Free Republic

Obamacare, the health-care industry is going to get a big makeover during the coming years and venture capitalists have wasted no time looking for ways to cash in. "This is the greatest opportunity I've seen in my lifetime. It's the first time we are seeing really fundamental changes happen. And there's a lot of money that can be made as this chaos is sorted out," said Lisa Suennen, the co-founder and managing member of Psilos Group, a health-care-focused venture capital firm. With trillions of dollars estimated to be spent on Obamacare as it gets going and trillions more to be...

Federal officials did not permit testing of the Obamacare healthcare.gov website or issue final system requirements until four to six days before its Oct. 1 launch, according to an individual with direct knowledge of the project. The individual, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the troubled Obamacare website project as suffering from top-level management disarray, changing systems requirements and recurring delays. The root cause of the problems was a pivotal decision by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services officials to act as systems integrator, the central coordinator for the entire program. Usually this role is reserved for the prime...

It's official: Obama has won and conservative Republicans have lost. The US Senate just approved legislation to end the so-called government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling. The bill funds the government through January 15th, raises the debt cap, give back-pay to furloughed workers, and has only two tiny crumbs of concessions that essentially do nothing. The first is that Obamacare will verify the income of those signing up for it, but as the website and program itself is so riddled with junk, that'll likely never happen. The second bit of nothingness is that a bipartisan budget committee will form...

This is another guest post by my (imaginary) friend The Very Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the State of Confusion Utopia. He was the first person of consequence to announce changes to the Bill of Rights enacted by President Obama and we are honored to have a post of this caliber by a quintessential Librul such as the Senator. He is a charter member of President Obama’s Go For It Team, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of the Meretricious Relations Subcommittee. He is also justly proud of his expertise in the care and breeding of unicorns, for which his...

In his self-made role as a life-long Emperor of Insanity, Obama uses NSA to spy on all Americans and on our allies in Europe; sends foreign aid to Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood; destroys the American economy by putting millions of white Americans out of work and giving zillions of dollars in benefits to minorities; stifling American healthcare which is one sixth of our economy with Obamacare; rigging the presidential election by using the IRS and other illegal tactics to shut down opposition to his Marxist policies; gutting the military; destroying private business enterprises with heavy-handed government regulation; turning our...

President Obama told attendees at an LGBT Pride Month celebration that the U.S. needs to get marriage equality "done now," but that he believed the nation had reached a "turning point" on gay rights. "We´re not going to have to wait that long," Obama said. "From Minnesota to Maryland, from the U.S. Senate to the NBA, it´s clear we´ve reached a turning point." The president said that progress could be traced "from the courage of those who stood up." "Eventually America gets it right. That doesn´t mean we can be patient," Obama said.

Police arrested more than a dozen people and used flash-bang grenades and pepper spray after apparent anarchists and May Day marchers converged in downtown Seattle, throwing pipes, fireworks and rocks, lighting flares and sparking confrontations with officers. Protesters met at Seattle Central Community College at the busy intersection of Broadway and Pine Street and then spilled into the street, blocking traffic.

Thieves plunder crashed SUV of tires, wheels and battery - while its dying driver lay trapped underneath A man who was crushed to death by his SUV after a fatal accident suffered the final indignity of being robbed as he lay trapped under the vehicle. Police in New Mexico say 26-year-old Steven Roy Reese of Carlsbad was killed either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning when he apparently lost control of his 1996 Ford Explorer on a little-used dirt road. However, when they got to the vehicle they discovered that somebody had stolen wheels, tires and the battery from the wrecked...

What futurists in 1988 imagined Los Angeles would be like in 2013 With the year 2013 a quarter of a century away, the Los Angeles Times in 1988 asked 30 futurists and other experts what they thought life in their city would look like in 2013. They may have overshot the sophistication of our robots, but many of those predictions for 2013 have come true—or at least come close. Reporter Nicole Yorkin wrote the futurism pieces for the April 3, 1988 issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine, compiling the information from her various interviews. The articles include illustrations by...

The President has excoriated the Republicans for not bailing us out of the sequestration which is going to end life as we know it. He says the only way out is to keep borrowing more money – the sequestration was his idea on how to insure that we did some spending cuts when we raised the debt ceiling, but he has forgotten that I guess. Now the only hope for the nation is to raise taxes. Supposedly on the rich because there are plenty of tax rises that will affect us all coming inevitably. The notion is to blame the...

TIKRIT, Iraq, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least seven people were killed and more than 25 wounded in two car bomb explosions in a town in Salahudin province north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad on Thursday, a provincial police source told Xinhua. The first attack occurred in the morning when a car bomb detonated in the center of al-Dujail town, some 60 km north of Baghdad. Minutes later, another car bombing followed targeting security forces and civilians who gathered at the site of the first blast, the source said on condition of anonymity. The attackers apparently followed old tactic which...

Grid-Down Collapse: Hard Assets Soar In Value Mac Slavo November 5th, 2012By all accounts, the residents of many hurricane stricken areas of the north east are in the midst of a collapse. While FEMA, the National Guard and private relief organizations are in place and providing some level of assistance, the fact of the matter is that for tens of thousands of Americans, the world as they knew it has completely collapsed around them. What we are witnessing are the immediate after-effects of what is referred to as a grid-down scenario, where utility infrastructure like water and electricity, transportation infrastructure...

South Africa Is On The Brink Of Total Chaos As Strikes Are Leading To Fuel And Cash Shortages Matthew BoeslerOct. 3, 2012, 11:02 AMThe labor strikes that have engulfed the mining industry in South Africa in recent weeks have now spread to one of the country's most vital industries – trucking. Without the trucking industry facilitating the flow of goods between purchasers and suppliers, things can get ugly pretty quickly, as they did in the U.K. in 2001 when truckers went on a similar strike and brought the British economy to the brink. Truckers are already entering their second week...

Albert Peterson shot dead his wife and two sons hours after going to church because he dreaded the thought of Obama winning the election, a family friend has revealed. A confidante of the family for the past 25 years has spoken to MailOnline about the strength and grace of the Peterson family, as well as the torment that plagued Albert which drove him to shoot dead his wife Kathleen and his two sons Christopher and Mathew at their suburban home in DC on Sunday. A history of mental illness, the loss of a dear uncle, and a growing fear of...

Sen. Sessions hosted a press conference today with top officials from two unions that represent U.S. immigration law enforcement agencies. ICE agent Chris Crane is President of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council, the union representing America's more than 7,000 ICE agents and personnel. Border Patrol agent George McCubbin, III is President of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing America's more than 17,000 border agents and personnel. From Sen. Sessions' remarks (forthcoming in a video tomorrow): "The Administration claims it has diligently enforced immigration law and that the border is 'more secure than ever.' But those on...

It was St. Peter Damian, a Doctor of the Church, who explained that the vice of sodomy "surpasses the enormity of all others," because, "Without fail, it brings death to the body and destruction to the soul. It pollutes the flesh, extinguishes the light of the mind, expels the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart, and gives entrance to the devil, the stimulator of lust: It leads to error, totally removes truth from the deluded mind . . . It opens up Hell and closes the gates of Paradise . . . It is this vice that...

Is a vampire on the loose in Corpus Christi? Police say a 16 year old boy was walking down Shoreline Boulevard near Corpus Christi Bay Wednesday night, when he accidentally bumped into a man, who turned around and bit him in the neck. "Apparently he left a bite mark and broke the skin and took some skin off," Senior Police Officer Julia Hernandez-Garcia told 1200 WOAI news.

COMPTON A 15-year-old boy will be arraigned Friday morning on murder charges in the fatal shooting of an infant boy while he lay in his father’s arms outside a South Los Angeles home. Police arrested Donald Ray Dokins Wednesday after he allegedly shot 1-year-old Angel Cortez, according to the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office. Mauro Cortez was reportedly standing outside of a house, holding his baby Angel, in the 105000 block of South Hikory Street on June 4, police reported. Cortez told police a teen boy rode up on a bicycle, fired several shots at him with a handgun and...

Moments after the pastor's words urged those at the funeral to value human life, the inspirational calmness came to a deadly halt Thursday afternoon at a DeKalb County church. That's where the man accused of killing 19-year-old Ryan Devon Guider showed up at the funeral and gunfire ensued again, according to police.

Correspondent R.T. is a retired accountant who has resided in Arizona since 2001. Prior to 2001, he resided in California. On March 14, he received a letter from the California Franchise Tax Board (the agency that collects income taxes) claiming that he owed $1,343 for the tax year 2006. This was the first notification he'd ever received of this claim. This was an interesting claim given that R.T.: -- Did not reside in California in 2006 -- Did not file a State income tax return in California in 2006 -- Did not have any outstanding tax issues with California in...