Free Republic

Just heard on FoxNews that Obama is planning on asking the Joint Chiefs to cut the defense budget 10%.

Ode To a Lost Decade by: Bethany Stotts, February 08, 2008 Ironically, Professor Wegner openly admitted to what many conservatives heretofore suspected: multiculturalism, gender studies, ethnography, and other disciplines operate under an ideologically-uniform agenda. ... ...Wegner told a standing-room only Modern Language Association (MLA) audience in Chicago that he views September 11, 2001 as a “non-event,” that has meaning which “cannot be reduced to an ordinary description.” “In brief, I argue in my book that no event occurred on 9/11,” Wegner said. Rather, he argues, “9/11 is a repetition of an earlier event...an encounter with the traumatic real that occurs...

As far as economic recoveries go, the current one may be the most maligned in history. One glaring weakness, which pessimists never tire of pointing out, is that payroll job growth in this cycle has been weaker than in the 1990s. Over the past three years, payroll jobs have grown at an average monthly rate of 180,000. At the same point in the previous cycle (1994-96) payrolls grew at an average monthly rate of 244,000. But don’t despair. While the data is accurate, it is highly misleading. After digging beneath the surface, the jobs market is just as strong today...

U.S. Air Force pilots are flying planes so old that some were built during the Eisenhower administration, and still Congress is delaying new appropriations to modernize America's aging fighters, bombers and other military aircraft. The average age of today's Air Force fleet is 24 years. Big B-52 bombers, which played a critical role in America's recent efforts to liberate Iraq and stabilize Afghanistan, are over 45 years old. Worse, many of these bombers rely on KC-135 aerial refueling tankers that are equally as old. Add to the mix, the U.S. military critically depends on C-130 cargo planes for rapid deployment....

LOS ANGELES (AP) - First he went on national television to apologize for his racial tirade against two black hecklers. Now Michael Richards is taking his contriteness to the next level: he's hired a public relations expert with deep contacts in the black community. New York publicist Howard Rubenstein took on Richards as a client Wednesday after being contacted by the actor-comedian. He then arranged for Richards to call the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. "I've known those gentlemen for many years," Rubenstein told The Associated Press. "Michael apologized profusely. He wants to heal the tremendous wound that he's...

Michael Richards exploded in anger as he performed at a famous L.A. comedy club last Friday, hurling racial epithets that left the crowd gasping, and TMZ has obtained exclusive video of the ugly incident.

I was born in 1980, which is considered either to be the tail-end of Generation X, part of Generation Y, or part of the so-called "MTV Generation," or the XY Cusp. I was only a pre-teen when grunge appeared, and a teenager and/or college student when the current wasteland of music started. There are ten albums, which after 8-14 years, are still great, at least to me. Some of them I actually found out about years after they came out, but I consider them to be "classics" of the decade. Here are the ten albums, organized in alphabetical order by...

Clinton Let Bin Laden Slip Away and Metastasize Sudan offered up the terrorist and data on his network. The then-president and his advisors didn't respond.By MANSOOR IJAZ President Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year. I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities. From 1996 to 1998, I opened unofficial channels between Sudan and the Clinton administration. I met with officials in both countries, including Clinton, U.S. National Security Advisor Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger and Sudan's president and...

House Financial Services Cmte. Subcommittee hearing on CFIUS Process Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH) chairs a subcommittee level hearing of the House Financial Services Cmte. on the CFIUS Process. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is responsible for reviewing the Dubai Ports World deal. The UAE company will request a full 45-day CFIUS review. rtsp://cspanrm.fplive.net/cspan/project/ter/ter030106_dubai.rm

Rocky Mountain News   To print this page, select File then Print from your browser URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_4727264,00.html Rosen: Hard times for presidentMay 26, 2006It's tough being George W. Bush these days. His poll numbers are low, liberal media sharks taste blood in the water, and some elected Republicans - primarily concerned with their own survival - are separating themselves from their president. Some of this is Bush's own doing; much of it is unfortunate happenstance. Americans tend to give their presidents too much blame or credit for things that simply happen on their watch. Bill Clinton was lucky. His...

 FOUR YEARS LATER, few doubt that 9/11 ushered in a new epoch. What's less obvious is that that day also marked the end of an era. For Sept. 11, 2001, was the last day of the 1990s. Of course that's not literally, chronologically true. But just as the great British historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote a history of the 19th century, which, he decided, started in 1789 and ended in 1914, so we can look back on the 1990s and see that they too were not an exact match with the dates on the calendar. That was not obvious at the...

It is now becoming ever clearer that the last decade of the 20th century could go down in history as the Decade of Illusions. There was the tech bubble whose detumescence was predicted by some of the very same engineering geniuses who had created the technological marvels that it was based on, for instance, Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet and a major force in the creation of the Internet. He predicted the bubble's burst almost to the day. Another of the illusions of the 1990s was that with the fall of communism barbarism vanished. The world would be safe. Our...

A look at the dark underbelly of recent history, from the mid-1990s to the early part of this decade: one minute speeches by former Blue Dog Congressman, James Traficant. He took on the IRS. Then he was impeached and sent to jail. Felon or Fighter for Freedom? A little of both. And he knew how to make a darn good speech. There are many, many more speeches by former, impeached Congressman Traficant in the South Boston Phoenix 'vaults', which will be steadilly loaded and shared in the future, God willing, if people show an interest. South Boston Phoenix is loading...

Throughout the 1990s, Turkish foreign policy analysts had an easy job. After all, Turkish foreign policy was predictable. Ankara cooperated enthusiastically with Washington, whether in the Middle East or in the Balkans. Turkey aligned itself with Israel and kept at arms length from Middle Eastern neighbors such as Syria and Iran. In Europe, Ankara traded heavily with the European Union (EU) but did not allow the EU to dictate foreign policy. The European Union's frequent allegations and criticism of human rights abuses in Turkey, especially with regard to Turkey's fight against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK, Partiya Karkaren Kurdistan) terrorists, soured...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Bob Dole Slams Kerry By Andrew L. Jaffee, August 23, 2004 Home   Search   Forum   Terms Nothing has really changed for Democratic hopeful John Kerry, except that real war veterans, like Bob Dole, are questioning the “superficial wounds” and resulting “medals” he received during four (4) months service in Vietnam. Kerry is still flailing, trying to cover up a career punctuated by extreme left-wing politics and flip-flopping by talking to voters about his military service. He squandered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention by trying to convince Americans that his tour of duty in Vietnam will make him a great commander...

Ken Lay of Enron Indicted and Arrested By Andrew L. Jaffee, July 8, 2004 Home   Search   Forum   Terms Enron’s ex-Chairman of the Board has been indicted and arrested on charges connected with his former company’s implosion in 2001. Corporate executives at Enron engaged in all sorts of financial manipulations to pump up the company’s stock price. They created complex “partnerships” to hide company debt from shareholders. In 1998, Enron’s share price was at about $20. By 2000, it hit $90. By 2001, the company’s stock was worthless. Enron’s collapse wiped out billions in shareholder value and employee pensions. Democratic Presidential hopeful John...

A former intelligence official that worked in the U.S. government during the Clinton years tells NewsMax that though the Rwandan genocide of the '90s was the subject of headlines blazing the word "genocide" throughout the world, U.S. officials were not allowed to use the "G" word. The source told us that it was Richard Clarke's office at the National Security Council who decided in October of 1993 not to back up the Rwanda peace plan with adequate UN troops. Then, in the spring of 1994, Clarke - Special Assistant to the President for Global Issues and Multilateral Affairs from 1993...

<p>The booming 1990s shook out in California with a major disparity that favored the rich over the poor while a continued decline in manufacturing jobs left the middle lagging, according to a report made public today.</p> <p>In a 115-page report titled "Boom, Bust, and Beyond: The State of Working California," the Sacramento-based California Budget Project found that over a 20-year period ending in the late 1990s, inflation-adjusted income actually dropped for 40 percent of the state's families.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) --  A Democratic congressman criticized President Bush Tuesday for withholding more than $300 million for security at Energy Department installations, saying they could be targets for terrorists.</p> <p>"The Department of Energy, by its own admission, does not have adequate resources to provide security at these facilities," said Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts.</p>