Free Republic

Friends who own resort hotels dependent on high season occupancy on the West Coast tell me the same story over and over...Locals 'pretend' to apply for a job, so that they can check the 'Job Search' box on their unemployment requirement. They call by phone, hang up and are no shows for interviews. Or, they show up stoned. Or, they only want to work enough hours so that they don't 'ruin' their benefits....they actually say this. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the issue at hand. They 'pretend' to look for work, while the Employment Office 'pretends'...

There have been a lot of protests from minority students on college campuses who are angry about the alleged racism they feel from the schools they have chosen to attend. But when you read this article in the Times about minority unhappiness at Amherst, a lot of it sounds like mental anxiety, even illness, created by affirmative action: Hundreds of students crammed into Amherst College's Robert Frost Library for a sit-in against racial injustice that turned into a confessional, as one black or Hispanic student after another rose to talk about feelings of alienation and invisibility on campus. They wanted...

One brave woman in Illinois was arrested last week for standing up for herself in the face of tyranny. Pancake tyranny. Denny's customer Natasha West was sharing an innocent plate of all-you-can-eat pancakes with her friends when a waitress approached her and told her that wasn't allowed. Instead of backing down, West decided to defend her right to share pancakes. Unfortunately, she dodged the check (not cool) and tried to hit the waitress (super not cool) and was subsequently arrested. Some people are just exceedingly passionate about breakfast foods.

This is a plea from those of us with limited bandwidth. This morning there was a touchdown animation that took about 2 minutes to load on my browser. It was in a thread that was completely unrelated to football or touchdowns. There are an increasing number of animated GIFs showing up that are either unrelated to the topic or superfluous. Videos like youtube links are automatically blocked from loading until you ask to load them. Those are great and I select a few to click and load. Links to animated GIFs could be replaced with a single frame GIF of...

5-year-old Talk Show host Melody Blasts Political Correctness & Entitlement Mentality on her show, "A Moment with Melody." Transcript: Today I want to talk about Political Correctness. It's very tricky because there is nothing correct about it. Political Correctness should really be called Political Incorrectness. It's really a way that one group of people Try to brainwash you to do something the bad way. And to make you feel bad if you try to go it a good way. Let me give you an example. You do lots of chores to earn money to go to the carnival. It's so...

Senator Jerry Moran discusses dangers of national debt, and entitlements and warns what's happening in Greece may foretell America's fate. When the Gov't teat runs dry, have a SHTF plan.

Bresso, near Milan, 07/02/2015New original protest circulate among welcomed immigrants (with the money of the Italians) in the center of the Red Cross, Clerici Street in Bresso. After the violence of June 8, a new challenge was born yesterday afternoon. Illegal came out of their homes and headed, making threatening, to executive offices managed by the provincial Red Cross. They complain about their "poor housing conditions." There are too many mosquitoes and the water is too hot, they want air conditioning in each tent. Hundred refugees staged a protest, this July 2 to complain about their conditions. They were immediately...

The headline on this op-ed piece in the Washington Post says it all: College applicant: I got in! But I can’t afford it. Was all my hard work for nothing? The author of the piece is a high-school senior in Lousiana who just got admitted to Tulane, so let’s cut her some slack here. But what does it say about the success of President Obama’s constant yammering about how college should be “free” (incrementally, of course, beginning with community college, but we’ve all seen this leftist movie before and know where it’s going)? A lot, is what: I am...

There is no “right to food”. Food never was any sort of fundamental “right”. Saint Paul already warned us that to those who do not want to work, we shall give no food. You can’t find any clearer evidence that food is not a fundamental right of the person. Of course, charity demands that we feed the hungry. But this is not a subjective right of the hungry, merely the result of the charitable help of those who feed them because – let us say this once again – consider them, in their charity, worthy of being fed. Charity is...

The United Nations is holding climate talks in Lima, Peru, featuring delegates from 190 countries. To get their attention, the anti-science extremists of Greenpeace illegally entered a prohibited area adjacent to one of the most famous Nazca Lines. The activists trampled across the fragile, 1,500-year-old site to install large cloth letters reading: “Time for Change; The Future is Renewable.” To put it mildly, Peruvian officials are not amused.

Rep. Hank Johnson, Georgia Democrat, said black people like retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson are trying to tap into the ignorance of people who have been whipped “into a frenzy, like a lynch mob.” Mr. Johnson was speaking on Michael Smerconish’s radio show about President Obama and opposition that he’s faced since winning election. “I support the president, I believe he’s done as much as is humanly possible to advance the cause of justice and prosperity and freedom for all people, not just blacks, and not just here in America, but across the world. I think he has changed the paradigm...

Welfare Abuse in America 30 year old Kiara of Baltimore been on welfare for 12 Years. She is one of the welfare recipients who feel entitled for services on are tax payers dollar

We do not need Hillary or Warren or any career politician. We do not need another leader in debt to big business, financial backers or his party agenda. We do need someone truly independent of all political pressures, capable of resolving all the damage done to this country. The names that come to mind are Ben Carson, Mitt Romney and maybe Ted Cruz. What say you all?

Barbecue. Did you think he would go to the border? Nuh uh. I thought he would. But I gave him too much credit. Instead, the president headed for a rib joint! He cut in line, but paid off the unlucky barbecue seekers. From the pool report: After POTUS finished at Austin’s Paramount, motorcade sped east just past I-35 to Franklin’s, a hugely popular barbecue spot that was packed. Pool squeezed in just as POTUS reached the head of the line at the counter to order. He apologized to the two at the head of the line for cutting in front...

Why do we tax corporations? No, seriously — why? If you’re like most people and all New Democrats, your response will be “because that’s where the money is,” or some variant thereon. Corporations have lots of money, the thinking runs, and are unlikely to mind if the government helps itself to some of it. And since they don’t vote, it doesn’t much matter if they do mind. An economist, on the other hand, would point out that, one way or another, all of the income earned by a corporation finds its way back to the people who financed it, whether...

In 1968 when I enlisted, my enlistment contract guaranteed me that for the rest of my life I could be seen at any VA hospital or clinic for free for the rest of my life on a tier system. 1st. To be seen were service connected disabilities. 2nd to be seen were active duty personnel and their families. 3rd. And last to be seen were all other veterans. You could walk-in and wait and you may have to wait all day but you would be seen by a doctor. All medications were free at any veterans hospital or clinic, no...

It seems clear now that there are two Hillary Clintons. The first, who exists wholly in the abstract, is the one we have been waiting for. She is a Maker of History and a savior of women; an equal partner in the power couple that presided over the prosperity, cool, and competence of the 1990s; a world-beating secretary of state; a feminist who smashes glass ceilings and fights for all that is right and good. Millions of us are “Ready!” for her. The other exists in the real world. This Hillary is a person who lacks concrete achievements; whose inevitability...

Police arrested singer Ray J at a Beverly Hills hotel after they say he became belligerent with staff, kicked out a patrol car window and spat at an officer....

Adapted from "Unworthy: How to Stop Hating Yourself" by Anneli Rufus “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” – Bertrand Russell Is low self-esteem all that bad? Self-loathing is. But between self-loathing and narcissism is a vast spectrum comprising infinitely various degrees of self-regard. Neither extreme is good. If only we could just reach medium. In 1986, California state assembly member John Vasconcellos proposed the State Task Force to Promote Self-Esteem. This ignited a new movement: Based on the notion that low self-esteem...

The Census Bureau just released a report on America’s aging population. The big takeaway is that our population will be getting much older between now and 2050. And since I’m a baby boomer, I very much like the fact that we’re expected to live longer. But as a public finance economist, I’m not nearly as happy. As I explain in this interview with the Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network (and as confirmed by BIS, OECD, and IMF data), the United States is going to get deluged by a tsunami of entitlement spending. I mentioned that it’s important to focus on...