Free Republic

There are those, certainly not me, who are very qualified to handicap the voting scheduled for this Sunday on the health care bill, like John McCormack at this link. All I know is that they don't have the votes now in the House of Representatives, and that it's not passed until and unless it actually is passed. There is still a mountain to climb and the real hope, from my point of view, that some rocks will fall down on those clambering their way up. But on a broader level, there's this fact, which even I, from my perch in...

Interesting poll via CNN, the results of which put a finger on much of what is misunderstood about the electorate in the United States of America. The headline is: Majority says government a threat to citizens' rights. A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll. Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government's become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those...

Now, I know that Randy Newman is some kind of darned liberal, and (based on media reports I've seen) was quite recently in possession of a very fine case of Bush Derangement Syndrome. I don't like him for his politics, but I do genuinely enjoy his artful and ironic way with a song. And all I know is that his song Mr. President (written around 1974, but with something of an aura of 1934) has never been a more relevant and sharply-aimed arrow than it is at this very moment. Today, President Barack Obama, in the face of so much...

Whaddya know? President Obama is talking up the economy. Based on a drop in the official unemployment rate to just below 10% (9.7%, to be exact), the president said today that "we are climbing out of the huge hole that we found ourselves in." Of-course, one can't miss the knock at the previous administration even in such a short statement, and even one designed to be cheering. Still, while his optimism is dubious, to say the least (on a day when total job losses during this recession were corrected up to 8.4 million from 7.2, and when his own budget...

I've been a pretty light Twitter user, all in all, but last night I decided to try "live tweeting" President Obama's State of the Union speech, for the fun of it. And I figured I may as well recycle all of those stunning bon mots for this little piece on the subject today. Twitter is of-course a cross-platform communication and social networking application which limits users to no more than 140 characters per "tweet." Before the speech began, I took note of someone I observed in the audience: Police officer who shot Fort Hood jihadist is with Michelle Obama. Perhaps...

Various representatives of the Barack Obama administration were out on the Sunday talk shows in the U.S. today, trying to spin the election of Senator Scott Brown (R -MA) [and how often do you see that abbreviation?] as being an endorsement of the Obama agenda, particularly with regard to health care. I witnessed the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on "Fox News Sunday," trying to do this very thing. Gibbs was making the very same kinds of arguments to host Chris Wallace as Howard Dean tried making a few days ago to MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Wallace was a lot...

The full transcript of the interview with President Barack Obama by former Bill Clinton campaign worker and staffer George Stephanopoulos is at this link. I had written elsewhere yesterday on some of the excerpts that had been released. Other than those highlights, there's really not so much more in the interview that is significant. At no point does George S. really pin the president down, allowing him instead to just blather in general terms and do the whole "don't I sound so moderate and reasonable" thing to the nth degree, as is his wont. That was enough to get him...

You have to wonder. President Barack Obama talked to George Stephanopoulos this morning, in his first interview since the victory of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts. If President Bush, in the wake of a dramatic electoral setback, had done an interview in which he came across in a state of such deluded denial, there would have been calls for him to be removed on the grounds of being mentally unfit for office. (And I don't mean just from liberals, but also likely from the liberals' pet conservatives like David Brooks and Peggy Noonan). President Obama's sober analysis of why Scott...

Vice-President Joe Biden presided in Baghdad over a naturalization ceremony, where 237 U.S. troops -- comprising immigrants from places such as Mexico and Haiti and also some native Iraqi interpreters -- were sworn in as American citizens. The ceremony took place in the late Saddam Hussein's former Al-Faw Palace. CNN quotes the VP: We did it in Saddam's palace and I can think of nothing better. That S.O.B. is rolling over in his grave right now. So, there's the Vice-President of the United States, publicly spitting on Saddam Hussein's grave and reveling in the performance of an American ceremony of...

President Obama's policy (as of today) with regard to the Guantanamo Bay detention facility seems to me to be summarizable in the following way: The use of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay has damaged the reputation of the United States around the world. The U.S. has compromised its principles by detaining people there. We can do better. We will try those who we can in the U.S. court system. We will use military tribunals to decide the fate of a select few. We will repatriate certain others, or persuade other nations to detain them in some manner. In the...

The UK Times Online has this response to the excerpts from Bob Dylan's interview with Bill Flanagan that were published yesterday: After the summer of love, Bob Dylan backtracks on Barack Obama. Up until now it had been a mutual love affair. As the campaign for the American presidency gathered pace last June, Bob Dylan lent his support to Barack Obama, telling The Times that his candidacy was “redefining the nature of politics”. In return Mr Obama described the singer as an icon, and boasted of having “probably 30 Dylan songs on my iPod”, including “the entire Blood on the...

Yesterday, it was reported that a victim of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center by Islamic jihadists was positively identified, seven and a half years after his death: The city medical examiner's office says 54-year-old Manuel Emilio Mejia has been identified from remains found at the World Trade Center site in the months after the 2001 terrorist attack. Mejia was a kitchen worker at Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the trade center's north tower. Manuel Emilio Mejia was the 1,624th victim to be identified. More than 1,100 others still have not been positively identified....

It used to be that mothers would tell their children, "Go out and play in the sunshine, it's good for you." In more recent years, saying something like that too loudly might have gotten a poor mom arrested and her children taken away from her. "The sun, good for you? Are you crazy? Are you trying to kill your kids with skin cancer?" At least, make sure the urchins are slathered all over in 45 SPF sunscreen, and preferably wearing hats and long sleeves. You might call this the Gospel of St. John the Dermatologist, and it has now been...

That is, he would if he had the ability to think coherently and extend his appreciation of things right in front of his face to his perception of things in general. In recent statements on the local news channel New York 1, the actor Alec Baldwin pleaded for tax breaks that are provided to film and TV production companies in New York to be continued, in the name of business, jobs and overall revenue for the state and city. In an interview on “The Road to City Hall,” actor Alec Baldwin is calling on state leaders to renew a tax...

On July 15th, 1979, President Jimmy Carter made a televised address to the nation that later became known as "the malaise speech." America's economic problems were bad and getting worse. Lines at gas stations, inflation, rising unemployment. The speech that President Carter gave that day was presumably meant to inspire, but ultimately fell on many people's ears as a litany of what was wrong with Americans and with America. Carter seemed to be blaming Americans for creating their own troubles with their lack of confidence and spirit. It came to define his presidency for many. Of-course, he had already been...

Andrew Sullivan claims a petard is about to be hoisted, in reference to a sermon recently given by the pastor of Governor Sarah Palin's church, one Larry Kroon. Sullivan clearly believes that it is exactly equivalent to some of the controversial sermon remarks of Barack Obama's pastor and mentor of twenty years, Jeremiah Wright (remember, Obama named one of his memoirs from a phrase his pastor coined, and praised him enthusiastically until the day he threw him in the garbage). The transcript of Larry Kroon's sermon is is at this link. The audio is here. Here is the portion we're...

When I saw this headline, I wondered what it could possibly mean: "Drugs like LSD and Ecstasy 'could help terminally ill'." Turns out (drat!) that it doesn't mean that those hits of acid you may have swallowed when you were young and irresponsible will help you live longer. The first clinical trial involving LSD since the 1970s began in Switzerland in June with the aim of using "psychedelic psychotherapy" to help terminally ill patients come to terms with imminent death to improve the quality of their remaining life. Eight subjects will receive 200 micrograms of LSD - enough to induce...

In yet another move away from the kind of campaign his supporters would have expected of him not so many months ago, Barack Obama has effectively rejected John McCain's invitation to do multiple town hall type debates across the country in the period leading up to the conventions. He is agreeing only to the standard three debates after the conventions, in a variety of arranged formats. Though not unexpected at this point, his decision is a complete turnaround from the candidate he portrayed himself as barely three months ago. As even the AP writer notes: In May, when a McCain...

Barack Obama has a page on the photo sharing site called Flickr. On his profile, there are words of praise for him from fans far and wide. Here's a few (these are comments that have to be approved by the user, i.e. Obama's campaign, by the way): zanalee says: "Everywhere I go in NYC where I live, I feel this amazing spirit of support for you. I have never been so excited about a presidential candidate in my life! I wear my Obama button proudly. A woman on the train today told me I reminded her she should be wearing...

It's remarkable that he went there. I don't mean that it's remarkable that Barack Obama went to Berlin to make a speech (although it's odd, which is something like remarkable); I mean that it's remarkable that in that much-anticipated speech he chose to criticize the United States. There was no need. He could have given a nice speech and talked about so many things, without having to go there -- that is, to criticize his own country in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands of foreign citizens. Did he think he needed to earn their votes? I honestly...