Free Republic

The Washington leadership never misses an opportunity to blame the eight years of Bush policies for the economic problems that have befallen the nation. CNN news touts a poll that says 53 percent of the people blame Republican policies for the mess. Both are wrong. Republicans certainly contributed over the years, but the cause of the economic problems must be laid squarely at the doorstep of the Democrats. The root cause of the economic problem is government interference with the free market.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks slid Friday after a disappointing jobs report added to investors' concerns that the economic recovery is losing steam, ending a week of steep losses on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped for a seventh straight day after the government said private employers added only 83,000 jobs last month, fewer than the 112,000 analysts had forecast. The Dow hasn't fallen for that many days in a row since an eight-day losing streak at the height of the financial crisis in October 2008.

The train that is the nation’s economic recovery has slowed noticeably, unable to generate enough jobs in the last two months to keep pace with population growth, much less reduce the vast numbers of unemployed Americans. The United States added just 83,000 private sector jobs in June, according to the monthly statistical snapshot released by the Labor Department. The unemployment rate declined to 9.5 percent, from 9.7 percent in May. But that was a largely illusory decline, as 652,000 Americans left the work force.

Forget about the drop in the unemployment rate last month. The economic recovery has lost significant steam in the last few months. Today’s employment report is clear on that score. Job growth in the private sector has slowed — to 83,000 last month and a three-month average of 119,000. From February to April, the private sector added 154,000 jobs a month. (With the Census winding down, the federal government cut jobs last month, which explains the drop in overall employment.)

The stock market rounded out its worst quarter since late 2008 on Wednesday with a late slide that spared few blue chips. A day after the broad market tumbled to its lowest level so far this year, it fell a further 1 percent Wednesday after Moody’s warned that it might lower the credit rating of Spain Continues... The other day, Joe Biden announced in a speech that this summer will be a 'summer of recovery'. I fell off my chair and nearly collapsed on the floor from laughing. Just a few of the significant milestones Obama's achieved so far: --...

President Obama's overhaul of the health-care system has done little to improve the nation's fiscal outlook, and his pledge to extend an array of tax cuts for the middle class would only make things worse, congressional budget analysts said Wednesday. In its latest long-term forecast, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that the national debt, which has surged to nearly 60 percent of annual economic output in the wake of the recession, would continue rising in the coming decades despite cost-containment measures in the health overhaul Obama signed this spring.

A South Carolina lawmaker suggested that new Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene may be intellectually incapable of participating in the general election race. Continues... He can't string a coherent sentence together. Can't form a coherent thought, either. Doesn't understand the issues. Has no idea what he's doing. Didn't have a real job. He was a virtual nobody! But enough about Obama. The world's biggest whiners -- mostly known as "Democrats" -- are whining and complaining that Republicans in South Carolina selected their nominee for them. Alvin Greene is a jobless military veteran who won the nomination handily last Tuesday, with...

WASHINGTON — David Axelrod, President Obama’s senior adviser, has added his voice to those saying they smell something fishy in a Democratic primary in South Carolina that selected a jobless man who faces felony obscenity charges as the party’s nominee for the Senate.

A soldier, a small American flag on the shoulder of his jacket, slowly walks through the streets of a once-bustling city now lying in rubble. The still-upright walls, their windows and doors blown out, appear as skeletons framed by the blue sky. He steps carefully around the broken bricks and shattered glass, alert to any noise or movement. The soldier hears a faint stirring and, wheeling around, rifle at the ready, sees a young girl perhaps five or six years of age slowly walking towards him. Her tattered clothes barely cover her emaciated frame. Their eyes meet. The soldier sees...

President Obama and his leftist pals ought to start taking responsibility for the shortcomings of their extreme ideology. The left’s knee-jerk reaction: Blame former President George W. Bush for anything that goes wrong, seems to have no bounds. Bush has been saddled with everything from a bad economy to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Continues... To stem the Gulf oil gusher and clean up the mess, Obama has been mustering all the incompetence his entire administration could manage under the circumstances. His biggest achievement thus far is watching this drag out for over a month before realizing...

WASHINGTON — As President Obama and his top aides were convening a series of meetings that led to the announcement in March of a major expansion of offshore oil drilling, the troubled history of the agency that regulates such drilling operations was well known. Mr. Obama, shortly after taking office, had assigned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to clean up the agency, the Minerals Management Service. The office’s history of corruption and coziness with the industry it was supposed to regulate had been the subject of years of scathing reports by government auditors, lurid headlines and a score of Congressional hearings.

HOUSTON — The Obama administration scrambled to respond on Sunday after the failure of the latest effort to kill the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. But administration officials acknowledged the possibility that tens of thousands of gallons of oil might continue pouring out until August, when two relief wells are scheduled to be completed.

Unsuccessful in its latest bid to plug the oil leak off the Louisiana coast, BP on Sunday announced a new attempt to place a "containment cap" atop the gushing well one mile deep in the Gulf of Mexico. Robert Dudley, managing director of BP, said Sunday on CNN that the new remedy, which could take up to seven more days to take effect, is not a sure thing, and wouldn't capture all the leaking oil even if it works.

White House lawyer Robert Bauer's statement today on the "job offer" to Rep. Joe Sestak carefully explained it was really only an unpaid advisory position that would allow Sestak to stay in his U.S. House seat representing Pennsylvania. But the words did nothing to remove critics' doubts, and one commenter on the blog of conservative columnist Michelle Malkin may have touched a nerve when he wrote, "When you are telling the truth you do not have to prepare a response. The truth does not have to be manipulated. It does not have to be reviewed by attorneys. It does not...

The White House said Friday that former President Bill Clinton acted as a go-between to discuss with Rep. Joe Sestak an Obama administration job in exchange for abandoning his Senate Democratic primary challenge against incumbent Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The report came amid heavy pressure from Democrats and Republicans for the White House to provide details about Mr. Sestak's repeated contention that he was offered a job if he would pull out of the race.

WASHINGTON — The White House lavished attention on Senator Arlen Specter when he switched parties last year, but Rahm Emanuel realized he had a problem. To secure the seat for the Republican-turned-Democrat, Mr. Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, wanted to clear the path for Mr. Specter to win his new party’s nomination.

With Republican prospects brightening for major wins in Connecticut in the fall elections, Republican National Chairman Michael S. Steele on Sunday accused the Democrats' U.S. Senate front-runner, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, of lying about having served in Vietnam. Appearing on the same "Fox News Sunday" TV show, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine backed away a bit from Mr. Blumenthal, who several times claimed military service in the Vietnam War but, after news stories to the contrary last week, now is saying he "misspoke" and admits to not having fought in Vietnam.

This month, three members of Congress have been beaten in their bids for re-election -- a Republican senator from Utah, a Democratic congressman from West Virginia and a Republican-turned-Democrat senator from Pennsylvania. Their records and their curricula vitae are different. But they all have one thing in common: They are members of an appropriations committee. Like most appropriators, they have based much of their careers on bringing money to their states and districts. There is an old saying on Capitol Hill that there are three parties -- Democrats, Republicans and appropriators. One reason that it has been hard to hold...

Nevada is a politically divided state, and Rep. Dina Titus (D) is having a hard time hitting all of the right notes. That’s going to prove especially difficult come November, when she’s up for re-election against a tough Republican opponent.

The Washington order suffered big losses Tuesday, with establishment-backed candidates losing or facing a fight for their political survival in all three marquee Senate primaries on both the Republican and Democratic sides. Insurgent candidate Rep. Joe Sestak toppled Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania's Democratic primary, Sen. Blanche Lincoln was forced into a runoff in Arkansas's Democratic primary and newcomer Rand Paul, riding "tea party" momentum, steamrolled to victory in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary.