Free Republic

Between 2013 and 2023, Americans’ spending on home appliances jumped 53 percent. Adjusted for inflation, that’s an annual increase of $390 to $558. But the cost of appliances decreased by 12 percent during that same time. How is that possible? Well, as the Wall Street Journal explains, one “reason for the discrepancy between [higher] spending and [lower] prices is a higher rate of replacement[.]” Over a mere two years, “Yelp users … requested 58% more quotes from thousands of appliance repair businesses last month than they did in January 2022.” “We’re making things more complicated, they’re harder to fix and...

During an interview with NBC News aired on Tuesday’s edition of “Hallie Jackson Now,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that one reason he visited East Palestine, Ohio in the wake of the train derailment there was “all of the misinformation that came to the people of East Palestine” and that “had I known the amount of misinformation that would be directed at the people of East Palestine, we would have taken more steps to make sure that they got more accurate information sooner in the process.

Students at the University of Oklahoma are working to remove the school’s “Boomer” and “Sooner” nicknames out of concern that the words are offensive to Native Americans. According to the OU Daily, the Undergraduate Student Congress met Nov. 12 to mandate a name change for the “Sooner Freshman Council”, citing the words “boomer” and “sooner” as offensive to the Native American community.

The last time I went to my local hospital, they made me fill in a questionnaire about my drinking habits before they would even look at my injury, writes Melissa Kite. For three weeks I’ve been limping around on a broken toe. The horse stamped on it and I’m in agony, but I’m not going to get it seen to because I do not want to go anywhere near my local hospital. I’m sorry, I know I will get complaints from doctors and nurses about how hard they work. I know the NHS is a sacred institution that must not...

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) -- The Pakistani roommate of a man authorities say died when he detonated an explosive device outside a crowded football stadium was led in handcuffs from a party shortly after Saturday's explosion, the head of an Islamic student group said. Fazal M. Cheema, a finance major, shared a university-owned apartment with Joel Hinrichs III, 21, who died Saturday when a device attached to his body exploded as he sat on a bench outside George Lynn Cross Hall. Cheema and three other Muslim students were led in handcuffs from a party by police after the blast, Ashraf Hussein,...

Vice PM Shimon Peres said today that the disengagement should be pushed forward rather than postponed due to its coincidence with a period commemorating past Jewish tragedies. “We knew it fell out on that date from the very beginning,” Peres said, referring to the recently publicized fact that the forced expulsion of Jews from Gaza and the northern Shomron will take place during the three weeks leading up to the 9th of Av [Tisha B’Av]. That time period commemorates the destruction of the Holy Temple and a myriad of other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people. A special ministerial...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- Former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts hasn't ruled out running for governor next year but he said he wasn't ready to make a decision. ''I have been encouraged to do it, and I pay attention to the people who are encouraging me to do it because they've been great friends of mine,'' Watts told The Oklahoman's Washington bureau during a telephone interview on Friday. Watts, a Republican, served as 4th Congressional District representative from 1995 to 2003 in the U.S. House. He now runs the J.C. Watts Cos., which do government affairs and business consulting work in...

Social Security problems start sooner than you think Alan Greenspan puts the date to really start worrying at 2008. That's because he's looking at real cash flow, not fancy government accounting that puts the problems with Social Security decades away. By Scott Burns In two days of grilling about Social Security, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan put an important new date on our calendars: 2008. That's when he believes problems may begin with Social Security. **SNIP** The high-cost estimate has a smaller cash surplus. It also disappears much faster. The high-cost estimate has Social Security and Medicare down to a...

Senior British and United States commanders predicted that allied forces could be in Baghdad by Monday. The claim came after United States Marines captured a key section of the Southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.

As I type, the Oklahoma women's basketball team is about to finish taking Duke to the cleaners....My fearless prediction is that OU does the NCAA double..and wins both the mens and womens titles this year...and they're gonna go nuts in Sooner land.....