Free Republic

What does the Titanic have in common with NFTs? Not much. One lives on in the collective psyche as a monument to hubris while the other refuses to just sink already. Still, apropos of nothing except the smell of filthy blockchain-adjacent lucre, RMS Titanic Inc (RMST), which has been collecting artifacts associated with the ship since the 1980s, has hooked up with NFT flinger Artifact Labs and Venture Smart Financial Holdings to "bring the RMS Titanic and its physical artifacts into Web3." The ship sank into the frigid Atlantic in 1912, taking the lives of more than 1,500 people aboard....

The cost of a dozen eggs has now surpassed the price of a pound of beef, marking the first time that’s happened since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping data in 1980. The average price of a dozen large Grade A eggs ran at $4.82 in January 2023, while a pound of ground beef was $4.64. In January 2022, eggs were $1.93, and beef was $4.77, but egg prices have soared by 70% in the last year alone. Farm Action, a farmer-led advocacy group, says the “real culprit” behind sky-high prices is a “collusive scheme” among top U.S....

Those who see the madness for what it is have only one escape: go to ground, fade from public view, become self-reliant and weather the coming storm in the nooks and crannies. A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one's opinions. Extremes only become more extreme even as the folly of previous extremes wearies rationality. Imaginary sins are conjured out of thin air to convict the innocent while those guilty of the most egregious fraud...

Pfizer is looking to raise the price of its COVID-19 vaccines in the United States by up to four times once Washington’s purchase program ends, according to the company’s U.S. president, Angela Lukin. Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is presently provided free for all Americans by the U.S. government. Next year, when the U.S. public health emergency expires, the COVID-19 vaccine market will move to private insurance. The federal government is paying roughly $30 per dose for the Pfizer vaccine. When the government purchase program shuts down, Lukin expects a dose to be priced around $110 to $130. “We are confident that...

Video at the link. Transcript from The Last Refuge (link in comments): [Transcript] – It is hard to think the unthinkable – but there comes a time when there’s nothing else for it. People raised to trust the powers that be – who have assumed, like I once did, that the State, regardless of its political flavour at any given moment, is essentially benevolent and well-meaning – will naturally try and keep that assumption of benevolence in mind when trying to make sense of what is going on around them. People like us, you and me, raised in the understanding...

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced his administration would cancel $10,000 in student debt for many borrowers, while extending a pause on monthly loan payments through the end of the year. For students and young people in Pittsburgh, it should have been a cause for celebration; but just hours after the announcement, reactions skewed negative as left-leaning activists argued the president should have honored his campaign commitment to cancel all student debt. Meanwhile, Republicans chided Mr. Biden for what they see as the president bowing to the progressive movement. “In my opinion, it’s not enough,” said Allie Holler, a University...

Country star Wynonna Judd is planning to formally contest her late mother’s will which left her entire $25million fortune to her husband. Naomi Judd, who was the long-time singing partner of her daughter Wynonna as The Judds, left her two daughters out of her will in a baffling move. Both Wynonna, 58, and Ashley, 54, did not feature in the will, and did not get any part of her estate, with the Nashville superstar leaving everything to her widower Larry Strickland. The couple had been married for 33 years, with Naomi making Strickland the executor of her estate in a...

Seventeen months ago, as the keys to the oval office changed hands, for all of the political animus and theatrics, one thing seemed a given: the US economy would roar back to vitality in historic fashion, a point of optimism in a nation of discord and incertitude. Yet hope would give way to ambivalence, which, in turn, gave way to serious doubt. Today, a pathetic 23 percent of Americans feel economic conditions are even “somewhat good.” The primary reason for such abysmal economic sentiment? Inflation. As consumer prices have accelerated out of control over the past year, a new political...

US Foods Accused of Unfair Labor Practices as Executives Deal with Growing Number of Unresolved Labor Contracts (WASHINGTON) – The Teamsters Warehouse Division and numerous Teamster locals currently in contract negotiations with US Foods [NYSE: USFD] are putting the foodservice giant on notice that work stoppages are imminent. Workers at a growing number of US Foods Distribution Centers throughout the East Coast are considering the possibility of walking off the job following an increasing number of unresolved labor contracts. Workers at several of these locations say the company has violated federal labor laws, and US Foods is currently being investigated...

Health officials are considering extending the eligibility for a second COVID-19 vaccine booster dose to people under 50 amid a steady rise in cases, with the United States seeing a threefold increase over the past month. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had in late March authorized a second booster dose of the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech SE vaccines for people aged 50 and older, citing data showing waning immunity and the risks posed by Omicron variants of the virus. "With regard to a fourth dose for those under the age of 50, that is going to require action from the...

We have been getting a version of this question lately: Is corporate greed driving inflation? Corporations are taking in record profits. Inflation is at 40 year highs. So could corporations just maybe not raise prices and still be fine and would that stop inflation? There's a lot to unpack there, so today on the show, we investigate the greed thesis. We also look through the metaphorical financial pipes connected to the Federal Reserve to see how last week's decision to raise interest rates will affect many of us, through higher mortgage rates.

It is no secret that the costs of prescription drugs are very high in the United States. Studies from Harvard Medical School indicate that one in four American patients have foregone a prescription because the cost was too high. With the costs of everything else beginning to rise due to the pandemic, inflation, and the global supply chain crisis, it is even more possible that more Americans will have to choose between treating their illnesses and affording basic necessities. This is unacceptable. Access to medicine and prescriptions is a problem that touches many families in the United States. Naturally, lawmakers...

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that COVID-19 could not have evolved in nature and, therefore, must have been created in a laboratory, it came as no surprise that U.S. intelligence agencies released an inconclusive report about its origin. The U.S. intelligence agencies are part of a permanent U.S. federal bureaucracy, which is controlled by a rich and powerful few, who are profiting enormously from their collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party. Similar to the Chinese Communist Party’s use of China and the Chinese people, the oligarchs do not consider the United States a nation, but simply a land and people...

Losses will be taken and sacrifices enforced on those who don't understand the Chinese state will no longer absorb the losses of speculative excess.Let's start by stipulating that no one outside President Xi's inner circle really knows what's going on in China, and so my comments here are systemic observations, not claims of insider knowledge.Many western observers have noted the centrality of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist doctrine in President Xi's writings. This is somewhat akin to invoking America's Founding Fathers to support one's current policies: if you're trying to modify state policy in China, you have to explain it in the context of...

Article in the HaAretz newspaper on March 2, 1970, p. 16 Title: The Mufti planned crematoriums for Jews in the Dotan Valley On the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1943, "His Holiness" organized a mass protest rally in Berlin with the participation of Muslim and Arab exiles from Morocco, Israel, Lebanon, Yemen, Mahjaz, India and Iran. Thousands of SS representatives from government ministries and branches of the Nazi party also took part in this rally, which was held in the Luftwaffe Hall and was broadcast on Radio Berlin, Athens and Belgrade. The Mufti was the keynote speaker...

....Pointing accusingly at climate change, President Joe Biden toured deadly flood damage in New Jersey and New York City Tuesday and said he was thinking about the all families who suffered “profound” losses.... Biden, like many, is arguing with increasing forcefulness that the threats from wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and other extreme weather must be dealt with in ways that will mitigate the ever-worsening impacts of climate change. “We can’t turn it back very much, but we can prevent it from getting worse," he said, adding that scientists have been warning for decades this day would come and merits urgent...

A Philadelphia man allegedly stole 14 houses around the city using fraudulent deeds, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Tyree Burno, 42, has been arrested and charged with assuming ownership of homes located in West Oak Lane, Logan, Frankford, Cedar Brook, and Mt. Airy neighborhoods, either in his own name or using a series of fake names. Such fraud is fueled by a white-hot real estate market, said Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Esack, with the office’s Economic Crimes unit. “Oftentimes, the neighborhoods targeted are ones seen as up-and-coming, where gentrification is prevalent,” she said. The victims, often the elderly, may...

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.” – Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged “A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.” – Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead “The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.” – Ayn Rand, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism “To love is to value. Only a rationally selfish man, a man of self esteem, is capable of love – because he is the only man capable of holding firm, consistent, uncompromising, unbetrayed...

“There a three questions that I think would destroy most of the arguments on the left. The first is, ‘Compared to what?’ The second is, ‘At what cost?’ And the third is, ‘What hard evidence do you have?’” “Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area—crime, education, housing, race relations—the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the...

(CBSNewYork)- The New York Knicks announced Friday that tickets for Game 5 of the series against the Atlanta Hawks have sold out. But, the bigger news was tucked into the end of the first paragraph of the announcement. The team plans to only allow fans who are fully vaccinated to buy playoff tickets if the team advances past the first round.