Free Republic

NEW YORK - It looks like a cause for celebration: The Dow Jones industrial average surged from 12,000 to 13,000 in just six months. But appearances can be deceiving, and there may be more reason to worry rather than rejoice about Wall Street's latest accomplishment. Stronger-than-expected profits from several large companies helped push the stock market to historic heights. But many big corporations, including the Dow components, made a chunk of that money overseas, where economies are growing faster than in the U.S. And many of the same worries that weighed on investors earlier in the year remain: rising energy...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. presidential candidate John Edwards on Sunday said that he would raise taxes, chiefly on the wealthy, to pay for expanded healthcare coverage under a plan costing $90 billion to $120 billion a year to be unveiled on Monday. "We'll have to raise taxes. The only way you can pay for a healthcare plan that cost anywhere from $90 to $120 billion is there has to be a revenue source," Edwards said on NBC's Meet the Press news program. The 2004 vice presidential nominee and former North Carolina senator said his plan would "get rid of...

This is my first time doing a prayer request so I hope I am posting this correctly. I am requesting a Prayer Request for my sister who under went some testing and a biopsy last week to make sure that cells that were pre-cancerous years ago did not progress into anything worse. This was just a preventative test but none the less if there is even a tiny reason to worry I worry. If I could ask you all to pray that my sister does not have cancer (or anything else as bad for that matter) and that her tests...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - On a boat stranded in a street in New Orleans, two words are scrawled: "No politicians." It's not clear if the boat is a remnant of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated this city more than a year ago, but the message of the graffiti is unmistakable: politicians failed to deliver for those who lost their homes in the hurricane. "They sent boys over there (to Iraq) to fight in a war that never ends. Why didn't they keep the money over here when Americans are suffering," said Gwen Brown, 51, whose home in New Orleans was flooded...

China's military budget for this year will rise almost 15 percent to more than $35 billion. A spokesman for the National People's Congress made the announcement Saturday, one day before China's parliament starts its annual session. He said the increase will be spent mainly on salaries and fuel, and underlined that China is committed to a path of peaceful development. China has had double-digit increases in military spending nearly every year since the early 1990s, causing unease among its neighbors. Much of the country's weapons arsenal is deployed against Taiwan, the island Beijing regards as a renegade province. Tensions rose...

I have been here for about a month now and have had a great time discussing current events and politics. But when it comes to who shall be crowned our nominee things get bloody in a hurry. So I thought that maybe we need to discuss someone who will please us and unite us but also at the same time defeat hillary and unite the country behind us and our vision. McCain and Giuliani though could beat hillary seem to be way to devicive and would divide us when we most need to stand together in which the democrats could...