Free Republic

New York: Oil traders and analysts closely watching weekly US inventory figures have been scratching their heads in the last few weeks wondering one thing: Where are the missing barrels? US Energy Information Administration data Wednesday showed a crude supply adjustment factor — the difference between reported stockpiles and those implied by production, refinery demand, imports and exports — of more than 800,000 barrels a day. While that doesn’t seem like that much, it’s added up to more than 24 million barrels over the past four weeks, and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in trading opportunities. The figure tends...

University of Oklahoma Study Calls Obama 5th Best President in America I know you will find this hard to believe.... University of Oklahoma Study Calls Obama 5th Best President in America. Good research work by a fine institution. OBAMA RATED 5th BEST PRESIDENT IN OUR HISTORY From a total of 45 US Presidents: Obama is rated as the 5th best. The OU Public Relations Office released this statement "After 8 years in office, Americans have rated President Obama the 5th best President ever." These are the details according to OU: 1. Reagan, and Trump tied for first, 2. Twenty four...

Having an extra finger can enable people to execute movements with a single hand that would otherwise require two. Photo courtesy of HealthDay News ============================================================== Though rare, some children are born with an extra finger, a condition known as polydactyly. Now, for the first time, a team of researchers set out to see whether having this extra appendage is somehow beneficial. The answer is yes. The bottom line: Having an additional finger significantly boosts a person's ability to manipulate objects, so much so that they can execute movements with a single hand that would otherwise require two. For the study,...

CUTTYHUNK ISLAND, Mass. - Actress Jenny Slate, known for her roles on “Parks and Recreation” “Saturday Night Live” and as the voice of Assistant Mayor Bellwether in “Zootopia,” will have a very small audience when she addresses the Class of 2019. Slate will give the graduation speech for the ceremony at Cuttyhunk Elementary on Cuttyhunk Island off Cape Cod. The ceremony will graduate only one eighth grade student, 13-year-old Gwen Lynch, The New York Times reported. Cuttyhunk Island has a population of about 12 people most of the year, the Cape Cod Times reported. Vacationers fill the 2 and a...

June 7 (UPI) -- Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday will launch what he calls the largest ever coordinated campaign to beat climate change, which will close all U.S. coal plants by 2030. Bloomberg said the $500 million program, Beyond Carbon, will put the United States on track toward a 100 percent clean energy economy by working with advocates to "build on leadership and climate progress already underway." Bloomberg and his foundation joined with the Sierra Club in 2011 to launch Beyond Coal with the goal of closing at least a third of U.S. coal plants. "With...

Today's Quotefall Puzzle features a quote by Marine Le Pen. Click image (or click here) for full size rendition, then use your browser's print command to print puzzle. Marine Le Pen is a French politician who believes in republican sovereignity, and is considered the Nigel Farage and Donald Trump of France. All hints, along with the answer, are provided in the first reply comment below, using filtered font to prevent accidential spoilers. Please refrain from disclosing the full answer in comments to prevent spoilers.To solve the puzzle: Enter the letters in the top half (letter columns) of the puzzle into the white...

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg argued Stacey Abrams should be Georgia's governor at the Democratic National Committee’s African American Leadership Summit in Atlanta on Thursday. "Stacey Abrams ought to be the governor of Georgia," Buttigieg said, according to Politico. "When racially motivated voter suppression is permitted, when districts are drawn so that politicians get to choose their voters instead of the other way around, when money is allowed to outvote people in this country, we cannot truly say we live in a democracy."

This week in Vancouver, Prime Minister Trudeau said the federal carbon tax, a key pillar in his government’s climate policy, will help protect Canadians from extreme weather. “Extreme weather events are extraordinarily expensive for Canadians, our communities and our economy,” he said, citing the recent tornadoes in Ottawa and wildfires in Western Canada. “That’s why we need to act.” While members of the media may nod along to such claims, the evidence paints a different story. Roger Pielke Jr. is a scientist at University of Colorado in Boulder who, up until a few years ago, did world-leading research on climate...

Unbelievably, Congress is considering a restriction on the ability of the U.S. to defend itself. The proposal, tucked into this year’s defense bill, would prohibit the Pentagon from spending money to deploy smaller, low-yield nuclear warheads on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. These weapons have been scheduled to be deployed before the effective date of this year’s defense bill, meaning that this provision would pre-emptively recall the weapons from deployment. Preventing these missiles from being deployed dangerously threatens America’s ability to defend itself against adversaries who themselves possess low-yield nuclear weapons. Last year, with a bipartisan vote, Congress provided funding necessary to...

The brinksmanship between Russian and US militaries has expanded from the air to the sea — and it nearly created a collision today near the Philippines. Just a few days after a mid-air confrontation over the Mediterranean Sea made headlines, the two navies are pointing the finger at each other as well. This time, the US Navy says it will declassify images to show the “unsafe and unprofessional” practices of the Russian navy: A US Navy warship nearly collides with a Russian warship in East China Sea.To avoid a collision "the US Navy ship went full engines back, as...

Illinois Catholic bishop denies communion to two pro-choice Democrats after calling abortion an 'abominable crime' (full title) as the state looks to expand women's rights. Bishop Thomas Paprocki of the Diocese of Springfield targeted two Democratic leaders of the Illinois state legislature because of their stance on abortion. Speaker of the House Michael Madigan and John Cullerton, who leads the state Senate, are barred from 'the most sacred aspect of our Catholic faith'. The Illinois legislature this month passed a bill stripping away a number of restrictions on abortions in the state that have existed for decades. Illinois Governor JB...

The Truth about Radiometric Dating June 2019 Prove it. That’s the challenge biblical creationists often face when discussing the scientific validity of the Genesis creation account with skeptics. Many people leave the church, especially young adults, when they think that the Bible and science can’t be harmonized. But what if incredible harmony actually exists? Those who believe in millions and billions of years often point to radiometric dating as indisputable scientific proof that Earth is old. Since the biblical timeline indicates a young earth that’s only about 6,000 years old, creation scientists must address the radiometric dating issue. We need...

Analysts looking for steady job growth got a rude awakening this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Instead of the expected expansion of 180,000 jobs in May, the economy only added 75,000 jobs, the second-worst performance since August 2017. Unemployment remained steady, but that’s one of the few bright spots from the jobs report: Total nonfarm payroll employment edged up in May (+75,000), and the unemployment rate remained at 3.6 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in professional and business services and in health care. …The unemployment rate remained at...

He said it a Brooklyn press conference on Tuesday. Mayor Bill de Blasio, in addressing the increase in hate crimes in New York City under his watch, said, “I think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement.” DeBlasio made the outrageous comments at a Brooklyn press conference on Tuesday. Anti-semitic incidents in 2019 are up 90 percent more than they were in June of 2018. A reporter had stated that there is also anti-Semitism “on the left – in the BDS movement around the world.” But Hizzoner the Mayor disagreed. He continued, “I want to be very,...

Furious at the breakout success of the HBO series Chernobyl, Russia is planning to make its own series portraying the nuclear disaster as the work of an American CIA operative. Russian television broadcaster NTV announced that it had commissioned the series, and principal photography has already begun in Belarus under director Alexei Muradov. In response to the HBO series' depiction of Soviet bureaucrats bungling the response both during and after the 1986 nuclear accident in the Ukrainian SSR, the Russian version plans to tell the tale of a heroic KGB agent trying to thwart a supposed CIA sabotage plot. 'One...

If you are the sort of person who feels compelled to demand new gun control laws after a mass shooting, you have several options. You can keep your recommendations vague, letting your audience fill in the blanks; push the policies you always push, regardless of whether they have anything to do with the latest outrage; or latch onto a detail of that crime, inflating its importance to support a seemingly germane solution. All three of those strategies were on display after a gunman murdered 12 people at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center on Friday. None of them reflected well on...

Trade talks between China and the United States collapsed because there was “a critical cultural gap” on the understanding of law between the two sides, according to a professor at the University of Hong Kong. The explanation offered by Chen Zhiwu, director of the Asia Global Institute in Hong Kong who also taught at Yale University, provided a fresh perspective to understand how Chinese and American officials failed to reach a deal to end the trade war after months of negotiations. According to an article published by Chen on Thursday, the high-stakes talks involved “lawyers” on the US side and...

Full Title: Navy retaliated against SEAL Keith Barry after refusing to sign paperwork admitting guilt, he says – Navy denies . Navy Seal Chief Keith Barry has been through hell and back. He was released from jail in 2017 after serving three years for a crime that he didn’t commit, after it was discovered that one of the top lawyers in the Navy personally tried to ensure he was found guilty. -snip- Three years after the conviction, and after two failed appeals, it was revealed in 2017 that the convening authority in his case had been pressured to rule against...

The clinical laboratory company said in a release that an "unauthorized user" gained access to a system used by American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA), a billing vendor hired by a Quest contractor called Optum360. Quest said the information that may have been exposed included Social Security numbers and medical information, but not test results. AMCA first notified Quest on May 14 of "potential unauthorized activity" on its payment page, Quest said. Two weeks later, according to Quest, AMCA then told Quest and Optum360 more about the breach, including the number of patients potentially affected and what information was accessed. Quest...