Free Republic

A Kentucky restaurant manager has recalled the hateful treatment he received from customers after he flew a Ukrainian flag in solidarity with the country, amid the war. Ben Ashlock, who heads Colton's Steak House and Grill in Bardstown, Kentucky, told The Washington Post that he has a personal connection to Ukraine because he and his wife adopted their son from there three years ago. So when the war broke out, Ashlock said he wanted to show solidarity by flying a Ukrainian flag at the restaurant. "You just let them know, even in little old Kentucky, we see you, and we're...

Few people have received the kind of love-hate treatment from the media that Elon Musk has. Initially lionized for his role in building Tesla into the world’s preeminent manufacturer of electric cars, Musk saw his public image darken as the media fixated on his increasingly contrarian and – dare we say it – conservative viewpoint on politics, the climate and society. As a result, Musk took to Twitter Tuesday morning in Asia to criticize the traditional media for pumping out a “relentless hate-stream” of bad news. Musk lamented that it’s “so hard to find out what’s going on in the...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned that President Trump will lose in 2020 if he cuts a deal with Democrats regarding gun control. Roll Call reports that Cruz offered this observation while speaking to reporters at a Thursday breakfast. He contended that conservative voters will stay home if Trump and the Republicans as a whole cave to Democrat demands. He was asked about the possibility of Trump making a deal with gun control stalwarts Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). Cruz said, “We’re going to see record-setting Democratic turnout. The only element missing is demoralizing conservatives so they stay...

I grew up in a family of 11 children in the days before SUVs. So we took our road trips in two-car caravans led by a steamy station wagon with crank-handle windows and hot vinyl upholstery. That wagon was always packed with obstreperous kids singing obnoxious songs. But one song we were emphatically discouraged from singing has now emerged as a theme song for John Kerry's presidential campaign. My father loved popular music and never ceased being interested in it. In the 1960s, he happily escorted my older sisters to see the Beatles. A decade later, he bought me tickets...

Fact Checker Trump’s Nonsensical Claim He Can Eliminate $19 Trillion In Debt In Eight Years Donald Trump, in an interview with Bob Woodward and Robert Costa In a revealing interview, Trump predicts a ‘massive recession’ but intends to eliminate the national debt in 8 years By Glenn Kessler April 2 The Washington Post's Bob Woodward and Robert Costa sat down with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Here's how the interview went. Donald Trump: “We’ve got to get rid of the $19 trillion in debt.” Bob Woodward: “How long would that take?” Trump: “I think I could do it fairly quickly,...

A low level employee answering phone inquiries from customers trying to purchase health insurance through an Obamacare Exchange was summarily fired for publicly affirming that the process is unpopular. The incident occurred when Erling Davis admitted to talk show personality Sean Hannity that most of the callers she has handled expressed frustration and unhappiness with the cumbersome and complicated process. “Negativity is a millstone around the neck of social progress,” said Administration adviser Valerie Jarrett. “Positive thinking is essential if we are to make the Affordable Care Act work. The accuracy or truthfulness of Ms. Davis’ observations is irrelevant. Her...

I’m absolutely terrified that the end of the political campaign season, with its cavalcade of negative advertising, is here. Exactly how am I going to be able to determine who is attempting to tear the very fabric of our nation apart, or who shipped my job overseas, or for that matter, who is forcing their constituents to bow bound and gagged before a false God? This is the kind of stuff I need to know about. These people are out there amongst us, and with the big political machines in idle they’ll now be able to go about their dirty...

In trying to understand how so many Americans adore people like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh I have come to this critical understanding: Poorly educated, terribly informed, intellectually deficient and downright stupid people need idols. They feel angry, frustrated, ignored, cheated and disillusioned by so much going on in American society. They find the emotional, political and philosophical rants by talk show, loud mouth celebrities matching and justifying their feelings. Of course, those celebrities work hard to fan the flames of all that unhappiness and discontent, and also perpetuate ignorance. They sell stupidity to gullible dummies,...

BARACK Obama wrote a book about hope and be came president promising it. So why's he doing everything in his power to snuff it out? Think about it: In Obama World, what are we supposed to "hope" for? Certainly not vast riches. What would be the point? His budget swipes massive amounts of wealth from top earners. Consider, too, his resentful rhetoric toward them. Recall his despicable failure to block the House from moving to rip up private contracts and confiscate past earnings via a 90 percent, retroactive tax. Really, in this climate, who can muster enthusiasm for personal fortune-building?...

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called the campaign tactics of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (Ariz.) “sleazy.” “I know this is a harsh accusation, but let’s look at the facts,” Dean urged. “First and foremost, McCain admits that he’s running against Senator Obama. This sets a starkly negative tone to his campaign. It’s as if he saying that Obama is an inferior option for America. To me, calling an African-American candidate inferior smacks of racism.” “And need I point out that McCain has been openly critical of Obama’s positions on the economy and the war,” Dean went...

As I continue to think about the lessons of the Pennsylvania primary, and their relevance to the races ahead, I found myself thinking about the hours I spent last Saturday watching CNN's "Ballot Bowl" -- long live clips of John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton out on the campaign trail, rarely mediated by cable chatterers. I was also reading angry letters about my post on the ABC debate and recovering from three college visits in a week with my daughter. I share that TMI because the context was important. I was tired and a little bit cranky (I know,...

Researchers at Harvard say that publicly voiced doubts about the U.S. occupation of Iraq have a "measureable effect" on insurgents there. Periods of intense news media coverage in the United States of criticism about the war, or of polling about public opinions on the conflict, are followed by a small but quantifiable increases in the number of attacks on civilians and U.S. forces in Iraq... The increase in attacks is more pronounced in areas of Iraq that have better access to international news media, the authors conclude in a report titled "Is There an 'Emboldenment' Effect? Evidence from the Insurgency...

Journalism: Last fall, when the jobless rate hit a five-year low of 4.4%, Vice President Cheney was asked by ABC's George Stephanopolous why the administration didn't get more credit for it. "Well," said Cheney, "you guys don't help." So much for the understatement of 2006. Cheney, of course, was referring to the now-obvious fact that even when there's good news about the economy, it's played down — or turned upside down — by the mainstream media. Coverage of that unemployment report, coming just before the congressional elections, was just one of many cases in point

Theodore Roosevelt had this to say about criticism: "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows,...

Can’t a guy take a vacation without the nay-sayin ninnies of negativity taking over this place? As the self-appointed optimist of this forum, I must say that I am more than a little P-Od over what I have been reading coming from the scared keyboards of some of you folks. You act as if someone stole your little Republican cookies and ate them in front of you. Look, I know it’s not the best of times for Conservatives if you are concerned about spending or the protection of the borders. However, it escapes me why it seems impossible for some...

God, to listen to the Democrats, you’d think the United States was a fascist juggernaut, while the so-called Iraqi insurgents and their al Qaeda cohorts were brave freedom fighters seeking to liberate their precious homeland from a force more evil than Darth Vader. I am beginning to wonder if people like Howard Dean, Richard Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton are attempting to establish a government in absentia with their constant proclamations about how the U.S. is guilty of crimes against humanity or some such tripe. The fact is the U.S. is at war and for a sitting...

I spent the last week with my Modern Liberal relatives in New York. It was excruciating. What I found was cynicism beyond belief -- and beyond all rational (in fact any rational) thought. The correct answer to all things was whatever the worst interpretation of America and Americans could be. This was typified in discussions about the Michael Jackson jury who my relative was convinced would come back with a quick verdict because "they just want to go home" and, when that proved untrue were only delaying the announcement of their verdict to increase the "excitement" making the book they...

As I watched the ABC news last Sunday night, I was reminded of how the TV news networks seemed to be so anxious to tell us all the bad things that have happened in Iraq or at Gitmo. “Four more of our soldiers were killed today in Iraq, making a total number of X hundred this year,” the anchor solemnly announced. I could not help but wonder how many Americans were also killed today in Detroit, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles, and how many that would add up to in one year. I think of media as trying to...

I constantly hear liberals decry the policies of George W. Bush, using catch phrases like “out of the mainstream” and “dangerously irresponsible” to describe them. Apparently, if you repeat something often enough, using the same carefully crafted terminology, and applying to it with the same condescending tone each time, it magically becomes the truth... at least in the minds of leftists. And, of course, the primary policy target of left-wingers in Congress remains the war in Iraq, even though nearly all of them supported it initially. As recent polls show support for the war waning, liberals all over the country...

The other day I entered a business establishment and overheard the following comments contained in a vitriolic, rabidly anti-American discussion. If I hadn’t known better I would have thought I was somewhere in “old Europe.” “They only did it for the oil...they don’t have an exit strategy...I have kids who are Draft age... this is really a mess.” If one hadn’t heard the same from Kerry (who was the other guy?) during the recent Democrat election debacle, the discussion might have come as a shock, but it didn’t. Still, it is incomprehensible that adult Americans, apart from blind stupidity or...