Free Republic

Bloated universities should reform or perish. One can only hope British conservatives can show the same resolve as their American counterparts in blocking any bailouts Emily Cousens, a gender studies teacher at the University of Oxford and London School of Economics, is in despair that Oxford University will start a vaccine trial. In an article for Huffington Post titled “I Teach At Oxford, But I Don’t Want It To Win The Coronavirus Vaccine Race,” she writes that she is worried this scientific research would justify stereotypes, such as that “China, once again, has unleashed a threat to civilisation. But the...

Covid-19 has infected nearly 3 million people across the globe, initially ravaging China before hitting hardest in the West and leaving the United States as the most deeply-afflicted country, with more than 55,000 deaths as of April 27. Its origin remains the subject of not only scientific debate, but a politically charged dispute in the international community. Initial assessments conducted by the Chinese government pointed to the city's Huanan Seafood Market as the likely cause of a natural outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, a new coronavirus that causes Covid-19. In the early days of the outbreak, local officials played down the possibility...

The news about Joe Biden has taken on a completely surreal quality. For a long time, the headlines were about his declining mental state, which is becoming hard to ignore. This was bizarre enough in a presumptive Democrat candidate for the presidency. Then, Tara Reade dropped a bombshell, alleging that the same politician known for publicly groping and sniffing women and children had sexually assaulted her. The media assiduously ignored Reade's allegations as long as they could and eventually reported on them only to dismiss both Reade and the allegations.

The interstellar object (alternatively a comet or an asteroid) that killed the dinosaurs when it slammed into Earth didn't work alone. Researchers have shown previously that its after-effects, such as tidal waves and earthquakes, played an important role in the mass extinctions of three-fourths of plant and animal life. Now, new research suggests that one of the most important factors was the soot-rich smoke from fires sparked by the collision. Clay Tabor, a geoscientist at the University of Connecticut, and his colleagues studied soot, sulfates and dust to see how each type of particle may have contributed to the cataclysm....

The Pentagon has declassified three previously leaked top-secret U.S. Navy videos that show “unexplained aerial phenomena” and that some believe could show Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) in an effort “to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real or whether or not there is more to the videos,” said a Pentagon spokesperson. “The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified'”, the spokesperson added. “The Department of Defense has authorized the release of three unclassified Navy videos, one taken in November 2004 and the other two in...

A few days ago, on 15 April, 2020, the Florida 5th District Court of Appeals dismissed charges against retired General Motors worker John DeRossett, who wounded a deputy in a gunfight at his home in 2015. It was at night. The officer at the door was in plain clothes at the time, had no warrant, and was developing a case of solicitation for prostitution on DeRossett's niece, Mary Ellis. The other two officers were in plain clothes and hid in the dark outside the house.  The officers attempted to take Mary Ellis into custody, at DeRossett's home.  The officers never...

Authorities on Monday identified a suspect in a recent vandalism spree targeting Asian-owned businesses in the South Bay.

Instead of being a vital technology empowering average people to learn and act for themselves, the internet now mostly succeeds in making users feel small, paranoid, and helpless. Some people might take issue with Facebook’s decision to remove posts attempting to organize protests against shelter-in-place orders, Twitter’s stance against presumed misinformation, and major news outlets acting as mouthpieces for the Chinese government. But by now, most people hardly blink at these heavy-handed moves to control public speech. They are told that dissent is either misinformation or hate speech, and, in the midst of a pandemic, such freedoms are positively dangerous.This...

Pray For the Peace of Jerusalem (Music in The Bible) Hebrew Worship Words Hilluwl Leviticus 19:24 In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. Judges 9:27 After they had gone out into the fields and gathered the grapes and trodden them, they held a festival in the temple of their god. While they were eating and drinking, they cursed Abimelek. (There are only two occurrences of this word in the OT) New International Version (NIV)(End of Scripture Passage) . "Hilluwl" is an expression of thanksgiving and joy, especially for the harvest....

Fear of the coronavirus is leading people with life-threatening emergencies, like a heart attack or stroke, to stay home when ordinarily they would have rushed to the emergency room, preliminary research suggests. Without prompt treatment, some patients, like Mr. Virachan, have suffered permanent damage or have died. Emergency rooms have about half the normal number of patients, and heart and stroke units are nearly empty, according to doctors at many urban medical centers. Some medical experts fear more people are dying from untreated emergencies than from the coronavirus.A recent paper by cardiologists at nine large medical centers estimated a 38...

Had a request for Hank Snow - The Rhumba Boogie (1951). I was surprised to see that, after over 1500 videos, this tune was not already in my library. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

MALIBU, CA—Many described the scene as breathtaking or awe-inspiring. Others were so touched they couldn't find the words to communicate how they felt. Most simply wept. No matter how they expressed their emotions, everyone agreed that the scene off the Malibu coast Monday morning was exactly what America needed to get through this pandemic. Celebrities gathered their multi-million-dollar yachts on the waters of the Pacific Ocean and spelled out "WE'RE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER." "We're just like you," said Ellen DeGeneres on her Instagram as her servants sailed her yacht into position to form the apostrophe. "Yes, maybe I have...

As some states begin loosening coronavirus lockdowns, all eyes are on Texas to see if a phased reopening can be done safely. In what could be the beginning of America’s resurgence from the coronavirus pandemic, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Monday he will let the state’s stay-at-home order expire at the end of the month and allow some businesses to reopen Friday, with restrictions. It marks the boldest loosening of pandemic restrictions since states began issuing lockdown orders last month, and could mark a path ahead for reopening the rest of the country. Retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters, and malls...

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“First do no harm” is a phrase attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, taken by new physicians upon medical school graduation, but those words do not actually appear in the oath. This is much like “separation of church and state” or the “right to privacy” that are constitutional concepts yet not actually appearing in the US Constitution. It is a wise guiding concept for much in life, especially large government mandates or programs. Proposed solutions may actually be worse than the underlying problem such solutions are supposedly solving. What harms will result from stay-at-home orders, banning elective surgery, shutting down businesses,...

His stubborn refusal to take the coronavirus seriously may have caused thousands of deaths. America’s COVID-19 devastation is disproportionately a story of New York State’s devastation, and New York State’s devastation is overwhelmingly a story of New York City’s devastation. There’s a case to be made that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio is the single individual in the United States who is most to blame for the catastrophic loss of human life. I refer you to a grueling investigation by Charles Duhigg in the New Yorker that painstakingly compares the responses to the outbreak in Seattle and New...

Special Dispatch to the New-York Times. CHARLESTON, Friday, April 27. Out of the 4,000 strangers in the city probably not more than three-fifths went to bed last night at all, and probably even they can't stand the temptation to-night. At early dawn knots of people, eagerly talking and fiercely gesticulation, could be seen in the bar-rooms or on the corners of the streets. The all-aborbing question was, what will be the state of things in the Convention when the discussion on the Platform comes up. All parties conceded that a fierce and bitter discussion would be had, and that in...

Did we see a serious political stumble by President Trump in his spat with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp last week? While some may wonder, he seems over all to be handling the coronavirus crisis deftly enough. He’s been giving due deference to the medical brain trust of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx -- perhaps too much, some fear. At the same time, he’s hammering away at the need to limit the brutal economic consequences of the lockdown as soon as possible. All this while parrying relentless attacks from the press and, of course, from an opposition party desperate to...

Ex-pat in Japan . Wife and I living on SS . Read conflicting articles re: stimulus money . I never thought I deserved it mind you , since I live overseas , but read via Jerusalem Post that dual citizens living in Israel and Israeli green card holders will get money so figured so should I . Anybody out there in the same boat as I ?

Morning Joe regular Jon Meacham tends to be cast as the somewhat nerdy, pointy-headed professor, above the partisan fray. (Beats being described as the editor who flew Newsweek into the ground with Tina Brown.) Scarborough regularly teases him about the seven causes of the War of 1812, etc. In fact, under his scholarly guise, Meacham is just as much a Trump hater as the rest of them. On today's Morning Joe, Meacham literally described President Trump as dumber than a dog. He said: "He's failing to do what my Springer Spaniels know we should do, which is launch a Marshall...