Free Republic

A Cape Girardeau police officer got more than he bargained for when he answered a call about shots fired. What he found when he arrived was a large street fight. As you can see, when he went to arrest one suspect a woman approaches the officer. He pushed her away and when she came back again swinging, the officer punched her. The Cape Girardeau Police Chief stands by what the officer did saying there's always a fear that a person will go for the officer's weapon. "Of course the major fear is that person may try to go for the...

Yes we can? Barack Obama wasn't sure at first. The President initially blanched when his now-famous campaign slogan was first introduced by political guru David Axelrod during the 2004 Illinois Senate race, a new book reports. "I don't like it. Come on," Obama was quoted as saying in "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," by author Christopher Andersen. Obama felt the catch phrase was "childish" and "corny," and even asked his staff to find something else - until his wife, Michelle, convinced him otherwise, the book reports. "It will work," she said, swaying the future President. "Trust me."...

Japan's Democratic Party has won a resounding general election victory, surpassing the 241 seats required for a majority less than two-and-a-half hours after polling stations closed. The outgoing Liberal Democratic Party had just 57 of the 480 seats being contested and Taro Aso, the prime minister, said he would resign as party leader to take responsibility for the debacle. Photographers are pictured in front of posters of Democratic Party politicians "The result of the election is very severe," he said in a press conference in Tokyo. "I believe this is the judgement of the public and we have to accept...

Apparently there have been some 'Snake-Oil' salespersons selling Jesus as a cure-all. For instance I am acquainted with two individuals who profess to be Christians. One is a confessed thief and the other a habitual liar (people pleaser). These two expect God to 'fix' them. So if God chose to take on that responsibility then the next morning the thief wakes and reaches up to scratch his nose only to discover his hands are missing and the liar is unable to speak as his tongue is missing. I don't know anything but I'm pretty sure we're still responsible for our...

>-snip-< What a disaster this health-care debate is. It strains, stresses and pierces, it unnecessarily agitates and is doomed to be the cause of further agitation. Who doubts the final bill will be something between a pig in a poke and three-card Monte? Which is too bad, because our health-care system actually needs to be made better. *** There are smart and experienced people who say whatever the mess right now, the president will get a bill of some sort because he has the brute numeric majority. A rising number say no, this thing has roused such ire he won't...

When George W. Bush did town halls like that—full of people who'd applaud if he said tomorrow we bring democracy to Saturn—it was considered a mark of manipulation and insecurity. The first question was from a Democratic state representative from Dover named Peter Schmidt. He began, "One of the things you've been doing in your campaign to change the situation is you've been striving for bipartisanship." "Right," the president purred. They were really holding his feet to the fire. "My question is," Mr. Schmidt continued, "if the Republicans actively refuse to participate in a reasonable way with reasonable proposals, isn't...

Don't strain the system. Don't add to the national stress level. Don't pierce when you can envelop. Don't show even understandable indignation when you can show legitimate regard. Realize that the ties that bind still bind but have grown dryer and more worn with time. They need to be strengthened, not strained. Govern knowing we are a big, strong, mighty nation, a colossus that is, however, like all highly complex, highly wired organisms, fragile, even at places quite delicate. Don't overburden or overexcite the system. America used to have fringes, one over here and the other over there. The fringes...

In the political paraphernalia department, "Yes, we can" is becoming "No, he can't." Anti-Obama memorabilia - from T-shirts to bumper stickers to buttons - is increasingly emerging in the marketplace as the president's economic and health care policies polarize supporters and detractors. While "Mama for Obama" was a popular slogan during the 2008 election cycle, that design has been retooled with angry and fickle disenchantment: "To the Mama for Obama - thanks for the tax hike." The "Audacity of Hope," the title of Mr. Obama's popular book, has been replaced by the "Audacity of Hype." "It really started peaking about...

This was the biggest 30 minutes of complete propaganda known to man, how bout that first question from the girl? Those mean signs outside? good grief....

PORTSMOUTH — Having spent four years living with England's government-run health care system, longtime Republican Dave Best says he isn't sold on President Barack Obama's plan for reform. However, he's willing to listen. Best, 57, of Bow was among the hundreds who traveled to Portsmouth High School on Monday to pick up their tickets for today's "Town Hall" forum, where Obama will pitch his plan during a visit to the Port City. Organizers are expecting large crowds both inside and outside the high school, which will play host to a national debate that has some pushing for reform and many...

Is anyone surprised ?

Excerpted from Yes We Did! An inside look at how social media built the Obama brand (New Riders) Obama's official social network, my.barackobama.com, was at the heart of the campaign’s new media strategy. Affectionately referred to internally as MyBO, the site allowed users to create events, exchange information, raise funds, and connect with voters in their area. MyBO was the digital home base from which the campaign could mobilize its army of supporters. Creating an account required an email address and a password. Users didn’t even have to confirm their email address. This was done to make the sign-up process...

WASHINGTON — Unemployment topped 10 percent in 15 states and the District of Columbia last month, according to federal data released Friday. The rate in Michigan surpassed 15 percent, the first time any state hit that mark since 1984. The Federal Reserve this week projected that the national unemployment rate, currently at a 26-year high of 9.5 percent, will pass 10 percent by the end of the year. Most Fed policymakers said it could take "five or six years" for the economy and the labor market to get back on a path of long-term health. To get there, consumers must...

COLUMBUS — Ohio’s unemployment rate jumped to 11.1 percent in June, up from 10.8 percent in May and the first time in nearly 26 years that the rate has topped 11 percent. The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services released the rate on Friday, July 17. “Ohio’s labor market continued to weaken in June,” Douglas Lumpkin, ODJFS director, said in a press release. “Significant job losses in both the goods-producing and service-providing industries led to an increase in the unemployment rate to 11 .1 percent. The state’s nonfarm wage and salary employment decreased 33,000 over the month, from 5,133,200...

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 33% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-six percent (36%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –3. Those figures reflect the highest level of strong disapproval measured to date and the lowest level recorded for the overall

As President Obama's Supreme Court nominee comes under heavy fire for allegedly being a "racist," Judge Sonia Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza, a group that's promoted driver's licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs, and no immigration law enforcement by local and state police. According the American Bar Association, Sotomayor is a member of the NCLR, which bills itself as the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the U.S. Meaning "the Race," La Raza also has connections to groups that advocate the separation of several southwestern states from the rest...

The moment I first heard my co-blogger Melissa Clouthier use the phrase "Party of Yes," I knew a column would eventually come out of it because that phrase so perfectly describes today's Democratic Party. No matter how bad the idea, the Democrats are willing to say, "yes, yes, yes" and throw a few billion dollars at it. That has already led to a series of disasters in the early days of the Obama Administration. The Democrats have said "yes" to taking over the auto industry: Welcome to "Government Motors," where Barack Obama is the Super-CEO and the union now owns...

snip Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Over the past decade, racial groups have become more polarized, not less. A simple example will suffice. A personal friend, a white man who teaches at an inner-city school in Los Angeles County with an almost entirely Hispanic population, polled his students shortly before the 2008 election regarding their parents' presidential preferences. Every hand in the classroom went up for Obama. After class, my friend approached one of the students. "Why are your parents voting for Obama?” he asked a 10-year-old Hispanic girl. She answered him in four words: "Because he's not...

South Bend, IN (LifeNews.com) -- Now that the University of Notre Dame has chosen to honor pro-abortion President Barack Obama, the fallout appears likely to begin. One key Catholic writer says Notre Dame will become the symbol of pro-life Catholic dissent following the Obama scandal.Notre Dame was deluged with opposition as soon as the announcement reached the public that it would not only invite Obama to give its commencement speech but bestow upon him an honorary degree.Its president, Father John Jenkins, as Deal Hudson notes in a new editorial, "defended the choice with arguments that should make a freshman...

Barack Obama's offer of a hand of friendship to Iran after 30 years of hostility may have met with a sceptical public response from Tehran. But now a rapprochement of sorts may be under way amid evidence thatthe US president's can-do electioneering tactics have struck a chord with his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Obama's signature campaign slogan, Yes We Can, has been replicated by the Iranian president in a promotional video issued for Iran's presidential poll on 12 June, when Ahmadinejad is seeking re-election. The video features a cover picture of Ahmadinejad wearing his trademark white jacket and pointing to...

Obama’s choice for Treasury secretary disclosed publicly Tuesday that he failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in federal taxes from 2001 to 2004. Senate Democrats tried to brush aside the last-minute complication as a minor bump on an otherwise smooth path to confirmation for Timothy Geithner, who has been president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. After the underpayments were detected, Geithner paid back taxes and interest totaling $43,200.

In my exclusive interview with Barack Obama airing tomorrow on This Week, the president-elect told me that fixing our economy over the long term will require sacrifice from every American and scaling back some of his campaign promises. "Our challenge is going to be identifying what works and putting more money into that, eliminating things that don’t work, and making things that we have more efficient. But I’m not suggesting, George, I want to be realistic here, not everything that we talked about during the campaign are we going to be able to do on the pace we had hoped,"...

Politically active Barack Obama supporters in Michigan have tried to silence criticism of the president-elect on a talk program at a community radio station by cutting its air time, the program host says. Officials with radio station WRHC told WND the dispute involved talk show host Martin Dzuris' coverage of local issues as well as national issues. But Dzuris explained in a lengthy interview with WND he attended at least one meeting where radio station officials discussed specifically how to reduce Dzuris' criticism of Obama, which has linked Obama's statements taken directly from his speeches to Marxism. Dzuris said one...

Obama's Plan to Rejoin the World Communityby Phyllis Schlafly (more by this author) Posted 12/23/2008 ETUpdated 12/23/2008 ET When Candidate Barack Obama declared himself a "citizen of the world" before thousands of cheering German socialists and later pledged to "rejoin the World Community," those weren't just his usual platitudes about "change." Those words sounded the trumpet for his specific and far-reaching globalist agenda. Obama plans to use his presidential power to get the Democratic-majority Senate to ratify a series of treaties that would take us a long way toward global rule over our money, our laws, our military, our...

Having been inspired by reading the President-Elect's biography to her daughter, Letrice Titus personally contacted Obama's publishers for copies of the book for Syracuse students. Some Syracuse students have something new to read in the upcoming school year. "This is really an inspiring story about a mother who [has] read about Obama to her daughter, and then trying to take that experience through the Syracuse City School District," says former City Councilman Mike Atkins. Atkins joined Letrice Titus and Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney at Bellvue and Lincoln middle schools Monday morning. "It's relevant to their lives...it's not often that...

There's nothing like a little Guilt-by-Association Red Meat to bring the anti-Obama crowd back to the comment boards. Hundreds of posts have found their way to various articles on washingtonpost.com and elsewhere about the dramatic arrest yesterday of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich for, among other things, allegedly trying to sell the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Obama. Federal prosecutors said without equivocation that there is no evidence of Obama's involvement in the matter, but the noisy anti-Obama comment crowd stirred from its post-election silence to fire away. Because, as Michael D. Shear and Chris Cillizza wrote, "the conspiracy allegedly dreamed...

A record one in 10 American homeowners with a mortgage were either at least a month behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of September as the source of housing market pressure shifted to the crumbling U.S. economy. The Mortgage Bankers Association said Friday the percentage of loans at least a month overdue or in foreclosure was up from 9.2 percent in the April-June quarter, and up from 7.3 percent a year earlier. Distress in the home loan market started about two years ago as increasing numbers of adjustable-rate loans reset to higher interest rates. But the...

Enough with the Lincoln analogies; Reagan is the president that Barack Obama is most closely modeling himself after. Ronald Reagan inherited stagflation, a defeat abroad and a nation at its nadir in morale. Through the sheer force of his personality as much as his policies, four years later, it was "Morning in America," the theme of his 1984 re-election campaign when he won 49 states. Obama isn't president yet, but his determined calm and orderly transition pace appear to be soothing the financial markets, producing the first sustained gain in stocks since the mid-September meltdown. On Jan. 20, Obama will...

x-Fed Chief to Lead New Economic Panel of Outside Experts Who Will Brief Obama President-elect Barack Obama appointed former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker on Wednesday to be the chairman of a new White House advisory board tasked with helping to lift the nation from recession and stabilize financial markets. University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee, one of Mr. Obama's longest-serving policy advisers, will serve as the board's staff director, along with his duties as a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Members of the panel will be drawn from a cross-section of citizens outside the government,...

A former New York college instructor may proceed with a claim that he was denied tenure because school administrators disapproved of his conservative politics and support for President George W. Bush, not for deficiencies as an educator, a federal judge has ruled. Michael Filozof has presented sufficient evidence of a possible First Amendment violation ... on his free speech claim, Western District Court Judge David G. Larimer has determined. Filozof contends the tenure track he was on as a political science instructor at the Rochester, N.Y., community college was suddenly derailed in 2003, during a period of hot debate among...

Identity politics in the Democratic Party are already presenting challenges to President-elect Barack Obama, who is under pressure to appoint Hispanics and African-Americans to key posts in his administration. Both groups were crucial to Obama’s victory last week over Republican John McCain. Ninety-six percent of African-American voters cast ballots for Obama, while 67 percent of Hispanic voters. Both are now counting on Obama to appoint Hispanic and African-American politicians to his Cabinet as a way of rewarding their support. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Hispanic who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination but later endorsed Obama, should be secretary...

In Sarcelles, a northern suburb, I walked through a crowd of black children yesterday who were arguing about which of them was "le plus Obama" -- the most like Obama. As it has done all over Europe, the election of a US president called Barack Hussein has given a lift to minorities who feel marooned outside the mainstream. This weekend, the imminent arrival in the White House of someone with an African Muslim name has prompted a new campaign for racial integration, supported by Carla Bruni, President Sarkozy's wife. Yazid Zabeg, an Algerian-born millionaire and the JDD Sunday newspaper have...

Clinton faced the same dilemma in November of 1992. So he called a summit that confused everything During CNN’s broadcast of Barack Obama’s first press conference on Friday, a corner of the screen flickered with a live feed of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. As Obama spoke, the Dow average lost more than 100 points. In his brief statement and question session, the president elect of the United States said next to nothing about anything. There were no signs of the Yes We Can positivism of the campaign in his low-key, even halting manner. What little he did say may...

Inspired by Barack Obama, the French first lady and other leading figures say it's high time for France to stamp out racism and shake up a white political and social elite that smacks of colonial times. A manifesto published Sunday urges affirmative action-like policies and other steps to turn French ideals of equality into reality for millions of blacks, Arabs and other alienated minorities. "Our prejudices are insidious," Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, a singer and wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy, said in an interview with the Journal du Dimanche newspaper, which published the manifesto. She said she hoped the "Obama effect" would...

-snip- I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a...

Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation's 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20. "Yes We Can" planning rallies will be at 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. every Tuesday at the downtown McDonald's restaurant, 1100 Kansas Ave., until Jan. 13. The goals are to secure a national holiday in Obama's honor, to organize celebrations around his inauguration and to celebrate the 200th birthday of President Abraham Lincoln, who was born on Feb. 12 1809. At 7:30 a.m. on Inauguration Day, Obama Cake will be served at...

Obama's defeat of the heir apparent in his own party and his victory over the much-vaunted Republican machine is a remarkable achievement that owes a lot to his instinct for marketing When the book is written on this election, it should not be titled "The Making of a President," but "The Marketing of a President." Barack Obama's campaign is a case study in marketing excellence. True, it was always going to be a Democratic year. An unpopular war, an incumbent Republican president with rock bottom approval ratings, and many Republican incumbents retiring from Congress as a result all meant that...

Posted 5 :56 PM ST. LOUIS -- For many people outside of the political world Rahm Emanuel is not a household name, but that is about to change as President-elect Barack Obama has tapped him to be his White House chief of staff. “Rahm is exactly the right person at the right time for that job” said John Lapp who served as executive director under Emanuel in his role as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, (DCCC). “What people don’t understand about him is, yes he is a great political strategist and statistician, but he is also a thoughtful...

Paul Begala refers to Rep. Rahm Emanuel’s style as a “cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache.” His stint as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been notable for his clashes with DNC Chairman Howard Dean over strategy, resources, and the direction of the party. A former aide to President Clinton, he was known as “Rahm-bo” among friend and foe alike. Schooled in the rough and tumble of Chicago politics, he was a senior adviser to Richard Daley’s successful 1989 mayoral bid Friends and enemies agree that the key to Emanuel’s success is his legendary intensity. There’s the...

Liberal Attack Dogs: Rep. Rahm Emanuel and Sen. Charles Schumer July 6, 2006 – The Los Angeles Times’ July 5, 2006 edition featured an article about the tactics used by two powerful Democrats to attack the Bush Administration to regain control of the House or Senate in November. The article describes the behind the scenes work of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), head of the House Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. According to the Times, both men “have deployed tactics reminiscent of the smoke-filled room of yore. They have hand-picked...

Transition: Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to change the partisan tone in Washington. So why did he pick a take-no-prisoners partisan for his chief of staff?The high-level White House selection of fellow Chicagoan Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the sharp-elbowed, foul-mouthed head of the Democrat caucus, doesn't exactly augur well for the kind of noncynical air-freshening Obama voters had hoped for. After Emanuel helped the Democrats win Congress in 2006, he told a gathering of celebrating staffers and campaign workers that Republicans "can go f*** themselves," according to Chicago Tribune reporter Naftali Bendavid in her book, "The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel...

America Serves "When you choose to serve -- whether it's your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood -- you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That's why it's called the American dream." The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation’s challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps,...

History will record this as the night the souls of black folk, living and dead, wept – and laughed, screamed and danced – releasing 400 years of pent up emotion. They were the souls of those whose bodies littered the bottom of the Atlantic, whose families were torn asunder, whose names were erased. They were those who knew the terror of being set upon by men with clubs, of being trapped in a torched house, of dangling at the end of a rough rope. They were the souls of those who knew the humiliation of another person’s spit trailing down...

Right Change turns Obama's "yes we can" slogan on its head. Another good ad.

Some Obama supporters are saying this is a John McCain scheme to make Obama look bad....... LOLOL!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVi4rUzf-0Q As a person who is partly of african american descent, I just want to say the comparisons between MLK and Obama are pathetic.

The Perdido spar will bring production in from three fields—Great White, Silvertip and Tobago—with a production design of 130,000 boe/day. The Shell-operated Perdido Regional Development Spar has arrived in the ultra-deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) and is currently being secured to the seafloor in 7,816 ft (2,382 m) of water, a process that will take about one month. Perdido will be the deepest oil development in the world, the deepest drilling and production platform in the world and have the deepest subsea well in the world to date. Other partners in the joint venture are BP...

Just watched USA mens beach volleyball team (Gibb/Rosenthal) defeat Spain in a close match and after scoring the winning point the camera showed the wife of one of our guys in the stands and the announcer said " and Mrs. (Gibb or Rosenthal) says "yes we can". Actually she just said Yeah or something like that. Didn't catch the name of the announcer.

We have the left rattled and on the run. For proof, consider three developments from late last week. But first, I want to make a special announcement. Many of you are probably following the story of how House Republicans are staging a protest in the House Chamber, demanding that Nancy Pelosi call the House back into session in order to vote on The American Energy Act, an "all of the above" energy strategy that includes more drilling, funding for scientific breakthroughs, as well as common-sense conservation efforts. (More info on that story below.) Tomorrow at 10am, I will meet with...

Two men. One slogan. Equally qualified for office. Barry and Bob. Perfect together.