Free Republic

Every presidential candidate can use a sexy blonde movie star to liven up his or her campaign, appear at big money events and rally the entertainment community. Sen. Barack Obama's go-to Hollywood hottie is Scarlett Johansson, a starlet who trades frequent e-mails with the presumptive Democratic nominee, campaigns tirelessly on his behalf, hosts lucrative fundraisers and even appeared in that "Yes We Can" viral video that got 10 million views in its first week online. Drawn to his candidacy largely because of her anti-war views, she met Obama several times on the trail, talking to him one-on-one on many occasions....

WASHINGTON (AP) - John McCain said Democratic rival Barack Obama is bad for business in a speech to small business owners. McCain said Tuesday that Obama's policies would mean higher taxes and higher overhead costs. The Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also criticized Obama for pledging to renegotiate the McCain said small businesses make the economy run and that his Democratic rival would slow the creation of new jobs. "You work hard in small businesses to grow and create new jobs and opportunities for others," McCain said. "The federal government shouldn't make your work any harder." Economic issues have taken center stage...

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is unrolling the general election campaign he has been shaping for months. For example, in May, the campaign unveiled a 50-state voter registration drive, the skeleton operation Plouffe is adding meat to now that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is officially the presumptive nominee. On Tuesday, Plouffe—on the Democratic National Committee e-mail—sent out a low-dollar appeal for money for Obama’s 50 state campaign. The letter demonstrates how strongly the Obama team is now running the DNC—and how DNC chairman Howard Dean now answers to Obama.

Barack Obama, without a church since he abandoned the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's congregation of addled bigots, racists and conspiracy nuts, ought to consider starting his own. Having never been inside a church, many of his disciples regard him as the messiah. He's ready to rock. "A light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany," he told a raucous rally of the rapt in Lebanon, N.H., back in January. "You will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Obama." Another rally the other night...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama is considering former top military leaders among his possible running mates, according to a senator who met Tuesday with the Democratic presidential candidate's vice presidential vetting team. North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad told The Associated Press said the team asked him about potential candidates from three broad categories _ current top elected officials, former top elected officials and former top military leaders. Conrad would not disclose which names they discussed, and the Obama campaign has been keeping the process a closely guarded secret. "We talked about many names," Conrad said, including "some that are out...

The conversations are free-flowing but one name the vetters are inserting in the conversations is one that is not a household name... Ret. Gen. James Jones, the former Marine-turned-NATO Supreme Allied Commander. Jones, a Vietnam vet born in Kansas City, MO (swing state alert!), was a career military officer rising to one of the highest posts possible. Now retired, Jones has been critical of the number of troops currently in Afghanistan. He's been appointed to independent posts by both the Democratic Congress and the Republican-run State Department Jones currently is the president and CEO of the Institute for 21st Century...

As we’ve pointed out recently, the official Barack Obama campaign web site is full of utterly amateurish security problems, such as open directory listings. LGF reader EC Marm points out that the campaign is now advertising for a “security expert:” Barack Obama | Change We Can Believe In | Secure a Website and an Obama Victory. Obama for America is looking for a network security expert who wants to play a key role in a historic political campaign and help elect Barack Obama as the next President of the United States.In this role, you will be responsible for:Analyzing the network...

Minnesotan Jim Johnson, the disciplined, discreet and obsessively meticulous vice presidential vetter for Barack Obama, is a stalwart of the Washington establishment. In the mid-1990s, he headed up a power trifecta: mortgage giant Fannie Mae, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Brookings Institution, one of the city's most prominent think tanks. At various times, political insiders have floated his name in Democratic administrations for White House chief of staff, Treasury secretary and president of the World Bank. His circumspect ways - rare in a town known for its shameless attention seekers - have helped make...

Good energy policy is easy to distinguish from bad energy policy: Good policy leads to more supplies of affordable energy and bad policy leads to less. A few recently proposed bills, such as the American Energy Production Act of 2008 (S. 2973), introduced by Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), and the Affordable Fuel for Consumers Act of 2008 (H.R. 6009), introduced by Representative Phil English (R-PA), seek to free up domestic energy supplies by undoing past constraints , including eliminating restrictions on domestic oil production. Unfortunately for consumers, the energy bill on the fast track right now is the Consumer-First Energy...

On December 31, 2010, the low tax rates on capital gains and dividends enacted in 2003 will increase to the higher level that applied prior to that year. Many economists agree that the expiration of these tax cuts will discourage investment and slow economic growth. The United States already has one of the world’s highest capital gains tax rates. This paper examines the economic effects of allowing the tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividend income to increase in 2011. Because the economy would suffer from these tax increases, Congress should act now to make permanent the existing tax...

...Again let me conclude by reiterating that both Obama and Democratic leadership proposing this bill have stated that the WPT is not likely to reduce the cost of refined oil. Their solution is not designed to provide measures to reduce the cost at the pump, but rather to redistribute the tax revenues generated under the WPT. The WPT amounts to nothing more than collusion between the oil monopolies and our government. The WPT creates a policy by which oil companies are allowed to retain record profits so long as the government gets their cut. Today we have a government that...

Leftism Brings Economic Catastrophe       By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, June 10, 2008 A recent International Monetary Fund research report listed the countries expected to suffer the worst currency depreciation—that is, the worst inflation—this year. Zimbabwe (a mind-boggling 300,000 percent-plus), Venezuela (25.7 percent), Bolivia (15.1 percent), Nicaragua (13.8 percent), and Argentina (9.2 percent) are the top five. What do these countries have in common? You could reply in two ways: 1) they are poorly governed; 2) they are leftist governments, which is simply another way of saying that they are poorly governed. Indeed, it is difficult...

WASHINGTON — With gasoline prices topping $4 a gallon, Senate Democrats want the government to grab some of the billions of dollars in profits being taken in by the major oil companies. The Democrats' energy package also would: — Make oil and gas price gouging a federal crime, with stiff penalties of up to $5 million during a presidentially declared energy emergency. — Authorize the Justice Department to bring charges of price fixing against countries that belong to the OPEC oil cartel. — Require traders to put up more collateral in the energy futures markets to curb speculation.

NEW YORK: It's unusual. But, it's a fact. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic party's presidential nominee, is seeking the blessings of Hanuman in his battle for the White House. The 46-year-old senator from Illinois, who defeated his rival Hillary Clinton in an epic 17-month long electoral battle for Democratic party nomination, carries a "tiny monkey god" apparently representing "Hanuman" with him for good luck. A recent photo posted on Time's White House Photo of the Day collection shows the first ever Black-American nominee of a major US party for the Presidential elections carries with him a bracelet belonging to an...

Following are two poems by Barack Obama that were published in the Spring 1981 issue of “Feast,” a 51-page student literary journal that described itself as "a semi-annual journal of short poetry and fiction collected from the Occidental College community.” The journal is no longer published, according to a college spokesman.

There is already a widespread consensus that Barack Obama will say whatever he has to say to get elected. His own pastor, Jeremiah Wright, said that he understood why Obama had to distance himself from him to avoid unfavorable attention. Obama also put on an American flag pin (perhaps for the first time) along with an Israel flag pin to talk to AIPAC, but he would probably wear a Palestinian flag pin if he spoke to the International Solidarity Movement. We also recall Yassir Arafat’s technique of saying in English what he wanted the West to believe while using Arabic...

Obama has succeeded in separating the wheat from the chaff in the Democrat party. We hear about these groups of disaffected Hillary voters who are resolved not to vote for Obama. A full 59% of Hillary voters in the West Virginia primary said that if Obama got the nomination, they would either vote for McCain or not vote at all. Obama and the DNC are desperately trying to unite the party, and though intra-party squabbles are usually ironed out by November, this year is without precedent. One cannot assume, as they say, that past experience is an accurate predictor of...

If you're wondering how low the Obama campaign will sink and how eagerly the media will abet them in their unfair attacks, you might want to take a look at my article on NRO today which details how Newsweek facilitates the Obama campaign's slandering of Joe Lieberman. The Obama campaign accuses Lieberman of "half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim," an accusation which demonstrably not true, and Newsweek printed without bothering to ask Lieberman about it. After reading my article, Geraghty notes that Newsweek has established quite the pattern of being in the tank for Obama...

Newsweek has a piece this week on Barack Obama — titled “His Jewish Problem: A Myth?” — that is an absolutely Herculean feat of water-carrying for the Illinois senator. But before tackling the factual problems, the article’s biggest problem needs to be addressed — Newsweek aids and abets the Obama campaign’s decision to slander Joe Lieberman: (From Newsweek) In a brief but animated Senate floor confrontation last week, according to a campaign aide who asked for anonymity when talking about private discussions, Obama told Lieberman he was surprised by Lieberman’s personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors...

... McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) fastened on a Wall Street Journal report that said that Jim Johnson, the mortgage executive leading Obama's vice presidential hunt, had received preferential home loans. ... the Republican's chief economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said the reported loans to Johnson from Countrywide Financial raised troubling questions. "And I thought it was remarkable that Senator Obama could talk about housing, talk about ethics, and fail to mention that he entrusted the single most important decision in his campaign, the choice of the vice presidentil running mate, to a gentlemen, Mr. Johnson, who benifitted...