Free Republic

Why all the hand wringing about the economy? If what I read this week in the Wall Street Journal is correct, anyone with a 401K, IRA, or other market-tied investment will most certainly take it in the shorts in the coming years no matter what happens between President Trump and China. Corporate political activism will sink us all. Some of America’s biggest CEOs gathered this week for an event known as the “Business Roundtable.” WSJ’s David Benoit reported on the event and the new language nearly unanimously endorsed from the group was stunning.Specifically, a discussion surrounding the language of their mission...

Several of the largest, most well known corporations in America also happen to be some of the most left-leaning. Indeed, in today’s hyper-partisan political era, intensified and arguably defined by the election and administration of President Donald Trump, left-wingers in positions of corporate power have used their leverage and political leanings to effectively add a whole new term to America’s political lingo - Woke Capitalism.Under the Woke Capitalist model, companies aren’t just producing and selling a product to create shareholder wealth and provide for employee livelihoods, they are also assuming the mantle of social justice, or fairness and equality as...

If her first interview is any indication, the new leader of Planned Parenthood is doubling down on abortion as “one of our core services.”On July 16, Alexis McGill Johnson became the acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood Action. The move came after her predecessor, Leana Wen, claimed she was fired for not prioritizing abortion enough while at the helm of the nation’s largest abortion provider.While Wen served for a short eight months, McGill Johnson may head Planned Parenthood for more than a year. In one press statement, Planned Parenthood revealed that its search for a more permanent leader...

FiveThirtyEight noticed last week that, very quietly, Biden was recovering from the polling hit he took after the busing exchange with Kamala Harris at the last debate. Harris had zoomed up after that in some polls, even touching 20 percent in Quinnipiac’s June survey, but the trend didn’t continue. It was Biden who was once again on the rise while Harris dipped a bit.Now here comes Quinnipiac’s July poll with even clearer evidence of the trend.What happened?Look back to the numbers from June. After a long slide in early July after the first debate, with Harris nearly passing him,...

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke says he was recently given documents showing that both he and his wife are descended from people who owned slaves. In a post Sunday night for the website Medium, the former Texas congressman writes that the documents showed that one of his paternal great-great-great grandfathers owned two women in the 1850s. He says records also showed that one ancestor of his wife, Amy, owned slaves while another was part of the Confederate Army. …

President Trump’s impeachment organizer Tom Steyer has joined the race to become the Democratic presidential nominee with a pledge to spend $100 million of his own billion-dollar fortune. While it will not put him any closer to defeating Donald Trump, it does likely close the door on former Vice President Joe Biden winning the nomination. Steyer’s notoriety comes from donating the billions he has made investing in fossil fuels, private prisons and subprime lending companies into progressive activism for impeaching President Trump and reckless environmental policies. He will be pushing the same radical, job-killing climate change ideas that those defining...

The policy positions of Democrats running for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination have gone from the impractical to the absurd to outright chilling, should any one of them win and actually implement those policies. The latest comes from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who essentially threatened all border enforcement and immigration agents for simply doing their jobs. In a policy proposal posted online, the Massachusetts Democrat said that as president, she would appoint a “task force to investigate accusations of serious violations — including medical neglect and physical and sexual assaults of detained immigrants.” She added the task force would be...

Tom Steyer, the California billionaire with too much time on his hands and too much ego for one man to possess, says he’s running for president to defeat Donald Trump.

Starbucks Corp on Sunday apologized after an employee at one of its stores in Tempe, Arizona asked six police officers to leave or move out of a customer’s line of sight, triggering social media backlash. The officers had visited the store on July 4 and had paid for the drinks, before one company employee approached them about a customer not feeling safe because of the police presence, the Tempe Officers Association said on Twitter. “This treatment of public safety workers could not be more disheartening. While the barista was polite, making such a request at all was offensive,” the association...

A Tempe, Arizona Starbucks is in the news for asking a group of five Police Officers on the 4th of July to “move out of the sight of a customer” or “leave” because – it made that customer feel unsafe to see them. No, really – this happened. Starbucks Corporate Office is “still gathering information” on the incident. Well, Starbucks needs to apologize to these Officers and make amends for what happened. Maybe they need to close their stores for an afternoon and train all employees how to respect Police Officers! Yes, that’s what they need to do. . ....

A group of Arizona police officers were asked to leave a Starbucks coffee shop on July 4 after a customer complained to staff that she “didn’t feel safe” with them being there, reports say. Five cops from the Tempe Police Department were drinking at a branch of the coffee chain in the city when they were approached by a barista and told that a customer had made a complaint about their presence. The worker is said to have told them to either move out of the complaining customer’s line of sight or leave the premises entirely, the Tempe Officers Association...

Starbucks billionaire Howard Schultz suspended his longshot presidential campaign on Wednesday — saying he had a sore back and needed time to get better. Schultz told campaign staffers he was slashing the operation, the Huffington Post reported. Schultz came into the office Wednesday for the first time in months and met with the staff, a person in the room told the website. Later, Schultz sent an email to backers about his bad back. “While I was in Arizona, I unfortunately experienced acute back pain that required me to cut my travels short,” he wrote.

The pro-mass immigration Koch brothers’ network of billionaire, donor-class organizations is readying to financially back Democrats, so long as they promise to support amnesty for illegal aliens and vote to advance free trade at all costs. In a memo to its staff, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (AFP) organization announced that the economic libertarian group is set to back any elected official in Washington, DC, — including Democrats — who support their agenda of amnesty for illegal aliens and endless free trade, and oppose the GOP voter-preferred economic nationalist agenda of less immigration and tariffs to protect American jobs. The...

SALEM – Oregon is close to becoming the 15th state to signal that it will award its Electoral College votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes nationwide. On a 37-22 party line vote, the Democratic majority in the Oregon House sent Senate Bill 870 to the desk of Democratic Gov. Kate Brown, who has indicated her support. Instead, said Rep. Allisa Keny-Guyer, D-Portland, the compact would make Oregon more relevant during presidential campaigns. “The Republican presidential candidates write Oregon totally off, and the Democratic candidates take Oregon for granted,” she said. “So we are just relegated to...

FULL TITLE: Woman Gets Uber Driver Fired For Refusing To Take Her To Get An Abortion. Now She's Looking To Sue Him. A 20-year-old college student in upstate New York reported an Uber driver for refusing to take her to get an abortion. According to the women’s account, which was reported on by Yahoo! Style (UK), the ride-sharing company canned the pro-lifer. But now the woman is looking to take legal against the driver. “I’m in college in upstate NY and I don’t have a car on campus because it’s expensive,” she wrote in a message posted to Reddit earlier...

8th Place: A High School Girl’s Life After Transgender Students Joined Her Sport A growing number of school administrators want to silence women and girls who dare speak out about the ways transgender policies are harming them—but these brave young women refuse to be bullied or made to believe their concerns are hateful. They don’t hate anyone. These girls were among the best high school athletes in their region —excited to earn scholarships and opportunities by working hard to perfect their talents on the track. All of that changed suddenly when they were forced to compete against transgender athletes. Learn...

A crowd broke out into chants of "PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint," at Democratic presidential hopeful and entrepreneur Andrew Yang's latest Seattle rally last week. The chant broke out during a Friday rally at Gas Works Park in Seattle. Yang was reiterating his promise to become the first president to use PowerPoint in the State of the Union address when the audience responded by repeating "PowerPoint," according to GeekWire. "I'm going to be the first president to use PowerPoint at the State of the Union, how do you feel about that?" Yang said. "Yes, this is the nerdiest presidential campaign in history!"...

Full title: INTERCEPTED: Democrat Training Group Polls Hillary Clinton And Michelle Obama As Presidential Candidates Targeted training materials make it clear that the Democrats are seeking to “destroy Trump’s presidency,” offering a window into Democrat strategic thinking as the 2020 election heats up. Both Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama are included as top presidential contenders in activist polling as Democrats gauge support for either a Clinton or Obama run. National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC), a well-funded 527 PAC bankrolled by the AFSCME labor union and others, is targeting Democrat activists with a poll that was provided to Big League Politics...

Despite the headlines about an eight-point advantage for Democrats in the generic congressional ballot, the detailed results of today’s Washington Post/ABC News poll should make most Democratic Party leaders and their billionaire benefactors sweat. First, the eight-point gap represents a five-point drop from the same poll just three weeks ago, when Democrats had a 13-point advantage. (Like most polls, the sample favors Democrats by six points among registered voters.) But even more ominous for Democrats is how specific voting blocs responded. If Democrats are going to win control of the House, they need to pull votes from independent women and...

Are the White Walkers cloud macchiato folks? Do the Dothraki prefer green tea frappuccinos with extra whip? (Just kidding! The Dothraki are all dead.) Can Dany’s dragons even consume Pike Place caffeinated blends? Vulture is asking the very important, very relevant questions to start our morning, as this week’s Game of Thrones episode confirmed the presence of America’s favorite (minus New England) coffee chain, Starbucks, in a scene. It’s not even that hard to miss, really: If you fast-forward to 17:39 to where Dany, Jon, Tormund, and their merry band of pals are hangin’ out, a Starbucks coffee cup is...