Free Republic

Remember the AIG firestorm? The company's Financial Products division, based in Weston, Conn., was to blame for the business practices that sent the company south. The feds stepped in with a $180 billion bailout. And then we figured out that the company had to give out $450 million in bonus payments to those same employees who may have caused the mess? Now, hoping to stem any further public outrage, the company is asking the Obama administration (basically, its financial consigliere) for permission to go ahead and make those bonus payments. The retention incentives, as the company puts it, are an...

N.Korea's Kim has 'serious' pancreas disorder: report 57 mins ago TOKYO (AFP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is suffering from a "serious disorder" of the pancreas, a Japanese television network reported Friday, quoting a South Korean intelligence official. The 67-year-old's condition has been the focus of much speculation since he reportedly suffered a stroke last August. The TBS network reported that Kim has been resting and is being treated at his villa in the southeasten area of Wonsan by a team specialists.

On Speaking Ill of the Dead A bit of advice to my fellow conservatives: Do not speak ill of the dead. I think you know to whom I refer, do you not? A second bit of advice to my fellow Christians: Do not speak ill of the dead. Let us suppose that you are a wretched man, recently died under unseemly circumstances, whose life was made all the more wretched by fame. Oh? Do we not believe fame brings wretchedness? It brings its own temptations and its own sorrows that we private people, we happily private people never hunted by...

If we abandon God, what will He do in return?

When will the failing U.S. economy become President Obama's problem? To date, the president seems immune to criticism of his handling of the economy, except from conservatives. Job losses continue to mount, despite his promises that his "stimulus" plan would create jobs and stop rising unemployment. The housing market shows no sign of imminent recovery, with prices continuing to decline and more homeowners falling behind on their payments. Retail sales fell again in June, with even value stores like Costco experiencing drops in sales. And the federal debt has risen under President Obama to its highest level as a percentage...

Going down...

"IOUs" the state of California has issued instead of payments amid its budget crisis are "securities" under U.S. law and their holders and potential buyers are protected by anti-fraud law, federal regulators said on Thursday. The determination comes amid efforts by some entrepreneurs to establish a secondary market for the IOUs, which the government of the most populous U.S. state began issuing last week to vendors and to taxpayers owed refunds to maintain dwindling cash for priority payments, including payments to its bondholders.

Enduring Nonsense By: Daniel Mandel FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 10, 2009   The other week, responding to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech that envisaged creating a demilitarized Palestinian state, perennial Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak noted, “I told President Obama that solving the crises of the Arab and Muslim worlds goes through Jerusalem.” The week before, General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, said, “Hezbollah’s justifications for existence will become void…if the Palestinian cause is resolved.”  The notion that the Israeli/Arab conflict lies at the core of Middle Eastern problems has been popular among the political class...

The 2009 summer blockbuster movie season is upon us. As a brief respite from our usual political humor, I offer you this preview of some of this summer’s most eagerly anticipated movies. Dumb And Dumber Obama and Biden are two lovable and friendly, but very stupid friends, who struggle with every aspect of life. Obama is the President of the United States. Biden is his more experienced, but equally stupid sidekick and Vice President. Watch the two bumble their way through the misadventures of running the United States government in this hilarious comedy, destined to be a classic (Hilarity may...

Prehistoric communities in one part of Peru's Andes Mountains may have gone from maize to amazingly complex. Bioarchaeologist Brian Finucane's analyses of human skeletons excavated in this region indicate that people living there 2,800 years ago regularly ate maize. This is the earliest evidence for maize as a staple food in the rugged terrain of highland Peru, he says. Maize agriculture stimulated ancient population growth in the Andes and allowed a complex society, the Wari, to develop, Finucane contends in the August Current Anthropology. Wari society included a central government and other elements of modern states. It lasted from around...

American International Group is preparing to pay next week millions of dollars more in bonuses to dozens of corporate executives, a source familiar with the development said. AIG [AIG 9.48 --- UNCH (0) ] has been talking with Washington's newly-appointed compensation czar Kenneth Feinberg about the bonuses, which are due to be paid on July 15, said the source. The company is reviewing its compensation plans with Washington as it tries to avoid the national furor set off by $165 million in retention bonuses paid to employees of a financial products unit in March. Much of AIG's $99 billion in...

Baby got Barack! The leader of the free world and his French counterpart were caught sneaking a peek at a the pink-satin-draped booty of a 17-year-old junior G-8 delegate just moments before the summit's official group photo was snapped in Italy yesterday.

Young Female Islamist Denial By: Joe Kaufman FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, July 10, 2009   Earlier this year, I wrote of a young female leader from the Muslim American Society (MAS), Mashal Azhar, and of the e-mails that she had sent me. She was upset at my group’s slogan, “Fighting Hate with Truth.” She had believed it was dishonest. She was mistaken. In the course of our correspondence, Azhar was unusually candid in describing her and her group’s goal of creating a new America and bringing her brand of Islam to the masses. Recently, I had the opportunity to communicate with...

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office scored the House version of a health overhaul bill at $1.5 trillion, that is, if you believe those rather optimistic estimates. Congress, after all, has a history of underestimating the costs of the programs they fund. In fact, the independent HSI Network scored the House's initial draft at a heart-stopping $3.5 trillion. But let's give Congress the benefit of the doubt, for just a moment, as we try to comprehend just how much of our money they want to spend on government-run health care.

L'AQUILA, ITALY -- In a meeting this morning with the leaders of Egypt, Algeria, Senegal, Nigeria, Libya and Ethiopia, President Obama spoke about his personal connections to both Africa and poverty, and according to a top White House aide, "you could have heard a pin drop." As the president put it, Froman went on, "his cousin in Kenya cant find a job without paying a bribe, and that’s not the fault of the G-8. And when companies can’t operate without paying, in some parts of Africa, without paying the 25 percent fee off the top in bribes, that’s not colonialism."...

Sarah, Sarah Storms Are Brewing in Your Eyes (Excerpt: You knew that when David Letterman had the temerity to gratuitously and vulgarly insult her daughter, Sarah Palin was not going to react like a Bob Michel Republican. (He was the former House minority leader who had this terrible habit of smiling after a gratuitous slur was made against Republicans by one of the House Democrats. As W. James Antle III, wrote a year ago in the American Spectator - “Bob Michel Republicans …are happy being in the minority.”) Sarah Palin was not going to take Letterman’s abuses like Bill O’Reilly...

Let there be no doubt: Democrats are the party with two ideas: borrow and spend. The only vigorous internal debate on the left revolves around two questions: How much and how much more? Even as the first trillion-dollar stimulus craters, the debt-o-crats are floating yet another grand act of generational theft to create the illusion of jumpstarting the economy. Call it Spawn of Spendulus. Return of the Porkulus Beast. Crap Sandwich Redux. White House economic adviser Laura D'Andrea Tyson told an international economic conference: "We should be planning on a contingency basis for a second round of stimulus." Team Obama...

Astronomers have turned up the oldest and most distant supernova ever found: the star that created it detonated just 3 billion years after the big bang. The technique used to find it could reveal tens of thousands of other ancient supernovae, tracing out how the universe became seeded over time with heavy elements. Because light travels at a finite speed, more distant supernovae also occur further back in time. The calculated distance of the newly discovered blast suggests it occurred 10.7 billion years ago – about 1.5 billion years earlier than the previous record holder. The new blast was a...

The Obama administration, in a precedent-setting move, has approved resettlement in the U.S. for 1,350 Palestinian refugees from Iraq. But before this becomes a done deal, Congress and the media ought to ask the White House and the State Department why these refugees, rather than being granted asylum in the U.S., shouldn't get immigration visas to Arab countries, especially those with immense oil wealth. Wouldn't that be a more logical, more natural destination for these refugees? Thousands of these Palestinians lived for many years in Iraq under the generous protection of Saddam Hussein -- and repaid him in kind with...