Free Republic

Increased fuel emission standards for airlines receiving funds and carbon offsets: Payment for up to $10,000 in student loans Same-day voter registration, early voting, voting by mail, ballot harvesting The expansion of wind and solar tax credits. Automatic extension of nonimmigrant visas. and much more at link

Like many families, ours is separated by COVID. My son and I are together at hour house in the San Francisco Bay on the Peninsula. Our oldest daughter and boyfriend are in the East Bay. Our middle daughter is in Denver at her home. My wife is at our vacation home in North Idaho with our doggie. Our eldest came up with the idea of using Zoom to have a Family Game Night. She's our creative one and thought the game "Scattergories" would be fun and easy to play over video conferencing. It's been a favorite family game for a...

Misinformation about the coronavirus spread by Chinese government officials does not violate Twitter's policies, a spokesperson for the company told The Hill Monday. In particular, tweets from Lijian Zhao, an official spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, insinuating that the U.S. military may have spread the coronavirus to Wuhan, China, will remain up. Twitter's spokesperson pointed to the company's position of giving public figures broad exemptions to many of its policies. "Presently, direct interactions with fellow public figures, comments on political issues of the day, or foreign policy saber-rattling on economic or military issues are generally not in...

Musician’s “Dueling Banjos” cover from the Deliverance soundtrack became a huge hit in 1973Bluegrass musician Eric Weissberg, whose cover of the Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith instrumental “Dueling Banjos” became an unlikely pop hit when it appeared on the soundtrack to the 1972 film Deliverance, died Sunday at the age of 80 after a five-year struggle with dementia. His son, Will Weissberg, confirmed the musician’s death to Rolling Stone. “Eric Weissberg was a consummate musician, a solid and seemingly effortless player of stringed instruments of all kinds — banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, pedal steel, and string bass,” his lifelong friend and...

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) issued one of the more sweeping responses to the COVID-19 outbreak on Thursday evening: he ordered all "non-life-preserving" businesses in the state to close, indefinitely. "To protect the health and safety of all Pennsylvanians, we need to take more aggressive mitigation actions," Wolf said in a statement announcing the new anti-virus measures. "We need to act with the strength we use against any other severe threat. And, we need to act now before the illness spreads more widely." Acting "with strength" meant threatening fines, citations, and the loss of licenses to any business who defied Wolf's order for more...

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was mocked on Monday after the gaffe-prone 2020 Democratic front-runner appeared to lose his train of thought when his teleprompter malfunctioned during remarks on the coronavirus pandemic. Biden's remarks, livestreamed from a studio set up in his home, began with his touching his face despite ongoing warnings not to do that during the coronavirus pandemic. His remarks were also short compared with the president's near-daily coronavirus briefings, lasting less than 15 minutes in total, and featured a clear teleprompter issue that became a social media punchline.

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams said if you think things are bad now, just wait: He appeared on NBC's "Today" show: I didn't expect that I'd be on the "Today" show for such a somber occasion. I want America to understand, this week it's going to get bad, and we really need to come together as a nation. I heard the story that you were just playing, young people out on beaches. We see here in D.C. that the District set up a cam for people to watch the cherry blossoms. You look on the cam, you see more people...

The music world will remember Kenny Rogers for his country hits and rotisserie chicken. The sports world will remember him for the time he scored on Michael Jordan. After Rogers' death on Saturday, a video began going around showing the country singer faking out Michael Jordan during a pickup basketball game. The 1988 game was part of the Kenny Rogers Classic Weekend, a three-day fundraising celebration at his Georgia home. The festival featured live music, golf, fishing, and a star-studded 3-on-3 celebrity basketball game played against NBA legends and other celebrities, including Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas, Larry Bird and Dominique...

Wheeling, WV (WTRF) – In a letter to Wheeling Hospital staff, Wheeling Hospital’s CEO, Doug Harrison said 40 N95 masks (2 boxes) were stolen from their Corporate Health Department. The theft has been turned over to the Wheeling Police Department who is working with Wheeling Hospital’s Security Department to review security tapes.

Actor Idris Elba recently tested positive for the new Chinese coronavirus. But if you thought he'd be saddened by that, I have news for you. Elba believes it's perfectly alright. You see, the COVID-19 virus is simply earth taking revenge for climate change. "It is incredible. One of the upsides of this whole drama is that we are forced to think together as a race," Elba told Oprah Winfrey via video chat for her new "Oprah Talks" show on Apple TV+. "Our world has been taking a kicking. We damaged our world, and it’s no surprise that our world is...

Half of Americans give President Donald Trump positive marks for his management of the coronavirus outbreak, according to a new survey, and his approval rating has seen a marginal improvement over the past month as the pandemic has worsened. A Monmouth University poll released Monday reports that 50 percent of respondents believe Trump has done a “good job” dealing with the outbreak, while 45 percent say he has done a “bad job.” Three percent of those surveyed said they had a mixed review of Trump’s performance, and 1 percent did not have an opinion. The president’s net positive rating is...

America’s increasingly unstable and dangerous establishment media are calling for a full blackout of President Trump’s daily coronavirus press conferences. Think about that for a moment… For the first time since World War II, for the first time in nearly 80 years, Americans have no idea what their country will look like a year from now, and the corporate media want to impose a full blackout on the daily briefings the American president is making to the American people.

By Hassan Mahmoudi In Iran, the number of prisoners infected with coronavirus is increasing. Given that prison is a closed space, lacking proper nutrition, lacking adequate health and medical facilities and with high population density, Coronavirus infection threatens the lives of many prisoners. Despite the issuance of 2 directives by the head of the judiciary granting leave to prisoners, political prisoners are denied these directives. According to the judiciary, the legal status of these detainees is defined as "detained," including those arrested during the November protests. While the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights also calls for the release of...

As a new week begins, some Chinese virus notes: ~What can disease-riddled New York learn from Italy? Well, à propos the photo at right, how about hotter curfew enforcers? Jill Filipovic tweets: I think I speak for all New Yorkers when I say, Spain, hi, can you deploy some of that in our direction? We will comply with your orders. No disrespect, but I'm not sure figure-hugging plunging-cleavage uniforms would work with the one-man small-town police departments of my neck of the woods. ~There are now over 350,000 Politburo Pandemic cases in some 170 out of 200 countries. A week...

Germany may have begun to successfully flatten the curve amid the global coronavirus pandemic while the death tolls in Spain and Italy continue to spike despite nationwide lockdowns meant to curb the spread of the novel disease. The exponential upward curve in new coronavirus infections in Germany may be flattening off, according to the head of the country’s public health institute, who said stringent social distancing measures, including school closures and bans on public gatherings, as well as hand washing instructions, helped the public quickly slow the rate of infection. ITALY CLOSES ALL NON-ESSENTIAL BUSINESS AS REST OF EUROPE HUNKERS...

There is a time to reap and a time to sow. This is the time to act and pray. Amen Hopefully, Mark Twain will approve. Although our normal everyday lives seemed to be spinning out of control by the minute as many of us are in fear of what a ‘lock down’ or other policies/controls tomorrow will bring, please fear not, have faith in the Lord and we will get through this together—at an acceptable ‘social distance’, that is.

Don Henley is paying a debt of gratitude to country-pop star Kenny Rogers, who died on March 20 aged 81. Before he was a member of the Eagles, Henley was in a band named Shiloh. Rogers secured the group a record deal in 1969, and, while taking on the role of producer of their self-titled 1971 album, he brought them to Los Angeles, where Henley first interacted with his future Eagles colleagues. “In addition to his tremendous talent, Kenny was a generous and caring man, a wise mentor to so many of us,” Henley told Billboard in a statement. “He...

This is a coup. This is an economic war. An attack on freedom —-Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and infectious Diseases—- HEADLINE: “In Dr. Fauci we Trust.” (Daily Beast) The Daily Beast writes about Fauci: “...as he guides the nation through the coronavirus crisis…stands at the White House with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence…introduce[s] actual truth to the coronavirus briefings…Fauci has been in charge from the start.”

he White House announced the launch of the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium to provide COVID-19 researchers worldwide with access to the world’s most powerful high performance computing resources that can significantly advance the pace of scientific discovery in the fight to stop the virus.“America is coming together to fight COVID-19, and that means unleashing the full capacity of our world-class supercomputers to rapidly advance scientific research for treatments and a vaccine. We thank the private sector and academic leaders who are joining the federal government as part of the Trump Administration’s whole-of-America response,” said Michael Kratsios, U.S. Chief...

Analyzing the specific data of each country separately suggests that there is a light at the end of the tunnel – and that the tunnel is not that long. [the data] indicates that this bell's life cycle is around six to eight weeks, with its peak appearing after about two to four weeks from the time when incidents begin to occur at a substantial rate.