Free Republic

A few days ago, the Chick-Fil-A restaurant chain came under attack from the hateful and intolerant mayor of the city - Bill DeBlasio. The fact that this chain was founded by and is operated by church-going people who have strong family values and who actually close their restaurants on Sundays evidently irks the mayor to the point that he has made it clear that this restaurant chain is not welcome in "his" city. Evidently it rubs the mayor the wrong way that some executives in this company espouse political and social opinions that are not lock-step with his own views....

A recent article by David Samuels at the New York Times Magazine, based on an interview with Obama's foreign policy guru Ben Rhodes, purported to explain how, and about what, the Obama administration lied to get public support for the Iran Scam. According to the article, the principal Obama lie involved who was the Iranian president when the negotiations with Iran began. It's much deeper and worse than that. As Paul Harvey would say, “Here’s “the rest of the story.”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uogp40PeddI Iranian President Rouhani was elected on June 15, 2013 and assumed office on August 3d. According to Rhodes, negotiations started...

In light of Ben Rhodes' revelation over the weekend that he led a White House effort to lie about the Iranian nuclear deal, it is useful to look back at last summer, when the White House attacked the Associated Press and its diplomatic reporter, @APDiplowriter (Matt Lee) for asking too many questions about the deal, particularly about the side agreement that allows the Iranians to 'self-inspect' their weapons production facility at Parchin. What this story is really about is the politicization of expertise, and how far things can go when one group of experts (arms controllers) decides to fight...

Ben Rhodes has offered us four lessons 1. the press really is both lazy and stupid 2. the press acts as obama's useful idiots 3. all of obama's policies are likely based on deceit 4. Ben Rhodes is an a**hole and a liar Ben Rhodes is the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications for Barack Obama and seems to have an extraordinary amount of influence in the current administration. Rhodes was the architect of the phony scheme to blame a video for the Benghazi attacks. He is also the guy who last April promised the Iran deal would contain "anywhere,...

Racism is to blame for Puerto Rico’s dire fiscal situation, Mayor de Blasio charged Saturday. “The backs of the United States government turned on them, while a health-care crisis grows, a humanitarian crisis grows, the Zika crisis grows,” he said in a speech at the National Action Network in Harlem.

Never one to hold back, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader and bane of the Koch brothers and Mitt Romney, made clear on Thursday that he intended to spend much of the rest of the year savaging Donald J. Trump. In a conference call with reporters from his home in Las Vegas, Mr. Reid lit into Mr. Trump, calling him anti-woman, anti-Hispanic, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-President Obama and anti-working people, to name a few. “It is a sad day for Republicans when they decide to bow to Trump,” said Mr. Reid, who is not running for re-election, potentially freeing...

Hundreds of people carrying photos of loved ones killed by gun violence marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Saturday to rally for stricter gun laws and chanted demands for action. The fourth annual march, held on the eve of Mother’s Day, was organized by the group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. “We are going to stand up and fight until our last breath because if we lose our children we have nothing left to lose,” said the group’s founder, Shannon Watts. …

It’s rare when a politician is as honest about his strategy as the New York City councilman largely responsible for the plastic-bag fee about to hit New York City. For his candor, Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) ought to be considered a new American hero. Here is progressive politics in 2016: “It works by irritating us into changing our behavior,” Lander said of the bag tax. It works by irritating us. There can be some debate about the accuracy of one of those verbs, but not the other. Government, when it’s being honest, acknowledges it isn’t your buddy, your helper, your protector,...

How Ben Rhodes rewrote the rules of diplomacy for the digital age. Picture him as a young man, standing on the waterfront in North Williamsburg, at a polling site, on Sept. 11, 2001, which was Election Day in New York City. He saw the planes hit the towers, an unforgettable moment of sheer disbelief followed by panic and shock and lasting horror, a scene that eerily reminded him, in the aftermath, of the cover of the Don DeLillo novel “Underworld.”

..files $500K lawsuit against the director for 'violating her civil rights' Shoshana Roberts says she was paid $200 to be filmed walking through the streets of Manhattan for 10 hours, with the resultant video of her being catcalled more than 100 times quickly going viral. Now the 24-year-old aspiring actress has filed a lawsuit against the director of the clip and the advocacy group who came up with the idea of documenting street harassment, claiming they did not get her written permission to air the video before using it to cash in on advertising. The two-minute footage received over 40...

When it comes to foreign policy, President Obama has spent more than seven years now living the dream. And I mean dream, as in fantasy -- a trip to an alternate universe. Never mind the dangerous and in some cases deadly realities that increasingly beset the rest of the planet. For the White House, it's been one glorious fiction after another. Russia was a "reset." Libya was a success. So was the pivot to Asia. The tide of war is receding. There was a red line in Syria (until there wasn't). The Iran nuclear program is now "exclusively peaceful." America's...

Ben Rhodes is perhaps the weirdest foreign policy adviser in the history of the White House. His path to his current position as deputy national security adviser for strategic communications was, as this New York Times profile informs us, "perhaps not strictly believable, even as fiction." Forget his title. Ben Rhodes is "the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself," according to the Times. What makes that so bizarre is that Rhodes has no background in foreign policy at all. He was a failed short story writer who wandered into the orbit of Obama aides...

Congratulations, liberals of the Washington press corps and elite organizations: You’re a bunch of suckers. We all know this because the Obama White House just told us so. In an astounding New York Times piece by David Samuels, senior White House officials gleefully confess they use friendly reporters and nonprofits as public relations tools in the selling of President Obama’s foreign policy — and can do it almost at will because these tools are ignorant, will believe what they’re told, will essentially take dictation and are happy to be used just to get the information necessary for a tweet or...

In an article appearing in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, White House speechwriter Ben Rhodes (@rhodes44) admits what Israel supporters claimed all along: He lied to Congress in order to sell the nuclear sellout to Iran. Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal is likely to be a model for how future administrations explain foreign policy to Congress and the public. The way in which most Americans have heard the story of the Iran deal presented — that the Obama administration began seriously engaging with Iranian officials in 2013 in order to take advantage of a new...

It’s hardly any wonder that Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes has a "mind meld" with his boss, the president. According to a David Samuels New York Times Magazine article to be published Sunday and already posted to the website, Rhodes, like Barack Obama, is contemptuous of "the American foreign-policy establishment." What Obama calls the "Washington playbook" dictating the sorts of responses available to American policymakers, Rhodes calls the "Blob." Blob includes "editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker," etc. It also encompasses, according to Rhodes, Obama's former secretary of state Hillary Clinton,...

The rap on Donald Trump is that he’s all bluster. The New York Times says he’s offering “incoherent mishmash.” Ted Cruz claims Trump has “no idea” how to fix the economy. Don’t’ believe it. The Trump campaign is putting forward proposals to fix problems facing the nation, from the long waits for medical care at the VA to the impending collapse of Obamacare. Check out Trump’s economic plan, for starters. Unlike Hillary Clinton’s radical anti-business agenda, Trump’s plan would actually help unemployed Americans get back to work. Trump slashes the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from the current...

In its latest attempt to instill fear far away from the battlefield in Syria, or the recently terrorism-plagued countries of France and Belgium, last week Islamic State supporters published the names and addresses of 3,600 New Yorkers in an apparent “hit list” designed to escalate the group’s campaign of sowing fear far from the battlefield in Syria. According to the CSM the names on the list were released last week by a group calling itself United Cyber Caliphate on the encrypted chat application Telegram, which IS supporters have used to recruit supporters and spread propaganda. As Reuters adds, the group...

ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. - A $48 million grant for Isle de Jean Charles, La., is the first allocation of federal tax dollars to move an entire community struggling with the effects of climate change. With a first-of-its-kind "climate resilience" grant to resettle the island's native residents, Washington is ready to help. "Yes, this is our grandpa's land," Ms. Bourg said. "But it's going under one way or another." In January, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced grants totaling $1 billion in 13 states to help communities adapt to climate change, by building stronger levees, dams and...

The so-called “mainstream” national media has developed a penchant for focusing on violence originating from certain quarters while all but ignoring hooliganism emanating from others. The disparity in treatment is due primarily to an agenda being pushed by leftist elements within the media establishment, including, but not limited to, MSNBC and the New York Times.

Leftist Violence & Double Standards When will the media decry the culture of violence of Clinton and Sanders' supporters? May 3, 2016 Ari Lieberman    The so-called “mainstream” national media has developed a penchant for focusing on violence originating from certain quarters while all but ignoring hooliganism emanating from others. The disparity in treatment is due primarily to an agenda being pushed by leftist elements within the media establishment, including, but not limited to, MSNBC and the New York Times. Violence emanating from Trump supporters buttresses a false narrative that many within the establishment media wish to propagate; namely...