Free Republic

Syria's state media say rebels have fired a chemical weapon in the north of the country, killing 15 people. The report by the official SANA news agency marks the first time the government has accused fighters seeking to topple President Bashar Assad of using chemical weapons. It says "terrorists" fired a rocket "containing chemical materials" into the Khan al-Assal area in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday.

[...]Omar al-Masharawi, an 11-month-old infant, was killed on Nov. 14, the first day of fighting. An Associated Press photograph showed Omar's anguished father, Jihad al-Masharawi, clutching his slain child wrapped in a shroud. Palestinians blamed Israel, and the image was broadcast around the world and widely shared on social media. Now a report from the U.N. office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights says the baby was "killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel."

Tension among Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee boiled over on Wednesday, as panel members blamed Pentagon leaders for playing a role in the looming fiscal crisis facing the Defense Department under sequestration. During Wednesday's hearing, committee Republican Reps. Randy Forbes (Va.) and Rob Bishop (Utah) slammed DOD for its refusal to plan for the massive, across-the-board cuts tied to the White House's sequestration plan. Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter, Pentagon Comptroller Bob Hale, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and the heads of the service branches appeared before the panel, to again plead their...

President Obama blamed the recent contraction of the U.S. economy on “bad decisions in Washington” in his weekly address. The national economy shrank by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to figures released this week by the Commerce Department. The contraction was an unexpected reversal of months of modest economic growth since the end of the recession in mid-2009. Obama said in his address that the dip was the fault of “bad decisions” being made in Washington. “We began this year with economists and business leaders saying that we are poised to grow in 2013,” he said....

At Hillary Clinton's Benghazi hearing at the House this afternoon, Democratic congressman Eliot Engel said: "Barack Obama was not responsible for the Benghazi attack any more than George W. Bush was responsible for the 9/11 attacks"

**SNIP** Others stood against any pension changes. Some who were willing to entertain a new approach criticized the proposal as too harsh on public employees and retirees. Still others contended the proposal violates a state constitutional prohibition on diminishing or impairing public employee pensions, as union officials have maintained. Rep. Jim Durkin scoffed at the excuses for a lack of action, criticizing lawmakers who raised concerns that the pension bill might not be constitutional. "I'm perplexed that members of the Legislature now have grave concerns regarding the constitutionality of the pension legislation when they've disregarded the constitutionality of every other...

(Reuters) - Americans blame Republicans in Congress more than congressional Democrats or President Barack Obama for the current "fiscal cliff" crisis, as the deadline approaches for action to avert big tax increases and spending cuts, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Thursday. When asked who they believed to be more responsible for the "fiscal cliff" situation, 27 percent blamed Republicans in Congress, 16 percent blamed Obama and 6 percent pointed to Democrats in Congress. The largest percentage - 31 percent - blamed "all of the above."

Most voters still want President Obama and Congress to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of big tax hikes and automatic across-the-board spending cuts scheduled to kick in next Tuesday, but fewer than ever think a deal is likely. Voters tend to blame congressional Republicans more than the president for the impasse.

All over the airwaves I am seeing commercials for Zero Dark Thirty, wondering if the "Arab Street" knows this movie is being released. We all know how ENRAGING youtube videos can be, and yet we have NOT heard the clown in the Oval Office or his toady Hillary with the concussion come out and condemn this film that COULD be very offensive to the Libyans.

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the National Rife Association (NRA) deserves some of the blame for last week's massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. "We're not trying to take away your right to advance the interests of gun owners, hunters, people who want to protect themselves," Bloomberg told ABC News in an interview set to air Friday. "But that's not an absolute right to encourage behavior which causes things like Connecticut. In fact, Connecticut is because of some of their actions." The pro-gun lobby was silent in the aftermath of the shooting, disabling a Facebook page...

Don't blame Quentin Tarantino for Friday's tragic Newtown, Conn., shooting. The Django Unchained director is tired of having to defend his use of violence in film. "I just think, you know, there's violence in the world, tragedies happen, blame the playmakers," he said Saturday at a press junket, per the BBC. "It's a Western. Give me a break."

A letter to the editor today in the editorial pages of my local newspaper caught my attention. The writer lamented yesterday’s slaughter of 27 innocents in Newtown, Connecticut – as we all do. Then he identified the culprit – guns. We’ve never heard of a “mass-knifing” claiming so many victims, he pointed out. His implication was that, if we scrap the Second Amendment, there will be no more funerals for victims of mass murder. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Timothy McVeigh did not use a gun in 1995 when he killed 168 people, including 10 children,...

A new poll finds that a majority of voters would blame both President Obama and congressional Republicans equally if efforts to find a deficit deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” fail. Fifty-six percent surveyed in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll say both sides would be responsible if a compromise is not reached. Nineteen percent would blame Obama and Democrats only, with 24 percent saying the GOP would be at fault. Those numbers could suggest a shift in public opinion as both parties work to find a way to prevent tax rate hikes and automatic spending cuts from taking...

Filling in on Rush Limbaugh’s Monday radio show, National Review columnist Mark Steyn said that Republicans lost big on Election Day because less engaged and more uniformed voters turned out in force. “We do very well in off years, in the midterms — 1994, 2002,” Steyn said. “Republicans can have good years then because essentially they’re low-turnout elections — people who are engaged in politics vote. In the presidential years, people voted — a broader pool of voters comes in, and they’re basically people who swim in the broader culture. They’re not people who know the name of their congressmen...

Speaking at The David Horowitz Freedom Center's "Restoration Weekend" in Florida on November 16, Pat Caddell indicted what he called the Republican "consultant-lobbyist-establishment" complex for losing a presidential campaign in 2012 President Barack Obama had no business winning. “No presidential campaign should be run by consultants,” Caddell said. “They should be run by people who are committed to the candidate and not into making big money.” Caddell said “Republicans never attempted to put a frame around the national election” because “the people who run the messaging in the Republican party and their consultants refused to do it.” Caddell, the former...

A new CNN poll shows that more Americans would blame Republicans if the country went off the fiscal cliff rather than President Obama. 45 percent of those polled by CNN said they would blame Republicans more; 34 percent said they would blame Obama. But Republicans might have a political opportunity if they can convince Americans that President Obama is not working to cooperate with Republicans. According to CNN, nearly half say Obama is not doing enough to cooperate with the Republicans, although seven in ten want him to compromise with the GOP.

<p>With all bad news on the tape now having a suitable "explanation", be it a prior president, a tropical storm, the weather being too hot, the weather being too cold, the weather being just right, but never, ever someone actually taking blame for the fact that life is what happens when corporate CEOs (and sovereign presidents) are busy making "priced to perfection" plans. So it is with what is now a confirmed flop of a Black Friday, which according to ShopperTrak saw sales drop by nearly 2% to $11.2 from 2011, which in turn was a 6.6% gain over 2010 (and would be revised to far lower once all the refunds and exchanges to cash took place in the two weeks later). This occurred despite a 3.5% increase in retail foot traffic to 307.7 million store visits. The nominal drop in retail sales also occurred despite a nearly 1% increase in the total US population over last Thanksgiving, and a 2% Y/Y inflation. But fear not: the ad hoc excuse for this "surprising" loss in purchasing power is already handy: it is all Black Thursday's fault, or the latest idiotic attempt by retailers to cannibalize their own future sales by diluting the exclusivity of Black Friday, and which will force all retailers to follow the sovereigns in a race to the bottom, as soon every day will be the equivalent of Black Friday. But at least retailers have another 364 years worth of excuses for the conceivable future to excuse any and all store weakness. Next year: it's all Black Wednesday's fault.</p>

Cliffs Hurt! We conservatives haven't been very politically adept recently, we may consider watching our step! OK, first of all I am a very conservative voter who considers himself a conservative RINO. I vote republican because I won't ever again vote for an independent that will take a vote away from the republican candidate. That said: I think the argument can be made that we should let the taxes go up on high income earners only if we exclude S corporations. It is small business that we are trying to protect. When democrats cry about this one, their hypocrisy can...

BMI Assistant Editor Julia Seymour appeared on "Your World" with Neil Cavuto to discuss the media's coverage of the Fiscal Cliff on November 15. Seymour cited a BMI study which found that the three major networks blamed Congress 16 more times than they blamed President Obama for the approaching Fiscal Cliff. Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2012/11/16/bmis-julia-seymour-fnc-networks-blame-congress-not-obama-fiscal-clif#ixzz2CRCrTZ29 BMI Assistant Editor Julia Seymour appeared on "Your World" with Neil Cavuto to discuss the media's coverage of the Fiscal Cliff on November 15. Seymour cited a BMI study which found that the three major networks blamed Congress 16 more times than they blamed President Obama...