Free Republic

<p>Congress says it likely will adjourn this month having done nothing on the most important issue in America right now: the financial meltdown from the subprime lending crisis.</p> <p>Can Congress just walk away from a problem it helped create? Maybe, maybe not.</p>

For his entire presidency, George W. Bush has tried to avoid the fate of his father, brought low by a feeble economy. Now, as the financial crisis radiates far beyond Wall Street, Mr. Bush faces an even grimmer prospect: being blamed, at least in part, for an economic breakdown. “There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem,” Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden on Friday. “Now is the time to solve it.” But in Washington, on Wall Street and on the presidential campaign trail, the debate has already begun. Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential...

About Nancy Pelosi. She says the Democrats share absolutely none of the blame for the current financial goings-on. She's wrong. In fact, she's lying because she knows here statement to be untrue. I'm going to unload on this when I get back, but here's your primer: 1. Almost all of the financial problems we see today are based on bad mortgage lending. That would be lending money to people to buy homes who didn't qualify for a loan. 2. The Democrats, under Clinton, strengthened a government-created monster called the "Community Reinvestment Act." This law was then used by "activists" and...

VENTURA, California — The family of a gay teenager who was fatally shot in class blames the school district for allowing their son to wear makeup and feminine clothing to school — factors the family claims led to the death. The parents and brother of 15-year-old Larry King of Oxnard filed a personal injury claim against the Hueneme school district seeking unspecified damages for not enforcing the dress code, The Ventura County Star reported.

For many on the left, WE are the aggresors in Georgia Where you stand on Georgia says a lot.By Christopher Cook First, consider the presidential candidates.McCain has taken a strong stand against Russia's crushing of a sovereign nation. Obama, not so much.Of course, as is to be expected, America turns to Republicans whenever they notice anything serious going on in the world, and that can be seen in the poll numbers: people by far prefer McCain on the Georgia matter. Then we have the left vs. the right.People on the right, generally, believe that a free nation and a free...

Quarter of Russians blame U.S. for conflict - poll 13 Aug 2008 18:47:42 GMT Source: Reuters MOSCOW, Aug 13 (Reuters) - Russians blame the United States and Georgia for triggering the conflict in Georgia's breakaway region of South Ossetia, with just one percent pointing the finger at Moscow, an opinion poll showed on Wednesday. When asked who was guilty for the conflict in South Ossetia, 54 percent of those polled blamed Georgia and another 22 percent blamed the United States, a survey carried out by Russia's largest pollsters VTsIOM showed. A further 12 percent said Russia, South Ossetia and Georgia...

The cost of Georgia's ill-fated adventure against Vladimir Putin was beginning to sink in. Many blamed Georgia's president Mikhail Saakashvili — querying why he had taken on mighty Moscow given Georgia's military inferiority and the improbability of US intervention. "Saakashvili has to resign. There is no other way," Misha Iashvili said, stopping to mend his truck next to a roadside café. Its owners had gone, locking up and leaving behind their neat dahlia garden. He added: "Russia had been close to us for years. It will defend us. The US and Europe won't." By this afternoon the Russian ceasefire appeared...

The president again pinned the prospect of oil drilling off the coastline — considered a long-term energy solution — to today's high gas prices for consumers. "The American people are rightly frustrated by the failure of the Democratic leaders in Congress to enact commonsense solutions," the president said. Bush acknowledged that development of oil resources in waters off the coastlines, an area known as the Outer Continental Shelf, would take time. But he said that only creates more urgency for Congress to lift its legislative ban on drilling in these protected waters before lawmakers leave Washington for summer break.

Only two facts matter in this little episode. First, Obama is a sitting U.S. Senator and can visit the troops any time he wants. Second, the only restriction on visiting the troops was that he could not bring reporters. Most importantly, it makes no difference what you call the trip. "Senator Obama had hoped to and had every intention of visiting our troops to express his appreciation and gratitude for their service to our country," retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, an Obama adviser, said in a statement. "We learned from the Pentagon [Wednesday] night that the visit...

Don't blame Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., member of two influential banking committees - the Senate Finance Committee and the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs - for IndyMac's collapse, says CNBC's Erin Burnett. Burnett, host of CNBC "Street Signs," disagreed with a claim by MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough that a letter to regulators from Schumer caused a run on the beleaguered bank IndyMac, which eventually led to its failure and takeover by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. "I don't think Chuck Schumer caused a run on the bank," Burnett said on MSNBC's July 24 "Morning Joe." "This...

Obama: Right Wing to Blame for Wife's Negs Amanda Carpenter In October’s installation of Glamour Magazine, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama blames conservative-leaning media outlets for driving up his wife’s negative ratings. “What happened was that the conservative press — Fox News and the National Review and columnists of every ilk — went fairly deliberately at her in a pretty systematic way,” Obama told Glamour’s editor-in-chief Cindi Leive. The women’s magazine published excerpts of the Obama interview on their political blog Glamocracy on Thursday morning. [Full disclosure, I blog there every Tuesday] “It took a toll,” Obama said. “If you...

An important angle in the IndyMac failure that may get lost in ominous headlines tonight and tomorrow: federal regulators pointedly cited U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., in explaining the bank's failure. In simple language, federal regulators blamed Schumer for a run on the bank. Here's from the press release issued by IndyMac's regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision: "The OTS has determined that the current institution, IndyMac Bank, is unlikely to be able to meet continued depositors’ demands in the normal course of business and is therefore in an unsafe and unsound condition. The immediate cause of the closing was...

"Why Iraq Was Inevitable" by Arthur Herman According to an April 2008 poll in U.S. News & World Report, fully 61 percent of American historians agree that George W. Bush is the worst President in our history. Some of these scholars cite the President’s position on the environment, or on taxes, or on the economy. For most, though, the chief qualification for obloquy lies in Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq. In this, of course, the historians are hardly alone: five years after the launching of Operation Iraqi Freedom, both the mainstream media and America’s political elites treat...

What's the cause of $4 for a gallon of gasoline? To listen to Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail -- and also some Republicans -- the answer is "price gouging," "speculation," "oil companies" or "the failed policies of George Bush and Dick Cheney." Everything is getting blamed except the well-documented obvious: the law of supply and demand. The history of U.S. energy policy is that Democrats have refused to increase supply and Republicans have refused to curtail demand. They are both to blame for $4 gasoline -- and they'd better get together to keep Americans from paying $200...

A few years ago, when the tyrant of Zimbabwe was moving from being wicked to being downright evil, I wrote that we should invade Harare, depose him, and supervise free elections. Invited to appear on a BBC programme to defend this stance, I was assailed by an "Africa expert" who told me that diplomatic pressure on Mugabe was bound to work, that the idea of sending the Parachute Regiment in to sort the monster out was offensively colonialist, and that I was wrong. Miliband: getting the message at last White liberals like him are as much to blame for the...

Justice Antonin Scalia: Al Gore to blame for 2000 US election mess By Toby Harnden in Washington Last Updated: 6:35PM BST 26/06/2008 The 2000 presidential election debacle was the fault of Al Gore, who should have followed Richard Nixon's 1960 example and conceded without legal action, according to the Supreme Court's leading conservative judge. The 2000 election remains a source of discontent for Democrats "Richard Nixon, when he lost to [John F.] Kennedy thought that the election had been stolen in Chicago, which was very likely true with the system at the time," Justice Antonin Scalia told The Telegraph. "But...

Gordon Brown will today blame Margaret Thatcher for Britain's low rates of social mobility and accuse the former Conservative Prime Minister of creating a lost generation by "denying many children the chance to progress". The keynote speech coincides with the unveiling of plans to pay poorer parents for signing up their children to state health and education schemes. The Prime Minister will say that the economic policies of Conservative governments in the 1980s meant Britain has become a harder place for poor people to get ahead. He will also call on Britons to improve their work ethic and "aim high"...

I’m back and I have had enough of the Democrats (Communists), Obama, and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media. The high cost of oil, gasoline, and natural gas can be laid squarely in the lap of the Democratic Party (the Communists). They have repeatedly grilled the top CEOs of the largest oil companies in America attempting to blame them for setting the price of oil and gas. Threatening a windfall profits tax (someone explain what a windfall profit is) to taking over the industry. This is the usual tactic of guilty people to deflect attention away from them. They know nothing...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Another study suggests Planned Parenthood is at fault in the deaths of women in the United States from the abortion drug RU 486. The abortion business had been telling women to use the drug in a different way than the FDA guidelines suggested and the study shows it contributed to the deaths. So far, eight women have died from the use of the abortion drug, including women going to Planned Parenthood abortion centers in California.Planned Parenthood had been telling women to use the abortion drug vaginally, even though the FDA indicated oral use is safer for...

In Saudi Arabia, the government refused to allow the question to be asked at all. Pro-American feeling does not necessarily translate into pro-American action. People across Western Europe mourned the 9/11 attack. But a Gallup poll conducted the week after 9/11 found that only 29% of the French, 21% of Italians, 18% of the British, 17% of Germans and 12% of Spaniards supported military action against countries that harboured terrorists. Iraq is not the reason that NATO has trouble persuading European governments to send troops to fight in Afghanistan. Anti-American feeling is often an artefact of propaganda. Anti-Americanism becomes stronger...