Free Republic

We Are All Japanese Now By Bill Bonner 04/05/11 Delray Beach, Florida – Even before the Richter needle began to quiver and the pots began to fall, Japan’s finances were already shaky. The country began running huge budget deficits following the stock market sell-off of 1990. Economists called this “fiscal stimulus” back then. Two decades later, the deficits are bigger than ever – 7.5% of GDP this year – and they stimulate nothing. Japan has gotten in the habit of living beyond its means. The country has an accumulated debt equal to twice national output and 20 times tax revenues....

Model's Eye Surgery To Look Japanese Updated:11:24, Sunday January 27, 2008   A Brazilian model is having nylon wires implanted in her eyes to give them an oriental slant.   Bismarchi prepares for surgery Angela Bismarchi will lead her samba group at next month's Rio Carnival and is having the procedure to celebrate 100 years of Japanese immigration to Brazil.It will be the 42nd time she has had plastic surgery and she is closing in on the world record of 47 held by American Cindy Jackson.Bismarchi will dance ahead of a drum group of 300 people, hoping her sculpted...

Despite a glut of literature available on how to have more and better orgasms, science is only beginning to unravel the mysteries of the nervous system. The experiences of some paralyzed women prove how little we know: Though seemingly cut off from all feeling below the waist, some have found they still had orgasms when they tried sex. More mysterious still, some could have orgasms when touched in a spot on the trunk or neck just above the region of injury. One Philadelphia-area woman who was paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident was overwhelmed to learn she'd...

WASHINGTON — Editor's note: This article is the fourth in an occasional series about unexpected swing states in the 2004 presidential race. Richard Nixon was the last Republican to capture the Democratic stronghold of Minnesota — back in 1972. But the native state of former Vice Presidents Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey — once known as an outpost of the leftist politics of Scandinavia, where many Minnesotans trace their roots — is a swing state in the presidential election.