Free Republic

The Hill predicted Sunday that Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis will secure the 2024 GOP presidential nomination with former President Donald Trump as the runner-up contender.DeSantis was picked as the top candidate for his double-digit reelection during the midterms and what The Hill calls "his embrace of culture war issues and his opposition to COVID-19–related lockdowns." Explaining why Trump was ranked as the second most likely 2024 nominee, the outlet said: "Trump would have been the runaway favorite had these rankings been drawn up the day before the midterm elections. Since then, virtually everything the president has touched has turned...

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is causally associated with lung cancer risk, according to a study. Lin Li and colleagues employed a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) approach to examine the causal relationship between GERD and lung cancer. Independent single nucleotide polymorphisms that were highly linked to GERD were identified in a sample of 129,080 GERD patients. Data from genome-wide association studies were used to assess outcomes for lung cancer, including squamous cell lung cancer (LUSC) and lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) in 11,348 patients. To examine the potential causative association between GERD and risk for lung cancer, three MR statistical techniques were used....

A high-end estimate of up to 88,000 deaths and over 1 million hospital admissions could follow the ongoing wave of the COVID-19 pandemic over the next four weeks as the virus moves toward claiming nearly 900,000 lives in the United States alone, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an ensemble forecast, which combines data from diverse independent team forecasts on the pandemic, published Monday and updated on Wednesday, the CDC stated its low and high estimates on how many COVID-19 related deaths will likely occur from Jan. 10 to Feb. 5. “This week’s national ensemble...

So what happened to the BLM protester and BLM protester that were photoed at the 1/6 rally. Where did the pictures go on the web. They where in the front of the supposed insurgence. One was directly linked to Antifa as a leader, the other I believe was linked to BLM. True republican defenders of faith… LOL. I believe one of them was the son of a New York Supreme Court Judge. Old news, but time to destroy the narrative. To many honest Godly people locked in a concentration camp with no fair trial. This article is bs, as are...

Mexico never paid for any of it. It’s less than half finished. And on Jan. 20 or soon thereafter, construction will come to an abrupt halt on the “big beautiful wall” that President Donald Trump promised to build along the U.S.-Mexico border. The project has cost $15 billion so far, most of it diverted from the military budget after Congress refused to provide full funding. President-elect Joe Biden vowed during the campaign to kill the project, but leave in place whatever the Trump administration leaves behind. At the moment, that’s about 400 miles worth of levee wall and 30-foot-tall bollard...

With an election result in question, and all manner of Democratic subterfuge taking place in the recounts, we are still far off from anything conclusive being established. But in that interim there have been many who are preemptively bemoaning what a Joe Biden presidency would mean and looking ahead at all of the disasters he would deliver. Hopefully this column will tamp down some of that anxiety. First off, one of the parlor games taking place right now is how long Joe will remain in power before succumbing to mental infirmaries and thus ceding the resolute desk to Kamala Harris....

Minxin Pei With the imposition of 25% tariffs on $68 billion worth of their merchandise trade ($34 billion of exports each), the U.S. and China have fired the first salvos of their trade war. If one were to borrow a military analogy, the first round of the U.S.-China trade war is either a skirmish or a probing attack, as the amount of the two-way merchandise trade affected by the tariffs is about only 10% of the total U.S.-China trade. But everyone knows that the main battle will be joined soon. Besides the additional $32 billion merchandise trade targeted for punitive...

[snip]Brazen story... ordinarily trigger a front-page news story or an outraged editorial — a bunch of rich individuals asking Congress to write them a law that would give them better negotiating power against other rich individuals. [snip]Bezos, Slim, and Buffett need Congress to help them negotiate with Google.

"From our standpoint, it’s not a good thing," Clapper said of accelerated advancements in encryption technology. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden, by leaking classified data two years ago, contributed to the acceleration of sophisticated encryption methods that militants are using to hide their communications, National Intelligence Director James Clapper said Monday. The rapid advancement of commercially available encryption software is proving to be a difficult obstacle in detecting potential threats, he said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "From our standpoint, it's not a good thing," he said of the rapidly advancing encryption, adding that the software has had...

If the opinion polls are correct, Sen. Ted Cruz will be shown a thing or two on Tuesday by the New York voters he’s been insulting by going on about fellow Republican presidential contender Donald Trump’s “New York values.’’Everyone knows what values he meant, Cruz says. We sure do. Cruz meant freedom, respect, diversity and striving. But he disdains those values when it means gays are free, women are respected, and immigrants strive. Unfortunately for Cruz, those all-inclusive values help build prosperity — and win national elections.Here are some of our New York values:Hard work. If you can do the job,...

Abstract OBJECTIVES: The objective this prospective, open-label study was to determine the long-term effect of medicinal cannabis treatment on pain and functional outcomes in subjects with treatment-resistant chronic pain. METHODS: The primary outcome was change in pain symptom score on the S-TOPS (Treatment Outcomes in Pain Survey - Short Form) questionnaire at 6 months follow-up in intent-to-treat (ITT) population. The secondary outcomes included change in S-TOPS physical, social and emotional disability scales, pain severity and pain interference on brief pain inventory (BPI), sleep problems, and change in opioid consumption. RESULTS: 274 subjects were approved for treatment; complete baseline data were...

On Tuesday Donald Trump announced he would force Mexico to pay for a border wall by threatening to cut off billions of dollars in remittances sent by immigrants living in the United States. Later that day Barack Obama took time to scold Donald Trump on his plan to cut off remittances to Mexico until they fork over the funds to pay for a border wall. Of course, Barack Obama is wrong about this, too. The US already cuts off remittance payments to Somalia. "Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Congress passed stricter money-laundering regulations, which caused several large U.S. banks...

What disturbs you? What childhood event, adolescent disappointment or even adult despair has scarred you beyond repair? Did it ever make you want to become a politician? It's a tangential question incited by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz's appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." Asked how many of the "Star Wars" movies he's seen, Cruz proudly said, "All of them." And when probed about the last movie that made him cry, he exposed his deeper innards. "As someone who grew up -- I mean, I stood in line for two hours to watch 'Empire Strikes Back,'" he said. "Han Solo was...

Let’s not risk the rightful wrath of legions of historians by comparing Donald Trump to Abraham Lincoln, but it is undeniable the campaigns of 1860 and 2016 share some eerie similarities. The Republican convention was held in Chicago that year, and on its eve, Harper’s Weekly, the standard of the day, published a huge, double page illustration of the eleven “prominent candidates” for the party’s nomination (see Ronald C. White’s A.Lincoln, p321 and following). Centered on the page was the presumed choice that year, the curmudgeonly William H. Seward, US Senator from New York. His picture was three times the...

Last night the Trump campaign called off their Chicago rally due to security threats.] Leftist protesters cheered, beat Trump supporters, block an ambulance to the local hospital and screamed profanities at families staying at the Trump Hotel. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and John Kasich sided with the violent protesters. Republican endorsements. American game show host Chuck Woolery lashed out at Senator Ted Cruz after he sided with the violent leftists. And Second Amendment speaker Jan Morgan withdrew her support from Ted Cruz.

Why Trump Haters Really Hate Trump It’s not the hair. Or the bad manners. Or the “beautiful” wall he says he’ll build. There’s a different, more subtle reason why the Republican establishment, donor class, political operatives, and the news media in general hate Donald Trump. The reason can be found in a New York Times best selling business book, Stacking The Deck, by Wharton professor David Pottruck. Pottruck, the Charles Schwab CEO who took the genial brokerage house online and into the big time, says that organizations hate change. Hate it with a PASSION! That’s because when there’s a new...

As the end of the year approaches, Donald Trump is solidly ensconced at the top of the Republican polls nationally. The man just behind him? Senator Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) , an establishment bugaboo. The establishment’s favorite candidate, Senator Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) , is currently running far behind in national polling, a distant third in Iowa, and in a deadlock with Cruz and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for second in New Hampshire. Panic time. So, here’s the establishment roundup for Christmas week. If You Support Donald Trump, You Want to Lose. Earlier this week, Bret Stephens of The...

A week ago I was in Belgrade watching a panel on "blockchain." The makeup of the panel was typical: a young, plugged-in VC, an older banker guy and a crypto-anarchistic dude in a T-shirt. It was like watching a movie called "Bitcoin is Good And Bad" for the 50th time. I knew what was happening but I couldn't look away. The panel started normally - VC guy said he liked the blockchain specifically but was iffy about those bitcoins, the older gentleman said bitcoin was bad, but then the anarchist dude was quiet. He let the banker talk. The banker...

The Orthodox Christian Church, which is reclaiming its traditional role in post-Soviet Russia, has described its government’s fight against the Islamic State and other jihadi groups in Syria as a “holy war.”According to Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Church’s Public Affairs Department, The fight with terrorism is a holy battle and today our country is perhaps the most active force in the world fighting it. The Russian Federation has made a responsible decision on the use of armed forces to defend the People of Syria from the sorrows caused by the arbitrariness of terrorists. Christians are suffering in the region...

... Steve Jobs and Carly Fiorina made a deal where HP could slap its name on Apple’s wildly successful product. Nonetheless, HP still managed to botch things. ... If it were a straight deal for HP to include Apple’s software, the fee might have been hundreds of millions of dollars. (Around that time, software companies were paying huge sums to have their products or services preinstalled, since people seldom deleted them and often used the default choices.) Even better, preinstalling iTunes was a way for Apple to stifle Microsoft’s competitor to the iTunes Music Store. As an Apple leader at...