Free Republic

Two of the greatest bands in comic book history hook up like never before when Josie and the Pussycats come to town to tour with The Archies. However, more than music is made on one starry night outside Archie's home, when there's a kiss that could change Riverdale forever. Is it possible that the pure-hearted, red-haired lead of The Archies is really falling in love with Valerie, the beautiful bassist/songwriter of Josie and the Pussycats? What will happen to Betty and Veronica? "It Starts with a Kiss" is the beginning of a tale to be continued. Don't miss out while...

It’s easy to dismiss Sarah Palin. She’s back on the trail, with the tumbling hair and tumbling thoughts. The queen of the scenic strip mall known as Wasilla now reigns over thrilled subjects thronging to a politically strategic swath of American strip malls. The conservative celebrity clearly hasn’t boned up on anything, except her own endless odyssey of self-discovery. And she still has that Yoda-like syntax. “And I think more of a concern has been not within the campaign the mistakes that were made, not being able to react to the circumstances that those mistakes created in a real positive...

If you thought your boss was tough, try working at the Paradou restaurant. The owner of the Meatpacking District bistro made George Steinbrenner and Donald Trump look like pussycats, when he sent a profanity-laden e-mail memo to his staff demanding they get customers' e-mail addresses or be fired. "WHAT THE F - - - IS WRONG WITH YOU A - -HOLES?!?!?!" wrote Paradou owner Vadim Ponorovsky. "How many times do we have to tell you how important it is that you collect emails. "Everytime we have a slow night and you make no money and you sit there bitching about...

International travel by world leaders is mainly about making symbolic gestures. Nobody expects President Obama to come back from China with major new agreements, on economic policy or anything else. But let’s hope that when the cameras aren’t rolling Mr. Obama and his hosts engage in some frank talk about currency policy. For the problem of international trade imbalances is about to get substantially worse. And there’s a potentially ugly confrontation looming unless China mends its ways. Some background: Most of the world’s major currencies “float” against one another. That is, their relative values move up or down depending on...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- President Obama has been steadfast in his pledge that he won't raise taxes on those making less than $250,000. But that doesn't mean only high-income households will be subject to higher taxes. An increasing number of influential Democrats and fiscal policy experts have signaled publicly that lawmakers will have to get a handle on the deficit sooner rather than later. And they recommend policymakers seriously consider the creation of adding a value-added tax (VAT) on top of the federal income tax. That could mean more money out of everyone's pockets when buying virtually anything - sweaters,...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Starbucks unveiled a brand of instant coffee Tuesday that the high-end chain says "will change the way people drink coffee." The Seattle-based company will begin selling a "ready brew" coffee called Via at all of its U.S. locations in a move designed to tap a growing market for instant coffee. "With a $21 billion global instant coffee business, and instant coffee representing 40% of overall global coffee sales, we believe Starbucks is uniquely positioned to capture a significant share of this market," said Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, in a statement.

ONE of the great battlefields in the war between bicyclists and pedestrians in New York City is the Brooklyn Bridge. Pedestrians think all bicyclists are out-of-control maniacs; bicyclists — the majority, anyway — are just trying to avoid cars and not break a sweat. The stripe painted down the center of the elevated Brooklyn Bridge walkway, to separate bicyclists from pedestrians, has become a line in the sand. We need to erase that line once and for all. There are various reasons for the battle of the Brooklyn Bridge. Brooklyn seems to sprout bike commuters, as do its vaguely do-it-yourself...

If you want to see a FABULOUS time-lapse video of the San Francisco Bay Area, you have got to see this video (you need to have broadband for it to stream properly). I'd recommend you play the video in full-screen mode so you can see the spectacular time-lapse video scenes of the fog rolling in from the west over the San Francisco hills and the lights of the planes landing and taking off from San Francisco International Airport at night.

ACORN has quietly become one of the Big Apple's biggest owners of low- and moderate-income housing, amassing a real-estate empire worth at least $50 million, The Post has learned. New York ACORN and a tangled web of affiliates own or manage nearly 1,500 housing units across three boroughs and draw in an estimated $5.7 million in rents, fees and profits from sales. The properties are controlled by an opaque collection of nonprofits, holding companies and development funds. Many have generic names, like the 385 Palmetto Street Housing Development Fund or the Mutual Housing Association of New York, leaving no clue...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - Filmgoers who have long turned to the local newspaper to find theaters and show times for movies may have to start looking elsewhere as theater chains rethink the value of paper and ink in a digital age. The top two U.S. chains, Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc., have begun in recent months to reduce or eliminate the small-type listings showing the start times for movies at individual theaters. Theaters typically must pay newspapers to print that information. Looking to cut costs, the theater chains are instead directing consumers to their Internet sites or...

O.K., Thursday’s jobs report settles it. We’re going to need a bigger stimulus. But does the president know that? Let’s do the math. Since the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 6 ½ million jobs — and as that grim employment report confirmed, it’s continuing to lose jobs at a rapid pace. Once you take into account the 100,000-plus new jobs that we need each month just to keep up with a growing population, we’re about 8 ½ million jobs in the hole. And the deeper the hole gets, the harder it will be to dig ourselves out. The...

My wife and I were on a crowded 1 train last year when a young red-headed woman turned to the woman seated next to her, who was playing her iPod way too loud. “Hey, mind if I listen?” the redhead said, and without waiting for a response, plucked the woman’s left earbud, placed it in her own ear, and began bobbing her head to the music. The iPod owner looked mortified. The car grew silent save for the blare. I looked at my wife, who had heard me rant about this so many times she knew exactly what I was...

MOSCOW (AP) — Legendary Russian ballerina Ekaterina Maximova, who graced the stage of the Bolshoi Theater for 30 years, died Tuesday. She was 70. The theater said Maximova died at home and no cause of death was immediately determined. She had been working as a ballet coach and was not known to be suffering from ill health. Ballet directors and President Dmitry Medvedev praised Maximova's work as an artist and a teacher of young ballerinas, and mourned her death as a great loss to Russia. Maximova's dancing career at the Bolshoi spanned three decades, from her debut as Masha in...

No thanks to Comcast now charging a totally silly US$63 per month for their Extended Basic cable service, I am looking at switching to satellite TV. My configuration requirement is simple: a two-receiver setup where one receiver will have a built-in DVR, and one receiver will not need it (since it will be in the kitchen). I do not need HDTV support for now. I am down to two different plans: DirecTV's Choice Xtra package and Dish Network's Silver 200 package, using the configuration I mentioned above. I'd like to find out which is the better deal in terms of...

Help. My old 27" CRT TV died and I'm in need of a replacement TV. Any suggestions for a good 32" LCD model that won't burn a hole in my pocket? I'm thinking about getting a VIZIO VO32L 32" TV, where Costco is selling for US$449 (and they have plenty in stock).

After all of the misinformation and dirty lies spread about Obama over the course of the presidential campaign, this is the most shocking I've heard about him: He uses a Zune. This can't be possible. Why? Because, as has been widely reported, Obama, many of his staffers and Joe Biden use a Mac. And well, Zunes don't work on Macs and ... my mind is blown.

The camouflage on the new Prius has come off a little sooner than Toyota had planned. We've known for quite a while that Toyota was going to bring the new Prius to the Detroit auto show next January. And there's been no shortage of spy shots of well-covered prototypes. But the new Prius has gone naked. The fans at priuschat.com posted pix of what was claimed to be redesigned Prius. And guess what? Toyota PR confirms that the photos are legit, although they won't say anything else about them.

Investing in commodities has been a brilliant move in this decade -- so brilliant that the strategy has attracted untold numbers of large and small players, particularly in the last few years. What do you suppose all of their buying has done to the price of oil? Pushed it down? With crude surging above $130 a barrel this week for the first time, a long-simmering issue is threatening to boil over: the role these new investors, often derided as rank speculators, have had in stoking the prices of oil and other commodities. Their standard line has been, "It's not our...

It is one of the greatest films of Hollywood's golden era, a triple Oscar-winning classic with electrifyingly charismatic stars and a script bursting with memorable lines. But now Madonna has stunned the movie industry with plans to remake Casablanca – and this time set it in Iraq. The singer, whose previous film career has been littered with critical and commercial turkeys, is also planning to take the lead role of Ilsa Lund, which originally made a star of Ingrid Bergman.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The final "Harry Potter" book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," will be adapted into two films, Warner Bros. said Wednesday. Titled "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1" and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2," the movies are set to be released in November 2010 and May 2011. They will be shot back-to-back by David Yates, who is directing the adaptation of the sixth novel, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," due in theatres November 21. Steve Kloves, who has written all but one of the "Potter" movies, also is returning...