Free Republic

Last year the consensus opinion was that we are all Keynesians now. Virtually everyone in the commentariat believed that John Maynard Keynes’s solution for the Great Depression—heavy government spending to resuscitate the economy—was also the answer to today’s global downturn. The first cracks in the consensus appeared with the outbreak of the fiscal crisis in Greece earlier this year. Across the developed world, critics began to argue that government spending had reached the point of diminishing returns, and was producing an anemic recovery that mainly benefited special-interest groups. And the electorate listened. From Europe to the United States, as voters...

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA -- Gov. Sarah Palin returned triumphant to her home state Wednesday for the first time since she was named to the Republican ticket with John McCain, and received thunderous cheers as she promised 3,000 supporters: "I will do my best to do Alaska proud." Palin reprised many passages from her vice presidential nomination acceptance speech at the party's convention in St. Paul, Minn. But she steered away from explicit attacks on the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, instead gushing about her home state and its sudden role in the limelight. "It's going to be awesome to spend a...

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - Customers in Germany and Britain lined up to buy the iPhone as it debuted there Friday, with Apple Inc. hoping to replicate the success that the combination cell phone, music player and Web browser has seen in the United States. Apple hopes to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, helped by its launch in Asia next year. In Germany, the phone went on sale at more than 700 T-Mobile shops, including one in Cologne that opened just after midnight with some 350 customers already waiting outside...

And, for my triumphant return, we also have a Dinklemeyer strip:

CAMP LIBERTY, Iraq – When he went on patrol last September on the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Staff Sgt. Willie Hall had no idea the day’s events would separate him from his unit for more than six months. “I never thought that day that I wouldn’t be back. I even had plans to finish watching a movie with my buddies when our patrol was over,” said Hall, who recently returned to his unit, Company B, 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, Multi-National Division – Baghdad. Hall’s dismounted patrol came under attack in Ghazaliya September 11 from a vehicle-borne improvised...

Osama bin Laden prophesies that Islam will triumph over the West by God's right, by His will and by His power. On its face, this is a preposterous boast. There is simply no comparison between the military power of the Muslim world and that of the West, indeed of the United States alone. Islam, even in its pure form as understood by bin Laden, in Taliban-led Afghanistan, could hardly stand a few weeks against America's sophisticated military wizardry. On paper, Saddam Hussein's Iraq had one of the largest armies in the world and it fell in days, disintegrating as a...