Free Republic

Below, via Mark J. Perry and Bill Gross, is a chart we've run before. It shows inflation-adjusted newspaper advertising revenue over the past 60 years. Thanks to the precipitous decline in the last ~7 years, the industry is now back to where we it was in 1950. And it's only slightly better off when you factor in online revenue. Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/newspaper-advertising-collapse-2012-9#ixzz26jSCZVzI

Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei reveal the disarray within the struggling Romney campaign: ”Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s top strategist, knew his candidate’s convention speech needed a memorable mix of loft and grace if he was going to bound out of Tampa with an authentic chance to win... So Stevens, bypassing the speechwriting staff at the campaign’s Boston headquarters, assigned the sensitive task of drafting it to Peter Wehner, a veteran of the last three Republican White Houses and one of the party’s smarter wordsmiths. Not a word Wehner wrote was ever spoken. Stevens junked the entire thing, setting off a...

President Obama is cramming for his three prime-time debates with Mitt Romney next month by practicing brief and concise answers, senior campaign strategist David Axelrod told Reuters. A gifted orator, Obama has a tendency to give long, detailed answers that the campaign worries could come across as aloof during a televised debate. In his debate prep with sparring partner John Kerry (D-Mass.), Obama has been working on keeping his answers short after four years when he's rarely had to submit to rapid-fire questions. “He's got to speak shorter, that's all,” Axelrod told Reuters. “He just hasn't had to do that...

[The Seattle Times is doing something highly unusual and irregular by endorsing Referendum 74 (marriage "equality") and then launching an all out social media campaign, called in its Editorial page "The I Do Effort", asking readers to clip out the placard in the Sunday Times, and to "take a photo of you, your partner or your family holding this sign and share it on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #IDo74. You can also email the photo to ido@seattletimes.com."]

<p>One person was killed and dozens of people were injured when anti-American protesters tried to storm the American Consulate in the southern port city of Karachi and clashed for several hours with the police and paramilitary troops on Sunday evening, rescue workers and police officials said.</p>

Anyone following the presidential campaign through the prism of media polls is doing themselves a serious disservice. Virtually every one uses a polling sample that is so heavily-skewed towards Democrats that it distorts the actual state of the campaign. Of course, that is a feature, not a bug of the polls. The polls are specifically designed to drive a narrative that Obama is surging and Romney is struggling. Increasingly, though, the polls are having to go to ridiculous efforts to support this meme. Friday's CBS/New York Times poll, for example, uses a D+13 sample of registered voters. This is absurd....

In a complaint filed Wednesday and settled the same day, Justice claimed that California-based Luther Burbank Savings violated the 1968 Fair Housing Act and 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act by setting a policy that had a "disparate impact" on minorities. Between 2006 and mid-2011, 5.2% of Luther's single-family residential mortgage loans went to African-Americans and Hispanics, compared to an average of 41.7% for other lenders in the area. The complaint doesn't cite evidence of intentional discrimination because there wasn't any.

The Romney election team has decided the most effective course to re-election is through centrist voters. They have chosen to contrast Romney's effectiveness versus the nation's disappointed hopes in Obama. That may be the right approach to win the small handful of swing voters. But that isn't why we will win this election. We will win because conservatives know what is at stake and we know we can't afford to lose. That is why the Tea Party base is going to work their butts off to get out the vote. That is how we took back the House in 2010....

Why isn't the blockbuster trilogy "50 Shades of Grey" just another bosom-busting trashy romance novel? After all, the endless sex scenes should have relegated the books to the erotica section in bookstores. Instead, they have been mainstreamed to an adulating population begging for more. Looking farther into the pedestrian prose of author E.L. James, aka Erika Mitchell Leonard, we find more than just a titillating tome. It's hard to believe that this story ever made it out of the online venue called "fan fiction." In a normal world, the author would have been ostracized by literary critics for her lack...

The weird ecstasy of the media-political complex at the convention in Charlotte last month was the first sign that its attachment to President Obama, always fawning, had become morbid. In spite of the anemic economy and a real unemployment rate above 11 percent, the high priests of pontificating liberalism were giddy with euphoria. The Democrats “put on a nearly flawless convention,” Paul Begala opined, and it was soon all but incontrovertibly established that, come November, the president — beautiful, magical, and lovable as he was — would vanquish his boring opponent. The media savants sympathized with the delirium of Charlotte...

It COULD happen. At least, SOME of the political experts are saying it COULD happen. I think America should be prepared for every sort of political gymnastics conceivable come Tuesday, November 6th, 2012. Battalions of lawyers are set to spring into action if there is a hint that Obama may lose. Planning and preparations for such an eventuality have been in progress since the early days of the Obama Administration. Tying the election up in the courts is the plan. And these people are serious! So what happens if, indeed the US election is tied up in the judicial system...

2009 High 169 2010 High 174 2011 high 184 2012 high 184 2009 Low 157 2010 Low 168 2011 Low 172 2012 Low 176 Record High 185 Record Low 57 17 Sept 12 12 Dec 93

A recent column in National Review Online by James Valvo (“Disinherit the Wind,” September 10), contains numerous errors with regard to the federal wind Production Tax Credit (PTC), the policy driver behind the rapid growth in U.S. wind energy and associated jobs and American manufacturing since 2005. Let’s set the record straight: The PTC is tax relief that only rewards results and doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime. It pays for itself, through federal, state, and local taxes paid by the expanded industry, including wind-farm operators and their employees. As Republican strategist Karl Rove said recently, “It is a market mechanism,...

A sect of Gnostic Ebionites, whose religion was a wild medley of heathen superstitions and Christian doctrines with Judaism. Hippolytus (Philosophumena, IX, 13-17) tells us that under Callistus (217-222) a cunning individual called Alcibiades, a native of Apamea in Syria, came to Rome, bringing a book which he said had been received from Parthia by a just man named Elchasai (’Elchasaí; but Epiphanius has ’Elksaí and ’Elkessaîoi; Methodius, ’Elkesaîos, and Origen, ’Elkesaïtaí). The contents of the book had been revealed by an angel ninety-six miles high, sixteen miles broad, and twenty-four across the shoulders, whose footprints were fourteen miles long...

Contra Dick Morris, Mitt Romney is not winning this election. At least Mitt Romney is not winning the election right now. Conservatives are obsessing over every poll, the turn out models used, and the media bias that is on ful display. Yes, some of the polling models seem screwy, though we all forget the pollsters apply a secret sauce known only to them on top. Yes, reporters are fully beclowning themselves to get their god-king re-elected. But while we may be focused there, the fact is the Romney campaign isn’t functioning well. Lucky for you and me the election is...

.......The most detailed account appears to be an article titled “What happened that night in Abbottabad” in the Aug. 8, 2011,issue of the New Yorker. Citing authorized interviews,it offers direct quotes from Ben Rhodes,a deputy national security adviser for strategic communications;Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism adviser,John Brennan;and Marine Gen. James Cartwright,then-Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman. It also includes statements from a “senior Obama adviser.” The article’s sequence of events closely mirror what Mr. Bissonnette wrote:The Black Hawk helicopters’ route,how the SEALs entered the compound, how they moved from room to room,the weapons used,how security was maintained around the perimeter,the killing itself,...

According to the Salisbury Post: _________________________________________ For several decades one economist has been tracking the relationship between the economy and presidential elections. His name is Ray Fair, of Yale University, and his updated book on this work, simply titled “Predicting Presidential Elections,” just hit the bookstands. Now Fair doesn’t claim that only economics matters to how we vote. But he does argue that economics is very, very important, and he has put his model of presidential election predictions to the test for almost of century of contests. Before I tell you how good Fair’s predictions have been, let’s see what...

Word For The Day, Monday, 9/17/12 In order that we might all raise the level of discourse and expand our language abilities, here is the daily post of "Word for the Day". persiflage; noun . light, bantering talk or writing. 2. a frivolous or flippant style of treating a subject. Etymology: 1757, from Fr. persiflage, from persifler "to banter," from L. per- "through" + Fr. siffler "to whistle, hiss," from collateral form of L. sibilare "to hiss," possibly of imitative origin. Rules: Everyone must leave a post using the Word for the Day in a sentence. The sentence must, in...

A woman was awarded Social Security disability benefits because of "crippling hand pain" from carpel tunnel syndrome, but still managed to work as a bartender. A judge coached a disability applicant to lie about paying rent to boost his payments from the government. ‘I think you could flip a coin for anybody who came before the Social Security commission for disability and get it right just as often as the ALJs do, - Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.’ A man with history of cocaine addiction was approved for disability because of back pain and headaches, which he claimed could be controlled...

Protesters plan to take to the streets of New York City to mark the first anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement. After a weekend of events in Manhattan —and multiple arrests —demonstrators intend to gather in spots across lower Manhattan on Monday to disrupt the start of the workday. The groups, which meet at 7 a.m., will organize around issues that appeal to the concerns of protester. There will be zones for debt, education, environment and the 99 percent. Once people are assembled, the groups will wind their way towards the stock exchange where they expect to form the...