Free Republic

--SNIP-- From North to South Philadelphia, shovel-weary residents on blizzard-battered streets are using the time-honored orange cones, folding chairs, and garbage cans to save their spots. "It's been an unwritten law," said Stephen Flemming, a public school teacher from Southwest Philadelphia. "If you take a [saved] parking spot, you run the risk of causing an argument, a fight, or worse." Jennifer Williams, a Mount Airy homeowner, said: "How is it that I spend all this time shoveling out my car in front of my house, yet I can't save my spot? Why am I paying property taxes again?"

The Zika virus, a disease suspected of causing birth defects which spread across much of Latin America in 2015, has now reached the United States. A young girl who traveled from Los Angeles County to El Salvador was infected with the mosquito-transmitted disease, according to the local department of public health. The girl has now recovered, but it’s not the adults infected with the disease who are especially at risk—it’s the unborn. The Zika virus is linked to microcephaly, a birth defect where the infant is born with an abnormally small brain. The majority of children born with the disease...

Major demolition work was set to begin next week, which will also require a 40-hour closure of the 101 Freeway scheduled to being 10 p.m. on Feb. 5, the Los Angeles Times reported. The freeway will be closed from the 10 Freeway near Union Station to the 5 Freeway interchange south of downtown during the demolition, the newspaper reported earlier this month. The work will also require the onramp to the 101 Freeway from the westbound lanes of the 60 Freeway to be shut down. Tuesday night, hundreds of people and cars gathered on the bridge to celebrate it's 84-year...

Rose is back! Formerly the Rose half of the Quinn & Rose Morning Show, she is back on the air and ready for the fight! Catch her on Pittsburgh's 1250 AM The Answer WPGP, from 8AM to 10AM Monday through Friday or via live stream at www.am1250theanswer.com, where you can also get the podcasts. Join us for real no-nonsense conservative talk with a passion that only Rose can deliver! Grab a cup of joe and lets discuss Rose's latest show. Lots of good guests and and a round table discussion on Fridays!!

So Mr. Trumps war on Fox News isnt just a media spat. Its part of a war for control against the power structure of the G.O.P.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said the GOP frontrunner will own the entire GOP primary debate hosted by Fox News on Thursday night, even without being there. He added that he was "stunned" watching Fox News last night and that the network is acting as if it was "jilted at the altar." "Donald Trump knows that by not showing up, he's owning the entire event," Limbaugh said of the GOP frontrunner refusing to participate in the Fox News debate because Megyn Kelly is a moderator - someone who Trump doesn't think was fair to him in a past debate. Some...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, christened Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was born January 27, 1756. He died December 5, 1791.

Donald Trump’s criticisms of Megyn Kelly have been weak, sexist, thin-skinned. His decision to back out of Thursday night’s debate is childish and reflects a fear of having to debate his competitors on issues facing the country. All that said, this dispute is turning into a spectacle with two losers. Fox News unwisely sent out a statement yesterday designed to mock the Republican front-runner for his decision to launch a Twitter poll on whether he should participate in the debate. Here’s what that statement said: We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday night lashed out at Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly in his first appearance on the network since he announced he'd boycott the next GOP debate. Speaking on "The O'Reilly Factor," Trump continued his long-running feud with Kelly, who has been criticizing ever since she challenged him on his past derogatory remarks about women at the first GOP debate in August. "I have zero respect for Megyn Kelly," Trump said. "I don't think she's good at what she does and I think she's highly overrated. And frankly, she's a moderator; I thought her question...

Despite his ongoing feud with Fox News, Donald Trump honored a previous promise and appeared on The Factor tonight. Bill O'Reilly tried a variety of tactics to convince Trump to participate in Fox's GOP debate tomorrow night. Nothing was working, so O'Reilly played his trump card, citing Christianity: "the tenet of forgiveness . . . don't you think that's the right thing to do?" Shot back Trump: "it probably is. But it's called an eye for an eye I guess also." View the video here.

In the contentious interview with O'Reilly, Trump rebuffed the anchor's attempts to convince him that he's making a grave error by skipping the debate. "I believe personally that you want to improve the country," O'Reilly said. "By doing this, you miss the opportunity to convince others ... that is true. "You have in this debate format the upper hand -- you have sixty seconds off the top to tell the moderator, 'You're a pinhead, you're off the mark and here's what I want to say'. By walking away from it, you lose the opportunity to persuade people you are a...

~ The FReeper Canteen Presents ~ ~ Remembering Our Troops!! ~ DOG DECONTAMINATION Cirque, a service dog for the Ohio Task Force 1, goes through a decontamination procedure at the hands of his handler, Craig Veldheer, after searching for survivors in radioactive rubble during Vibrant Response at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Complex, IN, Aug. 4, 2014. U.S. Northern Command conducts the field exercise to train troops and civilians to respond to a catastrophic domestic incident. Canteen Mission Statement Showing support and boosting the morale ofour military and our allies' militaryand family members of the above.Honoring those who have served...

President Obama on Wednesday said movies will be better if they represent everyone's stories, for the first time weighing in on the lack of black nominees at the Oscars. "I think that California is an example of the incredible diversity of this country," Obama said during a series of interviews with local news stations. "That's a strength. I think that when everyone's story is told then that makes for better art." "It makes for better entertainment it makes everybody feel part of one American family, so I think as a whole the industry should do what every other industry should...

Rupert Murdoch is urging former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to throw his hat in the ring and run for president. "This is Bloomberg's last chance," the billionaire media mogul tweeted Wednesday morning. "You never know until your hat is in the ring!" Murdoch added, in what may be a veiled reference to Donald Trump's planned boycott of Thursday's GOP presidential debate on his Fox News Channel: "Events change everything, especially during elections."

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Sweden intends to expel up to 80,000 migrants who arrived in 2015 and whose application for asylum has been rejected, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said Wednesday. "We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000," the minister was quoted as saying by Swedish media, adding that the government had asked the police and authorities in charge of migrants to organise their expulsion, likely spread over several years.

As the world on Wednesday marked the Nazis' systematic killing of six million Jews during World War II an official Iranian website linked to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei posted a video quoting the supreme leader's questioning of the Holocaust. "No-one in European countries dares to speak about holocaust [sic] while it is not clear whether the core of this matter is a reality or not," read the English subtitles accompanying audio from an excerpt of a speech by Khamenei, over images of the entrance to Auschwitz and piles of Jewish corpses. "Even if it is a reality, it is not clear...

Washington (CNN)--Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday welcomed Donald Trump's announcement that he was skipping the upcoming Fox News debate, saying the "IQ of the debate went up." "It's an improvement to the debate. The IQ of the debate went up a couple dozen points, I would say," he told Fox News Wednesday morning. "He thinks he's already elected himself king. I say, good riddance. We're going to have a much better debate," Paul added. Paul is returning to the debate stage after he boycotted the last Republican event earlier this month because Fox Business Network assigned him to the...

Sweden expects to expel up to 80,000 asylum-seekers whose applications have been rejected, the country's interior minister has announced. Anders Ygeman said that charter aircraft would be used to deport the migrants over several years. "We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000," Mr Ygeman told Swedish media. Some 163,000 migrants applied for asylum in Sweden in 2015, the highest per capita number in Europe. Of the approximately 58,800 cases processed last year, 55% were accepted. Schengen: Controversial EU free movement deal explained Migrants feel chill as Europe tightens frontier checks EU threatens Greece over...

"Google has taken a brilliant and unexpected step toward building an AI with more humanlike intuition, developing a computer capable of beating even expert human players at the fiendishly complicated board game Go... Their computer program, called AlphaGo, beat the European Go champion, Fan Hui, five games to zero... Two deep-learning networks were used in AlphaGo: one network learned to predict the next move, and the other learned to predict the outcome from different arrangements on the board. The two networks were combined using a more conventional AI algorithm to look ahead in the game for possible moves. A scientific...

Link due to copyright. See first post.