Free Republic

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) didn’t mince words Wednesday when discussing the hurdles Washington faces in preventing a government shutdown next month. “It’s a pretty big mess,” he said in Kentucky on Wednesday afternoon, before once again appearing to freeze while taking questions from reporters. “The Speaker and the president reached an agreement which I supported in connection with raising the debt ceiling to set spending levels for next year,” he added. “The House then turned around and passed spending levels that were below that level,” he said. “Without stating an opinion about that, that’s not going to be...

During the “Overtime” segment on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher said that the prospects of avoiding a recession don’t look good and pointed out that people were already losing “a lot of money” in the market. Financial Times U.S. Editorial Board Chair and Editor-at-Large Gillian Tett responded to a viewer question on rising mortgage rates and monetary policy by the Federal Reserve by stating that the Federal Reserve is in between “a rock and a hard place, in that inflation has been rising. If it doesn’t act, it could get a lot worse. But if it...

Derision becomes classic TV

Despite spending over half-a-billion dollars on increasingly mind-blowing promotions for Obamacare, a new survey released today shows that even the website apparently fixed, over one-third of Americans without insurance say they plan to stay that way, even after being told that the new law requires them to get covered or pay a penalty. As CBS notes, some 46% of those surveyed also were unaware of the March 31 deadline for being insured as it seems "low-income, young families may have been overlooked. They're probably not spending a lot of time watching television, they never read a newspaper and if they...

Diminished prospectsJ.C. Arenas May 10, 2010 Yesterday, the Associated Press reported on Ben Bernanke's commencement address to the newest class of graduates from the University of South Carolina. On this special day, when graduates officially transform from kids just trying to amass credits to earn their respective degrees to grown-ups just trying to earn a living, they were treated to his pessimistic anti-prosperity theme, "money can't buy you happiness." "We all know that getting a better-paying job is one of the main reasons to go to college. But if you are ever tempted to go into a field or take...

WASHINGTON, March 19, 2009 – Prospects for the Iraqi people “get better every day,” with the Iraqis now solving their problems “politically, and not with guns,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday as Operation Iraqi Freedom marks its sixth anniversary. “That’s a much different kind of life,” Gates said, contrasting life in Iraq now to what the Iraqis endured under Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship. And while challenges remain, Gates noted positive trends in Iraq’s security, diplomacy and economy. “I think that we will be in a much better place in 2011,” he said. Gates conceded that those strides...

One day after her big victory, Hillary’s prospects are looking dim, as her only chance at seating delegations from Michigan and Florida appears to rest on an unlikely do-over in one or both states. Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today.Instead, he put the state parties on notice: either they can wait and allow the credentials committee to decide whether to seat their delegates, or submit to a re-vote sanctioned under DNC rules. “We look forward to receiving their proposals...

WASHINGTON - Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group, said Monday he's "extremely doubtful" that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be able to secure the country and allow American forces to leave any time soon. President Bush, however, reaffirmed his strong support for al-Maliki. And in what has become a drumbeat from the region, yet another military commander said Monday it would be a mistake to draw down U.S. troops just as the buildup is making its best progress. "There is no chance that the Iraqi forces could take over at any time, or certainly by the...

House approves oil drilling in Alaska refuge; Prospects in Senate slim.By H. JOSEF HEBERT/Associated Press Writer Published: Friday, May 26, 2006 3:51 AM CDT WASHINGTON (AP) — Citing the public outcry over $3-a-gallon gasoline and America’s heavy reliance on foreign oil, the House on Thursday voted to open an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, knowing the prospects for Senate approval were slim. Drilling proponents argued that the refuge on Alaska’s North Slope would provide 1 million barrels a day of additional domestic oil at peak production and reduce the need for imports. But opponents to developing what environmentalists argue...

A bipartisan group of senators trying to craft an Endangered Species Act rewrite bill has failed to reach consensus, signaling dwindling prospects of Senate action in the wake of House passage of an endangered species bill last year. Although talks continue, the stalemate is welcome news for environmentalists. They viewed the House-passed bill as dangerously extreme and feared that no matter what the Senate produced, the final product could be unacceptable because of the need to combine the two efforts. "If I cried it's probably crocodile tears," said Rodger Schlickeisen, president of Defenders of Wildlife. "It's hard to see, with...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted a dusty disc of material around a very small "failed star" called a brown dwarf, raising the possibility that there may be miniature solar systems in which planets orbit objects not much larger than planets, scientists said Monday. The brown dwarf named OTS 44 is only about 15 times the mass of Jupiter, much smaller than any other brown dwarf known to be surrounded by a disc of planet-building material, said Kevin Luhman, lead author of a study by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "The neat thing...

SAN DIEGO - With new storm clouds over job growth, a weakened stock market and growing public unease over Iraq, California Republicans appear divided over whether President George Bush will win a second term Nov. 2. Though a new poll shows Bush running 11 points behind Democratic nominee John Kerry in California, some GOP members meeting here for a three-day state convention predicted a tight race would widen in Bush's favor after the national GOP convention this month in New York City. Other members of the state's minority party members say the contest may be "nip and tuck" nationally, but...

Why prospects for reforming health care look so dim Fri Jan 23, 6:27 AM ET Tucked deep within the promises and policies of his State of the Union address, President Bush uttered three words that speak volumes about Washington's paralysis in addressing the plight of the 41 million Americans who lack health insurance. In between his discourse on Medicare and his support for a low-income health care tax credit, Bush called for something called "association health plans." These plans allow small businesses to band together into national pools to negotiate discount health insurance rates closer to those available to big...

Bush's Steps in December Boost Prospects 1 hour, 56 minutes ago By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer CRAWFORD, Texas - A little luck and some pre-emptive moves before the new year began have allowed President Bush to muffle Democratic criticism on a host of political issues, from Medicare to mad cow disease, the CIA leak to Saddam Hussein. Democrats can no longer criticize Bush about failing to find the Iraqi leader. Got him. The prescription drug benefit Bush promised? Done, although only time will tell if seniors really think it's a good deal. The sluggish economy? Upticks in financial indicators...