Free Republic

Here are 65 reasons why I’m against the COVID-19 lockdowns 1) Sweden did not have a lockdown.Experts predicted that it would have 40,000 COVID-19 deaths by May 1.The actual number was 2,769.https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/sweden-suppressed-infection-rates-without-lockdown/2) Nobel Prize-winning scientist shares COVID-19 data showing strict lockdowns were an overreaction.“the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor’”https://www.theblaze.com/news/nobel-prize-winning-scientist-shares-covid-19-data-showing-strict-lockdowns-were-an-overreaction3) Keep parks open. The benefits of fresh air outweigh the risks of infection:https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/13/keep-parks-open-benefits-fresh-air-outweigh-risks-infection/4) Dr. Deborah Birx:“I think we underestimated, very early on, the number of asymptomatic cases. And I think we’re really beginning to understand there are people that get infected — that...

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has called for the “immediate release” of a Dallas salon owner who was arrested and sent to jail for opening her business in defiance of Gov. Greg Abbott’s stay-at-home orders. Shelley Luther, owner of Salon A La Mode, was sentenced to seven days in jail Tuesday after Dallas judge Eric Moye said she violated those orders as the coronavirus pandemic continues. Paxton said he believes the judge is abusing his authority and that her arrest seems like a “political stunt.” In a full statement, Paxton said: “I find it outrageous and out of touch that during this...

Kansas City, Missouri, officials are now requiring every church to submit a list of members and attendees along with their names, addresses and telephone numbers to city officials for tracking and surveillance purposes.I am running out of adjectives to describe how completely insane the tyrannical abuses launched by state governors and local officials against pastors and churches are becoming. It is as if these leaders never bothered to so much as glance at the Constitution they swore to uphold and defend. They seem to be governing from some make-believe, dystopian viewpoint. Yesterday, we received a desperate call from a Kansas...

A woman says she was sexually harassed by presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden when she was 14 years old. The woman, Eva Murry, told Law&Crime that Biden complimented her on the size of her breasts at the First State Gridiron Dinner & Show in 2008, a long-running roast of and party for politicians, journalists and prominent business figures held each year in Delaware. Murry says she remembers the event occurring sometime around May of that year. One friend and her sister said that Murry told her details of the alleged incident more or less immediately after it happened....

Due to ongoing concerns about the coronavirus pandemic, multiple Western Massachusetts defense attorneys are urging area sheriffs not to let correctional officers attend a Northampton rally in favor of Republican President Donald Trump and then go to work after the event. The request was made after “Correctional Officers for Trump 2020” appeared as a listed contact for the rally, called “Trump Standout & China Virus Liberation Celebration.” The event is one of dozens happening across the U.S. this week in support of Trump’s reelection and the reopening of the country amid the COVID-19 public health crisis. The Northampton event is...

The liberal media have gone to bat for fellow liberal and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates against “conspiracy” theories regarding the coronavirus that started in Wuhan, China. But recent comments from Gates on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS shilling for the Chinese government may have just made that mission to insulate the billionaire a bit harder. In his questioning of Gates, Zakaria said: “You've been making this case for international cooperation very powerfully and in my mind persuasively. There is right now in Washington a very different mood, which is to say far from cooperating with the second largest economy in the...

“It’s a great honor and I’m humbled for this endorsement from these freedom fighters (Bay of Pigs Veterans Association)…You were fighting for the values of freedom and liberty that unite us all. (Candidate Donald Trump, receiving endorsement of Bay of Pigs veterans at the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami, Florida, Oct. 25, 2016.) 'Shameless ELECTION YEAR PANDERING!' snort liberals. Well: “I really admire toughness and courage, and I will tell you that the people of this brigade [Brigada 2506] really have that…you were let down by our country.” (Donald Trump, addressing Bay of Pigs Veterans at the Bay of...

EVERETT, Wash. -- Snohomish County Sheriff Adam Fortney has become the latest sheriff in Washington to voice his displeasure at the state's current "Stay at Home" orders amid the COVID-19 outbreak and reiterated his vow not to enforce it. Fortney took to Facebook late Monday night in a several-paragraph statement questioning Gov. Jay Inslee's plans amid what Fortney called were "drastic measures as the suspension of constitutional rights." While acknowledging that the COVID-19 outbreak is "a very serious issue and the appropriate precautions need to be taken to protect our most vulnerable populations," Fortney stated he's concerned about small businesses...

Today's AM Joy show on MSNBC provided a virtual parody of liberal-elite condescension to Trump supporters. Joy Reid kicked things off by finding it "confusing" that Trump's populist base supports him despite supposedly not "getting anything economically out of this plutocracy." It's a recycling of the old liberal complaint of "What's the Matter with Kansas?": those poor, benighted cultural conservatives allegedly voting against their own interests (against redistributing all the wealth). Ultraliberal writer Jane Mayer of The New Yorker [infamous for co-authoring a book trashing Justice Clarence Thomas with Jill Abramson while they were reporters at The Wall Street Journal]...

The debate about “reopening the economy” is a phony debate. It’s phony because “the economy” isn’t shut down. Far from it. Walmart is still open. Dollar General is open. Amazon is open. Alibaba is open. It just so happens that the big-box mass merchandisers and online retailers responsible for flooding our country with crap from Communist China are open. Meanwhile, other, very specific parts of the country are shut down. Family-owned shops and workshops, the backbone of America, are closed. Fast-food franchises remain open—drive-through windows are operating at full tilt—but independently owned restaurants are shuttered or trying to survive at...

A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it. Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, told Israel’s Channel 12 (Hebrew) Monday night that research he conducted with a fellow professor, analyzing the growth and decline of new cases in countries around the...

EXCLUSIVE: COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China's effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China's government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News. This may be the "costliest government coverup of all time," one of the sources said. The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that "patient zero" worked at the laboratory, then went into the population...

Ever since a “senior official in the Trump administration” penned an anonymous 2018 New York Times column attacking President Trump as unfit for office, Washington has been engrossed in a high-stakes whodunit. After an exhaustive investigation, the White House believes it’s cracked the case, identifying Trump's turncoat as his former deputy national security adviser, Victoria Coates, according to people familiar with the internal probe.

Unable to defeat Schlafly in life, cultural elites in Hollywood are now attacking her posthumously in the brazenly dishonest 'Mrs. America' series.

Tell the Democrat Governors that “Mutiny On The Bounty” was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 14, 2020

he Spanish government has announced it will be launching a clinical trial into whether hydroxychloroquine and certain antiretrovirals can prevent frontline health workers from contracting COVID-19. The research, dubbed the Clinical Trial for the Prevention of Coronavirus Infection in Health Workers (EPICOS) will study 4,000 health workers, from wardens to doctors, at 62 hospitals in 13 regions in Spain. The EPICOS investigation will evaluate to what extent existing medicines may offer protection against coronavirus. One group of participants will be given the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, while another will take a combination of the antiretroviral medications emtricitabine and tenofovir, a medication...

REVEALED: U.S. government gave $3.7million grant to Wuhan lab at center of coronavirus leak scrutiny that was performing experiments on bats from the caves where the disease is believed to have originated The US National Institutes of Health, a government agency, awarded a $3.7million research grant to the Wuhan Institute of Virology The lab is the center of several conspiracy theories that suggest it is the original source of the coronavirus outbreak The institute experimented on bats from the source of the coronavirus They were captured more than 1,000 miles away in Yunnan Sequencing of the Covid-19 genome has traced...

It’s a Bloomberg article, so link only (I don’t want to get in trouble with Mike).

Japan is willing to fund its companies to shift manufacturing operations out of China, Bloomberg has reported as the disruptions caused to production by the coronavirus pandemic has forced a rethink of supply chains between the major trading partners. As part of its economic stimulus package, Japan has earmarked $2.2 billion to help its manufacturers shift production out of China. Of this amount, 220 billion yen ($2 billion)is for companies shifting production back to Japan and 23.5 billion yen for those seeking to move production to other countries. China is Japan’s biggest trading partner under normal circumstances, but imports from...

The high end number of estimated deaths comes from a 2011 textbook called “The American Economy: How It Works And How It Doesn’t,” by Wade L. Thomas and Robert B. Carson. Citing Bluestone, Harrison and Baker’s book, “The Causes and Consequences of Economic Dislocation,” they conclude that for every one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate, there are 37,000 deaths — the largest single source coming from heart attacks, presumably from stress, but another 1,000 from suicides and another 650 from homicides. The rest are not categorized, likely due to a lack of underlying data.