Free Republic

Congressional analysts Tuesday projected that President Donald Trump has inherited a stable economy and a government that is on track to run a $559 billion budget deficit for the ongoing budget year. The new estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office say the economy will hold relatively steady, with economic growth rising slightly to 2.3 percent this year and unemployment averaging less than 5 percent for the duration of Trump’s term. Trump is promising higher growth as his administration curbs regulations, overhauls the tax code, and repeals the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s signature accomplishment. …

Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan spoke out against the Chicago Teachers Union strike on Monday, saying he stands behind Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's opposition to the demonstration. "Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong," Ryan said in Portland, Ore., according to a pool report transcript. "We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel." More than 26,000 education professionals in the Chicago area did not attend work on Monday over a contract negotiation dispute with the...

Former president Bill Clinton told the Democratic National Convention that Barack Obama has a plan to rescue the economy, and only the fact that the Republicans stood in his way has stopped him from getting the economy out of the doldrums. From all this, and much else that is said in the media and on the campaign trail, you might think that the economy requires government intervention to revive and create jobs. It is Beltway dogma that the government has to "do something." History tells a different story. For the first 150 years of this country's existence, the federal government...

Archeologists involved in the hunt for the wreckage of the Franklin Expedition in Canada’s Arctic have discovered human remains they believe are from a member of the doomed crew. Despite bad weather that has hampered some of their plans, the journey has been a productive one so far, says the chief of underwater archaeology for Parks Canada, and it should get even better with the addition of an automated underwater vehicle from the University of Victoria. “Work is going well… (but) we haven’t found the ships yet,” Marc-Andre Bernier said in a telephone interview after leaving the Canadian Coast Guard...

Outside, posters of President Obama and the first lady were the only signs that Eastern Bloc was closed for a private party. To some regulars of the grungy gay bar in Manhattan’s East Village, the $100 minimum cover charge seemed too pricey for a Saturday night. But for an Obama campaign fundraiser, the entrance fee was relatively modest, unlike some of the boisterous dancers at the “GoGo for Obama” event. The fundraiser, hosted by a gaggle of models, fashion editors and socialites, is just one of hundreds of such small, grass-roots events organized by individual donors and held throughout campaign...

On May 26, 2011, the White House posted this video praising Solyndra as a Recovery Act success story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0lVKTmLMV_MIn August 2011, Barack Obama’s gleaming example of green technology – Solyndra – filed for bankruptcy. The solar panel manufacturer squandered $535 million of stimulus money in a little over a year. Why Solyndra? Top Obama bundler George Kaiser made multiple visits to the White House in the months before the company was granted a $535 million loan from the government. And top Solyndra officials also made numerous visits — 20 — to the White House, according to logs and reporting by...

Skills gap is hampering labor marketBy Vicki Needham - 09/09/12 05:25 PM ET Two recent reports underscore the complexities of the flagging labor market and provide backing for more action by policymakers to help narrow the skills gap in the workforce. A survey from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and a report by Deloitte show that employers are struggling to find workers with skills that fit their openings. With about 12.5 million unemployed workers and millions more underemployed or so discouraged they are leaving the workforce, job creation in the United States is hampered not only by supply...

Gaffetastic! Add this to the list… Obama goes off TelePrompter, pulls a Biden. Barack tells audience, “Stamped with 3 proud words… Made in the USA!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W1W9ih09gxU

Ezra Klein: Let’s begin with the obvious question. Did the stimulus work? Michael Grunwald: Everything people think they know about the stimulus is wrong. It was called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and it did produce a short-term recovery. We dropped 8.9 percent of GDP in Q4 2008. We lost 800,000 jobs in January 2009. We passed the stimulus. And then the next quarter we saw the biggest jobs improvement in 30 years. The long-term reinvestment part is working. It spent $90 billion for clean energy when we were spending just a few billion a year. It’s doubled renewable...

Obama said hang on, but jobs report shows many Americans aren’tBy Chris Stirewalt Published September 07, 2012 FoxNews.com 368,000 — the estimated number of Americans who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, left the labor force in August. **SNIP** Biden, who literally used the word “literally” 10 times in his brief speech introducing Obama, accused the Republicans of talking down the country in a bid to gain power. “America is not in decline. America is not in decline,” shouted the vice president. “I've got news for Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan: Gentlemen, never ever — it never makes sense,...

His (Obama's) stubborn insistence that government - and not small business - is the way to grow jobs and the economy has always been wrong. That he keeps insisting, with 88.9 million Americans out of work, has become morally unacceptable. The early news coverage Friday reported that the unemployment rate fell from 8.3 to 8.1 percent, with headlines suggesting it wasn't all that bad, maybe even a slight positive for the president. It wasn't all that bad. It was worse. The reason the unemployment fell to 8.1 percent was that 368,000 Americans had given up looking for work, bringing the...

Nowadays the energy picture is confusing at best as the more information we are shown the murkier the picture seems to become. Mixed messages, poor reporting and a media hungry to sensationalize anything it thinks can grab a headline have led to many wondering what the true energy situation is. We hear numerous reports on how the shale revolution will transform the energy sector, why alternatives are just around the corner, why advances in oilfield extraction techniques and new finds will help to lower oil prices. Yet no sooner have we read these rosy reports than we are bombarded with...

To combat rising gasoline prices, anonymous White House sources are reporting that President Obama will release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. When Obama was inaugurated, the average gasoline prices were $1.84 per gallon, and oil was at about $39 for a 42-gallon barrel. On Monday, refiners were paying about $96 for a barrel of West Texas Intermediate, and the average price of regular gasoline was $3.72, up from $3.45 a month earlier. The 696-million barrel Strategic Petroleum Reserve, stored in underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana, exists to protect America against "severe energy supply disruptions," according to the...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is creating a new office to bolster education of African-American students.</p>

The attacks from presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney on intelligence leaks put Obama campaign officials on the defensive Wednesday, as Republicans stepped up attempts to chip away at the president’s credibility on national security. Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod was grilled on the leaks during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he shifted from his previous position. “I can tell you that the president of the United States did not leak classified information, as Mitt Romney suggested yesterday, and he didn’t authorize the leak of information, as Mitt Romney suggested yesterday,” Axelrod said. Axelrod previously denied that the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is James in Rolla, Missouri. Great to have you on the program, sir. Hello. CALLER: Hello, Rush, been listening to you for 20 the years. I'm a conservative retired university professor. RUSH: One of my aunts is from Rolla, Missouri. My aunt Mary is from Rolla, Missouri. She married my uncle Manly, my dad's brother. CALLER: It's a wonderful town. RUSH: It is a great town. School of mines. CALLER: Right. RUSH: It was the University School of Mines is in Rolla, Missouri. CALLER: Yeah, now it's called Missouri University of Science and Technology. RUSH: Yeah,...

Republicans relish the tempting thought of history repeating itself: an incumbent Democratic president, widely perceived as a disappointment or a failure, heads into an election with seven out of every ten Americans believing the “country is in deep and serious trouble.” After dismissing his Republican challenger as an unserious joke, the hubristic incumbent loses the popular vote by a wide margin and the Electoral College by a landslide.And just think, Republicans have been comparing Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter since 2008.While Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is sure to enjoy the comparisons of this year’s presidential election with the one...

Erika touched on this earlier but I'm less interested in the four-year trends (enthusiasm overall is down this year compared to 2004 and 2008) than in the monthly trends. The last time Gallup asked voters if they're more or less enthusiastic to vote than usual was February, when the GOP led 53/45. Fast forward to this month's poll and the split is ... 51/39, with both parties' numbers having dipped but the Dems down more sharply. How come? Is it a seasonal thing in election years? Maybe, maybe not:Enthusiasm built steadily throughout the campaign in 2004 but it fell off...

*Corrected from earlier | WRAL, the CBS affiliate in Raleigh, N.C., recently published a searchable database of concealed carry licensees within the "WRAL viewing area, including Chatham, Cumberland, Durham, Edgecombe, Franklin, Granville, Halifax, Harnett, Hoke, Johnston, Lee, Moore, Orange, Nash, Northampton, Person, Sampson, Vance, Warren, Wayne, Wilson and Wake counties." Searches do not turn up names or street numbers, but they do give a number of permits issued to residents on that street. The search form for the database appears within a story filed July 12 (updated July 20 -- the day of the Aurora, Colo., shooting), entitled "Rural areas...

It's been nearly a week since the deadly shootings in Colorado and the choruses of gun control are more catchy and widespread than ever. Even so-called lovers of the Second Amendment are demanding crack downs. http://video.foxnews.com/v/1752177459001/Bill O'Reilly, to use his words, is a pinhead. Literally every point he made in this interview (re: interrogation) of Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz was dead wrong. The gunman didn't purchase 60,000 rounds of ammunition, he had 6,000. But, the number doesn't really matter. He could have had 6,000,000 rounds of ammunition and that won't change the laws of physics and gravity that restrict how...