Free Republic

Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov.Sarah Palin (left) speaks to Alvaro Uribe, President of Colombia

The headlines scream doom. There are endless references to the economic situation being "the worst since The Great Depression." Immense names in finance have collapsed and sunk beneath the waves of the financial crisis. Please allow me to try to explain a bit of what's going on. First of all, all you have to do is look around you to see that in terms of daily life, we are not anywhere near The Great Depression. Unemployment is barely about six percent. It was 25 percent at the nadir of The Great Depression. Real per capita incomes adjusted for inflation are...

All this recent talk about “change” got me thinking.... Maybe the time has come to establish a Congressional Rich White Guy Caucus for the purpose of defending America’s real minority group, taxpayers, currently under constant attack. Rich white guys - that top 5% of American producers that Obama’s leftists want to put out of business, just because they hate freedom, liberty and capitalism, - just because with your help, they can. Democrats learned nothing else from Thomas Jefferson, but they certainly learned this… “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away...

The National Rifle Association is likely to spend "in the eight figure range" on radio and television advertisements in the next 42 days as part of its efforts to deter undecided voters from voting for Barack Obama, according to an NRA spokesman. The group will air a series of ads starring group members that openly question Obama's commitment to protecting gun rights. Ads will air on radio stations and during local cable television ad breaks in Colorado and New Mexico through Oct. 5 and in Pennsylvania through Sept. 28, with plans to expand to other battleground states in the coming...

Bars and restaurants around Wrigley Field that ignore the city’s call to voluntarily cut off liquor sales after the seventh inning could face a dire alternative: Area residents could vote them dry, Mayor Daley warned Tuesday. One day after bar owners reacted angrily to the city’s proposal, Daley defended it as "common sense." He argued that Cubs fans who’ve been drinking up until the seventh-inning stretch of potential title-clinching games need, what he called, "some smoothing time" before the celebration begins in earnest. » Click to enlarge image Fans celebrate after the Cubs won the Central Division title. Mayor Daley...

I think most of us that have been paying attention over the years are expecting an ugly year when it comes to these types of tactics on the part of so-called liberals. Well, here we go. McCain absentee ballots being disqualified in Ohio by a Democrat Secretary of State. If Ohio polling looks like Chicago, 'thank' Brunner Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has a reputation as the most partisan state official in Ohio. And she works hard to earn it. The Democrat's latest stunt rejected absentee ballots for thousands of Republicans. But it's not her first rodeo. Almost as soon...

I think in the space of about the last 24 hours, Joe Biden claimed that the AIG bailout was bad, but then said it wasn't bad; that we did not need to burn coal; that his apology about the dirty McCain ad was, as they say, inoperative; that FDR once went on television to address the nation after the stock market crash of '29 (that's a twofer that trumps Obama's Americans liberating Auschwitz); and all but said that McCain took a $50,000 bribe. Not a bad day's work — encompassing terrible energy policy, flip-flopping, historical ignorance, and slander. And...

http://patriotroom.com/?p=2329 whoops...ol' Joe at it again.

WASHINGTON (NNPA) - “We’ll never have this opportunity again,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, taking to the streets for what appeared to be an emergency cross country tour in September. He hopes to rejuvenate the Obama excitement that some say has waned since the Democratic National Convention last month. “What we’ve got to tell people is what’s at stake; that we’re dealing now with the new unemployment. Unemployment is higher than it’s been in four years, we are seeing the education and health care of our people as worse than it ever was. We cannot afford to not vote,” Rev....

This morning President Bush addressed the United Nations general assembly for the last time. Transcript After the address he and the first Lady met with some political dissident at Governors Island in New York City Transcript Vice President Cheney attended a weekly House Republican conferencemeeting on Capitol Hill Secretary of Defense Robert Gates testified today on Capitol Hill before the Armed Forces Committee on Afghanistan and Iraq Vice Presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin met this morning in New York City with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. She also met with Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger...

Credit Is Not a Civil Right I have no way of judging whether the Wall Street bailout is a necessary evil or an impending disaster. But we're in this mess, ultimately, because our political elites thought it was good social policy to encourage banks to give mortgages to uncreditworthy people, resulting in what Sailer months ago called the "Diversity Recession" (if this doesn't work, make that the Diversity Depression). In other words, if poor people in general, or blacks or Hispanics in particular, were less likely to be approved for a mortgage, the only possible reason was racism or classism...

"I think we're going to be up very late counting votes," Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., told a kettle of lawyers Tuesday night at a fundraiser for the Democratic Victory Fund hosted by the American Association of Justice in Washington, D.C. "And so, your help means a big deal. The last help we need you for, is you're the best legal minds in the country. We're going to need you going into election time, because we're going to mobilize thousands of lawyers to make sure they don't steal another election."

House Democrats will allow a quarter-century ban on offshore oil drilling to expire next week. Currently, drillers are banned from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, but the moratorium on oil drilling will officially end when congress returns from its November recess. Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gas prices soared this summer, and President Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling in July. The U.S. Department of the Interior estimates there are 18 billion barrels of oil in waters now off-limits.

Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that seeks to prevent Islam's radical Shariahlaw from gaining a foothold in the U.S. legal system, as it has in other countries. Tancredo introduced HR 6975, the Jihad Prevention Act, last week. If made into law, the bill would allow American authorities to prevent advocates of Shariah law from entering the country, revoke the visa of any foreigners that did champion Shariah law and revoke naturalization for citizens that seek to implement Shariah law in the U.S. The radical form of Islam's Shariah religious law includes several statutes...

I thought that I would pose a few questions to the sharpest knives in the drawer, Freepers, and perhaps incite some discussion by those more knowledgeable than myself and in the process enlighten us all a bit. I have been employed in the residential mortgage business for the last 6 yrs. and may have a little better grasp of what is happening than the average guy on the street, though far from an expert.

FactCheck.org doesn't think much of the NRA's ads criticizing Obama. They are, sadly, way off base. This is, presumably,one of the reasons why Stuart Taylor Jr. of the National Journal declared he "no longer trust the major newspapers or television networks to provide consistently accurate and fair reporting and analysis of all the charges and countercharges." He's got good reason. For starters, FactCheck.org takes Obama at his word that he "believes the Second Amendment creates an individual right, and he respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms." Many gun owners are not so willing to give the benefit...

WASHINGTON — Democrats have decided to allow a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to expire next week, conceding defeat in a months-long battle with the White House and Republicans set off by $4 a gallon gasoline prices this summer. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., told reporters Tuesday that a provision continuing the moratorium will be dropped this year from a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Congress recesses for the election. Republicans have made lifting the ban a key campaign issue after gasoline prices spiked this summer and...

Not sure about MyFox Colorado's posting policy, so I'll leave it as link-only.

As metro Atlantans sputtered through another day of long lines, spot shortages and panicked buying at the gas pumps, the federal government on Tuesday waived the region’s smog-busting gasoline requirements in an attempt to boost supplies. But Gov. Sonny Perdue, who requested the waiver, does not expect it to solve the region’s overall gas shortage. That could take up to two weeks as refineries in the Gulf of Mexico continue to ramp back up after two hurricanes.

Any Questions?  Five years ago, Republicans proposed "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry [in a decade]." (Source: New York Times) Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee blocked efforts at fixing Fannie and Freddie. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) said, "Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac... are not facing any kind of financial crisis," At least 18 times since 2001 Democrats blocked efforts at overhauling Fannie and Freddie even as accounting scandals and executive ripoffs became public. Why? For starters, the top two recipients of Fannie and Freddie campaign donations were Democrat fatcats Chris Dodd ($165K) and Barack...