Free Republic

Islamabad: Several clerics have issued fatwas against former Pakistani minister Sherry Rehman and declared her an infidel for calling for changes in the blasphemy law, prompting civil society activists to register a complaint with police in the port city of Karachi today. Media reports said the imam of Sultan Masjid, one of Karachi's biggest mosques, declared Rehman a 'kaafir' (infidel) and 'wajib-ul-qatl' (fit to be killed) while delivering a sermon after the Friday prayers. The mosque has close ties to the Saudi Arabian government. Islamic hardliners who organised a massive rally in Karachi today also issued a pamphlet that named...

SNIP...I’ll reserve final judgment until I read the entire piece. But based on these excerpts — which presumably reflect the thrust of the 10,000-word article — what is striking is the degree of self-pity we find in Obama’s advisers, which is reflected in the president’s words and attitude as well. Team Obama sounds nothing so much as overmatched and overwhelmed, unable to understand what has gone wrong, and increasingly bitter toward the nation’s capital and the pace and nature of politics.

John McCain — who built his political persona and his 2008 presidential campaign around the claim that he’s a “maverick” — told Newsweek recently: “I never considered myself a maverick.” When POLITICO asked McCain about the contradiction at the Capitol this week, the Arizona Republican grew visibly irritated and snapped: “I’ve been called a thousand things. It’s absolutely ridiculous.”He said 48 percent of the homeowners in his state are underwater on their mortgages. He said he’s always “done what’s best for my state and the nation.” Then he said it again, adding, “People can consider me whatever they want.” And...

Here is video of the implosion of Texas Stadium this morning, April 11, 2010. Texas Stadium was the home of the Dallas Cowboys from 1971-2008. They moved into Cowboys Stadium to begin the 2009 season.

RUSH: Nancy Pelosi says she does not have the votes to pass health care reform in the House of Representatives. She made that announcement not long ago. House Dems do not have the votes to pass the Senate bill. Don't have the votes. It's amazing. It's an amazing thing what one election can do, just one election. I have always said that elections have consequences. RUSH: You gotta hear this. Scott Brown shows up in Washington today, folks. This is hilarious. It's hilarious and predictable. I told Cookie, I want a montage of the questions, the initial questions that he...

Consumer Credit Plunges $17.5 Billion On Consensus Of -$5 Billion, Largest Drop On Record Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/08/2010 15:15 -0500 US consumers have said "enough" - in November consumer borrowing plunged by seasonally adjusted $17.5 billion, the largest drop in history, on a -$5 billion consensus... and the market doesn't move one bit. Quants 1: Efficient markets 0. In November total credit dropped at a whopping 8.5% annualized rate, and while auto-related nonrevolving loans dropped a mere -2.9%, revolving credit plunged a stunning 18.5% annualized. This is a full blown consumer borrowing revolt. Here is the month over...

Funny things happen when the government borrows trillions and transfers a rising chunk of it to individuals: GDP goes up and so does the dependence on government borrowing. Frequent contributor B.C. submitted a fascinating and deeply disturbing chart which depicts government transfers skyrocketing to 22% of personal consumption and 20% of personal income. That means that one out of every five dollars in personal income now comes from the Federal government. Note that this is fully triple the 7% rate at the end of the great postwar Bull market (1967). Also note that the percentage of income has leaped from...

The U.S. dollar continued to tumble against most Asian currencies Thursday, prompting a wave of foreign-exchange intervention by central banks in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Thailand seeking to limit damage to their export industries. Traders said the dollar selloff is unlikely to fade soon, given the prospect for a long period of low U.S. interest rates to support a sluggish U.S. economy and increasing signs central banks in Asia will begin tightening monetary policies in the months ahead. Surprisingly strong employment data in Australia bolstered speculation the Reserve Bank of Australia — which Tuesday became the first among...

Never has an administration who had more firepower at their disposal, been set to so totally fail in the next six to eight weeks. It is nearly a foregone conclusion. It is nearly unavoidable. And it defies all logic given the sizable majority the administration has in both houses of Congress. Since I was the first pundit to predict Obama's presidency (Dec 2006) it behooves me to tell you the course I believe the next few weeks will take and effectively halt the radical transformation that the left appeared unstoppable with only months ago. 1. Health Care's long and painful...

Here is video from Turkey of how NOT to implode a building! The building used to house a Flour Factory, and when the planned implosion took place, instead of collapsing, the building rolled over onto its side and ended up upside down on its roof right up against an apartment building. Sky News reports there were no casualties. . . . . . (Watch Video)

Democrats have big majorities in both houses of Congress, but cracks are emerging — both legislatively and politically — that threaten to pit liberals and centrists against each other. Where President Bush was able to enforce tight discipline on the Republican Conference while his political advisers exercised an iron grip on the national party, President Obama and his advisers have been less able to do so. That, political watchers say, is not unusual, especially for a Democratic president. “The Democrats have always been herding cats,” said Rhodes Cook, an independent political analyst. “They’ve always been considered to be the more...

The GOP's top Internet official is leaving the Republican National Committee. Arguably the most respected technocrat in the Republican Party, Cyrus Krohn is just the latest in a string of officials to resign from the RNC; last week, the RNC's finance director quit. But because GOP Chairman Michael Steele made leveraging the Internet to attract voters to the Republican Party a top priority ina tech summit two weeks ago, Krohn's departure comes as an especially heavy blow -- not just to the RNC, but to the conservative blogosphere. A veteran of Microsoft and Yahoo, Krohn joined the RNC in July...

The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states -- and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president! The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says...

Is Credit Default Swap Litigation the Next Big Thing? Robin Sparkman 10-03-2008 It seems that hardly a day goes by anymore without someone predicting with utmost confidence that boom times for litigators are just over the horizon. Thursday's prognostication, courtesy of a media lunch hosted Wednesday by Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker: It's going to be all about the credit swaps. Robert Claassen, chair of the firm's derivatives group, and Keith Miller, chair of the credit crisis group, told reporters that the banking industry's implosion means that banks with a piece of the $43 trillion market in these unregulated instruments...

Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA: Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra. "You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It's still a pig." "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink." "We've had enough of the same old thing." The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."

Obama: "Lipstick on a pig, still a pig."

A national Associated TV/Zogby International telephone poll of 1,011 likely voters conducted July 31-Aug. 1 finds Republican Sen. John McCain taking a razor-thin 42%-41% lead over Democrat Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the U.S. presidency. The margin between the candidates is statistically insignificant, but demonstrates a notable turn-around from the Reuters/Zogby poll of July 7-9 that showed Obama ahead, 46%-36% in a four-way match-up that included Libertarian candidate Bob Barr of Georgia and liberal independent candidate Ralph Nader. McCain made significant gains at Obama’s expense among some of what had been Obama’s strongest demographic groups. For example: McCain...

FORT MYERS, Fla. - Rudy Giuliani loves to prove people wrong. He's trying to do it again in Florida. Polls show the former New York mayor, last year's national front-runner, trailing badly in the state where he has bet almost everything in his pursuit of the Republican presidential nomination. If he wins on Tuesday, he will have earned the biggest, brashest "I told you so" of his political career. Lose, and Giuliani may be uttering his final words of the campaign. "Wednesday morning, we'll make a decision," he told reporters between campaign appearances. "In the past, I've done the impossible...

Pope Benedict Encourages "Child-Poor" Europe to Open up to Life Called attention to the demographic implosion in Europe By John-Henry Westen MARIAZELL, Austria, September 10, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In his homily delivered Saturday at Mariazell during a Mass to mark the 850th anniversary of the Marian shrine's founding, Pope Benedict XVI called attention to the demographic implosion in Europe for a second time on his pastoral visit to Austria.  "Europe has become child-poor: we want everything for ourselves, and place little trust in the future," he told the assembled crowd. On Friday, Benedict addressed political leaders in the nation pointing...

Rebuilding Military Requires Sacrifices But Can Be Done, Experts Say By Monisha Bansal CNSNews.com Staff Writer June 27, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Asserting that the U.S. military is "stretched thin," policy experts debated Tuesday whether the country can afford to rebuild the military to necessary levels and how it should be done. "We should spend whatever it takes to make sure we're secure, but by doing it in a very candid way," Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. "Funding the military in the next decade is going to be very...