Free Republic

How do people let themselves get to be 100 pounds overweight? I suppose for everyone the story is a little different; here’s mine. First, before delving into the years of weight gain, I realized recently I was in denial about my weight and just how heavy I was. At 270 pounds, it just wasn’t sinking in that I was a hundred pounds overweight. It was after seeing recent pictures of myself that I realized just how heavy I was. I’m fairly tall, at 5’9”. I’ve always carried my weight pretty well. I’m top heavy, so that accounts for some of...

LOLOL. Cost them $4M -- a million per signup.

It has become taboo to “shame” anybody for violating basic norms—including sexual deviance, poor manners, or even violent behavior. (Of course, that has not prohibited shaming that is deemed politically correct. It’s perfectly fine to make a public display of spurning racists or people who think men and women are, in fact, different. That’s called “enlightened” humiliation.) In short, progressivism has won the PR war. So why the constant yammering on social justice? My only guess is that leftism’s bitter warriors will not halt until all advantages are vanquished from society. Screeds decrying racism, prejudice, sexism, ableism, and all of...

"Wow that's pretty disturbing," said recent University of Tampa graduate of Criminology studies Carley Donovan about a post made to Facebook Tuesday night by Fire Bar and Grill in Tampa. "I read it and I was like, ‘No, that can't be right.’ It's almost advocating for men preying on drunk women." The post, which has since been deleted, read "Ladies night at Fire tonight. Ladies get $2 martinis and $3 wines. Guys get drunk ladies." The post was followed by a wink-face emoticon. Donovan took offense and said the post sends a terrible message. "Sexual violence is a prominent problem...

The American Medical Association has weighed in on Obama’s new health care package. The Allergists were in favor of scratching it, but the Dermatologists advised not to make any rash moves. The Gastroenterologists had sort of gut feeling about it, but the Neurologists thought the Administration had a lot of nerve. Meanwhile, Obstetricians felt certain everyone was laboring under a misconception, but the Ophthalmologists considered the idea shortsighted and Pathologists yelled, “Over my dead body!” All the while the Pediatricians said, “Oh, grow up!” The Psychiatrists thought the whole idea was madness, while the Radiologists could see right through it....

A lesbian couple urged the New York State Division of Human Rights Wednesday to rule that an upstate wedding venue broke the law when it refused to book their wedding last year. Melisa and Jennie McCarthy, formerly of Albany, filed the complaint against Liberty Ridge Farm outside Albany in October 2012. They’re asking for unspecified damages and an order telling the farm not to reject customers based on sexual orientation. Attorneys from the New York Civil Liberties Union argued Wednesday before the Division of Human Rights that the 100-acre farm is a business open to the public and subject to...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — This is one strange asteroid. The Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a six-tailed asteroid in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Scientists say they've never seen anything like it. Incredibly, the comet-like tails change shape as the asteroid sheds dust. The streams have occurred over several months.

As Michael Bloomberg prepares to leave office, Glamour magazine sat down with his youngest daughter, Georgina Bloomberg, to reflect on what it’s like being the daughter of a billionaire mayor who isn’t shy about speaking his mind. And Ms. Bloomberg, who is currently expecting Mr. Bloomberg’s first grandchild–a son, due on Christmas Day– revealed that that’s actually one of the things she respects most about him. “My father lacks a filter, and it’s gotten him in trouble—a couple of years ago, he gave a speech at the Nathan’s hot dog eating contest at Coney Island. It was badly written and...

Once, pasta and bread were store cupboard staples. Now, many of us are replacing them with ‘healthier’ gluten-free foods. But are they really better for us? ... The new ubiquity of gluten-free products certainly makes life much easier for sufferers of coeliac disease, an auto-immune response to wheat where the body believes wrongly that gluten is attacking it... But coeliacs make up only one in 100 of the population ... Nutritionist Ian Marber agrees that yeast, not gluten, may be the real culprit... Marber acknowledges that gluten intolerance does exist, but probably in fewer cases than is generally believed. ......

Officials at Harvard conducted a 12-year study on 43,000 women and found higher rates of depression in those consumed more pasta and other refined grains, according to Newser. The study found that women who cosumed more soda, red meat and refined grains like pasta, white bread and chips were 29 to 41 percent more likely to be diagnosed with depression when compared to women who consumed more wine, coffee and vegetables.

The Louisiana governor's office said Wednesday night that it would strip food stamp benefits from anyone who took advantage of an EBT card malfunction that in some cases caused an all-out shopping frenzy in some stores across the state, The Advocate reported. It is unclear how many recipients stand in line to lose benefits for a year, but more than 12,000 received an insufficient funds notice when the EBT card system was corrected on Oct.12, the report said.

With Terry McAuliffe’s gubernatorial victory over Ken Cuccinelli, Democrats have now won seven of Virginia’s eight high-profile, statewide races since 2005 (three Senate races, two Presidential contests, and two of three gubernatorial elections). The lone exception, Bob McDonnell’s gubernatorial victory in 2009, provides an instructive contrast with the current contest. In 2009, Virginia voters were 78 percent white and 22 percent minority. In 2013, they were just 72 percent white and 28 percent minority—not far off the 70/30 split in the 2012 presidential election. There you have the key to McAuliffe’s victory: Despite performing much better among white voters than...

The problem-plagued ObamaCare website was only equipped to handle 1,100 users a day before it was launched, documents released by the House Oversight and Reform Committee reveal. The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that the website’s repeated crashes were due to unexpectedly high traffic. U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said on Oct. 6 that the website was expected to draw around 60,000 simultaneous users but instead drew many more, around 250,000. However, a Healthcare.gov testing bulletin from Sept. 30, the day before the site’s launch, states that the website began to run into trouble with far fewer users. “Currently...

This Jim Acosta tweet piqued my interest so I’m tossing it out there. Let the feverish baseless speculation begin! Jim Acosta ✔ @JimAcostaCNN HHS: Sebelius to Atlanta tomorrow and "discuss an important announcement related to the Affordable Care Act" 11:54 AM - 7 Nov 2013

When the news broke last night that he was leaving, I figured he’d been pushed out as a sacrificial lamb in lieu of firing someone more important like Sebelius or Marilyn Tavenner. After reading this, I wonder if I’ve got it all wrong. Was he pushed out or did he resign in protest because they insisted on launching a site that he knew wasn’t secure? When asked whether he jumped or was pushed, HHS said simply that “Tony [Trenkle] made a decision that he was going to move to the private sector.” Memo to Darrell Issa: Subpoena this man.

There’s been much talk about how the Obamacare exchanges need to attract enough young and healthy people to survive. If a disproportionately old, sick and expensive crowd signs up in any given state, premiums will skyrocket for 2015. So as you can guess, this move by Oregon — whose exchange doesn’t work but has awesome, freaky television ads — is especially brilliant....

Jeremiah 29:11 I Know the Plans I have for You, Says the Lord. They are Plans for Good and not for Evil, To Give you a Hope and a Future.

Millions of health insurance plans have been cancelled after ObamaCare went into effect, and President Obama backed away Monday from his previous oft-repeated statement that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” But he may want to glance at his own website, WhiteHouse.gov, which still states: "For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can keep it. Nothing in this act or anywhere in the bill forces anyone to change the insurance they have, period." That appears in a section of the WhiteHouse.gov website labeled "health reform details." The exact same language also appears...

Many of the president's supporters are in barely concealed panic over the fact that he didn't tell the truth when he was selling the Affordable Care Act. In an oft-repeated vow, he told the country that "if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what." This was, by any common-sense measure, a lie. It was a lie because President Obama understood that one of the central aims of the Affordable Care Act was to squeeze out the individual insurance market (and the small...

The Valley Morning Star reports that Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D-Fort Worth), who is running for governor of Texas and became nationally known after she stood for an eleven-hour pro-abortion filibuster, astonishingly claimed to be "pro-life" while campaigning at the University of Texas at Brownsville. I am pro-life. I care about the life of every child: every child that goes to bed hungry, every child that goes to bed without a proper education, every child that goes to bed without being able to be a part of the Texas dream, every woman and man who worry about their children’s...