Free Republic

It's a shockingly eco-friendly plan from the world's most toxic retailer. Did hell just freeze over? Sometimes you just have to let the possibility breathe. Sometimes you just have to allow that something grand and good and healthy might actually be born from the bowels of the dank and ravenous megacorporate world, like flowers from a dung heap, like vodka from old potatoes, even if it comes right alongside the nastiest, most abusive federal environmental policy you will see in your lifetime. Take Wal-Mart, the most famously offensive, town-destroying, junk-purveying, labor-abusing, sweatshop-supporting, American-job-killing, soul-numbing, seizure-inducing, hope-curdling retailer in the known...

When all else fails and you're becoming Nixon 2.0, why not just nuke someone, and smirk? It's just like playing blackjack in Vegas. Invariably, sitting right next to you is some guy, eyes shifty and body twitchy and making weird sounds with his mouth and smelling vaguely of sawdust and horse manure and dead dreams, with a huge pile of chips he is quickly turning into a very small pile of chips. He is suffering. He is playing terribly, grumbling, sneering at the dealer, talking to the cards like they were his personal slutty harem ("C'mon you dumb bitches, do...

Yes, I know you were drunk. Must've been. Either drunk or on serious meds and/or you just didn't give much of a damn about anything anyway because you're just one of those people, one of those types who comes lurching around the city like a chunk of numbed pain in your big-ass mid-'80s burgundy car with the white top and chrome bumpers -- an old Cadillac? Monte Carlo? -- early last Sunday morning to wreak casual havoc. Is that about right? Do you remember any of it? Here is what I'm guessing: probably not. Let me tell you what happened,...

Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe? Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost? And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob...

Apparently, it wasn't just "invade Iraq and Afghanistan in my name." A special report: Scene: White House private residence, night, not long ago. President Bush present in his most favoritest guns 'n' bunnies PJs. Laura asleep, knocked out by a combination of too much Good Housekeeping and excessive hair-spray fumes. Suddenly, a burst of black smoke. A deep, resonant voice speaks: "Psst! George! God here, taking a break from supervising the well-being of eight billion troubled souls along with infinite galaxies of unimaginable vastness to speak with you directly one more time because, well, you're special, aren't you, George? Yes...

CHICAGO — When it comes to gender, Alex Polanco is not easily pegged. Some days, he wakes up in the morning and feels male, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt and leaving it at that. Other times, he wears makeup and one of the wigs he keeps in tidily packed boxes in his bedroom closet

Leather, techno, sex & war: more only-in-SF juice to make you proud. Take that, uptight neocons. It was the moment when we walked by a jam-packed S.F. City Hall and realized it was open to host a VIP techno dance party, while immediately outside its gilded doors upward of 50,000 revelers wandered and shimmied and flaunted their costumes and drank nasty Red Bull cocktails in the huge Civic Center plaza for the third annual Love Parade, everyone baring flesh and shaking their groove thangs to any one of 200 world-class (well, some of them) DJs spinning their wares on over...

At last, one scientist BushCo will definitely -- albeit resentfully -- listen to. Sometimes. So now we know. This is what it takes. This is how far the nation has to crumble and this is how many people have to die and this is how many tens of billions it has to cost and this is how far his dirt-low poll numbers have to fall before Bush will finally come out and say he agrees with one of those godforsaken gul-dang book-learned scientist types. You know the ones. Those informed and well-educated data-crunchers he normally despises like a kid hates...

Can you hear that? That low scraping moan, that painful scream, that compressed hissing wail like the sound of an angry alligator caught in a vise? Why, it's the GOP, and they're screaming, "No, no it can't be, oh my God, please no, this damnable Katrina thing is just an unstoppable PR disaster for us!" After all (they wail), who woulda thought dissing all those poor black people and letting so many of them die in filth and misery in the Superdome while our pampered CEO president enjoyed yet another vacation would cause such an ugly backlash, such harsh criticism...

Many argue that communism will never be possible because of "human nature". The essence of this false argument is the belief that a communist society would consist of an all-powerful central government that would tell everybody what to do--and would therefore undermine the creative initiative of individuals and the search for happiness. • This argument is based on two false assumptions: (1) It assumes that a communist society will look like the former Soviet Union, or the current China, North Korea, etc (ie: corrupt police states with a feudal-style ruling class) (2) It assumes that people will only work in...

... "Senator Kerry has offered to meet privately with President Bush to discuss foreign policy before Bush flies abroad next week and has meetings with key European leaders. Kerry..." No, I'm not kidding. Kerry actually called Bush and said he "offered to get together with him to discuss foreign affairs." I guess because Kerry just got back from there, and Kerry wanted to talk with Bush. "The offer has fallen on deaf ears at the White House. Kerry spokesman David Wade said yesterday, 'We've offered to have Senator Kerry meet with President Bush to discuss his trip to Iraq, if...

'WASHINGTON - Sen. John F. Kerry's brash offer to meet privately with former foe President Bush [related, bio] to discuss foreign policy before Bush's meetings abroad next week with key European leaders has apparently fallen on deaf ears at the White House. ``We've offered to have Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) meet with President Bush to discuss his trip to Iraq, if the White House is interested,'' Kerry spokesman David Wade said yesterday. ``There are many areas where genuine bipartisanship would make a difference in leading our country forward, whether in national security or children's health care.'' The White House declined comment...

I have signed up I used free email When will I be banned? I have logged in With my new screename When will I be banned? Ever since two thousand It’s been the same old thing If you don’t kiss George Bush butt You are history! I am new here I have posted When will I be banned? Nazi mods are watching They’ve nothing better to do If you don’t kiss George Bush butt That’s the end of you! I have signed up I have posted When will I be banned? When will I be banned Tell me, when will...

I keep hearing from different people that the economy is getting better but everywhere I go, I cant find any jobs! I been unemployed for about seven months. I was fired from mcdonalds because I couldnt cook very good or fast enough. Ive tried getting jobs in different places. I tried applying for work as a janitor, a waiter, a secretary, a housecleaner, a bricklayer, a carpenter ETC. I cant get anywhere and I dunno why? Where are the jobs? How can I get a job fast? I have a highschool diploma and three years of college. I could really...

US Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who had hoped to replace George W. Bush as president yesterday, instead sat in the cold and clapped as the Republican began a second four-year term. Iowa Democratic Senator Tom Harkin patted Senator Kerry on the back shortly before the inauguration Senator Kerry had hoped would be his. As Mr Bush delivered his inaugural address, Senator Kerry, about 10m away on the steps of the US Capitol, joined other lawmakers and the crowd in repeated applause. Senator Kerry looked relaxed, at times wistful. He frequently smiled, able to hide any disappointment over what...

What happens when habitual warmongering and BushCo lies become part of our daily diet? And then you read the appalling little story about how BushCo is now "taking steps" to further the investigation into why their original intelligence on Iraq was so painfully, treasonously, colon-clenchingly wrong, why they thought Saddam had giant Costco-sized warehouses stacked to the rafters with snarling nukes and nasty biotoxins and active warheads when, in fact, he had nothing but a couple Dumpsters full of rusty 20-year-old shell casings and a bucket of stale glue.

When the Jessica Lynch story first made the news, almost everyone believed that she was some sort of Amazon warrior, heroically fighting off the bad guys. I was one of the few who did not believe this story. When the truth came out and I was proven right and the feminazis and the neocons were proven wrong, it was one of the happiest moments of my life. Whenever some feminazi/neocon starts blathering on about how great women in the military are, just say 'Jessica Lynch' or 'Kara Hultgreen' to them. That ought to shut them up. Names like Jessica's and...

We kill millions of pets every year Who cares if a few get posh shelters and humane laws? OK. So I tend to think people who insist on calling themselves pet "guardians" instead of "owners" are exasperating and a bit wrongheaded, and that such uber-PC thinking does almost nothing to change or improve the behavior of the thousands of animal abusers in this country. And I tend to agree with fabulous dog writer Jon Katz that such semantic sidestepping does more harm to the animals than good, and leads to naive treatment, lack of decent training and an outright ignorance...

A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges -- This is the year. No, really. This is the it. This is the year you resolve to let it all hang out and lick the fingertips of the divine and stop holding back and stop quivering with unchecked anticipation/dread as you realize that, if you care a whit for self-definition and spiritual nuance and hot wet intelligence and deep karmic color in this tsunami-hammered, Bush-ravaged world, you are desperately needed right now. It's true. Alas, many are dejected. Many of the blue or...

Visiting with U.S. troops in Baghdad on Thursday, failed presidential candidate John Kerry trashed Commander-in-chief George Bush for making "horrendous judgments" and "unbelievable blunders" that have undermined the war effort. In a series of demoralizing comments first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the defeated Democrat griped, "What is sad about what's happening here now is that so much of it is a process of catching up from the enormous miscalculations and wrong judgments made in the beginning." Kerry said that because of the Bush administration's mistakes, "the job has been made enormously harder." Among the errors cited by the...