Free Republic

Republican Donald Trump isn’t going away anytime soon, I now believe. That assessment doesn’t mean I think Trump is the favorite for the Iowa caucuses or the GOP nomination, but it does reflect a fundamental shift in my thinking. I can no longer say that with any certainty, though it remains the single most likely outcome. Trump’s favorable rating jumped from 27 percent in the May Selzer & Company’s Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg Politics to 61 percent in the August 23-25 Selzer survey. At the same time, his unfavorable rating dropped from 63 percent to...

Trump Fans, It’s Time for An Intervention by JONAH GOLDBERG July 11, 2015 The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays. Dear Reader (and those of you with better things to do), There have been times in the past when I’ve gotten crosswise with certain segments of the conservative base and/or with the readership of National Review. And, because, like the Elephant Man, I am a not an animal but a human being, I have always had at least some self-doubt. That’s as it should be. People...

A proposed new law in Denmark could be the first step towards an economic revolution that sees physical currencies and normal bank accounts abolished and gives governments futuristic new tools to fight the cycle of “boom and bust”. The Danish proposal sounds innocuous enough on the surface – it would simply allow shops to refuse payments in cash and insist that customers use contactless debit cards or some other means of electronic payment. Officially, the aim is to ease “administrative and financial burdens”, such as the cost of hiring a security service to send cash to the bank, and is...

With all the recent race clanging on MSNBC and other cable news networks, now’s probably a good time to remind everyone that America is among the least racist countries in the world. I know this statement will be shocking news to regular viewers of “PoliticsNation,” but it also has the quality of being true. From 2010 to 2014, the World Values Survey asked residents in over 50 countries who they would not want as neighbors. Just over five percent of respondents in the United States said “people of a difference race.” That’s far more tolerant a response than citizens of...

If Michael Sam doesn't have a job by next Monday, he has at least one standing offer. WWE has invited Sam to appear on the Sept. 8 episode of Raw....

After Monday’s bombshell about the federal government’s system-wide email back-up system broke, there was yet another bombshell. The IRS “recycled” — destroyed — Lois Lerner’s hard drive in June 2011, just 10 days after Rep. Dave Camp had sent a letter to the IRS inquiring about the targeting of conservative groups that Lerner knew about and may have orchestrated. The IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry device, too. Even though there is no suggestion that it ever “crashed,” as the agency claims about her hard drive. Even worse, the IRS destroyed Lerner’s Blackberry after it knew of the crash, and while the...

Michael Brown Funeral: Cop-Lynching Pep RallyPosted By Matthew Vadum On August 26, 2014 @ 12:58 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments An Al Sharpton-led memorial service yesterday for Michael Brown, the black 18-year-old thug who gave a white Ferguson, Mo. police officer a severe head injury while trying to seize his handgun, became the grotesque political rally some observers feared it would be.The distinctly anti-police tone of the service was proof that the lie that Brown tried to surrender to white police officer Darren Wilson, rather than trying to beat the life out of him, won’t die. The racial-grievance industry,...

The Rev. Al Sharpton is the White House’s man on the ground in Ferguson. The 59-year-old Sharpton has become a key adviser to President Obama on race issues, according to Politico, and is acting as his liaison in the racially charged St. Louis suburb, where the police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown led to days of riots. Sharpton arrived at the protest site in Ferguson three days after the shooting and quickly began briefing the White House. “There’s a trust factor with The Rev from the Oval Office on down,” a White House official told Politico. “He gets it,...

On Monday, four days after Vladimir Putin’s minions in Ukraine shot down a passenger airliner carrying 298 people, including an American citizen, President Barack Obama emerged from the White House to issue a statement. Scowling at the camera, Obama stated: “Russia has extraordinary influence over these separatists. No one denies that. Russia has urged them on. Russia has trained them.” Finally, after fulminating for several minutes about the nastiness of the Russian government, Obama approached the predictable climax: threats of action. Except that there were none. Instead, Obama explained that if Russia were to ignore his warnings, it would “only...

Boehner Is Said to Back Change on Immigration By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ASHLEY PARKER Published: January 1, 2014 WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio has signaled he may embrace a series of limited changes to the nation’s immigration laws in the coming months, giving advocates for change new hope that 2014 might be the year that a bitterly divided Congress reaches a political compromise to overhaul the sprawling system. Mr. Boehner has in recent weeks hired Rebecca Tallent, a longtime immigration adviser to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has long backed broad immigration changes. Advocates...

Dennis drawn to North Korea by his Rodman: report Staff Reporter 2013-12-26 08:55 (GMT+8) Retired NBA great Dennis Rodman loves visiting North Korea not just to train local basketball players but to enjoy the sexual services laid on for him by his pal, the country's supreme leader Kim Jong-un, reports Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po. The Hall of Famer departed from North Korea on Monday after training local players for an exhibition game against former NBA veterans scheduled for Jan. 8, Kim's birthday. This was his third visit to the country in the past year. Known for his wild...

Pistol permit applications in Newtown skyrocketed in the five months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December, exceeding the entire totals for both 2011 and 2012. The Newtown police department was so inundated with pistol permit applications after the shooting that town officials had to hire a part-time clerk to help process the paperwork. Monte Frank, a board member of the Newtown Action Alliance, a group formed after the Sandy Hook school shooting to press for stronger gun control laws, said that the increase in permit applications in his town did not surprise him. "What we've seen in...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the political face of the recent government shutdown, will make his first late night TV appearance on Nov. 8 when he guests on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”Cruz’s appearance reflects the increasingly common trend of political figures, no matter how controversial, venturing into late night, often in hopes of softening their image or reaching audiences normally not tuned in to politics. Cruz is mentioned as a possible candidate in 2016, and his appearance would be in line with other past candidates who have appeared in late night in advance of a run. In 2010,...

Fox News announces its primetime lineup, starting Mon., Oct. 7: Greta Van Susteren moves to 7 p.m., Bill O'Reilly stays at 8, Megyn Kelly's "The Kelly File" is at 9 and Sean Hannity moves to 10 p.m.

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,It's difficult to have a meaningful national debate about economic policy when "headline numbers" are juiced to make things appear rosier than reality. Since unemployment statistics are either suspect or blatantly bogus, we must look for other less manipulated statistics for some modicum of truth. Key statistics of employment, income and production are vital propaganda tools for the status quo, and the temptation to adjust them to manage perceptions is apparently irresistible. Here in the U.S., unemployment statistics are a travesty of a mockery of a sham: Real Unemployment Rate Rises To 11.4%,...

Here are pictures of three teenagers accused in the thrill-kill murder of a college baseball player in Oklahoma. The senseless slaying of Christopher Lane, 23, has sent shock waves from the Sooner State to the victim’s native Australia. “They followed him, shot him in the back and drove off,” Duncan, Okla., police chief Danny Ford said yesterday. “When asked why he [a 17-year-old suspect] did it, he said, ‘We were bored and decided to kill somebody.’ ” The suspects have been identified as as Chancey Luna, 16, James Edwards, 15, and Michael Jones, 17. Lane died Friday afternoon after he...

Global average temperature has been flat for a decade. But frightening myths about global warming continue. We're told there are more hurricanes now. We're told that hurricanes are stronger. But the National Hurricane Center says it isn't so. Meteorologist Maria Molina told me it's not surprising that climatologists assumed hurricanes would get worse. "Hurricanes need warm ocean waters," but it turns out that "hurricanes are a lot more complicated than just warm ocean waters." Computer models have long predicted nasty effects from our production of greenhouse gasses. But the nasty effects have not appeared. As far as hurricanes, more hit...

Bill and Hillary Clinton are angry with efforts by mayoral hopeful Anthony Weiner and his campaign to compare his Internet sexcapades — and his wife Huma Abedin’s incredible forgiveness — to the Clintons’ notorious White House saga, The Post has learned. “The Clintons are upset with the comparisons that the Weiners seem to be encouraging — that Huma is ‘standing by her man’ the way Hillary did with Bill, which is not what she in fact did,’’ said a top state Democrat.

On Thursday’s “Closing Bell” on CNBC, former NBA and Auburn University basketball star Charles Barkley sounded off on the George Zimmerman trial verdict with what he called “not a very popular opinion.” According to Barkley, the verdict was the proper one — but he took it further, criticizing the media for its coverage of racism evinced during the trial. “I agreed with the verdict,” Barkley said. “I feel sorry that young kid got killed. But they didn’t have enough evidence to charge them. Something clearly went wrong that night. Clearly, something went wrong, and I feel bad for anyone losing...

A man who says he was jogging alongside of a road when three black men abducted and beat him claims the alleged attack was in retaliation for George Zimmerman’s acquittal, police in Senatobia, Miss. told Fox News. Police Chief Steve Holts told Fox News the alleged victim, who is white, was jogging Sunday night along Highway 51 when, he said, the suspects pulled over and ordered him to get inside their car. “One of them asked, ‘Do you know who Trayvon Martin was?’” Holts quoted the man as saying. At that point, the men in the vehicle allegedly attacked him.