Free Republic

First Lady Michelle Obama will rally with Democratic candidate for governor Mary Burke in Milwaukee on Monday, September 29th. Last-minute preparations were underway Sunday at the Wisconsin Center in downtown Milwaukee. That’s where Michelle Obama will join Mary Burke Monday for a Milwaukee rally in the very close race for governor. “We want to give the first lady a big Wisconsin welcome,” Burke for Wisconsin Communications Director Joe Zepecki said. Volunteers were busy Sunday at the Wisconsin Center — setting up for the first lady’s visit. “There`s always a lot of set up — little details big details. They`re handling...

War speech at Air Force base produced by private, Dem-friendly company The stage, drapes, and sound system for an 18-minute speech by President Barack Obama cost taxpayers nearly $100,000. “Elite Productions,” the go-to company for prominent Democratic politicians such as Bill and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, put on the set for Obama’s speech to troops at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., on Sept. 17. The company provided “stage, drapery, and audio/visual equipment,” according to a contract document made public by the Air Force last week. The government paid the company $94,360 for a speech that lasted from...

Strict laws must be put in place to combat New York City’s massive tobacco smuggling problem, former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives Assistant Director Rich Marianos told The Daily Caller News Foundation.“Street gangs, narcotics crews, Russian and Asian organized crime networks, and terrorists are trading cigs for guns, narcotics — even humans,” Marianos, who was with the ATF for 27 years, said.NYC’s disproportionately high cigarette tax is allowing hardened criminals and even terrorists to fund illicit activity and make huge profits, with almost no risk, thanks to lax tobacco smuggling laws.Since 2006, the tax rate on NYC...

Get ready to whip out your credit card before you are wheeled into the operating room or undergo an MRI. Hospitals are increasingly asking patients to pay for procedures either upfront or before they are discharged. That's because Americans are shouldering a greater portion of their health care bills, and medical centers don't want to get stuck with patients that can't pay. (snip) The policies available on the Affordable Care Act exchanges are hastening this trend. Many enrollees are opting for the bronze and silver plans, which often carry deductibles upwards of $5,000 and $2,000, respectively. "The bronze plans are...

I officially declare my business, The Gun Cave Indoor Shooting Range, a MUSLIM FREE ZONE. I have made this decision based on the following FACTS: 1) The Koran (which I have read and studied thoroughly and (which all muslims align themselves with), contains 109 verses commanding hate, murder and terror against all human beings who refuse to submit or convert to Islam. Don’t take my word for it, click on this blue link and read the verses, (HERE). 3) The barbaric act of beheading an innocent American in Oklahoma by a (muslim>, the Boston bombings, and the murder of 3000...

President Obama firmly believes the United States is better off now than when he took office, even though the American people cannot “feel” it. During an interview with 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft, Obama said, “the country is definitely better off than when I came into office.” “When I came into office, our economy was in crisis,” Obama said. The president then cited lower unemployment, private sector job growth, and deficit cuts as evidence of his administration’s success. “I can put my record against any leader around the world in terms of digging ourselves out of a terrible, almost unprecedented financial...

The BBC reports that there has been "fierce fighting" between ISIS and government troops to the west of Baghdad, and intense airstrikes from the US-led coalition against the jihadists. However, "the insurgents have not retreated". "The Islamic State are on the verge of entering Baghdad...Over 1,000 Iraqi troops were killed by them yesterday," warned Canon Andrew White, vicar of Baghdad this morning. "As I said all military strikes are doing nothing. If we ever needed your prayer it is now."

Electric cars aren't selling nearly as well as many predicted. Why is that? Research suggests a host of reasons—including a basic lack of familiarity, a high price tag, misconceptions about the cars—and ineffective government incentives. Consider the lack of familiarity. In a survey by researchers from Indiana University and the University of Kansas, respondents couldn't correctly answer basic factual questions about plug-in electric vehicles more than 60% of the time. Some 75% of wrong answers underestimated the beneficial aspects of the vehicles. The survey, the most exhaustive on consumer perceptions of electric cars in recent years, was published in the...

Most of us will never be directly impacted by the international provisions of the internal revenue code. That’s bad news because it presumably means we don’t have a lot of money, but it’s good news because IRS policies regarding “foreign-source income” are a poisonous combination of complexity, harshness, and bullying (which is why only taxpayers with lots of money can afford the lawyers and accountants needed to navigate this awful part of the internal revenue code).But the bullying and the burdens aren’t being imposed solely on Americans. The internal revenue code is uniquely unilateral and imperialistic, so we simultaneously hurt...

You probably know your Social Security number, your driver’s license number and perhaps the latest wrinkle in mattress marketing, your sleep number. But do you know your drought number? The latter represents the amount of water you are allowed to use per day. If you don’t know it, you probably should. Not knowing could cost you money. As California’s severe drought moves into a fourth year, state and local water agencies are working on something called “allocation-based rate structures,” a kind of precursor to water rationing that’s all the rage in Sacramento and in some areas such as Santa Cruz,...

Pacific Investment Management Co. suffered roughly $10 billion of withdrawals following the Friday departure of co-founder Bill Gross, a person familiar with the matter said, a sign of how quickly Mr. Gross’s surprise move is reshaping the bond-investing landscape. Pimco is bracing for more outflows on the heels of the veteran investor’s departure after months of internal strife over his leadership. At the same time, some managers say they remain committed to the firm. Some within the Newport Beach, Calif., investment firm are projecting it will lose at least $100 billion or more in assets due to withdrawals, the person...

Alton Nolen, the man who is suspected of beheading a former coworker after being fired in Oklahoma, it’s now being described by the major media as a guy who is just “a little odd.” That’s the description they got from people who worshipped at the same mosque as Nolen anyway.“A spokesman for an Oklahoma City Islamic group,” reports CBSNews, “says a man accused of beheading one woman and attacking another at a food processing plant from which he was fired was seen as ‘a little odd’ and ‘a little weird’ by those who attended the same mosque he did.”In a...

Despite struggling with the ongoing border crisis, Texas is the number three state in terms of job growth, creating more than 20,000 jobs in August alone, with an unemployment rate of just 5.3%. So, what is Texas doing right? […] (President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard) Fisher explained that Texas is way ahead of much of the nation economically largely due to its highly diversified economy, pro-business government and lack of income tax. …

To understand why revitalizing Detroit will be difficult, consider the response to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department’s (DWSD) recent plan to make overdue customers pay their bills. The DWSD serves more than 4 million customers across the Detroit region. The suburbs mostly buy water from the DWSD wholesale, so it’s mainly city residents and businesses who get billed directly, and over half of them—about 90,000 customers—haven’t paid up. Total past-due bills add up to nearly $90 million, with the average delinquent residential customer owing $540, or more than 7 months’ worth of service, based on an average bill of...

We have just been notified that authorities may be looking for ‘loose buckets of sunshine’ in the New York area, just days after an ISIS threat upon New York and as verified by the Nuclear Emergency Tracking Center (NETC) now showing TWO RADCON 5 Alerts in the greater NY City area. You can check out screenshots of the NETC’s two RADCON 5′s below as well as the 1st video, of an ISIS member making threats upon New York, warning that ISIS members are mobilizing there now. Why haven’t there been any public announcements about this yet by our mainstream media?...

Microsoft Exec: Windows 9 to be Free for Windows 8 Users Microsoft has scheduled a special invite-only event for Tuesday, September 30, 2014, where it is widely expected to introduce the next version of its popular desktop operating system (codenamed “Threshold” but popularly referred to as Windows 9)... According to Indonesian news portal Detik, existing Windows 8 users will be able to upgrade to Microsoft’s next operating system absolutely free of cost. And how exactly do they know this, you ask? Well, Microsoft Indonesia president Andreas Diantoro said so in Jakarta Thursday... ...

Apple’s OS X is vulnerable to the Shellshock bug, but it’s not that easy for attackers to take advantage of it, according to Intego, which specializes in security software for the operating system. Shellshock is the nickname for a flaw in the Bourne Again Shell, or Bash, which is a command-line shell processor widely present in Unix and Linux systems. The flaw in Bash, which has been present for two decades, could allow an attacker to take complete control of a computer. Apple, which plans to patch the flaw, said most users are fine unless they’ve tweaked advanced Unix settings....

Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a plan for a seismic shift from the country's all-private health insurance system to a state-run scheme. Referendum results showed that almost 62 percent of voters had shot down a reform pushed by left-leaning parties which say the current private system is busting the budgets of ordinary residents. The results also underlined the national divisions over the hotly-contested issue as the country's German-speaking regions voted against the plan, while their French-speaking counterparts were in favour. Switzerland's private insurance lobby hailed the vote.

Hours after the police sought to break up the protest, large crowds of demonstrators remained nearby, sometimes confronting lines of officers and chanting for them to lay down their truncheons and shields. Police officers were also injured in skirmishes with protesters. Streets of a city known as a safe enclave for commerce became a nighttime battleground.

he ban on imports of selected food products to Russia has led to a fall of purchasing prices of summer apples and vegetables in the Czech Republic, according to a poll carried out by ČTK. According to Agriculture Ministry spokesman Hynek Jordán, retail chains have made use of the situation and have cut purchasing prices of apples as well as processed products, such as apple juice, by at least 20 percent. Apples, for instance, are being sold for about one half of last year's price. “Poland started placing apples on the market for almost zero prices to get rid of...