Free Republic

If President Obama were to stand before the magic mirror and chant, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, whose is the most jobless recovery of them all?” the mirror would answer, “Yours is, Master.” We are now 46 months into our third jobless recovery since 1991, and this one is the most jobless by far. But wait! First quarter GDP growth was up from 4Q2012, and the stock market is hitting new highs almost every day. Doesn’t that mean that there is finally hope for the labor market? No, it does not. With current economic policies, the employment picture is not...

There are more Americans today collecting food stamps than ever before, and that number is expected to rise steadily for the rest of the year, according to the CBO. The Wall Street Journal reports: The financial crisis is over and the recession ended in 2009. But one of the federal government's biggest social welfare programs, which expanded when the economy convulsed, isn't shrinking back alongside the recovery. Enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, as the modern-day food-stamp benefit is known, has soared 70% since 2008 to a record 47.8 million as of December 2012. Congressional budget analysts think participation...

The White House is pulling a tactic out of its campaign playbook – and President Obama’s own community organizing past – using the organs of government to enlist average Americans to help Obama advocate for his priorities. In an email sent to people who signed up to receive official updates from the White House, recipients are told to forward the message to their friends, asking them to help promote what is in effect White House propaganda. The White House email list, which government officials began compiling earlier in Obama’s term, is separate from the famed Obama campaign email list, but...

The U.S. budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a fourth straight year, but a modest improvement in economic growth helped narrow the gap by $207 billion compared with last year. The Treasury Department said Friday the deficit for the 2012 budget year totaled $1.1 trillion. Tax revenue rose 6.4 percent from last year to more than $2.4 trillion, helping contain the deficit. The government's revenue rose as more people got jobs and received income. Corporations also contributed more tax revenue than in 2011. Government spending fell 1.7 percent to $3.5 trillion. The decline reflected, in part, less defense spending...

These past 20 years in the United States proved that the fairy tale land I've heard about is still the land of opportunity. This is the country where everyone has a chance for a good living, if they work at it. In the country I came from we worked hard, but to no avail. The system did not reward the hard work, it favored those who sought well-being by becoming a part of the system, manipulating the system, or becoming Communist Party members. When I came to the United States in 1991 I couldn't wait to get my "green card"...

Obama: Green energy not ‘socialist plot’ By Ben Geman - 10/08/12 09:59 AM ET President Obama quipped Sunday night that energy efficiency initiatives are not a “socialist plot” in remarks that contrasted his energy policies with rival Mitt Romney’s. The president, fundraising in Los Angeles, addressed energy during a $25,000-per-plate dinner with backers that included actor George Clooney. “On energy, I’m big on oil and gas, and developing clean coal technology, but I also believe that if we’re ever going to have control of our energy future, then we’ve got to invest in solar and wind and biofuels, and that...

Obama: 'We Don't Believe Anybody Is Entitled to Success in This Country'

Barack Obama hates the poor and middle class. Thanks to Barack Obama gas prices doubled, incomes dropped, unemployment soared and the deficit nearly tripled in less than four years. The poor and middle class suffered the most.

Last fall, President Obama decided to cancel a hugely expensive new EPA rule designed to cut smog levels across the country. Obama said he did so out of concern about the rule’s impact on jobs. It was just one of many costly regulations the Obama administration has put on hold or delayed in the run-up to the election, as the president tried to dispel the impression that he’s anti-business. “I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty,” Obama said when he put the brakes the smog standard, “particularly as our economy continues to recover.”...

This past week, “2016: The Movie” about President Barack Obama opened in the Chicago area, and I chose to get more of an education about Obama by seeing the movie. After the inundation of canned hype for the movie on conservative talk shows across the Chicago radio dial that sounded more like commercials than honest endorsements of the movie, I was skeptical of what I was going to see. While some talk show hosts sounded like they were genuinely impressed with the documentary and honestly endorsing the film, there were those who were obviously reading a commercial script which was...

The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)." "The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains. The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of...

Obama is a proponent of failed economic policies that have left much of the Third World mired in poverty. Rather than acknowledging that centralized economic planning is a failure, Obama faults America’s industrial might as the cause of economic malaise that has crippled much of Africa. The answer, therefore, is not to abandon the discredited economic policies, but to disable America so as to level the playing field. Once America is bankrupt, Kenyan economic programs are bound to succeed! As someone who follows politics and current events closely, I thought that I was better informed about Barack Obama’s radicalism than...

There are some very serious issues at stake in this year's election — so many that some people may not be able to see the forest for the trees. Individual issues are the trees, but the forest is the future of America as we have known it. The America that has flourished for more than two centuries is being quietly but steadily dismantled by the Obama administration, during the process of dealing with particular issues. For example, the merits or demerits of President Obama's recent executive order, suspending legal liability for young people who are here illegally, presumably as a...

One month to the day after his infamous ‘you didn’t build that’ speech, President Obama’s description of wealthy people did not include “smart” or “hardworking,” as he instead ascribed their success to good luck. “If you’re lucky enough, and fortunate enough, and been blessed enough to be in the other two percent, the top two percent, you still get a tax cut for your first $250,000 of income,” Obama said during a campaign stop in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “All we’re saying is after that, maybe you can do a little bit more to help pay down this deficit and invest...

"This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." -- Barack Obama So far, the message of the Obama campaign essentially seems to be, "I'm unable to effectively govern because Republicans won't do everything I want. Re-elect me so I can deliver more of the same. Oh, also Paul Ryan wants to push old people off a cliff while Mitt Romney will give you cancer." That doesn't tell you much about what Obama would try to do in his second term, but given that he appears to be largely indifferent to the law and the wishes of...

Obama's desperate protests that his anti-business rant was taken out of context are betrayed both by that very context and because they are a part of a piece -- just one more component of his war against the American entrepreneurial spirit. He would have us believe that his words "you didn't build that" referred to roads and bridges and not businesses. Given his accompanying statements -- "you didn't get there on your own," etc. -- that is an absurd construction. But even if that's what he meant, why would he have felt compelled to point out that businesses don't succeed...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Who does Obama think paid the taxes for the roads and the bridges and the stoplights? Who paid for this? Who paid for all of that? People that don't have anything? People who pay taxes paid for all this stuff! Folks, it's a shame that we have to sit here and react to this kind of sophistry and explain to people how this country was built and who did it and why it happened and how it happened. Because we live in a period of time where the president of the United States is trying to rewrite...

Excerpt from the socialist-in-chief speech yesterday in Virginia: "If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."

Obsession with income redistribution is destroying U.S. productivity President Obama’s re-election prospects dim by the day. When it comes to all-important pocketbook issues, Americans quite simply are worse off now than they were when this administration moved into the White House. The Federal Reserve released its latest “Survey of Consumer Finance” on Tuesday, which confirmed widely held sentiment with hard data: Americans are poorer today than they were in 2007, when the Great Recession hit. The difference between now and then is massive. The median household saw almost 39 percent of its wealth evaporate, and real income (that is, the...

The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)." "The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains. The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of...