Free Republic

If anyone deserves to pay more to shore up the federal safety net, either through higher taxes or lower benefits, it’s boomers — the generation that was born into some of the strongest job growth in the history of America, gobbled up the best parts, and left its children and grandchildren with some bones to pick through and a big bill to pay. Politicians shouldn’t be talking about holding that generation harmless. They should be asking how future workers can claw back some of the spoils that the “Me Generation” hoarded for itself.

The Shanghai-listed Yantai Xinchao Industry Co. filed a security filing over the weekend announcing it would purchase Texas oil properties for 8.3 billion yuan. AFP/AFP/Getty Images A Chinese investment holding company intends to put down stakes in the United States after signing a letter of intent to purchase oil properties in western Texas for $1.3 billion through a limited liability partnership. The Shanghai-listed Yantai Xinchao Industry Co., said in a securities filing over the weekend, it was a purchasing oil lands in the Texas counties of Howard and Borden as part of the proposed acquisition of Ningbo Dingliang Huitong Equity...

RUSH: In the last couple or three days I have been reading more and more stories about how much trouble McDonald's is in that they may not make it. It's gotten to the point now where McDonald's may not make it. And the last story that I have here is from Business Insider, and the headline is, "McDonald's Franchisees Say the Brand Is in a Deep Depression and Is Facing its Final Days." And everybody is trying to figure out what happened. You know, McDonald's dates back to -- well, in its current iteration -- the mid-sixties. It wasn't Ray...

From the man who brought you malaise, now an even more depressingly negative view of America . . . On today's Morning Joe, Jimmy Carter declared that America is in "inevitable decline." But no finger-pointing at President Obama, please: Carter declared that the decline is "not because of any defect or fault on the part of the President of the United States." Cue the Cole Porter: it's just one of those things. View the video here.

This past weekend has been heady one for our friends on the soft-core left. Without ever attending a meeting, let alone a march, or even making a donation, they got to celebrate Obergefell v. Hodges as if it were V-J day. These are the same people, of course, who protested not a peep in 1996 when Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, the same people who voted giddily for Barack Obama in 2008 despite his avowed support for traditional marriage, the same people who cannot wait until their next water cooler encounter to dress down some...

Welcome to the age of vanity politics and campaigns-for-hire. What would our founders make of this nightmare? Four qualities have distinguished republican government from ancient Athens forward: the sovereignty of the people; a sense of the common good; government dedicated to the commonwealth; and resistance to corruption. Measured against the standards established for republics from ancient times, the American Republic is massively corrupt. From Plato and Aristotle forward, corruption was meant to describe actions and decisions that put a narrow, special, or personal interest ahead of the interest of the public or commonwealth. Corruption did not have to stoop to...

NEW DELHI: Immigration and visa issues, which have long plagued the information technology sector, could come back to hurt Indian IT services companies this year as the US heads towards Presidential elections in 2016. In the US, the biggest market for the Indian IT services sector, "this will be a bloody, contentious election and immigration reform is right up there for discussion," said Phil Fersht, founder and chief executive of HfS Research. "The displacement of US IT and back-office jobs will be a significant issue leading up to 2016." India's $146 billion IT outsourcing industry has been a beneficiary of...

In an appearance on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” Tuesday night, former Vice President Dick Cheney said that President Obama’s actions on the world stage exemplify a president who wants “to take America down.” Cheney also touched on Obama’s comments on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, telling Hewitt that Obama is the only post-World War II president to believe that America doesn’t need “to play a leading role in the world.” The former vice president made the appearance following the announcement of a new book on American foreign policy, co-authored by himself and daughter Liz Cheney, will be released in September.

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama White House says it welcomes comments by the new defense secretary about transgender people serving in the United States military. "I've seen the reports of Secretary (Ash) Carter's comments," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Monday. "I can tell you that the president agrees with the sentiment that all Americans who are qualified to serve should be able to serve. And for that reason, we here at the White House welcome the comments from the secretary of defense. "But in terms of -- of additional steps that the Department of Defense will take to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the fight against violent extremism, President Barack Obama argues the U.S. has one thing going for it that Europe doesn't: a long tradition of warmly embracing its immigrants, including Muslims. With the Islamic State group spreading and terrorists gaining strength in the Mideast and Africa, Obama has sought to use this week's White House summit on violent extremism to urge the world to broaden its response far beyond military interventions. U.S. airstrikes have managed to blunt some of the militants' gains in Iraq and Syria, but they don't address the extreme ideologies that underpin deadly groups...

During his trip to India, President Obama declared America’s commitment to “help design smart cities” and “bullet trains” in the country. The main selling point for “smart cities” is that they are “sustainable,” a vague but applauded term that often used in context of combating what this author strongly believes is a non-existent problem: man-made climate change. During a speech at the Siri Fort Auditorium in India, Obama, who met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the tour, declared: We are ready to join you in building new infrastructure…roads and airports, the ports and bullet trains to propel India into...

NEW DELHI: President Barack Obama has assured Prime Minister Narendra Modi that he will look into India's concerns on the H-1B visa issue as part of his comprehensive immigration reform, US officials said on Monday. Obama told Prime Minister Modi that his administration would be in touch with the Indian government on issues related to H-1B visas, popular among Indian techies. "I think what the President indicated is this is the type of issue (H-1B) that we have approached through the context of comprehensive immigration reform and so, given his ongoing efforts to work with Congress in pursuit of comprehensive...

Middle School Kids Taken To Hear Louis Farrakhan Call For Violence Against The 'Crackers' "We want some of this earth or we’ll tear this goddamn country up!” 1.2.2015 News Jeff Dunetz An administrator at Booker T. Washington Middle School in Baltimore, MD, took forty young teenage students as young as eleven-years-old to the 2nd Annual Black United Summit International (BUSI) conference where they heard bigoted purveyor of hatred Louis Farrakhan reference "white people as “crackers” and a call for “retaliation” for the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson." According to Danette Clark, ​who wrote about the conference for the Education...

I'm not one for boycotts, but I am one for data. And I like this kind of data. It's just good to have data when spending money. That's all. I mean, if I have no choice in keeping a SIGNIFICANTLY large portion of my money from being squandered by the folks that I've freaking employed up on the Hill (like drunk girls on Spring break with their Daddy's credit cards), I'm going to be as informed as possible with what's left of said money. Thus, the data thing. You know. According to the source article above and the New York...

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, there has been much debate among economists and policy makers on how best to prevent systemic collapses. Yet there is little data to go on: these are unprecedented times of sustained unemployment, fiscal stimulus, and price-earnings ratios. Perhaps, as Alan Greenspan recently suggested, we need to look to anthropology to see the really long-term trends. With this in mind, I interviewed one of the world’s leading archaeologists, Arthur Demarest, who studies the collapse of ancient civilizations, from Greece and Rome to the Maya and Aztecs. Demarest, the Ingram Professor of Anthropology at...

Writing for the Christian Post, Melissa Barnhart notes that, "The Rev. Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritans Purse, says the government's attacks against Christianity and bans on traditional Christmas themes while society glorifies sin is 'like little children shaking their fist at Almighty God.' 'What's happening is we're glorifying sin, we're lifting up sin. And it's like little children shaking their fist at Almighty God,' Graham told Fox News host Megyn Kelly during a Wednesday segment of 'The Kelly File.' Speaking about atheists and secularists' actions to ban celebrations of Christmas in schools and government...

I never got around to posting about my October trip to the hospital, I was out in four days, just another lung bug, and things were popping here on the forum and I just dug in.I had already fired the doctor who screwed up, almost fried my kidneys and caused a case of gout with too many diuretics. The insurance plan assigned a new doctor anyway so when I landed in the ER I gave his name. He never showed up, but the one I fired did. I told him to go away and 10 minutes later his sidekick showed...

The equation seems fairly simple: The more the world's population rises, the greater the strain on dwindling resources and the greater the impact on the environment. The solution? Well, that's a little trickier to talk about. Public-health discussions will regularly include mentions of voluntary family planning as a way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and births. But, said Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau, those policies can also pay dividends for the environment. "And yet the climate-change benefits of family planning have been largely absent from any climate-change or family-planning policy discussions," he said. A 2010 study published in the...

Over the past few years, General Mills has positioned itself as something like the anti-Chick-fil-A, celebrating LGBT pride and vehemently opposing Minnesota’s proposed gay marriage ban. All of that is very nice—but come on, this is 2014. If you’re a food company and you haven’t made an adorable ad featuring a gay couple with their children, you’re just another face in the pro-gay corporate crowd. Luckily, General Mills has now decided to get with the program, releasing a commercial with a gay couple, their adopted daughter, and a bowl of Cheerios. And the ad is just as impossibly cute as...

“When women go wrong men go right after them.” – Mae West “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Winston Churchill wrote this over a century ago. During my junior year in high school, the nuns asked about our plans for after we graduated. When I said I was going to attend State University, I noticed their disappointment. I asked my favorite nun, “Why?” She answered, “That means you’ll leave four years later a communist and an atheist!” What a giggle we girls...