Free Republic

PITTSBURGH (AP) — The Democratic Party’s most prominent figures warned that abortion, Social Security and democracy itself are at risk as they labored to overcome fierce political headwinds — and an ill-timed misstep from President Joe Biden — over the final weekend of the 2022 midterm elections. “Sulking and moping is not an option,” former President Barack Obama told several hundred voters on a blustery day in Pittsburgh. “On Tuesday, let’s make sure our country doesn’t get set back 50 years,” Obama said. “The only way to save democracy is if we, together, fight for it.” Obama acknowledged that voters...

He used to be commander in chief, but former President Obama says the "top dog" in his household is definitely his wife. "I'm generally the brunt of every joke in my household," Obama said of life with wife Michelle and the couple's two adult daughters, in a Thursday interview on Dax Shepard and Monica Padman's Spotify podcast, "Armchair Expert." "Michelle, she's the top dog because they're scared of her," he quipped of the former first lady and his daughters, Malia, 22, and Sasha, 20. "Michelle always says that you have to have at least one parent who the kids think...

The division of the Internal Revenue Service that improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of conservative groups sent confidential information on 31 conservative groups to the well-funded liberal nonprofit journalism organization ProPublica, according to a revelation made by ProPublica Monday. “The same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the run-up to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year,” according to the ProPublica report. “In response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November, the Cincinnati office of the IRS sent ProPublica applications...

At least so far, Gallup keeps giving Rick Santorum good news on the electability issue. In their latest poll, both Santorum and Mitt Romney fall within the margin of error against Barack Obama, and Romney actually bests Obama slightly [see update]: U.S. registered voters are closely divided in their 2012 presidential election preferences between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and between Obama and Rick Santorum. Romney is slightly ahead of Obama, 50% to 46%, while Obama edges Santorum, 49% to 48%, but neither of these differences is statistically significant.Santorum and Romney are the current leaders in the volatile Republican primary...

Anyone ever watch the Dreamworks animated film Monsters vs Aliens? I just watched it, and I had to laugh at how much the tentacled, big-eared, razor-lipped, four-eyed villain looked- and sounded like- Barrack Hoo-sain O-frigging-bama. Even the things the villain said were similar to the Obastard's unilaterally-minded, totalitarian regime-seeking style. Seriously. It was uncanny. Watch the movie and see for yourselves. Or maybe I've just had too many Guinness stouts. I'm going to bed.

Nick Danger taught me that ridicule is a powerful instrument in getting rid of the bad guys. If it's accurate, it's fair game. I have a suggestion for a moniker for our illustrious president: Dum BO, Pin it on him. Watch what happens. Get out the popcorn. Anybody got any pictures of BO's ears?

A substantial majority of Americans say President Obama has not developed a strategy to deal with the budget deficit, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which also found that support for his plans to overhaul health care, rescue the auto industry and close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, falls well below his job approval ratings. The poll found a distinct gulf between Mr. Obama’s overall standing and how some of his key initiatives are viewed, with fewer than half of Americans saying they approve of how he has handled health care and the effort to save...

"You guys know your president right? You know the one with the big ears. Yeah, wait a minute, he ain't my president, he might be yours. I tell you that woman he had singing for him, singing my song, she gonna get her a** whipped. The great Beyonce! Now like I said, she ain't mine. I can't stand Beyonce! She had no business up there singing. Singing on a big ole, big ole president day and going be singing my song that I've been singing forever." – 71-year-old Blues legend Etta James dogged both President Barack Obama and singer Beyonce...

Sooner or later, voters are going to recognize the exquisite sensitivity of the Obama campaign to ridicule as weakness. By choosing to cry foul  over the New Yorker cover depicting the Obamas as the opposition supposedly sees him, the campaign reveals the precariousness of the substance-free image-building effort to date. The irrepressible Doug Ross  dug up a New Yorker cover mocking Bush and Cheney as the gay cowboys from Brokeback Mountain, sarcastically noting the missing firestorm of protest.   Are Americans really going to want to vote for someone who holds himself to be above criticism and mockery?    

Grover Norquist, a former CRNC executive director, dropped by the LA Times’ Washington bureau and shocked the media: “As part of his negative critique of Obama’s liberal stances on economic issues and other matters, he termed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee ‘John Kerry with a tan.’”

Democratic Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) speaks to the Executive Council of New York at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, September 17, 2007. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid (UNITED STATES)

By all indications, we are closer this week to Barack Obama’s announcement that he is running for president. He and his wife Michelle are featured on Ebony magazine’s February cover. His book, "The Audacity of Hope," hit the New York Times’ best-seller list and with Democrats winning the U.S. Senate majority, he is highly sought for political talk shows. Along with all the speculation comes increased curiosity about Obama’s background and influences. The night he won his U.S. Senate seat, Obama thanked his campaign staff generically and immediately recognized his longtime spiritual advisor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., pastor...

Could Meredith Vieira be emerging as one of the morning shows' most incisive inquisitioners? As we noted here, Katie Couric's replacement at "Today" recently gave Ted Kennedy a rather rough going-over regarding his legislative proposal to require the president to obtain congressional approval for a surge. This morning, she took on the hitherto untouchable Barack Obama. And while her tone and line of questioning were not disrespectful, neither was there any hint of the kind of MSM cheerleading that the junior senator from IL has no doubt come to expect. Before we get to Vieira's questions, take a good...

Crazies Link Obama to Terrorism Senator Barack Obama has an unusual problem for a potential presidential candidate. His first name rhymes with Iraq, his middle name is Hussein, and his last name rhymes with "Osama". Of course, when his parents named him 45 years ago, they would have no way of knowing that we'd be at war in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein would be the dictator we overthrew, or that Osama bin Laden would have led an attack against the United States, let alone that their new baby boy might someday make a run for the presidency. Almost two years...

Barack Hussein Obama is the closest Democrats can come to electing a foreign Muslim President of the United States without actually violating the constitutional requirement that American Presidents be native-born. Obama’s nomination would follow in the footsteps of 2004 Democrat presidential candidate John Forbes Kerry, whose French-language Swiss boarding school education made him the closest thing to a European socialist able to run for President of the US without violating the constitution. Not only does Obama’s name sound like some kind of sick Islamist joke on America—a candidate whose moniker invokes both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin-Laden—but he would be...

NEW YORK -- CNN apologized Tuesday for mistakenly promoting a story on the search for Osama bin Laden with the headline "Where's Obama?" A spokesman for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said the apology was accepted. The blunder came Monday evening on Wolf Blitzer's news show "The Situation Room." Both Soledad O'Brien and Blitzer offered separate apologies during CNN's morning show Tuesday. CNN called it a "bad typographical error" . . .

Like a dutiful dancing partner, Senator Barack Obama has begun courting the evangelical right, and some are already waltzing along in perfect time. With his attendance at Rick Warren‘s church, Saddleback Valley Community, a mega-church in California for a large conference about AIDS, Obama has begun to align himself with an important base of voters to gain what conservatives lost this last year. Already lauded by some prominent evangelical publications for his outstanding "Christian faith" and a person Rick Warren called a "good friend" and a someone he'd like to work with on important issues, Obama is in perfect position,...

...Even his aides wonder if he can meet lofty expectations, which have elevated him beyond a politician’s normal realm, thanks to his celebrity, ambition and biography. While a presidential campaign would highlight Mr. Obama’s strengths as a lyrical communicator and personable campaigner, it also could expose the shortcomings of a 45-year-old politician not fully developed, and one who will not enjoy the luxury of learning in obscurity. The next phase of his political development will inevitably draw intense and less flattering scrutiny, particularly if he goes head to head with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination; he...

Finally, Barack Obama has a scandal. It’s small–a mere sapling next to its towering twentieth-century predecessors–but, with enough time and a little more attention, it could blossom into a White House Travel Office, or maybe even a Whitewater. The junior senator’s youthful drug habit (and his adult nicotine addiction) just never had legs, so if you need a cocktail-party reason to predict trouble for Obama’s candidacy, look no further than his business dealings with Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the indicted Chicago real-estate developer that sold the senator a sliver of his yard. Of course, there’s just one problem with the scandal...