Free Republic

One thing I haven't seen discussed or brought up is the fact that any shutdown, slim down or even default is repairable and only a temporary problem. But the creeping (well, it's past creeping now) socialism being brought about by Obama's executive orders, his unimpeded co-op of enumerate Congressional powers, his decisions to not enforce laws he doesn't like -- those are irreparable. Government rarely (peacefully) goes backwards. Taxes never go down and agency power is always expanding behind the backs of their congressional oversight. So bring on the shutdown, slimdown or default. Those can be fixed. Use those as...

A sharp reader caught a statistical problem with that much-cited NBC/WSJ poll that shows Republicans are getting whooped in the shutdown: Tampa @S1CT @texasbryanp In today's NBC/WSJ poll, 1 in 5 respondents work for govt.  Only 8% of pop works for govt.  See last page. 8:12 - 10 Oct 2013 It’s true. Here is the complete poll with the sample, the questions, etc. On the very last page we get the breakdown of where the 800 respondents work. The wording of the question is broad enough to sweep in spouses of government workers and other situations in which the respondent...

The shut-down elements that are attracting much of the news attention turn out to be fairly easily replaceable. ---- The government “shutdown” is starting to feel a lot like the sequester — a lot of alarmist warnings that the sky is going to fall, followed by business pretty much as usual. That’s not to minimize the genuine inconvenience or worse for those government employees who have been furloughed, or for cancer patients involved in clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health, an institution that House Republicans voted to fund but that Senate Democrats are holding hostage. But for most...

Put down that bag of chips, maggot, and give me 50! Gen. James Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, didn't say those exact words when he issued a shape-up-or-ship-out message to all Marines, but he might as well have. The nation's top Marine has created a rigorous fitness test to gauge combat readiness and has ordered strict enforcement of body-fat standards that he said have become lax in recent years. “Tendencies toward increased weight have become a dangerous trend over the last decade in our American society. But Marines are different,” Conway wrote in an Aug. 8 message. About 100...

PARIS (AFP) - An extra hour between the sheets at night might be the key to shedding excess weight and fighting obesity, according to recent research. "More sleep could be the ideal way of stabilising weight or slimming," said neuro-scientist Karine Spiegel, of France's INSERM, a public organisation dedicated to biological, medical and public health research. While poor eating habits and lack of exercise clearly play a role in the global rise of obesity, recent data indicates that lack of sleep may also be a factor, and one that is often under-estimated. Around 30 surveys carried out on wide population...