Free Republic

Liberals in New York City have been waiting 20 years for this day. For the first time in that period, a Democrat has taken office as the city’s mayor. Yes, there was Michael Bloomberg, but even he had a few redeeming qualities. Now with Bill DeBlasio taking office we can see a lot of smug people just telling everyone how wrong the rest of the country is. Belafonte said that DeBlasio will fight against, “the naysayers of progress in our midst” and ridiculed America’s “Dickensian” justice system.

On Morning Joe Monday, NBC’s chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman, after arguing that the “biggest fix” for the American healthcare system would be single-payer, proudly declared that she had forced her own kids to sign up for Obamacare as their “patriotic duty.” Snyderman was brought on to discuss a number of issues, but when hosts Harold Ford, Jr. and Wes Moore turned the discussion to Obamacare, Snyderman revealed just how far left her expert opinion leans, using the failures of the ACA as a means to push for a single-payer system. Ford: As a physician, what’s the biggest fix...

Original Headline: Media and Politicians want to impose same-sex “marriage” – but citizens fight back. The case of Estonia The controversial “Lunacek-Report” was rubberstamped in yesterday’s session of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties and will probably be voted in one of the Parliament’s plenary sessions in January. The support of Socialists, Communists, and Greens for this radical paper is not really surprising (after all these groups are known to have embraced same-sex “marriage”, homosexual adoption, etc. as part of their social agenda) – but with regard to the Conservative and Christian Democrat members of the committee one is...

Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron was a firebrand to the end, delivering a farewell speech that echoed many of the greatest hits of his controversial tenure barron.jpg “I just wanted to come before you to say that I will always be black, radical, revolutionary. I will always be a socialist, anti-capitalist/imperialist” said Barron, who represents East New York, at the Council’s last meeting Thursday, where many members took the chance to make farewell remarks. “I went to Cuba. I went to Venezuela. I went to Zimbabwe. I brought you the president and you didn’t appreciate it!” he said, a reference to...

Nearly three times as many BBC staff have been sent to cover Nelson Mandela’s death than all of its rival British broadcasters put together, it has been revealed. The corporation sent a total of 140 presenters and crew members to South Africa, while Sky News had the second highest number of the British broadcasters with 15. The BBC said it expected to have deployed about 120 journalists, technicians and support staff to work on the story over a ten-day period. The BBC World Service is also reported to have sent a further 20 staff, whose expenses will not be paid...

Just as cars can’t go anywhere without drivers and employees can’t work without bosses, health care doesn’t happen when there are no doctors around. And when an estimated 70 percent of the doctors in the nation’s deepest-blue state are rebelling against Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act is forcing a critical decision: America will have to junk Obamacare and go back to square one on health insurance reform, or trash the last vestige of private health care in this country by forcing doctors to do the government’s bidding. The rebellion among California physicians was detailed earlier this week by Washington Examiner...

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is sending out letters telling gun owners to turn over their rifles and shotguns — or else face the consequences. “You have the following options,” the letter explains. “1. Immediately surrender your Rifle and/or Shotgun to your local police precinct, and notify this office of the invoice number. The firearm may be sold or permanently removed from the City of New York thereafter...

Some years back, I was having a discussion with several of my liberal friends, who asked what my objection to their ideology was. My answer was simple: because liberalism (or “progressivism,” as they now prefer), when taken to its nth degree, must and does end in fascism. In order to achieve the liberal paradise, and since the common folk cannot be trusted, coercion must be part of the solution; the generation that screamed “off the pigs” now controls most of the levers of the federal government, and have become the pigs themselves.

Video at Gloria.tv in Buenos Aires, Argentina

[title cont.: ...Renounces Free Market Economics as “Crude and Naive”] Since his coronation, Pope Francis has made waves throughout the Catholic community, often shunning generally accepted Papal tradition for a more modern and progressive world. He is, for lack of a better term, a reformer. From refusing the luxurious living quarters traditionally reserved for the head of the Church in the Vatican, to turning Catholic dogma on its head by suggesting it’s OK to be gay when he addressed the issue by asking, “Who am I to judge?” Francis is unlike any popes who have come before him. By some...

This is very Orwellian: Definition #3 of fascism is "a person who...has extreme right-wing views." Evidently, those who favor smaller government and greater individual liberty are fascists.

Radio giant Rush Limbaugh is scorching the leader of the Roman Catholic Church for criticizing unfettered capitalism, saying, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.” “You know the pope, Pope Francis has issued an official papal proclamation, and it’s sad,” Limbaugh said on his national broadcast Wednesday. “It’s actually unbelievable. It’s sad because this pope makes it very clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism and so forth.” “I’m not Catholic,” Limbaugh added, “but up until this I admired the man.” In the 84-page document titled...

Two-thirds of Swiss voters on Sunday rejected a referendum to cap executive pay at 12 times the wage of a firm's lowest earner ... Switzerland, which has long boasted a business-friendly climate coupled with one of the highest average salaries in the world, has largely avoided the economic crisis dogging the European Union, of which it is a staunch non-member. The referendum campaign was spearheaded by the Socialist Party, plus the Greens and trade unions.

<p>Seattle voters have elected a socialist to city council for the first time in modern history.</p> <p>Kshama Sawant's lead continued to grow on Friday, prompting 16-year incumbent Richard Conlin to concede.</p> <p>Even in this liberal city, Sawant's win has surprised many here. Conlin was backed by the city's political establishment. On election night, she trailed by four percentage points. She wasn't a veteran politician, having only run in one previous campaign.</p>

Vaticanologists are making much of a major speech by one of the eight cardinals the pope has designated as leaders of reform, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga. The speech is ambitious: It offers a comprehensive re-reading of the Church’s role in politics, and of the government in economics. The cardinal makes bold, sweeping assertions in a tone as confident as Karl Marx or Ayn Rand: “With the New Evangelization we restart (start anew) from the beginning: we once more become the Church as proclaimer, servant, and Samaritan.” Does the cardinal really mean that the Church ever ceased to be these things?...

The French government has decided to suspend an unpopular environmental tax on heavy goods vehicles following a weekend of protests in Brittany. The move is expected to cost the France hundreds of millions of euros in lost revenue. … The unpopular “ecotax”, aimed at encouraging environmentally-friendly commercial transport, was designed to impose new levies on French and foreign vehicles transporting commercial goods weighing over 3.5 tonnes (3.86 tons). Critics in Brittany said the tax would seriously damage the region’s precarious farming and food sectors by increasing transportation costs, driving companies out of business and leading to major job losses. …

Vermont’s health-care exchange website may be even a bigger mess than the federal-run HealthCare.Gov. And health care in Vermont may be headed for a unique train wreck due to its efforts to become the first state in the country to implement a single payer plan. One of the president’s key selling points of the ACA was the promise that if you liked your plan, you could keep it. We’re learning that’s often not the case as Obamacare is implemented across the country. And in Vermont, there has been no pretense of such assurance. As of January 1, 2014, in Vermont,...

Will the initiative remain with aggressive Southern reactionaries, as their fellow Americans try to appease them or react on a case-by-case basis against a feint here or a diversion there? Or will an aroused national majority, tired of being pushed around by a selfish Southern minority of the shrinking American white majority, finally fight back?When I have described the well-considered, coherent political and economic strategies of the conservative white South, as I have done here, here and here, I am sometimes been accused of being a “conspiracy theorist.” But one need not believe that white-hooded Dragons and Wizards are secretly...

Whatever the perceived shortcomings of Ted Cruz and his hardy band of stalwarts, they've performed a remarkable public service by highlighting the fate that awaits all who rub wrongly the translucently thin skin of King Barack the Petulant. The Spartans may have had their shields, Native Americans their tomahawks and arrows, the Samurai may have wielded his sword with all the deadly grace of a tiger in mid-attack, but pound for pound, nothing comes close to the audacious stupidity of "Barrycades" and people in pointy little Smokey the Bear hats, poised to protect America's monuments from law-abiding citizens Welcome to...

If the United States were run like a business, its board of directors would fire its financial advisers for failing to disclose the significant and material risks associated with unmitigated climate change. Government officials, economists, financiers and everyone else in the business community need to ask: How much economic risk do we face from unmitigated climate change? Answering this question would go a long way toward helping us all prepare for the extreme weather and related economic effects that are most likely coming our way. We believe the Risky Business initiative will bring a critical missing piece to national conversations...