Free Republic

Up to last year, most Americans believed that Jimmy Carter was the worst President in American history. But, right now, Americans are more fearful and more uncertain about the future of their country, than they were during the years that Carter was President (1977 - 1981). Obama has not even completed a year in office, yet the country is on the verge of economic collapse. Does anyone believe that America can afford to fight and win a war with Iran? People may complain that tax rates were higher in the Carter years, but at least the financial burden for government...

Edén Pastora threatened to attack Honduras According to the former military, the Honduran conflict could only be resolved by guns. 18.07.09 - Updated: 18.07.09 06:56 pm - Writing: redaccion@elheraldo.hn Tegucigalpa, Honduras . Former Nicaraguan guerrilla Eden Pastora, threatened to take up arms if there is no agreement in Costa Rica on the return of Manuel Zelaya as president. Pastora, a former Sandinista commander, is known for having led the command that took the National Palace, in the late 70s, during the Somoza dictatorship. See the biography of Eden Pastora According to El Universal of Venezuela, "Commander Zero," he told the...

August 14, 2005 -- LONDON — The $21.3 billion United Nations oil-for-food scandal has now widened to include the brother of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Kobina Annan, the Ghanaian ambassador to Morocco, is said by investigators to be "connected" to an African businessman at the center of the scandal. The probe into Kobina's dealings are at an early stage and he has not been interviewed. However, investigators are understood to suspect that Michael Wilson, an African businessman, and Kobina had a business relationship at the time of the scandal. A source close to the investigation said: "We believe Kobina Annan...

A rant from the WARROOM with Quinn and Rose Rant by Jim Quinn (Transcript by Neil E. Wright. Any errors are mine. I have added emphasis where I think it is appropriate.) "I want to talk more about the president's plan for the economy which will be unveiled tomorrow night. And as I've said a couple of times in this hour, I'm convinced now that its not stupidity. That its not just bold ideology. I'm convinced now that there is a global agenda to destroy the economy of the United States of America.And the reason? Very simple. You cannot establish...

A number of people have written asking if I have anything to say about the now-famous 1970's party pics of our President-Elect, namely: The one word answer is "no." The thousand-word explanation is:  < -- SNIP -- >

The "Musicians Who Turn 50", "Musicians Who Turn 60", "Favorite Drummer" and "Favorite Guitarist" were such hit threads on FR, I've decided to do this one. Who is your favorite SONGWRITING DUO? We all know that Lennon-McCartney were amazing together and possibly the best songwriting duo ever. They might be mentioned several times on this thread. If you choose John & Paul, be specific about which song and lyric(s).

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Vinny Appice, Anita Baker, Jello Biafra, Andrea Bocelli, Simon LeBon, Kate Bush, Belinda Carlisle, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Shaun Cassidy, Darby Crash, Randy DeBarge, Bruce Dickinson, Thomas Dolby, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Siobhan Fahey, Neil Finn, Bela Fleck, Martin Fry, Lisa Germano, Grandmaster Flash, Jools Holland, Ice-T, Alan Jackson, Michael Jackson, Tony James, Joan Jett, Al Jourgensen, Nik Kershaw, Sammy Kershaw, Limahl, Madonna, Bird McIntyre, Mike Mills, Thurston Moore, Alannah Miles, Gary Numan, Michael Penn, Vicki Peterson, Prince, Stacey Q, Will Sergeant, Nikki Sixx, David Sylvian, Toyah, Tanya Tucker, Paul Weller, Jane Wiedlin, Jah Wobble.

Musicians Ozzy Osbourne, Stevie Nicks, Ted Nugent, Steve Winwood, Robert Plant, Kenny Loggins, Glenn Frey, Alice Cooper, Tony Iommi, Chris Squire, James Taylor, Todd Rundgren, Jackson Browne, Olivia Newton-John, Donna Summer, John Bonham (R.I.P.) & Rick James (R.I.P.)

A'Keiba Burrell - daughter of rapper MC Hammer. Landon Brown - eldest son of R&B singer Bobby Brown. Lara Johnston -daughter of Doobie Brothers' singer Tom Johnston. Chloe Lattanzi - daughter of Olivia Newton-John. Crosby Loggins - son of singer Kenny Loggins. Jesse Money -daughter of singer Eddie Money. Jesse Blaze Snider - son of Dee Snider. Albert J. Brown IV - son of R&B singer Al B. Sure. Lucy Walsh - daughter of legendary guitarist Joe Walsh.

It’s Baaack! by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 22, 2007 Maybe they should try mirrors. Like mythical vampires, 70s-style sex education keeps coming back to Maryland public schools no matter how many times parents protest. “A new sex education curriculum will proceed as planned in Montgomery County public schools,” the Associated Press reported recently. “Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge William Rowan has denied a request from advocacy groups to block schools from teaching the new lessons in middle and high schools this fall.”

Here's what my Internet correspondent reminded me of (and if you see it on the Internet, it must be so): "According to today's regulators and bureaucrats, those of us who were kids in the '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s probably shouldn't have survived. Our mothers put us in cribs covered with bright-colored lead-based paint. "There were no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets, and when we rode our bicycles into traffic (bike paths were unheard of), we had no helmets. If we didn't feel like pumping a bike up the hills, we could always hitch a ride with...

Many of you may have seen the following reflection many, many times. I had not. It brought back many pleasant memories of growing up "American." So, for those who have not read it, I share it with a whimsically nostalgic wink and smile: TO ALL THE KID S WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!! First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our...

HOW DID WE SURVIVE? Looking back, it's hard to believe that we have lived as long as we have: As children we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pickup truck on a warm day was always aspecial treat. Our baby cribs were painted with bright colored lead based paint, we oftenchewed on the crib, ingesting the paint. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors, or cabinets, When we rode our bikes we had no helmets. We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle....

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's !! First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts...

Sheik Jamal Said stood before the packed mosque and worked the crowd like an auctioneer. Speaking Arabic, the prayer leader asked for a donation of $10,000. No one responded. He asked for $5,000, and three men raised their hands. < SNIP> The recipient of the worshipers' generosity was Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist accused by the U.S. government of aiding terrorists. And the prayer leader's passionate appeal is a reflection of the ascendancy of Muslim hard-liners at the mosque, one of the most outspoken and embattled in the U.S. The mosque did not become this way without a struggle. Relying...

Former President Carter and his vice president, Walter Mondale, have joined forces to give verisimilitude to Carter's son, Jack's "back to the seventies" campaign theme. Jack Carter is seeking to unseat Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign. The Carter-Mondale campaign event took place in Minnesota as a precautionary measure. It is duck season in Nevada and there were fears that the speeches given by Carter and Mondale might be misunderstood by trigger-happy duck hunters. "My dad and Walter are treasured reminders of the happy days of 1970s America," Jack Carter said. "Those were humbler times for Americans. We shared shortages at...

We Three Kongs by Edward Hudgins The Objectivist center & The Atlas Society If art holds a mirror to reality, the original 1933 King Kong, the 1976 remake and the latest version by Peter Jackson, show a culture that swung from a romantic optimism to cynicism and now perhaps is returning to a healthier sense of life. The original Kong very much reflected the values of its maker, Merian C. Cooper. As a six-year old a book his uncle gave him on “Adventures in Equatorial Africa” inspired Cooper’s imagination with tales of the jungle and strange animals, including gorillas. He...

<p>September 17, 2002 -- NEW Jersey voters already concerned about Sen. Robert Torricelli's low ethical threshold now learn that he's been a paid shill for a group the government identifies as a terrorist organization. Called on this by his Republican opponent, Douglas Forrester, in a debate Thursday, Torricelli said the group had been pulled from the State Department's global terror list and given a clean bill of health. Not true.</p>

Asking freepers for advice: 1970s & cars... what's it mean? I'm researching for an article that will be the final of a series of four on "Motoring in Tough Times," on automobiles and economic trouble. We started with WWI and the 1920 depression, went from there to the 1930s, on to WWII & its aftermath, and now heading into the 1970s. The articles are being published by the best automotive and automotive history magazine out there, a hard-bound quarterly, which you will know if you know it. I go to Freepers for advice because the 1970s marks such a complicated,...

Former British PM Sir Edward Heath Dies By MATT MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS LONDON (AP) - Sir Edward Heath, the prime minister who led England into what is now the European Union but lost the Conservative Party leadership to Margaret Thatcher, died Sunday. He was 89. Heath, who governed England from 1970-1974, died at his home in the southern cathedral city of Salisbury. A carpenter's son who broke the tradition of blue bloods leading the British Conservative Party, he was a born politician whose major achievement was to negotiate Britain's 1973 entry into the European Community. The entry into what became...

For the major media, Watergate was the "good war," in which purely heroic reporters brought down the thoroughly villainous Richard Nixon. So the belated revelation that W. Mark Felt was Deep Throat is being cheered by the press establishment - even if those cheers sound a bit like last gasps. Not surprisingly, The Washington Post ran seven self-back-patting articles yesterday, including two on the front page. But others in the Old Media joined in, too: Felt-is-"Throat" led all three nightly broadcast news shows and filled up countless other news holes. For the mostly liberal MSM - mainstream media - the...

LONDON (Reuters) - The two-week dollar rally ran out of steam in European trade on Wednesday as investors awaited U.S. consumer inflation data which could reinforce expectations that U.S. interest rates are set to rise steadily. Earlier during the session, the greenback hit seven-month highs against an index of currencies. Investors were caught off guard after the Hong Kong Monetary Authority said it would tweak the territory's currency peg to fend off upward pressure on the Hong Kong dollar from speculation over possible revaluation of the Chinese yuan. The HKMA said it would refine the operation of its exchange rate...

The emotions this movement inspired coincided with the one deeply moral political phenomenon that postwar America has experienced--Martin Luther King's civil-rights movement. The Rev. King's multiracial civil-rights marches and their role in overturning de jure and de facto segregation in the U.S. were a political and moral achievement. In retrospect, it's clear that the moral clarity of the early civil-rights movement was a political epiphany for many white liberals. Some have since returned to traditional, private lives; others have become neoconservatives. But many active liberals carried along their newly found moral certitude and quasi-religious fervor into nearly every major public-policy...

In a case that has tormented the St. Paul Police Department for 34 years, two men were arrested Friday in the May 22, 1970, ambush murder of police officer James Sackett as he responded to a call of a woman giving birth in the Summit-University area. The FBI Fugitive Task Force and Minneapolis police arrested Larry Larue Clark, 53, in Minneapolis and booked into the Ramsey County jail pursuant to a sealed indictment, said St. Paul police spokesman Paul Schnell. Authorities arrested Ronald Reed, 54, at about 9 p.m. in Chicago. He was being held in Illinois, Schnell said. Sackett's...

In the most recent issue of First Things, there is an article about the Democratic Party's support for abortion and why this is hurting the party.

<p>A number of extremists with ties to the 1970s radical Weather Underground have recently been released from prison and are in New York preparing to wreak havoc during the Republican National Convention, The Post has learned.</p> <p>A top-level source with extensive knowledge of police plans wouldn't disclose the names of the aging rabble-rousers but said a handful of them are already here and will play a behind-the-scenes role in attempting to disrupt the GOP gala.</p>

Khaled Al-Hariri for The New York TImes Syria's fate is to see perfectly running vintage American cars everywhere. A 1959 Cadillac Eldorado in the Old City in Damascus. Because Syria imposes a triple duty on new cars, a new Cadillac costs $150,000. DAMASCUS, Syria, Feb. 10 — Do you like America? "No," said Majed Aboud, 47, leaving not an inch for doubt. "Because of Bush, they are destroying the world." So what about all these great cars? A groan of pleasure escaped the mouth of Mr. Aboud, a mechanic who has spent the last 25 years repairing cars built...

Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations April 23, 1971 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit -...

SO were the last 20 years a figment of our imagination? Was the idea that we kept most of what we earned and took responsibility for ourselves and our families a dream? We thought we’d left behind the era of crippling taxation and union militancy, where everything costs the earth and nothing works properly. We were led to believe Labour had changed. Enterprise was in, envy was out. We obviously thought wrong. In the past few days, there have been calls for much higher income taxes from senior Labour politicians. One of Tony Blair’s favourite think tanks has come up...