Free Republic

Saw it last night. Couldn't make sense of certain aspects of it until I realized they're telling the 9/11 truther plot that Bush planned everything. (Spoilers ahead with plot details revealed)

Obama to address the nation on the IRS scandal...nothing else...

"Two things need to be noted: IRS is an independent enforcement agency, which I believe, as I understand it, only contains two political appointees within it. The individual who was actually running the IRS at the time was actually an appointee from a previous administration. But separate from that, there is no question that if this activity ever took place that it was inappropriate and action should be taken. And the President would expect that it be thoroughly investigated and action would be taken."

At the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, President Obama and former President Clinton took to the podium to praise Bush – and in the process, stump for their version of immigration reform. Trying to leverage Republicans into handing over their principles by suddenly singing odes to the president he labeled the root of all evil, President Obama gushed over Bush “reaching across the aisle to unlikely allies like Ted Kennedy” with regard to his immigration reform effort. He continued: “Seven years ago, President Bush restarted an important conversation by speaking with the American people about our history...

Israel's top military intelligence official said Tuesday that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons repeatedly, and he criticized the international community for not taking tougher action against the Syrian leadership. Israel and the Syrian opposition have on multiple occasions accused President Bashar Assad's government of using chemical weapons in the country's civil war, but have not offered much in the way of evidence. Israeli Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, speaking at a security conference in Israel, gave the most definitive statement so far by an Israeli official. "To the best of our professional understanding, the regime used lethal chemical weapons...

The 19-year-old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings has told interrogators that the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan motivated him and his brother to carry out the attack, according to U.S. officials familiar with the interviews. --------------snip------------------------------ The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said Dzhokhar and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by police as the two attempted to avoid capture, do not appear to have been directed by a foreign terrorist organization. Rather, the officials said, the evidence so far suggests they were “self-radicalized” through Internet sites and U.S....

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Zombies seem to be everywhere these days. In the popular TV series "The Walking Dead," humans struggle to escape from a pack of zombies hungry for flesh. Prank alerts have warned of a zombie apocalypse on radio stations in a handful of states. And across the country, zombie wannabes in tattered clothes occasionally fill local parks, gurgling moans of the undead.

Three leading House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats are calling for an oversight hearing on the Federal Communications Commission's Lifeline program, a phone subsidy for the poor that has been disparagingly referred to as the "Obama phone" program. The program, which began long before President Obama took office, has been notorious for waste and abuse. The FCC enacted reforms last year aimed at trimming billions of dollars from the program, but recent reports indicate that people who are ineligible for the program are still receiving subsidies. The program gained more attention last year when conservatives seized on a viral video...

On the web-only "Overtime" segment of HBO's "Real Time" with host Bill Maher, guest Tina Brown, editor in chief of Newsweek/Daily Beast, said if President Obama were former President George W. Bush he would have been impeached by now.

Steven Chu, the retiring Secretary of Energy, is blaming the power outage at the Superbowl on the Republicans. Steven Chu had arranged to have the Superbowl completely powered by solar panels as a final act of demonstrating the reliability and feasibility of solar power. To accomplish it, he had asked the Food Stamp President to request Congress to change the day/night ratio to 80% daylight versus 20% night to support the increased light requirements. The Republicans laughed off the request and the resultant unexpected darkness rendered the solar panels inoperable. The battery and generator backups proved to be up to...

Boomer Esiason, the former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback and co-host "The NFL Today" on CBS, said Beyonce's halftime performance may have been responsible for the 34-minute blackout during Sunday's Super Bowl between Baltimore and San Francisco. “Beyonce blew the electric in the Superdome twice, I’m told, during her rehearsals during the week," Esiason said on Monday on his radio show. Esiason recalled there was a buzzing sound in the Superdome shortly after Beyonce's halftime show. On his "Boomer & Carton" radio show, Esiason said about "five or six minutes prior to" the "the breaker going," Kevin Harlan, a CBS announcer who...

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....

It's being reported on KXAN.com noon news that multiple people shot at on Lone Star College in Houston, TX. It's a tech school.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is hilarious. As you know, ladies and gentlemen, beginning with the first day of the year, and because of the fiscal cliff deal, the temporary partial tax cut on the Social Security tax expired. There was a temporary partial exemption on the payroll tax. I've been asked if most people noticed it. They didn't notice it until they were told about it. It added up to, depending on your income, it could be a thousand dollars a year that you had extra because of this partial tax. Anyway, on January 1, that partial temporary tax cut...

Bonnie Gray knows there are people out there who are worse off than she is. After all, at least she has a job. It’s just not a full-time gig. Like many other Americans, she works part time and it’s barely enough to pay for food, fuel and shelter. Millions of Americans were working part time in November but they would like to have been working full time. These so-called “involuntary part-time workers” are an example of some of the stubborn pockets of weakness that remain in the labor market even as the jobs picture improves very slowly. The Bureau of...

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo made headlines and raised eyebrows Monday when he said that while Hurricane Katrina was deadlier than Hurricane Sandy, the latter storm was “more impactful” over all and “affected many, many more people and places than Katrina.” Mr. Cuomo added that Hurricane Sandy had a greater economic impact, destroyed or damaged more units of housing, affected more businesses and caused more customers to lose power. For our part, City Room decided to undertake a little truth-squadding. While apples-to-apples numbers for the two storms are very difficult to come by, especially given that Hurricane Sandy’s costs are still...

In an emergency evacuation, there will always be people who stay behind to protect their personal belongings. People who ignored evacuation warnings had to be rescued and some lost their lives in one of the worst storms in the history of natural disasters in the United States.The biggest challenges were hunger and cold because of electrical outages. More than 8.1 million homes and businesses lost power.In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, city leaders across the country are asking how their city would respond to a similar disaster and examining their preparedness and self-reliance needs. Sandy would have resulted in much...

Rising prices and chronic unemployment were heavy on the minds of voters Tuesday even as a glimmer of optimism peeked through. Four in 10 said the nation’s battered economy is getting better. Most everyone agreed there’s still far to go. They were less likely to blame President Barack Obama for the economic troubles, however, than to point the finger at his predecessor, George W. Bush, according to preliminary results of a national exit poll. Only a fourth thought they were better off financially than four years ago when Obama was elected. Voters were most likely to say their families were...

The U.S. has lost track of some of Syria’s chemical weapons, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday, and does not know if any potentially lethal chemicals have fallen into the hands of Syrian rebels or Iranian forces inside the country. “There has been intelligence that there have been some moves that have taken place. Where exactly that’s taken place, we don’t know.” Panetta said, in a Pentagon press briefing.

Bill Clinton: No president could have "magically" fixed economy in one term By Leigh Ann Caldwell Last Updated 10:12 a.m. ET (CBS News) Former President Bill Clinton offered a strong defense for President Obama's re-election Sunday morning, arguing that no president could have "fully healed" the economy in four years. "That's why we've got to keep working at it," Mr. Clinton said on "Face the Nation." The president's efforts, Mr. Clinton argued, have reversed the downward spiral of losing up to 800,000 jobs per month. "His jobs record is better" than the Bush administration's, he said, adding that no president...

Asked about the Fast and Furious program at the Univision forum on Thursday, President Obama falsely claimed that the program began under President George W. Bush. “I think it’s important for us to understand that the Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration,” the president said. “When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned a inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that in fact Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were...

(April 24, 2011) Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu was a prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay prison, judged “a probable member of Al Qaeda” by the analysts there. They concluded in a newly disclosed 2005 assessment that his release would represent a “medium to high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the U.S., its interests and allies.” Today, Mr. Qumu, 51, is a notable figure in the Libyan rebels’ fight to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, reportedly a leader of a ragtag band of fighters known as the Darnah Brigade for his birthplace, this shabby port...

Breaking Right Now on Fox News

First lady Michelle Obama, speaking in Gainesville, Fla., on Monday, said that while the nation was on the verge of another Great Depression, President Barack Obama did not assign blame – instead “he got to work.” “The economy was losing 800,000 jobs every month, and a lot folks wondered whether we were headed for another great depression. Now this is what Barack faced on day one as president. That’s what awaited him, but instead of pointing fingers and placing blame, Barack got to work, because he was thinking about folks like my dad, like his grandmother,” the first lady said....

On this solemn day, most of the nation mourns the loss of life that occurred on this day eleven years ago and contemplates the changes that have occurred since then. Most, but not all. Kurt Eichenwald, contributing editor for Vanity Fair and writer for the New York Times, published an inflammatory op-ed accusing former President Bush of not preventing the attacks: “While those documents are still not public, I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks...

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal... [T]he administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it...

"CBS This Morning" co-host Norah O'Donnell said, "Then when a lot of people hear this, aren't they going to say, 'This is another example of where, not just the Bush administration, but our intelligence community dropped the ball. They failed to heed the warnings that were in a number of these (documents) that went all the way up to the president of the United States.'" Eichenwald replied, "Actually, the counterterrorist center of the CIA did a spectacular job, and that's what really comes down. You know, in the aftermath, the White House and others said, 'Well they didn't tell us...

For the New York Times, what better way to observe the 11th anniversary of 9-11 than by exploiting it for political purposes and seeking to blame George W. Bush? The Times chose to publish on its op-ed page today a column by Kurt Eichenwald, a former Times reporter now with Vanity Fair, entitled "The Deafness Before the Storm." Its gruel is thin when it comes to actually assembling a case of any real Bush-administration negligence. And that is the best evidence that Eichenwald and the Times were not motivated by any sincere desire to review the historical record with the...

Obama ties Bush to RomneyBy Justin Sink and Amie Parnes - 09/10/12 05:01 PM ET President Obama is using the still unpopular former President George W. Bush to gain an edge on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Obama rarely points direct blame on Bush for the sluggish U.S. economy, but implicit in his “forward” campaign message and his relentless attacks on Romney is that a vote for the Republican ticket would bring the country back to the policies of the Bush administration. The strategy — one that Obama has unleashed since the spring — has created a difficult problem for...

America is a totalitarian regime. Or, it was when George W. Bush was president. And maybe it still is. Or something. As if we needed more proof that blockbuster entertainment needn’t have even a nodding acquaintance with cogent political thought, the people that brought us Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” franchise can’t just quietly take their millions to the bank. They need us to know how unfair their payday is. “The Hunger Games” DVD was released Aug. 18, and the special features section titled “Game Maker: Suzanne Collins and the Hunger Games Phenomenon” is filled with nuggets of liberal received...

There are two types of conventions for a party in power, as Newt Gingrich once said: accusation conventions and achievement conventions. Accusation conventions run against their opponents' record; achievement conventions highlight their own. In 1984 President Ronald Reagan ran an achievement convention. He rarely mentioned Jimmy Carter's record, even though it had been so poor. Instead, his campaign slogan was "Leadership that's working." He ran an uplifting campaign focused on America's turnaround and that it was "Morning in America" again. After day one of the Democratic National Convention, it seems the Democrats are running a quite different convention. Julian Castro,...

I've been noticing since Sunday all of a sudden it's all "Bush's Fault" again". My guess is the RNC convention rocked the Dems, and they really have nothing to counter with except Hollywood and personal attacks. Suddenly every Dem is talking about how Obama was stuck with the evil Bush's record. My guess is their internals must be devastating, and all they can do is try to blame it on the previous guy. They've got nothing else.

President Barack Obama took a veiled jab at his predecessor, George W. Bush, Monday during an appearance in New Orleans, where the former was touring damage caused by last week's Hurricane Isaac.  Here's what Obama said, according to the White House transcript:  

By itself, the state of the economy is enough to guarantee a close election, and every national survey during the past two weeks has put Obama and Romney in a statistical tie. Now another key factor points in the same direction—the shifting balance between the political parties. This matters because party preferences and voting patterns are more closely linked today than they have been in several generations—and two recent in-depth surveys of the party system document that a clean Democratic victory, of the sort the party enjoyed in 2008, is exceedingly unlikely. The surging Democratic tide of four years...

OK...Watching Hannity right now, and he just had Rudy Giuliani on. They were talking abiut the govenors who turned their economies around, and how they did it using Reagans principles.Also the state that NYC was in when Giuli took over and how things turned around in a short period of time.So my prediction:If Romney is President AND applies true economic reforms, the economy WILL turn around and...The Dems will give credit to Obama.

Why isn’t Mitt Romney winning by now, given the painful sluggishness of the recovery, upside-down right-track-wrong-track numbers, and Obama’s high disapproval on the economy?For many analysts, that’s the key question. Charlie Cook has decided Romney is not leading because he failed to develop a positive vision of himself. Sean Trende, meanwhile, says the answer is that the economy isn’t as bad as it was in 1980, or even in 2008.Here’s my own unscientific answer. It’s grounded in a nuance I believe is central to the Obama campaign’s understanding of the race: The distinction between whether voters have decided Obama has...

My mom out in California is elated -- gasoline prices in her neighborhood are below $4 a gallon for the first time in four months. Less so are the world's petro-rulers, who are watching the price of oil -- their life blood -- plunge at a rate they have not experienced since the dreaded year 2008. Industry analysts are using phrases such as "devastation" and "severe strain" to describe what is next for the petro-states should prices plummet as low as some fear. No one is as yet forecasting a fresh round of Arab Spring-like regime implosions. But that's the...

Rodney King, the man whose videotaped beating by police led to the 1992 Los Angeles riots, was found dead at the bottom of his pool, police said. Mr. King's fiancée found him at the bottom of the pool on Sunday morning at his home in Rialito, Calif. He was 47. "The preliminary investigation indicates that this is a drowning and there are no signs of foul play," said Rialto Police Sgt. Paul Stella. In 1991, a video of police beating Mr. King after a freeway chase in Los Angeles rocketed across the world, stoking national tensions over race and police...

Just caught Bob answering a question on the recent "Are you better off than you were four years ago poll." His answer went something like this: "Look, four years ago was June, 2000. In June, 2000, the economy was doing well." Not remembering what year it is might be a sign to cut out the martini breakfasts, Bob!

Facing a slew of economic bad news, President Obama said Friday the private sector is doing just fine but blamed Republicans for not helping out-of-work teachers and other public-sector employees – an analysis pounced on by GOP leaders. “The private sector is doing fine,” the president said during a White House press conference. “Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government. … If Republicans want to be helpful, if they really want to move forward and put people back to work, what they should be thinking about is how do we help state...

President Obama has shelled out more in federal spending than the five presidents that came before him. A new chart by the Comeback America Initiative (CAI), a non-partisan group dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility by policymakers, shows federal spending by president as a percentage of GDP, and it doesn't reflect well on Obama. "There has been a dramatic increase in spending under the Obama administration," David Walker, Founder and CEO of CAI, told Whispers. "Most of it is attributable to year one of his presidency and the stimulus... but President Obama has continued to take spending to a new level."Federal...

49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011. Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one. The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of...

Vice President Joe Biden offered a sharp defense of President Barack Obama's friendship to Israel and leadership in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons in remarks to a Jewish group in Atlanta today. And Biden blamed the Bush Administration for the foreign policy challenges Obama inherited — specifically the lack of international pressure on Iran. "When we took office... we were the problem," referring to the way America was viewed in the world at the time. "We were diplomatically isolated in the world, in the region, in Europe.” Shouting at times, Biden said voices in the Jewish community who say...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Economic growth cooled in the first quarter as businesses cut back on investment and restocked shelves at a slower pace, but stronger demand for automobiles softened the blow. Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.2 percent annual rate, the Commerce Department said on Friday in its advance estimate, moderating from the fourth quarter's 3 percent rate.

In 2007, then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama missed two votes on the student loan interest bill that he now wants Congress to extend. Obama twice skipped the Senate vote on the College Cost Reduction and Access Act when the bill came to the Senate floor first in July and again in September of 2007, according to public records. The bill, introduced by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) and signed into law by President George W. Bush, first cleared the Senate in July on a 78 to 18 vote, with Obama as one of only four senators to abstain. Obama did not cast...

"Not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt had so much fallen on the shoulders of one president. Now when he faced his country who looked to him for answers, he would not dwell in blame or dream in idealism," narrator Tom Hanks said in the Obama biopic "The Road We've Traveled."

"So do not tell me that we're not drilling. We're drilling all over this country. There are a few spots we're not drilling. We're not drilling in the national mall. We're not drilling at your house. " http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/03/15/obama_do_not_tell_me_that_were_not_drilling_were_drilling_all_over_this_country.html

Not long ago Barack Obama accused Republicans of playing politics with gas prices: “Only in politics do people root for bad news, do they greet bad news so enthusiastically,” Obama said before a crowd of students. “You pay more and they’re licking their chops. And you can bet since it’s an election year, they’re already dusting off their three-point plans for $2 gas,” Obama said. “I’ll save you the suspense: step one is drill, step two is drill, and then step three is keep drilling. “We heard the same line in 2007 when I was running for president,” Obama said....

President Barack Obama's budget has about as much chance of passing the Republican-controlled House as a proclamation applauding JCPenney for standing by Ellen. Since its unveiling, Obama's political opponents have been lining up to denounce the plan that projects a $901 billion deficit for fiscal year 2013. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan declared that "instead of an America built to last, this is a plan for an America drowning in debt." Presidential candidate Mitt Romney called it "an insult to the American taxpayer." Romney was thinking of himself here since Obama is proposing the "Buffett Rule" that would double...

President Obama: I’m going to win reelectionBy Amie Parnes - 01/26/12 07:07 PM ET President Obama said in no-uncertain terms on Thursday that he will win his re-election campaign in November. Asked by ABC News’s Diane Sawyer if he was going to win, Obama replied: “Yes.” He also told Sawyer he would "fight with every fiber of my being" for a second term. "How much do you want it?" Sawyer asked Obama in the interview. "Badly," Obama said. "Because I think the country needs it." Just a few months ago Obama described himself as an underdog in the 2012 election....