Free Republic

We like to think Islamism represents only a fringe of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims. But that’s because we confound Islamists and terrorists. The terrorists — those who commit and materially support violent attacks — are a fringe (bigger than we’d like to think, but still a tiny minority). By contrast, Islamists may be a majority, and, if they’re not, they constitute a very substantial minority. Islamism is not terrorism. To be sure, Islamism includes terrorism in its arsenal. Still, there is major disagreement among Islamists about when violence should be used and how effective it is. In any event,...

A video that outlines some of the many lies Obama has been passing around over the years. This video is not in support of any political party as they are all bought and paid for by International banks, corporate interests and the Global elite. Think you voted for change? Think again! You can expect more of the same bullshi- agenda of policing the world and nation building at the expense of the tax payer (you and me). It will be interesting to see as the days grow closer Obama realizing he can't change shi-! This should make for some interesting...

If Barack Obama's idea of ending the occupation in Iraq is to transfer most of the troops to Afghanistan, he won't have accomplished much.

“I have to admire the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews lives in Jerusalem.” Thus did Israeli government press director Daniel Seamen caustically dismiss President Obama’s opposition to Israel’s right to “natural growth” of its settlements in Arab East Jerusalem and on the West Bank. Though Obama’s address in Cairo broke no new ground, it confirmed to the world that a new day has arrived and a sea change has taken place. The Israel-centric Middle East policy of George W. Bush is dead. And with the policy change has come rhetorical...

(ChattahBox)—Jesse Ventura appeared on Larry King Live this week and spoke his mind, pulling no punches, telling it like it is, as only a former pro wrestler, former Navy Seal and former Governor of Minnesota can. Larry King asked Ventura his opinions on a variety of political subjects and Ventura began the interview by calling former Senator Norm Coleman a hypocrite and that was just the beginning (Videos below). Ventura took on Norm Coleman for delaying the inevitable and refusing to concede to Al Franken when Coleman himself, called for Franken to concede before the recount, saying Coleman has always...

Alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk has arrived in Germany after a flight from the United States. He is expected to stand trial in Germany on charges of helping to murder 29,000 Jews. Demjanjuk arrived in Munich Tuesday after a flight from the northern U.S. city of Cleveland, Ohio. Immigration officials took the 89-year-old Demjanjuk to the airport from his house in an ambulance. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal against extradition to Germany. His family unsuccessfully argued that the flight would further endanger his poor health. Germany has charged the former auto worker with being...

Rand Paul, son of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, says he is poised to enter the race for U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning's seat. Paul, who has been stumping across Kentucky, told The Associated Press that "every bone in my body says there is going to be a race." But the Bowling Green physician said he won't run unless Bunning opts out. Paul is a fan of Bunning's conservative fiscal philosophy and said he simply wants to be ready to jump into the race quickly if the 77-year-old senator decides to retire instead of seeking re-election next year. Bunning has...

"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency," said Lord Keynes. Ben Bernanke disagrees. A student of the Depression, the Fed chair appears far more fearful of deflation -- a vicious cycle of falling prices, debt defaults, home foreclosures and rising unemployment. Deflation is what America underwent in the 1930s. A Fed-created bubble burst, causing margin calls to go out to stockholders, who ran to their banks that, besieged, collapsed, wiping out a third of our money. As Milton Friedman, who won a Nobel for his thesis that the Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression,...

Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America. Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to. This time, the silent majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these: First, America has been the best country on earth for Black folks. It was here that 600,000 Black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity...

It’s an explosive charge, one that I’m not in a position to evaluate. So let me just lay it out. On today’s Morning Joe, Pat Buchanan suggested that the Obama administration might like to see Afghani President Hamid Karzai given the same treatment as Ngo Dinh Diem. Readers will recall that Diem was the first President of South Vietnam. He was executed by rebels after the Kennedy administration reportedly signaled Vietnamese generals that the US would not interfere if they carried out a coup d’etat against him. Here’s the exchange: SCARBOROUGH: You know, Pat, I read over the weekend that...

Heeding the advice of Gen. David Petraeus, Barack Obama has committed 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan and will keep 50,000 in Iraq after U.S. combat operations end in August 2010. But are U.S. vital interests more threatened by what happens in Anbar or Helmand than in the war raging along our southern border? Prediction: After all U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Korea have come home, there will be a U.S. army on the Mexican border. For this is where the fate of our republic will be decided, as the fate of Europe will be decided by the millions streaming...

Mark Steyn: Stimulated right into being another Europe Plan also could trigger protectionist backlash, just like during the Depression. Mark Steyn Syndicated columnist Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) "stimulus." "How," asks the lady from CBS, "does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?" "I'll tell you how," says Speaker Pelosi. "I'm a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It's about it being less...

Arguably the most successful act of revolutionary terror was the June 1914 assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Believing his mission to murder the heir to the Austrian throne had failed, Gavrilo Princip suddenly found himself standing a few feet away from the royal car. He fired twice, mortally wounding the archduke and his wife. Tactically, that act of terror eliminated the reformist Ferdinand, who meant to address the grievances of his Slav subjects by granting them greater autonomy and equality with Austrians and Hungarians inside the empire. Strategically, the assassination succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its...

Barack Obama and George W. Bush seem to have come away from their study of the Great Depression with similar conclusions: To wit: After the Crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve did not move fast enough to save the banks and inject cash into the economy. Second, the New Deal, far from being wastrel deficit spending, was not bold enough. So it was that America wallowed in depression for a decade until the unbridled spending and mammoth deficits of World War II pulled us out. Bush and Obama seem determined not to make the same mistake. We are all Keynesians...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s,

"GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!" So may have read the headline Friday, had not President Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker's yard. What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy. The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having gone...

“GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!” So may have read the headline Friday, had not President George Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker’s yard. What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy. The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having...

George Bush, Protectionist by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author) Posted 12/26/2008 ET "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse." Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout to GM, Ford and Chrysler, Bush, by omission, excluded BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai -- though all operate auto plants here in the United States and all are...

he moment Israel began its war of defense against the missiles being fired at her citizens from Hamas launching pads in Gaza, the United Nations, the communist and dictatorship countries, the Europeans and the Arab/ Muslim states began their predictable condemnation of Israel. Though not as severe as those just mentioned, Pat Buchanan embarked on a journalistic blitz with the similar goal of stopping Israel from defeating its terrorist attackers and asking the upcoming Obama administration to declare it will not support Israel. Buchanan ("Bush, Obama, and the Gaza Blitz", 12/30/08, HUMAN EVENTS) questions “the wisdom of so savage a...

Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, Hamas gave Israel the provocation it needed to deliver a savage blow to the Palestinian enclave in Gaza. Saturday was the bloodiest day in the history of the Palestinian people since being driven from their homes in the War of 1948. One thousand were killed or wounded, as the Israeli Air Force conducted over a hundred strikes -- on graduation ceremonies for Hamas fighters, police stations and storage sites for rockets. About Israel's right and duty to defend its border towns,...

(...) By traditional free-trade theory, a nation should import what it does not produce from the nations that produce it most cheaply. But in 1946, Japan produced almost no steel, no TVs and no cars. Instead of buying them from America, Tokyo subsidized its own steel, TV and auto industries for decades, and protected their market. Now, as Sony did to Philco and Dumont, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are taking down Ford, GM and Chrysler. Were the Japanese foolish to subsidize their industries and protect their market? Were we wise to let our TV industry be taken down, and watch...

Here is video of conservative pundit Pat Buchanan on MSNBC yesterday making comments about Israel that are just amazing. Buchanan likens Israel's Ground Offensive in Gaza to the Nazi "blitzkrieg," actually using the word in describing it. He also went a step further and says that Gaza is an "Israeli concentration camp," where "cruelty" by Israel is taking place. Let's step back for a moment. I have always liked Pat Buchanan's analysis when he is talking about inside the Beltway political matters. He is a very good analyst on those things. But he has real blinders when it comes to...

I like Pat Buchanan. I do. He's wise, funny and charming. But every once in a while . . . Like tonight. If Buchanan wants to criticize Israel's conduct of the current war, and its treatment of the Palestinians, so be it. But in doing so, is it really necessary to employ terms associated with the Nazis? Appearing on "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Buchanan accused Israel of carrying out a "blitzkrieg" against Gaza and turning it into a "concentration camp." View video here.

* The 20 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). * In 2009, federal spending is projected to reach 25 percent of GDP—the highest level in American history outside of World War II. The next economic “stimulus” package would push this total even higher. * From 2001 through 2008, federal spending surged 60 percent—6.9 percent per year, on average. Had spending increases been limited to 35 percent—4.4 percent annually—the 2008 budget would have been in balance. * The projected 2009 budget deficit of 8.6 percent...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s, an intellectual elite that produces mostly methane had its knives...

Photo: Ostia Archeological Authority

The neocons' Palin project Patrick J. Buchanan, Creators Syndicate, Inc. Monday, September 15, 2008 Will the neocons who tutored President Bush in the ideology he pursued to the ruin of his presidency do the same for GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin? Should they succeed, they will destroy her. Yet, they are moving even now to capture this princess of the right and hope of the party. In St. Paul, Palin was told to cancel a meeting with Phyllis Schlafly and pro-life conservatives. McCain's operatives said Palin had to rest for her Wednesday convention speech. Yet, on Tuesday, Palin was...

http://www.russiatoday.com/guests/video/1484

With 68 percent of Americans believing George Bush has done a poor job, and 82 percent saying the country is on the wrong track, the election of 2008 will turn on one issue: Barack Obama. If Sen. Obama can convince the people he is "one of us," and not some snooty radical liberal from Chicago's Hyde Park, who looks down upon white America as a fever swamp of racism and reaction, a la the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the senator will be the next president. The election of 2008 thus mirrors the election of 1980. Then, the country wanted Jimmy Carter...

September's national convention for Republicans won't be a bed of roses for Sen. John McCain. There's at least one impediment to keep him from his party's nomination — a probable fight over the platform. At issue are his stances on such explosive issues as global warming, immigration, stem-cell research and campaign finance. The Washington Post reports that, "Virtually the entire platform will have to be rewritten to lessen the imprint" of President Bush, whose name appears on nearly every page." Although McCain has yet to reveal how he plans to alter the strongly conservative platform, the Post reports that many...

One reason people are unhappy with the way politics and governments operate is that people who run for office are known to “say one thing and do another.” Thus, we have the call for “change.” Candidates for high office make frequent use of that word. Even our House Republican Conference’s recently released slogan highlights that word. Yet, bringing about change is easier said than done. The American people are aware that government is broken and must be fixed. They will demand more than lip service as our problems become more severe. Change, then, cannot simply be a word. It must...

Jewish Prisoners Executed at the Babi Yar RavineYesterday, I posted a thread here regarding Patrick J. Buchanan’s new book, the controversy surrounding it and included a photo taken at Babi Yar near the city of Kiev, Ukraine.  This was the site of a horrific slaughter by Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen officers of 34,000 Jewish men, women and children in September of 1941.  Accompanying my text was a photograph I mistakenly described as a mass of corpses.  On further research this morning, spurred by commenter Bantam, I discovered the photo had been miscaptioned at the site where it was originally found.  The photo...

When President Bush, before the Knesset, used the word "appeasement" to label those who would negotiate with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he invoked the most powerful analogy in any debate over war and peace. No man wishes to be regarded as an "appeaser." But, as this writer has discovered since my book "Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World" was launched Memorial Day, there is a deep well of ignorance about what happened that September, 70 years ago. Why did Neville Chamberlain go to Munich? How did Munich lead to World...

Last week we noted the bizarre arguments of Seattle Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey, who tried so hard to defend Barack Obama against President Bush’s “appeasement” speech that he actually ended up defending Hitler for annexing Austria. His exact words were: “What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable.” If you think that’s an ahistorical pretzel of monumental proportions, though, you ain’t seen nothin’ — because here comes Pat Buchanan. According to old Pat, not only was the Anchluss not a problem, Hitler’s invasion of Poland was also perfectly understandable, given the Poles’ refusal to negotiate. Those darned stubborn Poles were...

As Israel enters its 61st year, Israelis may look back with pride. Yet, the realists among them must also look forward with foreboding. Israel is a modern democracy with the highest standard of living in the Middle East. In the high-tech industries of the future, she is in the first rank. From a nation of fewer than a million in 1948, Israel's population has grown to 7 million. In seven wars -- the 1948 War of Independence, the Sinai invasion of 1956, the Six-Day War of 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and the Lebanon wars of 1982 and...

"I HAVE a much broader base to build a winning coalition on" than Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton has told USA Today. She cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me." "There's a pattern emerging here," said Hillary. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that." The Democratic Party can't win with just "eggheads and African-Americans," Paul Begala added helpfully....

Myths of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff The Fifth Chapter of How Americans Can Buy American - 2nd Editionby Roger Simmermaker To be able to accurately explain the affects of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, it is necessary first to rid ourselves of popular myths so that we can start with a clean slate and derive conclusions from fact rather than fantasy. I will list some common myths here, and then disprove them using facts according to history. The myths that prevail, even today, some 72 years after the tariff bill was signed by President Herbert Hoover, are as follows: 1. The...

Fads come fast and furious in our viral age, and the reactions to them can be equally ferocious. That’s what we’re seeing right now with biofuels, which everyone loved until everyone decided they were the worst thing since the Black Death. Where fuel distilled from plant matter was once hailed as an answer to everything from global warming to the geo-strategic power shift favoring repressive one-pipeline oil states, its now a “scam” and “part of the problem,” according to Time magazine. Ethanol has turned awful. The supposed crimes of biofuels are manifold. They’re behind soaring global commodity prices, the destruction...

NEW BUCHANAN BOOK DECLARES 'END OF AMERICA' Sun Nov 25 2007 20:40:15 ET **Exclusive** “America is coming apart, decomposing, and...the likelihood of her survival as one nation...is improbable -- and impossible if America continues on her current course," declares Pat Buchanan. "For we are on a path to national suicide.” The best-selling author and former presidential candidate is on the eve of launching his new epic book: DAY OR RECKONING: HOW HUBRIS, IDEOLOGY AND GREE ARE TEARING AMERICA APART. This time, Buchanan goes all the way: "America is in an existential crisis from which the nation may not survive." The...

The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government's domestic expenditures. Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries--perhaps that of the president himself--or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country. A troubled currency and financial system and large budget and trade deficits do not present an attractive face to creditors. Yet Washington...

WASHINGTON -- A largely unreported meeting held at the State Department discussed integration of the U.S., Mexico and Canada in concert with a move toward a transatlantic union, linking a North American community with the European Union. The meeting was held Monday under the auspices of the Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, or ACIEP. WND obtained press credentials and attended as an observer. The meeting was held under "Chatham House" rules that prohibit reporters from attributing specific comments to individual participants. The State Department website noted the meeting was opened by Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and...

In preparation for oral arguments Tuesday on the extent of gun rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has before it a brief signed by Vice President Cheney opposing the Bush administration's stance. Even more remarkably, Cheney is faithfully reflecting the views of President Bush. The government position filed with the Supreme Court by U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement stunned gun advocates by opposing the breadth of an appellate court's affirmation of individual ownership rights. The Justice Department, not the vice president, is out of order. But if Bush agrees with Cheney, why did the president not...

If McCain is the Republican candidate, I'm writing in Ronald Wilson Reagan as my vote in 2008. Since I was too young to vote in 1980, and can't rationalize voting for McCain in 2008, I'm going to make it up to the Gipper in 2008 instead. At least that way I can live with myself. Reagan in 2008: The only conservative choice left to us.

Paul Won't Rule Out Run as Independent Ron Paul, the Texas congressman stirring up the Republican presidential contest with his libertarian-leaning views and online fundraising prowess, left the door open Sunday to running as an independent, should he not win the Republican nomination. Paul, who has railed against excessive federal spending, also defended his own earmarks to benefit his congressional district into spending bills, likening them to a "tax credit" for his constituents. He added that his position was consistent because he ultimately voted against the spending measures. And he decried the Civil War, calling it a needless effort for...

The new Buchanan goes to extraordinary lengths to condemn every action of the United States, leading him into surreal arguments. He belittles our pledge to defend Taiwan, although it is a traditional plank of Cold War conservatism to defend free nations in danger of being swallowed up by Communist tyrannies.[xxxv] He even criticizes the United States for meeting with the president of Estonia after he removed “the statue of a Russian soldier and the remains of fourteen Red Army veterans” from a central to a peripheral cemetery,[xxxvi] although Pat once said on Crossfire that Communism won’t be dead until they...

Rudy Giuliani has made a "promise" not to allow Iran to acquire a nuclear capability, even if it requires U.S. military action. Though the U.S. Army is scrimping to meet recruitment goals, Rudy has pledged to add at least 10 new combat brigades. Speaking to an Atlantic Bridge conference in London, Rudy called for NATO expansion to include Japan, India, Australia, Singapore and Israel. Has Rudy thought this through? Why would Japan and Australia, each of which already has a U.S. commitment to come to its defense, commit to go to war with a nuclear-armed Russia if it invaded Estonia?...

The euro, worth 83 cents in the early George W. Bush years, is at $1.45. The British pound is back up over $2, the highest level since the Carter era. The Canadian dollar, which used to be worth 65 cents, is worth more than the U.S. dollar for the first time in half a century. Oil is over $90 a barrel. Gold, down to $260 an ounce not so long ago, has hit $800. Have gold, silver, oil, the euro, the pound and the Canadian dollar all suddenly soared in value in just a few years? Nope. The dollar has...

What Does Sovereignty Mean to You?In 1991 when globalism became a buzzword . . . Mel Hurtig who was the founder of the Council of Canadians, acknowledged the uniqueness of independent countries in contrast to a globalized world when he said: The advantage of the nation-state is that it allows the people the freedom to determine their own future to the best of their ability. People of common values and inclinations [who] build traditions and develop a legal framework for the society they have evolved…for the preservation of their heritage, their culture, their moral standards, their ethics, and their...

After two hours of deliberation, we voted on a resolution that can be summarized as follows: If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate. Those agreeing with the proposition were invited to stand. The result was almost unanimous. The other issue discussed at length concerned the advisability of creating a third party if Democrats and Republicans do indeed abandon the sanctity of human life and other traditional family values. Though there was some support for the...

MR. WALLACE: So, Congressman Paul, and I’d like you to take 30 seconds to answer this, you’re basically saying that we should take our marching orders from al Qaeda? If they want us off the Arabian Peninsula, we should leave? (Laughter.) REP. PAUL: No! (Cheers, applause.) I’m saying — (laughter) — I’m saying we should take our marching orders from our Constitution. We should not go to war — (cheers, applause) — we should not go to war without a declaration. We should not go to war when it’s an aggressive war. This is an aggressive invasion. We’ve committed the...