Free Republic

Former President Barack Obama visited The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Friday to accept the school’s ethics in government award, and to offer his take on “the state of our democracy.” And while Obama found plenty of time to denigrate Republicans for allegedly stoking fear during these “dangerous” and “extraordinary times,” he also dedicated a lot of his speech to patting himself on the back for everything from the improving economy to supposedly helping to heal the country’s racial divisions. All told, the former president referred to himself – I, My, Me – more than 102 times in about 64 minutes,...

Video. Clinton spoke for 7 minutes, 25 seconds; Reagan spoke for 20 minutes, 42 seconds; and George W. Bush spoke for 13 minutes, 7 seconds. Obama spoke for 51 minutes, 10 seconds, nearly 10 minutes longer than the other three put together. Obama also broke from the tradition of delivering his final speech from the White House. Clinton and Reagan both spoke from the Oval Office, and George W. Bush spoke in front of a small audience in the White House East Room; the Obama administration distributed public tickets for his speech at the McCormick Place convention center in Chicago....

Nothing oozes hubris like Barack Obama putting on a humble act. “There’s a point where the vanity burns away and you’ve had your fill of your name in the papers, or big adoring crowds, or the exercise of power,” the president tells historian Doris Kearns Goodwin in an “exit interview” published by Vanity Fair. “And for me that happened fairly quickly.” Since he no longer revels in his own grandeur, he explains, he won’t fall into the trap of making decisions out of ambition or “thirsty” attachment to the prerogatives of high office. Do tell. Five years ago, Obama claimed...

Me, Myself, and I.President Obama, speaking to an audience of mostly young people celebrating India’s Republic Day in New Delhi on Tuesday, told the crowd, “I realise that the sight of an American president as your chief guest on Republic Day would have once seemed unimaginable. But my visit reflects the possibilities of a new moment.” He pointed out that he was the first American president to participate in the country’s Republic Day and boasted, “And I’m the first American president to come to your country twice!” The president went on to refer to himself an astonishing 118 times in...

the split began during a power struggle of who would lead Islam after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 AD. A conflict developed between those who wanted the growing religion headed by qualified leaders and those who believed authority belonged to the direct heirs of Mohammed. The Prophet’s son-in-law, Ali, ruled as caliph for five years before being assassinated. His sons, Hassan and Hussein, were excluded from the succession and both were later killed. Their adherents evolved into the Shia, whose name derives from the term shi’atu Ali, Arabic for “partisans of Ali,”... Shia devotees would see the...

Remember how Richard Nixon told us to watch what he does, not what he says? Good advice. Well, Barack Obama — our POTUS who makes Nixon and Clinton seem like Diogenes — thinks like a postmodern agnostic, professes to be a Christian, but acts like a Shiite. During Obama’s presidency the influence of Ayatollah Khamenei’s Iranian Shiite regime has spread across the world like the proverbial wildfire, reaching from North Africa into Iraq, Lebanon (via Hezbollah), Syria (via Assad whose red line on chemical weapons famously faded into invisibility), Gaza (via improved relations with Hamas) and now into Yemen (via...

Over twenty nations and counting have a travel ban to stop the spread of Ebola. Senators, Congressmen, radio talk show hosts and assorted pundits on both sides of the aisle are clamoring for President Obama to implement a travel ban from Ebola hot zone countries. Stopping potential Ebola carriers from entering our country is only common sense. I chuckled upon hearing Bill O'Reilly say that when one more American is reported to be infected, Obama will surely implement a travel ban. Even after six years, Mr. O'Reilly is still credulous about who Obama truly is. Remember the programmed cyborg assassin...

In the wake of the shootings in Canada, the president said that “it emphasizes the degree to which we have to remain vigilant when it comes to dealing with these kinds of acts of senseless violence or terrorism.” The president has said we must be vigilant many times, but does he follow his own advice? He is among the least vigilant presidents in memory, always learning about scandals in the newspaper and surprised when aggressors act like aggressors. If he is being vigilant, he’s looking out for the wrong things. He should have been paying attention to the geographic spread...

Can you walk out on the messiah? Appearing at a campaign rally for gubernatorial candidate Anthony Brown in Maryland on Sunday, President Obama sought to capture the magic that had electrified audiences in 2008 and, to some considerable degree, even in 2012. Obama isn't doing much stumping this year. He limits his campaigning mostly to fundraisers. This is the year, after all, when Democratic candidates are announcing how important it is in our system of government to have honest disagreements with the president. They're hastening to say that they would be tougher than he is on ISIS. They are declaring...

"Oh, it's a shame when you have a wan, diffident, professorial president with no foreign policy other than 'don't do stupid things.'" So griped President Obama to a select (and loose-lipped) group of dinner guests the other night. The president is annoyed that critics cannot see the wisdom in his prudence. "I do not make apologies for being careful in these areas, even if it doesn't make for good theater." Obama's tendency to caricature his critics -- in this case suggesting that they're looking for "theater" rather than solid accomplishment -- may be remembered as one of his most damaging...

Some time ago I contrasted the reaction a conservative would get if he were in the same room with the two most consequential politicians of the 1990s, Bill Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. If you were in a room with Bill Clinton, he would discover the one issue out of 100 on which you agreed; he would probe you with questions, comments, suggestions; and he would tell you that you enabled him to understand it far better than he ever had before. If you were in a room with Rudy Giuliani, he would discover the one issue out of 100 on...

Contradicting the faultless, albeit far-fetched image he has of himself, Barack Obama is a man harassed by truth. That's why, judging from his inability to accept personal responsibility, Barack Obama must be living in a constant state of agitated cognitive dissonance. The late Leon Festinger is the social psychologist who proposed the theory of cognitive dissonance. According to Festinger, until the person suffering with perceptual disharmony can find a way to justify wrong actions and decisions, it's impossible to achieve a calm mental state, especially when those wrong actions and decisions challenge the way the cognitively dissonant individual sees himself.That's...

mmm Barack Hussein Obama mmm just loves PDA and we love him for it. My videos have shown so many dimensions to the man we call Barack, formerly known as Barry. Yet, he remains somewhat of an (Manchurian) enigma.