Free Republic

It turns out that all of the “doom and gloomers” that were warning that we would eventually experience nightmarish inflation were right after all. In particular, vehicle prices have become exceedingly painful in recent months. Due to a crippling global shortage of computer chips, production of new vehicles is way down, and a lot of that demand has shifted into the used vehicle market. Over the past year, used vehicle prices have escalated at a pace that we have never seen before in our entire history, and things reached a crescendo during the month of October. If you can believe...

Days after Democrats conceded control of the Virginia House of Delegates to Republicans, they walked back that concession as two key races in which the GOP holds razor-thin leads appeared headed for recounts. As of Tuesday, vote counts show Republicans with 50 seats and holding slight leads in two additional seats that have still not been called by The Associated Press. Democrats have 47 seats and are leading in one other district that has not been called. In both districts where Republicans are leading, the margins are under 0.5%, which allows candidates to request state-funded recounts. In District 91, Democrat...

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Phillip Swagel said Tuesday that the office will start releasing estimates of portions of House Democrats' social-spending bill this week, and that a cost estimate of the full bill will come out "as soon as practicable." "The analysis of the bill’s many provisions is complicated, and CBO will provide a cost estimate for the entire bill as soon as practicable," Swagel said in a blog post on CBO's website. The comments come as a small group of moderate House Democrats has sought information about the cost of the bill from CBO prior to voting on...

Of all the intrusions on Americans’ civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic, mandates forcing those who have already had the virus to vaccinate anyway are the hardest to understand. By now, what has been known for centuries – that survival confers immunity on the survivor – has been borne out in numerous well-regarded studies on COVID-19 recovery. Yet government officials continue to disregard them, insisting COVID-19 survivors get the shot like everyone else. In September, the Biden Administration announced a mandatory vaccine policy that fails to recognize natural immunity. Notwithstanding his early assurances that vaccines would not be mandatory, President...

Former President Donald Trump took credit Monday night for Glenn Youngkin’s come-from-behind win in the Virginia gubernatorial race and told congressional Republicans that the path to victory is through his army of “MAGA” supporters. Trump spoke to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP’s re-election outfit, and told his audience that the party will not win back the White House in 2024 without appealing to his voters, according to the New York Times. The 45th president said Youngkin would not have been able to pull off last week’s shocking win over Democrat Terry McAuliffe without Trump supporters coming out...

COVID-19 hospitalizations have risen significantly in the Inland Empire and Central Valley, bringing new concerns about whether the shift represents a precursor to a wider spike in COVID-19 in California as the winter holidays approach.Across the state, both cases and hospitalizations hit a plateau after months of decline. Hospitalizations have remained fairly flat in some areas with relatively high vaccination rates, including the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County.

Once again Jimmy Carter can breathe easier as another layer of worthless, ineffectual, bigoted, racist flesh now separates him from being the worse president in the history of America. Obama earned that title on steroids; but records are made to be broken, and that brings me to "Dementia Joe Biden." Carter was and is a racist anti-civil rights crusader who loved to tell how his mama took care of their "nigras." Obama is a racist contradiction in terms and values whose wife redefines uncouth. He embraces Islam, but publicly admits to having a ravenous sexual appetite for white men. The...

This year has seen the largest increase ever in the number of concealed handgun permit holders—more than two million, for a total of 21.52 million. That is a 48 percent increase since 2016. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of NYSRPA v. Bruen, which has a chance to further increase this total and make permitting rules more similar across states. Six states now have more than 1 million permit holders: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Florida is the first state to have more than 2.5 million permits. Alabama has the highest rate of adults with...

A fly regurgitating digestive juices. (Carlos Ruiz/CC BY-ND) ====================================================================== Imagine you're at a picnic and just about to bite into your sandwich. Suddenly you spot a fly headed your way, homing in on your food with help from its compound eyes and antennae. It manages to escape your swatting, lands on the sandwich and then seems to throw up on it! It can look kind of gross, but the fly might be just airing out its own digested food, or spitting on yours. Most of the over 110,000 known fly species have no teeth, so they cannot chew solid food....

One court already has temporarily halted the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for private employers and legal battles are emerging across the nation as 27 states and multiple businesses and nonprofits sue to block the mandate on its likely path to the Supreme Court. Plaintiffs have brought lawsuits in federal appeals courts for the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 11th circuits as well as the one in Washington, D.C. The next step will be a “lottery” process to determine which federal circuit hears the case. Then, the federal government likely will file a motion to vacate the ruling Saturday by a...

A Vermont college has temporarily canceled student gatherings and in-person classes after linking Halloween parties to a COVID-19 outbreak on campus. St. Michael's College in Colchester has reported 77 positive cases in the past two weeks, after experiencing only a handful of cases previously in the semester, according to its COVID-19 dashboard. “We were doing really well as a community up to the point where there were numerous Halloween parties where students were unmasked and in close contact,” Lorraine Sterritt, the college's president, said in a statement Sunday.

If you listen to leftists, they'll endlessly repeat the assertion that Jan 6 was meant to overthrow the government. I cannot remember the last time a government was overthrown by a ragtag collection of unarmed people. Those participating in the protests have been arrested, many for the thinnest of accusations, and are in fact political prisoners. They are subject to inhumane conditions and frequently kept in solitary confinement for weeks. Julie Kelly of American Greatness has followed all of this this closely and documented the lies told about Jan 6 and spread by the left wing media. Revolver News has...

Former President Barack Obama called on world leaders to save the planet, but he couldn’t quite identify which country he was in. Mr. Obama’s speech Monday at the COP26 climate-change summit is being mocked for his reference to host Scotland as part of the “Emerald Isles,” which is a nickname for Ireland. " Since we’re in the Emerald Isles here let me quote the Bard, William Shakespeare,” Mr. Obama said. “‘What wound,’ he writes, ‘did ever heal but by degrees?’”

The district of Cuxhaven, Germany confirmed on Wednesday, November 3, 2021, that a 12-year-old child died two days after taking the Pfizer vaccine. Police are investigating and an autopsy was ordered due to the short interval between vaccination and death. The result of the autopsy is still pending and is expected to be released this week at the earliest. “The current status of the autopsy suggests a connection,” Kirsten von der Lieth, press spokeswoman for the district said about the vaccine and the child’s death. NDR reported, “As can be seen from the preliminary autopsy protocol, experts from the Forensic...

Since COP 26 is mostly devoid of facts, I will provide some basic information that can be used to answer the questions that follow.Facts from the last 150 years:CO2 atmospheric content has increased from around 280 PPM to over 410 PPM, up 40%.The world population has increased from around 1.3 billion to around 8 billion, up over 500 percent.Worldwide crude oil production has increased from around zero to over 95 million barrels per day. Up exponentiallyThe amount of coal and natural gas went up exponentially.The amount of methane from cows and oil wells went up exponentially.Worldwide cars and trucks on...

“I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a black neighborhood, or if an underpass was constructed such that a bus carrying mostly black and Puerto Rican kids to a beach — or that would have been — in New York was designed too low for it to pass by, that that obviously reflects racism that went into those design choices,” Buttigieg responded. “I don’t think we have anything to lose by confronting that simple reality,” he added. “And I...

Eli Crane and a number of other former Navy SEALs are running for Congress to take action for all Americans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42yypOEcTPU&t=2s

Laura Bush may be the same age as her husband, former President George W. Bush, but she still faced ageist remarks when they got engaged. Monday on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna, Jenna Bush Hager said her mother was the subject of a sexist critique before the couple married. Jenna was chatting with Hoda Kotb about Sarah Jessica Parker's remarks to Vogue about aging in Hollywood and the social media commentary she's seen as she gears up for the "Sex and the City" sequel series "And Just Like That…"

As Kyle Rittenhouse's prosecutors go into their grand facepalms, following the trial revelation from their star witness that just supported the 17-year-old murder defendant's claim to self-defense, it's pretty obvious the wretched case is now over. AT deputy editor Andrea Widburg has an excellent post today on that here.The short story here is that the kid was beset by Antifa thugs during the Kenosha, Wisconsin arson-and-looting riots last summer and ended up killing a couple of menacing Antifa-linked thugs who seemed to be trying to kill him first. The argument stands up, and even the guy who'd been aiming the...

President Joe Biden’s administration is sending notices to tens of thousands illegal immigrants who were released into the U.S. interior without being given a date to appear in court, the government confirmed to The Epoch Times. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “is mailing charging documents to place noncitizens in removal proceedings who have been paroled or released under prosecutorial discretion by Customs and Border Protection,” an ICE spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email. The illegal immigrants, numbering about 78,000, will receive packets of documents, including ones directing them to report to the ICE office closest to where they’re...