Free Republic

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) Hey, y’all, Donald Trump lost a lot of money in the 1980s! – That’s the big “bomb” the news-fakers at the New York Times dropped on President Donald Trump Tuesday night, as the paper somehow got hold of a decade of Trump’s tax returns. In all, the returns show that Trump’s real estate and casino businesses lost over a billion dollars during the 10 year period. Well, for tax purposes, that is. Anyone familiar with how the tax code works, i.e., nobody who works for the NYTimes, would know that tax losses...

President Trump on Friday signed a spending package to avert another government shutdown, his top spokesman said. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Trump approved the measure on Friday afternoon in the executive mansion. Reporters were not on hand to witness the bill signing. The move came hours after Trump announced during a freewheeling, 50-minute news conference that he is declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress and obtain $8 billion for his long-desired border wall, a move that triggered a major legal showdown with Democrats.

Senator Edward M. Kennedy and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, met in debate tonight and staged a generally pallid battle pf policy details... The only heated confrontation was over crime, after Mr. Romney said Mr. Kennedy was too soft... Mr. Kennedy then demanded to know where Mr. Romney stood on banning cheap handguns...

Those Yanks living overseas or posted on assignment/traveling will more than likely have to put up with CNN International, which is unfathomably a couple of magnitudes worse than domestic CNN.

Obama touts 10,000th stimulus project By Eric Zimmermann - 06/18/10 12:07 PM ET President Barack Obama on Friday highlighted the 10,000th project funded by stimulus dollars. In remarks near a children's hospital in Columbus, Ohio, Obama argued that the stimulus had put the economy on the road to recovery. "When I was here last, America was losing 700,000 jobs per month," Obama said. The economy is now "growing at a good clip" and has "added jobs for 6 out of the last 7 months." The project in Columbus will use about $25 million to widen sidewalks and create new lanes...

Informing myself about the Health Care Bill has made it difficult to know even the rudiments of the next awful thing--financial services takeover. Can someone start to fill me in, provide some background?

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AFP) – US President Barack Obama Thursday launched a sales blitz for his historic health care reforms, as Democrats battled deep Republican anger to finish a set of fixes to the law. Obama returned on Air Force One to Iowa, the cradle of his 2008 campaign, to proclaim he had made good on the political change he promised, by enacting reforms dreamed of by Democrats for generations, but never realized until now. The president was also expected to take on Republicans as they seek to define the historic bill as a costly, big government power grab, in...

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his department have been sued by Judicial Watch as a result of the government's abject failure to abide by the law, specifically the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), concerning the Toxic Assets Relief Program and Obama administration "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg. Last November, Judidial Watch submitted an FOIA request multiple documents concerning meetings involving Feinberg, special master for executive compensation under TARP; AIG Chairman Robert Benmosche, and New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley. As the Obama administration’s “pay czar,” Feinberg is responsible for setting compensation guidelines for the seven largest firms, including AIG,...

Senate Republicans blasted the chamber's new healthcare bill in no uncertain terms on Saturday. "Make no mistake, this bill will reshape our nation and our lives," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement. "This bill is a legislative trainwreck of historic proportions." McConnell's Democratic counterpart, Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), unveiled the final language for his party's healthcare bill while simultaneously sewing up the 60th vote for the bill in Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). "The history that's being made here is the ignoring of the will of the American people," McConnell said. Other Republican lawmakers dumped on...

New homes are full of questions and possibilities. What color to paint the walls? How to arrange the furniture? What to plant in the garden? The Obama family must have asked a lot of those same questions when they moved into the White House. However, the first lady's dreams of growing an organic vegetable garden have been dragged down by a previous resident that refuses to leave: sludge.

WASHINGTON -- As financial markets tumbled and the government worked to stave off panic by pumping billions of dollars into banks last fall, several members of Congress who oversee the banking industry were grabbing up or dumping bank stocks. Anticipating bargains or profits or just trying to unload before the bottom fell out, these members of the House Financial Services Committee or brokers on their behalf were buying and selling stocks including Bank of America and Citigroup -- some of the very corporations their committee would later rap for greed, a Plain Dealer examination of congressional stock market transactions shows....

Speaker Pelosi Visits MN To See Stimulus In Action ReportingMaya Nishikawa Jun 7, 2009 6:34 pm US/Central MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi paid a visit to Minneapolis on Sunday. Pelosi toured a school where federal economic stimulus money is helping put young people to work this summer. She was also here to raise money for Democratic U.S. Representative Tim Walz. Young people greeted Pelosi in Minneapolis in a traditional way with Native American drums. The American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center (AIOIC) is a place where both culture and advancement come together. Students at the AIOIC...

Half of the big banks paying back federal loans are investment firms or asset managers, so lending isn't likely to pick up. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Don't expect TARP-free banks to unleash a torrent of loans to cash-strapped consumers. The Treasury Department told ten big bank holding companies Tuesday that they are healthy enough to repay their federal loans. In turn, the big banks said they would repay $68 billion to Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program. JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) will be sending Treasury the biggest check, for $25 billion. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told Congress that the planned...

Black Newspapers Omitted from Stimulus Package, NNPA Publishers Push for InclusionBy Cash Michaels Special to the NNPA from the Wilmington Journal RALEIGH, N.C. (NNPA) - Black publishers of the National Newspaper Publishing Association (NNPA) are concerned that there is nothing “designed” in President Barack Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package to do business with struggling Black newspapers in this flailing economy. “While we publishers wholeheartedly applaud the president's efforts of making certain economically devastated communities of color are able to benefit from the billions of dollars within the stimulus package, it is unclear whether any of the money has been earmarked...

U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala., said the government should not stop big banks from failing. McCain said the Treasury failed to make the "hard decision" to let "these banks fail." The senators made their comments on Sunday-morning talk shows, but neither mentioned any specific banks. President Barack Obama has said he does not want any major banks to fail, noting that his administration will "take more significant action to deal with those institutions." New York Times, The (03/08)

(sigh) Time to bend over and grab the Vaseline.

I learned a few tricks and tactics while I was a lieutenant governor and governor for over 13 1/2 years. And one thing is that when someone is in a hurry to pass legislation, you'd better slow it down because the reason to hurry a law is rarely urgency to help the citizens, but urgency to get it passed before people find out what the heck it really is. A lot of legislation is like garbage and it's garbage the first day in the can, but if it sits there long enough, it really starts smelling. Congress knows that the...

Gov. Sarah Palin has a complete open shot here to clean both Biden's and Obama's clocks Thursday night! As a conservative, she is well advised to take it.If we don't oppose this Socialist Democratic corruption on the bailout and CRA/ACORN/FREDDIE/FANNIE, and expose them, and also make a clear distinction between Democrats and Republicans on borders and illegal immigration, we can kiss this election GOOD BYE.These are TWO MAJOR WIN ISSUES FOR THE GOOD GUYS.Moment of truth, folks.Will we get a pit bull? Or an aging basset hound?