Free Republic

LAST year was a fabulous one for entrepreneurs, at least according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity released last month by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. “Rather than making history for its deep recession and record unemployment,” the foundation reported, “2009 might instead be remembered as the year business startups reached their highest level in 14 years — even exceeding the number of startups during the peak 1999-2000 technology boom.” Another surprise is the age of these new entrepreneurs. According to the report, most of the growth in startups was propelled by 35- to 44-year-olds, followed by people 55...

It's not uncommon for traffic to be a bit congested on the corner of College Avenue and Dickson Street in Fayetteville, AR, especially in the afternoon. On Monday, however, traffic came to a complete stand still. The reason? It all happened around 3:30 Monday afternoon when Abel Tomlinson, who ran for Congress in 2008 against John Boozman, drove his car into the middle of the Dickson/College intersection and left it there blocking traffic from all sides. Before anyone could react, Tomlinson was sitting atop a tree in front of Washington County Court House - causing a scene and of course...

BENTONVILLE -- The father of a 17-year-old girl found his daughter's boyfriend hiding inside her bedroom closet Tuesday, beat him bloody with a pool stick, then left the room to fetch a gun. The daughter and boyfriend blocked the door with a dresser, so the father shot through the closed door, hitting the boyfriend in the back and paralyzing him, police said. George David Reed, 48, posted a $150,000 bond and was freed from jail Wednesday afternoon as Michael Austin Guzman, 19, underwent surgery to treat a bullet lodged in his spinal cord. Three of Guzman's vertebrae are fractured and...

Is it possible that George Bush is a secret Green? Evidently his Crawford Winter White House has 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling. “By marketplace standards, the house is startlingly small,” says David Heymann, the architect of the 4,000-square-foot home. "Clients of similar ilk are building 16-to-20,000-square-foot houses." Furthermore for thermal mass the walls are clad in "discards of a local stone called Leuders limestone, which is quarried in the area. The 12-to-18-inch-thick stone has a mix of colors on the top and bottom, with a...

CARACAS, Venezuela - Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices. President Hugo Chavez's administration blames the food supply problems on unscrupulous speculators, but industry officials say government price controls that strangle profits are responsible. Authorities on Wednesday raided a warehouse in Caracas and seized seven tons of sugar hoarded by vendors unwilling to market the inventory at the official price. Major private supermarkets suspended sales of beef earlier this week after one chain was shut down...

Global warming and oil are central to the energy/environment conundrum which is in turn central to nearly every other global problem. Global warming and oil are in a sense equivalent problems, because solving either one necessarily implies solving the other. Last year was, once again, the hottest year on record. Nineteen of the hottest 20 years since record-keeping began in 1860 have occurred since 1980. The Arctic, which might be Earth’s canary in the coal mine, is rapidly approaching a point of no return. Arctic sea ice extent reached its lowest recorded level last September, with Arctic temperatures now at...

A rusty lunch box with $16,000 cash inside, a fistful of uncashed paychecks, an orange-sized roll of bills wrapped in a stretched-tight rubber band -- those are things bankers tend to notice. All are examples of Hispanic customers' thriftiness and cash hoarding that got area banks' attention years ago. It is no coincidence that several Northwest Arkansas banks now have bilingual staff members. It is a move aimed at catering to a growing entrepreneurial and sometimes bank-shy Hispanic population. "By and large, I think it is fair to characterize (Hispanics) as savers," said Rob Brothers, president of Arvest bank in...

LOS ANGELES - Television talk shows took aim Monday at Vice President Dick Cheney's accidental weekend shooting in Texas of a hunting companion. Here's a few of the jokes. --- "Late Show with David Letterman," CBS: _ "Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It's Dick Cheney." _ "But here is the sad part - before the trip Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy's request for body armor." _ "We can't get Bin Laden, but we nailed a 78-year-old attorney." _ "The guy who got gunned down, he is a Republican lawyer and a...

Scientists find plants cause global warming 12 January 2006 LONDON: German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change. The culprits are plants. They produce about 10 to 30 per cent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere, according to researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany. The scientists measured the amount of methane released by plants in controlled experiments. They found it increases with rising temperatures and exposure to sunlight. "Significant methane emissions from both intact plants and...

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. -- A nationally known motivational speaker is facing child pornography charges. Police in Arkansas arrested Michael Fortino -- a man who lives in Pittsburgh, but travels the world. Fortino's Web site has been shut down, but a cached version of it showcases him as a motivational speaker. He was apparently in Arkansas to give one of those speeches when he was arrested. "For every one time somebody does something wrong, it takes four rights just to break even," said Fortino on a clip on his Web site. Now, police have charged him with three counts of possessing child...

Blanco demands apology 9:15 p.m. An angry Gov. Kathleen Blanco demanded that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., apologize for his statement that it might not make sense to rebuild New Orleans. It was “unthinkable,” Blanco said, that Hastert would “kick us when we’re down. I demand an immediate apology.” At a press conference Thursday night, she said that 300 soldiers from the Arkansas National Guard arrived in New Orleans fresh from Iraq and are under orders to restore order from the “hoodlums.’’ She said of the soldiers: “They have M-16s and they are locked and loaded. These troops...

Hey everyone this is the long email I had been working on. Today I got a chance to pull guard duty in a tower on the wall over looking a middle class Iraqi neighborhood. This place looks like about at war torn as you can get. Most of the kids and adults in our area got around in carts made of pickup truck frames pulled by Donkeys. The only cars are really bad 1970 bombs.They get a few hours of electricity after dark then its gets shut off. Today they had off for their Christmas celebration so they all looked...

I was probably the only person watching Keith Olberman on MSNBC and his "Countdown" Show tonight- I must ask- why whenever they show pictures of insurgents with AK-47's or RPG's their faces are blurred- like they are in the witness protection program??? Why can't we see the evil faces of these terrorists- why is MSNBC protecting people that seek to murder our troops?

Hello- I am a frequent lurker- this is my 1st post. My wife has manned the phone bank at the local republican headquarters- I was asked to help as well. I am a mostly silent partner in a telemarketing business- so I thought big. I offered (for free) our services to do a phone blast of "unattended messages", that is the recorded calls that politicians love to make. I received a list of 9,000 republicans from the local party chairmen. he enlisted our Lt. Governor to record a 30 second call- we ran it today- it took about 4 hours...