Free Republic

Ruling by presidential decree is a characteristic of the typical Latin American “Republic.” Does anyone care what the Brazilian or Venezuelan congresses do? What the Mexican Senate and Chamber or Deputies decide? Populated by powerless eunuchs, many of el Presidente’s own party, they don’t matter except as a façade. So what’s the difference between the way Americans are ruled today and the way the heirs of Peron and Chavez rule their country? Is there that much difference between Obama and the rule of the president of Mexico whose term is often labeled the "six-year monarchy" because of the seemingly unchecked...

The reaction of the MSM to the Gruber tapes is revealing. Today’s article by Chris Cillizza tries to misdirect the issue into a personality conflict between Gruber and Conservatives who he thinks are the object of Gruber’s charge that the American people are stupid. His article, about Gruber as catnip for conservatives tries to make the story about Conservative pique, not the fact that Gruber did something that you are never supposed to do when you pull a sting: expose the sting. A good sting never ends, but Gruber ended the ObamaCare sting. So the press, after hoping it would...

The 2014 midterm election was interesting for several things. First, it was a repudiation of Obama-ism only 2 years after he was re-elected. The “dense-pack” strategy (having one scandal after another take the previous one off the front pages) of Team Obama didn't work. The “independent” voters finally saw failure follow failure and realized that the things they were promised were either lies or that Obama was incompetent. Either way, they abandoned him, big time. Keeping in mind that the “Black” vote was a Republican lock for nearly a century after the Civil War, it’s very interesting that there is...

Facilitating voter fraud, fomenting lynch mobs, and supporting failed policies as a matter of racial solidarity will not win black Americans greater respect But after the incredible failures of the First Black President, it's all the Democrats have left. The Department of Justice introduced an “expert witness” to a North Carolina court considering that state’s voter identification law who calmly explained that the requirement in inordinately onerous to black citizens because they tend to be “less sophisticated,” “less educated,” and “less attuned to public affairs” than other Americans. Can you imagine the outrage from Liberals in the press if a...

As the New York Times explains, Patricia Wanderlich got insurance through the Affordable Care Act this year, and with good reason: She suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2011, spending weeks in a hospital intensive care unit, and has a second, smaller aneurysm that needs monitoring. But her new plan has a $6,000 annual deductible, meaning that Ms. Wanderlich, who works part time at a landscaping company outside Chicago, has to pay for most of her medical services up to that amount. She is skipping this year’s brain scan and hoping for the best. “To spend thousands of dollars just making...

It all starts with a discussion of what you see as your personal preference. Then some reasons why it should be a general preference. Then it’s published as a thumb sucker in a publication read by movers and shakers. Denial, of course, that it’s a policy prescription designed for the general public. And heaven forbid that it should become government policy. But for Zeke Emanuel, famed atheist, and architect of ObamaCare, Soylent Green is not a dystopian movie but a really neat Final Solution to the financial problems of government funded health care. Death Panels will be known as SeniorCare...

So it begins: Panel Urges Overhauling Health Care at End of Life Taking care to make sure that Republicans are implicated, the NY Times hails death of the elderly. “The current system is geared towards doing more, more, more, and that system by definition is not necessarily consistent with what patients want, and is also more costly.” The operative word here is "costly."I have no problem with any old person expressing the wish to be left to die in peace. I have a big problem with Death Panels deciding that death is cheaper than life and making that the national...

I was doing a little research on my blog, going back to Barry's campaign in 200. I posted an essay nominating Barry for GQ managzine model but McCain for president. I received this reply: "I don't care what the blogs or the media says, Obama is the real deal. I will be proudly voting for the candidate who inspires me to be the change I wish to be. I post on FreeRepublic but am an "Obama Republican."I responded with thisHow's that working out for you, friend?

Way back, even before the beginning of Barry's first term, we opined that he belonged in GQ magazine, not the White House. We were reminded of this upon reading the delightful Bud Norman's essay "The end of Language" in which he despairs of the loss of common words like "fop." The disappearance of the word “fop” from the language seems to have coincided with the disappearance of society’s sneering contempt for men who take excessive pride in their physical appearance that it once conveyed, for instance, and as a result American society is inundated with preening pretty boys and empty...

So a 22-year-old son of Hollywood privilege goes on a murder spree, killing 6 and then himself. People who write for a living mount their favorite hobby horses and tell us “what it all means.” Since we are all critics now, I want to get in on the action. What do we know? Quite a lot, actually. The killer wrote a “manifesto:” apparently a must-do for people who want to go out with a bang, and who have the time and leisure to chronicle their lives. I read the whole thing and it's fascinating because it reads like a movie...

A great YouTube video at the link.

SCIENCE! It turns out that the latest study of the effectiveness of Medicare on patient health is non-existent. Here's the summary from the New England Journal of Medicine: CONCLUSIONS This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain. Like a child's security blanket, it made people who had it feel better for having it.

People who see the world through the lens of domestic politics label ObamaCare as Barack Obama’s signature achievement. They are wrong. Obama has had a much greater, and more ominous achievement in the geopolitical arena. What did Obama really have in mind when he told Medvedev that after his re-election he would have greater flexibility? As he assumed office, the world was uni-polar and the US was the sole superpower. Five years into his Presidency, Iraq is reverting to sectarian warfare and becoming an Iranian client state. Afghanistan is slipping away as fast as American troops are leaving. Egypt was...

When the economy is struggling, people are jobless, government programs are failing, war clouds are rising on foreign shores and the American government is widely despised and feared, it is good to remember how we got out of the problems that Reagan's predecessor left behind. Ronald Reagan reminds us how he came to be so successful. [video at link] What's this address particularly prescient is that Reagan warned us against losing the culture. Without a culture that believes in the goodness of the country, the country is lost.

Our local morning drive-time talk radio host, Tony Macrini, was waxing wroth over people who were critical of Obama’s handling of the crisis in Europe as Russia absorbs part of Ukraine. There are those, including Richard Cohen, a liberal columnist of the Washington Post who thought it might be time to apologize to Neville Chamberlain. Recalling that Hitler’s excuse for taking the Sudetenland was that he wanted to protect the Germans who lived there, Cohen writes: Putin is demanding for Crimea more or less what Hitler wanted for the Sudetenland: Russians ought to be in Russia. Macrini won’t hear of...

Barack “Corpseman” Obama couldn't spell RESPECT, despite the fact that it’s almost impossible to misspell. That dreadful song by Aretha Franklin is burned in my brain thanks to hearing it played endlessly for years. It brought to my mind that one of the most popular refrains one hears from the media is that we should “respect the office” of the President. Like any slogan or piece of propaganda that is repeated incessantly, you nod and agree. But why? What does “respect the office” even mean? Synonyms for respect include: reverence, admiration, esteem, veneration, high opinion. But if the slogan is...

A comment in the Wall Street Journal "Best of the Web" section today managed to blame Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on George Bush, without actually using his name. Here it in in full: "The character of political leaders isn't the only factor determining geopolitical events." Perhaps the wisest insight from the BOTW I've ever seen. We like to blame the politicians who happen to be nominally in charge for the changing tides of history. This is the Great Man theory of history, and it is arguably wrong, or at least not sufficiently explanatory. Hitler, for example, did not kill a...

When you're part of the Obama Administration, fresh from publishing the Virginian Pilot, and being used to telling people what to do, a little thing like the law doesn't stop you. An internal federal probe has concluded that Maurice Jones, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s new commerce secretary, improperly lobbied Congress while he was in the Obama administration last year. Mr. Jones, who was a deputy secretary at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, sent an email to more than 1,000 recipients — including 46 people at HUD — asking them to contact senators to “defend against efforts by...

It appears, per Bud Norman, that with the exception of FOX News and the editorial pages of the Wall street Journal, the MSM really isn't bothered by the FCC's announcement that they're going to be checking up on what stories are being reported and how they are covered. Well, when your already the organ of the ruling party, that doesn't bother you. The Fox New Network is on the story, possibly because they’re the ones whose reporters have treated as criminal co-conspirators and excluded from the White House news pool and routinely criticized by every level of the administration, and...

As a follow up to the shooting in the Military Circle Mall by a black mob, I ran across an essay by Daniel Greenfield (Sultan Knish) "Our state of Police" which analyzes the situation from an interesting perspective. I'm disturbed about the increasing militarization of the police. It's a poor police force indeed that does hot have a SWAT Team and one or more mini-tanks and heavy weapons. But, as Greenfield points out, we're not living in a police state. Not yet. But when the story about what's actually happening in places like the Military Circle Mall - which gets...