Free Republic

There are two topics that you don’t discuss in Singapore: the weather and politics, because both generally remain the same. Food, on the other hand, is a subject that unifies the people of this small island like nothing else can. Eating out here can range from horrifically expensive - S$300 for a steak if you go to a celebrity chef restaurant - to terrific value, such as S$3 for a bowl of delicious noodles, eaten out of a plastic bowl while sitting under strip lighting. Yet it is the traditional and inexpensive food sold at hawker centres that sparks an...

What do you think Fred Phelps, the fringe preacher with the Westboro Baptist Church, would say about Alberta's floods? He'd say what he always says - that they are God's punishment for Canada because of our tolerance for gays. Or, as his protest placards say, "God Hates Fags." He's the idiot who protests at funerals of U.S. soldiers. See, he even blames wars on gays. Canada has our own versions of Fred Phelps. They say natural weather events, like seasonal floods, are "proof" that God Hates Oilsands. (They tend to say Mother Earth or Gaia.) As TV images of Albertans...

The rationale for the federal government’s “Head Start” program is to give disadvantaged students a boost with their school work. Sadly, though, a recently completed research study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reveals that students enrolled in the program actually do worse than similarly disadvantaged peers not in the program. The biggest deficits show up in math and behavior. Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urged that “we should not read too much into these findings. Given our society’s widespread access to computers, calculators, and cash registers that can do the math for us, proficiency in math may not...

Stung by being called an “idiot” by Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) for his claim that victims of 2012′s Hurricane Sandy suffered more than victims of 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev) attempted to explain his way out the scathing characterization. “My colleague’s focus on quantitative data overlooks qualitative differences between the two events,” Reid argued. “First, New Jersey and New York are states where many important people live. Many of the homes that were destroyed were million dollar properties. The same could be said for the businesses.” “Most of the properties destroyed by Katrina were more like broken down...

This is a guest post by Senator Ima Librul (D., Utopia) on the fine art of growing pineapples. I am a Librul and justly proud of the great good we are doing for the entire World. This is my creed: it is irresponsible to be concerned about the future when our own leaders and our other experts tell us that only good things will happen if we do exactly as they say. The brightest and best, we are never wrong! Don't think. Don't question. Just follow our Dear Leader. My small garden had thirty pineapple plants. Twenty of them had...

“I don’t think legitimate sportsmen are going to say, ‘I need an assault weapon to go hunting,’” Cuomo said, according to the New York Times. “There is a balance here — I understand the rights of gun owners; I understand the rights of hunters.” Cuomo indicated the state will likely force some kind of permit process on owners of semi-automatic “assault weapons.” In addition to generating revenue and expanding the size and reach of government, the effort will allow the state to confiscate the weapons of citizens who do not comply. “Confiscation could be an option. Mandatory sale to the...

"On this Thanksgiving Day, let me say this: God Bless America the only country on this [bleep] planet where you still have the freedom to build AKs in defense of Motherland! The only country where a [bleep] shovel can become an awesome weapon of death and destruction."

After finding a portrait subject, he asks her to put together a hot-pot meal using veggies and ingredients native to her country. They then assemble the foods into the shape of a gun and do a portrait shoot. Once the photograph is made, Ozawa and his model disassemble the delicious weapon, cook the ingredients, and share a meal together.

If President Obama is reelected, redistribution will go into even higher gear. I want His promise that I'll get mine. Now, so I will know how to vote. As President Obama well knows, the best socio-economic system ever devised is based on the premise "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Now old and creaky, my abilities are few and my needs are great. When President Obama again makes history by being sworn in as our first reelected President of this century on January 20th, soon to be celebrated annually as ChristObamamas, there are some...

I just saw a funny Tweet from @jimnorton, in which he “condemns” Mitt Romney’s father for “murdering roses” when he placed one on his wife’s bedstand every night. (Romney scored emotionally in last night’s speech when he recalled that his mother found out his father had died because the rose was missing.)Thing is, Norton’s jibe is not quite as off the wall as some might think. Switzerland has, for instance, placed the “dignity” of individual plants in its constitution. The government then asked a big brained bioethics commission to explain why individual plants have dignity (they share molecular material with...

A funny thing happened on the way to economic Armageddon: Iceland’s very desperation made conventional behavior impossible, freeing the nation to break the rules. Where everyone else bailed out the bankers and made the public pay the price, Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net. Where everyone else was fixated on trying to placate international investors, Iceland imposed temporary controls on the movement of capital to give itself room to maneuver.

Former Marine Raub Brandon was taken by FBI and Secret Service last night (8/15/12) for his patriotic Facebook Posts. Now being held in mental hospital...DEVELOPING STORY!! Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UCQ1VwhdRU&feature=player_profilepage

Pressure is increasing on Uncle Joe to step aside and allow Barack to pick a less embarrassing Democrat for the number two position on the ticket. Until such an event occurs, the Romney-Ryan team will have to prepare for a bout with numb-skulled Joe. Romney's debate experts, tasked with finding the best proxy opponent to practice against, winnowed their choices down to a bag of damp sand and a butternut squash. The verbal feint, thrust and parry abilities were identical for the sand and squash, but in the final analysis, the butternut's penchant for wildly disconnected false accusation won the...

•It seems that recently Rahm came home and found a brown paper bag sitting on his front porch and demanded to know how it got there and what it was from his security detail. After all, there are police guarding his house front and rear 24/7. The police are not supposed to come on the front porch and the 1st watch detail knew nothing about it. Looking inside it was determined that it contained tomatoes and various vegetables. And the Case of the Killer Tomatoes was closed with no evil consequence. And so far as can be determined, just one...

A $348 million contract to maintain the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad was awarded this week by the U.S. Department of State to PAE Government Services, which will be tasked with delivering operations and maintenance services for the 104-acre compound. An unspecified portion of that amount will be devoted to providing a residence manager, two cooks, two waiters, and four housekeepers to serve the U.S. ambassador and deputy chief of mission. It also remains unclear how much will be spent on lawn maintenance, though The Peacock Report -- U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor's predecessor site -- reported back in 2005 that...

How's that workin-out... The Congressional Budget Office never did quite buy-into the Obamacare 'savings' spiel; their far-more sober assessment after 'finding out what's in it' produced a federal cost estimate of $944B for the decade (2010-2019).   Yet last week Forbes took a fresh look at the CBO's lastest and found forecasts in a clear uptrend over the last two years, so much so that Obamacare's total decade cost now stands at an eye-watering $1.856 TRILLION, with over $1.3B of that deficit spending, not-at-all paid-for yet. Although the costs have already doubled, the article made it abundantly clear that most of...

Here is my GARDEN SIGN that I put up just after the Supreme Court travesty/gaffe-cision.

It’s distressing that the Michigan Senator chairing the U.S. Senate Agricultural committee doesn’t know that, despite rumors, Michigan’s agriculture does not represent the state’s second-largest industry. In a recent press release on proposed assistance to agricultural industries, Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s office claimed: “Bio-based manufacturing is a key sector of Michigan's agriculture industry, which is Michigan's second largest industry, supporting nearly one out of every four jobs.” But these statistics being used by the Democrat from Lansing are a hypothetical guess using an inflated definition of agriculture and a multiplier factor. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, there are 63,667...

In a recent interview with The Guardian, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, stated that it is not her policies that are driving coal-fired power plants out of business, but rather organic changes in the American electricity market. Scapegoating natural gas, Jackson claims that low natural-gas prices and booming gas production are depressing coal consumption. But what Jackson fails to mention is that explicitly due to the EPA’s stringent regulations that some coal production is now non-econommical. The price coal-fired power plants would have to pay to comply with new, burdensome regulations is so expensive, that many coal mines are forced to...

As it turns out, new research has determined that a judgmental attitude may just go hand in hand with exposure to organic foods. In fact, a new study published this week in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, has found that organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks.