Free Republic

As efforts to avoid an unprecedented U.S. default entered crunch time Friday, President Obama faced growing tensions with senior congressional Democrats, who are angry at White House concessions to Republicans and at being left out of the talks. With the clock ticking toward an Aug. 2 deadline to raise the U.S. debt ceiling, Obama and the senior Republican in Congress, House Speaker John Boehner, worked toward a plan that could include up to $3 trillion in spending cuts but might leave tax reform for later, congressional aides said. Friday is essentially the start of crunch time. The White House initially...

(CNSNews.com) – NBC apologized for omitting the words “under God” and “indivisible” from the Pledge of Allegiance during Sunday’s U.S. Open, but the incident has touched off calls for NBC to hold those responsible for the omission accountable. During the opening broadcast of the U.S. Open, NBC showed a montage that included children reciting the pledge, but the words “under God” and “indivisible” were omitted twice. The network received immediate backlash about the incident through social media, including tweets calling for a boycott of NBC. “We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago, and when...

Listen to the pledge of allegiance that runs alongside the patriotic images, and later to the one that overlays video of previous U.S. Open winners: (VIDEO)

As Noel Sheppard reported earlier, in the show-opening feature of its coverage of the final round of the US Open golf championship today, NBC--twice--edited out the words "under God" from its clip of school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Clearly many Americans were offended and let NBC know about it. Because later in the broadcast, one of the announcers issued an apology. But the network simply compounded one omission with another. The apology spoke of "a portion of the Pledge" being edited out--but never mentioned that the omitted words were "under God." View video here.

With data showing that the housing market has gone into reverse, another of Obama’s blue ribbon panels is about to report to the president on ways to get the U.S. economy going. Heading up the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is corporate welfare queen GE’s Jeffery Immelt.Expect, then, Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness headed by Immelt to recommend more of the top-down central planning where Big Business, Big Labor and Big Government connive to divide up the jobs pie at the expense of the rest of us, the little guys. The program will kind of be like Obamacare,...

Fanniegate: Gamechanger For The GOP? Walter Russell Mead Democrats, watch out.The Republican Party and especially its Tea Party wing have just acquired a new weapon of mass destruction — and it has nothing to do with any of Congressman Wiener’s rogue body parts. If they deploy this weapon effectively in the next election cycle — a big if — then they have the biggest opportunity to move the country rightward since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office back in 1981.The Tea Party WMD stockpile is currently stored in book form: Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led...

General Electric Co. reported a 77% increase in first-quarter earnings, lifted by marked improvement at its GE Capital financing arm and gains at most of its industrial units. The company also boosted its quarterly dividend by a penny to 15 cents. The move marks GE's third dividend increase in the past year, although the payout remains well short of GE's 31-cent dividend before the financial crisis and economic downturn. Many companies have been boosting dividends, looking to give cash back to shareholders as the need to hoard it wanes amid an improved economy. GE shares were up 2.7% to $20.95...

It's common for companies to indemnify their officers and directors against lawsuits. But what happens when the company gets taken over by the government? Oh, you know.... Since the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, taxpayers have spent more than $160 million defending the mortgage finance companies and their former top executives in civil lawsuits accusing them of fraud. The cost was a closely guarded secret until last week, when the companies and their regulator produced an accounting at the request of Congress. This would be amusing if it wasn't so outrageous. Remember, most of these allegations date...

Different host, same liberal bias . . . Subbing for Ed Schultz on MSNBC this evening, Cenk Ugyur suggested that the roughly 70% of Americans who oppose the Ground Zero mosque are "ignorant." Ugyur was debating the mosque matter with Republican strategist and former Newt staffer David Winston. Winston suggested that the people behind the mosque could, in light of the overwhelming oppposition of Americans to the plan, show sensitivity by agreeing to site it elsewhere. That provoked Cenk's snide insult, which, as you'll see, actually revealed his own lack of knowledge on the subject . . . View video...

MSNBC just finished a poll asking “Do you support Arizona's tough new law on illegal immigration?” Results: of 2738,770 votes 95.9% YES! 95.9% Yes! 2,626,424 voters said YES! 4.1% said No 112,346 votes Of course this was smothered by the enemy's media, but here it is.