Free Republic

Yesterday, I outlined a terrible secret. That secret? That the Fed knows the official inflation measure, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is practically useless for forecasting future inflation. In a little-known paper published in 2001 the Fed found that food inflation, NOT CPI or PCE, is the best predictor of future inflation. Fed researchers wrote the following: We see that past inflation in food prices has been a better forecaster of future inflation than has the popular core measure [CPI and PCE]…Comparing the past year’s inflation in food prices to the prices of other components that comprise the PCEPI (as...

Many items destined for retailer shelves this holiday season are hopelessly snarled in the global supply chain. What does that mean to shoppers?

And now this weekend traffic and weather update from Del Rio,TX:Expect long delays as traffic backs up at the International Bridge due to deconstruction on the American side.There should be a deluge of Haitians with widely scattered Mexicans and a few gusts of terrorists throughout the weekend. The extended outlook calls for more of the same with inevitable flooding and no relief in sight. Despite this fact the Federal Government is not expected to declare the area a disaster zone. When contacted, a spokesmouth for the Administration commented that the visitors were behaving better than the insurrectionists of 1/6, noting...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

The fiancé of missing 'van-life' woman Gabby Petito presents himself as a sweet and caring guy, but is actually jealous and controlling, her friend has claimed in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com. Rose Davis said Brian Laundrie, 23, allegedly went so far as to hide Gabby's ID once so that she couldn't meet up with her at a bar, triggering a violent episode similar to the one police investigated weeks before her disappearance. 'Brian took her ID just so she wouldn't be able to come out with me,' she told DailyMail.com on Friday. 'He's got these jealousy issues and he...

A communique sent by my very large healthcare insurance plan presented a list of recommended vaccines for each age group. There was no mention of CoVid vaccines on the page.

UPDATE: Nurse Claire sends that Julianne in Long Island delivers incontrovertible evidence. The Cult of Moloch demands universal participation. Note that the murdered children whose organs are collected and used are called “donors”. Donate, as in “to give”. What an utterly satanic inversion. -AB E_WakZvXoAQ1kR2.jpg (1200×471) Here’s the money shot: E_Wa-deXMAIrPSK.png (1200×605) “Fetal liver samples were obtained from the Human Fetal Tissue Repository at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, and from Advanced Biosciences Resources, Alameda, CA.” “Newborn RG SKI and RG SKI IL-6 mice were irradiated and engrafted with human CD34+ cells purified from the fetal liver. “...

We are living in a fractured nation. We have allowed an aristocracy/oligarchy and a soft form of totalitarianism. The Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Executive Branch have allowed power to be exercised by technocrats, who want to control everything because they think they know best. They live in Capitol City while we live in the outer districts of Panem. We have a complete lack of integrity in every facet of our government, leading to a lack of trust by the people. A significant segment of the left and the right have given up on the Republic and its institutions....

A federal grand jury on Thursday handed up an indictment requested by special counsel John Durham — and it’s fresh proof that the entire Russiagate “scandal” was manufactured by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Durham, the federal prosecutor tasked with investigating the origins of the investigation, is targeting lawyer Michael Sussmann for lying about his client when he met with an agent to share dubious suspicions of a link between the Trump Organization and Kremlin-connected Alfa Bank. The FBI later disproved the claim during the endless Russiagate investigation, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s team found itself unable to verify anything from the...

Talk to me for just a few minutes about my life as a lawyer and I will tell you that, without question, the worst thing about being a litigator is activist judges. It turns out that Clarence Thomas shares my concern, for he fears the power that the Supreme Court holds. In a speech at the University of Notre Dame, the brilliant jurist told his audience that “The court was thought to be the least dangerous branch and we may have become the most dangerous,” adding, “And I think that’s problematic.” Indeed Article III of the Constitution of the United...

A school shooter in suburban Denver was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday. Devon Erickson, 20, was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting death of classmate Kendrick Castillo, along with 45 other charges in connection with the 2019 attack at STEM School Highlands Ranch. Castillo, 18, was hailed as a hero for trying to stop Erickson’s deadly massacre, which also injured eight people. A jury found Erickson partnered with fellow student Alec McKinney to plan the attack for weeks. McKinney testified he wanted to target students who mocked him because he was transgender. Judge Theresa Michelle...

In this age of wokeness and cancel culture, an aggressive minority wields the weapons of demonization and stigmatization to trample all opposition. Undoubtedly you have seen many reports of dissenting conservatives and libertarians self-censoring to avoid everything from loss of friends to politically-driven college admissions or grades to getting fired from a job. So today I want to highlight two conservatives of notable courage who can’t be silenced, and who are calling on others to join them in a more assertive push back against the forces of authoritarian wokism. The two are Mollie Hemingway and Tom Klingenstein. Mollie Hemingway writes...

For many years, the American military was the most respected institution in America. In the seven months of the Biden administration, we’ve learned that the upper reaches of the Pentagon are partisan, corrupt, possibly treasonous, and totally incompetent. The latest evidence of this is General McKenzie’s confession that the military didn’t really kill an “ISIS-K fighter” after Islamists slaughtered 13 American troops. Instead, our military drone attack killed an aide worker, seven children, and two other adults. This is unconscionable and I have a few points to make. You’re probably familiar with the story already, so I won’t belabor the...

If you think you’re going to be in the catbird seat when all these changes to America shake out as you’ve planned, you’ve got another guess coming. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say that I suspect that it’s not just patriotic deplorables that read the essays in American Thinker. It’s not an intergalactic leap to assume that what is written here gets “monitored” by congressional aides, assistant-assistant media editors, and sub-administrative assistants at our tech behemoths, to name just a few of the Woke elements that draw the short straw and are tasked with...

On the 20th anniversary of 9-11, Kylee Zempel over at The Federalist published a poignant reflection titled "Would you have stormed the cockpit?" Through the lens of that question, she examined the character necessary for the passengers of Flight 93 to take on terrorists armed with box-cutters and bombs. She further asked what sort of culture instills that character. It was a powerful piece. But it left unexplored the imminent reality that every American is already facing the same situation today. The passengers of United Flight 93 were ordinary citizens who realized that their airplane had been hijacked. But that...

The more one knows about the citadels of American higher education, the more one realizes they are vile centers of indoctrination, a clear and present danger to the Republic. “Death to America.” Shout the Iranian mullahs? No, so says the University of Kansas student body President, Niya McAdoo. And she has no plans to apologize. Both the @KUPresident and the student senate Twitter account retweeted a September 3rd post reading, “Happy Friday everybody. Death to America.” Replete with a laughing emoji. Because there’s nothing funnier than that. Ms. McAdoo sent out a follow-up tweet saying, “The more you read American...

Few presidents have taken more public pleasure in seeing one of their party’s own leave office than Donald Trump in his reaction to Rep. Anthony Gonzalez’s announcement that he would not seek reelection. “1 down, 9 to go!” the former president gloated, in the second of two statements he released Friday celebrating Gonzalez’s exit. The Ohio Republican’s departure was, of course, a victory for Trump — the first victim in his post-election crusade against the 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach him. Shannon Burns, the president of Ohio’s Strongsville GOP, said Gonzalez “was an up-and-coming star, who made,...

We've had a long time to think about it. Now it's time to act. On the 20th anniversary of 9-11, Kylee Zempel over at The Federalist published a poignant reflection titled "Would you have stormed the cockpit?" Through the lens of that question, she examined the character necessary for the passengers of Flight 93 to take on terrorists armed with box-cutters and bombs. She further asked what sort of culture instills that character. It was a powerful piece. But it left unexplored the imminent reality that every American is already facing the same situation today. SNIP For decades, the enemies...

Being "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades," is leading America to some very bizarre, uncharted waters. That's what Joe Biden has wrought, living up to Bob Gates' memorable summary of his record. Which brings us to Biden's latest fiasco, his unprecedented rupture in U.S. relations with France. So much for 'diplomacy is back,' the campaign slogan he ran for office on and repeated a lot since. Based on this latest example of "diplomacy," Biden's a diplomatic wrecking ball. According to France24: France on Friday recalled its ambassadors to the United...

The authoritarian moment has arrived, the result of a decades-long evisceration of core American institutions. Ben Shapiro’s new bestseller, The Authoritarian Moment, is about the death of authentic liberalism and the rise of left-wing authoritarianism. He writes: “I grew up in an America that made room for different points of view that could tolerate political differences. I grew up where we could attend ball games together without worrying about who voted for whom, where we could attend different schools and recognize our differences without trying to beat each other into submission… Most of all, I grew up in an America...