Free Republic

Please bear with me as I struggle once again to order my thoughts in a chaotic situation. First, let's get right to the meat of the matter with the following excerpts from an illustrative essay posted at Substack on 18 November 2020 by one Alexander Macris: https://macris.substack.com/p/trump-at-the-rubicon/[excerpted text begins] Trump at the Rubicon — How the Insurrection Act and Militia Act Empower Trump to Cast the Die[... snip ...] Like Caesar, Trump now must fight for victory or lose everything. Come January 2021, will Donald Trump decide to cast the die and cross the Rubicon? He might. The same people...

I just read the entire response as linked herein (with thanks to the stickied post from Harper42190). It's a masterpiece of avoiding reliance on specific charges of ballot fraud while repeatedly body-slamming the defendants for that exact electoral fraud. The based lawyers representing Texas have managed the difficult but evidently legally necessary feat of squaring the circle. ^_^ https://supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163498/20201211111125165_TX-v-State-MPI-Reply-2020-12-11.pdf BTW, while I'm not a lawyer or paralegal myself, I've written fairly complex legal pages in clear, accessible language for clients who were themselves practicing lawyers. Make of that what you will. :-) Perhaps it'd be interesting to point out a...

Y'all might be interested in a quick update on how the ground game stands as of yesterday and probably early today.

With apologies if this is in the wrong forum, the following tentative 2020 electoral map is what I've been able to glean from closely following up-to-date state polling (NOT misleading national polling), news and trends as reported by reliable sources, and betting activity at PredictIt:

Like, ya know? It's truth, and it's funny in a grim but hah-hah "eff-ya" way! :-)

Where in the world is Waldo? Oh, wait — wrong meme. Carmen Sandiego? Warmer, but no. The answer is zinc sulfate 220-milligram tablets or capsules suitable for popping like candy for a few days. As we've seen, the mass media has been determinedly ignoring the third leg of Dr. Vladimir Zelenko's treatment trifecta. Still, the word has gotten out, and the stuff appears to be out of stock absolutely everywhere.Forward magazine piece on Dr. Vladimir Zelenko. So! What happens if you get sick enough from coronavirus to seek treatment? Even if your own primary-care doctor is friendly to the hydroychloroquine...

At the risk of upsetting a few folks, someone who appears to be in the know has tossed a small bucket of cold water on the notorious hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin drug cocktail: [....] First up is this study from France. It’s another very small one, and all the usual warnings apply because of that. It’s from a team at the University of Paris and Saint-Louis Hospital there, and they evaluated 11 consecutive patients admitted there with the same course of treatment as the Marseilles group first reported (hydroxychloroquine 600mg/day and azithromycin, 500mg the first day and 250 mg/day thereafter). The...

On March 9 a team of researchers in China published results showing hydroxychloroquine was effective against the 2019 coronavirus in a test tube. The authors suggested a five-day, 12-pill treatment for Covid-19: two 200-milligram tablets twice a day on the first day followed by one tablet twice a day for four more days. A more recent French study used the drug in combination with azithromycin. Most Americans know azithromycin as the brand name Zithromax Z-Pak, prescribed for upper respiratory infections. The Z-Pak alone doesn’t appear to help fight Covid-19, and the findings of combination treatment are preliminary. But researchers in...

With apologies if this is a repeat thread, the embedded video at the linked YouTube post holds an excellent analysis by John Correia, founder of Active Self Protection, of how the shooting and armed response went down.I tried first to link to the Reddit thread where I saw this video because viewing the video through Reddit apparently skips an annoying "sign in" step at YouTube, but Reddit appears to be unwelcome at Free Republic. Nor do I know how to embed the video from YouTube itself. You may need to sign into YouTube with a Google account. Sorry about that....

It isn't just the Second Amendment under assault in blue America; the crazed anti-gun nuts want to take away your Nerf guns too! Leave it to New York to start this idiotic idea. The Empire State Consumer Project is part of a nationwide group that lobbies lawmakers for consumer safety, research, and education. The NY faction has decided that this year, the biggest threat to consumers is "assault-style" Nerf guns that shoot foam darts and contribute to much family fun (in my house anyway).... (read rest at link) ...

Whilst poking at the notorious Slickdeals website for anything useful and within my budget, I ran across the post linked above for ten custom 3x3" vinyl stickers for a dollar with free shipping. The stickers are apparently cut down to fit your image if it's not perfectly square. Here's the link again:10-Count 3" x 3" Custom Die Cut Vinyl Stickers $1 + Free ShippingI ordinarily ain't much for such tomfoolery, but a fun thought occurred! I just finished placing an order and confirming the proof for ten stickers containing the following image:Sticker Mule's website complained at first about wanting a...

What we are witnessing with such gems of hysterical mendacity are the pathetic death throes of a discredited political franchise and its rapidly disintegrating narrative.If you haven’t had your daily dose of petulant surreality, swivel over to read this astounding editorial at what used to be America’s paper of record. This curious effusion warns that “The G.O.P. will not be able to postpone a reckoning on Donald Trump’s presidency for much longer.”Oh, dear. Are things as bad as that? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. And you know that it is really serious because the cri de coeur not only...

The national media blasted President Trump’s withdrawal of 50 US military advisors from the Syrian border with Turkey as a “sellout,” a “betrayal” and a “huge strategic blunder.”Let’s be clear: None of them truly care about the Kurds. Otherwise, they would have been sending correspondents and camera crews to Rojava, as the Kurds call northern Syria, on a regular basis.[....]I have met with Kurdish political and military leaders in the region, including the PYD, the political arm of the Kurdish YPG militia. And while they were thrilled to have US backing in the fight against ISIS, none of them had...

"The open practice of killing then cuddling does not simply represent a ghastly declaration that children are both fully human and disposable. It signifies a war against the mother-child bond."The infamous abortionist LeRoy Carhart invites women to cuddle with their freshly killed babies. His clinic also offers them take-home keepsakes such as photographs and footprints of their child.Carhart specializes in third-trimester abortions, those done when the baby is approximately 24 weeks of gestation and older. You may recall that he was at the center of the debate on partial-birth abortion when the Supreme Court ruled in his favor in 2000....

A recent thread on bedbugs abruptly disappeared because it wasn't news. Still, the care and feeding of tenants is a topic of some interest, and at least one person in that thread complained about tenants who muck up your property with bedbug infestations and then demand that you fix the problem at your expense.I've had to deal with this problem myself, and it might be worth sharing the results of my extensive research into ways to avoid the costly expedient of either whole-residence heat treatment or sulfuryl fluoride fumigation. This is only a list of a few products that appear...

I get that question whenever I object to more “gun control” as a response to the latest tragedy. I have long held, and continue to hold, the position that more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners is not the answer to mass murder. It doesn’t work. It just leaves the law abiding helpless in the face of criminal violence.First, let’s dispense with that “end”. I hate to tell you this, but you can’t end them. “Gun control” certainly cannot. France’s strict gun control did not prevent Charlie Hebdo nor the 2015 Paris attacks. India’s draconian gun laws did not prevent Mumbai....

... I’ve watched the two millionth “the problem with conservatism is people like you, the solution for conservatism is people like me” debate, and I’m just sick and tired of so many of our brethren averting their eyes from the big, glaring, worsening problem that rips off so many decent, hard-working folks. The Huge Albatross to the Conservative Movement that Few Want to Talk About Back in 2013, Conservative StrikeForce PAC raised $2.2 million in funds vowing to support Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor in Virginia. Court filings and FEC records showed that the PAC only contributed $10,000 to Cuccinelli’s...

President Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Sterling Heights, Michigan, on May 18 to raise support for his reelection in the critical swing state. The Daily Caller News Foundation sent a crack team to this unusual event to investigate strange rumors surrounding the event. Could thousands of people in a battleground actually gather together to support the supposedly embattled American leader? It seemed impossible. Imagine our surprise to discover the unbelievable truth. Not only were there really thousands of people at the rally, but the overwhelming majority of those in attendance actually love the current U.S. president! Donald J....

Americans have long dreaded the “Big One,” a magnitude 8.0 earthquake along California’s San Andreas Fault that could one day kill thousands of people and cause billions of dollars in damage. The Big One, though, is a mere mini-me compared with the cataclysm forming beneath the Pacific Northwest. Roughly 100 miles off the West Coast, running from Mendocino, California, to Canada’s Vancouver Island, lurks the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where the Juan de Fuca Plate is sliding beneath the North American Plate, creating the conditions for a megathrust quake 30 times stronger than the worst-case scenario along the notorious San...

I should have known this was coming sooner or later, given my unhealthy living style and other health risk factors, but it did come, quietly on padded feet in the hushed hours of early morning. I had a silent heart attack. I woke up to take a piss but was unable then to fall back asleep. I kept waking up again to gasp for breath, which was weird. After perhaps thirty minutes of this, I gave up and arose to poke at the Internet for clues. Carbon monoxide poisoning was a possible cause, but then why were alarms not ringing...