Free Republic

The law that protects citizens from racial, ethnic and religious persecution will now also include discrimination based on sexual orientation. More than 63 percent of voters accepted on Sunday the proposal to broaden Switzerland’s current anti-racism legislation to encompass sexual orientation. However, the proposed law for more affordable housing was defeated, with 57.1 percent votes cast against it. With the acceptance of the anti-homophobia legislation, Switzerland will join a handful of other European nations where public incitement to hatred, discrimination, and violence on the basis of sexual orientation is illegal. […] But not everyone was pleased with the referendum’s result....

Sanders wins New Hampshire primary BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 02/11/20 11:04 PM EST 3,619 6,146 Sanders on NH victory: Win is 'beginning of the end for Donald Trump' Biden, Warren on ropes after delegate shutout Sanders wins New Hampshire primary MANCHESTER, N.H. — Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday night, delivering a victory for his campaign after a muddled result in Iowa that produced no clear winner. The result is significant for Sanders, though it was expected after he defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton easily in New Hampshire’s primary four years ago. Sanders...

French winemakers hit by US tariffs imposed in a transatlantic trade war over airplane subsidies on Tuesday demanded help from their government and European planemaker Airbus. French wine exports to the US have plunged since President Donald Trump in October imposed 25 percent tariffs on a range of European delicacies in retaliation for EU subsidies of Airbus, arch-rival of America’s Boeing. The French finance ministry last week announced that wine exports to the US — the second-biggest export market for French wines after Germany — had fallen by 44 percent in value from October to November. On Tuesday, the vice-president...

President Trump's budget would eliminate the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, an Energy Department initiative to lend money to retool factories and advance the progress of electric-vehicle manufacturing.

As those of you here may know, The Pat Metheny Group has been a big part of my music listening life for over 40 years now. So when I heard the news this morning that he had passed on, to say I was devastated by the news, would be an understatement. What he and Pat Metheny created together over the years was pure magic and cannot be duplicated. Pat has played with other Pianists, but it's just not the same. See you "On the Way Up!" Lyle.

February 12 2020 Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Kgs 10:1-10 The queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon’s fame, came to test him with subtle questions. She arrived in Jerusalem with a very numerous retinue, and with camels bearing spices, a large amount of gold, and precious stones. She came to Solomon and questioned him on every subject in which she was interested. King Solomon explained everything she asked about, and there remained nothing hidden from him that he could not explain to her.When the queen of Sheba witnessed Solomon’s great wisdom, the...

Lyle Mays, a keyboardist, composer and orchestrator who helped carve a new channel for contemporary jazz with The Pat Metheny Group, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 66. His niece, jazz vocalist Aubrey Johnson, announced his death on social media, noting that he passed away “surrounded by loved ones, after a long battle with a recurring illness.” [excerpt]

His stepfather, Carsten Jensen, said on Facebook that Coleman “collapsed without prior health problems” during a trip. Coleman was born in London and appeared in several movies as a child, including “The Fourth Kind” and “It’s Alive.” He was best known for playing Eric Brown, aged 11, in the 2005 British comedy movie “Nanny McPhee,” alongside Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Angela Lansbury. His former castmate, Eliza Bennett, said she was “heartbroken” at the news. “After we worked on Nanny McPhee, he dedicated his life to protecting wildlife and fighting climate change,” she wrote. He became an active member of...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has won the New Hampshire primary, Fox News projects, catapulting the 78-year-old self-described democratic socialist to the front of the still-crowded Democratic presidential primary field.

Several days ago, I proposed that China's big lie regarding the Coronavirus wasn't downplaying its contagiousness or deadliness, but the opposite: because the Coronavirus had run rampant through Hubei before they acknowledged it, they were under-reporting cases, and therefore the death rate looked so much worse. And because they had failed to distinguish the Coronavirus from the flu, many cases where people got the Coronavirus despite strong preventitive measures were actually cases where they had been exposed much earlier to "flu." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak Whatever the reasons, I identified the Coronavirus as in decline, despite the hysterics of the media... at least...

Tesla is getting more aggressive in revoking paid software features on used cars, raising the stakes in a battle over what used Teslas can do that has raged for years. ... The entire Autopilot package, which the car had when the dealer bought it, costs an extra $8,000. Then, Tesla remotely removed the software because “Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for.” Tesla said if the customer wanted Autopilot back, he’d have to fork over the $8,000. The Model X performance package costs $20,000 more than the standard version, so, in effect, Tesla remotely disabled a...

Mike Bloomberg defended stop and frisk: "I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It's exactly the reverse of what they're saying. I don't know where they went to school but they certainly didn't take a math course or a logic course." ...

It should be obvious by now, even for the semi-attentive, that USG elections are fixed. This arrangement failed stupendously in 2016 and the establishment has spent the last three years trying to unseat an elected president they revile and want to be removed from office, even if the interloper must be assassinated. Now that the dysfunctional efforts by Democrats to remove Trump by way of impeachment have failed, the president may indeed have an unfortunate accident or be offed by a “lone wolf” patsy if it looks like he will be reelected. The establishment desperately needs to insert one of...

Former Vice President Joe Biden brushed off lackluster early returns in the New Hampshire presidential primary on Tuesday, saying that it was time to look at more diverse states such as Nevada and South Carolina for guidance in the Democratic nominating contest. “It is important that Iowa and Nevada have spoken, but, look, we need to hear from Nevada and South Carolina and Super Tuesday and beyond,” Biden told a crowd of supporters at a rally in Columbia, S.C. Biden’s speech came as votes in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary were still being counted. He left the Granite State earlier on...

The Pannenjet 737 Max continues to create a depressed mood at Boeing. According to the official website of the US aviation giant, the group did not receive a single aircraft order in January. The last time sales were so bleak was in 1962. At Boeing, deliveries looked poor at the beginning of the year: only 13 aircraft were delivered to customers handed over, including six 787 Dreamliners, The European archrival Airbus, on the other hand, has already received 274 orders for new transport jets and is therefore continuing to pull away. In 2019, Boeing even lost its bottom line for...

Shaniqua Davis, it’s not McDonald’s fault that you chose to become an unmarried, teenage mother Recently, McDonald’s employees have been going on strike to try to get paid $15 an hour. Associated Press reports:Shaniqua Davis, 20, lives in the Bronx with her boyfriend, who is unemployed, and their 1-year-old daughter. Davis has worked at a McDonald’s a few blocks from her apartment for the past three months, earning $7.25 an hour. Her schedule varies, but she never gets close to 40 hours a week. “Forty? Never. They refuse to let you get to that (many) hours.”Her weekly paycheck is $150 or...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru4SVUlNfMY

Elizabeth Warren admitted defeat in New Hampshire Tuesday night. She claimed to be still plotting a path forward for her presidential campaign, but, at this point, it has nowhere left to go. With results still coming in, MSNBC has projected that Warren will come out of the primary with zero delegates. At best, she'll be in a distant fourth, well behind Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar. This was a disastrous night for Warren on top of an already lackluster showing in Iowa last week.

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — An evacuee who tested positive for the coronavirus in San Diego was mistakenly released back into quarantine because their test sample was mislabeled. Four evacuees were brought from MCAS Miramar to UC San Diego Medical Center and provided samples for testing within the last week. Three of those four samples were not labeled in compliance with the same regulations between UC San Diego Health and the CDC, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson. Because of this, when the samples were brought to the CDC in Atlanta, three of them were not immediately...