Free Republic

Riots! Dark forces! Terrorism! American gangsters! The allegations are propaganda smears threatened dictators routinely employ to tar opponents and shift blame. Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and communist China frequently slandered the U.S. as a gangster state. The Nazis and communists used 1930s Hollywood gangster flicks as visual evidence. In 2019, communist China's propagandists are using these bogus accusations as narrative warfare tropes to discredit Hong Kong's relentless pro-democracy demonstrations and -- potentially -- as reasons to suppress them militarily. Even gangsters. A pro-Beijing newspaper has claimed an American "black hand" is behind the protests, a term with terrorist and...

A US MQ-9 drone was shot down over Yemen on Tuesday by a surface-to-air missile, a US official tells CNN. The US believes the missile was provided to Houthi rebels by Iran, said the official, who added that it was not immediately clear if the drone was being operated by the US military or the intelligence community. The official said the Trump administration will publicly call out Iran for the incident, which was first reported by Reuters.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A Missouri farmer blamed for running the largest organic food fraud scheme in U.S. history has died by suicide, weeks before he was to report to federal prison to begin serving a 10-year term, a coroner said Tuesday. Police officers found Randy Constant dead in a vehicle in his garage at his home in Chillicothe, Missouri on Monday evening, hours after federal investigators held a news conference in Iowa to highlight the prison sentence he had received. Livingston County Coroner Scott Lindley said he concluded that Constant died from carbon monoxide poisoning, and that finding...

Morning "He that watereth shall be watered also himself." Proverbs 11:25 We are here taught the great lesson, that to get, we must give; that to accumulate, we must scatter; that to make ourselves happy, we must make others happy; and that in order to become spiritually vigorous, we must seek the spiritual good of others. In watering others, we are ourselves watered. How? Our efforts to be useful, bring out our powers for usefulness. We have latent talents and dormant faculties, which are brought to light by exercise. Our strength for labour is hidden even from ourselves, until we...

The primary matchup between Senator Edward J. Markey and Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III is still hypothetical, but it’s already getting messy. An apparent social media blunder by Markey’s top campaign hand has angered Kennedy, his team, and supporters — just as the 38-year-old Newton Democrat is weighing a challenge to the 73-year-old Markey. The controversy started late Monday night when a senior adviser to Markey’s campaign retweeted a nasty post: “@EdMarkey, co-author of the green new deal, is a great Senator. @joekennedy should focus on his family’s considerable mental health issues.” Drama on Twitter ensued: A Kennedy supporter called...

Iran's president sent a bill to parliament Wednesday that would cut four zeroes from the value of the Islamic Republic's sanctions-battered currency, the rial, as tensions remain high between Tehran and Washington. By sending the bill to lawmakers, President Hassan Rouhani's government shows it is serious about an idea discussed for some time in Iran, where people discuss monetary transactions in both rials and informally, but more commonly, in tomans. A toman is worth 10 rials. If passed by parliament and approved by lawmakers, Iran's Central Bank would in effect devalue the rial and rename it as toman. The bank...

Here is another hit by Webb Pierce: I Don't Care (1955). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Japan surpassed China in June as the top holder of U.S. Treasuries as the trade war between the world's two largest economies intensified. Japan increased its holdings of U.S. bonds, bills and notes by $21.9 billion to $1.12 trillion, the highest level in more than 2 1/2 years, according to data released by the Treasury Department on Thursday... The last time Japan held the position as America's largest foreign creditor was May 2017... China's U.S. debt hoard has come under increased scrutiny in the trade dispute amid speculation that the Asian nation could sell Treasuries in response.

Stone tools uncovered in Mongolia by an international team of archaeologists indicate that modern humans traveled across the Eurasian steppe about 45,000 years ago, according to a new University of California, Davis, study. The date is about 10,000 years earlier than archaeologists previously believed.

Ok. I realize that listing only five points eliminates thousands of other really good reasons, they serve as powerful reminders. Planned Parenthood, contrary to their victimhood tweets, opted out of #TitleX funding because abortion is more important to them than their “family planning” patients. Planned Parenthood President, Alexis McGill Johnson, confirmed with CBS (prior to the defunding) that she voted along with the organization’s board to “ensure that abortion was one of our core services that every center affiliated with Planned Parenthood would provide.” CBS then asked, regarding Title-X funding: “Is there a scenario where you would discontinue abortion services...

On Tuesday Facebook released the results of a study on bias within and by the platform against conservative perspectives and activity on the platform. It was led by former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and his team at corporate law firm Covington & Burling LLP.The report confirmed what many had already been experiencing firsthand in the years since social media has become central to global communications, business, governance, and interactivity – that many voices on the right felt subject to arbitrary purposefully targeted restrictions on their ability to operate freely within the terms of services of the platform.Senator Kyl and...

On her weekly Sinclair TV show, "Full Measure," on Aug. 18, former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson interviewed pollster Scott Rasmussen about journalists' standing in the public square. They're about as trusted as Wikipedia, the website considered so unreliable that school teachers often tell students they can't cite it as a source for their research papers. Only 38 percent said national political coverage is accurate and reliable, while 42 percent said it is not. "We asked about national political reporters. Are they credible? Are they reliable?" said Rasmussen. "And you know, a little more than 1 out of 3 people...

Toward the end of his Fox News broadcast on Monday evening, Special Report anchor Bret Baier responded to President Trump’s recent criticism of the network’s polling, which shows him trailing every major Democratic candidate in hypothetical head-to-head matchups. “Fox has changed,” Trump told reporters on Sunday, adding, “There’s something going on at Fox, I’ll tell you right now and I’m not happy with it.” “Fox has not changed,” Baier said in response. “We have a news side and an opinion side. Opinion folks express their opinions. We do polls.” After explaining that Fox’s polls reflect the reality of the race...

ESTES PARK, Colorado -- I often say that what happens on Twitter isn't a reflection of American life in the real world. The facts mostly back that up. Last month, a Pew survey showed only about 22% of U.S. adults say they use Twitter. Twitter users skew younger, identify more as Democrats, are more educated and have more money than the other 78% who don't use it. Experiences back that up as well. Halfway through a 16-state back-road trip across the country, I've had many people -- both conservative and liberal -- tell me that if they use Twitter, they...

It perplexes me why anyone would question the perfectly logical move by Israel to deny Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar entry to the country. Who invites guests whose motive is to destroy their host? We certainly don't do it in the USA. No one, elected official or not, is permitted entry into the USA whose agenda is the destruction of our country. Both Tlaib and Omar are aggressive supporters of the BDS movement -- boycott, divest, sanction -- whose objective is economic strangulation of Israel. They are voices of unremitting hostility toward Israel's existence. Let's get some perspective. According...

White House hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) will attend a CNN town hall focused on climate change next month after previously saying a scheduling conflict prevented her from participating in the event. The California Democrat was hammered by environmental groups, including the Sunrise Movement, after Harris was the only one of nine initial Democrats invited to the town hall who did not confirm her attendance. “We were happy to change our schedule to accommodate such a critical conversation,” Lily Adams, the Harris campaign’s communications director, said in a statement to The Hill. “As Senator Harris has said, this is a...

I learned last week from a Silicon Valley whistleblower, who spoke with the intrepid investigative team at Project Veritas, that my namesake news and opinion website is on a Google blacklist. Thank goodness the Big Tech giant hasn't taken over the newspaper syndication business yet. Twenty years of column writing have allowed me to break news and disseminate my opinions without the tyranny of social justice algorithms downgrading or whitewashing my words. But given the toxic metastasis of social media in every aspect of our lives, especially for those who make their living exercising the First Amendment, it may only...

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President Donald Trump promised he'd get rid of bad rules. "Remove the anchor dragging us down!" he said when campaigning for president. "We're going to cancel every needless job-killing regulation!" Trump was a developer, so he knew that the thicket of rules government imposes often makes it impossible to get things done. But would he keep his deregulation promise? I was skeptical. Republicans often talk deregulation but then add rules. People called President George W. Bush an "anti-regulator." But once he was president, he hired 90,000 new regulators! Trump has been different. When he took office, he hired regulation skeptics....

For many parents, August is a month of both pride and tears. Pride because their teenager is taking that big educational step and tears because for many it's the beginning of an empty nest. Yet, there's a going-away-to-college question that far too few parents ask or even contemplate: What will my youngster learn in college? The American Council of Trustees and Alumni provides some answers that turn out to be quite disturbing. ACTA evaluated every four-year public university as well as hundreds of private colleges and universities. That's more than 1,100 institutions that enroll nearly 8 million students, more than...