Free Republic

For the last nine years, the Military Times newspaper has surveyed an average of 2,300 active-duty service members. Their latest poll has just been released and concludes that “Obama’s popularity — never high to begin with — has crumbled, falling from 35 percent in 2009 to just 15 percent this year, while his disapproval ratings have increased to 55 percent from 40 percent over that time.” Much of the opposition to Obama has come from military members who believe he has been an inconsistent and flawed leader in foreign policy — for example, his 2011 removal of all troops in...

There could be an unlikely contributor to the decline of marriage in this country. And it's free pornography on the Internet. A team of researchers, who published their findings in The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany, determined that the rise of free Internet pornography is not only correlated with a pronounced decline in percentage of young adult males who are married, but might actually be contributing to the trend. "The results in this paper suggest that such an association exists, and that it is potentially quite large," the study notes. The researchers used data from the...

In a new Washington Post poll released today, American Latinos have a more favorable view of the GOP, besting the Democratic Party among the nations fastest growing demographic group. In a survey conducted between December 11-14, 52 percent of Hispanic Americans view the Republican Party favorably, while 37 percent have an unfavorable view of the Party of Lincoln. In contrast, 40 percent of Latinos have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party, while 48 percent rate them favorable. The poll suggests that large numbers of Americans, of all demographic groups, are moving toward the right, as the GOP holds a...

Six years after candidate Barack Obama vowed to make working for government “cool again,” federal hiring of young people is instead tailing off and many millennials are heading for the door. The share of the federal workforce under the age of 30 dropped to 7 percent this year, the lowest figure in nearly a decade, government figures show. With agencies starved for digital expertise and thousands of federal jobs coming open because of a wave of baby-boomer retirements, top government officials, including at the White House, are growing increasingly distressed about the dwindling role played by young workers. “Millennials are

They may not have a crystal ball, but the folks at Spotify do have the next best thing: heaps and heaps of hot, fresh listener data. ...Here’s who’s next up, according to Spotify. Pell Børns Raury The Bohicas Mikky Ekko Seinabo Sey Houndmouth Ezra Vine Kim Cesarion MisterWives James Bay Ryn Weaver George Ezra Young Fathers Catfish and the Bottlemen MLKMN Francesco Yates AURORA

In a dozen polls taken from 1982 to 2014, Gallup has asked Americans to choose among three views of evolution. One view is that humans “developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.” Another view is that humans “developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.” The third option is that “God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.” In that three-decade span, the young-Earth creationist option has always...

•The 2014 election and the long-term trends •Whither the Hispanic vote? •Catholics drop out of the Democratic coalition. Amid the tangled lines above,[below] we see the trends of America’s voters over the last 32 years. The chart measures something very specific: How much larger (or smaller) a Democratic margin of victory has grown in each of several different voting groups for U.S. House in the last 17 elections. For example: If Democrats won women by three points in an election Republicans won by six points, women were nine points more Democratic than the average voter in that election. And if...

NOAA says that the first 10 months of the calendar have been the warmest in more than 130 years. The weather outside has been frightful, but not because it’s cold. According to a new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this year is shaping up to be the hottest since scientists began keeping record more than 130 years ago. The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature from January to October was 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average of 57.4 degrees Fahrenheit. “Record warmth for the year-to-date was particularly notable across much of northern...

… The data coming out of Colorado is exhibit A on why voters should reject legalization efforts. Even the Democratic governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper, said that legalizing marijuana in Colorado was “reckless.” As I have written at Heritage, pot-positive traffic fatalities have gone up 100 percent since voters legalized pot in Colorado. This is true despite the fact that overall traffic fatalities in Colorado have gone down since 2007. A report by a federal grant-funded agency in Colorado found seven specific negative side effects that pot legalization has caused in Colorado: the majority of DUI drug arrests involve marijuana;youth...

Nielsen Ratings are going to finally factor in Netflix traffic. Reed Hastings thinks it's too little, too late.

Orange County continued its trend toward an electorate that looks more like the rest of the Democratic state when it supported Proposition 47 – which reduces some non-violent felonies to misdemeanors – with 53 percent of the vote. Republicans had a good mid-term election nationwide and in Orange County wrested two state legislative seats from Democrats. But a Register analysis of Prop. 47 found a broader ongoing shift of county voters. The county GOP advantage over Democrats has steadily declined from 22 percentage points in 1990 to 9 points today, with little indication that the slide’s end is in sight....

Take a look at this informative website. It shows all the races and the most frequent search trends that voters are using to learn about candidates. We have seen the enemy...

This, from Reuters, tells you everything you need to know about Europe's continued descent into depression: According to German officials, Merkel felt betrayed by Draghi's speech at a central banking conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in August in which he pressed Berlin for looser fiscal policy to stimulate the economy. Her entourage is also deeply skeptical about Draghi's plan to buy up asset-backed securities (ABS) and covered bonds in the hope of encouraging commercial banks to lend. Most of all, politicians in Berlin worry that if this scheme doesn't work, the ECB president will be tempted to launch full-blown government...

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University estimates that there are currently approximately 32 million adults in the United States who were raised Catholic but have ceased to identify themselves as a member of the Church. A recent survey of lapsed and former Catholics in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois, conducted by researchers at Benedictine University, offers new insights into why some Catholics stop attending Mass or leave the faith all together.In their report “Joy and Grievance in an American Diocese,” the researchers indicate they targeted “those who had lapsed or drifted from the...

Midterm elections are all about turning out base constituencies. Over the last few decades, there have been few more reliable voters for Republicans than white evangelical Protestants. This year, however, GOP candidates may be getting less help from this group—not because white evangelical Protestants are becoming less supportive or less motivated, but simply because they are declining as a proportion of the population, even in Southern states.White evangelical Protestants have remained a steadfast Republican constituency in both presidential and midterm congressional elections ever since the Reagan presidency, which marked what political scientists Merle and Earl Black dubbed “the great white...

The number of wild animals on Earth has halved in the past 40 years, according to a new analysis. Creatures across land, rivers and the seas are being decimated as humans kill them for food in unsustainable numbers, while polluting or destroying their habitats, the research by scientists at WWF and the Zoological Society of London found. “If half the animals died in London zoo next week it would be front page news,” said Professor Ken Norris, ZSL’s director of science. “But that is happening in the great outdoors. This damage is not inevitable but a consequence of the way...

The Northeast, once the nation’s political engine that produced presidents, House speakers and Senate giants including the late Edward M. Kennedy, is losing clout in Washington as citizens flee the high-tax region, according to experts worried about the trend. The Census Bureau reports that population growth has shifted to the South and the result is that the 11 states that make up the Northeast are being bled dry of representation in Washington. Critics blame rising taxes in states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut for limiting population growth in the Northeast to just 15 percent from 1983 to 2013, while the...

Nearly three-quarters of the public (72%) now thinks religion is losing influence in American life, up 5 percentage points from 2010 to the highest level in Pew Research polling over the past decade. And most people who say religion's influence is waning see this as a bad thing. Perhaps as a consequence, a growing share of the American public wants religion to play a role in U.S. politics. The share of Americans who say churches and other houses of worship should express their views on social and political issues is up 6 points since the 2010 midterm elections (from 43%...

The anecdotal evidence that Americans are remaining single longer into their lives has more and more data backing it up. No longer is it merely the musings of worried relatives hoping to see that young man or woman in their life find a spouse. According to a recent story over at Bloomberg—Is Everybody Single?—we’ve reached a statistical, verifiable relationship tipping point as a society; one with far-reaching implications. Single Americans make up more than half of the adult population for the first time since the government began compiling such statistics in 1976.Some 124.6 million Americans were single in August, 50.2...

A ‘data alchemist’ has split music into over 1,000 bewildering microgenres. But what lies out there beyond witch house, and what on Earth does skweee sound like? (article excerpted, here's the list; descriptions at the link) ...Well, here are 10 genres (we could have nominated about 50) that even mouth-breathing indie record-shop blowhards (full disclosure: I used to be a mouth-breathing indie-record shop blowhard) would be hardpressed to help you find … 1. Vaporwave Check: Food Pyramidhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhBg9vAsDGk 2. Blackgaze Check: Alcesthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADIEAW65H5o 3. Duranguense Check: Reencuentro Musicalhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lmdVmmk-yk 4. Deep filthstep Check: Denis Mashhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hSQYhkLbYU 5. Skweee Check: Baba Stiltzhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq6KeQLCQpM 6. Fallen angel...