Free Republic

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTI- . . . No, wait, that bumper sticker expired January 20. Under the stimulus bill, there’s a new $1.3 trillion bills-for-bumpers program whereby, if you peel off old slogans now recognized as environmentally harmful (“QUESTION AUTHORITY”), you can trade them in for a new “CELEBRATE CONFORMITY” sticker, complete with a holographic image of President Obama that never takes his eyes off you. “The right-wing extremist Republican base is back!” warns the Democratic National Committee. These right-wing extremists have been given their marching orders by their masters: They’ve been directed to show up at...

Leave it to Democratic Party operatives to describe citizen protesters as acting like “organized mobs.” Such an unimaginative contradiction in terms surely indicates a new level of desperation in the liberal camp. Then again, the same smirking liberal pointmen introduced the phrase “tea-bagging” to a general population heretofore blessedly ignorant of that particular sexual fetish. (Shamefully, even Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin has used the expression in public. It’s another indication of the degree to which civil discourse has degenerated — no small thanks to Durbin’s own comparison of U.S. soldiers to “Nazis” on the Senate floor. But back to...

If ya can't shut em up, shut em out!I guess Obama and his thug base weren't kidding when they said they were going to punch back twice as hard. In a clear effort to put down dissent from what they claim are coordinated angry mobs, Team O did a little community organizing of their own. What better way to show America that the opposition is a coordinated mass of mobs than send in one of your own. Chicago style. Protests, passions roiling town hall meeting on health care Several hundred people, mostly opponents, wound up outside or packing a hallway...

Sorry for the Vanity, but I figured someone here would have the answer: A caller to my local radio show said there was footage on Morning Joe (Scarborough) of union thugs beating a guy protesting Obamacare and they were laughing about it. Anyone see that or know what he's talking about?

Get this: The party of "community orga nizers" is now whining that President Obama's critics are organizing com munities -- against his health-care scheme. The nerve of 'em, huh? Faced with mushrooming opposition to ObamaCare, Democrats have launched a multi-media campaign that attacks foes as "extremists" who've "called out the mob" to "destroy President Obama" and "intimidate and silence regular people." They cite "the playbook of high-level Republican political operatives." Actually, that sounds more like the tactics of the Chicago street, where Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel cut their political teeth. Indeed, you can almost hear Richard Nixon grousing about...

The first ammendment gives each of us the right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The townhall meetings are a perfect place for such redress. In a concerted effort the Democrats, lead by Speaker Pelosi, are trying to intimidate any dissenters by painting them as mobs, paid schills and her latest as Nazis. I'm not a Lawyer so I don't know if this a technical violation but it certainly violates the spirit of the first ammendment.

Unlike candidate Barack Obama, President Barack Obama has been unable to use mob anger to his advantage. The White House position on a comprehensive release of terrorist interrogation materials and on potential prosecution of Bush administration officials is incoherent and stultifying. Casting himself as restorer of national decency, Obama first denounced tough interrogations as a betrayal of American ideals. Yet he recommended “reflection, not retribution,” vowing to “move forward” and not prosecute interrogators because “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” However, days later, he decided that laying blame for the past...

NEW YORK – A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday when "out-of-control" shoppers desperate for bargains broke down the doors at a 5 a.m. sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said. At least four other people, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening. Shoppers stepped over the man on...

Mugabe's mobs force 40,000 to flee homes By Sebastien Berger, Southern Africa Correspondent Last Updated: 8:31PM BST 08/05/2008 Around 40,000 Zimbabwean farm workers have had to flee as a result of the violence inflicted by Robert Mugabe’s mobs since the country’s general election in March, a union leader said today. The Movement for Democratic Change also said that the violence is getting worse, with three of its supporters shot dead earlier this week. Farm workers, whose livelihoods have been destroyed since Mr Mugabe launched his assault on white-owned land in 2000, are often supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic...

Twelve village churches were burned and ransacked in eastern India over Christmas as Hindu extremists clashed with members of the Christian minority. One person died and more than 25 were injured in the violence in Orissa state. It was sparked after Hindu hard-liners objected to the scale of a Christmas Eve prayer vigil, according to the Catholic Bishops Conference in New Delhi. More than 450 police had to be deployed to quell the violence, which saw groups of Hindus rampaging through villages in the Kandhamal district, burning the mud and thatch village churches. By yesterday afternoon police said the worst...

" While Danish milk products were dumped in the Middle East, fervent rightwing Americans started buying Bang & Olufsen stereos and Lego. In the first quarter of this year Denmark’s exports to the US soared 17%. The British writer Christopher Hitchens organised a buy-Danish campaign. Among the thousands of emails sent to Rose was one from an American soldier serving in Iraq. “He told me he was sitting in Iraq, watching a game of football and drinking a can of Carlsberg,” Rose said. Rose is not the only person to have prospered from the crisis. Re-elected last year, Mr Rasmussen...

TOUTED as a celebration of sport, culture and national unity, the Ethnic Minority Games in southwestern China descended into a farce of cross-dressing cheating and mob violence, state media reported. Athletes representing China's 55 ethnic minorities assembled in Yunnan province last week to compete in blow-pipe darts, horse-riding events and other traditional sports. But blind pursuit of victory lead to some unorthodox tactics, Xinhua news agency reported. Results of the women's dragon-boat racing were reviewed after athletes complained of "big women with Adam's apples", Xinhua said. Referees subsequently found that several of the competitors were men wearing wigs.

Mobs cheer British deaths as Basra slips out of control By Oliver Poole, Iraq Correspondent (Filed: 08/05/2006) It took the soldiers from 1 Bn Light Infantry all the night and most of yesterday to remove the wreckage of the Lynx helicopter that came down in Basra at the weekend, killing five British servicemen on board. As they used heavy lifting equipment to separate twisted metal from the debris of a house that the aircraft had crashed into, military experts were trying to establish whether the crash was caused by mechanical failure or hostile fire. British officers believe the most likely...

An angry mob surrounded a motorist near Little River Thursday evening, shouting and pounding on her Chevrolet Blazer just moments after she hit a 6-year-old boy, Miami police said. When Miami paramedics arrived on the scene, the crowd turned its rage on them, pounding and kicking their rescue truck, and impeding their work to help save the boy, police said.

November 12, 2005 Paris, France After watching the awful French riots on TV, I knew I had to help. Early this week several fellow activists and myself flew to Paris with the hope of successfully ending this conflict like we almost did the war in Iraq. After landing at Charles de Gaulle International Airport we rented a cute little green Renault and drove to our hotel. I don’t know what it is with the rental cars over here, but the inside of this one smelled like a flatulent chain-smoking Cocker Spaniel soaked in sweat. We drove fast with the windows...

Latin America: The past week's high political turmoil in Ecuador is about more than oil or bananas. It's about a terrifying descent into instability that could hit every country in the hemisphere. The turmoil in the tiny South American country shows no sign of ending. Another president was thrown out — the third in a decade. His successor is widely regarded as an ignorant weakling. And no one thinks he's going to last. After all, Ecuador has had seven presidents since 1995. Maybe that's why Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice turned her attention from a milestone NATO treaty signing in...

By KADYR TOKTOGULOV Associated Press Writer The Associated Press BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan Mar 27, 2005 — Two rival parliaments vied for power in Kyrgyzstan on Sunday, and the head of Europe's leading security organization tried to resolve the turmoil in the Central Asia country three days after its longtime leader fled to Russia in the face of massive protests. Kyrgyzstan has both Russian and U.S. bases on its soil and like neighboring Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan had been ruled by authoritarian chiefs until President Askar Akayev left Thursday after 15 years in power. Akayev's departure made Kyrgyzstan the third former Soviet...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - After basking in the democratic glow of people power movements in Georgia and Ukraine, the United States appears to have been caught flatfooted by the turmoil in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan. AFP Photo If critics accuse Washington of orchestrating the wave of protests that swept the country, US officials say they have been scrambling to keep up with developments since the hasty departure of President Askar Akayev. "That is certainly not something we would have encouraged or necessarily foreseen, or upon which we based our planning," said a senior State Department official who asked not...

9 French troops and a U.S. citizen were killed when Ivory Coast fighter planes bombed a rebel position in the north of that country. The French have hit back, destroying 5 Ivorian helicopters and 2 bombers near the capital city of Yamoussoukro. Ivorians aren’t happy with France’s reprisals. Angry mobs are rioting, looting French properties, and yelling “Everybody get your Frenchman!” and “French go home!” Well, well, well, isn’t France’s criticism of the U.S. Coalition presence in Iraq a bit like the pot calling the kettle black? Listen to the French government’s words, as reported by the BBC: President Jacques...

Protests barely make a ripple By Kathleen Parker Tribune Media Services Republican National Convention NEW YORK - It is hard to ignore Shakespeare most any day, especially here in the theater nexus of civilization. All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, indeed. But the Bard's words are particularly wounding -- cutting deeply into one's pride and sense of human purpose -- during Republican convention week as thousands play their assigned roles to an audience composed mostly of one another. Act I: The Mammoth Protest in which either 100,000 or 500,000 people, depending on whose...