Free Republic

ORLANDO, Fla. - If your shopping trip to Costco includes stopping by all the free sample stations to fill up on goodies, it won't be happening for awhile. Costco stores, including those in Central Florida, are suspending free samples over safety concerns surrounding the coronavirus. It was not immediately known if all stores in the U.S. have pulled samples. No timeline was given as to when the suspension would end. An employee told FOX 35 that the ban is in effect "until further notice." With fears of the coronavirus heightening, some shoppers in recent weeks voiced concerns over whether the...

Joy Reid indulged in some particularly ugly scapegoating/scaremongering this morning. On her MSNBC show today, Reid twice depicted the children of Trump supporters as a coronavirus threat to "your kids." Reid's notion was that Trump supporters, "God love 'em," are gullible, credulous rubes who blindly believe anything the president says. And since President Trump has supposedly claimed that coronavirus is a "hoax," his supporters will ignore their children's symptoms, and send them off to school where they can infect "your kids."Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has a long history of siding with America's enemies. From the very beginning of his political career, as mayor of Burlington, Vt., he fought to forge friendships with our foes.

Last week, the House Veterans and Emergency Preparedness Committee held hearings with the intent to cast climate change and global warming as threats to national security. The documents provided in the committee should not be taken at face value because they are from politically correct collaborators in the military industrial intelligence complex that failed in Iraq and Afghanistan after nearly two decades. It is about money and budgets, not real national security. Further, the military's climate change admirals, generals and contractors did nothing as Communist China built a world-class military and navy that can challenge anyone in the Pacific Ocean...

A Connecticut community physician has tested positive for coronavirus, marking the second case connected to the state within a day. The newest person who is infected is a community physician who made rounds at Bridgeport Hospital, according to Governor Ned Lamont. ...

Music legend Billy Joel has a message for burglars: Break into his house again, and he will take a big shot at them. The singer/songwriter’s house on Long Island was hit in January by intruders, who damaged a dozen motorcycles and trashed a home office. According to TMZ, the burglars got in by breaking a glass door. Nothing was stolen, but the possibilities of what could happen if he had been at home probably came to mind. Now, Joel is prepared. During a concert Feb. 20 in New York, he told the crowd, “Welcome, Madison Square Garden. Last time I...

Over the past two weeks, the stock market has had some of its biggest drops since the 2008 financial crisis. Investors are asking whether this decline will turn into a 2008-like meltdown I think that while the stock market could remain volatile for the next month, it will be the time to buy for those with a 12-month horizon. Let’s start by looking to the same indicators that flashed red flags even before the coronavirus known as COVID-19 appeared. My Jan. 18 article highlighted one very specific concern and the Risk/Reward Heat Map showed risk for January/February/March based on a...

Acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf announced he will allow American businesses to import an additional 35,000 foreign workers to take non-agricultural jobs through the H-2B visa program. Every year, U.S. companies are allowed to import 66,000 low-skilled H-2B foreign workers to take blue-collar, non-agricultural jobs. For some time, the H-2B visa program has been used by businesses to bring in cheaper, foreign workers and has contributed to blue-collar Americans having their wages undercut. On Thursday, Wolf confirmed that DHS will ensure American businesses can hire an additional 35,000 H-2B foreign visa workers for non-agricultural jobs in...

There are ten countries that have more than 100 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, but the United States has the smallest infection rate per capita of all of them by a significant margin.According to figures provided by the World Health Organization (WHO), the ten countries with 100 or more cases, as of Thursday, are as follows: China: 80,523 cases South Korea: 5,766 Italy: 3,089 Iran: 2,922 Japan: 317 France: 282 Germany: 262 Spain: 198 United States: 129 Singapore: 110 Taking population into account, the United States has a per capita infection rate of 0.0000388 percent. The next highest per...

I'm watching it at Wild Wings tonight(10 pm) with a pitcher of Michelob Ultra.

Your congressional office is not your private home. It is a public space. This behavior is threatening and unacceptable. I feel unsafe with this in my place of work. I have been in contact with the Sergeant at Arms to express my concerns.

President Donald J. Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Annika Sorenstam and Gary J. Player on March 23, 2020. They will join Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Charlie Sifford, and Tiger Woods as the only golfers to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This prestigious award is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, which may be awarded by the President to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. The world knows Annika on a first-name basis...

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - Taiwan sits near Japan, China and South Korea, three countries with some of the world’s worst outbreaks of the deadly coronavirus, but the island itself has just 42 isolated cases. Chalk it up to extra early, effective preparedness, analysts and policymakers say – so effective that people’s approval of the government unexpectedly soared last month. Taiwanese health officials saw the virus taking shape in the central Chinese Wuhan in December and began checking passengers who flew in from there. They also cut off flights from much of China, the outbreak origin, before a lot of peers around...

The Illinois Supreme Court has rejected actor Jussie Smollett's request to dismiss a case in which he's accused of falsely reporting that he was a victim of a racist and homophobic attack near his Chicago home. The court on Friday also refused to remove a special prosecutor who filed the charges. Smollett, 37, pleaded not guilty last month to a six-count grand jury indictment in the case. After entering the not guilty pleas, Judge James Linn set bond at $20,000 and released the Empire actor on his own recognizance, ordering him to return to court March 18. Smollett -- who...

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Atlanta, Georgia March 6, 2020 4:43 P.M EST THE PRESIDENT: I said, “I’d like to walk the press down the hall to see how professional this is.” It’s incredible. If you people would like, we would do that. Are they able to do that, Doctor? Can they do that? DR. MONROE: (Inaudible.) THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Yes. (Laughter.) Why don’t you tell them a little bit about what you’re doing and how it’s going? And here they are, right over there. They’re actually very nice people. But they’re told not be (inaudible) by the editors....

Investigators say five men suspected in multiple home burglaries in Nassau County are part of an organized crime ring out of South America. Amaro Rosas, Bayron Palta, Fabian Catalan, Juan Rosas and William Perez were arrested late Thursday night after a burglary spree on Long Island’s North Shore, reports CBS2’s Tara Jakeway. Police say they broke into a home in Locust Valley and stole thousands in cash and jewelry, and in Sands Point they stole a safe full of valuables from a home – 15 robberies in all. The men, ranging in age from 20- to 26-years-old, are all from Chilè and...

About 30 people remained trapped early on Sunday after a five-storey hotel being used for coronavirus quarantine collapsed in the southeast Chinese port city of Quanzhou, state media said. About four hours after the collapse, the Quanzhou municipality said 38 of the 70 or so people who had been in the Quanzhou Xinjia Hotel had been rescued. A video stream posted by the government-backed Beijing News site showed rescue workers in orange overalls clambering over rubble and twisted steelwork carrying people towards ambulances. The hotel collapsed at about 7:30 p.m. (1130 GMT) on Saturday evening. “I was at a gas...

James S. Brady Press Briefing Room 5:41 P.M. EST THE VICE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. We just completed today’s lengthy meeting of the White House Coronavirus Task Force and, at the President’s direction, have continued to implement his whole-of-government approach to bring the full resources of the federal government to bear to confront the spread of the coronavirus in the United States. Let me begin, as always, by saying that according to all the experts gathered here and on our task force, the risks of the American public of contracting the coronavirus remains low. But that being said, we’re continuing to...

BEIRUT - Lebanon announced it cannot meet its debt payments and halted a March 9 bond payment of $1.2 billion on Saturday, setting the heavily indebted state on course for a sovereign default as it grapples with a major financial crisis. In a televised address to the nation, Prime Minister Hassan Diab said foreign currency reserves had hit a “critical and dangerous” level and were needed to meet basic needs. He called for “fair” negotiations with lenders to restructure the debt. The default will mark a new phase in a crisis that has hammered the economy since October, slicing around...

he has also cleaned up in Portland, Oregon, but it was his trip to San Francisco that put a new spotlight on the blight in one of America’s once shining cities. “You saw some horrible things in San Francisco,” Breitbart News asked Pressler. “Can you share what you saw, because it wasn’t just coke bottles and water bottles.” “I can just tell you I have been to some of America’s most dirtiest and dangerous cities — I’ve been to Austin, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Portland, San Francisco — San Francisco was the only city where you had to watch...