Free Republic

Months after Disneyland opened the biggest expansion in its history, the Anaheim theme park raised ticket prices Tuesday, pushing the cost of some one-day passes above $200 for the first time. Prices of annual passes and the digital MaxPass climbed too. Under a new five-tier pricing scheme that charges more for days when demand is highest, one-day ticket prices rose as much as 5%. For the lowest-demand days — such as Tuesdays and Wednesdays in March — a one-day ticket to visit either Disneyland or Disney’s neighboring California Adventure Park stayed unchanged at $104. For peak days, such as most...

The state health department hopes to detect cases earlier and prevent the disease from spreading. Illinois is the first state to do in-state testing for novel coronavirus. The Illinois Department of Public Health said test results are typically available within 24 hours for specimens arriving at the department's Chicago laboratory, the agency said in a statement. IDPH is also working on bringing testing to Springfield and Carbondale. “The ability to do this testing will mean we will be able to detect any new cases of novel coronavirus earlier and prevent any possible spread,” IDPH Assistant Director Evonda Thomas-Smith said in...

Berni Sanders won in the worst way in New ­Hampshire. Of course, a victory is far better than a defeat, but Sanders got 75,000 fewer votes in 2020 than he received in the Granite State four years ago — with 26 percent, compared to his 60 percent in 2016. You can attribute all this to the fact that Sanders had only one rival in ’16 and he was able to consolidate the anti-establishment and anti-moderate vote that was repelled by Hillary Clinton.

President Trump sounded off on Twitter on the four Justice Department (DOJ) attorneys who quit the Roger Stone case on Tuesday and accused them of cutting and running for political reasons. Trump asked if the lawyers were loyal to former special counsel Robert Mueller and said Stone's case was the offshoot of an illegal investigation. "Who are the four prosecutors (Mueller people?) who cut and ran after being exposed for recommending a ridiculous 9 year prison sentence to a man that got caught up in an investigation that was illegal, the Mueller Scam, and shouldn’t ever even have started? 13...

After a night of watching coverage, including Fox News, that seemed to paint the Democratic primary in New Hampshire as the only primary held tonight and clearly holding that the winner of that primary would surely be our next President, I did a little research of my own: Unopposed Incuments in New Hampshire Presidential Primary NH Primary Votes Cast 2020 Trump 120,476* 2012 Obama 49,080 2004 Bush 53,962 1996 Clinton 76,797 1992 Bush 92,271 *87% Reporting

President Trump has withdrawn his nomination of Jessie Liu to serve as a top Treasury Department official, Fox News has learned. The president’s move to withdraw Liu’s nomination comes just hours after four Justice Department lawyers quit following a move by senior leaders at the department to overrule the prosecutors' judgment by seeking a lesser sentence for long-time Trump ally Roger Stone after he was found guilty of lying to Congress. Liu is a former U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., who before her nomination oversaw the prosecutions of Stone and former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn over charges of...

The number of confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus have continued to surge inside China, sickening tens of thousands, with a death toll of more than 1,000. But outside the Asian giant the numbers remain a fraction of that, a trend Harvard’s Marc Lipsitch views with suspicion. Lipsitch thinks it is just a matter of time before the virus spreads widely internationally, which means nations so far only lightly hit should prepare for its eventual arrival in force and what may seem like the worst flu season in modern times. Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School...

The law that protects citizens from racial, ethnic and religious persecution will now also include discrimination based on sexual orientation. More than 63 percent of voters accepted on Sunday the proposal to broaden Switzerland’s current anti-racism legislation to encompass sexual orientation. However, the proposed law for more affordable housing was defeated, with 57.1 percent votes cast against it. With the acceptance of the anti-homophobia legislation, Switzerland will join a handful of other European nations where public incitement to hatred, discrimination, and violence on the basis of sexual orientation is illegal. […] But not everyone was pleased with the referendum’s result....

Sanders wins New Hampshire primary BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/11/20 11:04 PM EST 3,619 6,146 Sanders on NH victory: Win is 'beginning of the end for Donald Trump' Biden, Warren on ropes after delegate shutout Sanders wins New Hampshire primary MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night, delivering a victory for his campaign after a muddled result in Iowa that produced no clear winner. The result is significant for Sanders, though it was expected after he defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton easily in New Hampshire’s primary four years ago. Sanders...

French winemakers hit by US tariffs imposed in a transatlantic trade war over airplane subsidies on Tuesday demanded help from their government and European planemaker Airbus. French wine exports to the US have plunged since President Donald Trump in October imposed 25 percent tariffs on a range of European delicacies in retaliation for EU subsidies of Airbus, arch-rival of America’s Boeing. The French finance ministry last week announced that wine exports to the US — the second-biggest export market for French wines after Germany — had fallen by 44 percent in value from October to November. On Tuesday, the vice-president...

President Trump's budget would eliminate the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, an Energy Department initiative to lend money to retool factories and advance the progress of electric-vehicle manufacturing.

As those of you here may know, The Pat Metheny Group has been a big part of my music listening life for over 40 years now. So when I heard the news this morning that he had passed on, to say I was devastated by the news, would be an understatement. What he and Pat Metheny created together over the years was pure magic and cannot be duplicated. Pat has played with other Pianists, but it's just not the same. See you "On the Way Up!" Lyle.

February 12 2020 Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Kgs 10:1-10 The queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon’s fame, came to test him with subtle questions. She arrived in Jerusalem with a very numerous retinue, and with camels bearing spices, a large amount of gold, and precious stones. She came to Solomon and questioned him on every subject in which she was interested. King Solomon explained everything she asked about, and there remained nothing hidden from him that he could not explain to her.When the queen of Sheba witnessed Solomon’s great wisdom, the...

Lyle Mays, a keyboardist, composer and orchestrator who helped carve a new channel for contemporary jazz with The Pat Metheny Group, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 66. His niece, jazz vocalist Aubrey Johnson, announced his death on social media, noting that he passed away “surrounded by loved ones, after a long battle with a recurring illness.” [excerpt]

His stepfather, Carsten Jensen, said on Facebook that Coleman “collapsed without prior health problems” during a trip. Coleman was born in London and appeared in several movies as a child, including “The Fourth Kind” and “It’s Alive.” He was best known for playing Eric Brown, aged 11, in the 2005 British comedy movie “Nanny McPhee,” alongside Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Angela Lansbury. His former castmate, Eliza Bennett, said she was “heartbroken” at the news. “After we worked on Nanny McPhee, he dedicated his life to protecting wildlife and fighting climate change,” she wrote. He became an active member of...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has won the New Hampshire primary, Fox News projects, catapulting the 78-year-old self-described democratic socialist to the front of the still-crowded Democratic presidential primary field.

Several days ago, I proposed that China's big lie regarding the Coronavirus wasn't downplaying its contagiousness or deadliness, but the opposite: because the Coronavirus had run rampant through Hubei before they acknowledged it, they were under-reporting cases, and therefore the death rate looked so much worse. And because they had failed to distinguish the Coronavirus from the flu, many cases where people got the Coronavirus despite strong preventitive measures were actually cases where they had been exposed much earlier to "flu." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak Whatever the reasons, I identified the Coronavirus as in decline, despite the hysterics of the media... at least...

Tesla is getting more aggressive in revoking paid software features on used cars, raising the stakes in a battle over what used Teslas can do that has raged for years. ... The entire Autopilot package, which the car had when the dealer bought it, costs an extra $8,000. Then, Tesla remotely removed the software because “Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for.” Tesla said if the customer wanted Autopilot back, he’d have to fork over the $8,000. The Model X performance package costs $20,000 more than the standard version, so, in effect, Tesla remotely disabled a...

Mike Bloomberg defended stop and frisk: "I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It's exactly the reverse of what they're saying. I don't know where they went to school but they certainly didn't take a math course or a logic course." ...