Free Republic

Taking beer-making to a whole new sphere, Japan's famous Sapporo Holdings Ltd. plans to launch a beer in November that's literally from out of this world. The brewery will collaborate with scientists at the Okayama University in Japan to concoct this unearthly beverage from a third generation of barley grains that spent five months on the International Space Station in 2006. Does the barley taste any different? Apparently, no. In fact, scientists have not found a difference in the genetic make-up of the earth-grown and space-grown barley yet, according to Manabu Sugimoto, an Okayama University biologist who has been part...

More on the possible contribution of index fund investment to recent commodity price moves. We and many others have been discussing whether the surge in investment fund purchases of long positions in commodity futures contracts may have been a factor contributing to the spot prices of those commodities beyond what would be warranted by considerations of physical supply and demand. John Mauldin shares an interesting graphic from Deutsche Bank researchers, showing that the prices of a number of commodities in which no futures market exists have increased even more dramatically than those traded on major exchanges.

Sometimes it's just so durn easy to get confused when you're having a conversation with a transsexual...

The other day I mentioned a possible pending Michelle Obama bombshell, and it looks like it's getting closer. Republican strategist Roger Stone was interviewed today on Fox News and had this to say: FNC 06/01/2008 14:43:30: …>>> Welcome back to our special coverage live coverage from Puerto Rico. just before the break, Roger Stone the Republican strategist made the comment that Michele Obama used the phrase whitey when describing white people and Michael Brown says bs that is republican dirty tricks as usual. Roger take it away. Michael, you are in the wings. >> This has little to do with...

Obama also accepts testimonial from 9/11 conspiracy theorist who equated 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire Please view Priest Michael Pfleger Campaigns for Obama at Trinity United at YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGgRaApkcP8). Pay attention not only to what Michael Pfleger is saying, but also to the audience’s reaction to “There were a whole lot of white people crying.” (Two screen shots appear below.) They didn’t get up and walk out in disgust. They didn’t sit in embarrassed silence while pretending not to hear. They applauded wildly, and many stood up to give “There were a whole lot of white people crying” a standing...

Here are the 2008 Electoral Vote Projection Maps and State Poll Average Charts for Sunday, June 1, 2008: John McCain leads Barack Obama 236-216 on the 50-Day Average Electoral Map (Based on a 50-Day Avg. of State Polls). A total of 86 votes remain in the "tossup" category. Barack Obama leads John McCain 251-238 on the 15-Day Average Electoral Map (Based on a 15-Day Avg. of State Polls). A total of 49 votes remain in the "tossup" category. . . Today's Rasmussen Tracking Poll has John McCain leading Barack Obama by one-point at 46%-45%. This was a 2-point improvement for...

Let's be honest here. How can Obama be so close to the presidency with a complete lack of political experience? Would his backers be as enthusiastic about Obama if he held other positions without any experience? "Geeks On Caffeine" examines this very issue in a comic that is funny, thought provoking and ultimately tragic in that it exposes the sorry state of today's American political scene.

The “Comeback Kid” has transformed to the Fade-away Fool. Bill Clinton has lost his luster with the MSM and Liberals. The “First Black President” is experiencing a scathing tell-all article written by Dee Dee Myers’ husband Todd Purdum. Dee Dee was Bill Clinton’s first Press Secretary when Bill could do no wrong. Now the Liberal Media has a new “fair haired boy” with Barack Obama. The Clintons will be thrown off to the side of the road with no fear of retribution. Bill and Hillary have lost their power in the Democrat Party with her waning candidacy for President.

Jim Henley assesses the complete and utter failure that was the Ron Paul campaign for the Republican presidential nomination: Paul failed to win any states, to move the GOP debate in his direction, to accrue significant delegates or to leverage his fund-raising into a third-party run. And word is he’s staying quiet about endorsing an independent because he doesn’t want the Congressional GOP leadership to strip him of committee assignments come the fall. Paul accomplished the one thing he’s always been good at: using political appeals to get people to send money. I don’t feel freer. But other than that,...

On 23 March 1989 Martin Fleischmann of the University of Southampton, UK, and Stanley Pons of the University of Utah, US, announced that they had observed controlled nuclear fusion in a glass jar at room temperature, and — for around a month — the world was under the impression that the world's energy woes had been remedied. But, even as other groups claimed to repeat the pair's results, sceptical reports began trickle in. An editorial in Nature predicted cold fusion to be unfounded. And a US Department of Energy report judged that the experiments did "not provide convincing evidence that...

<p>There’s some interesting insight into the mood of the Iranian street in a Washington Post article today. From the author’s experience as an on and off resident of Iran, Ahmadinejad’s stock is plummeting while America’s is climbing.</p> <p>Starting in about 2005, Iranians’ historic esteem for the United States gave way to a deep ambivalence that is only now ending. President Bush’s post-9/11 wars of liberation on both of Iran’s borders — in Iraq to the west and Afghanistan to the east — rattled ordinary Iranians, and Washington’s opposition to Iran’s nuclear program — a major source of national pride — added to their resentment. In early 2006, when I lived in Iran as a journalist, I had only to step outdoors to hear the complaints. Standing in line for pastry, I heard indignant matrons suggesting a boycott of U.S. products. The pious bazaar merchant who lived across the street grumbled that America was trying to “boss Iran around.” On the ski slopes outside Tehran, I heard liberal college kids in designer parkas lionize Ahmadinejad for “standing up to the U.S. like a man.” … But on a recent two-week trip to Iran, I found the shift in sentiment palpable. This year...</p>

A Hooters girl in every bedBy J.J. Jackson web posted May 26, 2008My fellow Americans, I come before you today to humbly ask for your vote this November at a pivotal time in America.  We can no longer ignore the pressing issues facing our country and that is why it is imperative that you consider the future of this great nation. Now I understand that simply asking for your vote is not enough.  Nor would I expect you to vote for me because I have simply asked you to.  I could no more accept a vote from you based upon...

I returned from vacation this morning and just had to share this with you guys. The first leg of our trip was a visit to beautiful Savannah, GA. While trying to get my bearings upon our arrival, I made a wrong turn and ended up in a neighborhood that ... I would not normally visit. However, we spotted this interesting sight and I made it a point to get a shot of it while leaving this area. This is located at the corner of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd and Victory. Now, some might simply see this as just...

  Much has been made of Michelle Obama’s Princeton thesis paper. Since her brother Craig Robinson has now given his thoughts on the campaign, one might be curious of what his own Princeton senior thesis reveals. The title of Craig Malcolm Robinson’s senior thesis is “The Nature of Informal Social Structures Within a Prison”. It was completed at Princeton in 1983.Here are some excerpts: Trenton State Prison houses inmates mostly from the Trenton and Newark areas. This partially accounts for the racial make-up of the population. Racism, as I will show later, is accounted for as a result of the...

Please COPY but don't LINK, as linking uses my bandwidth. Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright said of the 9/11 attacks that "America's chickens have come home to roost."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has been granted a visa to travel to Italy by Silvio Berlusconi’s government, has demanded an audience with Pope Benedict XVI. “It is my intention to give this doddering infidel one last chance to accept Islam before we cast his severed head into the fiery pit of Hell,” Ahmadinejad offered. Ahmadinejad asked that the meeting be scheduled between the Muslim afternoon and evening call to prayers on either June 4th or 5th. “I am willing to meet with this fool, but he must accommodate my schedule,” the Iranian president demanded. In related news, Iran’s foreign...

Tax Foundation: Obama’s Plan to Abolish the Social Security Wage Ceiling: A State-by-State Breakdown, by Gerald Prante: It is commonly observed that the policy ideas of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are almost identical, but Obama does have one major tax proposal that Clinton does not specifically endorse: eliminating the wage ceiling for Social Security taxes. ... [T]here has always been a ceiling on the tax, an amount of annual wages above which the tax does not apply. Right now, the wage ceiling is quite high, $102,000 for a single person ... In 2008, the maximum Social Security tax for...

So how is that party unity thing working out for you, Democrats? Instead of the Democrat Rules Committee decision to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations and awarding them with a half a vote each ending up in the Democrats all singing Kumbaya together, it has ended up with angry accusations of betrayal against each other as Hillary continues ON TO DENVER!!! You can get an idea of how divided the Democrats are by taking a look at the infamous VIDEO of delegate Harriet Christian threatening to vote for McCain as well as this VIDEO of some really, really...

Free People Dropwaist Trench Coat ($108.00) A cult item of every women’s wardrobe is the Burberry trench coat. For more than 50 years, the double-breasted beige-colored coat with the leather buckle closure on the belt and cuffs, has been considered a womenswear classic. To read more...

Nineteen American heroes died in service to their country in Iraq in May 2008. The previous low was 20 in February of 2004. Of the 19, 16 died in combat and three were non-combat related. I wonder if we will here this anywhere else.