Free Republic

Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington and a group of other CEOs and former world leaders have formed a group whose goal is to end capitalism as we know it. The nonprofit, known as “The B Team,” was created to help promote a “better version of capitalism, one that prioritizes people and planet over profit.” This ignores the fact that capitalism is, by definition, motivated by profit. The team, led by Branson and German businessman Jochen Zeitz, calls for drastic changes in how the economy works. These include “new rules and models for the future of business – not incremental ‘change as...

For centuries, Christians thought culture would change if we just had a majority of Christians in the culture. That has proven to be a false assumption. Culture is defined by a relatively small number of change agents who operate at the top of cultural spheres or societal mountains. It takes less than 3-5 percent of those operating at the top of a cultural mountain to actually shift the values represented on that mountain.For example, this is exactly what advocates in the gay rights movement has done through the "mountains" of media and arts and entertainment. They have strategically used these...

At least a half-dozen professors who gave political donations to President Obama have been quoted in news articles opining about his administration and the 2012 race for the White House. ... The Hill cross-checked academics who have been quoted in news articles with Obama’s donor list and eliminated those who worked in prior Democratic administrations. The half-dozen professors detailed in this article do not mention their political affiliations in their bios online. A similar search for Romney donors did not yield any results. The scholars say they didn’t tell reporters that they had donated to Obama, but would have had...

My friends the world abounds with liars in all classes of politics and life in general but particularly here in America for the last six years (2006 elections) the Progressive Democratic Left has faithfully lied about everything under the sun to promote, preserve and protect their lawless Marxist agenda and their chosen chief chosen one. From Health Care to Medicare, from Republicans to the Tea Party, from the economy to tax increases, from the Fast and the Furious to the Stimulus, from the war on terror to Guantanamo, from drilling to green energy, from Limbaugh to Bush to Palin, from...

For the past three months, Jonah Lehrer, science journalist, author of three books, and (former) New Yorker staff writer has been under siege. In mid-June, he was accused of recycling his old work and publishing it as new. Since then, a number of accounts assert that Lehrer committed the two mortal sins of journalism: fabrication and plagiarism. Before Lehrer joined The New Yorker, he was one of the premier bloggers at Wired.com; the site still boasts several hundred blog posts he wrote for his Frontal Cortex blog. Quite naturally, when the Lehrer scandal first broke, the editors at Wired.com worried...

Forget the loud music, cheering crowds and funny hats. Instead of opening with a bang as originally planned, Mitt Romney's Republican convention started with a whimper on Monday as party leaders staged a low-key session while Tropical Storm Isaac churned through the Gulf of Mexico. The tone was deliberately subdued after Isaac led Republicans to scrap most of their first day's schedule in Tampa, complicating plans to showcase Romney to voters as the presidential candidate heads into a 10-week sprint to his November 6 election battle against Democratic President Barack Obama.Sunshine broke through the clouds in Tampa as the host...

Imagine for a moment, if you will, Sarah Palin attending an event at Ohio State University. She casually greets college aged supporters, and a group of excited, young students decide to spell out the word “Ohio” using the old YMCA routine. The group is in place, arms readied, fans surrounding them armed with their cameras and cellphones. Then this happens… OIHI. It is inarguable that the media, in all their smugness and ‘we are intellectually superior’ attitude would have ripped her from the California coast to the glaciated plains of … well … Oihi. Oi. Hi. More like oy vey....

Donald Trump: You’re fired! With his joke today that “No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate,” Mitt Romney moved down to the lowest rung of the Republican Party – the racist demagogues who know better. (VIDEO AT LINK) I don’t forgive poor, isolated, ignorant whites their racism, but you can understand some of the cultural programming that embedded it. Romney knows Obama was born here. And he also knows exactly what he’s doing with his birth certificate joke: he’s telling the bedrock Republican reactionary base to pay no attention to that Todd Akin mess, Romney will cater...

The moderator of the lone October vice presidential debate was previously married to a top Obama official, an association both ABC News and the left-leaning Commission on Presidential Debates do not view as a conflict of interest. ABC Senior Foreign Correspondent Martha Raddatz, whose role as moderator was announced on August 13, was previously married to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski — an Obama appointee. Genachowki and Raddatz were married in 1991, the same year he graduated from Harvard Law School. Their marriage ended in 1997; the two have a son together. Raddatz does not report on the FCC...

DEBATE MODERATORS ANNOUNCED: PBS Jim Lehrer, first Pres debate, Oct 3 Denver... CNN Candy Crowley, town hall, Oct 16, Hempsted LI... CBS Bob Schieffer, third Pres debate, Oct. 22, Boca Raton... ABC Martha Radditz, VP debate, Oct 11, Danville VA... FLASHBACK: CROWLEY: Some Think Ryan Pick 'Some Sort of Ticket Death Wish'..

2:17, fun begins at the 50 sec. mark

Tweets, texts, emails, posts. New research says the Internet can make us lonely and depressed—and may even create more extreme forms of mental illness, Tony Dokoupil reports. (snip) Questions about the Internet’s deleterious effects on the mind are at least as old as hyperlinks. But even among Web skeptics, the idea that a new technology might influence how we think and feel—let alone contribute to a great American crack-up—was considered silly and naive, like waving a cane at electric light or blaming the television for kids these days. Instead, the Internet was seen as just another medium, a delivery system,...

Edgy filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwait is sick of the dumbing-down of America thanks to reality television, and has brought to life the dark comedy “God Bless America” to serve as a wake-up call regarding the downward spiral of our culture. “The tipping point was that I was in London and they had a ‘My Super Sweet 16’ marathon on and there I was watching teenage girls throwing fits because their parents bought them the wrong BMW. I was aghast, then a ringtone commercial about an elephant breaking wind. I was offended,” Goldthwait told FOX411’s Pop Tarts column. “So this is a...

Politico says White House correspondent Joe Williams is on his way out the door. But the reporter who found himself ousted from his job — after making a penis joke about the Romneys, accusing his own publication of “blatant racism” and saying the Republican nominee for president is much more comfortable around “white folks” — isn’t technically gone yet. In fact, Williams — who pleaded guilty in May to assaulting his ex-wife — is still employed with the company and is still using his company email.

Joe Williams, the White House correspondent whom Politico suspended last week after he made racially insensitive remarks about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, tweeted about his employer on the evening of March 30 that “what’s most irritating is the overlay of blatant racism. that’s the secret sauce in the Politico sh**burger.” The Daily Caller has obtained an archive covering several months of Williams’ Twitter activity. In a tweet nine minutes before that comment, Williams wrote that “we’re supposed to be about justice and the truth, but we’re mostly about posturing, arcane rules and CYA [Cover Your Ass]. annoying.”

It is entirely self-serving of me to point out that the classified ads in the Pioneer Press seem to be making a comeback, but I think we are past the point of pretending to hide my affection for newsprint. I am not claiming that the classifieds are as busy as a small-town telephone book, or even a small-town church bulletin. I am merely suggesting that I am noticing a revival of sorts, particularly in my fields of misadventure. In Classic Antique Autos for Thursday, June 7, for example, the category immediately following Volvo and just before 4WD Trucks, there was...

In the months after her exclusive interview last year with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Barbara Walters tried to intercede to get a television position for a former aide of his, who Ms. Walters acknowledged helped arrange the interview. Ms. Walters, the longtime ABC News correspondent, issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for reaching out to contacts to seek an internship with CNN and admission at Columbia University for Sheherazad Jaafari, who had been a media adviser for Mr. Assad. Ms. Jaafari, 22, is the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United Nations.

Funny really is money. Bill Maher, the host of HBO's "Real Time," announced on Sunday at Citi Field that he had purchased a minority stake in the Mets earlier this year — and the sometimes controversial, always funny comedian wasn't kidding. Maher, a lifelong Mets fan, says he thinks he made a "great investment" by purchasing a share in the team. "I think people sometimes forget there's only one National League franchise in New York City, and they're not making anymore," he said. "I just thought it would be a great place, especially after I've seen some of the ways...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Here is Charlie Rose last night on his PBS show. His guest is New York Magazine National Editor John Heilemann, and they're talking about the presidential race. This is the question that I told you about right before the top of the hour. Basically Charlie Rose says: Why do Republicans want to beat Obama so bad? ROSE: What is it about the President that seems to make them so passionate to defeat him? HEILEMANN: That's kind of like a PhD dissertation-style question. ROSE: Yeah. HEILEMANN: There is a part of the Republican Party, the conservative -- far...

May 31, 2012 (HLIWorldWatch.org) - Anyone who is concerned about the influence of the homosexual agenda on reshaping traditional values must become intimately familiar with the major tactics that homophiles commonly employ in order to anticipate them and respond in charity and truth. Homophile strategists are very adept at manipulating public opinion with an arsenal of six tactics that are based upon deceptions and half‑truths: Exploit the “victim” status; Use the sympathetic media; Confuse and neutralize the churches; Slander and stereotype Christians; Bait and switch (hide their true nature); and Intimidation. One reason these tactics have worked so well is...

ROBIN Roberts was worried Barack Obama would out her as a lesbian. According to a Gawker report, the ABC news anchor — who scored the President Obama gay marriage interview — wasn’t overly enthusiastic about the scoop because she thought it would bring her own sexuality to the forefront. “Most of the discussions [among TV people] today about why Robin got the interview have to do with her being gay,” a source said. “Not that she’s black, or friends of the Obamas. “Obviously they picked her because she’s black and gay.

The vast majority of Americans are in agreement that Hollywood and network television are harming the nation’s culture, according to a new survey, which also reveals they don’t think celebrities should be “tweeting” information in criminal cases, such as Florida shooting case defendant George Zimmerman’s address. The scientific poll conducted exclusively for WND by the public-opinion research and media-consulting company Wenzel Strategies shows almost three-in-four registered voters believe the media are responsible for dragging the nation’s culture down. The poll revealed nearly 50 percent said Hollywood and network TV have done a “great deal” of harm, while another 24 percent...

After three years of eating steaks the size of elephants' ears, Kevin bids farewell The BBC's America correspondent Kevin Connolly is packing his bags for a new post in the Middle East. During his three years in the US he has visited 46 out of 50 states and covered the country's election of its first black president.Sometime around the spring of 1835, a young Frenchman called Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to the United States on a mission guaranteed to make Americans bristle with irritation. He was going to understand them, and explain them. De Tocqueville was smart, Gallic and aristocratic...

The Frontline Club in London is the kind of place where war correspondents and investigative reporters mingle with admirers and wannabes, fired by a shared passion for exposing government spin, revealing the truth — and fine dining. So when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange found himself at the center of an international firestorm over the website's publication of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables, he knew where he would be well-fed and, more importantly, safe. Amid calls for Assange's assassination or prosecution under espionage laws and condemnation from U.S. commentators like Sarah Palin — who dubbed him "an anti-American operative with blood on...

Helen Thomas's latest may be too much for the Society of Professional Journalists. If your lifelong ambition is to win the Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity Award from Detroit's Wayne State University, you might as well end it all now. Thomas's alma mater terminated the award Friday "after she made controversial remarks in Dearborn on Thursday... As you might expect, Thomas is not happy with Wayne State's decision. "The leaders of Wayne State University have made a mockery of the First Amendment and disgraced their understanding of its inherent freedom of speech and the press," she told the Free Press....

The MSM continues to fawn over this outrage at Ground Zero to show us common folk how “progressive” they are…Via Pundit Press:NBC and its affiliates have been trounced in ratings over the last several years. With stations like MSNBC under their belt and liberals such as Matt Lauer and Keith Olbermann hosting programs, NBC is clearly disconnected with the average American. Another clear sign of their mismanagement: naming Sharif El-Gamal, developer of the Ground Zero Mosque, one of their “People of the Year.” In an interview set to air on Thanksgiving Day, Matt Lauer sat down with El-Gamal and discussed...

Fox News pays Sarah Palin as a contributor to their network. And apparently to be “fair and balanced,” they also pay Judith Miller and Liz Trotta to make fun of Sarah Palin: LINK TO THE VIDEOUPDATE: Here’s what was said: LIZ TROTTA: “Alessandra Stanley [of the New York Times] had the best line [in her Nov. 11 review]. She said the new [Palin TLC] show was like ‘The Sound of Music’ without the Nazis, without the romance and without the music.” JUDITH MILLER (laughing): ”Oh, the Washington Post hated it, too . . . [Post TV critic Hank Steuver] said...

No bargaining, no deals, no compromise — that's the hard-line stance that Republicans have staked in the days since seizing control of the House. Their prescription for the sluggish economy — lower taxes, huge spending cuts, less regulation, and repeal of the sweeping healthcare law just taking effect — excites the party's conservative base. But a long and ugly fight with President Obama and Senate Democrats, starting with next week's lame-duck session, could end up alienating the large number of Americans more interested in jobs than ideological battles. The midterm vote was "an expression of anger and impatience," said James...

Wow, is Chris Mathews now starting to see the light of truth about President Barak Obama and the Democrats in light of the upcoming mid-term elections come tomorrow? I sense that Chris Mathews is waking up to the reality that as Americans go to the voting booths tomorrow, Tuesday November 2, 2010 for Election Day and the mid-term elections that is starting to look like a major political earthquake that will make the mid-terms of “1994″ look like a walk in the park. From what I have seen in this video, Mr. Mathews is NOT VERY HAPPY with how President...

Imagine the furor if a televangelist went on TV and told viewers Christianity would conquer the world and that the flag of Christianity would fly over the White House. Network reporters would seize the moment as an example of the evils of America’s supposed Christian theocracy. Radical Islamists would likely do as they did during the Koran burning episode or after the Danish cartoons were published. People might die. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. What did happen is far scarier. ABC News held a townhall meeting, bringing on experts to ask the question: “Should Americans fear Islam?” Thanks to ABC, we...

In trying to understand how so many Americans adore people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh I have come to this critical understanding: Poorly educated, terribly informed, intellectually deficient and downright stupid people need idols. They feel angry, frustrated, ignored, cheated and disillusioned by so much going on in American society. They find the emotional, political and philosophical rants by talk show, loud mouth celebrities matching and justifying their feelings. Of course, those celebrities work hard to fan the flames of all that unhappiness and discontent, and also perpetuate ignorance. They sell stupidity to gullible dummies,...

Boiling Mad: A surprising and revealing look inside the Tea Party movement—where it came from, what it stands for, and what it means for the future of American politics They burst on the scene at the height of the Great Recession—angry voters gathering by the thousands to rail against bailouts and big government. Evoking the Founding Fathers, they called themselves the Tea Party. Within the year, they had changed the terms of debate in Washington, emboldening Republicans and confounding a new administration's ability to get things done. Boiling Mad is Kate Zernike's eye-opening look inside the Tea Party, introducing us...

A new poll released by Gallup shows that American distrust in the mass media has reached a record high. This is the fourth straight year that a majority of respondents have said that they have little or no trust in the media, but the 57% who say that this year is a new record for the poll. According to the poll, 48% of respondents say the media is too liberal, 15% say it is too conservative and 33% say it is “just right.” You can see how the responses have changed over the years here: (snip to picture of chart)...

I don't think I ever want to meet Steven Thrasher in person. Aside from the fact that the NPR and Village Voice contributor has an ominously violent last name, this dude is p!ssed. Despite this, I'll admit that while reading his recent Voice cover essay on the insanity of white America, I occasionally pictured myself giving Mr. Thrasher a hug. Don't worry, Steven, I'd whisper: Christine O'Donnell is down 15 percent in Delaware. The Islamic community center near Ground Zero will soon be a reality. A single tweet from Sarah Palin doesn't signal the end of white American sanity. (In fact, there is...

Forty-four percent of Americans now see the upstart "tea party" movement in a favorable light, according to a new Christian Science Monitor/TIPP poll. What's more, about 40 percent of tea party sympathizers say they would not attend a tea party event, meaning they are essentially "closet admirers" of the small-government movement, says TIPP pollster Raghavan Mayur. "The general party line says the tea party is fringe, but I think most of the public hasn't bought that point of view ... and sees the tea party movement in a positive to neutral light," says Mr. Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence...

A look inside a teacher's mind could help you understand lesson plans and maybe even guide your child to perform better. 1. If we teach small children, don’t tell us that our jobs are “so cute” and that you wish you could glue and color all day long. 2. I’m not a marriage counselor. At parent-teacher conferences, let’s stick to Dakota’s progress, not how your husband won’t help you around the house.

The Huffington Post has pulled an article published this morning targeting Glenn Beck with a $100,000 bounty after news of the threat was broken on Free Republic.The article, titled $100,000 For Glenn Beck's Sex Tapes has been replaced with the following message:Editor's Note: This piece was published directly to the Huffington Post by its author. It didn't meet our editorial standards and has been removed from the site.The URL for the pulled article reflects the title: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beau-friedlander/100000-for-glenn-becks-se_b_698724.html The author of the threat, Beau Friedlander, is the former editor-in-chief of Air America.Here is the text of Friedlander's call for information to...

One may think that someone as well connected as long-time Washington correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell might also connect the dots. After an unseasonably rough DC winter occurring right in the midst of the ClimateGate scandal, she would be aware of doubt being cast over the idea of manmade global warming. But if you want evidence her mind is made up regardless of any of this, you could detect from her reaction to a report from Politco's Jim VandeHei that some Republican candidates are using the climate change debate to advance their campaigns. (Snip) ''"It just seems that I

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow is actually about to win an award for her "civility" and "tolerance." "The Walter Cronkite Faith & Freedom Award, established by Interfaith Alliance in 1998, recognizes individuals who courageously promote democratic values, defend religious freedom and reinvigorate informed civic participation," reads a statement released by the organization Monday. "The award recognizes individuals whose actions have embodied the values of civility, tolerance, diversity and cooperation in the advancement of public dialogue and public policy on traditionally controversial and divisive issues."

White House reporters are keeping quiet about an off-the-record lunch today with President Obama — even those at news organizations who've advocated in the past for the White House to release the names of visitors. But the identities of the lunch's attendees won't remain secret forever: Their names will eventually appear on the White House's periodically updated public database of visitor logs. The White House posts them with a three-month lag, so records of August visits won't be available until late November. (Although, since many of those invited already work in the White House every day, their lunch visit may...

President Obama spent much of the week harvesting bits of good news from some of his short- and longer-term initiatives. In Chicago, he showcased the revived U.S. auto industry that he bailed out last year. And here in Washington his senior advisers highlighted a federal report showing that most of the oil in the Gulf of Mexico is gone, suggesting a less-grave scenario than had been predicted. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs called that "good news" and said the federal response to the spill had played an important part in containing the potential damage. Obama even dropped in on...

Conservatives have long claimed that the media is biased against them and tries hard to shape stories in ways that help Democrats and hurt Republicans. This has sometimes been dismissed as paranoia - as in my former MSNBC co-blogger Eric Alterman's book, "What Liberal Media?" - but it turns out to be truer than they imagined. If this were a Hollywood movie, there would have been clandestine meetings in basements or bars or parking garages. But since it was real life, it was just an e-mail list, called "JournoList," set up by the Washington Post's Ezra Klein. It had over...

If you were in the presence of a man having a heart attack, how would you respond? As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would. But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn’t what you’d do at all. In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed...

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is being urged to monitor "hate speech" on talk radio and cable broadcast networks. A coalition of more than 30 organizations argue in a letter to the FCC that the Internet has made it harder for the public to separate the facts from bigotry masquerading as news. The groups also charge that syndicated radio and cable television programs "masquerading as news" use hate as a profit model.

MR. FRIEDMAN: Well, David, it's been decimated. It's been decimated by everything from the gerrymandering of political districts to cable television to an Internet where I can create a digital lynch mob against you from the left or right if I don't like where you're going, to the fact that money and politics is so out of control--really our Congress is a forum for legalized bribery. You know, that's really what, what it's come down to. So I don't--I, I--I'm worried about this, it's why I have fantasized--don't get me wrong--but that what if we could just be China for...

With Jay Leno and Matt Winkler from Bloomberg News. (Michelle wore red, for May Day)Sen. Chris Dodd and Michael Bloomberg.Chevy ChaseLarry KingRupert Murdoch and Tim GeithnerArianna Huffington and Joy Behar.Jessica Simpson and Gabourey Sidibe ("Precious")Dennis Quaid and Queen Latifah.Bill Maher and Seth MacFarlaneThe one who was supposed to move out of the country in November, 2004.No, it's not Madonna. That's Donatella Versace.Gail Simmons and Tom Colicchio of 'Top Chef'.King, MacFarlane, and Jeff Probst.Tracy MorganColin Powell and Joy Behar.Chelsea Handler (female equivalent of Bill Maher) and Katie Couric.Cynthia NixonJon Bon Jovi is pleased to introduce his wife to race-baiter Al Sharpton.Peter...

President Barack Obama struck a hyperpartisan note Thursday, telling Democrats that he was "amused" by the Tax Day Tea Party rallies. Obama, addressing a Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser in Miami, did little to endear himself to the Tea Party groups protesting around the country, saying "they should be saying thank you" because of the tax cuts he has signed into law. The president went as far as to say that this week's special election in Florida, which was won by Democrat Ted Deutch, was portrayed by Republicans as "a referendum on healthcare, a referendum on the stimulus." "And you...

After several days of hype and hand-wringing about liberal plans to infiltrate Thursday’s tea party rallies, the great 2010 Tax Day Tea Party Crash did not produce much of a bang in Washington. To be sure, a handful of obvious crashers engaged in some mostly non-confrontational back-and-forth with tea party activists at a Thursday evening rally that drew thousands to Washington’s National Mall near the Washington Monument. And some less overt crashers subtly mocked activists from amidst their ranks at both the evening rally on the Mall and an earlier event at Freedom Plaza near the White House. And there...

The Hate Man is probably the most colorfully oddball homeless person on Berkeley's famously oddball Telegraph Avenue. Known as Mark Hawthorne when he was a New York Times news reporter from 1961 to 1970, Hate Man has lived mostly on the streets in Berkeley since opting out of normal society in 1986. For a man whose penchant for wearing cast-off women's clothes and eating garbage seems a tad feral, the 73-year-old Hate Man is a surprisingly gentle, lucid conversationalist about most anything - particularly his philosophy that everyone must acknowledge that they really hate each other. He went over the...