Free Republic

There is no COVID-era surge in global cargo demand. There’s a lengthy albeit temporary spike in congestion compounded by a localized, stimulus-and-savings-driven demand boom in America. That explanation for skyrocketing rates gained more traction Friday when liner giant Maersk released details of its quarterly performance. Maersk — which pre-reported record Q2 2021 results on Monday — estimated that global container shipping demand was up only 2.7% in the second quarter versus the same period two years ago, prior to the pandemic. And yet, Maersk’s average freight rate (including both contract and spot business) was $3,038 per forty-foot equivalent unit, up...

Tucked into US President Joe Biden's expansive infrastructure bill is a plan to knock down "racist" roads that he says harm minority communities - but not everyone he's trying to help agrees. A fine layer of soot covers the straw-yellow paint of the wooden houses that line Interstate 81, a highway in downtown Syracuse, New York state, held up by rusted steel girders and dingy pillars of cement. Civil rights activists call this mile of the interstate a "racist highway" because roads like this one divide minority neighbourhoods and pollute these communities. Urban planners want to tear it down -...

Congress is barreling toward a high-stakes showdown over the nation's borrowing limit, with neither party ready to blink. Congressional leaders will soon need to find a way to pass legislation raising or suspending the debt ceiling, or risk a default that could have catastrophic ramifications for global financial markets. So far, they appear content to play a game of chicken reminiscent of the 2011 standoff that resulted in the S&P taking the historic step of downgrading the U.S. credit rating. One option for Democrats would be to try to raise the debt ceiling on their own as part of a...

"Those who fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it." This aphorism has been attributed to Edmund Burke, George Santayana and Winston Churchill. Regardless of who said or wrote it first, President Joe Biden should heed it now, before his poorly planned bug out from Afghanistan and his "phase-out of combat troops" from Iraq become disastrous retreats like the sad finale of the Vietnam War in Saigon on April 30, 1975. On April 14, Biden foolishly announced all U.S. troops would depart Afghanistan by Sept. 11. His crack national security team subsequently decided a bug out on the 20th...

White House Chief Medical Adviser Anthony Fauci said Monday that he hopes mask requirements for children will not be necessary for much longer so that the face coverings will not have a "lasting negative impact" on them. After the Center for Disease Control and Prevention updating its guidance last month to recommend that schools require masks for all children 2 years of age or older, regardless of vaccination status, Fauci encouraged mask mandate opponents to "keep an open mind." "It's not comfortable, obviously, for children to wear masks, particularly the younger children," Fauci told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. "But...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in an interview with CNN that aired Monday evening said she had fears of being raped during the Jan. 6 insurrection in which she recounted people banging on her office doors while she hid. "I didn't think that I was just going to be killed," Ocasio-Cortez told CNN anchor Dana Bash. "I thought other things were going to happen to me as well." The New York Democrat said that "white supremacy and patriarchy are very linked in a lot of ways," and remarked on what she sees are the sexualization that violence. When asked by Bash...

I am a huge fan of Dov Fischer. He’s smart, funny, and very insightful. I shouldn’t be surprised then that Fischer has written what I think is the best article putting the events of January 6 in their proper perspective. The premise is a simple one: “I remain adamant that January 6 was not an insurrection. To say otherwise is a despicable lie.” This is an important point. By calling events on January 6 an insurrection, the Biden administration is getting away with grossly abusing the rule of law and the Constitution to punish the people who were present at...

An ancient thermopolium, or fast food eatery, that was unearthed in Pompeii in 2019 will open to the public this week. The frescoed relic, which had been preserved by ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD74, was found in Regio V, a 21.8-hectare (54-acre) site to the north of Pompeii’s archaeological park near the Bay of Naples in southern Italy. Archaeologists also discovered a floor made from polychrome marble as well as the remnants of duck bones, pigs, goats, fish and snails in earthenware pots, leading researchers to believe that one of the dishes on the menu was...

Dan Bongino has what he calls his 48-hour rule: Don’t run with an “amazing” story before 48 hours have passed, allowing the facts to emerge. Many of Bongino’s fans would have done well to remember that when Liz Harrington, Trump’s spokesperson, pointed out that Fox News had deleted from the video of Bongino’s phone interview with Trump the part at which Trump referred to election fraud. In fact, there was a good reason for that cut, but Bongino got a lot of hate mail before he could explain. I’ll explain below the three takeaway lessons from this whole experience. Bongino...

Excluding the origin story of COVID, I believe the biggest lie in the handling of COVID is the lie around asymptomatic spread — i.e., you could have the virus and not know it and kill people. This has been the great distraction of COVID, and it is being used even today to distract from major issues. For those who have been monitoring the research, we have suspected since fairly early on that having otherwise healthy people and asymptotic people wear a mask has no known benefit in preventing viral spread. Even the peer-reviewed journal articles on the CDC website testify...

Only those who lived in its shadow seem to be worried about contemporary parallels. When communism collapsed in Europe 30 years ago, it seemed vanquished. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics turned out to be none of those things and broke into 15 independent countries. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, McDonald’s replaced Marx, and no one argued anymore that real communism still hadn’t been tried. But old, familiar ideas are making a comeback on both sides of what used to be a great ideological divide. In Russia, Josef Stalin’s approval rating recently reached an all-time high. Meanwhile, American...

Former first lady Melania Trump is firing back after NBC resident historian Michael Beschloss criticized her renovation of the Rose Garden — blasting his comments as “misleading” and “dishonorable.” Taking to Twitter, Trump’s office slammed Beschloss for his comments about her landscaping, writing, “@BeschlossDC has proven his ignorance by showing a picture of the Rose Garden in its infancy. The Rose Garden is graced with a healthy & colorful blossoming of roses. His misleading information is dishonorable & he should never be trusted as a professional historian.” The dig was in response to Beschloss, a presidential historian and frequent critic...

The Summer Games in Japan, which organizers and the world had hoped would mark a milestone toward the end of the sixteen-month-long global shutdown, unfortunately fell prey to the COVID-19 virus. In Tokyo, the delta variant has impacted how the Olympics have been staged and can only lead to speculation on how the upcoming Winter Games might play out. One thing is certain: testing and more testing of athletes will undoubtedly remain a greater part of any participation in future sporting events. Fast-forward to the XXIV Winter Olympics, to be held in Beijing in February. There's talk that under the...

Over the weekend, engineers were able to open seven of those valves and restore them to working order, the company said, and it is still hopeful that it could launch the test flight by the end of the month. But Boeing still does not know what caused the problem, which forced yet another delay in a program that has been plagued by serious issues for years. Boeing is developing Starliner under a contract with NASA to fly the space agency’s astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the other company that holds the “commercial crew” contract,...

Shouldn't policies be based on evidence? Another day, another dire warning about global warming. The press and its taskmasters could essentially Xerox a copy of what they printed for the public in the Washington Post in 1922, or a UN report in 1989, or a UN report in 2019 for this report here: U.N. climate report likely to deliver stark warnings on global warming As always, journalists just print and repeat these ever-ending reports to scare the public into submission with no questions asked. For decades, journalists, educators, scientists, bureaucrats, and other Democrats have colluded to spread these dire warnings,...

At this time many school districts across the country are in the throes of whether to mandate masks or vaccinations for grammar-school children, frequently amid great controversy and heated debate. Even in school districts where the majority political ideology overrides biology, gatherings may be less contentious and fiery, yet the mama and papa bears will be heard. The issue is whether school districts, which are entrusted to educate children about the real world, have any legitimacy to override parental responsibility in mandating the CDC’s onerous COVID restrictions. Given the latest resurgence of COVID, school districts are being allowed to challenge...

He was getting old and paunchy And his hair was falling fast, And he sat around the Legion, Telling stories of the past., Of a war that he once fought in And the deeds that he had done, In his exploits with his buddies; They were heroes, every one. And 'tho sometimes to his neighbors His tales became a joke, All his buddies listened quietly For they knew where of he spoke. But we'll hear his tales no longer, For ol' Joe has passed away, And the world's a little poorer For a Veteran died today. He won't be mourned...

“They told us it was a real infrastructure bill. It’s not; only 23 percent of the bill is real infrastructure, the rest is Green New Deal and welfare. They told us the bill was paid for; it isn’t, we’re gonna have to borrow maybe up to $400 billion to pay for it. They told us there were no tax increases. There are; my state’s gonna have to pay $1.3 billion in new taxes..." “They told us … the Democrats were really wary of this bill and that if we passed this bill, it would make it harder for them to...

I would be interested to hear the experiences of others. Living here in Florida, it's gotten ridiculous, the hysteria being broadcast by the media is worse than last year at the height of the lockdowns, it's a full court press to scare the crap out of everyone, it's like a Cat 5 Hurricane is bearing down on the entire state with a impending apocalypse about to happen... The Wife and I made a decision to not get vaccinated, we are retired, we are not near people in crowded places, we take care of ourselves, we exercise, take vitamins, and zinc...I...

I would be interested to hear the experiences of others. Living here in Florida, it's gotten ridiculous, the hysteria being broadcast by the media is worse than last year at the height of the lockdowns, it's a full court press to scare the crap out of everyone, it's like a Cat 5 Hurricane is bearing down on the entire state with a impending apocalypse about to happen... The Wife and I made a decision to not get vaccinated, we are retired, we are not near people in crowded places, we take care of ourselves, we exercise, take vitamins, and zinc...I...