Free Republic

Anyone questioning the sustainability and rightness of The New Normal is immediately attacked by the mainstream-media defenders of the crumbling status quo. Not only is everything that broke in 2008 fixed, everything's going great globally, and anyone who dares question this narrative in a tin-foil hat conspiracy nut or simply an annoyingly doom-and-gloomer who recalcitrantly refuses to accept the positive glories of official statistics: low unemployment, rising valuations of stock market Unicorns, etc. But the New Normal is anything but normal; all the readings of artificial life-support and manipulation are off the charts. If the New Normal were indeed a...

Usually, the admission of another rich child of privilege to the selective liberal finishing school known as Harvard is a non-story. But in the case of Malia Obama, it provides yet another example of the cynical elitism of modern liberals. FULL STOP: This is where liberal liars will try to distract you from the glaring hypocrisy of the elite by accusing me of attacking the innocent child of Barack Obama. It’s unclear whether this reflexive misdirection is the result of them being too stupid to understand an argument or whether they are simply falling back on their default move, dishonesty,...

WASHINGTON, May 5 (UPI) -- Soon after becoming the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump said he would be open to raising the federal minimum wage in a notable reversal of GOP policy. During a debate in November, Trump said he would oppose raising the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 an hour. "I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is," Trump said at the time. Speaking to CNN on Wednesday, Trump was asked about Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders' desire to raise the federal minimum wage to $15. "You can't live...

It's a well-worn (if not-entirely-agreed-upon) idea that college makes people more liberal. But a new report adds a twist to this: the most educated Americans have grown increasingly liberal over the last couple of decades. A report from the Pew Research Center finds a wide partisan gap between highly educated and non-highly-educated Americans. Not only that, but the share of college grads and post-graduates who are "consistently liberal" (based on their answers to a series of policy questions) has grown sharply in the last 20 years. In 1994, 7 percent of post-grads were "consistently liberal," and 1 percent of people...

George Washington University announced on April 25 its latest Battleground Poll. The single most resilient datum in the history of that poll has been the persistent conservative majority. Nothing has changed. The responses to Question D3 of that poll show that 55% of Americans identify themselves as either "Very Conservative" or "Somewhat Conservative," while 40% of Americans call themselves "Very Liberal" or "Somewhat Liberal." Excluding those who don't know or won't respond, conservatives constitute 58% of Americans. Every GWU Battleground Poll over the last sixteen years has shown the same overwhelming conservative majority in America. The size of the conservative...

This year just keeps getting sadder in the world of music, and this one really hits us hard. Legendary Philadelphia soul singer, Billy Paul, has died at age 81. Paul actively performed for a half century, but was best known for this chart-topping 1972 hit, "Me and Mrs. Jones." It was without a doubt one of the most lauded soul songs ever -- after overcoming some inital controversy -- and Paul made it his own with an expressive delivery over pristine Gamble & Huff production.

Doing bad things for good purposes is the operational rational of Progressive Liberalism That ultimate symbol of mischievous scamp Bart Simpson in Season One of the longest running show in TV history when caught red-handed offered up one of his signature phrases, “I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, there’s no way you can prove anything.” This came to mind when I was thinking about Hillary “They’ll Never Indict Me” Clinton and her morally challenged obviously corrupt character. Donald Trump has said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose...

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up Today’s topic is smugness: a potent combination of hubris and envy smug - adjective \ˈsməg\- having or showing the annoying quality of people who feel very pleased or satisfied with their abilities, achievements, etc. synonyms:self-satisfied, self-congratulatory, complacent, superior, pleased with oneself, conceited Go ahead - Google  “smug” Images and see what you get.If you are smug enough you can confidently disregard the stuff you don’t...

In the 1960s and 70s a war against cops began. It sprung up in prisons and on street corners of the worst neighborhoods in America. It was nurtured and strengthened in our prisons, mostly by Black and Hispanic men sitting around the yards of places like Sing Sing, Joliet, Chino and Walpole. The streets were so dangerous that by the early 1970s the New York City Police Department, my Department, was losing 10 cops killed by savage attacks each year. That worked out to 20 dead cops in a 24 month period; one dead cop every six weeks. As a...

Unlike some of her peers, Hanna Smokoski says she has a lot of respect for Hillary Clinton and the “really impressive career” in politics she’s had during the past few decades. It’s just that “history has already moved beyond Hillary Clinton,” said the young graduate student, even as she jumped and hooted for Sen. Bernie Sanders during his massive rally in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, on Sunday – which at an estimated 28,000 attendees was his largest to date. “I mean, I would be really excited for the first female president, but it’s just that we’ve already progressed further left than...

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East Setauket [Long Island, NY] farmer, Bob Benner and his family have learned to live off their 15 acres of land since 1977. "We learned, made, and had our own heat. We made our own food. We made our own clothing. We raised a garden," he said. With six mouths to feed on a tight budget, Benner began raising certain farm animals as a source of food. Over the years, Benner's farm has evolved into a popular attraction for strawberry picking, birthday parties, and class trips for kids. Which is how Kimberly Sherriton, a mother from Commack, got involved with...

Politics Socialism’s Lonely Eden by Chad Ashby March 22, 2016 The rise of Bernie Sanders this election cycle has American voters dusting off an old question: What is socialism? In 2016, the Cold War is a distant memory, and many millennial voters were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In a political race shaped by tweets and sound bytes, it’s tempting to think socialism is just a catchall term for a hodgepodge of liberal policies like free college, universal healthcare, wealth redistribution, and tax plans. Such assumptions suggest that socialism is misunderstood in the 21st century—in fact, even...

Sexism is driving women away from the GOP front-runner Donald Trump and the Republican Party, potentially providing a windfall to Hillary Clinton in a general election. But to ride women's discontent into the Oval Office, of course, Clinton has to win the Democratic nomination. And while she has maintained a strong advantage with women voters overall, she's not doing well with all women. White millennial women favor Bernie Sanders. Perhaps that's because the best rationale for Clinton's candidacy hasn't been effectively communicated to millennial women. There is a powerful case to be made for electing a woman president, and it...

It's very difficult, keeping up with the ever-changing PC permutations of the language. We all understand that what was once global cooling and then global warming is now just plain climate change. And that when Democrats pander to the "working class," they really mean the "non-working class." With these people, every day is 1984 and they're the Ministry of Truth. Obamacare is the Affordable Care Act - and it's unaffordable. And when your income-tax return is docked because you couldn't afford affordable care, it's not a fine, it's a "shared responsibility tax." How about the word "settled"? Settled science is...

Fraud: While the global warming alarmists have done a good job of spreading fright, they haven’t been so good at hiding their real motivation. Yet another one has slipped up and revealed the catalyst driving the climate scare. We have been told now for almost three decades that man has to change his ways or his fossil-fuel emissions will scorch Earth with catastrophic warming. Scientists, politicians and activists have maintained the narrative that their concern is only about caring for our planet and its inhabitants. But this is simply not true. The narrative is a ruse. They are after something...

A California college student who claimed to have found a pro-Donald Trump message scrawled on the whiteboard outside her dorm room last week was so shaken that someone nearby might support the GOP frontrunner that she alerted campus police, according to a report. “This morning, a Mexican-American Scripps student woke up to find her whiteboard vandalized with the phrase ‘#Trump 2016,'” Minjoo Kim, student body president at Scripps College, wrote in a March 26 email blast to classmates, according to The College Fix. Although the message was not derogatory, Kim claimed the unidentified student perceived it as such because of...

The violance against Muslim women has increased, and this is extremely worrying. Their basic rights are not being respected, their civil rights are being respected. And we need to put a stop to this. Being called names in the streets, getting their scarfs/hijabs ripped off their heads, and being slandered has become a daily routine for many muslim women.

It is widely known that in the past 6 months there has been a loud debate about helicopter money, i.e., giving out ordinary people (bypassing the banks) money directly printed by the Fed. What is less known is that when it comes to the most despicable underbelly of American society, cash to the tune of $1000 per month is already being "helicoptered" to some of the most brazen criminals living in the US today with one simple condition: "don't kill people." * * * Take the case of Lonnie Holmes, 21, who lives in Richmond, a working-class suburb north of...

Proving her worthiness for the throne if Hillary taken down by legal troubles. Elizabeth Warren is on the, er, attack against Donald Trump, who slashed back by mocking Warren's false appropriation of Indian identity to try to advance her career. The back and forth begs the real question, which is why did Warren decide to launch a tirade now against Trump? Trump has been being Trump at least since last summer. If Warren wanted to go ballistic on him, there were plenty of earlier opportunities. Senator Elizabeth Warren's harsh Twitter criticism of Donald Trump My theory of Warren is that...