Free Republic

Voice mimicking software imitated a company executive’s speech and tricked an employee into sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to a secret account, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. The managing director of a British energy company, believing that his boss was on the phone, wired more than $240,000 to an account in Hungary this March, French insurance company Euler Hermes told the outlet. The insurer declined to name the company. The managing director told the Post in an email that the request was “rather strange,” but the voice was lifelike to the point that he felt he had no choice...

Law enforcement authorities believe the gun used in Saturday’s Midland-Odessa shooting was illegally made and illegally sold from a man in Lubbock, Texas. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that authorities have “a person of interest” they believe may have made the gun at his home before selling it to the gunman who opened fire on August 31. It is legal to piece together a gun at home for personal use in numerous states around the country, but it is illegal to sell that gun.

2020 Democrat hopeful Joe Biden told “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert Wednesday night that he would nominate his former ‘boss’ Barack Obama to the US Supreme Court. “Would you appoint him [Obama] to the Supreme Court?” Colbert asked Biden. “Hell…yes!” Biden said with a creepy grin on his face. “I don’t think he’d do it but…he’s fully qualified.”

Executive Order No. GA-07 relating to the prevention of mass attacks

Senator Warren’s proposal would hit fortunes above $50 million with a 2 percent annual wealth tax. Fortunes above $1 billion would be taxed annually at 3 percent. Why is this a bad idea? Recent research and analysis convincingly argues that the plan would collect a fraction of the revenue that Warren’s advisers expect. Lawrence Summers, the economist and former Treasury secretary, and Penn professor Natasha Sarin argue this from the U.S.’s experience with the estate tax. And economists Matthew Smith, Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick present preliminary estimates suggesting that the Warren proposal would raise half as much as projected....

Cilla Carden made headlines this week for her legal beef, in which she claimed the odors from her neighbors’ barbecues had destroyed her quality of life, 9News reported. Now more than 3,000 people are planning to attend a cookout outside her Perth home, organized on a Facebook page called “Community BBQ for Cilla Carden.” Carden’s legal battle with her neighbors began last year. Her complaint was tossed out of court earlier this year, and she filed an appeal. The appeal was also rejected in July, but she has vowed to keep fighting.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A Florida man's good deed is not going unnoticed after he bought over 100 generators and food to send to the Bahamas. Alec Sprague, who lives in Jacksonville, said he went a Costco to buy a generator, and saw a man purchasing over 100 of them.

More than 500 people were injured over Labor Day weekend by stingrays in Southern California beaches. The spike in injuries came as hundreds of beach-goers tried to make the most of the sun as summer draws to a close, rather than there being a surge in stingrays locally. Stingrays are a common find in shallow waters of south-facing beaches, such as Bolsa Chica State Beach and Huntington State Beach, because of the suitable conditions for breeding, and safety from predators, Superintendent of California State Parks, Kevin Pearsall, said.

The left is trying to steer Facebook into doing more censorship. Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-OR) proclaimed that Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg should face dire consequences for how he has chosen to run the platform. However, he also calls for more censorship of the internet as a whole. Wyden also hammered the First Amendment, saying that “A lot of people don't realize the First Amendment is what creates the biggest opportunity for hate speech.” He then noted by contrast that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act “provides an opportunity to address hate speech without the bad guys going off to...

On the surface, Trump and Pence insist they have a great relationship and are working closer than ever to win reelection in 2020. (They’ve consistently beaten back rumors that former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is in the running to replace Pence on the 2020 ticket.) But behind the scenes, tensions have been mounting among Trump, Pence and their top advisers ever since the GOP’s resounding losses in the 2018 midterms. In the weeks afterward, Trump asked aides about replacing Pence on the ticket, and he asked again for their thoughts on Pence during his August vacation at his golf course...

The United States has offered several million dollars to the captain of the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1 to steer it to a port in a country that would detain the ship on behalf of the United States, the Financial Times reported, citing emails that the top U.S. envoy for Iran had sent to the vessel’s captain. “With this money you can have any life you wish and be well-off in old age,” the U.S. Special Representative for Iran, Brian Hook, wrote in an email to Adrian Darya’s captain Akhilesh Kumar, FT reports. The email also contained a warning...

We’ve covered a number of stories here dealing with the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles which has been out of control and growing for several years now. Most of these tales have to do with drug addiction, mental illness, crimes committed both by and against the homeless and people using the streets as their bathrooms. But there’s another, even darker element to this story featured in the LA Times this week. As it turns out, the homeless are not just living on the streets. They’re dying on them and in large numbers. On average, nearly three homeless people are...

I came upon this when looking at our local civic calendar of events. My eyes popped out of my head when I noted this group for the first time that is operating in my community. Founded in 2016, "The Indivisible Project's mission is to cultivate a grassroots movement of literally thousands of local Indivisible groups to elect progressive leaders, realize bold progressive policies, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.".....it blew my mind when I saw what they are doing in my town. Obviously they are fully funded by deep, dark money.....eg. working with AAUW in the public schools......check...

Full title: Did the Obama administration commit 'the biggest accounting fraud in history' with student loans? Experts weigh in The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board (WSJ) recently accused the Obama administration of pulling off “the biggest accounting fraud in history” with student loans when eliminating the role of private lenders in the federal student lending market. Experts who spoke with Yahoo Finance acknowledged the issue with the general policy in hindsight, though they disagreed on who exactly is to blame. In 2010, Democrats “nationalized the market to help pay for Obama Care,” WSJ asserted. “The Congressional Budget Office at the...

Link only due to copyright issues: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/09/05/2020-democrats-run-against-donald-trump-not-on-policy-plans-column/2209609001/

A Bipartisan Congressional Bill Allows the Media to Censor Conservatives There should be no safe harbor from anti-trust laws for media cartels. September 4, 2019 Daniel Greenfield 31 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. The mass censorship of conservatives by the Google/Facebook duopoly was due to pressure from the mainstream media which claimed that President Trump won because of conservative “fake news”. Since then conservative media sites have suffered huge traffic losses. Some have been barred from advertising on Facebook. Conservative personalities...

he Democrat party has devolved into a doomsday cult and 2020 hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday night warned we only have 11 years left…maybe. “We’ve got, what? 11 years Maybe…to cut our emissions in half,” Warren said during a CNN climate change town hall. WATCH:

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called out CNN over a graphic the network aired that appears to mislabel Alabama as Mississippi, based on a screenshot that Grisham tweeted as President Trump faces ongoing criticism for doubling down on his claim that Hurricane Dorian originally posed a threat to Alabama. The image was shown in reference to a report on Dorian's progress as it works its way up the eastern U.S. coast. Georgia is in a state of emergency, and damage has been reported in the Carolinas. A CNN spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. SNIP

Midland Texas Officer Zack Owens was shot multiple times in the hand and arm when he fought off the mass-shooting by now deceased suspect, Seth Ator, shot dead by responding officers. Flying glass shards also entered the eye of Officer Owens, an injury soon requiring ophtalmic surgery. Officer Owens is a huge fan of the popular YouTube channels of Dr. Matt Carriker, a Texas video creator and veterinarian for VetRanch and OffTheRanch, channels with over 10 million video followers. Learning that the injured officer is a dedicated follower, Dr. Carriker drove 10 hours through the night to pay a surprise...

Posted on September 4, 2019September 4, 2019 by Msgr. Charles Pope The Night Prayer of the Church as a Rehearsal for Death Some years ago, I was addressing a group of young adults at a “Theology on Tap” gathering. One of the attendees asked me to recommend some ways to avoid temptation. Among the advice I offered was this: meditate frequently on death, particularly before going to bed at night. Suddenly it got very quiet. Everyone looked at me as though I had said something in Swahili. “What did you just say? Would you repeat that?” Perhaps my remarks...