Free Republic

Time – The Overpriced News Brochure ($4.99 for 60 pages) - had an intense erotic experience with the cover story in its August 12th issue, "The Childfree Life: When having it all means not having children." Please note the choice of words – not childless but childfree, like cancer-free, as if children are a life-threatening disease, which is pretty much the way the contraceptive left views them. The organ of elite opinion begins by telling us that today "one in five American women will end their child-bearing years maternity-free, compared to 1 in 10 in the 1970s." In this and...

A visual history of the West's misguided attempts to send its hand-me-downs to the developing world.Most of us don't have billions of dollars to give away like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. But the charitable impulse is still strong: combined, Americans gave away almost $300 billion in 2010. Sometimes, though, good intentions have questionable results. In the rush to help after a crisis, public and private donors from around the world sometimes give without quite realizing what the needs on the ground are. Do Haitians really need your used yoga mat? Do the Balkans lack for clowns? Above, a young...

1. District of Columbia % of Households Earning $200K+: 8.4% Total Households: 251,039 Median Income: $50,318 Households Earning $200K+: 21,194 Election Results: Obama: 93% McCain: 7% 2. Connecticut % of Households Earning $200K+: 8.0% Total Households: 1,320,714 Median Income: $64,158 Households Earning $200K+: 105,433 Election Results: Obama: 61% McCain: 38% 3. New Jersey % of Households Earning $200K+: 7.5% Total Households: 3,149,910 Median Income: $65,249 Households Earning $200K+: 235,278 Election Results: Obama: 57% McCain: 42% 4. Maryland % of Households Earning $200K+: 6.9% Total Households: 2,082,458 Median Income: $65,552 Households Earning $200K+: 142,694 Election Results: Obama: 62% McCain: 37% 5....

President Barack Obama's tax plan, which would boost income taxes on those earning $250,000 or more a year, would affect about twice the share of taxpayers in Santa Clara County as in the state and nation. That's because there are more people here who earn high incomes, and the plan would take more of their income in taxes while cutting back on one of the few deductions available to them - mortgage interest. "Long term, there is going be some pain involved" for these taxpayers, said Michael Gray, a San Jose certified public accountant. That income class includes about 43,000...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama tempered his pledge to substantially raise taxes for high earners with an important proviso: He'd simply restore rates to their levels during the Clinton Administration. The implication was that families in the upper brackets would see their total tax bite go back to the levels of the 1990s, but no higher. Now, it sure looks like Obama is reneging on that promise. The burden will indeed go far higher than in the Clinton years via a technicality -- one that will come as a rude shock even to the taxpayers...

Starbucks' success cools under dollop of overkill Sunday, July 6, 2008 By James Bernstein NEWSDAY Patrons sit inside a Boston Starbucks store. Starbucks will close 600 stores in the United States, the first major downturn for the coffee-shop chain. The chain marketed its coffee brand as a lifestyle and moved away from the qualities that made it successful, experts suggest. Men play chess over a cup of Starbucks coffee in Alameda, Calif. Starbucks has fallen behind Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's, according to a market survey conducted by Brand Keys Inc. Ben Margot | Associated Press Men play chess over a...

Suzanne Magaziner, she of the broomed OUI case, surely sends out an annual Christmas - excuse me, ‘holiday’ - letter every year. It’s such a Beautiful Person thing to do. Imagine how this year’s edition might begin. Not for Mrs. Ira Magaziner the traditional cliche about how the year has “flown by” or “Where does the time go?” No, I see her employing yet another tired but slightly literary cliche: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Our hero, Deval, prevailed. But I, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was pulled over after a mere...

April 11, 2006 -- It's yuppie-hunting season on 125th Street in Harlem. Teen wolf packs have been systematically preying on people in the gentrifying neighborhood, police sources said yesterday, as four young punks were charged with murder for a mugging gone awry.

It's strictly new mask, same old hustle in Hoboken, New Jersey as the latest "reform" mayor dishes the pork up to the Democratic machine statewide (not to mention other states).

Boston cracks down on winter tradition of reserving dug-out parking spaces Thu Dec 30, 5:21 PM ET BOSTON (AP) - There's an unwritten code of urban etiquette on Boston's narrow and often-snowy neighbourhood streets: You shovel a parking space and it's yours. But this year, the city is cracking down on this age-old rule and warning residents that it will no longer tolerate the garbage cans, the chairs, the boxes and the Christmas trees that people put out along the curb to reserve the parking spaces they sweated to clear. Mayor Tom Menino is giving residents 48 hours after a...

"No other pop song has so thoroughly challenged and transformed the commercial laws and artistic conventions of its time, for all time," wrote Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke in an article accompanying the magazine's list of the top 500 rock songs of all time.

First came the Klinton Kool Aid drinkers...now the evolution continues...ladies and germs, I present to you the Kerry Ketchup drinkers! Made in the People's Republic of Mozambique.

ATLANTA - U.S. infant mortality has climbed for the first time in more than four decades, in part because older women are putting off motherhood and then having multiple babies via fertility drugs, the government said Wednesday. At the same time, U.S. life expectancy reached an all-time high of 77.4 years in 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Life expectancy in 2001 was 77.2 years. The nation's infant mortality rate climbed from 6.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to 7.0 deaths per 1,000 in 2002. The last time the rate rose was in 1958. "We...

January 26, 2004, 9:35 a.m. Kill Yuppie Scum The backlash against neoliberalism. For a few months in the early 1990s I lived on the Isle of Dogs. This is a district of London, three miles east of the Tower and the old City of London (which is now a financial hub). For a long time the Isle of Dogs was a working-class district, a region of docks and wharfs backed by miles of grimy, cramped rowhouses. The Luftwaffe flattened a fair portion of the docklands in WW2, and the Isle of Dogs suffered along with the rest. After the war...

<p>National headlines teem with debates about old people (Medicare) and married people (will gay marriage change the institution?). But locally, officials are eyeing a very different demographic.</p> <p>Tampa spent years turning Ybor City, an old cigar-making district, into a nightlife hub. Baltimore advertises its low living costs on the Washington subway. Memphis residents spearheaded a "Memphis Manifesto" — a statement on attracting creative individuals. In Louisville, the alumni club Bulldogs in the Bluegrass woos young Yalies to a home in the South.</p>

In the staid Bankers Club, young men and women mix it up with powerbrokers over beer, wine and hors d'oeuvres. Establishment luminaries work the room to welcome the twentysomethings to their inner sanctum. It's the hippest crowd this sedate, wood-paneled room has ever seen. Even the older CEOs are loosening up. There's the head of consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, tieless, playing host. University and chamber presidents, the newspaper publisher, bankers and executives bounce from table to table for informal chats. (Related chart: Cities sport young, educated populations) What's going on? Why would Cincinnati's powers-that-be court people half their...

NEW YORK – Young educated New Yorkers are pouring into mainline churches and synagogues in such numbers that some ministers believe is they are witnessing an awakening. "It is an awakening. It's a revitalization!" exclaimed the Rev. Amandus J. Derr, senior pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church in midtown Manhattan. His congregation has grown from 220 to 560 members in the last five years; 100 have joined in the year since Sept. 11, 2001. "They are all extremely committed. Every Sunday morning our sanctuary is full. We have to put in chairs." Like Derr, his colleagues say the young professionals...

The Suicide Of Marlboro Man The Price Of Freedom Is Slavery. Sort Of. A Little Anyway The other days I was reading G. Gordon Liddy's book of conservative nostalgia, When I Was a Kid, This Was a Free Country. He paints a sunset picture of former times when America was free, farmers could fill in swamps without violating wetland laws, and guns were just guns. People were independent and had character, and made their own economic decisions. The market ruled as it ought, and governmental intrusion was minimal. The picture is accurate. I lived it. I wish it would come...