Free Republic

The Federal Reserve has been bleating that inflation is "transitory"--but what about the real world that we live in, as opposed to the abstract funhouse of rigged statistics? Here's a simple test to help you decide if inflation is "transitory" in the real world. Let's start with some simple stipulations: price is price, there are no tricks like hedonics or substitution. Nobody cares if the truck stereo is better than it was 40 years ago, the price of the truck is the price we pay today, and that's all that matters. (Funny, the funhouse statistical adjustments never consider that appliances...

As questions about the January 6 Capitol protests mount, something very bad is afoot. A police state is taking shape. It is being suggested (and I agree) that the FBI had paid informants among the Capitol protesters who actually helped plan the protests and encouraged violence. It is unsettling to entertain the possibility that the federal government knew of a potential for violence on 1/6 and did nothing to stop it. It presents the question: why would agencies, or certain elements within, sit back and let something like this happen on purpose? A still more disturbing possibility arises from a...

A judge has ruled that Colorado Christian baker Jack Phillips violated state anti-discrimination law by refusing to bake a pink-and-blue transgender birthday cake. Denver District Court Judge A. Bruce Jones ruled Tuesday that Phillips violated the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act by refusing to make the cake for Autumn Scardina. In his opinion, Jones concluded that Phillips engaged in unlawful discrimination by denying “goods and services" because of Scardina's "transgender status." The ruling states that Phillips' wife had initially agreed to make a pink cake with blue frosting for about six to eight people. But the cake was rejected after Scardina disclosed...

North Korean leader King Jong-un is on a diet. That’s the best guess of experts in South Korea who make a living talking and writing about Dear Leader’s health and appearance. Well… it’s a living. These experts say that if the weight loss was health-related, there would be other noticeable symptoms. Associated Press: "In recent state media images, including those published on Wednesday, Kim appeared to have lost a large amount of weight. The strap on his fancy watch is tighter, and his face thinner. Some observers say Kim — who is about 170 centimeters (5 feet, 8 inches) tall...

It is such an obvious attempt to try to crush political dissent, you wonder if they thought no one was paying attention.The Biden administration just released a “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism.” It calls for abuses of state power to combine elements of totalitarian government with social and cultural engineering. They decided the Constitution and those pesky old individual liberties won’t stop them from making America the Wokest Place on Earth.It is such an obvious attempt to try to crush political dissent, you wonder if they thought no one was paying attention. If you aren’t, you need to be,...

The District’s newest elected advisory neighborhood commissioner is believed to be the first incarcerated person to win office in the nation’s capital. Joel Castón, 44, has been locked up for 26 years, since being convicted of killing an 18-year-old man in a shooting in a D.C. parking lot. While incarcerated, he has served as a Christian worship leader, a financial literacy instructor, and the founding mentor of the Young Men Emerging program. He also wrote a memoir and learned Arabic and Mandarin. On Tuesday, Castón won an an ANC seat that had been vacant since its creation in 2013. He...

The Port of Los Angeles announced Tuesday that it had earned the distinction as the first port in the Western Hemisphere to handle more than 1 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in a single month. May was the busiest month in the 114-year history of the United States’ busiest port. The Port of LA moved a total of 1,012,248 TEUs, up 74% from May 2020, when COVID-19 had stalled global trade. The Port of Long Beach and South Carolina Ports Authority last week also reported record Mays. And the Georgia Ports Authority announced it had had 10 consecutive months of...

A Fox Business contributor wasn’t having it with the money printing-obsessed Federal Reserve raising its inflation target and moving up expectations for an interest rate hike only in 2023. Kaltbaum Capital Management owner and president Gary Kaltbaum tore into the Fed for its money-grows-on-trees behavior. Kaltbaum stated during the June 16 edition of Making Money with Charles Payne: “We’ve been hearing for years their inflation target of 2 percent, and now it's 3.6 [percent]. And last I looked, we’re in June of 2021, and they’re talking about what they’re going to do in 2023.” He did not let up: “I...

Shaw Somers, a consultant surgeon who specialises in weight-loss operations, has been treating people with severe obesity for many years. He says people like Sarah, who have an inherited set of certain genes, are much more likely to develop obesity compared with those who don't. Historically, he says, people with these genetics would have done well in a famine, but with today's plentiful, high-calorie food they will put on weight "without strong determination and support". Dr Denise Ratcliffe, a clinical psychologist...says that many of the people she sees, have experienced trauma, abuse or neglect, for example, which leads to a...

A TOP-FLOOR tenant sparked a £3,000 clean up operation by hurling a mountain of soiled toilet paper out of his window as passers-by walked below. Neighbour-from-hell John Cameron claimed he was scared of flushing his toilet and was choosing to dump the used toilet roll out of his window instead. Cameron threw a mountain of soiled toilet paper out of his window 2 Cameron threw a mountain of soiled toilet paper out of his windowCredit: Perthshire Picture Agency Perth Sheriff Court was told today that specialist equipment costing £3,000 had to be hired to tackle the pile of filth outside...

For several decades now, politicians around the world have tried to curtail tax competition to make it easier for them to increase the tax burdens on their citizens without them fleeing to other lower-tax jurisdictions. The best way to achieve their goal is to create a global high-tax cartel. If implemented, the recent G7 countries' agreement to impose minimum taxes on multinational companies would get them much closer to this shady objective. It's no mystery why politicians don't like tax competition. In a global economy like ours, individuals and businesses are better able to work and invest in nations with...

A Republican congressman called for Congress to repeal the Iraq War authorization and close the massive U.S. embassy compound in Baghdad on Wednesday. Both the war authorization and the embassy compound played a role in the near war between the United States and Iran last year. Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) called the president’s war powers “disturbingly broad” in a Wednesday morning floor speech as he urged members to repeal the 2002 authorization for the use of military force. That law, also known as the AUMF, was originally passed to authorize the war to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but gives...

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Records suggest more than 100 batches of absentee ballots in Fulton County could be missing. Some experts see "election tabulation malpractice" as state officials seek to remove county's top election supervisors. ... The memos reviewed by Just the News include the handwritten tally sheets for all absentee ballots counted by [Fulton] county as well as a private report from a contractor hired by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to monitor the Atlanta-area election process. The report, which chronicled seven days of problems, recorded troubling behavior like the mysterious removal of a suitcase of sensitive election data known as polls pads,...

For a half-century, a small radical fringe has undermined our trust in institutions. A new AP-NORC poll shows 28 percent of Americans feel they have just one person they trust to help them navigate work challenges or connect with an employer. Meanwhile, leftist politics feed an angry mob of American so-called "peaceful protesters" or the reactive "insurrectionists." As a result, our American experiment is in great peril. Suddenly, the American landscape looks and feels like the world we freely allowed inside our open borders. A world filled with lawlessness, lack of self-restraint, and unparalleled agitprop. Like a Bunsen burner, a...

Dear friends, the "Fake News" Virus and Epidemic is running rampant throughout the "Land of the Free" today (via the EXPONENTIAL lawless media outlets of our day), attacking and slandering ANY who adhere to Judeo/ Christian values and conservative principles and policies based on the laws of nature and nature's GOD! Of course, there is a wide spectrum in that group; but the more Bible-believing, Christian, conservative and American loving you are; the more the "Fake News" virus seems to want to attack and destroy you! This godless, lawless and anarchic strain originates from the god of this world who...

Virginia residents who want to do right by the planet are confronted with a bewildering array of renewable energy and “green power” options. Unfortunately, few of these programs actually deliver renewable energy. People who want the gold standard — electricity from new wind and solar projects — are completely out of luck if their utility is Dominion Energy Virginia or Appalachian Power. To understand how there can be so many options and none of them good, we first have to talk about renewable energy certificates. RECs are a topic that is way more interesting than it sounds because — well,...

The Supreme Court unanimously overturned a lower court ruling that allowed the City of Philadelphia to ban Catholic Social Services from participating in the city's foster care program, saying the city violated the organization's First Amendment rights.

MOSCOW (CBS SF/AP) — Ukrainian police say they have uncovered a ring of computer hackers responsible for cyberattacks that included targeting personal data and financial records at the Stanford University Medical School and the University of California. Six members of the gang, known as Cl0p, were arrested and a number of computers, cars and about $185,000 in cash was seized. The hackers also allegedly attacked four South Korean companies in 2019 with an encryption virus that blocked internal servers and employees’ computers.

On April 19, the Vancouver Sun printed an article about the COVID-linked death of an infant under two years old. Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s provincial health officer, lamented that the infant’s tragic death “reminds us of the vicious nature of this virus.” The kicker, which Henry failed to mention, is that this was the very first COVID-19 death under the age of 30 in a province with a population of over 5 million. It turns out it was inside the BC Children’s Hospital that the child caught its infection—“behind the doors of a government institution,” as Julius Ruechel in...