Free Republic

To modify T S Eliot in "The Hollow Men" (whose theme seems not inappropriate), this is the way the world ends, not with a Bern but a whimper. As I said on Rush the morning after Super Tuesday, Senator Sanders blew the 2016 election with a single line - his crotchetty insistence to Mrs Clinton that he was "sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails". That told Hillary that he wouldn't go after her on the subject of her corruption and lawlessness. Which in turn told Hillary that Bernie wasn't serious. And so it proved. Four years later,...

A Chinese official questioned whether the U.S. Army "brought the epidemic to Wuhan" and demanded "an explanation" on Thursday. A spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, Lijian Zhao, made the post on his official Twitter account and included video of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield testifying before Congress. "CDC was caught on the spot," Lijian wrote. "When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us...

VIDEO Jon Meacham went on yet another of his incredibly pompous rants against President Trump which he typically dressed in faux historical authority. Meacham's shtick is to present himself as a "thoughtful" historian while engaging in pathetic partisan ranting. In fact, in this video, he laughably states that he is not making a partisan point but an historical point. Yeah, riiiiiight! In case you are not aware of this, Meacham was the "genius" who, as editor of Newsweek Magazine, took what he called the "counterintuitive" step of purposely reducing the number of subscriptions by raising the price. The end...

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump on Friday criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for being ill-prepared to test for the coronavirus and he blamed President Barack Obama for the situation. "For decades the @CDCgov looked at, and studied, its testing system, but did nothing about it. It would always be inadequate and slow for a large scale pandemic, but a pandemic would never happen, they hoped. President Obama made changes that only complicated things further.....," Trump wrote. In a follow-up tweet, Trump continued his broadside, ".... Their response to H1N1 Swine flu was a full scale disaster, with...

Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning will be released from jail after being held for 10 months because testimony she refused to give to a secret grand jury is no longer needed, a federal judge said on Thursday. Manning's release comes because "the business of (the grand jury) had concluded," Judge Anthony Trenga of the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, wrote on Thursday. "The Court finds that Ms. Manning's appearance before the Grand Jury is no longer needed, in light of which her detention no longer serves any coercive purpose." Manning was fined $256,000 in fines for refusing to testify,...

Coronavirus is nothing to sneeze at. But so far, widespread panic may not be justified. You should know: Almost all of the reported coronavirus deaths in the U.S. happened in long-term care facilities in Washington State. And almost all of those occurred at the same facility. Most people who get coronavirus have mild or no symptoms. No young or middle-age people have died of coronavirus in the U.S. Most around the world diagnosed from January-March 1 have already recovered. Obviously, this is a fast-moving news target. For the latest information from the government, you can visit the Centers for Disease...

Millions of Britons will need to contract coronavirus in order to control the impact of the disease which is likely to return "year on year", the government's chief scientific adviser has told Sky News. Around 60% of the UK population will need to become infected with coronavirus in order for society to have "herd immunity" from future outbreaks, Sir Patrick Vallance said. Herd immunity is the resistance to a contagious disease within a population because enough people have become immune, and so it is harder for it to spread. There is currently no vaccine available for coronavirus. So far, 10...

The left's reaction to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's rude exchange with a union worker in Michigan is a case study on liberal hypocrisy and propaganda. You'd have to be living in a cave not to recognize that something is way off with Biden. He's always been strange, but he's getting noticeably worse. His rhetorical recklessness is a feature, not a bug. He has a history of gaffes, especially for someone so prominent. Casual ethnic slurs roll off his tongue like water off a donkey's back. Pandering to an Indian American supporter, he said: "You cannot go to a 7-11...

Morning "Why sit we here until we die?" 2 Kings 7:3 Dear reader, this little book was mainly intended for the edification of believers, but if you are yet unsaved, our heart yearns over you: and we would fain say a word which may be blessed to you. Open your Bible, and read the story of the lepers, and mark their position, which was much the same as yours. If you remain where you are you must perish; if you go to Jesus you can but die. "Nothing venture, nothing win," is the old proverb, and in your case the...

It gets very hard to ask questions when nearly all of the media and government and many of those you live near and work with are all wringing their hands in unison. COVID-19 or coronavirus has many scared and scrambling. But who’s asking questions beyond, “What do we do now!?” The psychology around this virus and the way it's being covered is very strange. We know President Trump began taking action in January to mitigate travel between China and the United States. Media and health officials knew about coronavirus then. Maybe you heard a passing blip about a cruise ship, but...

Every time you think the Democrats on Capitol Hill could not become more despicable, depraved and demented than they already are, they go and surprise you again. – Honestly, at this point, I really don’t think there’s any way for San Fran Nan to surprise anymore. At least, not after this one. But I’ll probably be surprised again soon. The liberal hacks who run The Hill have a report out this morning detailing House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s objections to the Democrats’ version of a coronavirus-related “temporary” assistance bill now worming its way through the House. Here we have what...

Millions of New Yorkers may soon need to separate scraps of fruit, vegetables and meat into separate garbage receptacles every time they cook and do dishes — learning another new habit just as they did with plastics recycling in the 1980s and are now doing under a recent ban on plastic shopping bags. The City Council speaker is calling for organic waste recycling, also known as composting, to be available — and eventually mandatory — for all New York City residents, in an effort to reduce exports to landfills and emissions of planet-warming gases. The proposal, announced on Thursday by...

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw fired back overnight after Joe Biden criticized President Trump’s actions on the coronavirus outbreak. “A wall will not stop the coronavirus,” Biden wrote on Twitter on Thursday night, attempting to link the outbreak to Trump’s signature immigration goal of a strong barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border. (Please see link, for full article)

What the hell? No store here in Columbus has toilet paper. I'm not looking to hoard the stuff, I just need to be able to wipe my a**. Why toilet paper???? People must have the stuff packed to the rafters in their basements and garages. Best I can figure the news about no toilet paper during the Venezuela economic meltdown must have scarred our psyche pretty bad. It's to the point where it might be prudent for the secretary of commerce to hold a news conference and re-assure folks that there is no toilet paper shortage.

President Donald Trump’s suggestion to postpone the Tokyo Olympics for a year because of the spreading coronavirus was immediately shot down by Japan’s Olympic minister. “The IOC and the organizing committee are not considering cancellation or a postponement — absolutely not at all,” Seiko Hashimoto, an Olympic bronze medalist, told a news conference on Friday in Tokyo. The International Olympic Committee and Tokyo organizers have stayed on message since the viral outbreak in China three months ago spread across Asia and then the globe: The games will open as schedule on July 24.

Brenton USA Premium AR Hunting Rifle Youth A rigorous study of crime and deer hunting spanning 20 years and millions of people, found long gun use in rural areas either slightly reduced violent crime or had no impact. Aside from the contributions above, this paper is meaningful for policy-makers as it provides evidence that immense changes in rural recreational long gun use have no economically significant impacts on violent crime.This is an enormous, well-done study that is being ignored by urban media. The study was published on 1 December 2018. The author,  Paul Niekamp deserves kudos for tackling a...

Look, folks, I have white parents. That’s what my mom, a liberal Democrat mind you, would say jokingly as to why I, for lack of a better term, sucked at math. I’m a bad Asian. I don’t like math or science. Well, I like science—I’m fascinated by stuff that explodes—but I never excelled at it. None of the Vespa kids did well in math.  You could never even say that joke or even kid about Asians and math nowadays because the political correctness police would cancel you faster than you can say Gulag Archipelago. But I do know simple stuff...

"Our Father who art in heaven" (Matt. 6:9). Prayer begins with the recognition that God is your Father and has the resources to meet your needs. The term Father is one of the most commonly used terms in our prayers, and rightly so because that's how Jesus taught us to pray. But as common as that term is to us, it was very uncommon to the people of Christ's day. Then, most of the people who worshiped false gods thought of them as distant, capricious, and immoral beings that were to be feared. Even the Jewish people, who should have...

Now that the number of new people infected with the coronavirus in China is slowing, the country's Communist Party is ratcheting up threats against the West, with a particularly nasty warning about access to life-saving drugs aimed at the United States. In an article in Xinhua, the state-run media agency that's largely considered the mouthpiece of the party, Beijing bragged about its handling of COVID-19, a virus that originated in Wuhan and has spread quickly around the world, killing nearly 5,000 people and infecting thousands more. The article also claimed that China could impose pharmaceutical export controls which would plunge...

As the shroud of crisis began to lift at the center of the coronavirus epidemic in China, Beijing launched a campaign to project an image of global leadership while the United States and countries across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have taken on water. In a call with the Italian foreign minister last month, the Chinese foreign minister his hope that their “joint fight against the outbreak” would catalyze the creation of a “silk road” of health care, alluding to President Xi Jinping’s marquee Belt and Road economic strategy. Chinese diplomats have proselytized Beijing’s deft handling of the outbreak,...