Free Republic

Policy Failure Wanted You’ll never guess who wants Obama’s tax policy to fail. via Yahoo: “I would never want to adversely affect anything that is charitable or good,” Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said of Obama’s call to limit high-income taxpayers’ itemized deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest. Wow. That’s breaking pretty hard left. I thought policy failure wantage in the form of opposition to higher taxes was a Capitol offense. Republicans said the president’s plan to charge fees to industries that spew greenhouse gases amounts to a stealthy tax increase...

A man who lost his sight 30 years ago says he can now see flashes of light after being fitted with a bionic eye. Ron, 73, had the experimental surgery seven months ago at London's Moorfield's eye hospital. He says he can now follow white lines on the road, and even sort socks, using the bionic eye, known as Argus II. It uses a camera and video processor mounted on sunglasses to send captured images wirelessly to a tiny receiver on the outside of the eye. In turn, the receiver passes on the data via a tiny cable to an...

A collision between U.S. and Russian satellites in early February may have been a test of new U.S. technology to intercept and destroy satellites rather than an accident, a Russian military expert has said. The February collision could be an indication that the U.S. has successfully developed such technology and is capable of manipulating 'hostile satellites,' including their destruction, with a single command from a ground control center, the general said.

It's been a win-win the past few days for Democratic and Republican loyalists, but what about the rest of us? You know. Americans who either don't think that (a) spending nonexistent trillions is quite the way to proceed in an economic crisis, or that (b) Rush Limbaugh is the messiah.... Might there be a smallish strait between these gulfs where the storm-weary could rest their oars? (Not to go overboard on the metaphor, ahem.) Don't even think about it. Michael Steele, new Republican National Committee chairman, tried to inject a little calm into the discussion and quickly learned that criticizing...

I just watched a fantastic interview of a man who is committed to principle & protecting the life of the innocent unborn. When Megan Kelly (???) asked Sen. Coburn would EVER do an abortion, even if the government said he had to, he flat-out said : "NEVER DO IT. NEVER DO IT". She then asked him if he would be willing to go to jail & he unapologetically said "YOU BET!". I wish I knew how to put TV interviews on to the internet via YouTube, but my 10-yr old VCR just won't do the trick.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – One in five U.S. homeowners with mortgages owe more to their lenders than their properties are worth, and the rate will increase as housing values drop in states that have so far avoided the worst of the crisis, a new study shows. About 8.31 million properties had negative equity at the end of 2008, up 9 percent from 7.63 million at the end of September, according to the study, released Wednesday by First American CoreLogic. The percentage of "underwater" borrowers rose to 20 percent from 18 percent. Another 2.16 million properties could go underwater if home...

FALMOUTH, Mass. — A customer shopping at a Wal-Mart for a wallet claims he found something that definitely didn't fit the bill: human teeth. Police say the man found 10 human teeth Saturday when he unzipped a compartment in the wallet. One tooth had a filling. The customer turned the wallet and the teeth over to employees at the Falmouth store but left without giving his name.

Stock Markets are up on China news. Only bad thing oil has gone up to 44.01

With the Obama administration’s oft stated preference for alternative energy sources, what will happen to the industries built around conventional energy sources like coal, oil and natural gas? The whitehouse.gov Web site proclaims the following in The Agenda - Energy & Environment: “President Obama and Vice President Biden have a comprehensive plan to invest in alternative and renewable energy, end our addiction to foreign oil, address the global climate crisis and create millions of new jobs.” Notice the only mention of any of the current major forms of energy was getting less oil from foreign sources, and the “millions of...

TEHRAN, March 4 (Reuters) - Iranian missiles can reach Israeli nuclear sites, a top military commander said on Wednesday, amid persistent speculation that Israel could target facilities involved in Iran's atomic work. "All the nuclear facilities in different parts of the land under the occupation of the Zionist regime are in the reach of Iran's missile defences," the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said according to ISNA news agency. Reuters

Why couldn't President Obama have put on more of a show for his British guests? He looked like he simply couldn't be bothered. Number 10 may be content that they just about got away with the visit to the Oval Office yesterday, as Andrew Porter reports from Washington. But on this side of the Atlantic the whole business looked pretty demeaning. The morning papers and TV last night featured plenty of comment focused on the White House's very odd and, frankly, exceptionally rude treatment of a British PM. Squeezing in a meeting, denying him a full press conference with flags...

On his show last night, Stock Guru Jim Cramer responded to the shots White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs took at him during his press briefing yesterday for saying that Obama's policies had led to the greatest "wealth destruction" by a President Cramer has seen. He starts addressing the comments by Gibbs at the 1:45 mark of the video, and then goes off on a hilarious routine of why we could have "Hope" in Obama's policies if we wear "rose-colored glasses" (of course he puts on rose-colored glasses!). Cramer, who is not a political conservative, clearly believes Obama is a...

In the past few days, conservative "intellectual elites" Christopher Buckley and David Brooks, who entirely abandoned the Republican Party during the last election in favor of fellow "intellectual elite" Barack Obama, have begun expressing buyer's remorse over the decision. Peggy Noonan has yet to recant, but we can bet that it's only a matter of time until she begins to grace us all with some self-flagellating prose as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic

You can’t help but admire Rush Limbaugh’s talent for publicity. His radio talk show is probably—reliable figures only go back to 1991—in its third decade as the number-one rated radio show in the country. And here he is in the news again, trading verbal punches with the president of the United States. Limbaugh remarked on Jan. 16 that to the degree that Obama’s program is one of state socialism, he hopes it will fail. (If only he had said the same about George W. Bush.) The president riposted at a session with congressional leaders a week later, telling them, “You...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of parents and students at Lakeview Elementary School in Wilson County after school officials ordered “God Bless the USA,” “In God We Trust,” and other phrases referencing God and prayer to be covered up on posters before they could be displayed in the school’s hallways.  The posters were hand-drawn by students and their families to announce “See You at the Pole,” a voluntary, student-led prayer event held outside of class time. “Christian students shouldn’t be censored for expressing their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel Nate...

cannot seem to excerpt it

Why don’t liberals understand that changes in tax policy also causes changes in people’s behavior? Connecticut, which offers the nation’s heftiest tax incentives, is nearing agreement to bring the production of three syndicated TV shows to the state. “The Steve Wilkos Show” and “The Jerry Springer Show,” which are currently based in Chicago, and “Maury,” which is now produced in New York, are the shows that may make the move. This is causing panic among other New York productions....

Steele trap? GOP fears grow By: Mike Allen and Andy Barr March 4, 2009 04:41 AM EST A month after Michael Steele became the first African-American chairman of the Republican National Committee, key party leaders are worried that the GOP has made a costly mistake — one that will make it even harder for them to take back power from the dominant Democratic Party. Steadily becoming a dependable punch line, Steele has brushed back Rush Limbaugh, threatened moderate Republican senators, offered the “friggin’ awesome” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal some “slum love,” called civil unions “crazy” and promised more outreach to...

Here’s a question, fellow 401K-robbed victims of the meltdown: Exactly where did this toxic batch of bankers and businesspeople — who engineered the economy into the ditch, the stock market into free fall and frittered away the fortunes of our country and maybe even the world — learn their craft? Which MBA, economics and law programs produced the perpetrators of the calamities that have befallen the great Wall Street institutions and, now, Main Street Americans as well? Which schools are the Academies of the Apocalypse, and who and how many went to each? Winner: Harvard