Free Republic

A few weeks into Joe Biden’s presidency, I had the following thought: How many articles, opinion pieces and stories can be written and/or reported about one person’s utter stupidity? At some point, the sheer repetition of pointing out Scranton Joe’s uselessness as a leader, speaker, role model and human being would become background noise. It’s now just accepted that this man has no discernable virtues as a leader, no abilities that come to the fore, and is possibly the most annoying blowhard that has ever been in government. None of this is a revelation to anyone who has been awake...

The Los Angeles District Attorney announced Tuesday that a man is facing four separate felony cases for stealing over a dozen cars within a three month period. Jose Enrique Esquivel faces 14 felony counts for auto thefts between the March 30 and June 15. Esquivel, 24, was reportedly arrested on March 30 for stealing a truck and then immediately released following coronavirus emergency bail schedule – which sought to reduce jail populations during the pandemic. “The defendant was again arrested for either driving or attempting to steal a truck but released on April 28, May 8, twice on May 14,...

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Los Angeles police have arrested 14 suspects in connection with a series of smash-and-grab robberies at local stores last month. Police say there were at least 11 such robberies around Los Angeles in the week leading up to Thanksgiving, resulting in the theft of some $338,000 in retail goods.

Secret Service records confirm the details of Hunter Biden’s trips described in a series of emails obtained and published by the New York Post. Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said Hunter Biden received Secret Service detail from January 2009 to early July 2014. In one email reported by the Post, sent from Hunter Biden to his business partner Devon Archer dated Apr. 13, 2014, Hunter refers to a trip to Houston slated for “tmrw.” Secret Service records released by Johnson and Grassley corroborate details of the trip with a travel entry from Hunter Biden for...

The Supreme Court, as this is written, is hearing oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, challenging Mississippi's law banning, with a few exceptions, abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. There's a powerful argument that the Court can't logically uphold this statute, which is less restrictive than most other nations' abortion laws, without overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that overturned all 50 states' abortion laws. What is the likely political effect of such a decision? Democrats backing abortion rights predict a "revolution" of outraged voters ousting anti-abortion Republicans in elections for state legislatures...

Universities and corporations are desperate to hire people whose sole job is to tell you how racist you are. In a recent discussion about the "wokeness" situation in American universities, Prof. Kimberly Johnson presented a table showing the salary compensation data for DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) personnel at Michigan State University (MSU) in 2018–2019. It contains 82 full-time positions ranging from a modest $42,000 salary for the administrative assistant to $408,000 for chief diversity officer (that's just above the salary of the POTUS, at $400,000). The total annual compensation for DEI staff at MSU is $10.6 million. Isn't that too...

On Thursday's Morning Joe, Scarborough mocked the masculinity of Republicans, while by inference boasting of his own machismo. [snip] He then turned to Mark Meadows, who has been described as writing "fake news" reports in his new book where he claimed that former President Trump had tested positive for Covid prior to his first debate with then-candidate Joe Biden. That, in turn, led a smirking Scarborough to do a cutesy little limbo with words: "These guys put their masculinity in a lockbox for Donald Trump. There is another body part: I'd like to use it. Rush Limbaugh used it. I...

At last month's National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, I used my speech to criticize "Fusionism," the postwar conservative movement's default political alliance built upon an attendant "Fusionist" political philosophy, and instead argue on behalf of an alternative path forward. Fusionism, as formulated and popularized by the midcentury theorist Frank Meyer, "fused" together economic laissez-faire dogma with privately held social and cultural conservatism. Fusionism remains today the philosophical lodestar for many of the leading institutions of Conservatism, Inc., such as National Review and The Heritage Foundation. In the speech, I criticized Fusionism as "effete, limp and unmasculine" because the political...

There is a grave environmental crisis afoot. Mind you, it isn’t the oft-discussed “climate crisis”— but a threat that’s conveniently overlooked: radical preservationism. Preservationists, namely the far-Left and their environmentalist allies, have falsely presented themselves as true conservationists. But they’ve finally been unmasked. How? Anytime their policies are enacted, the results are ruinous to both people and nature. Take raging wildfires out West. A lack of forest management, due to preservationist policies, has led to the destruction of nearly 20 percent of sequoia trees in the last two years. That’s unconscionable. Here are some additional examples of destructive preservationist environmentalist...

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley drew on her native South Carolina’s struggles with racist violence during her time as governor, arguing Thursday that the Republican Party is best positioned to lead the country alongside a continued diversification of its ranks. “Our message is the right message,” she said during a speech in Charleston. “It’s a message of hope, a message of faith — faith in ourselves and our country. The more we spread that message, the more people we’ll add to the Republican tent.” Haley’s remarks came at The Citadel, where a...

On December 1, 2021, at a White House press conference, Tony Fauci was asked to comment about the "endgame" of COVID-19. After blabbering nonsensically and unscientifically about the pre-eminent role of his beloved — and pathetically leaky — vaccines, Fauci finally proclaimed, "I promise you that this will end." Needless to say, St. Anthony of Vaccinia didn't deign to tell us when it would end, and he scurried away from the lectern even before the barrage of follow-up questions could be fully hollered. Talk about a cliffhanger. Anthony Fauci, the diminutive egomaniac who declared, "I represent science," the éminence grise...

Let me count the ways: No. 1: China's actions and the virus have stunned the world. The Western world has concerned itself with the origin of the virus without even questioning what China did at the beginning. The Chinese blocked travel from Wuhan to the rest of their country but allowed travel from Wuhan to the rest of the world, deliberately killing millions and destroying the economies of their adversaries. They did this without firing a shot. No. 2: The Democrats' actions were just as bad. Even after it became known that the virus was deadly to the elderly, Democrat...

When a faultline breaks open on earth’s surface it reveals the presence of an underlying structural discontinuity that was previously unsuspected by those casually passing by. Those who come across it suddenly realize that things are not what they seem and that powerful forces are at work under their feet which can at any point erupt in scenes of great upheaval. Sometimes even the most adroit deceivers and manipulators commit an act that is so utterly illogical and patently senseless that it breaks open a deep fissure in their narrative which reveals the immensity and depth of their fraud to...

G. Steven Pigeon – once a powerful figure in Western New York politics who flaunted his close ties to Andrew Cuomo and Bill and Hillary Clinton and also advised billionaire Tom Golisano – now wears orange jail garb behind bars as an accused child rapist. His prominence as a political kingmaker in Erie County had ebbed over time, but then unraveled three years ago as he first pleaded guilty in state court to bribing a judge and then later in federal court to making an illegal campaign contribution to Cuomo. But six counts related to accusations he raped a child...

Rand Paul tells Maria that Fauci should go to prison for 5 years. Clip...

...Under the version of the Build Back Better Act that passed the House last month, new offshore drilling would be permanently prohibited in three major regions: the Atlantic, the Pacific and the eastern Gulf of Mexico... ...Other policies aimed at limiting oil and gas development have inspired fierce partisan divides on Capitol Hill. But coastal lawmakers of both parties have rallied around preventing drilling off their coastlines.. ...Still, the U.S. oil and gas industry has expressed serious concerns about the limitations on offshore drilling... ...Asked yesterday whether he supported royalty hikes, Manchin told reporters: "I think adjustments need to be...

Micro-sized cameras have great potential to spot problems in the human body and enable sensing for super-small robots, but past approaches captured fuzzy, distorted images with limited fields of view.Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have overcome these obstacles with an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported in a paper published Nov. 29 in Nature Communications.Enabled by a joint design of the camera’s hardware and computational processing, the...

...As a diversity admissions officer, he later traveled the country recruiting students to West Point from underrepresented communities. “It was so hard to tell people like, ‘Yeah, you can trust the military,’ and then their kids Google and go ‘Why is there a barracks named after Lee?’” he said.... ...Only 6% of nominations to the Army, Air Force and Naval academies made by the current members of Congress went to Black candidates, even though 15% of the population aged 18 to 24 is Black, according to a March report by the Connecticut Veterans’ Legal Center. Eight percent of congressional nominations...

One of my older jazz songs played on (synthesized) koto and guzheng, because why the h*ll not?

SPIN THE WHEEL MAKE A DEAL..FAUCI’S WHEEL OF MISFORTUNE We’ve all heard Biden’s mumbled phrase, ‘Build Back Better.’ Building back implies something is broken, but many things were still working under President Trump. Our southern border was under control. A wall was being built. The country was energy self-sufficient. There were jobs and a free flow of goods. The price of gas at the pumps was the lowest it had been in years. A pipeline was being built. There was some semblance of law and order. Trump chucked the climate change bunk and eliminated the trans nonsense from our military.