Free Republic

It's amazing how a few weeks ago the media was talking about how the Rats were favored to win by 20% or more, which everyone here knew was a lie. Then the numbers were tightened up to a 6-8% Rat advantage right before the election. According to these numbers: "28 House seats, 22 were won by 2 percent or less ? 22 of the 28. And of those, 18 were won by less than 5,000 votes, and four of those by less than a thousand votes.? Later he went over the numbers again, and concluded, ?In other words you can...

CRAWFORD, Texas - Anti-war demonstrators said Sunday they hope the end of President Bush's ranch vacation doesn't hurt attendance at their protest during the rest of the summer. They urged opponents of the war in Iraq to come to the five-acre campsite purchased last month by Cindy Sheehan, who resumed her protest a week ago. Sheehan's first trek to Crawford one year ago during Bush's monthlong vacation turned into a 26-day vigil that drew more than 10,000 people and spurred counter-protests by Bush supporters. A few hundred war opponents returned at Thanksgiving, when Bush was at his ranch, and again...

WASHINGTON, August 2, 2006 – The National Guard has exceeded its troop requirement along the southwestern U.S. border by almost 200 servicemembers and is assisting U.S. Border Patrol activities there, a senior Defense Department official said here today. “We were obligated, by Aug. 1, to have 6,000 National Guardsmen deployed to the four-state southwest border region. And, in fact, as of close of business yesterday, we had 6,199 soldiers,” Paul McHale, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, said in an interview. “We kept our commitment to the secretary of defense, Lieutenant General (H Steven) Blum (chief of the National...

Something that I've noticed alot recently is the use of the word "and" when speaking dates and numbers. Examples: 1. Two Thousand AND Six (2006) 2. One Hundred AND Ninety Five (195) 3. The address is Three Hundred AND Seven (307) ------ Street 4. The temperature in ------ is One Hundred AND Two (102) degrees. 5. The driver qualified at One Hundred AND Eighty Six (186) miles per hour. I've noticed news, weather and sportscasters all using the "and" word with numbers. When I went to school back in the 60's and 70's, my classmates and I were reprimanded when...

Orange County has given birth to and/or nurtured its share of people and organizations that have powerfully impacted the Republican Party -- for good or ill. Richard Nixon was born here, and Ronald Reagan's political home base was here. The state's two leading GOP groups -- the Lincoln Club of Orange County and the New Majority -- also originated here. The Lincoln Club was formed in the wake of the bitter 1962 gubernatorial primary between Richard Nixon and Joe Schell. The purpose was to "build Republican strength by lowering the intensity of intra-party warfare and making party politics more orderly...

Sailors' Social Security nos. on Web siteBy LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer 55 minutes ago Sailors man the rails as the amphibious transport dock USS Nashville (LPD 13), an element of the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group (ESG), departs Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Virginia, June 6, 2006. Personal data on 28,000 U.S. sailors and their families appeared on a public Web site this week, the Navy said on Friday, marking the latest in a string of data breaches involving American military personnel. (Matthew Bookwalter/U.S. Navy/Handout/Reuters) WASHINGTON - The Navy has begun a criminal investigation...

Bush's ratings appear to be declining in a three-step process. In the first step, Democrats fell off, while smaller numbers of independents peeled away and support remained strong among Republicans. In the second step, Democratic support hit bottom, while independent support fell to ever-lower levels and support among Republicans began to decline. In step three—which appears to be beginning now—independent support appears to be heading closer to the bottom while significant numbers of Republicans are also expressing disapproval.

In their search for patterns, mathematicians have uncovered unlikely connections between prime numbers and quantum physics. Will the subatomic world help reveal the elusive nature of the primes?In 1972, the physicist Freeman Dyson wrote an article called "Missed Opportunities." In it, he describes how relativity could have been discovered many years before Einstein announced his findings if mathematicians in places like Göttingen had spoken to physicists who were poring over Maxwell's equations describing electromagnetism. The ingredients were there in 1865 to make the breakthrough—only announced by Einstein some 40 years later. It is striking that Dyson should have written about...

God by the NumbersCoincidence and random mutation are not the most likely explanations for some things.by Charles Edward White Math and theology have had a long and checkered relationship. The Babylonians and Mayans both associated numbers with God. In fact, both societies named their gods with numbers. The Mayans used 13 and the Babylonians used 60. In the Greek world, followers of Pythagoras prayed to the first 4 numbers and thought they were the creator. On the other hand, in the 18th century, the French mathematician Laplace told Napoleon he had no need of God even as a hypothesis, and...

All those polling numbers about ballot initiatives got you feeling dazed and confused? You're not alone. With the conflicting numbers shown in recent public opinion polls, many voters must be wondering just what is going on. Check out one poll on Proposition 76, a state spending-cap proposal, and it appears that 58 percent of voters support the initiative while 36 percent oppose it. Check out another poll and it appears that just the opposite is true, with 19 percent saying they support the measure and 65 percent saying they oppose it. Another recent poll shows similar numbers, with 63 percent...

Mathematics students have cause to celebrate. A University of New South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit. What's more, his simple new framework means calculations can be done without trigonometric tables or calculators, yet often with greater accuracy. Established by the ancient Greeks and Romans, trigonometry is used in surveying, navigation, engineering, construction and the sciences to calculate the relationships between the sides and vertices of triangles. "Generations of students have struggled with classical trigonometry because the framework is wrong," says Wildberger, whose book...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seeking to combat rampant identity theft, U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday they may clamp new restrictions on companies that amass and sell social security numbers and other personal information. Executives from ChoicePoint (NYSE:CPS - news) and rival LexisNexis (ELSN.AS)(REL.L) told legislators that they had scaled back the sale of sensitive personal information following revelations in recent weeks that identity thieves gained access to more than 177,000 of the consumer profiles they sell. But lawmakers said during the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that data brokers should not be allowed to sell Social Security...

About a year ago, the Centers for Disease Control issued a highly publicized report stating that obesity-related health problems kill 400,000 Americans every year -- an "epidemic" second only to smoking in causing preventable deaths. The story was big news. A host of outside skeptics, however, such as the Center for Consumer Freedom, questioned the findings, and their efforts eventually forced the CDC to admit that at least part of the study was flawed. Now, despite even more critical evidence, the CDC says its mistakes don't matter.

There are about 25.5 million Iraqis. (Iraq Population/People) That means that 31.3% of the total population voted on 30 Jan 05 in Iraq's first free election in decades. In Iraq, the age distribution is extremely skewed. Over 40% of the current Iraqis are 14 years old and under. (Iraq Population/People) If one assumes that a voter probably was required to be older than 14, then the over 10.2 million youngsters should be excluded from the voting population. It is safe to conclude that at a maximum the voting age population was only 15.3 million people. This further suggests that at...

Recount by the numbers Here are some interesting numbers to mull over: Counties reported: 10, representing ~4% of the statewide vote Rossi's lead over Gregoire in the counties that have reported: +683, or a margin of +0.6686% Net new two-party votes since the machine recount: +57, an increase of 0.06% In the remaining 29 counties, Gregoire led the machine recount by 640 votes, or a margin of 0.0242%. In order for Gregoire to win (or tie), she would need to increase that lead of 640 votes to 683 votes, a 6.7% increase. Simply put, either she has to get the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Offensives Create Surge of Detainees Influx Tests Policies Put in Place In Wake of Scandal at Abu Ghraib ABU GHRAIB, Iraq, Nov. 26 -- More aggressive U.S. military operations in Iraq over the past two months have generated a surge in detainees, nearly doubling the number held by U.S. forces to about 8,300, according to the U.S. general in charge of detention operations. Since early October, the number of detainees in U.S. custody has grown by about 4,000 as a result of assaults on insurgents in Samarra, Fallujah, Mosul, north Babil province and elsewhere, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller said Friday....

Bush election was far from close Fri 05 Nov 2004 Page: A18 Section: Opinion Byline: Lorne Gunter "More Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history." That was the silver lining Howard Dean, a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, found in the American presidential election results. George W. Bush may have won, but Dean was comforting his supporters on the website Democracy for America (www.democracyforamerica.com) by pointing out that the 55.8 million votes cast for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry were the most ever cast against an incumbent president. Except they weren't. In 1992, 64.7 million...

President/Vice President Office Candidate Party Votes % Of Votes Statewide Totals Bush, George W. Republican 969,961 50.66% Kerry, John F. Democratic 891,086 46.54% Cobb, David Keith-WI 44,228 2.31% Badnarik, Michael 5,234 0.27% Peroutka, Michael Anthony 4,191 0.22% Schriner, Joe -WI 1 0.00% Duncan, Richard A.-WI 0 0.00% Parker, John T.-WI 0 0.00% Zych, Thomas F.-WI 0 0.00% Harris, James -WI 0 0.00% Precincts Reporting: 32.83% 1,914,701  

(CPOD) Oct. 23, 2004 – George W. Bush is leading the United States presidential race, according to a poll by SRBI Public Affairs for Time. 51 per cent of respondents would vote for Republican incumbent George W. Bush in the 2004 election, while 46 per cent would support Democratic nominee John Kerry.Two per cent of respondents would vote for independent candidate Ralph Nader, and one per cent is undecided. The election is scheduled for Nov. 2.Support for Bush increased by three per cent in a week, while backing for Kerry dropped by one per cent. In early October, the Republican...