Free Republic

It is time to cast aside all remaining doubt. President Obama is not trying to lead America forward to recovery, prosperity and strength. Quite the opposite, in fact. In September of last year, American Thinker published my article, Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis. Part of a series, it connected then presidential candidate Barack Obama to individuals and organizations practicing a malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government. Since then the story of that strategy has found its way across the blogosphere, onto the airwaves of radio stations across the country, the Glenn Beck...

House Democrats blocked the public from attending the unveiling ceremony of their health-care bill Thursday morning, allowing only pre-approved visitors whose names appeared on lists to enter the event at the West side of the Capitol. The audience at the crowded press conference included Hill staffers, union workers, health care providers and students, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who thanked them for attending.

President Obama's school age daughters have not been vaccinated against the H1N1 flu virus. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs says the vaccine is not available to them based on their risk.

ABC reports that experts who track hate groups across the U.S. are growing increasingly concerned over violent rhetoric targeted at President Obama, especially as the debate over health care intensifies and a pattern of threats emerges. New polls meanwhile show President Obama’s popularity has sunk to record lows. Is this an alarm bell for the possibility that a manufactured crisis is being prepared to reinvigorate support behind the government’s stalling socialist agenda? As far back as March controversial talk show host Michael Savage predicted that a “Reichstag fire-like event” would be concocted to reinvigorate support behind Obama but that was...

Trying to excite the crowd last night at a fundraiser for Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds in Tysons Corner, VA. Barry H. Obama made un-presidential remarks to which the crowd went crazy and no doubt had a collective Obamagasm. Blaming President Bush for the weak economy, Obama tried to make it appear that it was Bush and the Republican that spent us into this recession. While we had a hand in that, the bulk of the blame goes to the Democrats that have controlled congress and the spending since 2007. Obama said, ‘I don’t want the folks who created the...

The results of the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll are a major warning sign for Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. On some key issues, the gains that Democrats had made on Republicans in the last couple of years have disappeared, and the GOP has begun to reassert itself. In other policy areas, traditional Democratic leads are diminishing. The results are found in the answers to the Journal's questions about whether respondents believe the Democratic or Republican party would do a better job of handling a particular issue. In the past, Democrats have usually led in areas like health...

"...Copeland, 53, says he has a 20-year work history in Missoula that includes managing programs, running political campaigns and washing cars. He worked as a personal secretary to actress Andie MacDowell when she lived in the Missoula area."

The staggered phase out of energy-wasting light bulbs begins on Sept. 1 in Germany. The unpopularity of the energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs that will replace them is leading consumers and retailers to start hoarding the traditional bulbs. As the Sept. 1 deadline for the implementation of the first phase of the EU's ban on incandescent light bulbs approaches, shoppers, retailers and even museums are hoarding the precious wares -- and helping the manufacturers make a bundle. The EU ban, adopted in March, calls for the gradual replacement of traditional light bulbs with supposedly more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL). The...

Republican Charles Baker says Gov. Deval Patrick and Beacon Hill Democrats have "turned a crisis into a calamity" and made the Massachusetts economy "a wreck" with excessive government spending and an unwise tax increase. In a video to supporters unveiled today, the former Harvard Pilgrim Health Care president says he has twice engineered economic turnarounds.

  THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary_______________________________________________________________FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                      July 22, 2009 Excerpts of the President's Opening Remarks at Tonight's News Conference-As Prepared for Delivery- That is why I’ve said that even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, we must rebuild it stronger than before.  And health insurance reform is central to that effort.This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance.  Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job. ...

Sarah Palin entered into the arena of national politics today, with an op-ed in the Washington Post. Choosing energy, a topic that she is extremely familiar with, Sarah crafted a detailed and convincing argument against the cap-and-tax bill. Palin makes several points that absolutely decimate the argument in favor of cap-and-trade: * The bill includes $4.8 billion in unemployment relief over eight years for those who lose their jobs because of a drying-up energy sector — a direct counter to the administration claim that the bill is a job creator. * The bill is regressive, in that it will hit...

In a stunning report (pdf) released yesterday by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the current financial crisis was traced back to government intervention in the U.S. housing market.  Yes, you read that right.   The report issued by the Republican minority didn’t disclose the names of the culprit individuals, but it sure pointed a lot of fingers at organizations, politicians, lobbyists and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. According to the report, government intervention “created ‘affordable’ but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage.  Finally, government intervention created a nexus of vested interests...

Joe Biden's weekend statement that the administration misread how bad the economy really was, had been celebrated as just another gaffe by Obama's "Minister of LOL." Fact is that it was not another screw-up by Joe six-pack, it was part of a clearly orchestrated campaign by the Obama administration to make an excuse for the failure of the President's economic policy of high taxes, government control of major industry, and over spending. The basic contention of the administration is that the estimates were made before they knew the economy was contracting at a annual rate of 6%. Not only were...

Well now. Our economy is really lunging forward, isn’t it? What a ride! Are you holding on? We’re billions of dollars further in debt (trillions?) and the economy is still stagnant. TARP, the stimulus bill, massive debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay .. and what has this all brought us? Banks aren’t lending, businesses aren’t hiring – let along expanding – and consumers aren’t buying. Oh, to be sure, the malls are crowded. Turn up the thermostats and see how long that lasts. Those aren’t shoppers, they’re just your neighbors trying to stay cool while watching the...

Most people knew that Vice President Joe Biden would be one of President Obama’s major handicaps throughout his inexperienced administration’s first years. It’s not because Joe is incompetent, in fact he was selected to be the wise old man of experience. No, it’s because Joe has trouble shading the truth. He is no good at spin. He is a blunt, ‘tell it as it is’ type.

Duxbury, Mass. -- As millions of Americans struggle through the painful rebuilding of a crippled economy, a Massachusetts builder has published a book that promises to help average citizens understand just how the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression happened. Doug Friesen, a Duxbury-based home designer and builder, decided to write a book on the roots of the economic meltdown as a way of productively channeling his anger and frustration over the financial crisis. Titled "The Age of Entitlement: How Greed and Arrogance Got Us Here," the 180-page book begins with a layman's analysis of the monetary system before...

(CNSNews.com) - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-run mortgage giants, are absent from the Obama administration’s sweeping new financial regulations, despite the fundamental role played by both organizations in the financial system’s collapse. Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that the administration’s new regulations were only meant to address the most fundamental issues of the recession. “We considered a full range of options and decided that now is the time to pursue the essential reforms,” Geithner said. “Those that address the core causes of the current crisis, and that will help...

As the President jamming throw his agenda, his party is beginning to lose public confidence on key issues. Porkulus, the Omnibus bill, along with the auto bailouts, and a look ahead to programs such as cap and trade has made the Republican party the most trustworthy when it comes to the economy. It even gets better than that Rasmussen asks the public about ten Issues, Republicans are more trusted in Six, Democrats in three and one (abortion) was a tie. The GOP made impressive gains in trust to handle the economy, ethics and corruption,national security. It seems as if the...

Voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on six out of 10 key issues, including the top issue of the economy. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% now trust the GOP more to handle economic issues, while 39% trust Democrats more. This is the first time in over two years of polling that the GOP has held the advantage on this issue. The parties were close in May, with the Democrats holding a modest 44% to 43% edge. The latest survey was taken just after General Motors announced it was going into bankruptcy as part of...

Has the $787 billion stimulus package worked? In California last Wednesday, President Obama declared, “we are already seeing results.” That is in line with the predictions Obama and his advisers made when they warned of dire consequences if the stimulus did not pass. “If we fail to act, we are likely to lose millions more jobs and the unemployment rate could reach double digits,” Christina Romer, Obama’s chairwoman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned on February 4. Obama agreed. “If we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families...

62% Say Bush, Not Obama, To Blame For Ongoing Economic Problems Monday, June 01, 2009 President Obama contends he inherited the nation’s ongoing economic problems and that his actions since taking office are not to blame. Sixty-two percent (62%) of U.S. voters agree with the president that the problems are due to the recession that began under the Bush administration. Just 27% of voters say the problems are being caused more by the policies Obama has put in place since taking office, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Ten percent (10%) are not sure which president is...

Dow 4,000. Food shortages. A bubble in Treasury notes. Fortune spoke to eight of the market's sharpest thinkers and what they had to say about the future is frightening. Nouriel Roubini Known as Dr. Doom, the NYU economics professor saw the mortgage-related meltdown coming. We are in the middle of a very severe recession that's going to continue through all of 2009 - the worst U.S. recession in the past 50 years. It's the bursting of a huge leveraged-up credit bubble. There's no going back, and there is no bottom to it. It was excessive in everything from subprime to...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democrats will hold sway on a new independent commission to investigate the cause of the financial meltdown and chart the nation's path ahead, with the majority party picking six members and Republicans four. While a Republican senator helped write the legislation creating the commission and says it's a fair approach, and nearly all congressional Republicans have endorsed the measure, the uneven split on the proposed Financial Markets Inquiry Commission could call into question the group's impartiality and hamper its ability to raise consensus on the issue. Lawmakers are comparing it to the widely respected 9/11 Commission, which...

In a windowless room at the Westin Hotel in downtown Denver, leading business journalists and editors explained how the media “blew it” in covering the economic meltdown. They admitted, on one hand, to falling under the sway of free-market ideology and celebrating risk-taking financial leaders and, on the other, to missing the complex story of the rupturing system by only reporting it in parts and to almost no effect for the past decade. Although not planned as confession, the discussion, which kicked off the annual conference of the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW), quickly descended into an...

On the cold afternoon of February 5, 1976, an Army recruit told his drill instructor at Fort Dix that he felt tired and weak but not sick enough to see military medics or skip a big training hike. Within 24 hours, 19-year-old Pvt. David Lewis of Ashley Falls, Mass., was dead, killed by an influenza not seen since the plague of 1918-19, which took 500,000 American lives and 20 million worldwide. Two weeks after the recruit's death, health officials disclosed to America that something called "swine flu" had killed Lewis and hospitalized four of his fellow soldiers at the Army...

QUINN RALLINS, 23, graduated magna cum laude last year from Morehouse College with a dual major in international studies and Spanish. This spring, Mr. Rallins is finishing his master’s degree in comparative social policy at Oxford. He has analyzed research for the Rand Corporation in England, led workshops in Malaysia for Amnesty International and founded an organization to help orphans in the Dominican Republic. His next step? Top financial and technology companies and nonprofit groups have expressed interest in hiring him. Even in this economy, he has options. But Mr. Rallins wants to be a community organizer — just like...

WHO REALLY destroyed the base of the economy by forcing the banks to make all those millions of bad loans, pulling the rug out from under the  banks and insurance cos. IN THE FIRST PLACEYou didn't know this?  Perhaps you didn'tknow that newsmen have agendas andDELIBERATELY hid the facts from you.

EIR Investigation Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), November 1, 1996 The dossier that follows is based upon a report released on Oct. 1 by EIR's bureau in Wiesbaden, Germany, titled "A Profile of Mega-Speculator George Soros." Research was contributed by Mark Burdman, Elisabeth Hellenbroich, Paolo Raimondi, and Scott Thompson. ............................................................................ Time magazine has characterized financier George Soros as a "modern-day Robin Hood," who robs from the rich to give to the poor countries of eastern Europe and Russia. It claimed that Soros makes huge financial gains by speculating against western central banks, in order to use his profits to help the...

It's bad enough that American taxpayers have to bail out the privately owned, tax-exempt Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac. But it's truly outrageous that tax dollars will also go to groups involved in voter fraud and illegal immigration. The small print in the $42 billion bailout passed by Congress and signed by Bush requires those two government-sponsored mortgage giants to deposit 4.2 percent of all new mortgages they underwrite into the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Here's the catch. The Trust Fund - the largest expansion of federal housing assistance since LBJ's Great Society - is required to make grants...

Hedge fund manager George Soros says he has finally found his footing in Washington. A pariah under the Bush administration and largely overlooked by Clinton, Soros says that "at least I will get a hearing" in Washington now. Soros plans to use the opportunity to advocate radical regulatory and financial reforms that would rein in financiers — including himself. "It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work," Soros told The Australian News. "The American election, the financial crisis … it is actually a very stimulating period.” Soros wants Washington to loosen its grip on the International...

Congress: The spectacle of the very same people responsible for one of the nation's great financial calamities angling to be given even more control to fix the problem would be funny if it weren't so tragic.Rep. Barney Frank, the Democrat who sits atop Congress' efforts to deal with the financial crisis, has enough chutzpah for 100 politicians — which is saying a lot. In comments before testimony from both Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed chief Ben Bernanke Tuesday, Frank said he wants to regulate pay on Wall Street — even for companies that aren't getting bailouts. And he called...

George Soros is having a very good crisis. Other investors are wilting, political power structures are being upended and market economists are scrambling to fashion new theories, but the world's most famous speculator is having a belated heyday. George Soros is now recognised as one of the most effective philanthropists, finding a new sense of purpose by spending billions to promote civil society in new democracies. "It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work," the 78-year-old says in his heavy Hungarian accent during an interview at his London mansion. If Soros had retired from the money...

President Barack Obama said he believes the global financial system remains at risk of implosion with the failure of Citigroup or AIG, touching off “an even more destructive recession and potentially depression.” His remarks came in a “60 Minutes” interview in which he was pressed by an incredulous Steve Kroft for laughing and chuckling several times while discussing the perilous state of the world’s economy. “You're sitting here. And you're— you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, "I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money—”...

Geithner to call for new bonus system By: Mike Allen March 21, 2009 07:37 PM EST Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will try to cut down on risky behavior by financial institutions by asking them to tie bonuses to the long-term health of the company rather than short-term gains, according to people briefed on his plans. As part of a broad financial-regulatory plan to be unveiled this week, the administration wants to put in place reforms to get financial incentives for employees closer in line with the long-term health of the company. Basically, it’s what bonuses used to be before Wall...

Keynesian economists also fail to understand what the great Austrian economist F.A. Hayek understood; namely, that markets allocate resources by relative prices. For example, suppose consumers’ taste for fish intensifies while their taste for beef weakens. Consumers will then spend more money buying fish and less buying beef. The resulting higher price of fish relative to the price of beef will signal to entrepreneurs, investors and resource owners to produce more fish and to produce less beef. This change in production patterns is precisely what should happen. Specialized beef producers, though, aren’t so keen on this little piece of economic...

Class Warfare: ‘Working Families’ Offer Field Trip to AIG Executives’ Mansions Friday, March 20, 2009 By Susan Jones, Senior Editor (CNSNews.com) - "We're all mad at AIG," says the pro-union Connecticut Working Families Party. Tapping into some of that rage, the liberal group is sponsoring a "field trip" on Saturday to show working people from Hartford and Bridgeport how and where the AIG executives live. Some of the executives who received bonuses work in the company's Wilton, Conn., office. Those executives "bear a large share of the responsibility for bringing the economy to its knees, and now the same folks...

You remember this passage: Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame. Well, during the campaign and the first sixty days since, the POTUS's image has only been damaged by memorable individuals (with lots of video available for broadcast): Rev. Wright William Ayers AIG hearings clips Barney Frank Chris Dodd And of course the Pres and his minions's back and forth Add the frequent pop-ups of Biden, Pelosi and Reid and you have convinced the likes of...

"The fed is planning moves that would more than double its balance-sheet assets by September to $4.5 trillion from $1.9 trillion. Whether expressing approval or concern over the fed’s move, most commentators fail to understand the real magnitude of the projected expansion of the US monetary base because they don’t take into account the amount of dollars circulating abroad......................The fed’s planned balance sheet expansion results in a 15-fold increase in the base money supply. 262 Billion = US monetary base as of September 2008 (minus dollars held abroad) 3,818 Billion = projected US monetary base in September 2009 (minus dollars...

When it comes to our complex economy, Pres. Barack Obama would do well to heed the physician’s ancient commandment to first “do no harm.” Instead, Obama’s administration has been prescribing all sorts of multibillion-dollar borrowing remedies without any consistent diagnosis of what is exactly wrong with the weak economy or even how bad things actually are. Since becoming president, Obama has offered numerous bleak economic prognoses. He has told Americans: “The situation we face could not be more serious. We have inherited an economic crisis as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression.” He has also warned,...

Obama in a press conference this morning summed up with: I just want to make sure we don't get into messes like this in the future. Well, Mr. Obama, the answer is simple. Government meddling, specifically, Democrat meddling into formerly free markets created these messes in the first place. Government forced the banks to make these so-called sub-prime mortgage loans to people who could not afford them. Get rid of government meddling into free markets and you eliminate a whole host of problems. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should be the first to walk the plank. Hopefully, the American people...

NEW YORK – While the nomination of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner generated plenty of heat because of his failure to pay income taxes for five years, almost unnoticed amid the controversy is the fact that he presided over the failure of some of the largest banking institutions in the world – institutions he was charged with overseeing and regulating as head of the New York region of the Federal Reserve Bank. On Nov. 17, 2003, Geithner became the ninth president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank, a position he held until he was nominated by President Obama...

Obama changed tactics last week. In a 180 degree turn, he started voicing optimism on the economy, going so far as to advise Americans that its time to start buying stock again. From warning of 'the Great Depression' he shifted to 'the economy is fundamentally sound', all in a week's time. Curiously, during the same week, a flood of articles, studies and editorials resumed the mantra of rising sea levels and other catastrophic consequences of global warming. The majority of these articles report 'man-made global warming' as though it is settled, scientific fact. Sen. John Kerry (Vietnam veteran) gravely intoned...

Could this be a sign of things to come? Now that CNBC Chicago Mercantile Exchange reporter Rick Santelli has mysteriously disappeared from the spotlight after his criticism of President Barack Obama's mortgage proposal in February and now that CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer has been marginalized after his lackluster appearance on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" on March 12, could the new target of the Obama machine and the left and their accomplices in the media be CNBC "The Kudlow Report" host Larry Kudlow? James Rainey, a columnist for The Los Angeles Times, set his sights on Kudlow in...

When easy money is waved in front of people, many partake. It looks like Enterprise rent-a-car lobbied for TARP funds and may have laid off people to give the look of a struggling company. However, the literature on their website proves contrary. Did they dupe the U.S. Government? Full Story: http://www.butasforme.com/2009/02/25/alert-enterprise-rent-a-car-may-have-fired-employees-as-fake-evidence-when-lobbing-for-bailout-money/

Dick Cheney, in his first interview after the election, makes it clear he has concerns about the new team in charge, and the use of crisis to advance a radical agenda. On how Obama let Congress write the stimulus bill: "That says to me there is no plan for stimulating the economy." Lots covered in this. Typically brilliant Cheney.

"As Congress grapples with solutions for a faltering economy, Barney Frank sits at the center of power." Thus wrote John Gallagher in The Advocate as our government officials desperately struggled to limit the fallout from the unfolding financial crisis. Gallagher is right. As Chairman of the Financial Service Committee in the US House of Representatives, Barney Frank plays a crucial role in determining in what ways much of the bailout and stimulus money is spent. This is because the committee over which he presides oversees the housing and banking sectors, two industries that are at the center of the current...

The liberal media isn’t going to spell out exactly how it goes about smearing conservatives, so Bill O’Reilly helpfully explained it last night on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Boiled down it goes like this: George Soros (and others) fund one of the left’s most prominent noise machines, Media Matters for America, which distorts statements made by conservatives and then urges reporters to provide saturation coverage of such statements as proof conservatives are hypocritical and sinister. In his “talking points” segment, O’Reilly references the Obama administration’s strategy of attempting to marginalize its most vocal opponent, radio talk show giant Rush Limbaugh:

On November 5, 2009 Americans woke up to a very real Marxist coup - although most didn't realize it. I sat down and cried while a huge crowd gathered and were cheering. I intuitively knew something was very wrong. After watching Barack Hussein Obama destructively pursue his agenda as president, I now understand why. (UPDATE: Mar 3 - Conference Call on The Grand Jury Stephen Pidgeon: Conference Call on The Grand Jury, Click here to: Listen to the show A conference call to discuss the National Grand Jury, with Stephen Pidgeon as guest - Neil Stephen Pidgeon - Google Search...