Free Republic

Yes, I am going to be a bit tacky. I tried to tell y'all back in 2008 – my black family, white friends, and associates – but none of you would listen. I kept thinking, am I the one who is crazy? Will anyone even consider looking beyond his race and taking a good look at Obama, the man?

Conservatives won French Senate elections Sunday to take control of parliament’s upper house, handing President François Hollande’s Socialists a new setback. The far-right National Front party also gained its first two Senate seats in the balloting. The Senate press office said a final count will await tallies from all of France’s overseas holdings—not likely until Monday, but it was already clear that the conservatives were back in control of the 348-seat chamber. …

It was a protest for the planet, or at least it was billed that way. Progressive activists marched under the “green” banner this week in New York City to call for “action” on climate change. But what was the “action” they were advocating? White the media covered senators, actors, and celebrities at the event, they stayed away from the masses. That wasn’t an accident. One idiot shows up at a tea party event with a Confederate flag and the media covers that person like they started the movement, but hundreds, if not thousands of violent, anti-capitalist, anti-American lunatics damn near...

At Tea Party and conservative events, the press routinely seeks out any shred of evidence of far-right extremism, racism or even uncivil behavior exhibited by attendees. If found, it then tries to portray even one or a few such people out of thousands as somehow typical. Rallies in support of liberals' pet causes get a completely different treatment. The press almost invariably ignores rampant left-wing extremism clearly on display. Sunday's "Climate March" in New York City, along with other smaller marches in other parts of the world, exemplifies the blatant double standard. The Blaze, Gateway Pundit, and others reported no...

When you get past the details of the Scottish independence referendum Thursday, there is a broader story underway, one that is also playing out in other advanced nations. It is a crisis of the elites. Scotland’s push for independence is driven by a conviction — one not ungrounded in reality — that the British ruling class has blundered through the last couple of decades. The same discontent applies to varying degrees in the United States and, especially, the eurozone. It is, in many ways, a defining feature of our time. The details of Scotland’s grievances are almost the diametrical opposite...

Tyler Durden 09/05/2014 Just weeks after defaulting (yet again) on its debt (whether technically or not), and shortly after raising the minimum wage by 31% (to $523 a month) amid runaway inflation, it appears Argentina has gone full-Venezuela. As WSJ reports, the great minds that 'run' Argentina have decided to pass legislation (dubbed "the supply law") letting the government regulate private-sector prices, profit margins and production levels. The opposition is up in arms, "this is absolutely ridiculous. It's part of a very primitive ideology that says government officials should decide what people should make, how much they should make and...

A member of Venezuela's Socialist Party has rolled out a variation of the classic Christian "Lord's Prayer" to implore beloved late leader Hugo Chavez for protection from the evils of capitalism. "Our Chavez who art in heaven, the earth, the sea and we delegates," red-shirted delegate Maria Estrella Uribe recited yesterday at the PSUV party Congress. "Hallowed be your name, may your legacy come to us so we can spread it to people here and elsewhere. Give us your light to guide us every day," she said in front of an image of Chavez. "Lead us not into the temptation...

CARACAS (Reuters) - A member of Venezuela's Socialist Party has rolled out a variation of the classic Christian "Lord's Prayer" to implore beloved late leader Hugo Chavez for protection from the evils of capitalism. "Our Chavez who art in heaven, the earth, the sea and we delegates," red-shirted delegate Maria Estrella Uribe recited on Monday at the PSUV party Congress. "Hallowed be your name, may your legacy come to us so we can spread it to people here and elsewhere. Give us your light to guide us every day," she said in front of an image of Chavez. "Lead us...

Angry protests and police violence have continued night after night in Ferguson, Mo., since the murder of an unarmed Black teenager, Mike Brown, on August 9. Despite claims by local and state authorities that they want to respect the rights of protesters, police provocations have grown more intense over the past two nights--with reports on Monday that the cops began their nightly barrage of tear gas hours before a midnight curfew. SocialistWorker.org writers Eric Ruder, Elizabeth Schulte, Trish Kahle and Donny Schraffenberger traveled to Ferguson to provide this account of a community rising up against police violence, despite a crackdown...

France has seen an explosion in the number of households requesting a deferral or cancellation of part or all of their tax bill in recent years. The country’s public finance body, the DGFiP, says there was a 22% rise in the number of such requests between 2011 and 2013, from around 177,000 to more than 216,000. Over the same period, the number of reminders for payment sent out by the French government has soared from 4.5 million to nearly 10 million. …

I wrote about Bruno Kreisky last year in the context of discussing Austria’s Islamization. There’s no doubt that Kreisky was a real demented piece of work, on a par with Norman Finkelstein or M.J. Rosenberg. Austria’s Socialist Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, despite being of Jewish ancestry, was fond of Muslim terrorists and Nazis. He had a habit of filling his cabinet with former Nazis while comparing Zionism to Nazism. His political success rested on a welfare state built with Soviet money funneled through commercial orders and turning a blind eye to terrorist attacks carried out with Soviet and Polish machine guns...

In his young pontificate, Pope Francis has begun to rehabilitate radical Latin American priests. He invited Liberation Theology founder Gustavo Guttierrez to meet with him in Rome and now has revived the priestly faculties of a priest who called Ronald Reagan a butcher.

How a Club of Billionaires and Their Foundations Control the Environmental Movement and Obama’s EPA A new report was released today by the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, and it is damning. All this time that climate skeptics are accused of being in the employ of “big oil” is nothing more than a projection of their own greed. Some excerpts: Over 7.9 BILLION in funding between these groups.

As our government is insanely arranging flights at taxpayer expense for Honduran children so that they don’t have to make a dangerous trek across Mexico and pay coyotes $5,000 to invade our country illegally, their president is smiling, making no excuses for his inept and corrupt administration or the fact that this “refugee” airlift will encourage a continuous flow of illegal immigration to grow the ranks of Democrat voters in the U.S., moving large numbers of Hondurans and displacing American citizens.

Some remarkable - and frightening - photos of President Obama that show just how disengaged he's become. As crisis at home and around the world mount, the president is withdrawing and making it plain to those willing to see that the presidency doesn't interest him anymore. Peggy Noonan's July 4 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal laid out the case for the president's apparent ennui:

North Carolina’s voter identification law, which has been described as the most sweeping attack on African American electoral rights since the Jim Crow era, is being challenged in a legal hearing that opens on Monday. Civil rights lawyers and activists are gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the start of the legal challenge that is expected to last all week. They will be seeking to persuade a federal district judge to impose a preliminary injunction against key aspects of HB 589, the voting law enacted by state Republicans last August. Lawyers for the North Carolina branch of the NAACP and...

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy could face up to five years in prison and a €500,000 fine on allegations of corruption and influence peddling. The embattled center-right politician was released from police custody late Tuesday (1 July) and is now under formal investigation. Sarkozy is suspected to have attempted to obstruct an investigation into the financing of his 2007 presidential campaign. He denies any wrongdoing and says the accusations are politically motivated. …

Gov. Bobby Jindal struck a chord around the nation when he voiced the sentiment held by millions: “I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren.” What Gov. Jindal did was merely vocalize the serious frustrations of a majority of Americans, namely, that we no longer have a representative government. Our elected officials don’t even pretend to represent us anymore. It’s all a high-stakes game. A scam. A con. Our politicians pat us on the head...

I ask myself, where is my country? Can I have it back? Why must we destroy everything in order to satisfy the wishes of the ruling elite, the oligarchs in power, who are busy re-writing all our laws, inviting in corruption, lawlessness, and deceit. No matter what the regime says, those in power become more prosperous and acquire more power.

Social media makes it easier and cheaper to build movements quickly – but bypassing the business of creating decision-making infrastructure means they can disappear just as fast.Where have all the chanters gone; the gospel-minded Christians and the denouncers of ‘banksters’ and tyrants; the homeless and the indebted and unemployed who filled our urban squares in 2011-12, crying out such slogans as "We are the 99 percent" and "The people want the end of the regime"? Where are the leaderless revolutionaries who turned cities around the world upside down? The simple answer is: they were dispersed. When the sometimes public parks...