Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Jan. 20--President Carter would easily defeat either former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California or former President Gerald R. Ford if the election were held today, according to the Gallup Poll.

Fascinating NYT articles from the late 70s about the same things we see today. The GOP needs to be more moderate, reach out to independents, they're too conservative, Reagan is bad news, too extreme, etc... Things never change. Here's some highlights: From 10/3/77: Mr. Ford drew a warm but not particularly enthusiastic response when he told the Republicans that their party's future lay in avoiding idealistic extremes and in attracting non-aligned voters..."In my judgment the radical liberal or idealistically pure conservative policies will not in the long run attract the independent voter". It was a remark that some listeners interpreted...

Things seem to be going from bad to worse at the Washington Times. And the continued operation of the newspaper, which is owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, seems to be in serious doubt. There's already been plenty of speculation that the paper might fold or go online-only. Sources at the Times said they fear major changes and that the Moon family feud that's driving the paper's turmoil could lead to the Times shutting down in the coming months -- with some suggesting that Preston Moon, the reverend's son who serves as chairman of News World Communications, the...

In a report highlighting the "open carry" gun movement, KTVU's Lloyd LaCuesta interviewed locals who are hanging out in public, packing heat and exerting their Second Amendment right for all the world to see. Advocates across the country are picnicking together, going to zoos, going to church and picking up trash. Most notably, supporters protested Obama this past summer. In the Bay area, David Julian, 27, and others are hanging out at a Cupertino Starbucks, sipping their Venti coffees with guns holstered to their hips.

Author Larry Sinclair, who insists he had sex and did cocaine with Barack Obama, is taking his campaign for revenge to Congress - and insiders say the furious First Lady vows to crush him! GLOBE bares all the details of the bitter battle in an exclusive you can't afford to miss

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment could be re-started on Saturday morning at the earliest, officials have said. Engineers are preparing to send a beam of sub-atomic particles all the way round the 27km-long circular tunnel which houses the LHC. The £6bn machine on the French-Swiss border is designed to shed light on fundamental questions about the cosmos. The LHC has been shut down for repairs since an accident in September 2008.

The daughter of Sen. John Kerry has been arrested in Hollywood for allegedly driving drunk. Los Angeles police say 36-year-old Alexandra Kerry was stopped by officers on a Hollywood street at about 12:40 a.m. Thursday and tested for driving under the influence. Officer Bruce Borihanh says she was booked at the Hollywood police station and was held for about five hours. She was released at about 5:30 a.m. after posting $5,000 bail. Borihanh didn't immediately have other details. Alexandra Kerry is the eldest daughter of the Massachusetts senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate. She has produced documentaries and has had...

-snip- SPDR Gold Trust (NYSE: GLD) represents 3.91% of the fund's reported portfolio. The fund held 2,450,320 shares as of September 30th, up 2,445,420 since the fund's last filing. -snip-

Who's got a beard that's long and white? http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1599922023?bctid=50273075001

Satchmo and the Jews Terry Teachout From issue: November 2009 In addition to being the greatest jazz musician of the 20th century, Louis Armstrong was also the most beloved. “I never met anybody that didn’t love him that ever saw him work or ever has encountered him, had any connection or any business with him,” said Bing Crosby. The secret of Armstrong’s charm lay in the straightforward openness of his character. Though his personality was more complex than his fans realized, his public and private sides were essentially identical. One of his friends described him as “down-to-earth, natural, completely...

Sorry Lloyd: NO SALE “We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Blankfein, 55, said at a conference in New York hosted by the Directorship magazine. “We apologize.” But then there's this... Goldman Sachs, the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, had a record profit in the first nine months of this year and set aside $16.7 billion for compensation expenses. No they didn't. Their "profit" was entirely ill-gotten. About $10 billion from the government via the AIG conduit, which they had a ZERO chance of collecting had AIG filed bankruptcy. Another $21...

Unlike some of my fundamentalist Christian friends, I don’t think Obama is the Antichrist. But I have theorized that Obama is a puppet President and someone else is pulling the strings that are leading to the end of our way of life as we know it. A sinister plot is being implemented to destroy our economy and put us under the thumb of a tyrannical economic and political system. I have spent some time looking into eschatology, which is the study of end-times prophecy. Although the books of Revelation and much of Daniel are allegorical, anyone who reads them can’t...

Here's a stimulus success story: In Arizona's 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that's what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says. There's one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts. And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified. Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional...

The NFL has fined Tennessee Titans owner Bud Adams $250,000 for making an obscene gesture at Bills fans. It happened Sunday in Nashville. After the Titans beat the Bills 41-17, Adams was seen "flipping off" fans from his luxury suite at the stadium. Adams apologized later in the day for the display of his middle fingers.

Link to video of Jon Stewart Mocking Glenn Beck’s Appendectomy.

A man was found dead attached to a crab pot Tuesday on a boat off Morro Bay, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. A person on board a fishing boat named Miss Allison reported finding 47-year-old David Allen Kubiak of Los Osos attached to a crab pot around 11:35 a.m. The crab pot is registered to the fishing vessel Axel, a 39-foot boat home ported in Morro Bay, Coast Guard officials said. Sheriff's spokesman Rob Bryn said it appears Kubiak fell from the vessel sometime overnight. His body was discovered tied to a fishing buoy at 10:40 this morning.

Click the link above to access the poll. The poll can be found on the right side of the page about a 3rd of the way down in a box titled "Quick Vote." I hate to send any traffic to CNN's website, but CNN needs a reality check about what people think of this failed presidency. Yes approve is currently winning at 53%.

Are you racially biased? Harvard University has been trying to find out with its racism test, Project Implicit. The less than 10-minute test throws different races at you and has you identify the images as "bad" or "good" as quickly as you can. The idea is that your first reaction is usually the most honest. You can try the test out for yourself. Simply click on the "Demonstration" button and then click the "Race IAT" button. Project Implicit, started 11 years ago by Harvard, the University of Washington and the University of Virginia, is a joint investigation into our subconscious...

Thanks for killing the planet, dog owners. Well, that's a rough paraphrase of a New Zealand study that claims a medium-size dog leaves a larger ecological footprint than an SUV. In "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," authors Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog — including the amount of land needed to feed the animals that go into its food — give it about twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fueling a Toyota Land Cruiser. Noting that a cat's pawprint was roughly equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf's, "New...

Taylor Mitchell, a 19-year-old Toronto singer whose debut album was released in March, has died in a Nova Scotia hospital after being mauled by coyotes in a Cape Breton park. Mitchell was hiking Tuesday on the Skyline Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park when she was attacked by two coyotes. Another hiker, who was walking nearby, heard her cries for help and called 911. Officers arrived about 3:15 p.m., and one of the coyotes fled into the bush. The other coyote was shot and limped away. Mitchell was airlifted to a hospital in Halifax, where she died early Wednesday....

PRINCETON, NJ -- After peaking at 59% last November, Vice President Joe Biden's favorable rating continues to decline and now stands at 42%. That barely exceeds his 40% unfavorable rating, and is easily his worst evaluation since last year's Democratic National Convention. Independents' opinions of Biden have declined more steadily since the post-election high mark, and now 32% of independents view the vice president favorably.

The New Theory: Earth’s magnetic field is not produced by an internal dynamo within the planet. The magnetic field and the planet are separate parts of a complex dynamo system surrounding the planet. The system includes the planet, the magnetic field, radiation belts, and ring current. The same is true of the other planets. Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus are visible components of otherwise invisible planetary dynamo systems, which are all housed within a magnetosphere. According to this new theory, there is no internal dynamo within the planet. Planet Earth does not have a unique way of producing it’s magnetic...

A coalition of top musicians, including R.E.M. and Pearl Jam, want to know if their music was used by the U.S. military as part of controversial interrogation methods at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The artists have endorsed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, which were filed Thursday morning, asking the U.S. government to declassify documents that would reveal which artists' work was used on detainees at U.S. prison facilities and military detention centers, including the one at Guantanamo Bay. The National Security Archive, a Washington-based independent research institute that advocates "for the right to know,"...

Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it "the link" that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans. Experts protested that Ida wasn't even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction...

Target Anyone who's walked down Santa Monica Boulevard on Halloween night is well aware there are plenty of tasteless costumes out there. From over-sexed nuns to ... well, we can stop our list of examples at over-sexed nuns. That pretty much sums up tasteless costumes. Well, this year, you may notice a new tasteless costume in Los Angeles: The "Illegal Alien." "He didn't just cross a border, he crossed a galaxy!" according to the costume's description. "He's got his green card, but it's from another planet! Sure to get some laughs, the Illegal Alien Adult Costume includes an orange prison-style...

A 12-year-old boy from South River has become a sensation at Rutgers University football games for his air guitar impersonation of Bon Jovi, according to a report in The Daily Targum. The report said Nicholas Sasso has become a fixture on the Rutgers jumbo screen when the public address system plays a Bon Jovi song. Sasso and his family have declined a Today show invitation.

3 Detroit marathon runners die Posted: 02:44 PM ET (CNN) — Three runners died Sunday during the Detroit Free Press/Flagstar Marathon in Detroit, Michigan, police told CNN. All three deaths occurred between 9 and 9:20 a.m. ET, Second Deputy Chief John Roach said. A man in his 60s fell and hit his head, Roach said. The cause of the fall was unknown. The man was transported to Detroit Receiving Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Two other men, aged 36 and 26, also collapsed during the race and were pronounced dead at the hospital, Roach said. All three collapsed near...

February 29, 2008 -- Austin, TX - U.S. Senator Barack Obama was joined by Congressman Chet Edwards (TX-17) in Houston this morning for a town hall meeting with area veterans. Obama discussed his track record of fighting for veterans in the U.S. Senate and pledged that, as President, he will ensure that veterans are treated with the dignity and respect they have earned. "America enters into a sacred trust with every single person who puts on the uniform," Obama said. "That trust is simple: America will be there for you, just as you have been there for America. Keeping that...

A 75-year-old dead man sat decomposing on his Marina del Rey balcony for days because neighbors thought the body was part of a Halloween display and didn’t call police. Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday with a single gunshot wound to one eye. He was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment on Bora Bora Way, said cameraman Austin Raishbrook, who owns RMG News and was on scene Thursday when authorities found the body. Neighbors on the 13900 block of Bora Bora Way told Raishbrook that they noticed the body Monday “but didn’t...

BERLIN — Part of Berlin's red-light scene is going green. One bordello, hoping to stave off falling demand in the economic crisis, has begun offering discounts to customers who pedal bicycles to the door. "It's very difficult to find parking around here, and this option is better for our environment," said Thomas Goetz, who owns the brothel Maison d'Envie, or House of Desire. Local residents in Prenzlauer Berg - a part of former East Berlin now home to scores of trendy boutiques, restaurants and clubs - had staunchly supported the Green party in recent elections and have welcomed the bordello's...

Among the training regimes that Russian cosmonauts pass before being admitted into orbit is the shooting range. The reason is that they must learn how to use a special three-barreled gun found on every Soyuz spacecraft.

Warning Letters From FDA Cause Decline in Drug Marketing Oct 14, 2009 Response This Week RESTON, Va. – Recent letters sent from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to large pharmaceutical manufacturers have caused a large decline in the number of sponsored link exposures by drug marketers, according to a recent ComScore report. Sponsored link exposures dropped by about 50 percent after the letters went out in March, reminding companies that fair and balanced language should be included in all sponsored link advertising. Prior to the letters, sponsored link exposure in the pharmaceutical market totaled about 11 million per...

“As a white running back you get stereotyped,” Stanford University running back Toby Gerhart said during an interview in the October 12, 2009 edition of Sports Illustrated. “When I tell people I play football they say, ‘Oh, you’re a fullback,’” he said. For those unfamiliar with the sport, fullbacks are running backs who rely more on strength then speed. However, they rarely carry the ball. Their role is usually reserved to block for the running back. Gerhardt then mentioned during one football game that he overheard a coach from the University of Washington refer to him by yelling, “He’s not...

The Jobless Recovery October 11, 2009 11:40 AM EDT | by: Megan Whittemore Many experts envision a jobless recovery, in which the economy grows but job losses persist. Economists now predict unemployment will peak at 10.5% next June, fall to 9.1% by 2011 but still be at 8.1% in 2013. So what can be done? There was bipartisan agreement among a top economist, a big businessman and a Democratic and Republican Governor, for more powerful tax policy to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, called for more tax incentives to create jobs as well...

FEDERAL USURPATION A PERIL, SAYS MAYOR; McClellan Asserts That Congress Is Heedless of Restrictions of the Constitution. OUT FOR STATES' RIGHTS In Talk at Wyoming County Fair Declares Tendency Toward Centralization Is Source of Danger. September 16, 1909, Thursday Page 8, 829 words WARSAW, N.Y., Sept. 15. -- "If State sovereignty is to become a joke and State government a memory, let the Constitution be amended openly, in the broad light of day, and not violated in the dark," said Mayor McClellan in an address here to-day. Speaking at the Wyoming County Fair, Mr. McClellan vigorously upheld the Democratic doctrine...

Clinton pulls back from Turkish-Armenian signing By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS and BRADLEY S. KLAPPER Associated Press Writer © 2009 The Associated Press Oct. 10, 2009, 10:42AM ZURICH — U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton has abruptly returned to her hotel as the signing of a Turkish-Armenian accord was delayed at the last minute over the wording of final statements the parties will make. State Department spokesman Ian Kelley says the American delegation is helping the two sides work out the wording of the statements. The agreement to be signed would establish diplomatic ties in hopes of reopening the border...

Obama has achieved the ultimate in software programming, his new code runing on a super-duper computer designed and built by him also, has completed an infinite loop in just under 5.68320846 seconds.

Hudson Institute mourns the loss of Senior Fellow Laurent Murawiec. Murawiec was a big thinker who published with ease in French, German, and English. He was a well known intellectual in France, a gadfly who challenged the conventional wisdom by drawing on an encyclopedic knowledge of history, political thought, and theology. Prior to moving to the United States, he was an advisor to the French Ministry of Defense and taught the history of economic planning at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. He also taught military analysis and cultural anthropology at the Elliott School of...

Historical fiction differs from ordinary fiction in that it is presenting the past, history, in a novelistic format, with characters who ellicit sympathy or antipathy, in the context of a story that ought to be plausible against the known historical record. Monsieur Jacq is an Egyptologist. I can't begin to hold a candle to his knowledge of the reign of Ramses II. But one thing I do know is that the Egyptian evidence is mostly elicited from archaeological evidence, hieroglyphics on walls, papyrus, and from whatever contacts they had with other civilizations. That being the case, I could understand M....

WASHINGTON — Wondering if swine flu's bad enough to require a doctor's attention? An interactive Web site may help you decide, using the same type of triage calculations that doctors at Emory University use. Microsoft Corp. unveiled the site Wednesday at http://www.h1n1responsecenter.com. Type in your age — it's only for people over 12 — and answer questions about fever, other symptoms and your underlying health.

"Kids are being aggressively recruited to become heterosexual in this country." Editor's note: This audio is from the speech Kevin Jennings gave at a GLSEN event in Iowa in 2000.

Obama Administration task force closing in on deadline for 'health care' for nation's shorelines, waterways IRVINE, Calif. USA - October 5, 2009 - A recently published administration document outlines a structure that could result in closures of sport fishing in salt and freshwater areas across America. The White House created an Interagency Oceans Policy Task Force in June and gave them only 90 days to develop a comprehensive federal policy for all U.S. coastal, ocean and Great Lakes waters. Under the guise of 'protecting' these areas, the current second phase of the Task Force direction is to develop zoning which...

BANGKOK, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Hundreds of striking workers forced U.S. auto maker General Motors Co [GM.UL] to shut its Thai assembly plant on Monday, company and union officials said, raising the stakes in a pay dispute with management. About 200 of 800 unionized workers at the plant in southeast Rayong province joined the strike, a GM spokeswoman said. The rest were asked to take paid holidays pending negotiations with union leaders, she added. But GM union leader Suriya Pochairuak put the number of striking workers at about 700. The GM plant, which has about 1,700 employees on its payroll,...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izn63SHXPMw

Looks like there’s at least one high-profile Republican who won’t be voting for Sarah Palin should she run in 2012. Steve Schmidt, John McCain’s top political strategist in 2008, told a forum in Washington today that nominating Palin as the party’s next presidential nominee would be “catastrophic” for Republicans. “I think that she has talents, but my honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate,” Schmidt said. “In fact, were she to be the nominee, we would have a catastrophic election result.”

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/mackenzie-phillips-sexual-affair-dad/story?id=8647172 "confessed today that she engaged in a 10-year consensual sexual relationship with her father"

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc will eventually sell the Time Inc magazine unit and could buy holdings in its core entertainment category, Gordon Crawford, managing director of its largest shareholder, said during a presentation this week. "Time Warner just spun off their cable division, they are going to sell their print division, they are going to spin off AOL and they're just going to be Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks," said Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group.

<p>I was surprised to see that Craig Deeds received a very nice size donation from SEIU. The reason I am bringing this up is because with the election just 2 months away and Deeds trying to make a stink about McDonnell's 20 year old thesis, I believe the real issue should be a person is known by who their supporters are. To Virginia voters and all voters, check out where your candidate gets their money from. That should also be apart in your decision in whom you will vote for.</p>

The Sovereign Presidency: Is This What the Framers Had in Mind? Posted on 20 September 2009 by Joseph R. Stromberg, The Freeman American government under the Constitution was supposedly meant to work as follows: Congress, staying within delegated powers and the Bill of Rights, passes laws; the president executes the laws; and the courts sort out ensuing wrangles. This plan ran aground rather early—the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts, for example—which raises at least two possibilities: 1) The Federalist movement systematically misrepresented its project or 2) the framers’ well-meant “design” fell short of their goals. Figuring this out is difficult,...

P2+ Total Day FNC – 1,586,000 viewers CNN – 590,000 viewers MSNBC –454,000 viewers CNBC – 197,000 viewers HLN – 374,000 viewers P2+ Prime Time FNC – 3,238,000viewers CNN— 1,054,000 viewers MSNBC –1,123,000 viewers CNBC – 259,000 viewers HLN – 813,000viewers