Free Republic

President Barack Obama last week visited Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. -- a small city of 15 golf courses -- so he could preach to some of his humble campaign contributors his vision of American frugality. "So if all of you are willing to invest in the future the same way that our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents invested in the future, I'm confident America's best days are still ahead," Obama said. "But we're going to have to work for it. We're going to have to earn it. And that's what this election will be all about." Assuming the...

Picking out the most disturbing moments of Barack Obama's presidency is kind of like trying to choose the wettest parts of the ocean. Other than his "Even a blind squirrel sometimes gets a nut" moment where he said "yes" when the SEALS asked if they were allowed to kill Osama Bin Laden, his entire presidency has been one long, slow motion bamboo shoot sliding under the country's fingernails. So, everyone reading will probably be able to think of a few national nightmares that aren't included.

Deep prices waiting to pounceWe well remember candidate Barack Obama’s ’08 throngs laying in breathless wait for the “Lightworker” to appear and speak as “sort of like God” from his teleprompter on high. Now, with nearly everything this president has touched lying in shambles, a shrunken Obama whines from town to town, transported in a taxpayer-purchased bus that resembles a big, fat hearse — the perfect symbol for the harbinger of economic death that Obama’s presidency has become.It’s painfully apparent now that the American people were scammed in ’08 by Barack the Bamboozler in what will be known historically as...

As the White House and Obama administration grappled with the quickly evolving developments in Egypt, administration officials told ABC News, it was President Obama who was the most “forward-leaning” when it came to embracing the need for the Egyptian government to embrace reform – despite concerns about the impact on security and stability in the region voiced by others in the administration. But in 18 days, the president quickly traversed a path from urging Mubarak to listen to the demonstrators to aligning himself with those people in the street and no longer even speaking to Mubarak. All the while, officials...

Top White House adviser David Axelrod believes the U.S. government properly handled the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, despite the fact that Abdulmutallab stopped talking to interrogators after having had Miranda rights read to him. In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Axelrod was asked about the decision to read Abdulmutallab his rights after just 50 minutes of interrogation. "We have not lost anything as a result of how this case has been handled," Axelrod said. It was an updated version of the claim that Robert Gibbs made last week, when he said that FBI interrogators had gotten...

S.C. lawmakers will bypass him, accept disputed money. BY JOHN O'CONNOR Gov. Mark Sanford said Wednesday that using federal money to balance the state budget come July could “destabilize” the S.C. economy over time. The governor said he will not accept $700 million in federal aid for state budgets unless South Carolina can use the money to pay off retirement, health care costs and other debts — making him the nations’ first governor to specifically reject portions of the federal aid.

Gov. Mark Sanford's wish to use $700 million of federal stimulus money to cut the state's debt rather than prop up its budget soon will land on the desk of President Barack Obama. If Obama refuses Sanford's request, as expected, then state lawmakers will decide whether to override the governor yet again. The drama will unfold in the coming weeks as each of them grapples with what is widely considered the worst economy since the Great Depression. Much of South Carolina's $8 billion share of the $787 billion stimulus package will go directly to individuals in the form of tax...

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CNN) -- The United States faces a Zimbabwe-style economic collapse if it keeps "spending a bunch of money we don't have," South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Wednesday. Sanford, a Republican, has been an outspoken critic of the Obama administration's $800 billion stimulus plan. He said he'll turn down about a quarter of his state's $2.8 billion share unless Washington lets him use that money to pay down debt. "What you're doing is buying into the notion that if we just print some more money that we don't have and send it to different states, we'll create...