Free Republic

I haven't posted in a while; but I respect FREEPER opinion. I hope someone can help with this. It's a slightly different take on the bad boss thing. My boss really does not like me; he's pretty bad in a roundabout way. A rather benign example - I will ask for something that would require the department spending money on me, he'll say no, I say okay, I am disappointed. Of course, there was an earlier conversation on how we need to invest in so-and-so. At no point does he come out and say it -- it's always implied. This...

The U.S. Treasury Department is working through the weekend with Congress to craft a plan to spend as much as $700 billion to absorb bad mortgages and other assets from bank or other institution balance sheets to keep the financial system from collapsing. The move comes close on the heels of an $85 billion Federal Reserve rescue of American International Group [AIG 3.85 1.16 (+43.12%) ] and the Treasury's takeover of housing finance firms Fannie Mae [FNM 0.69 --- UNCH (0) ] and Freddie Mac [FRE 0.55 --- UNCH (0) ]. The Treasury plan, which follows a new federal guarantee...

Foreign banks, which were initially excluded from the plan, lobbied successfully over the weekend to be able to sell the toxic American mortgage debt owned by their American units to the Treasury, getting the same treatment as United States banks. On Sunday, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., indicated in a series of appearances on morning talk shows that an original proposal introduced on Saturday had been widened. “It’s a distinction without a difference whether it’s a foreign or a U.S. one,” he said in an interview with Fox News. The prospect of being locked out of the bailout...

House Republican staffers met with roughly 15 lobbyists Friday afternoon, whose message to lawmakers was clear: Don't load the legislation up with provisions not directly related to the crisis, or regulatory measures the industry has long opposed. "We're opposed to adding provisions that will affect [or] undermine the deal substantively," said Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government affairs at the Financial Services Roundtable, whose members include the nation's largest banks, securities firms and insurers. A deal killer for the group: a proposal that would grant bankruptcy judges new powers to lower the principal, interest rate or both on a...

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s mailing attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s record on guns appears to include a striking visual gaffe: The image of the gun pictured on the face of the mailing is reversed, making it a nonexistent left-handed model of the Mauser 66 rifle. To make matters worse, a prominent gun dealer said, it’s an expensive German gun with customized features that make it clearly European. “The gun in the photo does not exist,” said Val Forgett III, president of Navy Arms in Martinsburg, W.Va. Forgett's company was Mauser’s agent in the United States when the gun was released, and it...

NEW YORK - Israel's ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday called former President Jimmy Carter "a bigot" for meeting with the leader of the militant Hamas movement in Syria. Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, "went to the region with soiled hands and came back with bloody hands after shaking the hand of Khaled Mashaal, the leader of Hamas," Ambassador Dan Gillerman told a luncheon briefing for reporters.

In the wake of her humbling loss to Obama in Iowa yesterday, Hillary is planning to start drawing sharper "contrasts" between herself and the Illinois Senator in the days leading up to next week's New Hampshire primary -- and little by little, details are leaking out about Camp Hillary's evolving strategy. Here's a quick rundown on what we're learning: * Hillary aides are reportedly studying whether they can hit Obama on gun control, an issue where Obama has taken a hard line that might turn off some New Hampshire voters. * Hillary, who isn't known for frequent Q and As...

I thought it might be interesting for Freepers to record their experiences while voting and their impressions of the electorate's mood. I'll start. I am in South Florida, a Congressional district where 12-term Republican Congressman E. Clay Shaw is in a close race. Despite the intense liberal sentiment in this district, I have yet to meet anyone who is voting against Shaw. Both my mother and sister are extreme left-wing Democrats, but they will be voting for Shaw because his office helped them unsnarl some bureaucractic problems with the Federal govt. Mom got a replacement Social Security card and sis...

We can say without a doubt that the war of attrition against the city of Haifa and its residents is a tale of two cities: Tyre in Lebanon versus Haifa in Israel. The Hezbollah unit deployed in Tyre and its environs has been bombarding Haifa with Syrian rockets and upgraded Iranian-made Katyushas. If this unit is not destroyed, it will continue to target Haifa. As such, it is odd that the Israel Defense Forces ground operation that began Sunday was not immediately directed against the threat from Tyre.

Last Sunday, Bush press secretary Tony Snow speculated about what polls might have shown during World War II: "If somebody had taken a poll in the Battle of the Bulge, I dare say people would have said, 'Wow, my goodness, what are we doing here?.'" Yesterday, Josh Marshall posted results from polls done by Hadley Cantril at Princeton which showed "no downtick in public support for the war around the time of the Battle of the Bulge." This morning, with the help of Adam Berinsky, an associate professor of political science at MIT and a regular MP reader, the Washington...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 20 — The American military said today that it had found the remains of what appears to be the two American soldiers captured by insurgents last week in an ambush south of the capital, and a senior Iraqi military official said the two men had been "brutally tortured." SNIP Maj. Gen. Abdul Azziz Mohammed Jassim, the chief of operations of the Ministry of Defense, said that he had seen an official report and that he could confirm the two Americans had been "killed in a very brutal way and tortured." "There were traces of torture on their...

"Now, while the top leaders remain resolute in their course, cracks are opening both inside and outside the circles of power over the issue." ... "For 27 years after the revolution, America wanted to get Iran to the Security Council and America failed. In less than six months, Ahmadinejad did that." ... "The political scientist said some negotiators believed that by being hostile to the West they would be able to entice Moscow into making Tehran its stronghold in the Middle East."

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are making preparations for a massive assault on U.S. naval forces and international shipping in the Persian Gulf, according to a former Iranian intelligence officer who defected to the West in 2001.

NEW YORK -- The Port Authority said Thursday it will file suit to block a Dubai-based firm from taking over operations at a Port Newark container terminal, saying the federal government has not given them assurances about security issues.

I’d like to take a moment to coin a new phrase: Brownie Moment. A Brownie moment can be defined simply as the moment when a supporter of President Bush is smacked in the head by reality and loses any and all faith in the president from that moment forward. As you may have surmised the term comes from Bush’s recent comment regarding former FEMA head Michael Brown’s leadership in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” This was my Brownie moment. I understand that in the world of politics leaders often have to say...

Here’s an interesting question. Who said the following: “For the last week, the federal government and its state and local counterparts have consistently been behind the curve. The American people overwhelmingly know that the current situation is totally unacceptable,” and “It is a mistake to get trapped into defending the systems and processes which clearly failed.” Hillary Clinton? John Kerry? Howard Dean? No: Newt Gingrich, in private memos to fellow Republicans leaked to The Washington Post. For those in Washington, this is not that surprising. In private, Gingrich has been scathing about the Bush administration’s handling of the war in...

Senate drops the ball again. "It should have been a joyous occasion for the entire gun community. But just when it seemed that the majority party was about to deal a knockout blow, the Republican leadership dropped their gloves and allowed anti-gun Democrats to land a hard uppercut on the chin. As a result of that lack of resolve, America will be saddled with mandatory trigger locks unless the House of Representatives acts in a more responsible manner."

When you turn on the television news these days, you often see a new kind of home video: hooded men with guns and knives in the background and, in the grainy foreground, figures on their knees begging for their lives. They plead, they weep, they bow their heads and then, more often than not, they die. It has been like this since Daniel Pearl was made to repeat "My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am Jewish" before being decapitated. Thanks to the news editors, we rarely if ever see the footage to its gruesome conclusion, but the...

The phrase "lesser of two evils" often comes up at this time every four years, but this November, I think, it's too cynical a formula. Neither George W. Bush nor John Kerry can be credibly described as "evils." They have their faults, some of which are glaring. They are both second-tier politicians, thrust into the spotlight at a time when we desperately need those in the first circle of talent and vision. But they are not evil. When the papers carry pictures of 50 Iraqi recruits gunned down in a serried row, as Stalin and Hitler did to their enemies,...

This story is posted on Drudge under the title: "Haitian storm victims face a man-made disaster" ... The failure of Haiti's U.S.-backed government to disarm gangs, including the Cannibal Army that started the revolution that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, has created a climate of insecurity that jeopardizes lives after the calamity visited on Gonaives by Tropical Storm Jeanne.... ...Caribbean leaders have refused to recognize the interim government, saying it unconstitutionally replaced a democratically elected president and because interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue scandalized the region by hailing as "liberators" rebel leaders that include two convicted of murders during a military...