Free Republic

Rumors of congressional Democrats privately expressing disapproval of the Obama administration’s actions and policies have been given more credence by such things as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s public criticism of White House spokesman Robert Gibbs. But when two longtime Democratic pollsters, Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen, called President Obama “cynical” and “racially divisive,” that was a dramatic statement. It was like saying that the emperor has no clothes. A much more rhetorically subdued but nevertheless devastating implicit criticism of current government spending policies came from an even more unlikely source: the Congressional Budget Office, whose director is a Democrat. Without naming...

Just over a year ago on February 12, Barack Obama spoke to Caterpillar employees at the plant in East Peoria, Illinois, and said the following: "So what's happening at this company tells us a larger story about what's happening with our nation's economy -- because, in many ways, you can measure America's bottom line by looking at Caterpillar's bottom line." In that address, Obama provided us with a barometer, a measure, a way to know whether legislation is good or bad in microcosm. And judging by Obama's VERY OWN STANDARD, his health care legislation is absolutely terrible: John Deere, Caterpillar,...

The Gray Lady's Bones Are Showing David Lee Smith September 14, 2007 This is almost like watching a slow starvation. New York Times' (NYSE: NYT) advertising revenue, already on a steady slide for years, fell another 3.2% in August. The bad news is nothing new. Let's glance through the negatives, shall we? The News Media Group -- the newspapers -- saw revenue drop by 4.6% in a single month. All-important classified revenue plummeted 20% in the month, as weakness in real estate, help-wanted, and automobile ads took its toll. The hardest-hit entities were the New England Media Group, where ad...

Cell phones found inside four prisoners 1 hour, 40 minutes ago SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Cellular telephones were found inside four prisoners in El Salvador's maximum-security prison, authorities said Wednesday. The discovery was made Tuesday at the prison in Zacatecoluca, in central El Salvador, after suspicious officials took X-rays of each of the inmates, federal corrections chief Jaime Villanova said. The names of the prisoners, all members of the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha gang, were not released in order to avoid jeopardizing an ongoing investigation that began a month ago, he said. Capt. Juan Ramon Arevalo, director of the prison...

This is the pension squeeze companies aren't talking about: Even as many reduce, freeze or eliminate pensions for workers -- complaining of the costs -- their executives are building up ever-bigger pensions, causing the companies' financial obligations for them to balloon. Companies disclose little about any of this. But a Wall Street Journal analysis of corporate filings reveals that executive benefits are playing a large and hidden role in the declining health of America's pensions. Among the findings: • Boosted by surging pay and rich formulas, executive pension obligations exceed $1 billion at some companies. Besides GM, they include General...

If the Democratic chieftains in Washington really want a window into why heartland residents are tuning out our party, they should stop huddling with loopy linguists from Berkeley like George Lakoff and just start reading Frank Rich's commentaries in the New York Times. There they will find a perfect distillation of the arrogance and narrow-mindedness that typifies the cultural thinking of our elites--and turns off red-state voters. In the view of Mr. Rich and his acolytes, freedom in our culture has been "under attack" ever since 9/11. Indeed, Mr. Rich has argued that this attack is being led by "new...

Business Week Magazine has a cover story on the future of The New York Times. Coverage of the business strategy and economic prospects (not terribly encouraging) is pretty good. BW is rather sympathetic and admiring of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper's hereditary publisher, and does not even mention his widely-used nickname "Pinch" - probably an effort to protect his dignity. BW is nearly as leftist in its editorial stance as the Times itself, so the role of the NYT's extreme ideological bias is downplayed. Here is what BW has to say on the topic. The growing polarization of the body...

'What a Girl Wants' is to avoid making a political statement.Print advertisements for the teen comedy orginially featured a photograph of star Amanda Bynes wearing an American flag T-shirt and flashing the peace sign with her fingers as she stands between two Royal British Guards.With the war in Iraq sparking anti war protests in the United States and abraod, however, Warner Brothers quickly changed the ad. The studio Monday said it feared the peace sign would be viewed as a political message.New versions of the image feature Bynes with her right hand at her side, although many of the original...

Drugs companies have invented a new disease, "female sexual dysfunction", to sell their new products, a paper in the British Medical Journal claims today. Over the past six years, researchers with ties to the pharmaceutical industry have developed and defined the new disorder, the report says. Its author, Ray Moynihan, says the creation of diseases is turning "complaints of the healthy into the conditions of the sick". Unlike male impotence, female sexual dysfunction has proved difficult for doctors to define. But over the past couple of years, a range of symptoms including loss of libido and painful sex have been...

U.S. Businesses Help China Suppress Internet NewsMax.com Wires Wednesday, May 1, 2002 BEIJING – It's not easy being the father of the Chinese Internet. Children are running by, boats are paddling, the smell of roast lamb fills the air, and Michael Robinson, a young American computer engineer, sits rigidly, facing an empty cafe on the shore of Qinghai Lake, speaking in a low voice of the crackdown. "What is better? Big Brother Internet? Or no Internet at all?" he asks. Robinson was hired as the lead support engineer in 1996 by the Chinese government and Global One, a Sprint-France...