Free Republic

"Cash was, is, and always will be - king. Always have cash in reserve. Cash is the ammunition in your gun. My biggest mistake was not in following this rule more often. Time is not money because there may be times when your money should be inactive... Often money that is just sitting can be later moved into the right situation and make a fortune. Patience-Patience-Patience. Patience was the key to success - Don't be in a hurry." - Jesse Livermore. How To Trade In Stocks, 1940. The Great Comparison Two years ago, we began to note similarities to the...

The armed forces in Honduras have closed the Jesuit-run Radio Progreso, following the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya last month. The military - backed by Congress and the courts - forced Mr Zelaya out of Honduras on 28 June over his plans to hold a vote on possible constitutional change. However, Radio Progreso is still operating on line at radioprogresohn.com where you can also see videos of the military invasion of the radio station and Fr Ismael Moreno SJ, the Director of Radio Progreso, agreeing to close the station down to avoid further confrontation. Ged Clapson, Communications Officer of the...

July 1, 2009 — “Absolutely amazing” and “absolutely gobsmacking” are exclamations made by scientists analyzing the fossilized skin of a hadrosaur known as Dakota. The researchers found cell structures and organic matter in the skin and layers that resemble the skin of birds and crocodiles. The specimen was uncovered in 1999 on a North Dakota ranch and is still being analyzed. Photos on the BBC News show clear scales and cross sections of microscopic tendon structures. The article said, “Tests have shown that the fossil still holds cell-like structures,” adding, “although the proteins that made up the hadrosaur’s skin had...

Martin Weiss writes: Just as the authorities were touting the “end of the financial crisis,” all heck has broken loose again … We have a new surge in unemployment, and even without counting those who are excluded from the official numbers, 14.7 million are now jobless, the most since records dating back to 1948. Worse, for the first time since the Great Depression, every single job created after the prior recession has been wiped out. We have industrial production falling at the same pace as it did in the early 1930s …. and global trade falling at twice the pace...

Of all the lines of argument concerning Sarah Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska, surely there is none more disingenuous than the “she abandoned her post” line proffered today by Donny Deutsch on MSNBC and yesterday by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post (whose article was entitled “Big Girls Don’t Quit,” another example of the bizarre double standard according to which it is acceptable to deride a 45 year-old Republican grandmother by calling her a “girl”).

WASHINGTON – Vice President Joe Biden signaled that the Obama administration would not stand in the way if Israel chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, even as the top U.S. military officer said any attack on Iran would be destabilizing. Biden's remarks suggested a tougher U.S. stance against Iran's nuclear ambitions. Nonetheless, administration officials insisted his televised remarks Sunday reflected the U.S. view that Israel has a right to defend itself and make its own decisions on national security. In an interview on ABC's "This Week," Biden also said the U.S. offer to negotiate with Tehran on its nuclear program...

In a gesture of charity, the Canadian government has released the Republic of Haiti of its entire $2.3-million debt to Canada, Jim Flaherty, the finance minister said Thursday. The move, a part of the Canadian Debt Initiative, brings the total debt of impoverished countries cancelled by Canada to $965-million, including debt owed by Latin American and Caribbean nations. "Today’s announcement frees up valuable financial resources that can be better spent on Haiti’s priorities, not its liabilities," Mr. Flaherty said. "At a time of unprecedented hardship in the global economy, Canada continues to eliminate financial burdens faced by Haiti and other...

How would you like the government to reduce what you live on yearly, kill a vast number of jobs in America, all in hopes of reducing the temperature of the earth by two-tenths of a degree by 2099? According to Ben Lieberman of the Heritage Foundation, a family of four will experience the following due to the consequences of the Cap and Trade bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on June 26 and now goes to the U.S. Senate: $436 average increase in energy costs in 2012 $1,241 energy bill in 2035 Electricity costs will increase by 90%...

Please use "a lot", since those words are actually in the dictionary. </grammar rant>

MIAMI — Police say a Florida teenager who is accused of killing more than a dozen cats in two south Miami neighborhoods fits the profile of a sociopath. In the 10-page arrest affidavit for Tyler Hayes Weinman, police said they tracked the 18-year-old’s car electronically and traced his cell phone before charging him with the crimes. The affidavit was unsealed today, the same day Weinman was formally arraigned in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court.

(From Plainsradio blog) POLARIK springs some startling news re; McJuan's birth certificate. Private ping: The "other" forged birth certificate From Polarik | 06/25/2009 11:33:30 AM PDT new Keep this under your hats until I spring it on people I was doing research today on the eligibility and birth certificate controversy that PRECEDED Obama. Namely, the one on John McCain. It appears that: 1. Not only was there a forged birth certificate for McCain, he didn’t produce it. SHADES OF RATHERGATE! Someone named Don Lamb in Panama forged a Panamanian BC showing that McCain was born there in 1936. Wait! There’s...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Russia has seen over $1.5 billion (925 million pounds) of company deals unveiled, but a longer term step-change in business between the nations will depend on Moscow boosting the rule of law. "We need the confidence that things are going to remain stable, that the ground rules are going to remain stable," Samuel Allen, chairman of U.S. farm machinery maker Deere. , told reporters while announcing an investment of $500 million into Russia within the next five to seven years. .... A breakthrough at these talks would serve as evidence both...

Chiasmus is "a figure of speech by which the order of the words in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second" (Oxford Companion to English Literature, 1985 ed.). One way of identifying a chiastic quote is to mark the repeated words or phrases with the letters ABBA. To illustrate, one of the most familiar examples of this is the phrase spoken at the foot of the Cross: "He saved others, himself he cannot save." Which becomes: A. He saved B. others, B. himself A. he cannot save. There is an excellent web site dedicated to the...

Advancing in another direction.

Obama will not go to Kenya on his upcoming Africa trip. Why not? Here's why. Read all of it. It's eye-opening and shocking. And I encourage you to explore the whole website and discover plenty of eye-opening stuff that has been censored as much as possible by the Obamites. Even Fox News isn't telling us what's actually what. Odd, their incuriousness, again. Sometimes I think Fox News sounds no better than the also-ignorant CNN. In a nutshell, because his murderous, genocidal-against-Christians Islamofascist cousin didn't become the President. He's boycotting Kenya for not electing his cousin, the evil Islamofascist Ralia Odinga,...

Somebody at Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit kindly linked to an old article of mine entitled “Do not smooth series, you hockey puck!”, a warning that Don Rickles might give. Smoothing creates artificially high correlations between any two smoothed series. Take two randomly generated sets of numbers, pretend they are time series, and then calculate the correlation between the two. Should be close to 0 because, obviously, there is no relation between the two sets. After all, we made them up. But start smoothing those series and then calculate the correlation between the two smoothed series. You will always find that...

A tightrope walker in China has broken two world records after a walk at an altitude of more than 1,500 metres above sea level. According to a report by the state-run Xinhua news agency, Ahdili Wuxiuer created two Guinness records by performing the walk at the highest sea level a tightrope walker has ever done before, and doing it while passing his pupil on the wire.

Is she crazy? Or is she crazy like a fox? That’s the question being asked of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin after her stunning announcement last Friday that she will resign as Alaska’s governor later this month. From the left and the right, the puzzlement is the same: Why has Palin decided to leave her office so abruptly? Republican strategist Ed Rollins, noting that “everyone is shocked” by Palin’s decision, asserts that “everyone is going to assume there’s another story. You don’t just quit with a year and a half to go.” National Democrats, meanwhile, are licking their chops at...

I firmly believe that freedom is a gift from God. I believe it is every mans given right to enjoy this gift. Unfortunately evil men often get in the way of this right. Yesterday at church we sang “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and I was struck particularly hard by the last sentence: “As he died to make men holy, let us live to make men free.” America is a blessed land; blessed with freedom and opportunity from God. We are not grateful, profitable servants if we do not, as a country, do everything we can to help spread...

DOD’s major weapon systems programs continue to take longer to develop, cost more, and deliver fewer quantities and capabilities than originally planned. DOD also continues to face long-standing challenges managing service contracts and contractors. For example, the oversight of service contracts has been recognized as a material weakness in the Army... Several underlying systemic problems at the strategic level and at the program level continue to contribute to poor weapon systems acquisition. The total acquisition cost of DOD’s 2007 portfolio of major programs has grown by 26 percent over initial estimates... DOD largely continues to define warfighting needs and make...