Free Republic

ENOUGH!!! Can we just knock it off with all the doom-and-gloom in this place??? I swear I'm gonna bite my hand (or something else) if I see one more post about hoarding food and stocking on ammo. It's not the end of the world. Jesus is not coming yet. No Armageddon yet. It's just the market's response to years of greed, laxity, crookedness and all-around incompetence. Granted, times are tough, and livelihoods are on the balance, but we need to hang tough and ride the storm. I come from a place in which a decade ago the banking system actually...

Whether you're for or against it, the Colombia FTA has implications far beyond commerce between the two nations. Just by the simple fact of rejecting the agreement, the US would send a devastating message to my country of birth: We don't care about you!!! Would you tell "we don't care about you" to the US' staunchest ally in the effort to contain Chávez and his socialism in Latin America? The staunchest ally in the War on (some) Drugs? Would you rather have Colombia join the Chávez camp, putting him next door to Panama and Central America, giving him a chance...

Call it a textbook case of unintended consequences. For the last 40 years, liberals and Democrats appealed for votes to every "disadvantaged" group, meaning anyone who's not a heterosexual, married, Christian, fiscally conservative white male above middle class and over 35 years old, with children, self-made, generally with a college degree in majors other than social sciences or liberal arts, being this person "The Oppressor" (quite a mouthful, but I need to be clear). These "disadvantaged" groups were deeply ingrained with a victim mentality which reinforced their real or perceived gripes with "the Establishment", blaming "the Man", "the Anglos", "male...

And this is why: As things stand, McPain is slated to get the nomination, and the only "useful" thing Huckabee has done in this campaign is run interference for McPain. The only brokering done at the GOP convention would be Huckabee throwing his delegates to McPain, guaranteeing McPain the nomination. And, no, neither Arthur Branch nor Duncan Hunter will come to the rescue.

LOS ANGELES - Shares of Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender, plunged Tuesday after the company denied rumors that it was planning to file for bankruptcy protection. The stock fell $2.17, or 28.4 percent, to $5.47 on Tuesday after sinking to a 52-week low of $5.05. In a prepared statement earlier in the day, the company said there was "no substance to the rumor that Countrywide is planning to file for bankruptcy, and we are not aware of any basis for the rumor that any of the major rating agencies are contemplating negative action relative to the company."...

An international investigation code-named Operation Raw Deal that culminated in the last four days could produce the next steroids scandal in sports – and perhaps the biggest yet. The undercover operation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration resulted in the seizure of massive amounts of anabolic steroids from an illegal, underground network and the ability to identify hundreds of thousands of people who received steroids and other substances used by some athletes as performance-enhancing drugs, a DEA spokesman told Yahoo! Sports on Sunday. Most of the raids took place in the United States, and the DEA called the steroids...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Countrywide Financial Corp sought to reassure customers on Monday it is safe to do business with the company, while a published report said the largest U.S. mortgage lender has begun layoffs to help cope with a credit crunch. The company ran full-page advertisements in Monday editions of The New York Times and other newspapers assuring readers problems in the mortgage market do not affect the safety of federally insured deposits at its Countrywide Bank unit. It also said the bank is "well capitalized" and that "the future is bright." Countrywide ran the ads after the Wall...

<p>Washington - A new rule aimed at protecting US borders is behind the backlog of passport applications that has frustrated countless Americans this summer.</p> <p>But some experts and federal employees who check applications warn that these shortcomings mean more work needs to be done to improve this aspect of national security.</p>

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is poised to suspend a major post-9/11 security initiative to cope with increasingly angry complaints from Americans whose summer vacations are threatened by new passport rules. A proposal, expected to be announced Friday, will temporarily waive a requirement that U.S. citizens have passports to fly to and from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda, provided the traveler can prove he or she has already applied for a passport, officials said Thursday. The temporary lifting of the passport rule is aimed at clearing a massive backlog of passport applications at the State Department that has slowed...

I went to Puerto Rico for the Memorial Day weekend. Listening to the radio, I heard a parody commercial for a sweet talk dictionary, followed by a message promoting abstinence before marriage, and one of the sponsors was... ...THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO!!! A (sorta) state government promoting abstinence??? I couldn't believe it, either, but kudos for the government of PR. But, since there's always the sour note, will the ACLU sue Puerto Rico for this??? I hope not.

Today, at 11:00 am, I took the oath to become a citizen of the United States of America. It's still sinking in, but I'm ecstatic as well. And i just wanted to share this with you.

he families of those killed in the Virginia Tech massacre may not be able to grieve in peace at the funerals of those they lost. An anti-gay religious group known for protesting at the funerals of American soldiers killed in Iraq is planning on appearing at services for those killed on Monday as well. The Topeka, Kan.-based Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), which is not affiliated with any national Baptist organization, announced plans to protest at victims’ funerals only hours after 32 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. They also may protest at other events on...

Just like that, ladies and gentlemen. I had even lost hope that I would become one anytime soon, but thank God I received the good news today. My ceremony will be that day at about 8:00 AM at Harris-Stowe State University in downtown St. Louis. I'M HAPPY!!!

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil's raucous Carnival celebrations kicked off in Rio de Janeiro on Friday with tens of thousands dancing and singing in the streets, defying a recent surge of gun violence in the city's slums. Carnival's samba-dancing King Momo -- the Lord of Misrule -- and his shimmying Queen and Princess were handed a giant symbolic key to the city in a sun-lit park as a band played Rio's boisterous anthem "the Marvelous City." "The city has its problems but now we're full of hope, and we salute all those who come to visit us for the...

MANTA, Ecuador - The U.S. military's lone outpost in South America is a modest affair — some 220 Americans share space with a local air force wing and an international airport. They are allowed no more than eight planes at a time. But these surveillance planes play a vital role in keeping Andean cocaine and heroin from reaching the United States and are responsible for about 60 percent of drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific. That matters little to newly inaugurated President Rafael Correa, whose rejection of a U.S. military presence in Ecuador reflects widespread resentment over Washington's foreign policy...

OK, boys and girls, this thread comes to my heart because Colombia is my native country. If you look at a map of South America, you'll see that Colombia is surrounded by: Venezuela (Obvious) Ecuador (New president is a Chavez clone) Brazil (Lula, although he's been tame) Panama (president is the son of the guy that cheated Jimmah into turning the Canal to Panamanian control) Peru (Old leftist who now wants to be a centrist) And if we make a tally of the ten relevant South American presidents (the Guyanas do not count) we'll see that: 3 are radical leftist...

WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission unanimously approved AT&T Inc.'s $86 billion buyout of BellSouth Corp. Friday, the day after the company offered a new slate of concessions for consumers and competitors. The FCC's approval was the last major regulatory hurdle for the proposed deal, which is the largest telecommunications merger in U.S. history. Lawyers for AT&T and the two Democratic commissioners who had opposed the merger, hammered out a compromise, the details of which were released Thursday night. Among the conditions offered by AT&T is a promise to observe "network neutrality" principles, an offer of $19.95 per month stand-alone...

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Following all the rules, Indian national Sanjay Mehta came to the United States on a temporary work visa in 1997, hoping to build a glittering career in the fast-moving information technology sector. But nine years later his application for a green card remains snarled up in a bureaucratic logjam, and he looks with frustration at the strides made by illegal immigrants who he says simply jumped the fence from Mexico. "Washington has taken notice of them ... But what about the plight of legal immigrants to this country? We seem to have been forgotten," said Mehta, who...

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An Iraqi whose brother and other relatives were killed in a U.S. attack on a suspected terrorist hideout north of Baghdad condemned a military investigation Saturday that cleared forces of wrongdoing. A 9-year-old survivor of an alleged massacre by U.S. forces in the western city of Haditha, meanwhile, demanded that those responsible be executed, as anger mounted over accusations that Iraqi civilians have been killed by Americans without provocation. "We did not do anything to them," said Iman Walid Abdul-Hameed, who lost her parents, a brother, her grandparents and two uncles in the shootings. She said only...

TEHRAN, Iran - Wading into oil politics for the first time, Iran's hard-line president said Wednesday that crude oil prices — now at record levels — still are below their true value. In statements likely to rattle world oil markets, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said developed countries, not producing countries like Iran, are benefiting the most from the current high prices. "The global oil price has not reached its real value yet. The products derived from crude oil are sold at prices dozens of times higher than those charged by oil-producing countries," state-run Tehran radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. "The...