Free Republic

Paul Ryan says Trump will not be 2024 nominee Paul Ryan said he does not believe former president Donald Trump would be the GOP’s 2024 nominee for president. The one-time Republican House speaker — who has had an acrimonious relationship with Trump — offered a blistering assessment Thursday during an interview with Teneo, a D.C. consulting shop where he serves as a vice-chairman. “We all know he will lose, or let me put it this way: we all know he’s much more likely to lose the White House than anybody else running for president on our side of the aisle....

WASHINGTON — Michael Bloomberg spent $155.3 million nationally on political ads in 2019, far outpacing fellow billionaire Tom Steyer and other Democratic presidential candidates gearing up for early caucus and primary contests beginning in February. Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has bought $136.8 million worth of broadcast television time and $7.7 million on cable, according to data from Advertising Analytics, which tracks political ad spending. He spent an additional $10.8 million on digital ads.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz seems to be at odds with her boss about the sequester that is currently cutting the pay of 1000 Florida National Guardsmen by 20 percent, who are tasked to respond to natural disasters... [According to Politifact], Obama said that the sequester — and the defense cuts that would result from it — was not his proposition. “It is something that Congress has proposed,” he said in the debate. But it was Obama’s negotiating team that came up with the idea for defense cuts in 2011...

Thomas Friedman, bad writer, world traveler, and all around bon vivant, wants YOU to pay to save the planet. Just Do It Yes, this bill’s goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is nowhere near what science tells us we need to mitigate climate change. But it also contains significant provisions to prevent new buildings from becoming energy hogs, to make our appliances the most energy efficient in the world and to help preserve forests in places like the Amazon.

THINK: Donald and Melania Trump. THE DONALD COVERS YOUR ASSETS Always have a prenuptial agreement. I have seen people and businesses destroyed because there wasn't a pre-nup. I will be honest with you, if I did not have prenuptial agreements with Ivana and Marla, I would not have anything now. They attacked me rather viciously. --SNIP--Look at Paul McCartney, the poor bastard----he is worth $1.5B.......he married Heather Mills. Some people said she was a nude model in the 80s and worked for an escort service......she made his life miserable for three years, then sued him for $400M. Paul told...

Psilyclbin Mushrooms, Bags Of Marijuana Also In CarGREEN, Ore. -- Three California youths had their road trip interrupted when a bong fell from their car at the feet of a policeman during a traffic stop. An Oregon State trooper pulled the car over Thursday near the Douglas County town of Green. Police said the large drug pipe fell out as 18-year-old Benjamin Breiner of Berkeley, Calif., opened the car door. The trooper said he found a bag of psilycybin mushrooms and several bags of marijuana. One occupant, 19-year-old Michael Fox of Oakland, Calif., told the officer he had a California...

The FEC has published the final rules and explanation and justification for internet communications in pdf format. This is a 96 page document that needs to be read.

Why Wait Three Years for Our Next President? NEW YORK--By August 2003 California Governor Gray Davis' approval rating had plunged to 22 percent. Two months later, he lost a special recall election. Now it's George W. Bush's turn to take a drubbing. The latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll finds that only 37 percent of Americans think he's doing a good job, a record low for him and a dangerous drop below the historical benchmark of 40 percent. "When a president falls below 40 percent approval in public opinion polls--as President Bush has done twice in the past two months--it's usually a...

One day recently, while performing some house-husbandly chores, I tuned in to National Public Radio for diversion. In short order I heard the story of some women who have started "Mistresses Anonymous" to help deal with the pain, rage, and frustration; of those "other women" in our society; then the story of support groups for expectant fathers who feel sympathetic labor pains. This one-two punch, coming on the heels of an invitation from a well-respected college to a "math anxiety" workshop in preparation for a math test and the discovery that I am a likely candidate for Post-Vietnam Stress Syndrome...

Have you ever been issued a "guaranteed" reservation by a hotel? You know the drill: they take a credit card number and tell you that you will be charged for the room if you don't show up. But in return, you comfort yourself with the assumption that your access to an actual room at that particular hotel is "guaranteed" even if you show up at 4 AM. Maybe if you did this, you assumed that it meant that the hotel had already sold the room to you, and that, barring acts of God like a tornado, no matter how late...

"I thought that, as a timely reminder of the insincerity and emptiness of this 'liberty' cant, it would be fit to hear the musings and considered judgments of the neo-con infantry, the great Freeper horde at the blog of that name. A half-hour's examination of the frothy tirades and murderous incitements there would put any wavering mind out of doubt that what we have here is not a project for freedom and democracy, but, as the Freepers (who, being anonymous, do not dissemble their real opinions) readily fulminate, we have a racist war of civilizations, a comprehensive war against Muslims...

While some long-time critics of President Ronald Reagan stifled their inclination to criticize the dead, others launched the kind of venomous attacks that marked his long career in politics. Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy said yesterday he regretted Reagan died without ever standing trial for 1986 air strikes he ordered that killed the Libyan president's adopted daughter and 36 other people. Ronald Reagan ordered the April 15, 1986, air raid in response to a discotheque bombing in Berlin allegedly ordered by Khadafy that killed two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman and injured 229 people. "I express my deep regret because...