Free Republic

Post #30. With so many rats running for president in 2020 it's hard to keep up with who's in and who's out. Hopefully, this post will help. This thread will be posted each week, likely on Monday, with the dropouts from the previous week and newly declared candidates noted. Below is a list of declared candidates and their occupation. Below that is a list of dropouts, their occupation and the date they dropped from the race. Dropout(s) in the past week: Andrew Yang, Michael Bennet (who?) and Deval Patrick (who?) dropped out after poor showings in the New Hampshire primary...

In a first since the Reformation era, Protestants are set to receive communion during a Catholic mass at a historic Cathedral in Geneva, Switzerland, John Calvin's adopted home. The historic Swiss church, Saint-Pierre Reformed Protestant church, will hold a Catholic mass on Feb. 29, leap day, and Protestants have been invited to attend and take part, including in receiving communion. Although open communion is forbidden by Catholic doctrine, the practice is reportedly common in Geneva, according to Protest Info, a Swiss Protestant news outlet. The church became the home of French Protestant Reformer John Calvin, whose famous triangular chair continues...

If we’re different colors we deserve different languages! Right Amy?I see where Amy Klobuchar has changed her mind (aka pandering if you’re a politician) and now does NOT think English should be the national language of the United States. I wonder what she thinks SHOULD be our official language, Yiddish? Navajo? Aramaic?How about Esperanto?  The artificially constructed language created in 1887 by Polish ophthalmologist and linguist L. L. Zamenhof. He had hoped that his language - which he saw as a tool to gather people together through neutral, fair, equitable communication - would lead to a world free of war....

A report says that Sony plans to feature Spider-Man as a bisexual in an upcoming movie.The entertainment blog We Got This Covered said, citing anonymous but reliable sources, that Sony is developing a live-action Spider-Verse movie that would unite Holland with his predecessors, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, and that the studio is “particularly keen on getting Garfield back, as they want to portray his version of the hero as bisexual and give him a boyfriend in the film.”In an interview with The Sunday Times last year, Holland, who currently plays Spider-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was asked...

Florida enacted its red flag law in the spring of 2018 and they didn’t lose any time in putting it to use. And I mean a lot of use. But as this report from the Associated Press indicates, use of the law is not consistent from county to county and there are serious questions remaining as to how fairly it’s being applied. The law, supported by legislators of both parties , has been applied more than 3,500 times since, with the pace accelerating during the last half of 2019. Even so, an Associated Press analysis of the law showed...

While Bernie Sanders was speaking at a rally in Nevada, those watching the live feed saw a woman storm the stage and seize the microphone from his hands. She turned out to be an activist from Direct Action Everywhere, an animal liberation movement. After castigating Bernie for daring to support those American farmers who raise animals for milk and meat, the live feed cut off. That’s a shame because it was when the video cameras were gone that the fun really started. What you see watching the video is a young woman with long black hair and scarlet lipstick jumping...

All of their predictions are based on the conventional wisdom and assumptions of an insulted and excluded D.C. intelligentsia, and all are wrong. Media bias is an old constant. It has never and will never go away. A reporter or host can use all the proper, sanitized words he wants, but behind the scenes lie the decisions that went into which stories to pursue and which to drop; where to pull back and where to push forward; who to interview, who to skip; what is most important versus what can be buried or even cut.And then, of course, there’s the...

If you really want to shock leftists, tell them that Europe does not have, and has never had, socialized medicine or, indeed, socialized anything. European nations certainly had government-controlled medicine. They also boasted short work weeks, long vacations, year-long maternity leaves, early retirement, fully-paid-for old-age care, all sorts of other things that made them feel superior to Americans. However, contrary to Europeans’ self-satisfied faux-socialist vision of themselves, Europeans didn’t fund their so-called “soft socialism.” Instead, for the most part, Americans did. During the Cold War, government collected taxes from Americans to pay Europe’s defense costs, allowing Europeans to spend their...

Having discredited itself with utter (and very public) incompetence in tallying up the Iowa caucuses, the Democrats are reportedly on the verge of another disaster in Nevada. Politico headlines, ‘A complete disaster’: Fears grow over potential Nevada caucus malfunction  Anxiety is rising over the possibility of another tech-induced meltdown at the Nevada Democratic caucuses on Saturday. In interviews, three caucus volunteers described serious concerns about rushed preparations for the Feb. 22 election, including insufficient training for a newly-adopted electronic vote-tally system and confusing instructions on how to administer the caucuses. There are also unanswered questions about the security of...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview that if President Donald Trump was a person of faith he would recognize other people of faith like her pray “even for him” While claiming Republican senators did not have the “courage” to vote guilty on impeachment, Pelosi said, “Except for Mitt Romney. God bless him. And then the president criticized him for using his faith.”

On Sunday, Feb 16th, 40 days after the horrific downing of the Ukrainian airliner, students gathered at Amir Kabir University in Tehran to protest the regime's brutal crackdown against protesters and the downing of flight 752, while also demanding the release of political prisoners. "1,500 were killed in Nov. protests," they chanted. They asserted that the downing of the Ukrainian plane is a manifestation of 41 years of lies and blackmail. The students also call for a boycott of the upcoming parliamentary “elections” on Feb 21. chanting “No voting, no ballot box, boycott the elections.” The students were attacked by...

PONCA CITY, Okla. (KFOR) – A Ponca City woman is upset after she says she was asked to leave a local barber shop because she’s a woman. Maliki Skowroski says she went to King’s Kuts with her husband to get him a cut and beard trim, but before he could even sit in the chair, she was getting kicked out. "The man kind of ignores my husband, directly approaches me and says, 'I'm sorry, but we have a strict no women policy,'” Skowroski told News 4. “You can't be here." Owner Daxton Nichols says he can see how some may...

Anxiety is rising over the possibility of another tech-induced meltdown at the Nevada Democratic caucuses on Saturday. In interviews, three caucus volunteers described serious concerns about rushed preparations for the Feb. 22 election, including insufficient training for a newly-adopted electronic vote-tally system and confusing instructions on how to administer the caucuses. There are also unanswered questions about the security of Internet connections at some 2,000 precinct sites that will transmit results to a central “war room” set up by the Nevada Democratic Party.

Australia’s decision to join the U.S. and ban Huawei from any participation in a national 5G network remains a “sore point or thorny issue” between the two countries, the Chinese ambassador alleged Monday, adding “discrimination against a Chinese company” lies at the core of the dispute. Cheng Jingye dismissed concerns Huawei may pose a threat to Australia’s national security given its known links to the Communist Chinese government, and said Australia’s ban was “politically motivated.” The telecommunications giant was banned in August 2018 from joining Australia’s 5G rollout due to security concerns. The then Turnbull conservative coalition government chose to...

There is nothing small about Mini-Mike’s ego. As the billionaire oligarch continues his attempt at a leveraged buyout of the Democrat Party and its presidential nomination, there is no bigger factor getting in his way than his own unbearable arrogance. Let’s go through the highlights of what we have heard from the former Mayor of New York City in just the past week: Stop and Frisk – A week ago today, video leaked of a 2015 speech in which Bloomberg, then 3 years removed from his final day as Mayor, bragged to an audience in the starkest, and most racist...

The Eyes of Darkness, a 1981 thriller by bestselling suspense author Dean Koontz, tells of a Chinese military lab that creates a virus as part of its biological weapons programme. The lab is located in Wuhan, which lends the virus its name, Wuhan-400. A chilling literary coincidence or a case of writer as unwitting prophet? In The Eyes of Darkness, a grieving mother, Christina Evans, sets out to discover whether her son Danny died on a camping trip or if – as suspicious messages suggest – he is still alive. She eventually tracks him down to a military facility where...

A new video posted on Sunday shows former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg explaining how healthcare will “bankrupt us,” unless we deny care to the elderly.

Key Points Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is coming out in favor of boosting Social Security and creating new ways for American workers to save for retirement. The plans mark the latest addition to the former New York City mayor’s campaign platform, and puts him in line with other Democratic candidates who have called for shoring up Social Security benefits and the program’s long-term solvency. Bloomberg’s proposals also aim to help improve retirees’ lives, from giving low-income workers access to government-provided retirement savings plans to helping to ensure seniors get better access to health care and housing. ===================================================================== Mike Bloomberg...

SHANGHAI—Nearly half of the U.S. companies in China say their global operations are already seeing an impact from business shutdowns due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to a poll by Shanghai’s American Chamber of Commerce. Some 78 percent of the respondents also said they do not have sufficient staff at their Chinese plants to resume full production, as public health restrictions make it harder to workers to return to their jobs after an extended holiday. The survey polled 109 companies with manufacturing operations in Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing and the wider Yangtze River Delta. Forty-eight percent of respondents said plant shutdowns...

Although we are currently in the dead of winter, summer will be here before we know it. Democrats may be singing the Summertime Blues along with Eddie Cochran, “I'm gonna raise a fuss, I'm gonna raise a holler” when they are forced to nominate a socialist to represent their party in the upcoming presidential election. Or alternatively alienate half of their base. There will also be a bit of fussing and hollering over the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Assuming the coronavirus outbreak doesn’t turn into a science fiction movie leading to a near extinction event, gender politics and intersectionality...