Free Republic

Not sure if posting the story is ok. (kinda new to posting) http://bigjournalism.com/tag/debt-talks/

An unprecedented press conference was held in Washington on Wednesday – one that should have been convened a long time ago. And no, it wasn't the one to announce publication of Barack Obama's birth certificate, but rather the first of its kind by the US Federal Reserve. Believe it or not, the Fed has never before made itself directly answerable to the fourth estate for its monetary policy decisions. Accountability and explanation have instead been pursued through official statements, speech-giving, congressional committees and selective background briefings. After nearly 100 years at the helm of the US economy, the Fed has...

An otherwise casual question has turned out to be one of the most elusive and divisive questions of the young 21st century: where was Barack Obama born? The left despises those who ask the question. Some on the right ridicule those who raise the issue, while a sizeable number of Americans are insisting that Obama was born outside of the US and hence he is ineligible to be president. Whether intentionally or not, they are either missing or distorting the real issue. An inquiry to Obama's birthplace should be viewed in light of the sheer weight of the position he...

New York state manufacturing unexpectedly plunged in November, the first contraction since July 2009 when the US economy exited recession, official data showed Monday. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported its manufacturing activity index dropped to minus 11.1 points in November, from a positive 15.7 points in the previous month. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey index is considered a bellwether of the manufacturing sector which has been a key strength in the economic recovery. It was the first time the index fell below zero since July 2009, the month after the worst recession in decades was officially declared...

One of my pet gripes about the media and celebrities is the lack of follow-up and accountability. Remember all the hoopla about Steve Wozniak’s Prius with the mysterious electronics glitch that he could manipulate to create UA? My take was that obviously his cruise control had a minor bug that only showed up at over eighty mph. Woz readily admitted that he could disengage it with a tap on the brakes. Well, thanks to his celebrity status and the coverage, the story ended with Toyota agreeing to take his Prius for a week to test it thoroughly. So what...

The unemployment rate dropped last month for men and women, blacks and whites, lifting hopes that the long dry spell in the jobs market may be coming to an end. But for recent college graduates and other young adults, the labor situation didn't just remain dire -- it got worse. For 20- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate rose four-tenths of a percent to 16% in November, even as unemployment nationally slipped to 10% from 10.2%. And data from the Labor Department show that the unemployment figure for college graduates in that age group was 10.6% in the third quarter --...

Perhaps you've noticed an abundance of "Top Ten" lists in recent weeks. As usual, the mainstream media has churned out a variety of year-in-review pieces of late. Two events vied for top billing on all those lists -- the financial meltdown and the presidential election. At present, it isn't clear which of those debacles presents the greater threat to our nation. The factors leading up to the economic collapse in the last two quarters are clear (see Economics 101). What is not clear, however, is whether we can limit the damage to a mere recession. On the other hand, we...

I have been telling Brody File readers for months that if Barack Obama becomes the Democratic nominee he will make a pitch to win over independent/moderate Evangelicals. Well, we now have evidence. In Kentucky, he is making a direct appeal to Evangelicals with flyers that mention his conversion experience and they highlight a big old cross. Remember Mike Huckabee’s supposed subliminal cross in his Christmas campaign ad? Well, the Obama campaign ditches the subliminal and goes for the in your face cross. Look at the flyer here. The Obama campaign has consistently believed that their candidate can compete for the...

We at America Talks are launching a concerted effort to see to it that Barack Hussein Obama is not elected the next president of the United States. He is a dangerous individual who would do great harm to this country. Obama's associations with people of questionable character, his friendship with a racist pastor whose comments he claims he disavows, his plans to negotiate with and placate terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, leads us to believe that his not an honorable man who is looking out for the interests of our nation. Obama's questionable past, his embellishment of his father's legacy, his...

If one were to sum up the campaign strategy of Barack Obama in a word, it would be "obfuscation." Obama's well-known empty platitudes, of course, serve to hide the man behind them by revealing no detail. His underlying "black rage" -- expressed more openly by his less politically-cunning wife -- is hidden beneath well-crafted loftiness. Now that he has been exposed as a fellow traveler of the America-loathing anti-Semite Jeremiah Wright, Obama's attempt at damage control relies once again on obfuscation. First, through an attempt to minimize the scope of Wright's hateful rants through such carefully chosen words as "occasionally"...

One in 10 voters believes Barack Obama is Muslim, a mistaken impression that lingers across party lines, a poll showed. Fourteen percent of Republicans, 10 percent of Democrats and 8 percent of independents mistakenly think he is Muslim, according to a survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just over half of each group correctly identified him as Christian, while about a third said they don't know his religion. The false rumor that the Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois senator is Muslim has been fanned on the Internet and conservative talk radio. It has persisted despite the recent controversy over...

The "Obasma" solution to Iraq is blindingly simple. "Sherman, set the wayback machine to September 10, 20001" "Iraq continues to be a serious problem, and the Bush administration has done nothing but increase the problem and cause unnecessary deaths. It is a mess, but I have a solution: I would never have gone there. The Iraq War will be a big problem to inherit, but it would not be if we hadn't have gone there. That's why that is my solution. People ask me, "Won't leaving Iraq now be abandoning the Iraqi people?" Well, it wouldn't be abandoning them if...

Obama Offers Wild Revision of His Own History by Paul R. Hollrah 03/27/2007 Tuning in to C-SPAN recently, I found myself listening to a speech by Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Hussein Obama. He was standing at the pulpit of a black church in Selma, Ala., and as I studied the body language of the dozen or so black ministers standing behind the senator, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the little head-bobbing dolls that people used to place in the rear windows of their 1957 Chevrolets. If their reactions are any indication, the new Schlickmeister of the Democratic Party...

"They said all sorts of ludicrous things [about Romney]... that when he became president he would pass a bill for same-sex marriage." The push-polling has hit other candidates too, but it highlights Mr Romney's particular difficulties in selling his candidacy to the religious right since he is a Mormon. While much attention has focused on the possibility of "firsts" in the Democratic race with a woman in Hillary Clinton or African American in Barack Obama as real shots at the White House, Mr Romney would be the first Mormon president. It's something that's firing up the evangelical community, which is...

When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to get a message out, her presidential campaign handpicks news outlets. Or, in some cases, bypasses the media entirely. The New York Democrat's third-quarter fundraising blowout was leaked to the Drudge Report. She made sure an Iowa newspaper printed her comments that she found Sen. Barack Obama's answer to a foreign-policy question "irresponsible" and "naive." She also uses her "Hillary Hub" campaign creation to break news. The strategy allows Mrs. Clinton — who rarely holds press availabilities — to avoid taking questions from reporters who cover her campaign and who might have detailed follow-up...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government's annual accounting of hunger in the United States reported no hunger in its last outing. Instead, it found "food insecurity." Likewise, no one is even considering retreating from Iraq. "Redeploying" the heck out of there is, however, an option. In Washington, words are a moving target that conceal at least as much as they reveal. Doublespeak runs through the discourse on Iraq, terrorism and domestic matters to a point where it's hard to tell what is going on. The libertarian Cato Institute recently took on the rising tide of fuzzy words in the fight against...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has dismissed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's surprise letter to President Bush, saying it does nothing to address the standoff over Tehran's nuclear program. Rice told the Associated Press Monday the letter does not address any issues of U.S. concern. She said the letter is about 18 pages long and talks about history, philosophy, and religion. She says the letter is not the place to find a diplomatic opening to engage Iran on the nuclear issue. Rice is in New York meeting with other diplomats from the permanent U.N. Security Council members on possible sanctions against...

Rob Glaser has made his peace with Microsoft's Bill Gates. Now, the RealNetworks chief executive is turning up the rhetoric against another technology icon: Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs. At the Digital Living Conference here on Monday, Glaser told a packed hotel ballroom that Jobs & Co.'s refusal to make the iPod compatible with music services other than Apple's iTunes was "pig-headedness." Glaser also said that Apple's unwillingness to cooperate with other online music vendors promotes piracy of copyrighted materials and will eventually draw the wrath of consumers. These are heady times for Glaser and his Internet multimedia company, which...

When I recently suggested this disconnect publicly, I was vigorously challenged. One person recalled my use of Wilkins and charged me with quote mining. The proof, supposedly, was in Wilkins's subsequent paragraph: "Yet, the marginality of evolutionary biology may be changing. More and more issues in biology, from diverse questions about human nature to the vulnerability of ecosystems, are increasingly seen as reflecting evolutionary events. A spate of popular books on evolution testifies to the development. If we are to fully understand these matters, however, we need to understand the processes of evolution that, ultimately, underlie them." In reality, however,...

Washington -- House Democrats, seeking to take the offensive against Republicans in an effort to win back a majority, will talk Tuesday with a Berkeley scholar who says Republicans have succeeded by framing the nation's political debate on their terms. The scholar, UC Berkeley professor of linguistics and cognitive sciences George Lakoff, is a hot item in liberal circles these days as he argues Democrats must develop a message that resonates more deeply with voters. His latest book, "Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate,'' is on best-seller lists in Washington and the Bay Area....