Free Republic

Three years ago, the only people who’d ever heard of Pete Buttigieg were likely to be residents of South Bend, Ind., the town of 103,000 people where he served as mayor. South Bend is home to Notre Dame University. It has a bus station with a fleet of 60 buses, a small train station and a small regional airport. So, who better for Team Biden to nominate as secretary of the Department of Transportation, which employs more than 58,000 employees – more than half the population of South Bend – and has a budget of $87 billion?

Economic woes from the Covid-19 pandemic drive more-affluent people from Brazil and Venezuela to join poor migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. More migrants illegally entering the U.S. to apply for asylum are members of South America’s middle class who fly to the border by plane, according to authorities and aid workers.While the majority of people who come to the U.S. through Mexico are among the world’s poorest fleeing poverty and crime, such as the thousands of Haitians who recently formed a makeshift camp in Del Rio, Texas, the growth in middle-class migrants reflects continued hardship in nations such as...

* U.S. natural gas prices do have more room to rise, but they are unlikely to follow the skyrocketing rallies of the European and UK gas prices. * The United States has a fairly adequate natural gas supply in storage ahead of the winter. * The United States simply has not had to rely on the rest of the world to provide its energy supply, and that’s really what Europe’s problem has been. Join Our CommunityU.S. natural gas prices hit a 13-year high last week as the energy crunch in Europe and Asia pushed the prices in these two regions...

ST. PETER, Minn. (AP) — A private college in Minnesota has renamed its arboretum that honored an 18th-century Swedish botanist who has been criticized for classifying humans in a way now seen as racist, school officials said Tuesday. The popular greenspace at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, located about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of the Twin Cities, has been known as the “Linnaeus Arboretum” since 1988. It recognized Carl Linnaeus, who popularized a system of classifying living things and divided them into the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Recently, though, Linnaeus has been criticized for his 18th century...

On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Cuomo Primetime,” CNN Political Commentator and former Obama administration official Van Jones stated that President Joe Biden is doing good things, but he made claims about furthering his agenda, “then he steps on a rake and then he slips on a banana peel and then he falls down the stairs with some marbles and now people are looking at him in a negative light.” And people aren’t seeing “strong Joe Biden leadership that I think people were expecting,” and “the honeymoon’s over.” Jones also said that “right now, the Democratic Party is looking over the...

Let's have a look at the vaccine ultimatum millions of working Americans have gotten from their employers. The people least likely to comply are: Those with religious objections Those who have objections based on individual liberty They will likely lose their jobs. As a consequence, people of strong religious conviction, and those that value individual liberty, will be removed from the work force, especially in the military, medicine, police, and other first responders. That will remove the Holy Spirit and the spirit of liberty from those occupations, making an authoritarian, totalitarian dystopia easier to construct and enforce.

On my employer's intranet site it published a list of LGBT observances for October and November. The festivities started with National Coming Out Day celebrated on October 11. Not only does the LGBT community have all of June to preen but they have taken up several days during the Fall.

The Rolling Stones are now four shows into their 2021 No Filter Tour, and they have yet to play “Brown Sugar” a single time. The tune has been a staple of their live show since it came out 50 years ago, and it’s the second most played song in their catalog with 1,136 known performances. Jumpin Jack Flash is #1. During a conversation with the L.A. Times, guitarist Keith Richards and singer Mick Jagger have confirmed the band is taking its 1971 classic “Brown Sugar” off the setlist for the upcoming tour dates. “I’m trying to figure out with the...

A Seattle elementary school canceled Halloween activities over concerns about student equity and inclusion. Specifically, Seattle Public Schools says Black males do not celebrate and, more generally, students of color feel marginalized by the holiday. One parent, however, thinks this is an “exercise in affluent white vanity that is wokeism.” Benjamin Franklin Day Elementary typically hosts Halloween festivities each year. They include a “Pumpkin Parade” where students wear costumes if they choose. But the school administration changed its focus to “foundational beliefs around equity for our students and families,” and, consequently, they’re canceling Halloween. This year the only thing spooky...

California took another step toward its goal of ridding the state of all gas-powered engines thanks to a new bill signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday. The new law will ban the sale of all off-road, gas-powered engines, including generators, lawn equipment, pressure washers, chainsaws, weed trimmers, and even golf carts. Under the new law , these machines must be zero-emissions, meaning they will have to be either battery-powered or plug-in, according to the Los Angeles Times . “This is a pretty modest approach to trying to limit the massive amounts of pollution that this equipment emits, not to...

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned Tuesday that the ongoing illegal immigration surge at the US-Mexico border is creating a golden opportunity for terror groups, calling it “another 9/11 in the making.” “There are 80 countries that they pick people up from,” Graham told Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “There are two terrorists from Yemen they caught just a few weeks ago. How easy would it be for an Al Qaeda or ISIS cell to leave Afghanistan and come to the southern border, to blend in with this group? “The Border Patrol is doing the best they can,” Graham added, “but they...

Chicago has begun installing “Bleeding Control Kits” across the city under the new Safe Chicago program amid an increase in gun violence. The city will install 426 Bleeding Control Kits in 269 Chicago buildings, including City Hall and Chicago Public Library locations. Each kit can treat up to eight victims. Every kit comes equipped with a tourniquet, gauze, shears, gloves, and an instruction manual on how to best use it in instances of “life threatening bleeding emergencies” that can result from falls, penetrating injuries (such as stabbings), gunshot wounds, and more. Announced earlier this month to coincide with National Preparedness...

Central Maine Medical Center, a key hospital for regional healthcare, issued a dire warning about the need to shut down critical care services last week if they are forced to fire or lay-off all the unvaccinated workers. The hospital appealed to the Governor’s office, Democrat Janet Mills (pictured below left), for a testing option to avoid losing some of the most important care providers in their system. Today, the hospital quantified their issue and announced they were going to suspend pediatric admissions as well as heart attack and trauma admissions, because they just will not be able to operate. Unfortunately,...

President Joe Biden is rushing to relieve congestion across the nation’s complex shipping supply chain as it threatens to disrupt the holiday season for millions of Americans. With just over 10 weeks until Christmas, the White House is leaning heavily on port operators, transportation companies and labor unions to work around the clock unloading ships and hauling cargo to warehouses around the country. Biden will meet virtually Wednesday with industry leaders before delivering a speech on the administration’s efforts to address the bottlenecks. The supply-chain mess risks creating new economic and political turbulence for Biden in the coming months. Empty...

Rising inflation is expected to lead to a sizeable increase in Social Security's annual cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, for 2022. Exactly how much will be revealed Wednesday morning after a Labor Department report on inflation during September, a data point used in the final calculation. Over the last 10 years, the Social Security COLA has averaged about 1.7% annually as inflation remained low. But the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has triggered rising prices for a wide range of goods and services, and that's expected to translate to bigger checks for retirees. Policymakers say the COLA works to preserve...

A new personality construct has been defined that describes people who persistently see themselves as victims within interpersonal conflicts. The research was published in Personality and Individual Differences. Study authors Rahav Gabay and team describe how the social world is satiated with interpersonal transgressions that are often unpleasant and seemingly unwarranted, such as being interrupted when speaking. While some people can easily brush off these moments of hurt, others tend to ruminate over them and persistently paint themselves as a victim. The authors present this feeling of being the victim as a novel personality construct that influences how people make...

Sitting in the Manhattan office of her then-husband’s gender counselor, Karen Ranney was taken aback by the suggestion that the couple’s love life would dramatically improve once he transitioned into a woman. “She mentioned various methods and equipment we could use,” the 64-year-old mother of two told The Post. “She said, ‘You might find it very sexy.’ ” Ranney, a former professional dancer who had reluctantly attended the consultation, replied: “I’ve known homosexuals, bisexuals and lesbians in the dance world, and I’m not closed-minded. “But I’m plain Jane, the girl next door, and I know it’s not for me.” The...

New Shepard’s 18th mission, NS-18, will lift off on Wednesday, October 13, carrying four astronauts, Dr. Chris Boshuizen, Glen de Vries, Audrey Powers, and William Shatner, to space and back.

(Reuters) - Texas Governor Greg Abbott's ban on COVID-19 vaccine mandates will likely be superseded by the Biden administration plan to require shots for workers, but the dueling rules could take months to sort out in court, creating uncertainty for employers with business in the state. The Republican governor signed an executive order on Monday banning private employers and other entities from imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates, which he said threatened an economic recovery by disrupting the workforce.Some large employers are betting that federal law and President Joe Biden's vaccine mandates will trump Abbott's executive order. "Companies recognize they have to...

Do you trust the government or other people? Hardly a week goes by without another Democrat mayor, San Fran’s Breed or D.C.'s Bowser, another Democrat member of Congress like Tlaib or Pelosi, or even Joe Biden, flouting their own mask mandates in public. There’s also no great reason to believe that they’re abiding by their own vaccine mandates. Not after it was revealed that Governor Newsom, fresh from his French Laundry scandal, hadn’t vaccinated his daughter despite mandating vaccines for children her age. But the more rules there are, the fewer of them apply to the rulers. The two consistent...