing activists are showing up in larger numbers with a mission to be as disruptive as possible in thehopes of rattling Members of Congress and halting health care reform through pure spectacle and obstruction.  Our response is shaped by 3 things:  Ø Our targets are Members of Congress who must vote...

Seconds after BART police officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed Oscar Grant, police immediately began confiscating cell phones containing videos that have yet to see the light of day. [...] But the truth is, police had no legal right to confiscate a single camera. “Cops may be entitled to ask for people’s names and addresses and may even go as far as subpoenaing the video tape, but as far as confiscating the camera on the spot, no,” said Marc Randazza, A First Amendment attorney based out of Florida and a Photography is Not a Crime reader. Bert P. Krages II,...

Like the cavalry, organized labor reportedly plans on swooping in to the rescue of beleaguered lawmakers who are getting shouted down by conservative activists at town-hall meetings during discussions of health-care overhaul legislation. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports that the AFL-CIO is calling on its troops to counter the anti-health care reform hecklers. An excerpt: The nation's largest federation of labor organizations has promised to directly engage with boisterous conservative protesters at Democratic town halls during the August recess. In a memo sent out on Thursday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined the blueprint for how the union conglomerate would...

8:50 AM, Wednesday, April 15, Echo Park, a community adjoining downtown Los Angeles. This is unprecedented. Hence I am suspicious and for good reason as explained below. I am asking that others relate their experiences, especially in Los Angeles. Today, and never before today, all three garbage trucks have completed their rounds by 8:35 AM. Normally the green barrels are picked up first, between 6:30 and 7. Then the black or the blue considerably later -- sometimes after 2 PM. Today, the black barrels were picked up first beginning around 6 AM. This pattern has repeated regularly for as long...

<p>PARIS (March 31) - Angry French workers facing layoffs at a Caterpillar factory detained four of their bosses Tuesday at the U.S. manufacturer's plant in the Alps and refused to let them leave the premises, union representatives said.</p> <p>It is the third time in several weeks that French workers have seized their bosses to protest job losses as a result of the global economic crisis.</p>

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Newspaper Guild members at The Sacramento Bee agreed Friday to take pay cuts of up to 6 percent to save jobs at the 152-year-old paper. Members voted 65 percent to 35 percent to accept the deal, said Ed Fletcher, a reporter who heads the Guild's local at the Bee. Even with the pay cuts, Bee managers plan to cut 34 of the 268 Guild-covered positions in the editorial and advertising departments. Another 19 jobs would have been in jeopardy if the union had rejected the pay cuts. ''I think it was a very difficult decision for...

Here are the remarks (as prepared for delivery) that President Barack Obama spoke via video to the AFL-CIO executive Council in Miami today. At the very end of the speech, Obama made what all of labor hoped and expected: a promise to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, or 'card-check' for short. Here goes:

New York's largest Public Employee Union is AFSCME (American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees). It is one of the affiliated unions of the AFL/CIO. Today, an e-mail marked "urgent" was sent out to member employees urging them to contact their Senators right away to tell them how imperative it is that they vote "YES" on the Obamacratic spending bill. (I'll get to the contents of that e-mail in a moment). However, most interesting was a call to action at the AFSCME website, asking members to keep talk show host Rush Limbaugh from basking in the "satisfaction of sinking...

President Barack Obama warmly welcomed trade union leaders into the White House as he reversed restrictions on organised labour set up by the Bush administration. Promising to "level the playing field" for workers, he offered the most pro-union sentiments heard from a US president for many years. "I do not view the labour movement as part of the problem. To me, it's part of the solution," said Mr Obama, who was accused of being a Socialist by the Republican Right during the election campaign. He was speaking at the launch of a Task Force for Middle Class and Working Families...

In the military it's called "mission creep." That is when you start out doing one thing and end up doing something that has nothing at all to do with what your main function is supposed to be. Unions in New Mexico have just shown mission creep, once again, because, for some reason, labor leaders in that state imagine it is their duty to tell government what sort of taxes should be invented for the citizens of Santa Fe. These so-called labor leaders have decided to urge government to institute a "transfer tax" on houses that they deem "too big" to...

Teachers unions routinely claim that the interests of students are their top priority. So we would be interested to hear how the Pennsylvania affiliate of the National Education Association explains the proliferation of teacher walkouts in the middle of the school year. According to a recent study by the Allegheny Institute, Pennsylvania is once again the worst state in the country for teacher strikes. No less than 42% of all teacher walkouts nationwide occur in the Keystone State, leaving kids sidelined and parents scrambling to juggle work and family, potentially on as little as 48 hours notice required by state...

Signs posted in front and beside mailboxes at a post office location where I dropped off mail tonight. If it was at the headquarters of the unions, that'd be one thing. But in this case, would this be considered federal property? Would it be considered election engineering since this is where people will be dropping off vote-by-mail ballots? Should I bother complaining to the post office and registrar of voters? Should I post another vanity? Enquiring minds yada yada...

Members of the carpenters union in New York City have ruined any chance that authorities there will take their union out of government oversight by beating unconscious William Davenport, a union dissident running for office in the union. After an August 5 candidates forum, the candidate was beaten by members of the carpenters union audience outside a church. Outside a CHURCH! This thuggery along with continued Mob involvement, indictments and convictions on corruption of union members convinced Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. not to release the union from government oversight.... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...