Free Republic

The same day that the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee announced last week that the Fed would continue to buy $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and $45 billion in U.S. Treasury securities per month, the Fed also released its latest weekly accounting sheet indicating that it had already accumulated more Treasuries and MBS than the total value of the publicly held U.S. government debt amassed by all U.S. presidents from George Washington though Bill Clinton. Since the beginning of September 2008, in fact, the Fed’s ownership of Treasury securities and MBS has increased sevenfold. As of the close...

long story short, bank loan officer botched loan. cost incurred included: lost earnest money, moving truck fees, seller's late fees,missed work,etc.

The strategic mismatch between a seasoned KGB veteran and a neighborhood community organizer has been a disaster for America that has “reset” American-Russian relationships backwards. As former New York Mayor Giuliani told Fox and Friends: “The KGB agent is working him over… And unfortunately, he’s our president and he makes our country look so weak that it’s dangerous.” Little could we have imagined the consequences that would later unfold following Obama’s provident statement just prior to his first election: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” He has kept that promise. Not since the...

The US threatened military retaliation against Bashar Assad after the Aug. 21 gas attack. When Congress balked, Obama embraced Russia’s plan for Syria to turn over its chemical arsenal. ‘I don’t think that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has the same values that we do,’ the president said. But ‘we both have an interest in preventing chaos [and] terrorism.’ President Barack Obama sent a message Sunday to Russian President Vladimir Putin that his success in avoiding U.S. military action in Syria is not a blank check to prop up the Syrian strongman. A day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry...

LOS ANGELES, September 16, 2013—The real news of September 16th, 2013 was that there was a tragic Navy Yard shooting in Washington, D.C. There were several fatalities. Initial details were not released. While most Americans recoiled in horror at an act of evil, President Obama treated it as an inconvenience and minor annoyance. The shooter altered the news story about the day, which was supposed to be an Obama press conference where Obama would resume his role as Self-Praiser in Chief of all things Obama. This day was the five year anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. The plan...

President Barack Obama is damaging his presidency, weakening America’s standing in the world, and displaying “inexplicable” incompetence. The media figure making those accusations isn’t Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer or Glenn Beck. The critic doesn’t host a right-wing talk show, anchor a Fox News program, or write for the pages of the Weekly Standard. In fact, he’s not even a conservative. It’s Joe Klein, the Time Magazine political columnist. “Obama has lost some serious altitude: In the world, with the Congress, and most importantly with the American people,” Klein, a veteran journalist and political moderate, told POLITICO. Klein...

The left is on a roll. Liberals successfully pushed back against President Obama’s plan to launch airstrikes in Syria, and then quashed the expected nomination of Larry Summers as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. That one-two punch from some usually loyal Democratic allies has left Mr. Obama in a weakened political state right as he enters tough negotiations with Republicans: to keep the government funded beyond Sept. 30, and to raise the limit on federal borrowing authority a few weeks later. Republican House Speaker John Boehner is having an even harder time getting his own base to...

When President Barack Obama decided he wanted congressional approval to strike Syria, he received swift—and negative—responses from his staff. National Security Adviser Susan Rice warned he risked undermining his powers as commander in chief. Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer pegged the chances of Congress balking at 40%. His defense secretary also raised concerns. Mr. Obama took the gamble anyway and set aside the impending strikes to try to build domestic and international support for such action. He found little of either. Congress's top leaders weren't informed of the switch until just an hour or so before Mr. Obama's Rose Garden announcement...

The Democratic uproar that sank Lawrence Summers’s chances of taking charge of the Federal Reserve suggests that President Barack Obama’s clout on Capitol Hill is eroding ahead of crucial decisions about government spending and the debt ceiling. Mr. Obama often singles out House Republicans for blocking his agenda in Congress. But as his second term plays out, he also is confronting restive factions within his own party that are uneasy with some of his policies. The liberal wing in particular has rallied against his proposed use of force in Syria, his openness to changing entitlement programs and his apparent interest...

Even putting his best gloss on the case and even outright contradicting hard numbers from his own administration, President Obama has a tough time selling the current economy as a comfy place in which to live and do business. According to the White House's own five-years-later report on the fiscal crisis and the administration's wrassling therewith, Americans remain trillions of dollars in household income behind where they were in 2008. That's when the report is being honest—it also claims a TARP profit that will come as a surprise to Christy Romero, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief...

WASHINGTON — President Obama, to his supporters, is a deliberative leader whose willingness to recalibrate his response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons potentially helped avert military strikes and further US involvement in a civil war half a world away. But to his critics, Obama is like a character in a Shakespearean comedy, where the hapless protagonist succeeds despite himself. It was, after all, only after Secretary of State John F. Kerry made an offhand comment last Monday morning in London — and Russian leaders seized on it — that renewed diplomatic discussions began. Now those discussions have led to...

WASHINGTON - President Obama says a tumultuous month as commander in chief, when his policy toward Syria took a number of unexpected turns, may not have looked "smooth and disciplined and linear," but it's working. "I'm less concerned about style points. I'm much more concerned with getting the policy right," Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on "This Week." Obama said his surprise announcement on Aug. 31 that he would seek congressional authorization for U.S. military strikes against Syria, then the abrupt cancellation of a vote this week and pursuit of a diplomatic plan led by the...

President Obama's pitch for a military strike in Syria looked so politically clueless that he left supporters and foes alike scratching their heads: What was he thinking? For some, the answer was obvious. Because every conspiracy theory ever concocted about the President — from him being a secret Muslim agent sent from Kenya to take over the government to gay-sex-and-cocaine binges in the backseats of limousines — all make perfect sense if you simply accept the foundational supposition that Obama hates America. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Sunday, Norman Podhoretz argued that Syria showed the swift collapse of...

(Reuters) - It seems that everyone in Washington is talking about it except President Barack Obama: When Congress votes on the administration's request to use military force in Syria, the future of his presidency could well be on the line. A defeat, a distinct possibility, would hobble Obama in affairs both foreign and domestic, particularly if fellow Democrats collaborate in it. It will hurt him at a critical juncture, as he confronts not only Syria, but the nuclear activities of Iran and North Korea, another round of battles with Republicans over fiscal issues, an immigration bill, and a possibly difficult...

President Bush knew how to build a coalitionGeorge W. Bush was widely mocked by the Left during the Iraq War, with liberals jeering at the “coalition of the willing,” which included in its ranks some minnows such as Moldova and Kazkhstan. Michael Moore, in his rather silly documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, went to great lengths to lampoon the Iraq War alliance. But the coalition also contained, as I pointed out in Congressional testimony back in 2007, Great Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy, Poland, and 16 members of the NATO alliance, as well as Japan and South Korea. In Europe, France and...

Reuters) - The Obama administration has delayed a step crucial to the launch of the new healthcare law, the signing of final agreements with insurance plans to be sold on federal health insurance exchanges starting October 1. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notified insurance companies on Tuesday that it would not sign final agreements with the plans between September 5 and 9, as originally anticipated, but would wait until mid-September instead, according to insurance industry sources. Nevertheless, Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for HHS, said the department remains "on track to open" the marketplaces on time on...

LINDSAY, Ont. — There’s going to be the odd time when police can’t help you -- like, say, when you call them to ask how to protect the $6,000 in marijuana plants you’ve got growing in your house. Police said a woman called Wednesday seeking tips on how to prevent someone from breaking into her home and stealing her pot plants. “She didn’t want to get violently robbed,” Sgt. Terry Cox said. It was an odd request, Cox said, and the officer on the other end of the line reminded the woman that she was talking to a police officer...

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama continues to tell us that the quality of our lives and our economy have improved when all the available evidence shows they have not. In fact, they've grown worse under his policies. Recent economic data, studies and government reports reveal a nation in persistent decline showing very little improvement in the lives of millions of Americans. Incomes have fallen, poverty and homeless rates have risen, full- time jobs are much harder to come by, as low-pay, part-time jobs are surging, even while the work force is shrinking. Workers are losing their health insurance under Obamacare, confidence...

And almost a third of respondents still say they’re unfamiliar with ObamaCare, even as we approach T-minus one month for the individual exchanges.  Among those familiar with the Affordable Care Act, though, a majority disapproves, according to Gallup’s latest poll: Less than two months before the health insurance exchanges open nationwide, more Americans disapprove (49%) than approve (41%) of the Affordable Care Act. An additional 11% have no opinion. As this landmark legislation enters the next phase in its implementation process, it remains divisive. With the exception of a bounce likely caused by President Barack Obama’s re-election in November 2012,...

United Parcel Service Inc. plans to remove thousands of spouses from its medical plan because they are eligible for coverage elsewhere. The Atlanta-based logistics company points to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as a big reason for the decision, reports Kaiser Health News.