Free Republic

There was no surprise with the announced third-quarter GDP for the U.S. economy (+3.5%), however, there was some personal disappointment for me. The disappointment relates to the fact that few, if any, commentators were willing to speak up and exclaim that “the emperor is wearing no clothes.” The reason that this is such a big disappointment is that the “official” number for U.S. Q3 GDP cannot withstand the slightest analytical scrutiny. So, allow me to analytically dissect this obviously fraudulent number. Let's start with the big picture. At the end of 2008, official GDP was -6.4%. This was also likely...

(IsraelNN.com) Judge Richard Goldstone, whose recent United Nations Human Rights Council investigation purported to find evidence of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, once indicted a fictional Serbian character and a dead man for war crimes as well. As in Gaza, those indictments were also allegedly based on "eyewitness testimony." The problem for NATO forces in tracking down the serial rapist was that Gruban from Bijelo Polje, also known as Gruban Malic, is a fictional character. established by the United Nations in 1993. In 1995, one year into his term as chief ICTY prosecutor, Goldstone presented an indictment of several Serbs...

Here's the Democratic National Committee's take on CBS's decision to kill a slanderous, unfounded attack on Ronald Reagan: "CBS has decided to pull its miniseries about Ronald Reagan after a Republican National Committee-organized campaign complaining that it didn't lionize their favorite president enough. "CBS's decision is — to put it mildly — disturbing. Essentially the network has given the ruling party veto power over the content it puts on the air. "No, there are no First Amendment violations here. The RNC protested the content of a program, which is its right, and CBS voluntarily pulled that program off the air,...

It is the year 22006 A.D. and through the wonders of literary license, we are able to look down on a group of scientists who have made a stunning and grisly discovery. An archaeological expedition is being led by Professor Ralph Jameson from Belize University. Jameson is one of the foremost authorities in pre-Ice Age antiquity. Jameson's discoveries have changed the way the world views North America's ancient history. During a trip to the North American continent, which for the past 18,000 plus years has been buried under more than a mile of glacial ice, Jameson is accompanied by a...

NEW YORK - Collectively, we are fascinated by the super-rich. We devour their biographies. We hang on their advice. Maybe we even hope for their downfall. But in our attempts to explain the ultra-rich--and their super-inflated bank accounts--we are often guilty of reducing real people to mere caricatures. There is the monopolist. The oracle. The genius. The thief. With the Forbes Fictional 15, we have taken the opposite approach--fiction’s caricatures are elevated to the status of real people. To qualify for the Fictional 15, we insisted that members be both fictional (in the sense that we excluded mythological and folkloric...