Free Republic

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...

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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...

Modern greens who inappropriately and metaphorically often use the term “denier” to compare global warming skeptics to Holocaust deniers are shockingly betrayed by their very own environmental history. Modern environmentalism was largely born in the racist forests of Germany in the 1800's that was at first anti-Semitic, but later became mixed up with Social Darwinian biological science in which the very word 'ecology' was coined in 1866. Today, the green movement is no longer racist, but has evolved into anti-humanism in general ...

<p>David Niose, an attorney for the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center, said public schools should not permit an exercise that "teaches students that patriotism is tied to a belief in God."</p> <p>“Such a daily exercise portrays atheist and humanist children as second-class citizens, and certainly contributes to anti-atheist prejudices,” Niose said in a statement.</p>

While much of the world has focused on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, opposition forces in Venezuela continue to battle the brutal regime of Nicolas Maduro. While opposition forces battle for their basic human rights, the world, and in particular the government of the United States has remained largely silent. In February of this year, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was arrested by government officials on charges of "inciting unrest" for leading, at the time, peaceful protests against the policies of Nicolas Maduro and his ruling United Socialist Party. Despite the overriding belief that he was being held illegally, few world...

After the recent Bundy Ranch episode by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Texans are becoming more concerned about the BLM’s focus on 90,000 acres along a 116 mile stretch of the Texas/Oklahoma boundary. The BLM is reviewing the possible federal takeover and ownership of privately-held lands which have been deeded property for generations of Texas landowners. Sid Miller, former Texas State Representative and Republican candidate for Texas Agriculture Commissioner, has since made the matter a campaign issue to Breitbart Texas. “In Texas,” Miller says, “the BLM is attempting a repeat of an action taken over 30 years ago...

About 80 people showed up at a meeting in Aspen on Thursday on whether the BLM should void 65 oil and gas leases in the region, including 25 in the Thompson Divide area. Two-thirds of the way through the meeting in the basement of the Pitkin County Library, every person who had spoke urged the 13 BLM officials in attendance to cancel the leases, which were first authorized in a 1993 environmental impact statement. “We’re very much in favor of voiding the leases, specifically within the Thompson Divide area,” said Rob Ittner, the chair of the Pitkin County Board of...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says President Barack Obama's budget request would mean significantly larger budget deficits than the White House claims. CBO says the budget plan proposed last month by Obama would produce deficits of $6.6 trillion over the next 10 years — $1.6 trillion more than the White House estimates. The main reason is that the White House has a rosier estimate of the economy's performance over the decade than CBO. That means the administration predicts higher tax revenues. The president's budget is just a proposal; it has gained little...