Free Republic

Nothing to talk about here, This sad sack woman is nothing but a non-functioning empty suit..period!!!

Trey Gowdy blah blah blah

Yet, while this celebration of piracy seems like innocent fun and pride in a local culture, there is danger in romanticizing ruthless cutthroats who created a crisis in world trade when they captured and plundered thousands of ships on Atlantic trade routes between the Americas, Africa and Great Britain. Why? Because it takes these murderous thieves who did terrible things — like locking women and children in a burning church — and makes them a symbol of freedom and adventure, erasing their wicked deeds from historical memory. These were men (and women) who willingly participated in murder, torture and the...

As my title suggests, everyday while browsing through FR and reading some of the threads, sometimes I am up and sometimes I am down. However, I think about something that happened in Maryland back in 1994 that pushes me slightly in the half-empty camp. Ellen Sauerbrey ran against Paris Glendening (affectionately known as Spendening) for Governor and lost. However, she made the claim that the machines being used were switching votes over to Glendening. Lo and behold, she was able to provide evidence. Then a Maryland court threw her case out because the court stated she provided the evidence a...

After my husband was commissioned, we were assigned to Fort Rucker, Alabama. We moved our mobile home from Michigan and lived in Tiara Park, the mobile home park on post; it was a nice quiet place with nice people and a friendly community. Soon, My husband was deployed to Egypt. That fall, I was alerted by Military Police pounding on the door. There was a strong tropical storm heading this way and all the residents in the park had to take shelter in the installation gymnasium. Already it had been raining hard and there was lots of water on the...

We had a single wide mobile home while stationed in Michigan on recruiting duty in the early 90's. The Army would pay to move it, so we thought it would be like having our own home (boy, were we mistaken!). We had it moved down to Fort Rucker, Alabama, our next duty station after my husband went to OCS and was commissioned after nine years of enlisted service. I had been needing to have a hysterectomy. I was scheduled to have the surgery while he was away for more training, so my brother came to stay with us and help...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Thursday lauded Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley for apologizing for accompanying President Donald Trump on his walk to St. John’s Episcopal Church earlier this month. “I have nothing but deep admiration for and total confidence in General Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Graham wrote on Twitter. “I support his statement in both substance and spirit regarding the recent presidential visit to St. Johns.” “General Milley is a tremendous military leader who understands the long tradition of maintaining an apolitical, nonpartisan military,” the South Carolina Republican added....

As the person who posts the daily Live thread on COVIOD-19, I am often pointed at as a ring leader for the "hype" and "hysteria". I don't think its fair, but I get it. I want to make a couple of over arching statements based on my life experience working in hospitals, emergency management and along side municipal and federal emergency preparedness organizations and departments. My work experience in hospital emergency planning and working with local, state, and federal officials provides me with a perspective that is different than most. The planning for these is things is pretty unemotional and...

presidential candidate Joe Biden suggested that he would consider former failed Republican presidential candidate Jeb! [sic] Bush as his vice presidential running mate. “That son-of-a-gun Bloomberg ain’t gonna out-loser ol’ Joe Biden,” Mr. Biden told reporters. “He thinks he can show me up by winning this thing even with Hillary on the ticket. Well, Jiminy Cricket, I can win this nomination riding side-saddle with Jeb Bush, fella!” When asked about the many gaffes that Mr. Bush committed on the campaign trail in 2016 when he opposed Donald Trump, Mr. Biden scoffed: “Oh jumpin’ Jehoshaphat, he didn’t mess up as much...

I filed my column just after it came out; I cannot claim to have deeply studied the papal document, Querida Amazonia. Given more time, I’d hesitate to study it any deeper. Like many Catholics, who at least aspire to be “faithful” and “traditional,” I simply rejoice in what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t, in itself, advance such campaigns as those for the marriage of priests, or the ordination of women. It does recommend the appalling Amazon Synod Final Report, rather than ignore it, or better, refute it. This is the “footnote” tactic, tried by Bergoglio before. But now it can...

Actor Harrison Ford used a publicity appearance in Mexico City, tied to a new Disney movie, to praise Greta Thunberg and trash the United States, saying that America has lost its “moral leadership” in the world. Ford was in Mexico City this week to promote his latest movie, The Call of the Wild, based on the classic novel by Jack London. While speaking with reporters, the actor addressed environmental issues while also slamming American leadership under President Donald Trump. “Our position in the world is tenuous because of our lack of moral leadership, basically,” he told reporters Ford went on...

Hotter weather thanks to climate change could cause a spike in deaths related to injuries—including suicides, assaults, and drownings—according to a study. One expert described the problem to Newsweek as the looming "hidden public health burden" of global warming. Deaths by suicides, assaults, transport accidents, drownings and falls were forecast to be on the up if temperatures rose on average by 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the authors of the paper published in the journal Nature Medicine found. The researchers analyzed data on deaths and temperatures between 1980 to 2017 in mainland United States, excluding Alaska and...

President Donald Trump is one of the most controversial world leaders in modern times, igniting the ire of America’s staunchest allies. Whether it’s the proposed Muslim ban, the US border wall and immigration, or his praise of authoritarian leaders, Trump is deft at inciting deep divisions among the public. In 2018, political scientist Daniel Drezner summarized this consensus in The Washington Post: “The world hates President Trump.” Data from the Pew Research Center illustrates Drezner’s thinking. For the residents of US allies, their confidence in the US president dropped substantially from the last year of Obama’s presidency to the beginning...

When Donald Trump stepped to the dais at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday, he had a speech full of sharp lines: swipes at socialism, assertions of nationalism versus globalism, harsh words for Iran. Though Trump doesn’t enjoy delivering scripted remarks, he sounded listless, tired, and bored even by his own standards, struggling through the speech. The president had a good reason to be distracted. The same morning, he had spoken on the phone with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, trying to stem a growing tide of Democratic demands for his impeachment. According to NBC’s Heidi Przybyla, Trump asked Pelosi whether there...

Donald Trump’s presidency can often feel like an inevitable catastrophe that gets easier and easier to become desensitized to and disengaged from. Trump has successfully deconstructed and rendered irrelevant the traditional neoliberal niceties that have conveniently shielded this country from confronting its history, and continued practice, of structural violence: Trump is an indecent man who has lived an indecent life, and runs the country in accordance with this indecency — yet, unlike his predecessors, he makes no attempt to hide his amorality, and we make no attempt to remain shocked and horrified by his cruelty. The ongoing detention of innumerable...

He's back! President Obama has emerged from his supposed cloistered life to attack President Trump. Obama broke with a tradition apparently only modern Republican ex-presidents follow, which is not to speak ill of your successor.Obama, who reportedly has been running his "Organizing for America" operation, along with his White House aide Valerie Jarrett from his expensive home in a Washington neighborhood, spoke to a group of University of Illinois students last Friday, claiming it was his policies, not those of President Trump, that have produced the current economic boom."When you hear how great the economy's doing right now, let's...

With less than two weeks to go before Arizona's primary election Republican candidate US Representative Martha McSally is refusing to debate her rivals in the US Senate Primary set for August 28th. McSally is running against former State Senator Kelli Ward and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio's decision to enter the race this year appears to split the more conservative voters giving McSally a better chance of winning. The missing factor in the race is a clear cut endorsement from President Donald Trump. Trump did tweet praise of Ward within the last year. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte...

An Emerson College e-Poll released on Monday shows that Tuesday’s special election in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District is a dead heat between Democrat Danny O’Connor and Republican Troy Balderson. The Emerson College Polling Society said in a statement accompanying the release of the poll: The final US Congressional special election before the November midterm elections will be held on August 7 in Ohio’s 12th district and it shows a neck and neck race: The Democrat, Franklin County Recorder Danny O’Connor has 47% of the vote and Republican, State Senator Troy Balderson is at 46%, 7% of very likely voters were...

HAPPIER ABROAD  Why You Will Have A Better Love and Life Beyond America     What immigrants and foreigners say about America that you never hear in the US media  "The biggest culture shock that people experience in the US is not between their country and the US but between what they thought the US would be and what it actually is." – Ladislav, my Expat Advisor In reality, there are few redeeming qualities to living in America other than making money and consuming.  Besides that, the rest is mostly fake and artificial.  This is well known to many foreigners, immigrants and...

Donald Trump is a disappointing president whose misguided approach to foreign affairs was highlighted by the temper tantrum with which he concluded the G7 summit in Canada. Trump was so off the rails that the office of the French president released a statement declaring that: “International co-operation cannot be dictated by fits of anger and throwaway remarks.” After Trump instructed his aides not to sign a communique between the seven nations, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said: “It’s actually not a real surprise, we have seen this with the climate agreement or the Iran deal. In a matter of seconds,...