Free Republic

What does the triumph of FMLN candidate Salvador Sanchez Ceren, in the March 9 presidential elections in El Salvador represent for Latin America? I see his victory as very significant because it not only further strengthens the progressive current expanding through Latin America since the 1998 triumph of Chavez in Venezuela, but because he is the first president since Chile's Salvador Allende to reach the presidency by putting forward a project that he had no qualms in calling socialist. At the same time, he has explained socialism as a democratic, participatory project that is not decreed from above. This idea...

A leading air transport industry body has called for a top-level meeting with the Venezuelan president to discuss ways to restore over $4 billion of airlines' money that is trapped in the country due to its currency controls. President Nicolas Maduro's government requires airlines to sell tickets in the bolivar currency but has been slow to allow them to repatriate the earnings. IATA said on Monday that international capacity on routes to Venezuela is down 36 percent year-on-year, or down 49 percent from 2013 peaks. "Confidence in the market is falling sharply," Tyler said. "Venezuela risks becoming disconnected from the...

Here in southeastern Virginia, our biggest city, Norfolk, is saddled with an unwanted claim to fame. Norfolk is the place "where normal tides have risen 1.5 feet over the past century and the sea is rising faster than anywhere else on the East Coast." NPR notes that the Norfolk area "is particularly vulnerable because the land is sinking as sea levels are rising." As we frequently discuss here at 13.7, human-caused (anthropogenic) climate change is a global problem. Surprisingly, at least to me, the evidence points to a narrative of universal blame, instead of one in which the "big countries"...

The Earth got its annual checkup, and according to climate scientists around the globe, it looks as though its fever is continuing to rise. NOAA released the 24th annual State of the Climate report, on July 17 2014, including data compiled by 425 scientists in 57 countries. According to Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, "The climate is changing more rapidly in today's world than at any time in modern civilization." When asked how he would rate the health of the planet, he compared it to how a person might look at unwanted weight gain over time....

Not a week goes by that I'm not called or emailed by hundreds of fans who believe we have a foreigner and Muslim in the White House. I've disagreed for six years now. We have to take our President at his word. He says he is a Christian, he attends church, so he is a Christian. So let's throw that theory away. But I've met quite a few Christians who are both Marxists and radical Muslim sympathizers. It’s now clear that Obama is one of them. Why hide from it? It’s no crime. Obama should embrace the truth. Is he...

Obviously Obama is using Cloward-Piven strategy to destroy our beloved country before our very eyes by flooding the system of welfare with illegals as well as Obamacare subsidies, getting student aid and 49% of the public receiving govt. assistance. Time to remove him from power.................

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Why Presbyterians Took Up the ‘Palestinian Cause’Posted By David Paulin On July 7, 2014 @ 12:30 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments What has happened to America’s Presbyterians? Leaders of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) have joined ranks with the radical left in recent years. They vilify Israel, apologize for Islamic terrorists, and cheer on the Palestinian cause.Now, these leftist elites are savoring an important victory, having pushed through a resolution to divest from U.S. companies operating in Israel: Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett Packard. The contentious vote in the church’s general assembly passed by a...

… Opponents of the carbon tax implemented in 2012 had the media largely on their side. Electricity prices soared—not mainly because of the tax, but because power companies were spending billions on infrastructure. Most electricity users were compensated for the added cost of the tax, but many of them didn’t know that. And rising gas prices fed the fury—even though the tax didn’t apply to gasoline. Australia’s experience illustrates how easy it is to scuttle complicated environmental laws, and serves as a warning to President Barack Obama, whose recent proposal to force a 30 percent cut in power plants’ carbon...

In a calculated plan to replace US citizen voters, Obama and the Democrats devised an Orwellian scheme that is now playing out in front of ours and the world's eyes. Obama is disenchanted with the fact that he is still not recognized as King or Emperor of America and his supplicant Democrats are demanding the titles of Duke and Duchess. Therefore, as he's been getting away with it since he usurped the Office of POTUS with no elected official anywhere stopping him, Obama is – yet again – committing treason against the USA and its people via "providing aid and...

Obamacare has pushed us over the entitlements tipping point. In 2011 some 49.2 percent of U.S. households received benefits from one or more government programs—about 151 million out of an estimated 306.8 million Americans—according to U.S. Census Bureau data released last October. Currently, around 6 million to 7 million Americans who have signed up for Obamacare are receiving taxpayer-provided subsidies (though the administration’s numbers cannot be trusted, it’s all we have to work with). There are another 3 million who have signed up for Medicaid. That means some 10 million Americans—or a total of about 161 million—are now getting government...

The distinguished political philosopher Leo Strauss was supposed to have said that the only two things in life really worth talking about are God and politics. That’s because at a most fundamental level they are inextricably intertwined. A skewed notion of the very nature of God and whether man acknowledges him—or tries to substitute himself for God—is at the crux of the turmoil, fanaticism, and destructiveness of the politics of our day and of much of the last hundred years.This is seen well in two books of the last decade. Robert R. Reilly’s The Closing of the Muslim Mind...

Big name Republicans giving their full-throated support to the Obama Administration’s Common Core education reforms don’t dwell too much on what they are. They don’t look good in close-up. Common Core State Standards “Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in math were developed to address the criticism that national math curriculums were ‘a mile wide and an inch deep,’” Sarah Perry writes in a Family Research Council (FRC) issue brief. “The drafters sought to develop more focus and coherence through the standards, with the belief that those students who can explain mathematical rules would have a better chance at succeeding in...

Everyone believes in "standards" don't they? So what could possibly be wrong with "Common Core" (the US education system's "Common Core State Standards Initiative")? After all, is it not "a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English... created to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college, career, and life, regardless of where they live"?* Not according to Dr. Duke Pesta, professor of English at The University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, who joins us for an extended and detailed interview on the genesis, content and ideology of Common Core...

A blackout cut power to much of Venezuela on Friday, snarling traffic in the capital Caracas and other major cities as authorities scrambled to restore electricity after the outage, which twice interrupted a presidential broadcast. Pedestrians streamed into the streets of Caracas as the blackout shuttered the underground metro trains and left frustrated drivers honking in the chaos without stoplights. The OPEC nation has suffered an increasing number of power outages in recent years, which critics have attributed to low electricity tariffs and limited state investment following the 2007 nationalization of the power sector. Critics call the power problems a...

Much like DeQuincy’s autobiographical Confessions of an Opium Eater, a true Marxist is addicted to Revolution. Why? Because only through revolution can a liberal hope to overturn government enough to force his fellow citizens into embracing socialism. But why the desperate demand for all persons to acquiesce to communism? Because Marxism is a religion, and a violently missionary one, at that.

Venezuela, a country that takes great pride in its looks, is dealing with an issue that has the country in a major tizzy – shortages in beauty products. That means women and men so accustomed to looking their best are now having to do without shampoo, cosmetics and, hold your breath, even deodorant. The cash-strapped government has been dealing with all sorts of scarcities – from staples like milk to medical supplies – because the country has put controls on the purchase of hard currency. And while certain shortages have been more critical – like diapers and coffins – Venezuelans...

Many Seattle workers are about to see their income go way up, after the City Council unanimously passed a $15 minimum wage earlier this month. But faster than you can get a happy meal at McDonald's, the ordinance is facing a legal challenge. “I guarantee not everyone will survive,” warned David Jones, who owns a Subway franchise in Seattle. “This discriminatory law will affect some franchisees and they will go out of business.” The International Franchise Association, representing those concerns, has sued over the wage hike, specifically objecting to the fact the ordinance treats franchises as big businesses and requires...

President Obama, in an address speech to UC Irvine graduates Saturday, took aim at congressional Republicans and others who dispute climate change, saying they posed a threat to the future.

In Washington D.C., low-wage protesters aren’t settling for half-measures. On Thursday, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez unveiled a proposed rule to lift the wage floor to $10.10 per hour, potentially hiking the pay of up to 200,000 employees of federal contractors. Yet the step forward has not satisfied the workers’ organization Good Jobs Nation, which is now demanding the right to collectively bargain with their employers. “I’m grateful to the President for raising my wage to $10 an hour, but it’s not enough to care for my son,” says Rodelma Acosta, a McDonald’s worker at the Pentagon, in a statement from...

Major negative effects of climate change are here now and they're only getting worse. We've gathered some notable effects of climate change below. 1. Climate change will be insanely expensive. 2. Hundreds of millions of people may be displaced by 2050. 3. Dengue and malaria could spread in the U.S. 4. Western wildfires could burn up to eight times as much land by 2100. 5. An additional 8% of the world population will experience water scarcity by 2100. 6. Hurricanes could become up to 11% more intense and 20% wetter by 2100. 7. Four times as many New Yorkers could...

Maybe it’s me, but the predictable right-wing cries of outrage over the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules on carbon seem oddly muted and unfocused. I mean, these are the people who managed to create national outrage over nonexistent death panels. Now the Obama administration is doing something that really will impose at least some pain on some people. Where are the eye-catching fake horror stories? For what it’s worth, however, the attacks on the new rules mainly involve the three C’s: conspiracy, cost and China. That is, right-wingers claim that there isn’t any global warming, that it’s all a hoax...

For I will restore you to health and I will heal you of your wounds delares the Lord, because they have called you an outcast, saying: “It is Zion; no one cares for her.”’ Jeremiah 30:17 Why should anyone be surprised there were death lists at the VA, it is the natural process of Marxism. There is no way a socialist enterprise can compete with a free market one due to the lack of profit incentives which are replaced with political ones. There is no natural selection or efficiency necessities due to budgeting and making dollars go as far as...

by Jason DeWitt | Top Right NewsA teacher who helped write the controversial Common Core State Standards informed a shocked audience that he was motivated to do so because he is a “white male” who has been “given a lot of privilege that I didn’t earn.”Dr. David Pook, a professor at Granite State College and chair of the history department at the Derryfield School in Manchester, New Hampshire, had just been introduced at the event at New Hampshire Institute of Politics on Monday night when he delved into his ties to Common Core. “The reason why I helped write the standards and the reason...

You can see the video of this speech by clicking on the "Enza Ferreri Blog" link above. Here is the transcript. Vote for Liberty GB in the European Elections on the 22nd of May because Liberty GB is the only credible party that can change what's wrong, since it's the only party which has clear ideas about what caused it. Today's major symptoms of the disease that affects Britain – mass immigration, Islamisation, multiculturalism – have been caused by the Left's cultural dominance in Britain – as all over the West – over the past 50-60 years. Uncontrolled immigration –...

The WVAS talk show was trying to discuss interracial adoption. But the conversation quickly deteriorated when a call came in from Alabama State Rep. Alvin Holmes. Listen in amazement as this public servant proclaims that the government should recognize sexual relationships between men and mules as “marriages” (you might want to jump to 3:34 or so): Video Somehow, even after men are getting married to mules, folks like Holmes will still manage to lead us even further downhill.

First lady Michelle Obama is encouraging students to monitor their older relatives, friends and co-workers for any racially insensitive comments they might make, and to challenge those comments whenever they’re made. The first lady spoke on Friday to graduating high school students in Topeka, Kansas, and in remarks released over the weekend, Obama said students need to police family and friends because federal laws can only go so far in stopping racism. -SNIP- [O]ur laws may no longer separate us based on our skin color, but nothing in the Constitution says we have to eat together in the lunchroom, or...

The food industry should be regulated like the tobacco industry as obesity poses a greater global health risk than cigarettes, say international groups. Consumers International and the World Obesity Federation are calling for the adoption of more stringent rules. These could include pictures on food packaging of damage caused by obesity, similar to those on cigarette packets. The new rules could include reducing the levels of salt, saturated fat and sugar in food, improving food served in hospitals and schools, imposing stricter advertising controls, and educating the public about healthy eating. Artificial trans-fats should be removed from all food and...

Swiss voters have rejected a proposal to introduce what would be the highest minimum wage in the world in a referendum, first projections indicate. Under the plan, employers would have had to pay workers a minimum 22 Swiss francs (about $25; £15; 18 euros) an hour. Supporters said the move was necessary for people to live a decent life. But critics argued that it would raise production costs and increase unemployment.

On Thursday, fast-food workers in more than 30 countries across six continents will take coordinated action on an unprecedented scale. In the United States, they will walk off their jobs in 150 cities — the largest strike ever. Workers around the world will join these protests in 80 cities. The protestors are set to take over a McDonald’s during lunchtime rush hour in Belgium; hold flash-mobs at McDonald’s restaurants across the Philippines, and conduct a teach-in at McDonald’s headquarters in New Zealand. The spread of the fast-food movement to the global stage is notable for the speed at which it...

After successfully bringing more than 30% of the U.S. economy — the health care and financial services industries — under political control during his first term, President Obama made it clear last week that a priority of his second term is to go after the energy sector — another 10.5%. The purpose of the White House's orchestrated release of the National Climate Assessment on May 7 was to set the stage to drive energy markets and fossil fuels under the heel of more government regulation. Most Americans would celebrate knowing that the U.S. is on the cusp of oil and...

Pope Francis has close ties with liberation theology, the prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the body that once condemned the movement, has said. In a lengthy interview in the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller said Pope Francis “is not so much a liberation theologian in the academic sense, but as far as pastoral work is concerned, he has close ties with liberation theology’s concerns. What we can learn from him is the insight that there is no pastoral work without profound theology and vice versa”. In the 1980s the...

Today Pope Francis addressed a delegation of the UN – which I remind you is a principle agent for promoting abortion world-wide.Below please find the full text of Pope Francis’ address to the United Nations Agencies, Funds and Programmes on Friday, led by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.There is some blah blah at first, but keep reading. My emphases and comments.NOTE: A lot of this is simply warmed up John Paul II and Benedict XVI. There isn’t much new here, apart from the terrible wording about the State and redistribution. But we can, for the most part, say “Ho hum!...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis called Friday for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the "economy of exclusion" that is taking hold today. Francis made the appeal during a speech to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the heads of major U.N. agencies who met in Rome this week. Latin America's first pope has frequently lashed out at the injustices of capitalism and the global economic system that excludes so much of humanity, though his predecessors have voiced similar concerns. On Friday, Francis called for the United Nations to promote...

The latest speech from Pope Francis is leading Drudge and the Twittersphere, and for good reason. Any time a world leader talks about “legitimate redistribution� in regard to economic policy, it raises eyebrows, if not hackles. In the case of this pontiff, the highlight of that phrase provokes heightened scrutiny. However, the longer context of Francis’ remarks this morning to UN leadership provides a much more nuanced picture of Francis’ view of economic policy — although probably not nuanced enough for libertarian ears: With this in mind, I would like to remind you, as representatives of the chief agencies of...

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- Pope Francis called Friday for governments to redistribute wealth to the poor in a new spirit of generosity to help curb the "economy of exclusion" that is taking hold today.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's move on to the White House now and the reestablishment of climate change and global warming as a new primary impetus of the White House because it offers the president opportunities to be dictatorial. Executive orders and executive actions. Now, John Podesta was dragged out yesterday to all of a sudden make some comments about this. John Podesta was Bill Clinton's chief-of-staff, and he's over at a think tank. I think it's The Center for American Progress. I get 'em confused. Think Progress, Center for American Progress, Advanced Liberal -- (interruption) Center for American Progress, yeah....

WASHINGTON - It is time to craft new politics and economic policies to address the sustainability crisis, according to the latest edition of a flagship report by the Worldwatch Institute, a think tank here. “We need to rethink many of our basic economic assumptions and mechanisms, and aim not only for a better and wiser distribution of resources, but also a better sharing of available work. This can’t be accomplished via conventional forms of capitalism.” The global community has delayed addressing the issues associated with rapid climate change and environmental degradation for too long, according to the 294-page report, “Governing...

Creepy people buzz around Barack Obama like a dog who rolls in his own crap attracts flies. This post catalogues the many scoundrels (190+) that Barack Obama has associated with throughout his life and career. Behind only Ted Kennedy, Barack Obama is probably the single greatest example of liberal principle number five (from the Nuclear Counterarguments Book Series: #1 Deprogramming Liberalism with Nuclear Counterarguments): A contemporary liberal’s honorable motives and noble fight against contemporary conservatism excuses all liberal failures and indiscretions. The people and organizations that Barack Obama has palled around with paint a very ugly picture of dozens of...

Israel-bashing figures prominently in 'teach-ins' where San Franciscans seek a flavor of the Vietnam era Let's admit it - San Francisco is gorgeous, and deserves its name as the capital of resistance to what the US is trying to do in the Middle East. After all, while other places from coast to coast had rallies and marches before and during Operation Iraqi Freedom, only there were thousands "hauled off by the pigs" for blocking the financial district, and only there was there a rally and march almost every Saturday for weeks and weeks until Saturday, April 19. But were all...

Anyone who loves politics and horse racing is out to try and handicap anything this week. My favorite Saturday, outside any Saturday that Louisiana State University plays football, is the Kentucky Derby. It might not be very fashionable these days to be a horse degenerate, but that’s what I am. Thinking about the up and coming presidential election, I will use some horse racing analogies to talk about 2016. On the Democratic side, there has never been a more non-incumbent prohibitive favorite than Hillary Clinton. Seems to me the best horse analogy would be Secretariat running in the Belmont Stakes...

A good rule of thumb with Hillary Clinton is this: If it comes out of her mouth, it’s insincere. You will never lose money taking that bet 100 times out of 100. And a good corollary to that rule is this: When she tells you what something is supposed to mean, that’s not what it means at all. Especially when she’s talking about the Bible. Pay attention: When a liberal who “rarely mentions his or her faith” suddenly shows up in a church quoting Scripture to you, it’s a pretty good bet that liberal is trying to pervert the Scripture...

See link for discussion.

If modern industrial capitalism were a person, he or she would be on suicide watch. The system that has brought us quantum physics and reality television, modern medicine and the columns of Andrew Bolt is set on a course which, by all the best reckoning, points directly to its doing itself in. If capitalism goes on — everything goes. Climate, coastlines, most living species, food supplies, the great bulk of humanity. And certainly, the preconditions for advanced civilisation, perhaps forever. Moreover, we’re not just talking risk, in the sense of an off-chance. These are the most likely outcomes for capitalism’s...

After largely ignoring the dispute between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the mainstream media has been in frenzy over allegedly racist remarks he made while addressing a group of supporters earlier this month. In their typical style, they have cherry-picked a few selected words from a larger statement, causing the left to pounce and the right to distance itself from him faster than it takes Mozilla to load a webpage, or scuttle a CEO. Lost in this bonfire of self-righteous indignation is the full context of what Cliven Bundy was trying to say and...

Noting that America's middle class has lost its distinction as the wealthiest in the world, two Bay Area lawmakers say they're attacking income inequality with legislation that would link a company's tax rate to the gap between executive pay and average employee wages.

When Luka Ladan started his freshman year at Vassar College in southeast New York, he started noticing a difference between himself and the majority of his classmates. “We were talking about the upcoming election,” he said. “I was in a class talking about Republicans – Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. Whenever a name was mentioned, one kid would snicker and then five to seven would just laugh at the name.” This is a common experience in this age group: 66 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds voted for Obama in 2008 and 60 percent did in 2012 – the largest numbers...

While an anxious world holds their collective breath over the disturbing events in the Ukraine and elsewhere, these are high times for the political left. With the revelation that the latest Marx re-boot, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has reached the top of the best sellers list, progressives at long last have found (ironically enough) the commercial justification for their self-righteousness. While French academic Thomas Piketty’s views have leftists waxing poetically on social justice, his work reveals the more sinister instinct of using taxation as a punitive weapon of class warfare rather than a means for combating income equality. While...

When the government owns the land and natural resources and controls production from same, it's called communism. The Founders intended Americans to enjoy their God-given liberty. The constitution was written to severely restrict government power and ensure freedom. The founders never intended for an all powerful central government to own the land or to control the means of production. They limited the central government to about 18 enumerated powers and left all others to the people and the states to decide locally. The United States was intended to be a free Republic governed at various levels by elected representatives, working...

I was so naive when I went to Cal. I didn’t realize that, in my history and English classes, the material we read was either created in the first instance by Marxists or, if it predated Marxists, was first run through a Marxist analytical filter either before or immediately after we read it. All I knew was that I thought the material was nonsensical and, because of their adulatory prosing about it, that my professors were idiots. It says a lot about the quality of education at Cal that, simply by parroting the teachers’ stupidity back to them, I managed...

After Breitbart Texas reported on the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) intent to seize 90,000 acres belonging to Texas landholders along the Texas/Oklahoma line, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott questioned the BLM’s authority to take such action. “I am about ready,” General Abbott told Breitbart Texas, “to go to go to the Red River and raise a ‘Come and Take It’ flag to tell the feds to stay out of Texas.” Gen. Abbott sent a strongly-worded letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze, asking for answers to a series of questions related to the potential land grab. “I am deeply...