Free Republic

We elected you on a promise of hope and change. You've disappointed us. In 2010, we are taking the country back. Blue collar democrats, independents, and conservatives. We love our country. We are proud of our founders. And we will fight to protect our traditions. We don't want your revolution.

Organizers of the conservative Tea Party movement are forging plans to translate the anger that fueled nationwide anti-tax rallies and town hall protests into an electoral force that can boot incumbents in next year's midterm elections. Their targets range from big names like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., to county assessors. The East Bay Freedom Fighters, a Tea Party group based in the Pleasanton area, is already vetting 43 Bay Area candidates, many of them first time office-seekers. Other branches in California are gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would restrict the political...

Palin Derangement Syndrome was on full display Monday evening when HLN's Joy Behar invited the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan on to trash the former Governor of Alaska. At issue fully fifteen months after Sarah Palin was thrust into the limelight as John McCain's running mate was whether or not Trig is actually her son. Behar began the segment: "Sarah Palin may have been coy on the Oprah Show about a possible White House run in 2012. But new poll numbers show she`s a contender. Oy." This evoked laughter from crew members on the set. Behar then introduced her guest, and after...

President Obama is pursuing a "radical" agenda that is putting the economy and national security in peril, talk show host Rush Limbaugh told "Fox News Sunday," giving the young president failing grades across the board and standing by his sustained criticism of the administration. The conservative radio host assailed the administration for its economic stimulus package, health care reform plan and alleged uncertainty over the way forward in Afghanistan. In a wide-ranging interview, he called Obama a "child" driven by his "out-of-this-world ego." And he predicted that Obama, who built a broad-based majority over Republican candidate John McCain a year...

Is the New IRS Wealth Squad Coming for You? Smart Money, Oct. 27, 2009 Being wealthy has its downsides, chief among them the higher risk of an IRS audit. Now, amid the continuing debate over whether the government is doing enough to combat financial fraud, comes news that gives the uber-wealthy – or maybe even the “merely” wealthy – yet another reason to fear Uncle Sam’s attention. In a speech before the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, or AICPA, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman announced the recent formation of a new unit, dubbed Global High Wealth Industry Group, which will focus on the...

Conservatives are taking too much solace in the precipitous drop in Barack Obama's approval ratings, and too many of us are overconfident that his administration is merely a replay of the hapless presidency of Jimmy Carter that was easily swept out in a landslide election. Today's situation is far different, far more conducive to our political adversary's political power, than that which faced Carter. And Obama is an entirely different breed of cat. He's more ruthless, more tactically savvy, and has far more dangerous objectives. A drop in his poll ratings isn't as serious a setback for him as similar...

India's economic expansion slowed in the most recent quarter but the new government and invigorated capital markets prompted some economists to suggest that the country has weathered the worst of the global downturn. In the quarter ended March 31, India's gross domestic product grew 5.8%, compared with 8.6% for the year-ago period. The data come on the heels of increased government spending and a robust performance in several sectors, offsetting a decline in manufacturing. Friday's figures indicate the Indian economy has better withstood the global downturn than most of its neighbors, which are mired in recession or forecasting scant growth...

President Obama’s top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share. The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administration’s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s. The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, is to announce the policy reversal in a speech she will give on Monday before the Center for American Progress,...

This is the chart they don't want you to see: the purchasing power of the dollar over the past 76 years has declined by 94%. And based on current monetary and fiscal policy, we have at least another 94% to go. The only question is whether this will be achieved in 76 months this time. (Click chart to enlarge.)

Over a year ago, Mitt Romney was losing primaries to John McCain, and conservative pundits from Ann Coulter to Rush Limbaugh predicted the end of the GOP – Coulter went as far as promising she would campaign for Hillary Rodham Clinton if McCain became the party's nominee. By November 2008, the GOP had embraced a nominee who had considered switching parties twice, had opposed tax cuts, and had failed to advance an aggressive shift in a foreign policy that left the GOP discredited in an area it had always trumped in. It's not that McCain's willingness to reach across the...

Boehner says Obama's bills makes him 'want to throw up' Kara Rowland (Contact) The top House Republican said Tuesday that the liberal bills being pushed by President Obama and congressional Democrats make him "want to throw up" and that Mr. Obama's first 100 days in office have shown he has "no plan for keeping America safe." Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said in an interview that decisions such as closing Guantanamo Bay prison and releasing classified memos on CIA interrogation techniques reflect a dangerous, "piecemeal approach" to national security. "I'm just looking at some of these tactical moves...

Is this Pres. Obama’s new approach to diplomacy: sending his spokesman out to mock foreign leaders who dare to question his profligate spending, even when those leaders have sacrificed to support US national security policy? Apparently so . . . Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs made the rounds of the morning shows today, and interestingly it was GMA’s Diane Sawyer who asked the toughest questions. She displayed the chart shown in the screencap which demonstrates that PBO is spending, as a percentage of GDP, about 5x as much on his stimulus package as our European allies. When Sawyer quoted Czech Prime...