Free Republic

two weeks after the first shots began going into the arms of California’s highest-priority health care workers, about 300,000 people have been inoculated with the first of two doses of the vaccine. That is about 13% of the 2.4 million people in the first group scheduled to be inoculated in California. Earlier this month, federal health officials said most states would be able to complete vaccinations for health care workers within a few weeks. “That we’ve already administered 300,000 doses is extraordinary,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday during a Facebook Live talk with Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National...

President Donald Trump will be leaving Washington soon, but the most powerful Republican of the past four years isn't going anywhere. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, says a former member of the White House staff who advised Trump throughout the first three turbulent years in office, "was sort of Trump's 'Washington whisperer.' He offered quiet advice, and provided critical help on some very big stuff," says the former staffer, who requested anonymity in order to talk candidly. ''You could call him kind of a co-president." Much of Trump's legacy, when it comes to domestic policy at least, will be fleeting....

As the World Health Organization and other China puppets struggle to assemble a 'natural origin' theory for COVID-19, the CCP has been going to great lengths to quash non-sanctioned investigations that may instead point to a lab escape from research facilities which made international headlines in 2015 for dangerous 'gain-of-function' research - by which they were manipulating coronaviruses to better infect humans.'Batwoman' Shi Zhengli, known for bioengineering bat coronaviruses, was criticized over dangerous 'gain-of-function' experimentsAnd while mainstream news outlets spent the better part of 2019 flatly rejecting lab-origin evidence as 'debunked conspiracy theories' - which earned ZeroHedge a temporary Twitter...

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE THE SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES THE SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY SUBJECT: Extension of Memorandum on Visa SanctionsBy the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1. Extension of April 10, 2020, Memorandum. On April 10, 2020, I signed a memorandum detailing that countries that deny or unreasonably delay the acceptance of their citizens, subjects, nationals, or residents from the United States during the ongoing pandemic caused by SARS‑CoV-2 create unacceptable public health risks for Americans....

Many of the greatest horrors of the history of humanity owe their occurrence solely to the establishment and social enforcement of a false reality. With gratitude to the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper and his important 1970 essay “Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power” for the term and idea, we can refer to these alternative realities as ideological pseudo-realities. Pseudo-realities, being false and unreal, will always generate tragedy and evil on a scale that is at least proportional to the reach of their grip on power—which is their chief interest—whether social, cultural, economic, political, or (particularly) a combination of several or...

On the website of one of Sacramento’s most influential lobbying firms, partner Jason Kinney boasted of his close connection to Gavin Newsom, noting he has advised the governor for “nearly 14 years.” The plug suddenly disappeared last month, days after Newsom drew national criticism for attending Kinney’s 50th birthday dinner at the famed Napa Valley restaurant the French Laundry. The event turned into a political disaster for Newsom, drawing charges of hypocrisy at the very time the governor urged residents to avoid gatherings and stay home as much as possible amid an unprecedented surge in the coronavirus. But the episode...

PITTSBURGH -- Dick Thornburgh, who as Pennsylvania governor won plaudits for his cool handling of the 1979 Three Mile Island crisis and as U.S. attorney general restored credibility to a Justice Department hurt by the Iran-Contra scandal, has died. He was 88. Thornburgh died Thursday morning at a retirement community facility outside Pittsburgh, his son David said. The cause is not yet known. He suffered a mild stroke in June 2014. Thornburgh built his reputation as a crime-busting federal prosecutor in Pittsburgh and as a moderate Republican governor. As the nation's top law enforcement official, he prosecuted the savings and...

It would be the last hike of the season, Jessica Newton posted on her social media platforms. With mild weather forecast and Colorado's breathtaking fall foliage as a backdrop, she was excited — convinced an excursion at Beaver Ranch Park would be the quintessential way to close out months of warm-weather hikes with her "sister friends." Still, when that Sunday morning arrived in 2018, Newton was shocked when her usual crew of about 15 had mushroomed to include about 70 Black women. There's a first time for everything, she thought, as they broke into smaller groups and headed toward the...

Kooky CNN doc Jonathan Reiner just doesn't seem to be able to stay in his medical lane. In recent months, we caught Reiner putting on his legal-analyst [dunce?] cap, accusing President Trump of "negligent homicide" and "criminal endangerment." On this morning's New Day, Reiner veered into the foreign policy field, declaring that for months, he's believed that only "regime change" in the US could bring the pandemic under control. Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

A UK activist who calls herself the “Black Panther of Oxford” wants to create a “race offenders” registry that would bar alleged racists from getting work or living near communities of color. Sasha Johnson, 26, divulged the agenda for the Taking the Initiative Party, a political group in the UK that’s inspired by Black Lives Matter.

by Chuuck Ness The reason for Jesus coming into the World, was so that one day He would become the last sacrifice for our sins, and ultimately the forever sacrifice so that we can have eternal life. He came so the blind could see, the deaf could hear, the lame could walk, the lepers could be cleansed, the dead could gain life, and that the poor could hear the Good News from the very source Himself. While presenting the Gospel to the World, Jesus would spend three years discipling men who would become Priests. These men would be commissioned...

Roy Fox hasn’t paid rent for his New York City apartment in more than 30 years. But he’s not sweating an eviction. In a city of 8.4 million people, Fox, 81, is one of just 23 lucky New Yorkers who reside in one of the city’s publicly owned historic sites spread across the five boroughs.

VIDEOWhen I was a kid, space flight announcers were no-nonsense type guys who spoke in an almost matter of fact neutral manner. How that has completely changed! An example of this change was the recent flight of the SpaceX Starship SN8 launch in Texas during which the highly emotional announcers wore their hearts on their sleeves and sounded almost identical to the famous Double Rainbow Guy.

People have a hard time hating cruising. They may think they’re going to hate it. They may want to hate it. But then they try it, and they’re hooked. If you don’t believe me, just look at the numbers. When I first started writing about cruising, in the 1990s, barely 5 million people a year were doing it. These days, the number of people cruising each year is six times that level. That’s not the growth trajectory of something that people don’t love. Still, just because people love something doesn’t mean they love everything about it. That’s the case, for...

Alfred Hitch cock Presents. Middle aged gentleman, gets bored with his perfectly nice, attractive wife and decides to have an affair with another lady for some excitement. He thinks he wants to divorce his wife and marry his mistress, but he is n for a surprise. Nice twist in the tail. Only 12:24 long. A laugh if you have 12 minutes.

As funky fumes of sauerkraut blanketed our house year after year, the younger me resented the letdown of New Year's Day. The excitement of Christmas was officially over, it was time to head back to school, and of course my family's good luck food wasn't something kid-friendly, like cookies or ice cream. My mother cooked up her annual big pork roast, mess of sauerkraut, and a pot of black-eyed peas. I wanted none of it, dining sulkily on a pallid pile of mashed potatoes. Now I'm the one who's gladly stinking up the house with kraut, pork, and peas; I...

Harm prevention policies must take the long view, say experts. The evidence for the harmful effects of alcohol on brain health is compelling, but now experts have pin-pointed three key time periods in life when the effects of alcohol are likely to be at their greatest. Writing in The BMJ in December 2020, researchers in Australia and the UK say evidence suggests three periods of dynamic brain changes that may be particularly sensitive to the harmful effects of alcohol: gestation (from conception to birth), later adolescence (15-19 years), and older adulthood (over 65 years). They warn that these key periods...

We are facing the end of America’s constitutional republic. Was election-rigging software designed for the Central Intelligence Agency used to steal the 2020 presidential election? Former senior National Security Agency analyst Kirk Wiebe believes it was. In a December 21 interview with the New American, Wiebe described the abysmal state of election security in America and pointed to evidence of voter fraud committed via the criminal use of cia-developed Hammer and Scorecard programs. Kirk Wiebe is not some fringe conspiracy theorist. He worked as a senior analyst at the nsa from 1975 to 2001 and was awarded the Meritorious Civilian...

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports ” that Operation Warp Speed’s Covid vaccine rollout was falling short of the administration’s goal of administering 20 million shots in December because states had not been given the resources they require. Mitchell said, “So now we have two highly effective vaccines. Administering them has been anything but at warp speed. What we’re seeing is, you know, the fact that only something like 2.8 million people have actually gotten their vaccines, 14 million doses have been distributed, though. That’s really a big...

President Trump jetted back to the White House on Thursday after the Republican Senate rejected his demands for $2,000 COVID stimulus checks. Trump was uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter as he and First Lady Melania Trump left his resort in Palm Beach on New Years Eve day after a week of golf. There was no immediate word on what Trump’s early pre-holiday return to the nation’s capital might mean for the stimulus logjam on Capitol Hill. GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell again pronounced Trump’s bigger checks as a non-starter Thursday, saying it amounts to a windfall for the wealthy. “Socialism...