Free Republic

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes that Obamacare is a success in California, and the Golden State experience is proof that the entire program would be great if they could just get that darn website to work. Krugman's column doesn't discuss the quality or cost of the health plans offered on the California exchange at all. To make his case, Krugman cites precisely two pieces of data. First, he notes that "enrollment is surging. At this point, more than 10,000 applications are being completed per day, putting the state well on track to meet its overall targets for 2014...

I find Remembrance Sunday sadder each year. It’s partly that I’m becoming sentimental – I find it increasingly difficult to recite any poetry without a catch in my voice – but it’s mainly that the fallen are now closer in age to my children than to me. When I was a small boy, I was, as small boys are, uncomplicatedly pro-war. At around eleven or twelve, I started to read the First World War poets, but I was still mainly attracted by the heroic element in their writing: their endurance in monstrous circumstances. Later, as a teenager, I began to...

President Obama said reporters praise his economic proposals as “great” and tell him they are “all good ideas.” Obama made the remarks in a speech Wednesday in Galesburg, Ill., focused on the economy. The address didn’t include any new proposals on the economy, and Republicans criticized Obama for giving an address that was more of the same. But Obama said the news media often praises his ideas. "It’s interesting, in the run-up to this speech, a lot of reporters say that, well, Mr. President, these are all good ideas, but some of you’ve said before; some of them sound great,...

In February, 2009, I wrote for the Wall Street Journal an article entitled Reaganomics versus Obamanomics. The article explained that the emerging Obamanomics was pursuing exactly the opposite of every policy of the enormously successful Reaganomics, and predicted that it would produce exactly the opposite results. Well, the results are in, and under President Obama the American people have now suffered the worst 5 years since the Great Depression, as first explained by Steve McCann of the American Thinker on January 25. McCann writes, “From 2009 through 2012, the Obama cabal, and their allegiance to statist policies, has been in...

Freepers! Marco Rubio is just great and what a sense of humor. This is exactly how to respond to liberal hubris and their synthetic, hibrow, intellect. You need this water bottle if only to get Marco notice from now on. He is going to be Yuge and you need to support him.

Many times numbers and statistics are simply thrown at us. It is almost a mind blurring information overload. If we take the time to look inside the numbers, what the numbers show is frightening for America. How bad is the Great Obama Depression and what is it doing to America?

His nickname served Gary Carter well right up to his final days. “The Kid.” Once and always, “The Kid.” As his long-time friend Dave Van Horne says, even when it became clear that Mr. Carter’s battle with a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer was being lost, if a baseball person ran into him, it was the same. It was always, “Hey, how ya doing, Kid?”

This great white circled our 21ft boat for 20 minutes and made contact with the boat (slapped its tail on the boat). We were about 25 miles southeast of Wrightsville Beach.

<p>Germany's biggest Catholic-owned publishing house has been rocked by disclosures that it has been selling thousands of pornographic novels with titles such as Sluts Boarding School and Lawyer's Whore with the full assent of the country's leading bishops.</p>

Zanesville, Ohio, sheriff's deputies armed with assault rifles opened fire on dozens of "mature, very big, aggressive" lions, tigers, cheetahs, wolves, and bears who had escaped from a private menagerie in Ohio after the farm's owner, Terry Thompson, was found dead and the animals' cage doors were left open and fences unsecured. Chimpanzees and orangutans were found locked in cages inside the house. At least 30 animals have been killed, and several more remain at large.Thompson had a long history of brushes with the law and had just completed a one-year sentence on two federal counts of possessing illegal firearms....

Freepers, I need a favor. I can only find one black and white photo of Ronald Reagan and legendary Penn State Coach Joe Paterno.One of our forklift drivers is a big libtard who can't stand either of these great men.He is an otherwise good guy, but all of us just enjoy ribbing him.His 50th birthday is Sunday and we all want to hang a big blowup in the warehouse just to see him get worked up.

I’ve been warning of this for well over two years. My primary warnings were: 1) That 2008 was just a warm-up 2) That the REAL Crisis had yet to unfold 3) That the REAL Crisis would make 2008 look like a picnic Well, the period I’ve been warning of is now here. What’s happening right now is not just a market crash, bear market, deflation, or any other item related to just one asset class. Instead, this is a collapse of the entire US monetary and political system and the mentality of spending one’s way to wealth. For 80+ years,...

My countdown continues. Some people just love one-sided stories. Unfortunately, for the chattering classes, I’m not one of them. From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “7:3o report” (6/7/1999): Global warming will destroy Great Barrier Reef: report MAXINE McKEW: Well, it’s said that coral reefs are like the canary in the coalmine, warning of impending doom and dying in the process. So when the world’s reefs last year suffered severe coral bleaching on an unprecedented scale, scientists and environmentalists were alarmed. As a result, Greenpeace commissioned one of the world's leading reef biologists to find out what caused the dramatic coral decay....

Chris Matthews' infatuation with John McCain has returned. The day after the Republican senator bashed his own party, knocking "Hobbit" Tea Partiers, the Hardball anchor on Thursday lauded him as "great" and even suggested McCain as a MSNBC guest host: "...He can substitute for me some night with that kind of talk!" The former GOP presidential nominee criticized 2010 Senate candidates Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle. Quoting from a Wall Street Journal editorial, McCain recited possible debt ceiling scenarios: "Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform

July 20 is the 30th anniversary of a great moment in American and world history when a human climbed gingerly down an aluminum ladder attached to a spindly, fragile spacecraft and, for the first time, set foot on a chunk of the solar system not of this world. Neil Armstrong accomplished with one step President John F. Kennedy's call to greatness in a 1962 speech at Rice University to "go to the moon and do the other things," that would demonstrate American spirit and resolve. Armstrong's boot print in the dust also fulfilled countless speculations over centuries on how the...

An ironic bookend to that Richard Cohen column I linked earlier accusing the GOP of being a “cult” that can’t face unpleasant realities. Look out here for actual chanting about how allegedly un-broke we are. (Even The One is more reality-based than that.) You’ve seen this schtick before — remember Michael Moore’s disgusting speech in Wisconsin about the “400 little Mubaraks” who have stolen “our” money? — but watch it anyway to see how slippery Jones is with the actual numbers. Turns out there’s “a lot” of wealth out there that could be used to reduce the deficit; not enough...

Another 62 shot dead in cold blood in the streets today, just the latest in a series of Friday post-mosque slaughters. Good enough for a unanimous vote by the UN Human Rights Council? Why … no: At an Special Session in Geneva, Switzerland, Friday, members of the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning Syria’s human rights abuses and calling for a UN Mission to investigate the violence… The resolution expresses “grave concern with respect to alleged deliberate killings, arrests, and instances of torture of peaceful protestors by the Syrian authorities,” and “unequivocally condemns the use of lethal...

When an Indian-born man I knew a couple of decades ago expressed an intense dislike for Mohandas Gandhi, I found it a bit surprising. Wasn’t the “Great Soul,” that quintessential 20th-century icon, India’s George Washington? That certainly is the narrative created by historians — who, history has taught us, can tell a lie — and works such as Richard Attenborough’s award-winning 1982 film Gandhi. But there is a reason why Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie responded to that movie by lamenting, “Deification is an Indian disease. Why should Attenborough do it?” And with Gandhi back in the news owing to a...

“Just as a fish may be barely aware of the medium in which it lives and swims, so the microstructure of empty space could be far too complex for unaided human brains." -- Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, physicist, Cambridge University Our known Hubble length universe contains hundreds of millions of galaxies that have clumped together, forming super clusters and a series of massive walls of galaxies separated by vast voids of empty space. Great Wall: The most vast structure ever is a collection of superclusters a billion light years away extending for 5% the length of the entire observable...

And then the Health Police™ came for the cupcakes: A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama — and championed by the first lady — gives the government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom. Republicans, notably Sarah Palin, and public school organizations decry the bill as an unnecessary intrusion on a common practice often used to raise money. “This could be a real train wreck for school districts,” Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association said Friday, a day after the House...

We carried a graphic in today’s Telegraph that showed how different presidents scored in the polls at the time of the mid-terms in their first term. The good news for Barack Obama seems to be that however bad things look for him, they were a lot worse for Ronald Reagan in ‘82 and Bill Clinton in ‘94, yet both went on to cruise to a second term. If the Republican/Tea Party combine does as well as expected tomorrow, and if Sarah Palin presses home her advantage to take the Republican nomination for president, then think Goldwater and put your money...

Downturn lasted 18 months; longest recession since World War II The “Great Recession” has ended, officially. At least, that's the word from the private research organization that calls the beginnings and endings of recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER said Monday that the recession which began in December 2007 ended in June 2009, which marked the beginning of an expansion. The announcement rules out the possibility of a so-called “double-dip” recession, because any new downturn would be seen as a brand new recession.

Last Tuesday morning, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner "welcomed" us to the recovery. Seriously. "[A] review of recent data on the American economy shows that we are on a path back to growth," he assured us. (Snip) The Obama administration wants us to believe them. What evidence do they provide to the effect that they "saved" the economy? Vagaries heaped upon vagaries; meaningless phrases piled atop meaningless phrases. No hard numbers of any value. In fact, the Second Great Depression is just beginning. And just as during the First Great Depression, economic liberals are declaring that it doesn't exist.

Every president needs to escape what former President Harry Truman called the "great white jail" and what former President Andrew Jackson referred to as "dignified slavery." But for President Obama and some of his more recent predecessors, getting out of the White House has come at a cost. The on-going BP oil spill and unemployment numbers that are still at 9.5%, have made Obama and his vacations a target. The crisis in the Gulf has dogged Mr. Obama during two long weekend trips away from Washington - one to Asheville, N.C., and another back to his Chicago home for Memorial...

John Wooden dies at 99; coach won 10 national basketball titles at UCLA Known as the 'Wizard of Westwood,' Wooden's accomplishments with the Bruins during his 27-season tenure made him one of the greatest coaches in sports history. He also created the 'Pyramid of Success' motivational program. By Bill Dwyre and David Wharton 10:18 PM CDT, June 4, 2010 1 2 next Wooden delivers instructions during a timeout in the 1972 NCAA championship game at the L.A. Sports Arena. UCLA defeated Florida State, 81-76; Bill Walton, seated at left, was named the tournament's most outstanding player. (Rich Clarkson / Sports...

Liberty flourished and those who would defeat her pressed their wills on distant shores. Wherever Liberty was oppressed, “Free Men” rose and ruined the yoke that would constrain them; the world saw America as the shining star of freedom and its defender at all cost. Despot after despot dashed their oppressive wills against the walls of Freedom and time after time, continent after continent, they were defeated. With direct assault failing the oppressors of men would need a new tactic, if Liberty could not be controlled from without it must be stolen from within. Thus began the construction of the...

"Of all the talents bestowed upon men, none is so precious as the gift of oratory . . . Abandoned by his party, betrayed by his friends, stripped of his offices, whoever can command this power is still formidable." - Winston S. Churchill "(I) won a nickname, 'The Great Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things." – Ronald Reagan "Don't tell me words don't matter! 'I have a dream'-- just words? 'We hold these truths...

A spy network believed to have been controlled from China has hacked into classified documents on government and private computers in 103 countries, according to internet researchers. The spy system, dubbed GhostNet, is alleged to have compromised 1,295 machines at Nato and foreign ministries, embassies, banks and news organisations across the world, as well as computers used by the Dalai Lama and Tibetan exiles.

Abraham Lincoln ... Great president 46.6% Greatest president 53.4%

BOSTON, MA - December 16, 2008 - Despite dire economic forecasts, Americans will rely on credit cards in malls and for online gift shopping this year. And while some might be scaling back in light of the recession, others will rack up personal debt during the holidays. This wasn't how it used to be, according to people who lived through the hardest of economic times. In the second part of our series this week, we hear perspectives from two women who grew up during the Great Depression. Both are residents of The Goddard House in Brookline, Mass., and today they...

The current financial crisis has revived powerful misconceptions about the Great Depression. Those who misinterpret the past are all too likely to repeat the exact same mistakes that made the Great Depression so deep and devastating. Here are five interrelated and durable myths about the 1929-39 Depression:

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Democratic dominance in presidential elections has been the norm for decades throughout much of the country's union-strong industrial Great Lakes region. The GOP presidential candidate is mounting strong challenges to Democratic rival Barack Obama in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, and eyeing Minnesota — four states that have thwarted Republicans in at least four straight elections. The Arizona senator is also fighting to hang on to Ohio, a bellwether that President Bush won twice. They are home to large numbers of blue-collar whites, whom Obama has struggled to win over; senior citizens, who polls show tilt toward...

Alexander the Great's "Crown," Shield Discovered?Sara Goudarzi for National Geographic NewsApril 23, 2008 An ancient Greek tomb thought to have held the body of Alexander the Great's father is actually that of Alexander's half brother, researchers say. This may mean that some of the artifacts found in the tomb—including a helmet, shield, and silver "crown"—originally belonged to Alexander the Great himself. Alexander's half brother is thought to have claimed these royal trappings after Alexander's death. The tomb was one of three royal Macedonian burials excavated in 1977 by archaeologists working in the northern Greek village of Vergina (see map of...

The Next Great Depression --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The main lesson we need to learn from the Great Depression is that government programs prolong, rather than correct depressions. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No, I am not getting ready to join the ranks of those clever economists and financial prognosticators who periodically cop a book deal by peddling a hyped-up title that feeds our perverse appetite for scary scenarios—Financial Armageddon, Get Rich While All Your Neighbors Go Broke, How To Prosper From the End of the World As We Know It. I'm sure I'm passing up a lucrative opportunity. In fact, given the jarring financial convulsions in...

Did a Comet Cause the Great Flood?The universal human myth may be the first example of disaster reporting. by Scott Carney11-15-2007 The Fenambosy chevrons at the tip of Madagascar. Image courtesy of Dallas Abbott The serpent’s tails coil together menacingly. A horn juts sharply from its head. The creature looks as if it might be swimming through a sea of stars. Or is it making its way up a sheer basalt cliff? For Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, there is no confusion as he looks at this ancient petroglyph, scratched into a rock by a...

German town wants its own Great Pyramid By Bojan Pancevski in Berlin, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 12:17am BST 02/09/2007 The pharaohs may have set the standard, but German entrepreneurs are hoping to challenge Egypt's pre-eminence in monumental self-indulgence by building the world's largest pyramid. The pyramid of tombstones planned at Dessau They have secured €90,000 (£61,000) in state funding to assess the feasibility of building a 1,600ft tall "Great Pyramid" near the town of Dessau, in the impoverished east German state of Saxony-Anhalt. Like the original Great Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, this would be a place of burial. But...

Among the 110 Hoquiam High School seniors who will graduate tonight is one remarkable young woman. Hope Hunderfund is known as a star on the High School’s golf team, one of the school’s top scholars, a dedicated volunteer, member of the Renaissance Club and president of the Future Business Leaders of America. “There are a lot of people in school … who probably think I’m just some preppie, popular kid,” the 18-year-old said. “They have no idea.” Indeed, Hope, with big blue eyes and an ever-present smile, could have grown up to be the stereotype she knows she resembles. As...

How Alexander the Great used 'Mother Nature' By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 1:45am BST 15/05/2007 Alexander the Great had ''Mother Nature'' on his side when he conquered the island fortress of Tyre in 332 BC, says a study published today. A bust of Alexander the Great Tyre, in present day Lebanon, was then a strategic coastal base in the war between the Greeks and the Persians. Now archeologists have at last worked out how Alexander's engineers managed to build a causeway to enable his army to conquer what had become a bastion of resistance. All previous settlements on...

Law enforcement officers in Tennessee make the greatest underground discovery since Tutankhamen’s tomb was unearthed in the Valley of the Kings.

Source: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Date: March 23, 2007 The Next Great Earthquake Science Daily ? The 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and resulting tsunami are now infamous for the damage they caused, but at the time many scientists believed this area was unlikely to create a quake of such magnitude. In the March 23 issue of the journal Science, a geophysicist from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute urges the public and policy makers to consider all subduction-type tectonic boundaries to be "locked, loaded, and dangerous." Subduction Zones (blue curves) and tectonic boundaries (brown curves) with filled circles showing locations of known earthquakes of M7.5...

Scientists have unearthed remains of a primate that could have been ancestral not only to humans but to all great apes, including chimps and gorillas. The partial skeleton of this 13-million-year-old "missing link" was found by palaeontologists working at a dig site near Barcelona in Spain. Details of the sensational discovery appear in Science magazine. The new specimen was probably male, a fruit-eater and was slightly smaller than a chimpanzee, researchers say. Palaeontologists were just getting started at the dig when a bulldozer churned up a tooth. Further investigation yielded one of the most complete ape skeletons known from...

How do I create a tagline? Couldn't find directions anywhere. Thanks!

Source: University of Washington Released: Mon 07-Aug-2006, 15:10 ET Ancient Bison Teeth Provide Window on Past Great Plains Climate, Vegetation Scientists have devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes in America's breadbasket, the Great Plains.The third molar from a bison jawbone grows to 3 inches in length and has several times more surface area than a quarter. Newswise — A University of Washington researcher has devised a way to use the fossil teeth of ancient bison as a tool to reconstruct historic climate and vegetation changes...

Under tremendous pressure, mullahs agree to renovate tomb of "Cyrus the Great" May 29, 2006 Thanks to Iranian arab-parast, tomb of founder of Iran Zamin covered with dust but tomb of their beloved cowered arab imam whom ran away to Iran for dear life, covered with gold Under tremendous pressure by Iranian People, mullahs agree to renovate tomb of "Cyrus the Great". A team of experts have recently began renovating the tomb of Cyrus the Great at the ancient site of Pasargad in southern province of Fars. Several megaliths of the tomb have been stolen over time and the renovation...

Ancient engraved chessboards found on Great Wall Archaeologists have found two ancient engraved chessboards probably used by soldiers on the Great Wall more than 700 years ago at Qinhuangdao, North China's Hebei Province. The two boards, one for Chinese chess and the other for the ancient game "Tiger Eats Sheep", were engraved on a stone in front of a Great Wall beacon tower possibly in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), said officials with the provincial department of cultural relics. Archaeologists believe that soldiers from all parts of ancient China used to play chess to while away the time on the remote...

Palace of Darius the Great Discovered in Bolaghi Gorge Discovery of remains of a gigantic palace in Bolaghi Gorge and its similarity to the constructions of the time of Darius I, Achaemenid King, in Persepolis show that it was built during the same period of time. Tehran, 15 May 2006 (CHN) -- Iran-French joint archeology team at Bolaghi Gorge succeeded in discovering and identifying the remains of a gigantic palace, believed to be from the Achaemenid era (648 BC–330 BC), during their second season of excavations in the area. “Before the start of this season of excavations, our geophysical tests...

Wolves, wolf-hybrids suspected culprits in bloody predations... his herd of 700 sheep. But something had gotten there before him. Everywhere he looked, it seemed, there was a sheep that had been attacked and bloodied. "It was terrible," he said. "Some of them just had a chunk of flesh tore out, in some cases clear to the bone, the size of an orange. A few were bit in the neck." A few of the sheep could be doctored, but many of them died... of the 60 that were attacked, 21 died and 39 were injured. On top of that, the percentage...

As the scent of burning electrical wire and the pulverized dust settled over Manhattan in the wake of the 2001 World Trade Center attack, a certain book disappeared from New York City bookstore shelves. Within a week, that book rocketed from No. 8,000 to No. 125 on Amazon.com rankings. It described the nature of fanatics, offering a powerful window of understanding into the people capable of blowing up those two towers. "The True Believer" was published in 1951. Its author, Eric Hoffer, was a self-educated longshoreman born in New York City to a German cabinetmaker and his wife. His keen...

WASHINGTON, March 1, 2006 – U.S. military reserve forces are better trained and at a higher state of readiness than they've ever been as they continue to take on their new operational role in the war on terror, senior reserve-component leaders said here today. "We've all been to the battlefield; we've all been out to see our people, and I have to tell you, they are the best of the best. We have never had a fighting force like we have today," said Army Command Sgt. Maj. Lawrence W. Holland, senior enlisted advisor in the Office of the Assistant Secretary...

TBN EXPOSED! Hal Lindsey Refuses to Compromise to Stay on Air!Here is the letter written by Hal Lindsey to Paul and Jan Crouch, of TBN....(way to go Hal!) Hal Lindsey Leaving TBN http://www.hallindseyoracle.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=12286 Refuses to Compromise to Stay on Air January 1, 2006 Dear Paul and Jan, Paul, Jr. relayed your message to me that you are both in agreement on the policy of nothing negative being said on TBN about Muslims. Hearing that you also warned John Haggee, Perry Stone, Jack VanImpe and others of this policy caused me to realize that your are not going to modify your...