Free Republic

Every people enjoy a favorite holiday. For many Americans it is the yearly celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or the feast eaten by pilgrims with their Native American hosts. These events mark the beginning of the American people. For many Jews the celebration revolves around the Jewish New Year, when the Lord created the world, or Passover, when the Jews were freed from Egyptian slavery. At that points the Jews truly became a people, as they wandered for forty years after their Exodus. For the made up people known as Palestinians, the big event is Nakba...

If George Orwell were alive today he’d be censored by today’s Orwellian press-police. As America’s poshest-acting, bisexual neo-conservative, Christopher Hitchens points out in Why Orwell Matters (pages 79-80): It is true on the face of it that Orwell was one of the founding fathers of anti-Communism; that he had a strong patriotic sense and a very potent instinct for what we might call elementary right and wrong; that he despised government and bureaucracy and was a stout individualist; that he distrusted intellectuals and academics and reposed a faith in popular wisdom; that he upheld a somewhat orthodoxy in sexual matters...

The Defense Authorization Bill that was voted out of committee on Wednesday brought back to life an expensive earmark that has plagued taxpayers for years – the F136 alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter. The second engine line has been opposed by both President Bush and President Obama, is unwanted and unneeded by the Pentagon and has been rejected by both chambers of Congress. Already having cost $3 billion in taxpayer funds, the earmark was thought to have finally been laid to rest last month – its reinsertion in to the 2012 Defense bill signals this may not be...

VIDEO: Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi don't agree on much, but they do agree on the government's involvement in "climate change", as you can see from this 2008 joint ad.

Just when you thought gentlemanly business competition was coming back to America…. Back in the ‘90’s, when all the bank mergers were happening and there was a massive consolidation of the defense industry going on, The Onion featured a headline that read something to the effect that Business has been Consolidated to Six Corporations. That’s about what it felt like at the time. Never mind anti-trust or the laws on vertical integration to prevent monopolies, competition was going out of style (and under a Democratic administration, too. Imagine that). That headline popped into my consciousness this week when I heard...

Current state of affairs - brought to measure by the forebodings of yester-year and the pillars of our Great Nation regarding... I. THE WITHOLDING OF INFORMATION: "Information is the currency of democracy." "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." II. THE ENCROACHMENT OF GOVERNMENT: "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?" "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." III. OUR...

Academics love to forecast. For the sake of college graduates, let’s hope their latest one proves to be more warranted than now seems possible. “Students seeking full-time jobs after graduation will face a more optimistic job market this year, as the National Association of Colleges and Employers predicts a nearly 20 percent rise in hiring of graduates,” Katherine Rodriguez wrote in The GW Hatchet Online. “The association’s spring job outlook survey anticipates employers will hire 19.3 percent more graduates this year than in 2010, the first time employers have reported a double-digit increase in spring hiring projections since 2007.” “An...

Attempting to feign fiscal austerity, Democrats have looked to raise taxes on America’s oil and natural gas producers. With the nation fixated on deficits and debt, Senate Democrats, unwilling to seriously cut federal spending, have introduced the inaccurately named Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act of 2011—legislation to repeal expensing deductions and necessary tax policies employed by American oil and natural gas companies. Are oil companies the recipients of government subsidies? No, the federal government does not give oil and natural gas companies a cent to produce oil. Unlike other forms of energy, oil and natural gas producers receive zero...

...The White house has created an interactive map that highlights over 7,000 of the underused properties the U.S. government owns. You can view it by state and see how many properties the government owns along with the type of structure it is, the name of the structure, the use of the building, and the size of it. In the District of Columbia, it lists 5 properties as being unused and in the state of California a staggering 1,151 properties are listed. The White House defines excess properties to be an assortment of things, ranging from office buildings to labs to...

...Budget “deals” that consider revenue part of the problem always result in tax hikes while spending restraint is forgotten: Speaker Boehner: “Today some seem intent on recycling the 1990 budget deal, only this time with much larger tax increases. That's not going to happen, and I've told that to the president. A tax hike would wreak havoc not only on our economy's ability to create private-sector jobs, but also on our ability to tackle the national debt...” Read more: http://www.atr.org/speaker-boehner-refuses-make-taxpayers-responsible-a6129#ixzz1LxiJ4u9o

Sometimes we all get stuck in a rut. Events around us seem to be ever-changing but we just can’t seem to motivate ourselves to change with them. We do the same things we have always done and we end up with the same results we always get and there just doesn’t seem to be a way break the routines with which we have saddled ourselves. If this is you, let us provide you with some ideas – gleaned from literally a fraction of an hour of research on the internet – tailored to your specific situation. Let us help you...

VIDEO: Prominent pollster, Frank Luntz, after seeing his focus group's overwhelmingly positive (almost unanimous among the group) reaction to Herman Cain, said, "Something very special is happening this evening", and called it "unprecedented". Luntz asked the audience who before last night's debate in South Carolina, started out supporting Cain, and only one hand went up. Then, he asked how many supported Cain after the debate, and easily more than half of the hands went up. The responses from individuals in the audience were energetically positive...

After compelling the President to axe almost $80 billion from his desired spending levels for the fiscal year, House Republicans are once again faced with the prospect of negotiating with a recalcitrant President on the next spending battle: the approaching debt ceiling. In keeping with his inflated rhetoric on the threat of a government shutdown, President Obama is feigning exigency once again, claiming a “clean” debt limit vote is necessary to prevent government default and certain economic catastrophe. The request to increase the debt limit without confronting the actual causes of debt belies the wisdom of having a debt ceiling...

Unwilling to reign in Washington’s overspending problem, Democrats and their allies on the Left are stuck championing tax increases. Raising the corporate income tax rate—already the highest in the world—or increasing the personal income rate is untenable, leaving Democrats no choice except to try and repeal tax credits and deductions. With oil and natural gas companies releasing their first quarter earnings this week, look for revenue hungry Democrats and to set their sights on this industry. First out of the gate is the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) which began asking Members of Congress to pledge to raise taxes on...

...There are two ways to interpret this statement. The first is to believe the Secretary is claiming the debt limit has never been raised in exchange for cohesive reform, as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are currently requesting. This is simply untrue. The Congressional Review Act, which the administration has been so keen on flouting, was a product of the 1996 debt limit debate; the same is true for the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget reforms in 1985 and their subsequent revision in the debt limit debate of 1987. It is anachronistic, not to mention irresponsible, to consider a vote on raising...

The Connecticut Senate plans to hold a floor vote today on the budget agreement recently reached by legislative Democrats and first term Gov. Dannel Malloy (D). The plan, which entails two dozen tax increases, would technically be out of balance the moment it is signed into law and therefore unconstitutional. The problem is that the budget assumes over $13 million in higher revenue from an online sales tax and cosmetic surgery tax. Yet, that revenue is highly unlikely to come to fruition according to Kevin Sullivan, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Revenue Services. CT News Junkie has the following...

More bad news for those budding Ernie Pyles of the world as The Daily Beast ranks journalism at the top of its most useless degree list. 1. Journalism Median starting salary: $35,800 Median mid-career salary: $66,600 Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -4,400 Percentage Change in number of jobs, 2008-2018: -6.32 Undergraduate field of study: Communications Number of students awarded degrees 2008-2009: 78,009 When those now-degreed students entered college, journalism was still doing fine, though beginning to feel the first effects of the Internet. But by the 2008-2009 period, the landscape had radically changed and anyone actually able to find...

And the US Military currently has hundreds of experts combing-though a reported "treasure trove" of actionable Al Qaida intelligence contained in computer files snatched in Sunday's raid on the Abottabad compound. According to one US official: "They cleaned it out... can you imagine what's on Osama Bin Laden's hard drive?" A brief, interesting account of the AQ courier  who unwittingly got Geronimo scalped -here- _________________________________________________ More at Reaganite Republican _________________________________________________ The Pentagon Politico Bin laden compound diagram, pentagon, abbottabad compound diagram, xxx, Bin laden compound diagram, pentagon, abbottabad compound diagram, xxx, Bin laden compound abbottabad compound diagram, xx

I really wish we added as a topic: like we have wot=war on terror... SWBC= Slick Willy Bull Crap. Pakistan aided and abetted and provided comfort to the world's most wanted DEAD OR ALIVE terrorist no #1 leader AKA OUR enemy. Hey Slick Willy: They halped after they said oh frick and were shaked and baked by the Ops team. The mansion guards... Pakistan (Pakistahn like Odumbo pronounces it) provided HELP after they were caught. Sorry I just had to get that out.

It's been in the back of my mind now that there are certain dates throughout the year that The Almighty uses as lynchpins for his purposes. God does not play dice, as we've been told. This is not to say that human decisions do not cause less-than-earth-shaking events, or that random chance does not exist, or that coincidences on a grand scale don't happen, because they do. However, it is obvious that God prefers certain days to orchestrate historic events that are, shall I say, "plotline resolutions", where several building threads meet. Let's look at today in history - I'll...