Free Republic

So much for hope and change. With the economy growing worse and worse, the grand promises of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign have faded as the reality of malaise takes hold. Mr. Obama has vowed to spend $1 billion in advertising dollars to counteract the effect his policies have had on the nation. The GOP’s campaign chief met with The Washington Times on Friday to discuss why that’s not going to work. “I think this [election] is a referendum on Barack Obama,” said Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus. “The people in this country are going to ask themselves a...

Gov. Jerry Brown of California cited a long list of Republican demands as the reason he dropped his plan for a special election in June to approve tax extensions for the California budget. Los Angeles Gov. Jerry Brown has dropped his plan to broker a bipartisan California budget by asking voters, in a special election in June, to extend taxes to close the state’s $26.4 billion gap by $12 billion. Budget cuts enacted by the Legislature and signed last week covered only $11.2 billion of the deficit. Mr. Brown, who needed just four Republicans to sign off on the special...

Potential GOP presidential candidate Sarah Palin turned down a chance to speak at the prestigious Herzliya Conference this week, abandoning her plan to visit Israel early this year. "She was invited; the president was invited,” a conference spokesman said, according to the Washington website The Hill. “All of the top people in the U.S. were invited. But it's not as if her attendance was imminent or expected." Palin's advisors have not commented on her no-show. The former Alaska governor reportedly planned to visit Israel early this year to try to improve her image of being poorly informed on foreign affairs....

The Quebec government had the opportunity to be the first province to enact meaningful reform in health care, but instead it got cold feet. By cancelling its planned $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, Quebec caved in to special interest groups that refuse to acknowledge the necessity of changing how we pay for health care in this country. Quebec Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, acknowledging in his budget speech earlier this year that Quebec's health care system is in serious financial trouble, proposed two new measures: the $25 user fee for seeing a doctor, and a new health tax applied...

Islamabad - A delegation of Pakistani military officers has abandoned a trip to the US after being mistaken for terrorists and ordered off an airliner. The eight officers, led by a two-star Navy rear admiral, were on their way to a meeting at US Central Command. They had boarded a United Airlines Flight from Washington to Tampa on Monday but were taken off the aircraft because of comments made by one of the men, according to an airline spokesman.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - NASA has abandoned plans to get its replacement for the retiring U.S. space shuttles into service by 2013 because of a lack of additional funds and technical issues, officials said on Monday. The U.S. space agency had hoped to fly astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a new spaceship called Orion as early as September 2013, well before its formal deadline or goal of March 2015. "The window of opportunity for us to accelerate Orion has closed," program manager Jeff Hanley at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston told reporters during a conference call....

Zimbabwe abandons fixed official exchange rate By Byron Dziva In Harare Last Updated: 1:52am BST 07/09/2007 Zimbabwe injected a partial element of reality into its chaotic economy yesterday, abandoning its fixed official exchange rate of 250 Zimbabwean dollars to the US currency. It fixed the new rate at Z$30,000 to the US dollar, an official devaluation of more than 99 per cent, but still well above its true value — on the black market US$1 fetches around Z$260,000. The official rate is used for government transactions, but is also a hugely lucrative opportunity for senior officials in Robert Mugabe's regime,...

A drunken air passenger was cast away on an island more than 1,000 miles from home after abusing cabin staff. The unidentified man swore at crew and passengers after being refused a bottle of wine on the four-hour flight from Manchester to Tenerife. He became so abusive the fed-up pilot diverted the Monarch Airlines Airbus to Porto Santo island off West Africa. After the plane touched down, the man was marched off by police and had his luggage dumped on the tarmac.

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. diplomats abandoned contentious efforts to draft a treaty that would outlaw human cloning and will likely settle for a weaker declaration that won't seek a comprehensive ban, officials said. The last-minute agreement on Thursday appeared to be a major blow to President Bush (news - web sites), who had called for a total ban on cloning when he spoke before the U.N. General Assembly in August. While there is near universal support among the United Nations (news - web sites)' 191 members to ban reproductive cloning — the cloning of babies — countries have wrestled over...

Bush abandons his 'favourite son' Chalabi (Filed: 19/05/2004) Administration cuts off cash for gathering of intelligence, reports Alec Russell in Washington The Bush administration has signalled an end to its relationship with Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress and the Pentagon's former favourite for leadership of the country. After months of feuding within President George W Bush's administration over Mr Chalabi's role, the Pentagon is stopping monthly payments of $335,000 (£200,000) to the INC for intelligence-gathering in Iraq. Chalabi: mistrusted The decision was taken a week ago at a meeting of Mr Bush's senior officials, including the...

Britain abandons Gibraltar talks By Isambard Wilkinson in Madrid and Nicole Martin (Filed: 09/06/2003) Britain has abandoned negotiations with Spain on sharing the sovereignty of Gibraltar. A Government minister told Spanish newspapers yesterday that the prospect of a deal was "simply zero". Denis MacShane, the Foreign Office minister responsible for Europe, admitted failure after nearly two years of talks and acknowledged that London could not impose a deal against the almost unanimous opposition of Gibraltar's population.The news is a resounding victory for Peter Caruana, Gibraltar's chief minister, who led a campaign of opposition to any dilution of British sovereignty. Two...

BA Concorde twice abandons take off A British Airways Concorde is flying back to the UK after it was twice forced to abandon take-off while carrying showbiz stars. The supersonic jet twice abandoned take-off as it prepared to thunder along the runway in Barbados after a warning light flashed-up in the cockpit. It indicated a problem in one of the jet's four thrusters, which gives the engine extra power for take-off. Captain Derek Woodley eventually abandoned Saturday's scheduled BA Flight 272 and the 73 passengers aboard the £6,800-a-head flight were taken off the aircraft. Some were put onto another BA...