Free Republic

The latest report from the Census Bureau on income and poverty shows that President Trump’s pro-growth economic agenda brought the pre-pandemic economy to soaring new heights. Not only did we see significant decreases in poverty, but median household income rose to a historic high in 2019 before states instituted sweeping lockdowns that put millions of people out of work and on to the government's payroll.That meant more families with the financial freedom to put their kids through school, pay off the new car, and spring for a memorable vacation. That meant fewer families living paycheck to paycheck. Such incredible economic...

Rush Limbaugh is tired of a term he used for several years: the Drive-By Media. He wonders what our feckless, reckless media should be called now. The question is not easy. The media have become bizarrely the opposite of what they were. What label would capture the curious absence of truth, vitality, and intellectual excitement? The goal now is to control news, not to find news. Today's journalists have much in common with meter maids and elderly bureaucrats. Fatigue and desuetude hang in the air. The Moribund Media — that's perfectly accurate but perhaps not enough. Where can we look...

Sorry to take up space for what is essentially a vanity post. But this is interesting and important enough that I would like other Freepers to weigh in from their various parts of the country.We live in a mature working class neighborhood about an hour's drive ESE of Pittsburgh, PA. We've been here just under 20 years.Most of the homes in the neighborhood, including ours, were built about 50 years ago. It has been a fairly stable neighborhood which includes neighbors who work for the Pennsylvania State Police and leave their cruisers parked in the driveway.Trump signs outnumber Biden signs...

Bob Woodward got nine hours of interview time with President Trump over the course of 10 months for his new book, "Rage." He said it was to the president's "credit" that he let him have so much access to him and interrogate him on several issues. But, before he published it, the author warned Trump that he wouldn't like some of his conclusions. As he finishes his book, Woodward tells his readers that Trump is "the wrong man for the job." And he reiterated that point in his interview on Fox News Channel's The Daily Briefing with Dana Perino on...

When you think of a typical United States Postal Service delivery truck, you're probably thinking of the Grumman Long Life Vehicle — the boxy thing with right-side steering wheels and driver's seats so letter carriers can more easily access mailboxes. In recent years, however, hundreds of them caught fire — possibly due to age and a budget crisis, according to this new Vice story. The LLVs were specially developed by Northrop Grumman for the USPS, per this 1997 report from the US Department of Energy. Based on a Chevrolet S-10 truck chassis, they are powered by Pontiac engines and use...

Question: Why are so many of America’s young people apparently beguiled into despising America’s founding and heritage? I have had scores of Americans ask me that question in the last few months. My inquisitors have been baffled and perplexed as to why so many of our twenty and thirty- something citizens seem to so readily jettison what my questioners cherish as rich, meaningful, and critically important — an American heritage that has fostered and promoted individual human dignity (“All men are created equal”) with divinely imparted inherent rights (“and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” including “life, liberty...

... The cards, known as P-EBT (for Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer), are entirely legitimate. As it happened, every child enrolled in public school in New York City would receive one regardless of family income. The program, which delivers $880 million to New York State, was paid for by the federal government, a result of the economic relief package passed by Congress in the earliest phases of the coronavirus outbreak. The sum of $420 was meant to equal the cost of meals that a child would have received in the spring had school been open. While the notion of people who...

All right, maybe it’s an overstatement that Laura Loomer will be the greatest congresswoman of all time. I might be getting a little ahead of myself. After all, she hasn’t been elected…yet. But if she is, the chances of her being the greatest swamp wrecker in history are pretty high. If you are not familiar with Laura Loomer, she’s a 27-year-old firebrand who started out as an investigative journalist trained by James O’Keefe. She traveled the country destroying the left in ways that would have made Andrew Breitbart cry tears of joy and pride. Her guerilla journalism is part performance...

Now that the political left has decided to strain our few remaining bonds of national unity by encouraging disrespect for the American flag and the National Anthem, will there ever be a day in the future when Americans can pause from political division and join together as one nation to remember all we've accomplished? Can the athletes who have decided to kneel in protest of America imagine that future? Won't there always be some injustice, somewhere, that forces athletes to their knees? Won't there always be some kneeler who feels compelled to judge the actions of another American, even if...

When the Harry Potter series took off in the early 2000s, many conservative Christians warned parents that the book series was a gateway to witchcraft. Nineteen years later, activists on the far left are burning J.K. Rowling’s books because the author denies their favored kind of witchcraft — or rather, because she doesn’t embrace it fervently enough. As Newsweek reported, former Harry Potter fans started a trend on TikTok, burning Rowling’s books on video.TikTok user @elmcdo burned a pile of Harry Potter books on a pyre. “You have to stop using ‘death of the author’ as an excuse to have...

.........Adding to the TIP war-gaming Former Secretary of State John Kerry participated this June 18-19 at the Alliance of Democracy panel in Copenhagen. The event was called the Democracy Summit. During the meeting Kerry was reported to have said, “If people don’t have adequate access to the ballot, I mean that’s the stuff on which revolutions are built. If you begin to deny people the capacity of your democracy to work, even the Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, we have an inherent right to challenge that. And I’m worried that increasingly, people are disaffected.” Remember,...

A massive takedown by the US Marshals in Oklahoma netted more than 260 suspects — including 141 gang members — and located five missing children, authorities said. Playing out over the course of two months, “Operation Triple Beam” ultimately busted 262 people — including six homicide suspects and others wanted for assault, burglary, weapons offenses and drug offenses, KFOR reported. Five missing children turned up in the investigation, the US Marshals Service said in a news release. Meanwhile, 72 firearms, more than 9 kilograms of narcotics and nearly $17,000 were also recovered. The sting, which ended Sept. 6, was part...

Nashville is also known as Music City, the home of country music and the Grand Ole Opry. For music lovers, there is no better place to go than Broadway, where dozens of bars and restaurants have live bands playing beginning mid-morning and continuing well into the night. City leaders hid the low number of COVID-19 cases tied back to these venues, and Americans are wondering why. Tourism is a large part of the city’s revenue. And the downtown area is a huge attraction. Yet Fox 17 in Nashville obtained e-mails that appear to expose a deliberate attempt to keep low...

Does anyone know of a politician who has taken responsibilities for any mistake they may have made? This short clip posted by Andy Ngo exemplifies what I’m talking about. You should watch for yourself as a REAL journalist, Brandi Kruse, asks Seattle Mayor Jenny directly: “You down-played the autonomous zone (CHAZ). People were later killed there. Do you take responsibility?” The Seattle Mayor’s answer translated by my king tom decoder ring: WHY HELL NO I DON’T! https://choiceclips.whatfinger.com/2020/09/18/journalist-brandi-kruse-asks-seattle-mayor-jenny-directly-you-down-played-the-autonomous-zone-chaz-people-were-later-killed-there-do-you-take-responsibility/

The headline for the Arizona Republic, 30 August 2020, front page, blares, "Police Power out of Balance."  (I searched on the Republic's website as well as on two different search engines to find the article — no luck.  Politico has proof of its existence here.) The accompanying graphic shows that the Phoenix police use force more often against blacks and American Indians relative to their proportion of the Phoenix population than they do against whites or Latinos.  The article makes no mention at all of the percentage of serious crimes committed by different races or ethnic groups. So consider this report from...

by Ron Kersten A Karen filmed herself scolding a CVS manager in Washington, DC after the store called the police on two black shoplifters — and then tried to "doxx" him on camera. But she failed and the stunt backfired right back on her. During her persistent tirade, she insisted that the manager's action of calling police could easily have gotten the thieves killed — simply because they are Black. WATCH: The manager tried to calmly explain to the activist that CVS policy “dictates that if they’re shoplifters, they exit the store with merchandise unpaid for, we have to...

FBI Director Wray: "We certainly have seen very active, very active efforts by the Russians to influence our election in 2020...to both sow divisiveness and discord and...to denigrate Vice President Biden." Full video here: https://cs.pn/3kpryMJ

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Chrysopolis in Asia Minor. This was the last major battle between Constantine and Licinius for supremacy within the Roman Empire. With nearly 300,000 combined troops participating in the battle, it was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of ancient history. The battle was preceded by a large-scale naval conflict in which the Licinian fleet was crushed by Constantine's fleet under the command of his son, the Caesar Crispus at the Hellespont between Europe and Asia Minor. Once control of the sea had been established, Constantine moved his forces into Asia Minor...

Okay, Fox News is changing. I hear the complaints. But for me, I change with the times. When it comes to Fox News, I now apply a concept in medicine called debridement. Debridement is the selective removal of damaged tissue from a wound. Fox News is now wounded and infected by liberalism. Still, as a consumer of news, I have the freedom, and the duty, to remove programs infecting this news network from my viewing schedule. That's why God invented the DVR. There are still parts of the Fox News network worth saving, and I have that power in my...

Police are on the hunt for at least two gunmen who fired a barrage of shots on the Camden, New Jersey, home of two police officers and their newborn – with six of the bullets penetrating the structure in the “targeted” attack, according to reports. The couple and their 10-day-old baby escaped injury after the assailants opened fire on their Clinton Street home about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, NJ.com reported. Six of the seven bullets that struck the home made it inside – two through the front door, Camden Police Chief Joseph Wysocki said during a press conference Thursday night, the...