Free Republic

CNA Staff, Apr 22, 2020 / 09:30 am MT (CNA).- A 45-minute phone call between Pope Francis and French president Emmanuel Macron revealed “a lot of convergence” between the two leaders on the coronavirus crisis, the president’s office has said. French officials told reporters April 21 that the pope and Macron had discussed the debts of developing countries, aid to Africa, the need for a global ceasefire and the importance of a united Europe. "There is a lot of convergence in vision and in the answers," the Elysée said. The Holy See press office made no official statement regarding the...

ROME - Italy led much of the world into a coronavirus lockdown, with the highest infection rates and death counts during March and early April, and now it’s also setting a tone for the exit, with the government here announcing a gradual return to normality beginning May 4. Even before it debuted, however, authorities were forced to roll back a key element of the plan involving a digital tracking app that would record people’s movements as a means of preventing a new round of contagion once the quarantine ends, but which has generated serious resistance related to privacy, surveillance and...

Wisconsin stay-at-home orders were supposed to expire Friday. Instead, thousands of disgruntled Wisconsinites descended upon the capitol in protest after the Evers administration extended the Dairy State’s so-called Safer at Home order another month. Endless blaring honks turned to white noise as vehicles backed up East Washington Avenue before circling the capitol, with many waving signs and flags out of windows and sun roofs. One man drove a Yukon decked out with Trump 2020 gear, pulling a trailer he had transformed into a “Trump Unity Bridge” and leading passersby in a chorus of “M-A-G-A” to the YMCA song. One man...

With the latest reports of plummeting death rates from all causes, this crisis is over. The pandemic of doom erupted as a panic of pols and is now a comedy of Mash-minded med admins and stooges, covering their ifs ands and butts with ever more morbid and distorted statistics. The crisis now will hit the politicians and political Doctor Faucis who gullibly accepted and trumpeted what statistician William Briggs calls “the most colossal and costly blown forecast of all time.” An egregious statistical horror story of millions of projected deaths, suffused with incense and lugubrious accents from Imperial College of...

The hashtag #DropOutBiden trended on Twitter beginning early Saturday morning and throughout the day, fueled in part by progressives and #MeToo movement supporters calling on Joe Biden to drop out of the 2020 presidential race. Although supporters of Biden tried to blame the hashtag on Russian bots, there were several prominent progressives who were using the hashtag, such as Peter Daou, a former Hillary Clinton adviser....

Will our elected officials ever have the courage to talk honestly about COVID-19? That is the question asked by a reader who despairs over the countless millions of lives being devastated by governments’ shutdown orders: Here’s one of the crazier features of “expert guidance” as governors try to lay out criteria for reopening their states. With the exception of the Deep South governors (who are taking variable stances), it seems that most governors want to see declining counts of positive cases in the state. But everywhere we have tested a whole population (a ship at sea, all the women coming...

WASHINGTON — Until this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci was a near-constant presence at the daily coronavirus task force briefings at the White House. As the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 35 years, his expertise on the global pandemic has been a reassuring force for millions of Americans concerned about how COVID-19 has uprooted their lives. Of the roughly 50 press conferences on the health crisis so far, Fauci had only missed a handful. But now, for the first time since regular press conferences began on the topic, Fauci was only present for one of...

Human trials for a tuberculosis vaccine thought to boost immune systems in the fight against coronavirus are underway in Australia but despite the promising outlook, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned against using the vaccine outside of clinical settings. WHO has released a statement reminding countries around the world that the Bacille Calmette-Guérin vaccine (BCG) used to fight tuberculosis infection is not recommended for preventing coronavirus. It acknowledged that while experimental trials had been conducted and two related to fighting coronavirus were underway, their relevance to the pandemic was still unknown. "Two clinical trials addressing this question are underway,...

https://archive.org/details/IsThisTomorrowAmericaUnderCommunismCatecheticalGuild/mode/2up This is a comic published in 1947, it's public domain now and a really good read. It depicts a step-by-step communist takeover of America. "First, we must touch off a real crisis in this country so we have an excuse to seize power..." Amazing how relevant this is today. It closes with this: TEN COMMANDMENTS OF CITIZENSHIP 1. Know your government. 2. Know the issues before it. 3. Keep up on foreign problems. 4. Be tolerant of other races, religions, and nationalities. 5. Practice your own religion. 6. Read newspapers and magazines critically. 7. Use your vote. 8. Follow...

Armed police storm Catholic parish in France, demand priest stop Mass The police stormed into the church after having been 'warned' by people living close by that a 'clandestine' Mass was taking place pril 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Four armed policemen entered a Parisian church last Sunday in order to stop what they considered to be an illegal Mass in view of France’s confinement regulations linked to the coronavirus.  The incident caused outrage among French Catholics. The Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit, later said that if this sort of situation were to repeat itself, the French Catholic hierarchy would “speak...

...Two dozen Italian nursing homes are being investigated after the carnage. There could be manslaughter charges filed against the nursing homes! Meanwhile, Italians are going back to work soon. Factories will be open on May 4th...

Tom Hanks revealed that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, have volunteered to donate their blood for coronavirus research after recovering from the disease. “A lot of the question is, is what now? What do we do now? Is there something we can do? And, in fact, we just found out that we do carry the antibodies,” Hanks said on NPR’s podcast “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” last week. “We have not only been approached, we have said, ‘Do you want our blood? Can we give plasma?' And, in fact, we will be giving it now to the places that...

Phyllis Diller - Six minutes of fat jokes about her mother-in-law

Some Scientists fear that it may prove impossible to produce a working coronavirus vaccine and believe the world may have to simply learn to adapt to the permanent threat of COVID-19. The UK's Chief Medical Officer, Christopher Whitty, told a Parliamentary committee on Friday that there was "concerning" evidence suggesting that it may not be possible to stimulate immunity to the virus. "The first question we do not know is 'do you get natural immunity to this disease if you have had it, for a prolonged period of time?'" Whitty said. "Now if we don't then it doesn't make a...

I parked my car very close to a bus stop... A homeless guy was sitting on the bus bench. I was about to get out of my car. Suddenly the homeless guy came to my car. He opened the door for my rear seats. He asked me to drive him somewhere. I became very upset and asked him what he was doing. He then closed the car door and walked away... I immediately drove away and parked somewhere else... Be careful out there... Especially ladies... This happened in Hollywood area... There are many homeless people in that area...

The European Union toned down part of a report about Chinese state-backed disinformation because it feared Beijing would retaliate by withholding medical supplies, diplomatic sources have said. The initial version of the report, seen by the South China Morning Post, described China as running a “global disinformation campaign” to deflect blame for the coronavirus outbreak using “both overt and covert tactics”. But the Post has learnt that this section was removed after Beijing intervened and warned EU diplomats based in China there would be unspecified repercussions. EU diplomats were worried that this would “strain” relations and make it “more difficult...

Happened just the other day It's gettin' kind of long I could've said it was in my way But I didn't and I wonder why I feel like letting my freak flag fly And I feel like I owe it, yeah ... to someone, yeah Well, must be because I had the flu this Easter Oh, yeah and I'm not feeling up to par Oh, I tell you baby this increases my paranoia Yeah, like looking in my mirror and seeing a police car Well, well, I'm not, I'm not giving in an inch to fear Well, you know I've...

China has donated another US$30 million to the WHO after US President Donald Trump announced his intention to suspend funding to the global health body, accusing it of siding with Beijing on the coronavirus outbreak. It is the second time China – where the first cases of the virus were reported late last year – has provided additional funding to the World Health Organisation during the pandemic, after it announced a US$20 million donation in early March. Beijing has pledged to step up support for the Geneva-based organisation after repeated criticism of its response to the crisis, including from Trump,...

... "You can't talk, you can't breathe with your mouth open, you have to cover your ears in case they get in your ear hole — it's just horrendous."

A parody that is all too real of various government officials around the country