Free Republic

Jeb thinks he can beat Trump by attacking his liberal past. He clearly doesn't understand the nature of this beast.I wrote two months ago that Donald Trump is a mirror image of the conservative psyche, a perfect distillation of the Tea Party id: No ideas, no substance – just bluster and fiery platitudes. Everything that’s happened since has confirmed my initial suspicion. Trump has continued to repackage shopworn stupidities and beam them back at his audiences, and conservatives can’t get enough of it. If you’ve followed Trump’s ongoing spat with Jeb Bush, you’ve probably noticed that Trump is winning. And...

After six years in office, President Obama says his basketball skills went from "nothing but net" to nothing. "I’ll be honest with you: my game is a little broke, I've been a little busy," he told a crowd of students and faculty at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis on Friday, where he touted his new plan to give students who meet certain academic standards two free years of community college. "The risk-reward ratio starts shifting. The chances of an Achilles tear or an ACL injury is increasing each month, and then the satisfaction that I get from playing diminishes...

EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE, SO HERE’S BARACK OBAMA AWKWARDLY DANCING WITH SANTA By Emily Zanotti on 12.5.14 Is it just me, or has this been the longest week in history? Literally, everything is terrible. I don't even know why.

William Devane (IMDb page), who plays “President James Heller” on Fox’s prime time 24: Live Another Day, told USA Today that “obviously I’m a big fan of Obama, as a guy who’s smart and articulate” and, in his acting, “I say to myself, ‘what has got to be going on in the private side of this guy’s brain’ – the pressure, the racism that is thrown out — and he handles it with such dignity.’”

<p>There have been bad presidents--see Jimmy Carter. Yet has there ever been a president as staggeringly incompetent as Barack Obama? Really,can there be any other explanation for his performance as president than the man is, well...a moron?</p>

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) on Wednesday morning said members of Congress are like the parents of everyone in the country and said these "parents" need to act quickly to protect their toddlers from the possible fallout of a debt default. "We, as custodians of this great nation, members of the United States Congress, are like parents," she said on the House floor. "And therefore I ask any parent that is listening: How long do they wait before they see a toddler fall, or do they leap toward that toddler so that they know the strength of that parent is...

Road To Darkness I really don't understand George Bush. Why can't he say: "I was convinced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction but apparently our intelligence was faulty. I'm sorry to have misled you, but getting rid of Saddam is still a good idea, etc., and so forth"? No, there is apparently something in the Bush genes that forbids ever admitting to having made a mistake. Such arrogance cost his father a second term, and it could do the same to the son's political ambition. In the father's case, he refused to apologize to the American people for breaking...

Israel is denying. Israel is in denial that Mubarak was a reliable ally, that Morsi was “okay,” that Morsi’s ouster is an advantage or a disadvantage. Everything happening in Egypt is an internal Egyptian matter which does not concern Israel, and in fact contributes to the weakening of the Arab world. … In fact, as far as Israel is concerned, nothing happened in Egypt. There is no immediate or essential effect on Israel, on its status and on its policy in the region. But we are witnessing deep denial here. Supposedly, what is happening in Egypt justifies inactivity and political...

This California Councilwoman opposes open carry of unloaded handguns as people can even be shot by ‘unloaded guns!’

CNN's Jessica Yellin speaks to Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter about the hits and misses of the first presidential debate. [Snip] JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT:  That's right, Candy.  I'm here with Stephanie Cutter, who is the deputy campaign manager for the Obama campaign, and was also a staffer inside the White House.  You know the president well.  And, Stephanie, let me just ask you, plainly, where was the passion we see on the campaign trail from the president?  Why wasn't it there tonight? STEPHANIE CUTTER, OBAMA DEPUTY CAMPAIGN MANAGER:  Well, you know, I think we came...

An effort to "expose" climate change skeptics will instead show that Gore is a charlatan. Unfortunately for Al Gore, but fortunately for the rest of us, much of what we will hear in his 24 Hours of Reality extravaganza starting Wednesday evening is pure fantasy. Gore is completely wrong when he tells us that the science of climate change is settled. If his “Climate Reality Project” actually did promote climate realism, he would tell us that the science is in a period of negative discovery — the more we learn, the more we realize we do not understand about this,...

Gretchen, bless her pea pickin' heart. I'm sure her momma loves her. She needs to find a job on CNN Morning or somewhere else her positive views on the wealth tax would be better received. This is re her segment with Stuart Varney just now.

Jimmy Carter's Role on the Korean Peninsula Has Ended Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived in Seoul on Thursday accompanied by the former leaders of Ireland, Finland and Norway after a trip to Pyongyang. The group, who call themselves the "Elders," signally failed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. It was Carter's third trip to the North and the second during which Kim could not be bothered to meet him. Nonetheless, after telling reporters prior to the trip that South Korea is responsible for the North’s food shortage and saying he wanted to meet the reclusive leader, he came...

Vice President Joe Biden spoke to the PBS NewsHour tonight with the most direct US governent comments yet about the gathering Egypt protests against President Hosni Mubarak's 29-year reign. ... Ahead of a day that could prove decisive, NewsHour host Jim Lehrer asked Biden if the time has "come for President Mubarak of Egypt to go?" Biden answered: "No. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that – to be more responsive to some... of the needs of the people out there." Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator...

The chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security Peter King, R-New York, announced today that he will introduce a bill that would ban knowingly carrying a firearm within 1,000 feet of certain high-profile government officials. [Mayor Michael Bloomberg] and I have discussed that we are introducing in the next several weeks legislation which would make it a federal crime to carry a weapon within 1,000 feet of any event which is attended by the President, the Vice President, members of the Senate, members of the House of Representatives, Cabinet officials, including the CIA director as well as federal judges,”...

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine: Video Members of a bipartisan group of lawmakers called the Congressional Prayer Caucus want to make sure President Obama knows the country's national motto. Forty-one Republicans and one of the five Democrats from the caucus sent a letter to the president asking him to correct a mistake he made during a speech last month in Jakarta, Indonesia when he said -- quote -- "In the United States, our motto is E Pluribus Unum -- out of many, one." The lawmakers point out the official national motto -- approved by Congress in 1956...

Three years ago, Bryant Park Hotel doorman Greg Smith, 46, once a diehard supporter of the Clintons, put his life on hold to cam paign for Barack Obama. Shortly after The Post fea tured Smith's conversion on the front page in April 2007, Obama called the doorman and asked him to introduce him on the cam paign trail. Now, 18 months after Obama's inaugura tion, Smith says he's losing hope for the change he once believed in. He tells ANNIE KARNI his story.

Although the media took last week’s announcement of comedian Jon Stewart’s "Rally to Restore Sanity" like it was manna falling from heaven, some Democrats are concerned it could hurt them in the upcoming midterm elections. Scheduling such an event on the Saturday before Election Day, when field operatives should be diligently working on Get Out The Vote efforts in their districts, could be tremendously counterproductive. On the other hand, as Politico’s Ben Smith noted Monday, there’s already a big Democrat rally planned in October: Stewart hasn’t mentioned that labor groups and other institutional Democratic organizations are already planning a big...

This is old, it’s tiring, and it’s really starting to tick me off. Chris Matthews with Andrea Mitchell yesterday afternoon is promoting his upcoming special on “The New Right” and the Tea Party. Mitchell gives him the chance to promote the show … and Matthews feeds right into the lefty paranoia machine. “They’ve got guns. It’s scary.” I love the sound bites with the militia. I love the conflation. I love the way everyone in the Tea Party is framed as a group that wants to wrestle the government from the “enemy”, like the British? You have to watch to...

Filmmaker James Cameron garnered some headlines recently when he called BP "morons" for their handling of the Gulf oil spill (Cameron was asked to offer advice on how to fix the problem). "Over the last few weeks I've watched as we all have with growing sort of horror and heartache watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking, those morons don't know what they're doing," Cameron said last week. Now, Cameron is clarifying his remarks, telling CNN's Larry King that his words were "taken out of context."