Free Republic

About half a dozen times in the past few weeks I have been taken aside by a 20-something who’s looking for reassurance that the republic will not end. There has never been any campaign like this in the history of the nation, they say, and they know this is true because they’ve read it everywhere. “We have officially hit a new low in political discourse,” declared Stephen Colbert (after Trump’s penis allusion on national television). Next, the Huffington Post warned, “Recent violence at Trump rallies marks a new low for American politics.” Not long after that, the Financial Times said:...

Preliminary Republican Debate numbers from Saturday night: 11.63 million viewers

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits fell more than expected to near a 42-year low last week, pointing to ongoing tightening in the labor market despite the recent slowdown in hiring. The data released on Thursday provides an upbeat check on the health of the labor market after last week's monthly employment report increased doubts the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates by the end of this year. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 263,000 for the week ended Oct. 3, the Labor Department said. That was...

Perhaps it is nostalgia for the heady days of the past, when the media could be counted upon to publish photos of Barack Obama with a halo surrounding his head (Google Obama+Halo for countless examples), and journalists called him a “lightworker” and “like a god.”

The destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stockpile has been completed, Barack Obama has said. The US President welcomed the development, but said Washington would seek to ensure Damascus fulfils all its commitments. "Today we mark an important achievement in our ongoing effort to counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction by eliminating Syria's declared chemical weapons stockpile," he said. He added that the destruction, carried out aboard a US Navy ship on the Mediterranean Sea, sent "a clear message that the use of these abhorrent weapons has consequences and will not be tolerated by the international community".

Listen to the president and one would think that he was in office during the financial crisis that began on September 15, 2008. For the nth time, Obama reminded the nation on 60 Minutes of the financial meltdown he inherited. That is his usual way of suggesting to the American people that they could hardly hope for normal times after six years of his own governance. In truth, Obama entered office on January 20, 2009 — over four months after the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that precipitated a general financial meltdown.

Proposed US Military buildup under a conservative U.S. Administration circa 2012-2024 CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ARTICLE The following plan is based on a major US economic turnaround based on sound Free Market principles geared to US interests, energy independendece, a balanced budget, stabilization of Social Security & Medicare & eliminating unessary and wasteful entitlements & entire federal agencies. It is also based,under a conservative leadership in Washington, on adopting lower corporate and individual income taxes so the revenue to the treasury expands and increases significantly which will fuel the buildup necessary to remain technologically superior by two generations...

Conservatives will be enthusiastic about the 2012 election, but only in a negative way because of grim danger of a second Obama term. Kerry, Gore, and Clinton were crummy politicians, but compared to the quiet malevolence of Obama, those Democrats were Boy Scouts. The problem with conservatives is that since Reagan left office, we have had nothing to vote for; George H. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, and John McCain treated conservatives like barely tolerated stepchildren. Will the Republican presidential campaign this time be as condescending and dull? Mitt Romney, almost unnoticed, has done something no other Republican nominee...

WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum wants to ensure the GOP's policy platform represents conservatives' interests. Newt Gingrich wants help retiring his campaign debt and repairing his reputation.Both Republicans are expected to endorse their former rival Mitt Romney — and signal to their backers to fall in line behind the party's presumptive nominee — but each wants assurances that Romney will deliver for them. Neither is rushing toward the task.Meanwhile, it doesn't appear that Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is going to go that way. Paul is still in the race and hasn't yet recognized Romney as the party's nominee. The tea...

This Tuesday, when President Obama delivers his State of the Union Address, we can count on it to be filled with the same platitudes, anecdotes, false promises, cooked stats and tenuous connection with reality we find in everything the man does. It will be a laundry list of progressive fantasy, couched in populist rhetoric and designed to make middle-class Americans think he has something more than the zero connection and concern for them he has. President Obama doesn’t give a damn about the middle class, jobs, the economy or much of anything that distracts from his progressive agenda. But what...

"But I have to confess, as I thought this morning about the President flanked on one side by Mickey Mouse [laughter], and on the other side by Goofy [laughter], resembling actually a sort of Cabinet picture of the Obama administration [laughter and applause], I just felt better about the idea."

U.S. President Barack Obama unveils a strategy aimed at boosting tourism and travel in front of Cinderella's Castle as a flock of birds flies by, at Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Orlando January 19, 2012.

Team Obama obviously thought the optics of this was extremely important because they had Disney shut down “Main Street USA” so he could give his speech in front of Cinderella Castle.

Many have truly lost interest in the Republican primary and its "candidates." None appear fully acceptable, all have major faults and excess baggage that could easily cause them to lose to an absolutely unre-electable sitting president. While polls are often flawed and many are absolutely biased, I have seen a consistent trend that any particular GOP candidate VS Obama consistently loses, given a choice between "Any Republican" and Obama, the Republican wins handily. What this means is that the majority of voters, about 75% in the GOP in fact, are totally unhappy with the choices offered. It is my considered...

It's hard to know where to begin in dismantling the Republican canard that Democrats control the media. Fox News is the most popular 24-hour news network by a whoosh and a cachung. Rush Limbaugh is the most powerful radio host, and lots of little Limbaughs line up behind him. Sarah Palin is the biggest media-political crossover star. And in an increasingly fragmented Internet, the Drudge Report continues to drives more political traffic than any other website. In italics and bold, to boot. I don't begrudge conservatives this success. It speaks to message discipline and to feeding tasty food to a...

This is a radical break from journalistic convention, I realize, but today I'd like to give credit where it's due — specifically, to President Obama. Quiet as it's kept, he's on a genuine winning streak. It's hard to remember that the inauguration was just 19 months ago. Expectations of the new president were absurdly high. If Obama had done backflips across the Potomac River, when he reached the other side he'd have faced probing questions about why it was taking him so long to cure cancer, solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and usher in an age of universal peace and prosperity....

The new HBO movie "The Special Relationship" -- about the friendship between Bill Clinton and Britain's Tony Blair -- is missing something: a scene about Monica Lewinsky. The scene that showed Bill telling Hillary for the first time about his affair with Monica Lewinsky was shot but cut from the film at the last moment, according to actress Hope Davis, who plays the former First Lady in the movie. "It felt very strange trying to shoot it," Davis told the celebrity-news Web site becksmithhollywood.com. "It was a very uncomfortable feeling."

Thousands of public college students gathered at the Capitol on Monday to protest cutbacks in state aid to colleges and rising collegiate fees. They joined an expanding club of those with stakes in the deficit-ridden state budget who dislike what's happening – furloughed state workers, home health care providers and recipients, doctors who serve the poor, teachers, even farmers whose open space subsidies have been eliminated. Each stakeholder group makes its case with as much drama as it can muster, often with stories of horrendous effects, real or apocryphal. Surely, each argues, money can be found to avoid draconian cutbacks...

Here is video of Fox Business Channel's Stuart Varney today talking about the new U.S. Unemployment numbers, which now stands at 9.7%. Varney said Vice-President Biden's statement yesterday, that the Obama Stimulus Plan has "created or saved 750,000 job," is "fantasy land." Varney said at the best, Biden is "spinning," and at the worst he is speaking "economic nonsense" and is "misleading people." Varney cracked that maybe Van Jones has created all those jobs - "the wildly successful "Green Jobs Czar." . . . . (Watch Video)

This article was sent in by Paul Stanner an English teacher over in China. Please give his site a visit here. Who Has Queen Isabella's Jewels? By Paul Stanner I have a question for you all to ponder today. First however I will provide a little background information.