Free Republic

The wealthiest person in Illinois said the state's governor refused to deploy the National Guard in Chicago during civil unrest in the summer of 2020 because of the optics doing so would create, the Chicago Tribune reported. Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin said he implored Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., to declare a state of emergency and deploy the National Guard as more than 2,100 businesses across Chicago were damaged following the killing of George Floyd. "I told him to deploy the National Guard and he goes, 'It won’t look good for there to be men and women on Michigan...

Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “MTP Daily” that the Republicans’ refusal to raise the debt ceiling limit after they “ran up the credit card when Donald Trump was president” was like the friend who never pays a dinner check. Kaine said, “I would argue that flirting around with default is unconstitutional, absolutely. I happen to believe that the way we do debt management through a debt limit is foolish.”

The parent of a teenage girl blew the whistle on a horrific case of abuse in a scout group where adult instructors had underage children conduct sex games in the Balkan country of Northern Macedonia. The children were instructed to get nude in front of each other, to paint their genitals and leave imprints, and adult instructors would commend them about the size of their private parts. We are talking about 16 year old children, some not even that old. They were asked to name how many types of condoms they can identify. Then, they were asked about the number...

The Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to pass an ordinance that, as of Nov. 4, will require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter restaurants, movie theaters and many other private businesses. Now, the businesses that must require vaccines also include restaurants of any kind (fast food establishments, coffee shops, tasting rooms, cafeterias), gyms and fitness venues, entertainment venues (movie theaters, shopping centers, concert and performance venues, sports arenas, museums, arcades) and personal care establishments (spas, nail salons, hair salons, tanning salons, estheticians, skin care, tattoo shops). “If we ever want to get back to normal, to what Los Angeles...

Suffering under the tyranny of a woke Socialist Left political leadership, Melbourne, Australia, has become the most locked down city in the world. The teenage suicide rate has doubled. Old people in nursing homes, cut off from their loved ones, stop eating and die. More women are dying of breast cancer. I was a health professional (nurse and midwife) for 32 and want to know what is happening under lockdowns with other causes of death.(I am not the only one. "Death and Lockdowns | City Journal" https://www.city-journal.org/death-and-lockdowns) I have written to the Prime Minister Scott Morrison (ScoMo) and called his...

I got the go-ahead from Microsoft that my Lenovo laptop can be upgraded to Windows 11. But every time I try, it gets to about 75% then stalls. I have tried about 10 times. Yes, I have turned off the firewall. Any suggestions?

Will no one rid us of this troublesome A-10 ‘Warthog’? The United States Air Force (USAF) has spent almost two-thirds of its existence as an independent service trying to get rid of the A-10, one of its most well-known aircraft. But has the Air Force finally given up? It is odd to think that a fifty-year-old aircraft might have more job security now than at any time in its long history, but it does seem that the Warthog now has a relatively secure space in the USAF fleet.

An examination of over 100 Covid-19 studies reveals that many relied on false assumptions that over-estimated the benefits and under-estimated the costs of lockdown. The most recent research has shown that lockdowns have had, at best, a marginal effect on the number of Covid-19 deaths. Generally speaking, the ineffectiveness stemmed from individual changes in behavior: either non-compliance or behavior that mimicked lockdowns. [SNIP] The review covers over 100 different academic studies, along with related Covid-19 data sites. I have sought out studies that (i) dealt with matters of ‘lockdown’ either directly or indirectly, and (ii) were related directly or indirectly...

I have to go the religious exemption route to avoid the jab. Going with the aborted fetal cell arguments works with J&J but Pfizer and Moderna do not use aborted fetal cells but their technology does. It seems to be pretty weak argument to me. Any ideas? Thanks.

On Wednesday, Sweden and Denmark announced that they would stop using Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for younger age groups after numerous reports of rare side effects such as myocarditis. The Swedish Health Agency has stopped using the vaccine for anyone born in 1991 or later after receiving data that shows an increased risk of myocarditis and pericarditis in youth and young adults who have received the vaccine. Both conditions cause an inflammation of the lining around the heart.

Bay Area health officials are considering dropping indoor mask mandates. On Tuesday, Mayor London Breed said the change is long overdue. But, there's still a lot of hesitation among Bay Area residents, epidemiologists included. Mask mandates have been a moving target throughout the pandemic. In mid-June, when California reopened, the state dropped indoor mask mandates. But when Delta created a new surge, seven Bay Area counties re-issued indoor masking mandates in early August. Now Bay Area health officials are discussing ditching the face coverings once again. "The mask just feels like a safety blanket," said San Francisco resident, Danielle Coller....

A tech and telecom staffer for Sen. Amy Klobuchar announced she is leaving her staff to join Apple, the news coming just hours after the Minnesota Democrat slammed Big Tech for having “literally hired so many people” in Washington, DC. April Jones, the deputy legislative director and counsel for Klobuchar on tech and telecom issues, will be joining Apple as a senior government affairs policy counsel, according to Politico. The announcement came Wednesday, one day after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen spoke in front of the Senate Commerce Committee’s consumer protection subcommittee, blasting her former employer and calling for government regulators...

The Church has always struggled to find good leaders. However, as recently as a hundred years ago, bureaucratic structures did not dominate its life as they do today. What happened? {snip} The Vatican also furthered this revolution, despite already having a centralized bureaucracy and despite the vaunted “collegiality” proclaimed at Vatican II. When Paul VI reorganized the papal Curia in 1967, effective control over other curial departments fell to the Secretariate of State, marking a “turn to the world” in its orientation, downgrading the importance of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Paul VI also allowed bishops to...

@KelleyAshbyPaul A mob held us hostage for ten minutes, spitting on and threatening to kill us. No charges! Fake anthrax and death threats sent to our home. No charges! Now just learned the person who called Rand’s Senate office threatening to shoot us will not be charged. I’m exhausted and angry On May 28, a Republican-hating woman called Rand’s DC Senate office threatening to “shoot you all” to our staff member. She was never charged. Yet if you dare express indignation at a school board meeting about CRT or forced masks, the Biden DOJ and FBI say you’re a criminal.

No excerpt from Bloomberg allowed, ungated article here.

A group of prominent experts on COVID-19 is pushing President Joe Biden to significantly scale back his plan to provide booster shots for every vaccinated American. The experts, some of whom advised the president during the transition, told Biden and some of his top medical experts during a September 27 conference call that the data currently available does not justify using booster shots to combat breakthrough COVID infections among the vaccinated, according to Politico. The outside experts argued that the boosters should be restricted to only those at high risk from COVID-19. Biden was joined on the call along with...

Windows 11 started to roll out, but is your laptop ready for the new OS? Find out using the PC Health Check app WhyNotWin11 and other options. _______________________________________________________________________________ Microsoft will phase out Windows 10 support over the next few years, so it's important to make sure your device supports Windows 11. Sarah Tew/CNET Windows 11 arrived Tuesday (here's our full Windows 11 review) and the big question on a lot of PC users' minds since Microsoft unveiled its first major operating system upgrade in six years is, will my computer be compatible? There's been some confusion about device compatibility since...

I’ve had quite a few pints in my life. Be it light or dark, bitter or sweet, a fizzy 5 percent or a starker 9 percent, beer has always been my favourite drink. So when I heard that there are places in the world where you can not only drink beer but bathe in it, my interest was piqued. One of them, Belgium’s first beer spa, just opened in the heart of the capital, and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to try it. ADVERTISEMENT Founders Bart De Brabanter and Louis Raes decided to devote themselves to this new passion project...

FACEBOOK, Instagram and WhatsApp went down for seven hours in a major global outage yesterday – but why? Here's a quick guide on what actually happened to take three of the world's biggest websites and apps offline. https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/16328655/facebook-instagram-whatsapp-crashed/ In 2021, it's easy to wonder how huge chunks of the internet can go offline. But it's surprisingly easy for outages to happen – due to how the internet works. World wide web Every website – including Facebook – exists on a computer server somewhere. So when you want to log on to Facebook.com, you have to connect to one of Facebook's...

With John Hinckley's bullet still lodged in his chest, President Ronald Reagan was rushed to George Washington University Hospital, which is about nine minutes from the Hilton hotel where he'd been shot. One of the surgeons who met him there was Dr. Benjamin Aaron, then chief of cardiothoracic surgery at GWU. Aaron would go on to remove what turned out to be an explosive "Devastator" bullet from the president -- though they didn't know that at the time.