Free Republic

A rich former Google executive pleaded with Barack Obama to raise his taxes Monday, boosting the US leader's push to get well off Americans to bankroll his $447 billion jobs plan. Obama stormed through the American west on a three-day tour devoted to hammering Republicans and piling up cash for his 2012 reelection bid, which is overshadowed by 9.1 percent unemployment and a wobbling economy. Former Google brand manager Doug Edwards became an instant media sensation when he joined billionaire investor Warren Buffett in calling for those who had done well in America to do more to help the struggling...

----snip---- Three things would change. I'd bet a round of drinks he would ... 1. Frame everything around the user experience. Citizens are users, and the government delivers services. Guess what? Since World War II, the basic framework of our bureaucracy hasn't changed, just grown on rotting foundations. Now it's a tangled, clumsy, wobbling mass of weeds. President Jobs would restore a sense of purpose by reorienting the whole thing around people. Human-centered government begins with insisting on only releasing services that people will be irresistibly drawn to use and love. To get there, begin with keen observation. Look for...

...I am seized by each, and moved by its potential to change our world. Return of the Automobile as a Sexual Object ...That’s why the Obama administration — while it still holds the keys to the big automakers — ought to put some style fascists into the mix... Intellectual Property Developers ...A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators... and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business... An Equal Right to Pollute (and...

... one starts to wonder if the country wouldn't be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the health-care system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.

Tenant activist-turned-suburban landlord Chris Daly certainly knows a good deal when he sees one. In February, the San Francisco supervisor, who has had his share of battles with developers over the years, scooped up a Fairfield house for $270,000, Solano County documents show. The four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath house had last been assessed at $514,686.He's now renting out the house, Daly told The Chronicle's Marisa Lagos. Bonus for the supervisor - there's no rent control.Daly went bargain-hunting in Fairfield again in April and landed another four-bedroom, 2 1/2-bath home - this one with a pool, on a cul-de-sac - for $275,000....

First lady Michelle Obama called her "current life" in the White House "a very blessed situation, because I have what most families don't have -- tons of support all around, not just my mother, but staff and administration. I have a chief of staff and a personal assistant, and everyone needs that." "Everyone should have a chief of staff and a set of personal assistants," Obama said with a laugh as she spoke before a crowd of business executives meeting today during a "Corporate Voices for Working Families" conference at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.

President-elect Barack Obama’s vacation in Hawaii at $9 million mansion demonstrates his limousine liberal side — just a week after he called for “new ethics” on Wall Street, which he has condemned for “greed” for and luxury living while the rest of the U.S. is grinding through a recession. The economic downturn, moreover, Obama recently told reporters, “is going to get worse.” As far as the President-elect is concerned, however, these economic realities for regular folks don’t apply to him. Obama, his wife, and his children, as well as leftist apparatchiks, have rented three mansions on the beach in Hawaii....

I can understand why Warren Buffett wanted to teach Nicole Buffett, who gets by on $40,000 a year she earns as an artist and reportedly goes without health insurance, that she should not act like a spoiled brat. But the punishment did not fit the crime. The letter he wrote Nicole seems especially cold: "I have not emotionally or legally adopted you as a grandchild, nor have the rest of my family adopted you as a niece or a cousin," the magazine quotes the letter as saying. "He signed the letter 'Warren'."

(Crain’s) — The best-funded political campaign in American history says news organizations will have to pay—in some cases almost $2,000 each—if they want to cover Barack Obama’s election-night celebration in Chicago. A memo sent to news organizations on Tuesday by the Obama campaign says credentials will cost $715 to $1,815, depending on whether electrical and phone lines are needed and whether an indoor or outdoor seat is requested for the event, which is expected to be held outside the evening of Nov. 4 in Grant Park.

Mr. Gilmore called Mr. Warner an "elite limousine liberal," a "knave" on foreign policy, and a "piranha" hungry for tax money. Mr. Gilmore repeatedly hit Mr. Warner, his successor as governor, for breaking a 2001 campaign promise by raising taxes $1.4 billion.

<p>BANGOR, Maine â€” Stephen King has fired back at conservative critics who attacked him over a remark he made a month ago at a writers symposium for high school students.</p> <p>A blogger jumped on King’s statement at the Library of Congress about the importance of reading in which he suggested poor readers have limited prospects, including service in the Army.</p>

Hoping a new attorney general will be more sympathetic to their cause, John Walker Lindh's parents again asked the White House to commute the sentence of the Marin County man who fought in Afghanistan for the Taliban. The family filed a petition today asking that Lindh's 20-year sentence be commuted. Lindh pleaded guilty in 2002 to providing services to the Taliban and carrying explosives during a felony. His attorneys first applied for a commutation in 2004, and have regularly beseeched the government since then to shorten Lindh's sentence. "We hope that President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush will find...

. "...as a person, I love him,'' the Dalai Lama said about President GW Bush. ``We immediately became friends. He's a very nice person.''

IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT AND THE VICE PRESIDENT, THEY ARE TRAITORS TO AMERICA, AND SO ARE ALL OF THEIR SUPPORTERS. IMPEACH! ANYONE IN CONGRESS WHO REFUSES TO SAVE OUR UNION FROM THESE TRAITORS BY DOING NOTHING NEEDS TO BE RECALLED. SAVE OUR TROOPS!!! SAVE OUR SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS AND JOBS. FEED OUR HUNGRY AND POOR! SAVE THE DROWNING PEOPLE IN NEW ORLEANS! ANYONE WHO MENTIONS PARIS HILTON ONE MORE TIME MUST DIE!

This is about a week old now, but if you haven't seen it, watch until the very end when Edwards answers the question "right or privilege?" Here's the full transcript of the "Right or Privilege" portion: Question: A college education? Edwards: Right. Q: Health care? E: Right. Q: A livable wage? E: Right. Q: Owning a handgun? E: Privilege. Q: American citizenship for someone not born here but has worked here for one year? E: Working for one year? That's a hard one, because I think people have to earn citizenship. I think I would have a period be longer...

LONDON (AFP) - Al Gore said the war in Iraq mirrors the lack of action on climate change in that the best evidence has been ignored, in an interview published Saturday. The United States was sucked in by "crass manipulation" over the moves towards the invasion of Iraq, the former US vice president turned environmental campaigner told British newspaper The Guardian. And Gore, who is repeatedly asked if he will run for office again, said he did not have the skills it takes to get elected as US president -- though he admitted there was no job in the world...

This generation is one that thrives on media publicity, and right now global warming is in the spotlight. From melting icecaps to rising temperatures and sea levels, global warming seems to be the hot topic. With the help of Al Gore's Academy Award-winning film, "An Inconvenient Truth," the issue of global warming has been projected from television screens worldwide, including those at Central York High School. Both Gregory Wimmer and Eric Webb, teachers of global studies and environmental sciences at Central, have used Gore's film as a teaching tool. "In a social studies classroom, "An Inconvenient Truth" allows for an...

Let us say right up front that it's terrific that John Edwards lives in a country where he can lose an election and still land a $480,000 part-time job as a consultant to an investment firm that keeps its hedge funds in the Cayman Islands as a tax shelter for its clients. This truly is the land of opportunity. We're also encouraged to hear that, according to the former Senator's spokesman, "John Edwards is running for President to give every American the opportunities that he's had." While there may not be enough half-a-million-dollar-a-year part-time consulting gigs to go around just...

MIKE BAKER Associated Press RALEIGH, N.C. - Elizabeth Edwards says she is scared of the "rabid, rabid Republican" who owns property across the street from her Orange County home - and she doesn't want her kids going near the gun-toting neighbor. Edwards, the wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, particularly recalls the time neighbor Monty Johnson brought out a gun while chasing workers investigating a right of way off his property. The Edwards family has yet to meet Johnson in person. "I wouldn't be nice to him anyway," Edwards said in an interview. "I don't want my kids anywhere...

NewsMax.com &nbsp; Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2002 Sheila Jackson Lee, Limousine Liberal On her Web site Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee claims, &quot;As your Representative in Congress, I feel that it is my duty to ensure that the government tirelessly works on your behalf.&quot; But in reality she seems to think taxpayers must work tirelessly on her behalf so can be chauffeured one block to work. United Press International noted today that &quot;the fiery liberal&quot; Texas Democrat is under fire in the latest issue of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard. &quot;According to writer Sam Dealey, Jackson Lee has a staff member ...