Free Republic

I need some advice. I'm unable to continue on in my current occupation in warehousing and storage. I've been doing it for many years, but now my knees are so shot that I can't even do light labor comfortably or stand for very long. I have a friend who is a vocational rehab counselor that can get me set up with a ticket to ride on an education to get into a field that is more compatible with my physical problems. What makes it all the more thought-provoking, is that I just turned 50. That's not old, but old enough...

As Roger Goodell attempts these next few days to not only save his job but ask for a raise and luxurious perks amid NFL ratings that are plummeting even further into the abyss, undoubtedly many football fans across the country are wondering if our recent national trend towards the hyper-politicization of everything is here to stay.When Colin Kaepernick began kneeling last summer during the national anthem during football games, claiming that he was doing it to protest what he believed was the oppression of people of color, it caused a sharply divisive uproar across the country that has now snowballed...

Moscow, November 22, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia is alarmed by the rise of atheism in the West. "What we are seeing today, particularly in Western countries, is far more dreadful than what happened to religion in the Soviet Union: the rapid atheization, the expulsion of God from human life, disregard for the divine, the moral law," the patriarch said at a meeting with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby in Moscow. There was a time when atheism was being planted in the Soviet Union, but "the weakness of that atheization consisted in the fact that it...

Among the Australians upgrading their shower, 68 per cent increased its size, with 64 per cent switching over to rainfall showerheads or 62 per cent handheld showerheads. Around 22 per cent of homeowners included a bathtub large enough to fit a couple while 12 per cent upgraded their showers to accommodate two people. The study found white was the preferred colour for walls, cabinets and bench tops - and often accented by grey flooring. Up to 12 per cent of homeowners are getting high-tech upgrade to their bathrooms, including digital controls and built-in sound for showers and self-cleaning and overflow...

Women are having fewer children than ever before and more are staying childless, new data reveals today. Women who turned 45 in 2016 had an average of 1.80 children, down from 2.21 for their mothers' generation, who turned 45 in 1944. The same generation also had fewer children by their 30th birthday, suggesting women are having children later in life. Women who turned 45 last year had 1.06 children by 30 compared to 1.8 in their mother's generation. In total, 18 per cent of women who turned 45 last year had no children at all, compared with 11 per cent...

When the thing your company is named for is no longer selling all that well, that's a big problem. Just ask Campbell Soup, which reported lousy earnings Tuesday because of weak soup sales. Shares of Campbell Soup (CPB) plunged more than 7% after the food giant said that soup sales in the U.S. fell 9% from a year ago. The company also lowered its earnings outlook for fiscal 2018.

ERIE, Pa. -- The outcome of the race for county executive in this northwestern Pennsylvania corner didn't get much national scrutiny or post-election analysis because the incumbent Democrat, Kathy Dahlkemper, ultimately won. But it should have. Why? Because it is worth at least diving into what is happening to this once-reliable stronghold for Democratic candidates; it may not be red, but it sure is a vibrant shade of purple. Dahlkemper's narrow victory -- she won by 300 votes -- is something both parties should dive into to discover where the voters' sentiments are heading. Dahlkemper went into the race with...

At the next table in the cafe where I was working this morning, a young woman spent a whole hour talking excitedly to her older companion about herself, her hopes and aspirations for her job, her romantic relationship and her home. It was hard to avoid the impression that she thought herself the centre of the Universe, her dreams eminently fascinating and important. Is this simply what young people or “millennials” (people born after 1980) are like these days? Fuelled by the endless opportunity for self-promotion and self-reflection on social media, combined with a wider culture that’s arguably placed greater...

With all the awful things happening now – the discord, the anger, the stupidity – at least those of my generation can rest easy knowing that the Millennials are going to suffer after we’re gone. Sure, I’m going to die a lot sooner than them – unless someone invents some sort of expensive life extension potion that I can buy but they can’t because they will still be paying off their degrees in Oppression Studies and Virtue Signaling Arts until the year 2083. But at least I’ll know that we left them a suitably terrible world, since they are a...

A recent poll found that fifty percent of millennials say they would rather live in a communist or socialist country than in a capitalist democracy. These numbers can’t be laughed off -- they should frighten you. Maybe they don’t know what communism means. I do. I lived in Communist Poland. Perhaps those fifty percent of millennials were not properly taught about communism in school. That’s too bad, and dangerous. So here are some examples for those misguided millennials to ponder, all of which I experienced in communist Poland. Unreliable electricity Do you millennials enjoy having electricity on demand to charge...

A few weeks ago on “The Next Revolution” on Fox News Channel, we debated the impact of technology on children. My guest, Dr. Jean Twenge, shared shocking research from her latest book, which has a rather wonderful title: “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy – and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.” According to Twenge – and her research is backed up by numerous other studies – the use of smartphones is changing childhood in fundamental and deeply negative ways. I wanted to talk to her about this topic because it’s one that I’ve...

As millennials continue to leave traditional Christian religions, interest in Wiccan and pagan practices have seen increased interest in recent years, a trend also spotted among young people and on college campuses.

I recently discovered an article by author Daniel Lang, an incredible piece brimming with optimism for us conservatives. This quote in his article sums up his argument: “I think that the political landscape in America is going to be drifting towards conservatism for the next 20-40 years.”Do his hopes for an American conservative ascendancy seem ideal or quixotic?Here are his five reasons for his beliefs, and I agree with him. If all things continue as they have for the last ten months, we should to prepare for a compelling conservative pre-eminence:1. The Federal judiciary will be more conservativeThe Number One...

Generations Y and Z are rewriting the rules of the luxury market, according to a report released on Wednesday by the consulting firm Bain & Co. The global luxury market, encompassing goods and luxury experiences, is forecast to grow by 5 percent this year to an estimated 1.2 trillion euros, or $1.4 trillion, according to the study, compiled using market data and interviews with people in the industry. But while older shoppers traditionally have driven the growth of sales in the luxury sector, this time it was shoppers born after 1980 who made the difference. Generation Y provided 30 percent...

Manufacturing will fall. Retail will wobble. Automation will inch along but stay off the roads, for now. The rich will keep getting richer. And more and more of the country will be paid to take care of old people. That is the future of the labor market, according to the latest 10-year forecast from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These 10-year-forecast reports—the products of two years’ work from about 25 economists at the BLS —document the government’s best assessment of the fastest and slowest growing jobs of the future. On the decline are automatable work, like typists, and occupations threatened...

I took data from SportsMediaWatch.com to look at television viewership at NFL games 2014-2017. Most of the data in news reports compares same day games from last year to this year, (ie; MNF from one year to the next). I decided to look at the aggregate of each week's data over the last four seasons to get an idea of trends.So what you are seeing is the TOTAL viewers for Nationally Televised games, each week, Year-Over-Year(From Thursday Night - Monday Night). Below is the data for Weeks 1 - 6* of seasons 2014 through 2017. *Note - week 6 (2017)...

The Gartner Hype Cycle shows a remarkably consistent pattern. A new technology is first ignored, then begins to show promise and expectations get inflated beyond any realistic assessment of value. That leads to disillusionment and the technology is almost forgotten until, some years later, it begins to make a true competitive impact.What makes the Hype Cycle so pervasive is that it is, essentially, a pattern based on our obsession with patterns and stories, which is so universal that there is a whole branch of mathematics devoted to it. Our love of patterns is so great, in fact, that once we...

"I cannot be more remorseful about the people I hurt and I plan to do right by all of them,” wrote movie mogul Harvey Weinstein upon being busted for all manner of sexual predations, before adding this only-in-Hollywood non-sequitur, “I am going to need a place to channel that anger so I've decided that I'm going to give the NRA my full attention." Perhaps even more troubling, the day before Weinstein’s apologia came this unfortunate tweet from Nancy “with the laughing eyes” Sinatra, “The murderous members of the NRA should face a firing squad.” The Nancy tweet stung more because...

The mayors doing their utmost to get Amazon's second headquarters for their cities are having a grand time informing Jeff Bezos of everything they have to offer. They should enjoy this part of the chase because what comes next won't be much fun. They are about to get some insight into how the search for talent goes in Major League Baseball. St. Louis Cardinals general manager Michael Girsch noted the crucial moment in pursuing a coveted free agent player. "We sometimes call it your 'puke point,'" he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Sometimes you make an offer and you're not...

The NFL is not just losing white viewers. The NFL isn’t just losing black viewers. No, the NFL is hemorrhaging viewers of all races and ages, and they’re doing so at a frightening pace. With the NFL’s Week 4 in the rear-view mirror, a review of TV ratings through the league’s first month show that the NFL has lost millions of viewers year-over-year, a decline that has picked up speed so far this year. As Awful Announcing recently put it, “It seems everyone is mad at the NFL.” Overall, viewership is down seven percent over 2016, which is bad enough...