Free Republic

An increasingly hostile ruling class, who conceive of themselves as occupying a disloyal, irredentist America, is a formula for weakness abroad and conflict at home. One of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first actions after confirmation has been to order a “60 day stand down” to combat extremism. This follows the widespread and mostly baseless establishment fantasy that “right-wing extremists” and “white supremacists” are running rampant and pose some immediate threat to the country. The details and definitions will ultimately determine whether this campaign is a sensible one that is in keeping with the Constitution or ends up being a purge...

Have you been unfortunate fortunate enough to try a paper straw? Being on the West Coast, I’ve had the pleasure. Many, many times. For those of you yet to partake, you’ll love it — assuming you have the digestive system of a goat. As for function, the straw pulls double duty. For the first 4 minutes, it allows you to swallow liquid. At 4:01 and beyond — in my experience — it feeds you a paper stick. MMMmmmMMM good.Apropos, Coca-Cola’s about to try a paper bottle. From The Daily Wire: Coca-Cola plans to do a test-run of 2,000 paper bottles...

I am an optimist because: I believe Christians will soon see Jesus, see many of those that wrote the Bible, see multitudes of angels, etc. I believe Christians’ saved loved ones will soon be raised from the dead, and we will see them (I will soon see my deceased wife, and she will have a new body that will never get sick or die). I believe there is a good possibility that many Christians could go to heaven without getting sick, dying, having to be buried, etc. I believe the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Church, Christians...

Today is the Daytona 500. Is anyone watching?

Cruise prices fluctuate wildly based on the time of year, the destination, and what type of room you're booking. But it's possible to find rooms for less than $100 per day per person. If you're living on a cruise ship full-time, $3,000 per month can seem expensive. Keep in mind, though, that you'll also be saving money in other areas. For example, most food and drinks are included in your cruise fare. So unless you're splurging on specialty drinks or fancy restaurants, you won't need to budget much for food. You also won't need to worry about other costs you're...

NOTE DATE PUBLISHED: August 29, 2012 -- Take a typical Bain transaction involving an Indiana-based company called American Pad and Paper. Bain bought Ampad in 1992 for just $5 million, financing the rest of the deal with borrowed cash. Within three years, Ampad was paying $60 million in annual debt payments, plus an additional $7 million in management fees. A year later, Bain led Ampad to go public, cashed out about $50 million in stock for itself and its investors, charged the firm $2 million for arranging the IPO and pocketed another $5 million in “management” fees. Ampad wound up...

Personally, I like the idea that a professional sports franchise owner, like Mark Cuban, will stop exploiting the Star Spangled Banner to sell his product. For decades, professional sports teams have used patriotism for profit. The owners and players wrapped themselves in the flag they now burn. Let us be honest, corporations - especially multinational corporations - do not do anything that does not benefit the corporation. This practice of playing the national anthem, parading the flag in front of the crowd, “honoring” our uniformed services personnel, flyovers - it was all done to evoke the emotions of the audience....

Anchor Chris Wallace said, “So you’ve talked repeatedly here about mitigation enter guidelines depend on schools spending money to make the environment inside the classroom, inside the building more safe. But I want to put this up on the screen as part of his COVID relief bill. The president wants $130 billion for those improvements to schools. But having said that, Congress has already approved $68 billion, and so far as school districts have only spent 4 billion of that 68 billion. Isn’t the $64 billion that’s still in the pipeline, enough money maybe not to solve all the problems...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that impeachments based on partisan differences appear to be becoming normalized, suggesting that future presidents will face impeachment challenges. “I hope I will be proven wrong, but it seems that impeachment based on partisan differences seems to be becoming the norm, not the exception,” Graham wrote on Twitter.

“The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is probably the most ideologically intoxicated, most dogmatic political party of Leninist stripe in human history. Yet, we don’t tend to think of the CCP that way.” Tonight, we sit down with Miles Yu, who served as Senior China Policy Adviser to Mike Pompeo when he was Secretary of State. While many today still harbor illusions about the Chinese regime, the CCP seeks to “replace the US-led international order with its own authoritarian model of governance,” Yu says. And “their internal designation of the United States as chief adversary has never changed.”

Back in July of 2020, Chris Cuomo posed a question: “Can we trust the data from florida’s governor?” That was monumentally ironic. We'll "circle back" to that later. As regular readers here will remember, we've been well aware of Cuomo's malfeasances vis-a-vis the COVID CCP Wuhan Chinese virus pandemic. We remember his mandating that nursing homes take in COVID positive patients. We remember saying that his elderly death numbers were vastly under-reported. I remember writing that "Andrew Cuomo is an arrogant pompous self-righteous a**hole."The lid finally blew off the cesspool that is the Governor's office. Cuomo's aide admitted falsifying data:...

Sunday, February 14, 2021 Feast of St. Valentine (early 200s to AD 269 or 270), Patron of Love, Young People, Happy Marriages St. Valentine, officially known as St. Valentine of Rome, is a third-century Roman saint widely celebrated on February 14 and commonly associated with "courtly love."  Although not much of St. Valentine's life is reliably known, it is generally agreed that St. Valentine was martyred in about 270 AD and then buried on the Via Flaminia to the north of Rome. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed St. Valentine from the General Roman Calendar, because so little...

Under the belief it was the movie that would most offend today’s Woketards, last week I wrote about the gloriously inappropriate and problematic Animal House (1978). Finding myself in a Belushi mood, a few days later, I watched his next hit, 1980’s The Blues Brothers, and quickly realized today’s Hitler Youth would hate this one even more — a whole lot more. You have no idea how blessed I was to come of age in the 70s and 80s, two of the freest decades, not only in our country’s history but in world history. By 1970, Hollywood’s self-censoring Production Code...

The term "midlife crisis" was coined by psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques in 1965. The English language somehow made do without that phrase for the previous six hundred years, yet today, could we get along without it? In 1900, the average American male life expectancy was 47. In 1965, it was 67. An additional two decades of existence: More time to ruminate about your time running out. In this as in so many instances, art preceded (social) science: The then-nameless male midlife crisis had been explored before, through farce (1955's The Seven Year Itch), then high-brow literature (John Cheever's classic 1964 story...

<p>Trump Attorney Michael van der Veen spoke with CBS News following the acquittal of his client President Donald Trump by the US Senate in the second frivolous impeachment attempt by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.</p><p>Van Der Veen blasted CBS News hack Lana Zak who tried to defend the Democrat lawmakers who presented doctored and fraudulent evidence during the Senate impeachment trial.</p>

(Click on History Makers - February 14)

Michigan ammunition manufacturing company Fenix Ammunition announced a no tolerance policy relating to sales to Joe Biden voters on Thursday, sending left-wingers up in arms over the consequences of their own actions. Customers who use Fenix Ammo’s website are asked to affirm that they didn’t vote for Joe Biden when making a purchase. The Novi company primarily sells ammunition online. Fenix’s owners cited Biden’s pledge to criminalize online sales of ammunition as justification for the no tolerance policy. If Biden enacted such a gun control measure, it would destroy Fenix’s business, as well as many other smaller manufacturers of ammunition...

McConnell and the GOP elites (GOPe) worked against President Trump for years preventing him from passing his wildly popular agenda to protect America, its workers, and its citizens. McConnell did not hold back as he ripped Trump apart for a “disgraceful dereliction of duty” and attempting to “overturn the election.” He claimed that the protesters stormed the Capitol because they had been “fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on earth,” and that Trump was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.” And then Mitch McConnell suggested that President Trump can still be charged in...

Trump lawyer gives epic interview with CBS hack… Rips off his mic, video goes viral…

As of January 11 2021, the openvaers report has compiled to date the following record of covid vaccine related injuries and deaths. These statistics are compiled from HHS at vaers.hhs.gov Extrapolated from these reports lists 12697 covid vaccine adverse event reports. For which the breakdown of these statistics is as follows: Through Feb 5 2021 653 deaths 1,382 hospitalizations 2,792 urgent care 1,654 office visits 154 anaphalaxis 145 Bell's Palsey (I'm certain this will be attacked by the usual perp's but let the data speak for itself)