Free Republic

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign is courting Andrew Yang for his support and has raised the prospect of the technology entrepreneur being his vice-presidential running mate, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bloomberg has reportedly reached out to Yang, who dropped out of Democrat primary earlier February after poor showings in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, to brainstorm ways for the two work to together. However, one unnamed senior Bloomberg aide sought to pour cold water on the report, telling the Journal that Yang wasn’t being “seriously considered” as a possible running mate for...

Stocks fell sharply in volatile trading Thursday as investors worried the coronavirus may be spreading in the U.S. A slew of corporate and analyst warnings on the virus dragged down the major averages, tipping them into correction territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 1,190.95 points, or 4.4%, to close at 25,766.64. The S&P 500 slid 4.4% to 2,978.76 while the Nasdaq Composite dropped 4.6% to 8,566.48. The Dow had its worst day since February 2018 while the Nasdaq and S&P 500 posted its biggest one-day loss since August 2011. It was also the Dow’s biggest one-day point decline in...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=nrRcmDxMLKc&feature=emb_logo Begins airing today in Denver and Colorado Springs

Starting today, Mozilla will turn on by default DNS over HTTPS (DoH) for Firefox users in the US, the company has announced. DoH is a new standard that encrypts a part of your internet traffic that’s typically sent over an unencrypted plain text connection, and which could allow others to see what websites you’re visiting, even when your communication with the website itself is encrypted using HTTPS. Mozilla says it is the first browser to support the new standard by default, and will be rolling it out gradually over the coming weeks in order to address any unforeseen issues.Whenever you...

I don’t know if there’s anything to say in this post that wasn’t said in yesterday’s post. Second verse, same as the first: It suuuuuure looks like the Biden comeback in South Carolina is real.Which is the opposite of what I would have expected after Bernie ran the table in the first three states. In particular, his surprising blowout in Nevada had every indication of Democrats nationally beginning to warm up to him and accept him as a viable nominee. South Carolina would be the fourth and final domino to fall, and that would be that. Instead Biden’s gone...

I explore some of the last surahs from the Koran, and explain why Muhammad incriminates himself when he condemns slanderers and backbiters.

Last Friday, Prime Minister Trudeau abruptly reversed himself and demanded that the blockades of rail lines, which have sprung up in various places this month, be cleared. Monday, police in Ontario cleared out one of the larger protest camps, arresting 10 people and clearing the way for trains to resume service. But the protesters werenÂ’t done. Later that night they began throwing burning tires onto the tracks: This was the scene Monday night on the rail lines near Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. Police arrested 10 people earlier in the day and cleared out the camp that was set up Feb....

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is preparing a procedural vote that condemns Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' praise of purported accomplishments by communist regimes. Majority House Democrats will be faced with three choices, reports LifeZette, "Kill it in the cradle, vote against it thus apologizing for communism, or vote for it and trash their front-runner." "Do they stand with Bernie or do they stand for freedom?" McCarthy asked. Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey already has weighed in on the side of freedom. "Stalin doubled literacy in the Soviet Union, even as he murdered tens of millions of people,"...

Sometime in late 2019, a mysterious virus emerged in the city of Wuhan, China. Easily transmissible, it spread through the city like wildfire. By late January 2020, local hospitals were overwhelmed with critically ill pneumonia patients. China ordered a quarantine of the entire city – a city of 11 million people. Experts named the virus COVID-19 (a.k.a. “the coronavirus”). The quarantine of Wuhan, which now includes dozens of cities and over 700 million people, is implemented with the hope of ending all spread of the disease. If it fails, a global pandemic will strike the world. This isn’t without precedent....

Posting as vanity but this is making the rounds on the net. Posting for those that may wish to share or write a story on it.

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders will be hosting a rally in Los Angeles on Sunday (Mar. 1), and Public Enemy is set to perform. Comedian Sarah Silverman and beloved actor Dick Van Dyke will also take part in the event. The rally comes just two days before Super Tuesday (March 3), during which the greatest number of U.S. states (California included) will hold primary elections and caucuses. Sanders has already won the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries. Public Enemy's performance comes as no surprise, as in their decades-long career, the group has often focused on political commentary and African American...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that House Democrats will run on their own policy agenda in the lead-up to November, even if it means breaking from the platform of the party's presidential nominee. The issue of 2020 messaging has come under the spotlight with the surging campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a liberal icon whose left-leaning platform — including policies like "Medicare For All" and the Green New Deal — has energized progressive Democrats but has also sparked waves of panic among more centrist lawmakers fighting for reelection in battleground districts. Appearing to choose her words carefully, Pelosi...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) appeared on the front page of a Cuban newspaper Tuesday following his nuanced comments on the Cuban revolution. The current Democratic primary frontrunner was praised in a column published on the front page of Granma, the Cuban Communist Party’s official newspaper, for saying Fidel Castro’s communist regime was successful in expanding literacy programs in the island nation. However, Sanders went on to explain he did not support the country’s authoritarian leadership. “We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know it's unfair to simply say everything is bad," Sanders said on CBS' "60...

The police have been called multiple times now on supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) over a series of protests targeting officials in the Democratic Party. A video posted online Wednesday shows one of these protests by self-styled “Berners,” who showed up late Friday night with a bullhorn and a flashlight at the house of the chair of Nevada’s Democratic Party to issue warnings against conspiring to undermine Sanders in next day’s caucuses.

Nuns Perform Hindu Ritual During Doxology at Cdl. Cupich Mass ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - Catholics all over the world have been scandalized by nuns performing a distinctive Hindu ritual during the elevation of the Holy Eucharist at a Mass celebrated by Cdl. Blaise Cupich in Rome.       The "arati" ritual is one of twelve Hindu symbols, rituals and ceremonials approved by the Vatican for the "Indian Rite Mass" and has led to widespread syncretism, liturgical abuse, confusion among the laity and a moratorium on evangelization in India.  A trio of Indian nuns, who had completed their diploma in safeguarding at the Gregorian Pontifical University's Center...

Markets are reeling again on Thursday, after the U.S. reported its first coronavirus case involving a person who didn’t travel to an infected country, and didn’t knowingly interact with someone who did. Experts are becoming increasingly resigned to a worldwide spread of the disease, even as China’s new infections slow. 4:00 p.m. ET: Dow drops more than 1,100 points after news California is monitoring thousands of possible casesS&P 500 (^GSPC): -4.43% or -137.94 points to 2,978.45 Dow (^DJI): -4.43% or -1,194.98 points to 25,762.61 Nasdaq (^IXIC): -4.61% or -414.29 points to 8,566.48 Crude oil (CL=F): -3.67% or -1.79 to 46.94...

An Arkansas judge has ruled that Hunter Biden must make himself available for a March deposition in connection to his ongoing child support battle with a former stripper, despite his attempts to postpone the matter until April, according to court papers and a report from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Independence County Circuit Court Judge Holly Meyer handed down the order during a Wednesday afternoon conference call, the Gazette reported. “He needs to make himself available and unless his hair is on fire, he needs to be in Arkansas and he needs to be in a deposition,” Meyer told attorneys during the...

Quebec Premier Francois Legault accused First Nations protesters of being armed with AK-47 assault rifles and said police are reluctant to remove barricades because of potential violence. “The SQ [Surete du Quebec] is working on a plan to dismantle the barricades,” Legault told reporters, according to CBC. But he said The SQ — Quebec Provincial Police — haven’t made much progress because the Mohawks at the First Nations Reserve of Kahnawake have access to weapons, including AK-47s, Montreal’s City News reported Wednesday.

It struck me about one hour into what Politico calls “the snarling incoherence of the latest Democratic presidential debate” that was “painfully hard to follow.” What precisely was so painful? It was not what divided this gaggle of politicians vying for your affection. It was what united them. They all agree that their job is to have a plan for your life. This is the source of the pain. How did it happen that all these candidates have come to believe that it is their job to plan the economy, manage your finances, fix your job, improve your wages, get...

Did the Wuhan coronavirus originate from a wild animal market -- or a laboratory accident? TheStreet posed the question of a top microbiology expert who said either was possible. But, he cautioned, any idea that this particular virus was "created" in a lab can be easily tossed in the wastebasket. "Based on the genome sequence and properties of the virus, there is no basis to suspect the virus was engineered," said Prof. Richard H. Ebright, the laboratory director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University. It is important to distinguish,...