Free Republic

Dressing up like Wolverine or Cersei Lannister is probably more fun than scouring the classifieds for menial jobs. Imagine you're a college graduate stuck in a perpetually lousy economy. That's a problem Japanese twenty-somethings have faced for more than 20 years. Two decades of stagnation after the collapse of the 1980s real-estate and stock bubbles — combined with labor laws making it tough to fire older workers — have relegated vast numbers of Japanese young adults to low-paying, temporary contract jobs. Many find themselves living with their parents well into their twenties and beyond, unmarried and childless. Then again, they...

Operation Rescue urges all other states with Brigham abortion facilities to shutter them immediately in light of the New Jersey Board’s findings.By Cheryl SullengerTrenton, NJ – The New Jersey State Board of Medical Examiners voted yesterday evening to revoke the final medical license held by the notorious abortionist, Steven Chase Brigham, noting that he betrayed the trust of the women he exploited.In New Jersey, unlicensed persons are unable to hold ownership in medical facilities, so the Board’s revocation decision should force Brigham to shut down his eight abortion offices he operates there.“He dons the mask of caring practitioner but he...

Impact of EPA’s Regulatory Assault on Power Plants: New Regulations to Take More than 72 GW of Electricity Generation Offline and the Plant Closing Announcements Keep Coming…

Why did the stock market plummet more than 330 points?I could give you any one of several answers but they won’t actually help you. Because this is the wrong question.The right question is to ask why it went up an almost equivalent amount yesterday. And the answer to that is people are out of their f***ing minds.They’re nostalgic for the sentiment-driven, Fed-fueled, multiple expansion market of 2013 and they haven’t yet accepted the fact it was a once (maybe twice) in a lifetime thing. The conditions that were in place to set up what happened in 2013 were the following:1....

A bipartisan group of senators from across the political spectrum—from Elizabeth Warren and Patrick J. Leahy to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio—wants President Barack Obama to speak out and act to support Hong Kong’s democracy movement.They don’t specify exactly what they want Obama to do—they say “demonstrable, meaningful steps”—but note that a 1992 law “authorizes you to suspend trade and economic provisions should Beijing not provide sufficient autonomy for Hong Kong.”Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is president pro tempore and Judiciary chairman, leads the letter with Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rubio.“The people of Hong Kong have sent a strong...

Fears of the Ebola contagion breaking out stateside have fueled a curious boom in industrial-grade protective gear.Since the first case of the Ebola virus was confirmed in Dallas, Rick Pedley noticed an unusual blip in sales at his online store, PK Safety. His regular customers, most of whom work in hazardous environments like construction sites or claustrophobic drainage pipes, bought protective gear at a rate of about 150 orders per day. That gear included gloves, hard hats and the occasional hazmat suit. Now there are plenty of newcomers, shoppers who evidently fear their communities might become hazardous. Orders have doubled....

Most people ask for a raise in the privacy of their boss's office. But one gutsy Wells Fargo employee emailed the CEO directly — and copied some 200,000 other Wells Fargo workers on the note. On Tuesday, the Charlotte Observer reported that Tyrel Oates, who it says works in an Oregon office of Wells Fargo processing requests from customers trying to stop debt-collection calls, sent such an email to CEO John Stumpf. His plea was not just to get a raise for himself. His proposal to Stumpf? Use the company's profits to give every employee a raise of $10,000. According...

According to the Pew Research Center, half of Americans think business owners should be required to provide their services for same-sex weddings even if doing so violates their religious beliefs. In a September poll from the group, respondents split down the middle on the following question: If a business provides wedding services, such as catering or flowers, should it be allowed to refuse those services to a same-sex couple for religious reasons, or required to provide those services as it would to all other customers? The number saying businesses should be required to provide such services included a majority of...

An underfunded independent from South Dakota has turned the Senate race there upside-down, giving Democrats a renewed hope of holding the seat — or at least preventing a Republican pickup. But while former Sen. Larry Pressler, who served nearly a quarter century in Congress as a Republican, won't say who he'd caucus with, he told The Hill Wednesday that, if elected, he'd be a "friend of Obama" in the Senate. "I don't regret those votes, ‘cause on that day, that's how I felt," he said of voting for Obama twice, a detail used by Republicans as evidence Pressler is now...

"There's a sense possibly that the world is spinning so fast and nobody is able to control it" First, Community Organizer Barack Hussein Obama stole a country when he emerged from the shadows and in Hollywood style gained the Oval Office as prize with no credentials, no expertise of any kind other than that of on the streets of Chicago, public-funded rabble rousing. It should go down as the first time in living history that a politician, girded by sources outside the country, became president, if only in title. That’s the breathtaking trajectory of how Obama captured then began to...

In 2007, Charles Koch, CEO of Koch Industries, Inc., published a book titled “The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World’s Largest Private Company,” laying out five principles that comprise his market-based management philosophy, to which he attributes the exponential growth of Koch Industries. As political observers are likely aware, the success of Koch Industries has enabled the Kochs to spend millions of dollars funding libertarian ideological initiatives and Republican political campaigns, something Democrats are not enamored of. Sen. Harry Reid most famously has attacked the Kochs — using them as a caricature for the villainous one percent...

From Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” page. COPENHAGEN — Danish toy maker Lego said Thursday it won’t renew a deal allowing Shell to hand out Lego sets at its gas stations in some 30 countries, following a viral campaign protesting Arctic drilling. Environmental activists Greenpeace launched in July a video showing an Arctic landscape with a Shell drilling platform made of Lego bricks covered in oil. Lego CEO Joergen Vig Knudstorp said the protest “may have created misunderstandings among our stakeholders,” adding the company didn’t want to be embroiled in the environmental campaign. The world’s largest toy maker “should never...

As a hub of international shipping and travel it stands to reason that Miami might be at a higher risk to report a case of ebola. It also stands to reason that since Miami's economy is dependent on tourism a reported case of ebola could have serious business consequences. So it's not surprising either that Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and the county commission are taking extra precautions to prepare for the possibility of ebola in the 305. Come to think of it actually, it's not that surprising that they seem to have no idea what they're talking about either. The...

I attended the Gun Rights Policy Conference at O'Hare during the last weekend in September.   After the conference, I visited friends and family in Wisconsin.   Wisconsin has always had legal open carry of firearms, but only recently enforced the law against scofflaw governments in Madison and Milwaukee.   I decided to celebrate Wisconsin's return to the rule of law and the enforcement of constitutional rights by openly carrying on my trip through most of the state. At my first stop to fuel, on I-90 between Milwaukee and Madison, I told the clerk what I was doing, and asked him to...

A copy of the 3rd Party Report has been released and is now posted at the web site Sifferkol.se Link: http://www.sifferkoll.se/sifferkoll/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/LuganoReportSubmit.pdf Key findings: COP of COP of 3.2-3.6 over a 32 day period and isotopic change in nickel and lithium was found to have changed substantially after run. The authors conclude, "Once again, even in the most conservative scenarios, we have values that allow us to conclude that the reactor studied here may not be considered a conventional source of energy." UPDATE: From Rossi on the Journal of Nuclear Physics: To all the Readers of the Journal of Nuclear Physics:...

Those looking for good news on the fight against Ebola will not find much encouragement from Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command. As Jim Garamone of Department of Defense News reports, Kelly told an audience at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday that, if the disease reaches Central America, "it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States." He also said with certainty that "there is no way we can keep Ebola [contained] in West Africa." “By the end of the year, there’s...

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing.”—Christopher Manes, Earth First! “I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.”—John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal Should flights coming from West African nations be cancelled and our borders closed? According to Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the answer is “No, absolutely not.” “When you start closing countries like that, there is a real danger of making things worse,... governments could fall if you isolate them.” What kind of logic is...

This is why the World Health Organization believes there could be more than a million Ebola cases by January. A study conducted by the CDC in Liberia has found that ignorance and incompetence, plus unalloyed fear is contributing to the epidemic in Liberia. Washington Examiner: A new and remarkably candid on-the-ground audit from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the Ebola crisis in Liberia said that doctors and nurses have fled hospitals in the infection zone and that obstacles to killing the virus remain. The analysis of four remote Liberian counties conducted by local and CDC officials that...

Liberal groups are building a grassroots army in Iowa and New Hampshire in hopes of stopping a Hillary Clinton coronation in 2016. While the progressive groups don’t have a candidate, they are hiring organizers and opening offices as if one will emerge. At a minimum, the groups hope their efforts will push Clinton to the left. And if the political winds blow just right, the activists hope Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will take the plunge — and turn their organizing work into the foundation for her candidacy. Officials form Democracy For America, a liberal group, are getting involved in local-level...

Rebels claim that Moscow closes borders for volunteers from Russia and suppliers of freights to Donbass. To supporters of "the Russian spring" arises more and more questions from law enforcement agencies. Experts consider that the power intends to interfere further with private initiatives in the help to rebels of DNR and LNR. According to the field commander from DNR Oleg Miller, initially, when the Ukrainian crisis only inflamed, people with the weapon weren't allowed to pass neither in, nor out. But, as he claims, the border wasn't protected effectively that gave the chance to carry out big convoys with people...