Free Republic

Big Bird's seemingly innocuous — and obviously fictional — announcement Saturday that he has been vaccinated against Covid-19 caused a stir online, as Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas accused the yellow anthropomorphic bird of tweeting "government propaganda." "I got the COVID-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy," the 8-foot, 2-inch Muppet wrote on Twitter. "Ms. EricaRHill even said I've been getting vaccines since I was a little bird. I had no idea!" While Big Bird has been on "Sesame Street"...

CNN is teaming up with the perennial children’s program Sesame Street in a virtual town hall that will “address racism” in America in the wake of the police involved death of George Floyd. Scheduled to air Saturday, “Coming Together: Standing Up to Racism” will be co-moderated by Big Bird, with CNN’s Van Jones and Erica Hill adding support. The announcement of the program comes just days after Sesame Street released a statement in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis last week.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s critics let him know how they really felt about him ordering New Yorkers to snitch on each other for violating social-distancing rules — by flooding his new tip line with crank complaints including “dick pics” and people flipping the bird, The Post has learned. Photos of extended middle fingers, the mayor dropping the Staten Island groundhog and news coverage of him going to the gym have all been texted to a special tip line that de Blasio announced Saturday, according to screenshots posted on Twitter. One user sent the message “We will fight this tyrannical overreach!”...

House Democrats are getting slammed by American citizens over revelations that their massive coronavirus relief package would actually fund hundreds of millions of dollars in pet projects. Speaker Nancy Pelosi's 1,100-page proposal includes $35 million for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The Democrats seem to believe that nothing can lift the American spirit during a global pandemic quite like a Broadway show choir prancing across the stage in spandex and sequins while flashing jazz hands. But among the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic's largesse are the National Endowment of the Arts and PBS,...

Caroll Spinney, a puppeteer who brought the beloved Sesame Street characters Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch to life, died today at his Connecticut home. He was 85 and died from Dystonia, a movement disorder. His death was announced by the Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit focused on helping preschool-age children reach their potential. Spinney was described by Sesame Workshop as “an artistic genius whose kind and loving view of the world helped shape and define Sesame Street from its earliest days in 1969.” Spinney joined Jim Henson and developed a huge career using the Muppets characters. Big Bird visited China...

Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” 2020 presidential hopeful, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said President Donald Trump’s tweet asking why progressive lawmakers to “go back and fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” was intended to divide people. De Blasio said, “Unfortunately there is an American tradition of telling people to go back where they came from. It’s a very bad tradition that we need to weed out of our nation because we are a nation of migrants, that is who we are by our nature for hundreds of years. But you...

Inside a Crimean cave was a gigantic ancient mystery just waiting to be uncovered: a bird so large that it weighed nearly as much as an adult polar bear. Giant birds once roamed Madagascar, New Zealand and Australia. The latest fossil find, an intriguing fossilized femur, was recently found in Taurida Cave on the northern coast of the Black Sea. It was discovered along with other fossils, including bison bones, that helped researchers date the now-extinct giant bird to between 1.5 million and 2 million years ago. When the first early human ancestors arrived in Europe, they might have encountered...

Shortly after Mayor Bill de Blasio met with the U.S. Attorney's office Friday morning, City Hall released a trove of documents concerning communications between the de Blasio administration and outside advisors, known as the "Agents of the City." NY1's Bobby Cuza dug through the documents and filed the following report on what he found. On what turned out to be a bad news day for the mayor, one where reporters were busy reporting on his meeting with federal investigators, City Hall decided it was a good time to dump some documents — about 1,600 pages in all, including correspondence between...

Live stream of press conference following meeting with Trump

U.S. cities that implemented big minimum-wage hikes to $10 an hour or more in 2015 have seen a strikingly similar aftermath: Job gains have fallen to multiyear lows at restaurants, hotels and other leisure and hospitality venues. The data aren't, for the most part, stark and reliable enough to amount to smoking-gun proof. But Chicago, Oakland, San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. — all on the leading edge of the push for big minimum wage hikes — all show worrisome job trends.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is feeling unappreciated. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, he suggests that many of his accomplishments are being overlooked because of the day-to-day news cycle. “A lot of people outside New York City understand what happened in the first year of New York City better than people in New York City,” de Blasio said. …

I was going through my mailbag yesterday to see what I missed when I ran across this promo from last week:My first thought was, “You’ve never been to my website, have you Nick?”Butt even though I’ve  no idea who Billy on the Street is and never heard of Ariana Grande, I decided to play along - because they obviously don’t know who I am either.So, I watched it, the entire, tortuous 12 minutes 35 seconds. All I can say is entertainment isn’t what it used to be, butt then, what is? With that in mind, I’m sharing Nick’s exciting FLOTUS-Big...

The man who accused Elmo’s puppeteer of sexual misconduct reportedly wants to recant his recantation. Sheldon Stephens, 24, last week withdrew sensational claims that, as an underage teen, he had a wild fling with Kevin Clash, the voice behind the beloved Muppet Elmo. Now Stephens is interviewing lawyers in hopes of ripping up the $125,000 deal he reached with Clash, 52, to deny there was any illegal sex, according to TMZ. (snip)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsa4uLmTw0M?feature=player_detailpage] Video linkIt's excellent. Big Bird may not like it, but I do. If you are for the birds and like to listen to stories devoid of truth and substance, Vote Obama.

Tourists in downtown Washington, D.C. may have been confused by a small, colorful gathering on the mall on Saturday, as a group of activists came together for the “Million Puppet March” with a message of government support for PBS. While the Count may have been disappointed – the assembled crowd for this million-strong march was a few hundred at most – the activists in their cobbled-together homemade costumes did their best. Big Bird, Grover and the Wild Things took pictures with fans in a sea of Obama/Biden signs and ‘Puppets Unite!’ posters. For anyone walking to the Smithsonian museums, they...

The Million Puppet March is occurring in Washington, D.C. today. The Million Puppet March website states their goal is to "support continued funding for public broadcasting." The Washington Post has a story too. No Big Bird, No Peas...

Image at link. Not sure how long they will have it up. I think that we are dealing with 3rd graders.

President Obama was on the ropes in the polls after the first presidential debate. After the second presidential debate, he hit the mat in the polls. And after the third presidential debate, he looks to be down for the count. The question, of course, is why. Looking at the debates alone doesn't tell the full story. Romney surely won the first debate -- in fact, he cleaned President Obama's clock -- but in the second debate, he fought President Obama to a draw. And in the third and final debate, which centered on foreign policy, Romney pulled his punches. So...

"You’ve seen, as middle-income people in this country, incomes go down $4,300 a family, even as gasoline prices have gone up $2,000. Health insurance premiums, up $2,500. Food prices up. Utility prices up. The middle-income families in America have been crushed over the last four years." -- Mitt Romney "We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through. We don’t have to settle for gasoline at four bucks. We don’t have to settle for unemployment at a chronically high level. We don’t have to settle for 47 million people on food stamps. We don’t have to settle for...

Soooooo... What costume will you be wearing at the Million Puppet March in Washington on Nov. 3? I mean this is THE march of our generation and one does want to wear the proper attire. Personally I am torn between wearing a Big Bird costume or appearing as a Temporary SockPuppet. Since maybe half of the marchers will be appearing as Big Bird perhaps the Temporary SockPuppet would be the way to go although I worry that a certain faux bouncer from Boston might show up in that costume. Perhaps appearing as a Binder would be the way to...