Free Republic

The only thing about the Republican “race” more depressing than the slate of candidates is the backbiting and snide remarks in “conservative” media about them. We just got over a hysterical tantrum about Iowa Republicans because Scott Walker fired a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, pro-amnesty staffer who was apparently friends with some conservative bloggers and pundits. Now we have a lot of snide comments about Ben Carson. I’m not promoting Carson. Unlike a lot of conservative commentators, I don’t have a horse here. I don’t think Carson is all that ready for that matter, but his statement that the conflict with...

Now Joe Biden manages a St Patrick's Day gaffe: Veep makes off-colour joke about Ireland's religious divisions then gets prime minister's wife's name wrong Also got name of Irish prime minister's wife wrong and mis-named the title of a Yeats poem he selected for the occasion Joe Biden made yet another of his trademark gaffes today as he met Ireland's prime minister to mark St Patrick's Day - then suggested one side of its sectarian divide was unwelcome in Washington. Sporting a green tie and noticing that everyone else was also wearing one, or clad in green, he suddenly blurted:...

Leadership: An Army couple is told to move their wedding from the 16th tee of a golf course so President Obama can play through. Is it any wonder that his approval rating among the military is at a record low? Just 15% of active-duty service members gave their commander in chief a thumbs-up in the most recent Military Times survey, with 55% saying they disapproved of the job that President Obama is doing. It certainly didn't help his image when two Army captains were told hours before their wedding that they had to move it so Obama could play through...

After this, the word “colloquially” should be added to the definition of “Kinsleyan gaffe” — i.e. when a politician accidentally tells the truth … colloquially. That’s what Obama did last week when he shooed away a heckler by casually reassuring him that he had changed the law on immigration — which was true. With Congress unwilling to impeach and the next president unlikely for political reasons to cancel Obama’s order, his amnesty will survive as the de facto law of the land until either conservatives win the White House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate or the two parties...

Vice President Joe Biden made another gaffe on Thursday, telling Harvard students that China is a part of North America. Speaking at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Biden made yet another blunder after saying that "North America is literally--not figuratively--the epicenter of energy in the world today." "North America will account--meaning Mexico, China and Canada--for two-thirds of the growth of global energy supply over the next 20 years," Biden said. "By 2018, the United States will be a net exporter of natural gas, and most projections show North America will be totally energy independent by 2020, and the United States...

The African Leaders Summit in Washington, D.C., this week brought leaders from over 50 African nations to our nation’s capital to discuss such wide-ranging topics as women’s health to the threat of terrorism, according to WJLA. The summit featured a host of key speakers, including former President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and congressional leaders. One such speaker was Democratic House Whip, Rep. Steny Hoyer (MA). And Hoyer took the opportunity to make what he would describe as a joke, which was met with light laughter, and one person clapping.

Mrs Clinton confused names of political parties in interview with BBC. Said Tories and Conservatives were opponents in Houses of Parliament. Names actually refer to the same party, Labour being the other main party. Gaffe is particularly embarrassing given she was former Secretary of State . ... Clinton suggested that the Conservatives and Tories were opponents, when in fact the two names refer to the same party. The gaffe is particularly embarrassing for Clinton as she used to be Secretary of State, and so is expected to have extensive knowledge of foreign affairs. ... Sales of Mrs Clinton's book have...

CLINTON CAN’T STOP GAFFES ON CRONY CAPITALISM Can Hillary Clinton, who says she and her husband went on from being “dead broke” in 2001 to rake in an estimated $155 million, run for president as the nominee of a party that is obsessed with income inequality? No problem, she told The Guardian, because the Clintons pay their taxes. The Democratic 2016 frontrunner dismissed the idea that voters would see a corporate-connected candidate with a nine-digit income in the past decade as part of the problem: “‘But they don't see me as part of the problem,’ she protests, ‘because we pay...

As Hillary Clinton’s book tour continues, what many believe to be her unofficial presidential campaign roll out has been marred by gaffes and misstatements. In an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer on Monday, Clinton committed two classic Kinsley gaffes. First, she asserted that she and her husband left the White House “dead broke.” This statement earned Clinton a “mostly false” rating from Politifact and prompted her to clarify that she knows that her family is “obviously blessed.” The second gaffe related to her response to the Benghazi attack. Clinton’s clumsy defense of her actions leading up to and following...

Secretary of State John Kerry has said he chose the wrong word in describing Israel´s potential future after being criticised for saying the Jewish state could become an ´apartheid state´ if it does not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. In a statement released yesterday by the State Department, Kerry lashed out against ´partisan political´ attacks against him, but acknowledged his comments last week to a closed international forum could have been misinterpreted. He pointedly did not apologize for the remarks, but stressed he was, and is, a strong supporter of Israel, which he called a ´vibrant democracy.´

President Obama had plenty of heartfelt words as he spoke at the Oso firehouse after touring the mudslide debris field. But his remarks are being overshadowed because he mispronounced Oso several times. He got it right the first time he referenced the town devastated by last month's slide as he recognized family members of the victims, first responders and officials, saying he came to let the community know the entire country is thinking of them. But moments later came his big gaffe. "Because while very few Americans have ever heard of Osso [sic] before the disaster struck, we've all been...

RickLeventhalFoxNews        ✔ @RickLeventhal VP Biden: "my god, u have survived & u have soared. it was worth, it was worth it. i mean this sincerely, just to hear each of u speak." 3:47 PM - 15 Apr 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama has caused confusion after claiming yesterday that Kosovo held a UN-assisted referendum for self-determination – misleading people over the true origins of the country. The U.S. President used the example to hit out against Russia's annexation of Crimea, but experts have noted that no such referendum took place, and implied that Obama's "incredible mistake" should elicit a retraction or correction from the White House.

Aretha Franklin has much R-E-S-P-E-C-T for President Barack Obama — regardless of his spelling skills. At a White House tribute to the "Women of Soul" last Thursday, Obama dropped the initial "E'' when trying to spell out "respect" as the queen of soul does in her famous song. He was spelling out the word as part of Franklin's introduction. "I'm sure the President had much on his agenda and was just a little tired," the 71-year-old singer said in a statement Monday.

Vice President Joe Biden has revealed that the President assigned him ‘every s*** job in the world’ but he still wasn’t able to win Obama’s full support and began being effectively frozen out after one of his infamous gaffes. The 71-year-old argued that he was happy to do the less glamorous tasks- like handling the at-times petty Senate fights and calming the fears of the infamously paranoid President of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai- but only at a price. ‘When the president asked me what portfolio did I want, I said, “Base it on what you want of me to help you...

In a speech in Wisconsin on Thursday, President Barack Obama insulted perhaps the most fervent members of his political base: art history majors. The politically clumsy moment occurred during the president’s remarks at General Electric’s Waukesha Gas Engines facility. After extolling his own economic policies at some length, Obama observed that “manufacturing jobs typically pay well” in the United States. “We want to encourage more of them,” he said. Then, he began to speak — apparently extemporaneously — about the benefits of working in America’s ever-diminishing manufacturing sector.

On Thursday, President Obama launched into yet another broadside against Republicans over the government shutdown while in campaign mode in Rockville, Maryland speaking to a construction company. Oddly, after veering off teleprompter, he likened Republicans shutting down the government to striking workers shutting down a business: “Everybody here does their job, right? If you’re working here and in the middle of the day you just stopped and said, ‘You know what, I want to get something, but I don’t know exactly what I’m gonna get, but I’m just gonna stop working until I get something, I’m gonna shut down the...

Write a new chapter in the diplomatic handbook. Dedicate it to the off-the-cuff remark – the gaffe, even – which averts a war. We don't yet know if John Kerry's apparently unplanned comment in London, suggesting Syria could avoid a US military strike by turning over its stash of chemical weapons, has set in train a process that will ultimately prevent armed American action. But Barack Obama described it as a "possible breakthrough" and the relief can be felt across multiple world capitals. Of course the practical problems are legion – one report claims that getting rid of Syria's chemical...

White House: Kerry did not gaffe By REID J. EPSTEIN | 9/9/13 2:06 PM EDT White House press secretary Jay Carney said Secretary of State John Kerry’s assertion that U.S.-led airstrikes on Syria would be “unbelievably small” was only in context to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I think that Secretary Kerry clearly was referring to that in the context of what the United States and the American people have experienced over the past 10, 12 years, which includes large scale, long-term … open-ended military engagement with boots on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Carney said during Monday’s...

You can imagine the derision that would have flowed from the liberal “mainstream media” if George W. Bush had referred to the United States as well as its European allies as “developing countries.” [Snip] And one of the interesting things that we don’t talk about enough is the contrast between what’s happened in the United States and what’s happened in a lot of other developing countries, Europe in particular. It´s pretty rare where we have the chance to look at two policy approaches and follow them over several years and see which one worked. And the fact is