Free Republic

TGIFF! Its Fiddle Friday and we have Clarence 'Tater' Tate with Hoedown Polka (1978). THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Three years to revive an economy, create roaring circumstances. It took less than two months to wipe it all out. Twenty-two million people filing for unemployment compensation — 22 million — and the idea that there is not an angry outcry from all over the world that this must stop? That outcry had better happen, because this… We’re beyond now saying this is unsustainable. This is untenable! This is cataclysmic! We’re in the midst of a self-created disaster that we could fix (snap, snap, snap) at the snap of our fingers.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) today released a research brief detailing national figures for mail balloting failures, according to previous federal surveys. Roughly 1 in 5 ballots never completed the mail voting process in the past decade. “Putting the election in the hands of the United States Postal Service would be a catastrophe. Over the recent decade, there were 28 million missing and misdirected ballots,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “These represent 28 million opportunities for someone to cheat. Absentee ballot fraud is the most common; the most expensive to investigate; and can never be...

On April 12, the Washington Post and New York Times broke – and really carefully soft-pedaled -- a story that a woman named Tara Reade had accused Joe Biden of a sexual assault dating from 1993. Some other mainstream news outlets covered the story as well (e.g., “NBC News Online” but evidently not broadcast) in a similarly dismissive manner. The Post put the small headline below the fold in its April 13 print edition. Conservative media immediately noted the obvious double standard between this skeptical reportage, and the hysterical “She must be believed!” coverage by the same outlets of much...

A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it. Prof Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, told Israel’s Channel 12 (Hebrew) Monday night that research he conducted with a fellow professor, analyzing the growth and decline of new cases in countries around the...

My FIL was adjudicated mentally incompetent to handle his own affairs and to care for himself. He was seriously incapacitated from years of hard drinking. He'd start drinking beer in the morning and progress to Crown Royal at night until he'd pass out. A drinking buddy came into his house and found him in the tub unable to get out. He was transported to the ER and hit DTs that night. He hallucinated for a couple of days, but clearly was suffering dementia after that. He's been in a lockdown unit nursing home ever since but has recovered a lot....

MADISON (WKOW) — A Marquette County teen has filed a federal lawsuit against the Marquette County Sheriff, who she says ordered her to remove an Instagram post about recovering from COVID-19. The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty filed the lawsuit in federal court Thursday on behalf of Amyiah Cohoon and her parents, Richand and Angela, against Marquette County Sheriff Joseph Konrath and a patrol sergeant for violating the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The lawsuit results from a March incident where Marquette County law enforcement threatened Cohoon and her parents with arrest unless an Instagram post was removed. According...

Chris Cuomo's wife Cristina Cuomo has opened up about her coronavirus battle. CNN anchor Cuomo this week announced his wife has caught the virus, after revealing that he had tested positive last month. Magazine editor Cristina, 50, had been posting regular updates about her husband's condition on Instagram. The couple had been quarantining separately since Chris's diagnosis two weeks ago, with him staying in the basement and Cristina staying with the children upstairs. Cristina admitted she was finding it hard to self-isolate and not see her children

How could former FBI director James Comey and his accomplices be so bold as to think they could get away with spying on Carter Page, a 2016 Trump campaign adviser, when they objectively knew Page was not a Russian agent? Answer: Because they had already corrupted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court system. Applications for warrants to spy on Americans were being approved without truthful and accurate corroboration of their allegations. The standard for the government to obtain warrants under FISA is the highest in U.S. law because preventing terrorism and foreign danger involves the otherwise unconstitutional invasion of...

It’s been 230 years since James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, and what do we have to show for it? Nothing good. In America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. We can pretend that the Constitution, which was written to hold the government accountable, is still our governing document, but the reality of life in the American police state tells a different story. “We the people” have been terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a...

How is it that celebrities like Oprah see negative racial disparities in every facet of American life, except in the one industry that deliberately kills? Oprah recently opined about the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus in black communities. COVID-19, according to the guru of talk, is “taking us out.” Honestly, this is what happens when you look at everything in life through the broken prism of race. “We as a people, as African Americans, have jobs that require us to be at work. For so many African Americans, there isn't this ability to telecommute,” the multi-billionaire Oprah Winfrey told NBC...

For declaring in March that the U.S. economy might be reopened by Easter, President Donald Trump was roundly mocked. Yet, it appears his political instincts were correct. He was more in tune with his country than were his critics. By early Easter week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the governors of six states in the New York-New Jersey region had formed a consortium to synchronize the opening of their economies. California's Gavin Newsom and the governors of Washington and Oregon had done the same. The governors may disagree on the timing, May 1 or May 15, but most agree with Trump....

Earth is off to a hot start in 2020. On the heels of the warmest January in recorded history and the second-warmest February, the planet has now logged its second-hottest March on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday. It’s just the latest milestone in what NOAA says is a clear, long-term warming trend. And though there are nine months left in the year, the agency’s models are already suggesting that there’s a good chance that 2020 could end up as the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880. “It does look like there’s a better-than-half probability that...

The liberal media are urging Joe Biden to form a shadow government to upstage President Donald Trump's crisis response effort, which illustrates its consuming partisanship -- and its insufficient attention to the health and welfare of the American people. MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle floated the idea during an interview with former Barack Obama staffer Jim Messina. Referring to Trump's COVID-19 daily press briefing, Ruhle asked, "Should Joe Biden be counterprogramming that? Should he be creating his own shadow government, shadow Cabinet, shadow SWAT team, and getting up there at a podium every night, saying, 'Here's the crisis we're in. Here's...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Healthcare, Government, Family, Military, Business, Farmers, Sanctity of Life, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. 1 JOHN 5:14Religion Forum Threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

This is how the loss of our liberties begins. – It begins not with the clatter of gunfire but with 300 million citizens timidly holed up in their homes watching TV 18 hours a day, hoping for permission from some unelected bureaucrats at the NIH and the CDC to go to the grocery store or maybe to see a doctor to check out that disturbing mole on our back after putting it off for two months . It begins not with tanks rolling into downtown Lansing, but with the power-mad Michigan Governor with the plastic face ordering you to keep...

Beijing (AFP) - China on Friday denied Western suggestions it had covered up the extent of its coronavirus outbreak and rejected US allegations it has an overly cozy relationship with the World Health Organization. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian acknowledged that the virus's rapid spread had contributed to undercounting that resulted in China raising its death toll earlier Friday, but added "there has never been any concealment, and we'll never allow any concealment." The allegations China is too close to the World Health Organization (WHO), were an attempt at "smearing" Beijing, Zhao said. US President Donald Trump has questioned China's...

The forced coronavirus closure of small businesses throughout our great country has resulted in mass panic among business owners. For over a month now, most small businesses have been forbidden from operating. In a desperate attempt to avoid an irreversible financial crisis, the federal government extended an olive branch — they set aside some bread for businesses in the form of forgivable business loans. The government bread truck parked somewhere far away from business owners and their banks, and mass confusion immediately erupted. Eventually, business owners figured it out and started lining up for some gluten, in hopes of keeping...

RALEIGH, N.C. (WNCN) – Wake County is relying on cell phone data to see if people are social distancing and following the stay-at-home order. “We have various metrics that we use including anonymous cell phone data that shows that the overwhelming majority of Wake Couny residents are staying at home,” said Wake County Commissioner Chairman Greg Ford. Wake County’s Emergency Operation Center is keeping track by monitoring public websites from Google and Unacast. They compile anonymous cell phone data and break it down by each individual state to track where people go, for how long, and with how many people....

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