Free Republic

On Thursday's Morning Joe, Scarborough mocked the masculinity of Republicans, while by inference boasting of his own machismo. [snip] He then turned to Mark Meadows, who has been described as writing "fake news" reports in his new book where he claimed that former President Trump had tested positive for Covid prior to his first debate with then-candidate Joe Biden. That, in turn, led a smirking Scarborough to do a cutesy little limbo with words: "These guys put their masculinity in a lockbox for Donald Trump. There is another body part: I'd like to use it. Rush Limbaugh used it. I...

MSNBC's Chris Matthews ranted on Thursday's Hardball that "it's a ridiculous" to hold the Obama administration culpable for the lack of security around the Benghazi compound during the September, 2012 attacks. "But the idea that somebody else should have been covering for him [Ambassador Chris Stevens], that someone else should have the army there waiting to defend him, I think it's a little ridiculous," Matthews insisted. "How would the President even know he [Stevens] was going on that trip out there to Benghazi?

While discussing the contentious confirmation hearings for defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel, things got a bit heated on Sunday's "Meet The Press" when Sen. John McCain referred to the lack of information from the White House surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks in Benghazi as a "massive cover-up." "There are so many answers we don't know," McCain told host David Gregory. "We've had two movies about getting bin Laden and we don't even know who the people were who were evacuated from the consulate the day after the [Benghazi] attack. So there are many, many questions. So we've had a...

In the cover for a 1991 booklet, President Obama is billed as ‘the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, (who) was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.’ ‘It is evidence – not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.’ President Obama released his birth certificate to the public last April. He said during a press briefing at the time that he was ‘puzzled at the degree to which this thing just keeps going on.’ He said: ‘We’ve had every official in Hawaii, Democrat...

I am making public the letter that I wrote to Senator Grassley (Feb. 23, 2011) regarding circumstances that led to my firing after 2.5 months by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), particularly my writing about mortgage fraud and its roots in mortgage securitization that CBO sought to deny was a problem. I was repeatedly pressured by the CBO Assistant Director, Deborah Lucas… to not write nor discuss issues in the banking sector and mortgage markets that might suggest weakness in these sectors and their consequences on the economy and households... …Issues at the heart of the foreclosure problems pertain to...

Via POLITICO's Reid Epstein, NBC News and Tom Brokaw are loudly objecting to the Mitt Romney campaign's use of footage from the 1990s in an ad blasting Newt Gingrich over his House ethics charges. Brokaw, whose statement noted he was speaking on his behalf, said, "I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad. I do no want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign." "The NBC Legal Department has written a letter to the campaign asking for the removal of all NBC News material from their campaign...

On Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC, as guest Rick Santorum criticized President Obama for not supporting a democracy movement in Iran that might have weakened the anti-America radical Muslim government of Tehran, but, by contrast, supported a democracy movement in Egypt directed against a pro-America government - which resulted in an election that recently handed more power in Cairo to radical Muslims - host David Gregory accused the GOP presidential candidate of being "patently contradictory." As he moved into this foreign policy portion of the interview, Gregory brought up a recent speech in which Santorum accused President Obama of

NBC/WSJ poll: Romney Struggles With Primary Voters, Gingrich With General Electorate By Mark Murray, Deputy Political Director, NBC News WASHINGTON - Exactly three weeks until the first Republican presidential nominating contest in Iowa, front-runners Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have two different challenges, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Romney faces a challenge with the Republican primary electorate, trailing Gingrich nationally by 17 percentage points as nearly two-thirds of Republicans view him as either liberal or moderate. Gingrich, meanwhile, faces a challenge with the general electorate, as half of all voters say they wouldn’t vote for him...

So far the sum total of the times that Operation Fast & Furious has been mentioned on NBC is exactly ONE time and that was when it briefly mentioned in passing on Dateline NBC. Even though this scandal has been much discussed on the Web and covered in detail on CBS by Sharyl Attkinson, Brian Williams has yet to even mention this scandal once. However, there might come a point where even Brian Williams' virgin lips will be forced to be "deflowered" by uttering the taboo words "Fast & Furious." Therefore let us have a Brian Williams Fast & Furious...

Embattled government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were under fire again Thursday as the House Committee on Financial Services grilled leaders on "lavish" spending and executive pay. This after the government mortgage giants both posted huge losses last quarter and have appealed to the Treasury Department for more funds—almost $14 billion between them—to shore up their shaky balance sheets. With a hefty dose of indignation, Texas Republican Rep. Randy Neugebauer railed on Fannie Mae chief Michael Williams about more than $5 million budgeted for "meals and social activities" for employees—wondering why a taxpayer-funded organization in major financial trouble...

Top executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Wednesday defended their companies' pay practices which have drawn opposition after it was disclosed the government-controlled firms were paying out nearly $13 million in executive bonuses. Michael Williams, chief executive of Fannie Mae, and Charles Haldeman, Freddie Mac's chief executive, both argued the compensation structures at the mortgage finance firms were warranted to retain and attract qualified staff. A bill to block the pay packages was approved by the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday in a 52-4 vote. The full House must still vote on the measure. A similar bill...

Mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac received the biggest federal bailout of the financial crisis. And nearly $100 million of those tax dollars went to lucrative pay packages for top executives, filings show. The top five executives at Fannie Mae received $33.3 million in 2009 and 2010, while the top five at Freddie Mac received $28.1 million. And each company has set pay targets of as much as $17 million for its top managers for 2011. That's a total of $95.4 million, which will essentially be coming from taxpayers, who have been keeping the mortgage finance giants alive...

Fannie Mae taps $7.8 billion from Treasury, loss widens Photo 6:42pm EST WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fannie Mae, the biggest source of money for U.S. home loans, on Tuesday said it needed a further $7.8 billion in federal aid to stay afloat as a shaky housing market widened its third-quarter loss to $5.1 billion. Fannie Mae also attributed the deeper cash drain to losses on derivatives that are used to hedge the firm's exposure to swings in interest rates and expenses related to home loans made prior to the 2008 financial collapse. In the year-earlier quarter it had a loss of...

Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it lost $4.4 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the July-September quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25 a share, in the same quarter of 2010. This quarter's $6 billion request from taxpayers is the largest since April 2010.

The Obama administration’s efforts to fix the housing crisis may have fallen well short of helping millions of distressed mortgage holders, but they have led to seven-figure paydays for some top executives at troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-sponsored corporations last year met modest performance targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of foreclosure. The executives got the bonuses about two years after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly $170 billion in...

According to CNBC, General Motors has ramped up its lobbying efforts to the tune of $3.58 million in the first quarter of 2011. This is nearly triple the $1.36 million it spent in the first quarter of the prior year. It is also over double the $1.67 million spent by non-bailed out Ford in the same quarter. The $50 billion that taxpayers gave to bail out GM is now partially being distributed back to President Obama, Congress and a variety of agencies in an effort by GM to, well, receive more taxpayer money.One of the requests made by GM lobbyists...

(CNSNews.com) – NBC apologized for omitting the words “under God” and “indivisible” from the Pledge of Allegiance during Sunday’s U.S. Open, but the incident has touched off calls for NBC to hold those responsible for the omission accountable. During the opening broadcast of the U.S. Open, NBC showed a montage that included children reciting the pledge, but the words “under God” and “indivisible” were omitted twice. The network received immediate backlash about the incident through social media, including tweets calling for a boycott of NBC. “We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago, and when...

Listen to the pledge of allegiance that runs alongside the patriotic images, and later to the one that overlays video of previous U.S. Open winners: (VIDEO)

As Noel Sheppard reported earlier, in the show-opening feature of its coverage of the final round of the US Open golf championship today, NBC--twice--edited out the words "under God" from its clip of school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Clearly many Americans were offended and let NBC know about it. Because later in the broadcast, one of the announcers issued an apology. But the network simply compounded one omission with another. The apology spoke of "a portion of the Pledge" being edited out--but never mentioned that the omitted words were "under God." View video here.

With data showing that the housing market has gone into reverse, another of Obama’s blue ribbon panels is about to report to the president on ways to get the U.S. economy going. Heading up the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is corporate welfare queen GE’s Jeffery Immelt.Expect, then, Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness headed by Immelt to recommend more of the top-down central planning where Big Business, Big Labor and Big Government connive to divide up the jobs pie at the expense of the rest of us, the little guys. The program will kind of be like Obamacare,...