Free Republic

SkuzzFeed News: All the news that gives you fits

Boy Wonder believes that a private management company will be more reliable and accountable than government-run Amtrak, but the government will be more effective managing healthcare for 350 million Americans.

Re-financing current home and taking new loan on second home. Will never consider Quicken

NYT allows access through message board links.

I've been trying for two weeks, without success, to come up with a humorous angle on this story so bear with me. Yes, my identity was stolen. Yes, the consequences have been relatively minor. Yes, I'm pissed as hell and want to have the guy strung up by his scrotum in a junkyard filled with hungry, snarling Rottweilers. And I would prescribe a more torturous fate for the long line of bureaucrats and political flunkies who could have helped at any point along the line, but chose to do nothing other than suggest that I "pay the two dollars." Well,...

More than $70 billion in wealth left New Jersey between 2004 and 2008 as affluent residents moved elsewhere, according to a report released Wednesday that marks a swift reversal of fortune for a state once considered the nation’s wealthiest. Conducted by the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, the report found wealthy households in New Jersey were leaving for other states — mainly Florida, Pennsylvania and New York — at a faster rate than they were being replaced.

Sent to my Congress Dufus, Carolyn McCarthy, this morning. I just received a message from MoveOn.org asking me to thank you for your efforts on behalf of health care reform. We have already made the decision to relocate after our daughter graduates from high school. Thank you very much for reaffirming our decision. Enshrining the most perverse aspects of the current dysfunctional third-party payment system is not progress. Compelling citizens to engage in private commerce with the corrupt health insurance cartel is tyranny.

The NY Times this morning is running an Op-Ed piece which suggests that our government's policy toward ethanol production has been less than enlightened. Some of us arrived at this conclusion long ago. Georgie Cracks Corn I don't know how many State of the Union Addresses since 1973 have pledged commitment to energy independence, but to quote Jim Ignatowski when he was asked how many different illicit drugs he had ingested in his lifetime, it's "exactly a lot." It was still a surprise, however, when our current President touted ethanol last week citing the sustainability myth as just one of...

Rarely does a single piece of mail cause one's heart to flutter, face to flush and knees to buckle. But, then again, rarely does a piece of mail arrive with the dreaded return address: Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service That's the "Welcome Home" that greeted me this past Tuesday as I dragged myself through the front door after a rough day of earning a living, playing golf and ferrying adolescent infants from one suburban soiree to another. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I owed our esteemed and infallible federal government... $11,589.22! Holy smoke. What did I...

In his landmark book, Future Shock, Alvin Toffler postulated that it was not the nature of change that would cause the downfall of modern civilization, but the speed of change. Poor Alvin. How could he have envisioned the world we inhabit today? On the surface, the pace of modern life is accelerating exponentially. There's never enough time. We're always rushing. A short delay in the daily sprint causes road rage, high blood pressure and hemorrhoids. Poor, poor us. So it was with a combination of curiosity and skepticism that I picked up "In Praise of Slowness" by Carl Honoré. The...

...but here in the Empire State CHOICE is a four-letter word, except in a very narrow context. Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield along with the civil service unions and public policy advocates went in front of our state legislature and LIED, LIED, LIED!Challenged by an aggressive new group of competitors and facing massive market-share erosion most businesses would seek ways to upgrade their offering, improve their service and reduce their costs. But no. Empire Blue Cross and other non-profit insurers went crying to the government. They misrepresented their finances with bogus financial documents. Civil service unions predicted that New Yorkers would...

Nearly thirty years ago, as a Fortune 500 employee, I attended a seminar on health care finance. Newly hired and full of enthusiasm I volunteered for every "extra curricular" I could fit into my schedule. This one was very revealing and ominously prescient. To my great good fortune I arrived in my new position just as the Nixon-era wage and price controls were lapsing so my income increased by about 40% on my starting day. Other effects of the Nixon economic policies were more pernicious and far reaching. Prohibited from raising salaries beyond the government limit, employers sought alternative ways...

In the Dashiell Hammet classic The Maltese Falcon, Casper Gutman discovers that the black bird he has been chasing for nearly two decades is nothing more than a crude fake. Joel Cairo, unable to contain his disappointment cries: "You imbecile. You bloated idiot. You and your stupid attempts to buy it!"Yes. Yes. Crude attempts at gaining what you covet intensely very often result in disappointment. Today, the devotees of Daily Kos and Democratic Underground are consumed by two separate and conflicting desires. The first is retribution. George W. Bush trashed our Constitution, lied us into war and authorized an illegal...

During a conversation on politics with an old friend I offered the hope that all his faith in our new president: "Ain't been in vain fer nuthin'."With that he reared up and replied to my comment by saying: You always ridicule with clever solipsisms."Far be it from me to be solipsistic, so I pointed out that he probably meant solecism. Mistake 1: Never quote Lina Lamont at a New York City cocktail party. They won't know what you're talking about. Mistake 2: Never attempt to correct the tortured misuse of the English language by New York intellectuals who pride themselves...

In the hierarchy of human misfortune, nothing comes close to the tragedy of mothers and fathers attending the funerals of their children. As a Christian I understand that death is the beginning of eternal life in the presence of God, but as much as I try to reconcile faith and fact I still cannot accept a death that occurs out of sequential order. In the past few months I have listened to homilies delivered by sincere, loving and compassionate ministers of God, but still I ache--my heart has a void at its center.

A business colleague once told me that rewriting your life story line-by-line and chapter by chapter is a futile exercise. "If you want a new life," she said, "you have to throw your old life into the fire."A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.

Caroline Kennedy is breaking hearts again. Forced by personal reasons to inform Governor David Paterson that she is unable to serve her state and her country in the Senate, Princess Caroline will now retreat to her Eastside townhouse and suffer in private. Unlike that other paragon of the New York City conspicuous-charity scene, Bernard Madoff, Ms. Kennedy will not be required to wear an electronic ankle bracelet. Her voluntary confinement, however, will be no less unplatable or reflective than Bunko Bernie's. Perhaps, however, now is the time for the rest of us to reflect on how shabbily Her Grace was...

Balancing the demands of shameless and brutal commerce with the impossible dreams of the preservationists, JetBlue has restored a measure of sanity into this cuel and sterile world. JetBlue resisted the temptation to raze Eero Saarinen's iconic Terminal 5 to make way for their new JFK complex. Just as significant, they also pushed back attempts to preserve the site as an obsolete museum piece.

I was confronted by three strands of cultural connective tissue this week which portend the death of artistic expression. No, it has nothing to do with the First Amendment or government suppression. It has everything to do with the tearing down of greatness and the worship of mediocrity by the dominant cultural elite. First, Terminal 5 at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Second, the Zurich Opera's production of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. And third, that gaping hole in the ground where New York's World Trade Center once stood

It's interesting that on the same day that America's new Socialist in Chief will be inaugurated, Turner Classic Movies is featuring The Fountainhead.