Free Republic

“From each according to their ability” (you DON’T OWN what you produce)… “Too each according to their needs” (you DON’T get to decide that. Your “needs” and that of your family are done by "experts" at the Government “Central Needs Determination Office”)… January 20, 2017 (and thereafter): In Bernie’s (Hillary?) perfect "progressive" world, and with Global Warming (Climate Change on cold days) "crisis" looming (it's gonna happen any day now, PROMISE!)... quick action to “save” the planet has been instituted. As we all want to help “solve” this “crisis”, we now get our monthly ration coupons (after we wait in...

A violent Saturday and Sunday morning in Chicago left four people dead and at least 19 others wounded, including a 14-year-old boy who was killed and a 15-year-old who was injured after a fight in a park in the North Kenwood neighborhood on the South Side. The boys were on the street in the 4400 block of South Greenwood Avenue in the North Kenwood neighborhood when a car drove by and someone opened fire around 7:30 p.m. Saturday, according to police. The 14-year-old, identified by his mother as Tyjuan Poindexter, was shot in the head and died on the scene....

It's been a while since I've written about the idea of a universal basic income. So I figure an update is in order. The typical UBI proposal you see picks a certain dollar amount and then declares that it should go equally to all adults. I disagree with this in two ways. First, I think that children should also receive a basic income (paid to their parents). Second, I think that UBI payments should vary based on age. Neither of these additions negates the chief administrative advantages of the UBI because they don't introduce means-testing. It's trivially easy to vary...

All the lady wanted was some chicken. But in shortage-plagued Venezuela, she waited in line five hours, only to go home empty-handed. "I got here at 5:30 am and came away with nothing! It is just not fair that you have to work so hard -- and then put up with these lines," said an exasperated Lileana Diaz, a 49-year-old receptionist at a hospital emergency room. Venezuelans have been enduring shortages of the most basic goods, such as toilet paper, for more than a year.

CHICAGO (CBS) — Chicago is the most segregated city in the United States, while also being one of the most diverse, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Data. How can that be possible? Because “diversity” and “segregation” are two different things, when you look at them from a city-wide level and then the neighborhood level, writes Nate Silver, the founder and editor of the Five Thirty Eight blog. “Chicago deserves its reputation as a segregated city,” Silver writes. “But it is also an extremely diverse city. And the difference between those terms — which are often misused and...

Internal dissension not only blunts the Republican attack; it hands Democrats a convenient stick with which to beat them. No one on the right, whether conservative or Republican, thinks this is a healthy situation. Why, then, is it the case? What is it that unites Democrats that Republicans lack? Anyone who pays attention to politics can see that when Democrats attack, they speak from the same text, and when they vote, they march in lockstep. If one Democrat says the wealthy must pay their “fair share,” all Democrats do — regardless of the merits of the charge. If their leaders...

Necessity drives invention. In the field of military innovation, all sorts of inventions — the Maginot line, the flame fougasse, trench warfare, the Vickers machine gun — were rooted in the same urgent necessity: keeping Germans out. War is evil and ugly, but Europe experienced a worse horror when that necessity was inverted, and the totalitarian movement that controlled half of the continent decided it needed a way to keep Germans in. And so utopia’s jailers built the Berlin Wall and any number of similar fortifications. The ideologue may say that a wall is a wall is a wall, but...

Humorous short video portrayal of the utopian society of the future. Click link to watch.

There is a liberal progressive global vision for the world in which all religious beliefs, starting with Christianity, are wholly squelched. Those running this political and public relations campaign have the nation of Israel and American Christians in their sights. They continue to shape public opinion in such a way that the influence of Christianity will finally fall prey to 'science' and 'hate speech' as Israel loses its wingman (AMERICA) in their fight for self preservation. All the worlds problems can be solved, after all, if we could just annihilate all those pesky religions.... Looks like Allah hasn't got the...

In 1825 Welsh industrialist, Robert Owen, purchased a religious community on the frontier in Indiana, named Harmony. He renamed the village, New Harmony, and implemented a wide range of social experiments that seemed to hark of John Lennon’s 1971 song, “Imagine.” Things did not go as planned. The popular understanding of communism among North Americans is that its concept began with the writings of Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx then appeared in an extreme form with the advent of 1918 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In fact, while living in England, Engels attended a Socialist “church” founded by Robert Owen. and...

One of my favorite little moments in the very entertaining new “Star Trek” movie comes when the young James T. Kirk activates the computer system of a car he swiped for a joyride, and the Nokia logo comes up. It’s nice to see Nokia’s still in business in the twenty-third century. Such simple touches help to humanize the Star Trek universe, which had drifted a bit too far from recognizable human experience for audiences to fully engage with its characters. The presence of a good old-fashioned corporate logo in the new movie put me in mind of a long-ago, free-wheeling,...

A few decades ago, marijuana was a topic that relatively few people, mostly counterculture musicians and comedians, spoke about in public. The comedy team of Cheech and Chong made films such as "Up in Smoke" that extolled the pleasures of smoking pot at a time the subject was still taboo."When trouble times begin to bother me," they sang, "I take a toke and all my cares go up in smoke." On the fringes of American society, it was usually possible to find activists who wanted to legalize it, as the reggae artist Peter Tosh famously sang. Efforts to legalize the...

"I can't find anything. Prices are climbing daily," said Jesus Ramirez, a taxi driver who has spent a year trying to replace the 2008 Renault he purchased new for $7,441. He sold the car for over $30,000 five years later. With inflation at 60% a year, among the highest in the world, Venezuelans protect their earnings by buying cars, among other big-ticket items. Car parts needed to keep vehicles on the road have also become difficult to find. That has led thieves to steal parts such as batteries from parked cars. The owner of a Caracas car dealership who said...

This week, the trailer for the latest installment in the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay, was released. As I was watching this trailer, something really struck me: the themes touched on in this film are essentially the endgame of today’s American liberalism. An all-controlling Big Government that forces unity, prosperity; it’s government that calls on you to sacrifice for the greater good. I am not suggesting that today’s Democrat Party will lead us literally to the society depicted in the Hunger Games series, but there are some lessons we can learn when we watch these films based on the dystopian novels.

“It’s going to be interesting to see how people react to the movie – especially considering the fact that Winfrey is most likely playing the role of God. “‘The Shack’ goes to the heart of universal reconciliation, Christian universalism.” It created shock waves among many Christians not only for its theology but also for its portrayal of the Trinity as an elderly black woman, an Asian woman and a carpenter. Universalism is the belief that a God of love and goodness never would allow people to be separated from him forever, which means everyone ends up in heaven.

The United Nations (UN) has delivered its latest verdict on the measures necessary to save the world from global warming and the news is as grim as it is predictable and wearisomely familiar: More regulation from "experts", technocrats and bureaucrats at supranational organisations, such as the one whose initials begin with U and end with N.More taxpayer subsidies for expensive, inefficient renewable energy.More nuclear power (with shale gas used as a transitional fuel to replace coal). The abandonment of fossil fuels. Less meat consumption.A single, globally-regulated price for carbon dioxide. More local-government-enforced walking, cycling and public transportation. More back-door wealth...

I just saw a commercial during the NASCAR race for casting for a new Fox reality show called Utopia. Fox is casting now for its new show, bringing people together who want to build the "perfect" society. I thought this topic would be of interest to FReepers and maybe some might be interested in auditioning.

“In 1934 a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated,” Cornell historian Holly Case wrote in The Chronicle Review. “His death, likely orchestrated by Stalin himself, was used to initiate a mass persecution that would result in over a million imprisoned and hundreds of thousands killed.” “Actually, she’s a bit off on the casualty count,” we observed. ... “The late Alexander Yakovlev, the lifelong Soviet apparatchik who in the 1980s became the chief reformer and close aide to Mikhail Gorbachev, and who, in the post-Soviet 1990s, was tasked with the grisly assignment of trying to total the...

(Reuters) - The White House will send a group of top officials to Detroit on Friday to offer millions in assistance for knocking down empty buildings, hiring firefighters and adding buses to the city fleet, as the city struggles after filing for bankruptcy. The federal aid has been tapped from a variety of existing programs and is part of a patchwork of grants complementing investments by the city, state and private foundations. "We're going to continue to support the efforts under way in Detroit and ensure the federal government is an active partner in supporting the revitalization of the city,"...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Folks, let me tell you something. You know, privately there are a lot of Democrats that tell me that they are just distressed over what Obama has done to the health care industry and to jobs. They are afraid to say anything about it because of recriminations, because this regime fights back. I mean, this regime does not take internal criticism at all, just like they try to eliminate all conservative opposition. Likewise, if anybody in the Democrat Party goes public with the slightest disagreement or problem with what Obama's doing, it could be curtains for them,...