Free Republic

DAVE EUBANK MAKES an exploding gesture with his fist to alert the guerrilla soldiers following him of the danger ahead. “From here until we pass the road, the trail is lined with mines,” he says, scanning the mountainous Burmese jungle for signs of trouble. “Watch where you step.” As his signal relays down the line, conversations fall silent and the air hums with only the sound of heavy breathing and hundreds of footsteps on hard-packed ground. Eubank picks up the pace, slashing through brush and thorny stalks that tear at his clothing. A former U.S. Special Forces officer and ordained...

Ways That People Can Help in Burma Now 8 April, 2021 Dear friends and family, Thank you for praying for the people here and being with us in this. Even in the midst of killing and displacement here in Burma we feel and see God’s love, and appreciate so much your help. Although many people in the cities have been captured and tortured, and hundreds killed, they have not given up and continue to stand for freedom. The ethnic people in the mountains, although chased from their homes, also refuse to give up and continue loving and helping each other....

Wall Street continues to run away from Microsoft. Today, it's David Hilal at FBR that's cutting Microsoft, downgrading the company, Marketwatch Reports. He cites the common concerns of slowing PC-growth, and exploding growth of the iPad, and tablets. Hilal has the stock at a "market perform" rating, which seems to mean it's just going to be flat for a while. FBR is joining Goldman, Janney Capital, and Barclays, who have all cut Microsoft's rating this month. All for the same basic reasons. Microsoft's stock has been flat to down for the last ten years, nice of the Street's analysts to...

What's black and white and "red" all over? The Department of Justice's newly designed website. Gone are the standard red, white, and blue motifs, replaced by an all-black backdrop. And prominently placed on virtually every page of the site is a quote credited to a man who facilitated a greater role for socialists and communists at the U.N., and the global "workers rights movement." The redesigned website was launched without fanfare, but was noticed internally by several career lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of political reprisals. "We were told that the media team and the senior...

Eric Billings, chairman and CEO of Friedman Billings Ramsey Group Inc. and its majority-owned subsidiary investment bank FBR Capital Markets, received $13.8 million in total compensation in 2008 — more than triple his compensation from 2007, according to a Tuesday securities filing. That’s despite the company losing $417.5 million last year, its fourth year of consecutive annual losses. Billings’ $2 million 2008 bonus was a retention payment, rather than a performance-based bonus. He agreed to forego annual performance-based bonuses for 2008, 2009 and 2010. FBR Group (NYSE: FBR), which is in the process of changing its name to Arlington Asset...

FBR's Awful Truth By Steven Pearlstein Friday, March 14, 2008; D01 There was a time when lots of us were rooting for Friedman, Billings, Ramsey, the homegrown investment bank. With its strong bench of analysts, its focus on financial services and technology, its scrappy trading desk and a loyal network of institutional investors eager to buy up whatever it was selling, FBR was the Washington upstart determined to beat Wall Street at its own game. But in the decade since it began selling its shares to the public, FBR seems to have careened from one disaster to another, losing billions...