Free Republic

On this date in 1818, the last ruler of the first state established by the Al Saud who rule the modern state of Saudi Arabia lost his head to the Ottoman Sultan. The Ottoman state and its (largely independent) vassal Egypt begged to dispute the Wahhabi tribe’s authority in the Arabian peninsula (and its proclivity for raiding Ottoman caravans) and made war on the House of Saud throughout the 1810’s. The Battle of ad-Dir’iyah in 1818 settled the matter, with our day’s principal Abdullah I surrendering to the Egyptian general Ibrahim Pasha. We pick up the action from the third-hand,...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday said to reporters that “it would be a great idea” for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to switch to the Republican Party. The comment came after McConnell and Manchin had a meeting as negotiations continue for President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, The Associated Press reported. “As you know, he likes to talk,” McConnell said of Manchin. “It would not surprise you to know that I’ve suggested for years it would be a great idea, representing a deep red state like West Virginia, for him to come over to our side.”

In February 2020 when the fight against COVID was ramping up and the CDC was taking measures to address the pandemic, the agency was of course tasked to develop test kits under the Emergency Use Authorization Act. The kits were designed and mass produced for distribution to medical labs across the country. In record time, the CDC was able to develop a plausible kit to deploy. But there was only one problem. Specific flaws within test kits caused a massive flood of FALSE POSITIVES. Those numbers were then used by the Globalist Media to catapult their narrative of PANIC and...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals declined Wednesday to hear “en banc” the case against President Joe Biden’s rule forcing large private employers to vaccinate or COVID-19 test their employees. The Daily Wire, first to challenge the Biden mandate in the Sixth Circuit, is the lead plaintiff in the case against the federal rule after the Sixth Circuit was picked by lottery to consolidate and oversee the rule’s numerous legal challenges. The Daily Wire and others petitioned the court to hear the case “en banc,” or in front of all 16 judges on the court, for a vote on the...

WHO IS "etabeta"? The most art-knowledgable of all regular responders to these threads. Her contributions have been so entertaining and informative that I asked her to grace us with her favorite Christian artworks. After some persistent persuasion, she acquiesced and delivered these, grouped by artist, with this explanation: "There are so many more paintings I love but tried to refrain myself..." BENOZZO GOZZOLI46 BENOZZO GOZZOLI "The Three Kings Approach Bethlehem"47 BENOZZO GOZZOLI "The Procession of the Magi"48 Detail Source SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO49 SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO "Visitation" LEONARDO DA VINCI50 LEONARDO DA VINCI "Virgin of the Rocks"51 LEONARDO DA VINCI "Virgin...

President Biden sounded like he’d been watching “Game of Thrones” as he warned Thursday that the unvaccinated “will soon overwhelm” US hospitals and vaccine refusers will experience “a winter of severe illness and death.” “It’s here now and it’s spreading and it’s going to increase,” Biden said of the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 at the White House, seated near his chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci. “For [the] unvaccinated, we are looking at a winter of severe illness and death — the unvaccinated, for themselves, their families and the hospitals they will soon overwhelm,” Biden said. He urged people...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemLuke 225 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:...

Parents outraged over school staff who allegedly disguised the names of Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) clubs at a California middle school are planning to voice their concerns at a school board meeting this week in Salinas. Jessica Konen has alleged that school staff indoctrinated her then 12-year-old daughter in an LGBTQ club disguised as an “Equality Club.” She told The Epoch Times she plans to speak at the Dec. 15 meeting at Spreckels Union School District (SUSD) during public comments. Two teachers at Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas were recorded coaching other teachers to conceal the nature of LGTBQ clubs...

On Thursday’s broadcast of “CNN Tonight,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said that he thinks coronavirus will eventually become an endemic virus like the flu, but “Right now, COVID’s dominating our lives.” De Blasio responded to a tweet arguing that we can’t defeat the virus, but we should treat it like the flu by stating, “I agree don’t freak out. I agree one day it can and should be like the flu. And the flu takes some lives too. The flu’s not nothing. But the flu can be controlled. We all get our flu shots and life...

COVID is over. Oh, not with Anthony Fauci. Not with the media. Not with the sour-faced Karens ... But with normal people, especially outside the big urban areas, it’s over. The Atlantic scandalized its readers by reporting ... Where I Live, No One Cares About COVID.. No one cares. ... And with good reason... especially after the experience of the Diamond Princess cruise ship suggested that COVID was a lot less scary than we were told. ... the damages wrought by lockdowns ... have been worse than those wrought by COVID itself. ... People have seen through this, and they’re...

In June 2020, Bloods gang member Alexis Dubouchet allegedly tried to kill Samuel Diaz, then his supervisor at the New York City Housing Authority. According to police, Dubouchet used a folding knife to stab Diaz in the back of his neck and twice in the head, yelling, “You wanna f- -k with my life?” Although Dubouchet was a career criminal with 20 prior arrests and was charged with attempted murder in the attack on Diaz, he was freed on bail. Now prosecutors say he murdered someone while awaiting trial in the Diaz case, allegedly shooting Anthony Rios, 38, in the...

Do you remember Armand Hammer? If you're over 50, you may. Hammer was a business tycoon who died in 1990. He was most famous for his deal-making with the Soviet Union. Hammer would cut business deals directly with the Kremlin. This was unusual; most U.S. businesses had very few dealings with America's greatest adversary. Today, by contrast, many American multinational businesses see their growth as much or more tied to China, our new primary adversary, as they do to America. I began my career as a young lawyer on a special congressional committee set up to investigate the transfer of...

You've probably heard the saying: Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. In this day and age, those who really can't become Master Class instructors on how to fail. Scholars beware: Hillary Clinton's new course on "the power of resilience" is not for the faint of heart. Completing the three-and-a-half hour Master Class requires an extraordinary amount of preexisting intellectual resilience. Your humble reviewer, for example, was forced to confront his own lack of resilience when his failure to overcome the soul-destroying tedium of Hillary's lectures caused him to miss his original deadline. (Disclaimer: Unless you're getting paid to...

Right before Thanksgiving Day, House Democrats passed Build Back Better, one of the most misguided and ill-timed bills in the history of congressional legislation. At a time when an average of 1,300 Americans a day are dying from Covid-19 and tens of millions are battling chronic diseases from cancer to diabetes, the bill would discourage the development of lifesaving drugs. America's seniors will suffer the most as medicine cabinets soon turn distressingly bare. Build Back Better would set drug reimbursements far below the market-based prices that Medicare, the nation's largest insurance program, currently pays. Cheaper drugs sound great, in theory....

Sen. Elizabeth Warren just made the mistake of going after Tesla CEO and eccentric billionaire Elon Musk. He promptly destroyed her in response. The conflict began when the progressive politician and “tax the rich” crusader tweeted out a Boston Globe news article about Musk being named Time Magazine Person of the Year for 2021. “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” the senator wrote. (Warren is likely referencing illegally leaked IRS files that show Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018 through legal tax...

Thanks to inflation, the average American household is much worse-off financially in 2021 than in recent years. In fact, according to a new report from the Penn-Wharton Budget Model, “inflation in 2021 will require the average U.S. household to spend around $3,500 more in 2021 to achieve the same level of consumption of goods and services as in recent previous years (2019 or 2020).” In other words, due to inflation, Americans’ standard of living is rapidly plummeting. What’s more, the report proves yet again that inflation disproportionately affects lower- and middle-income families compared to high-income households. As the report states,...

Last week the corrupt media’s penchant for spinning all things conservative caused a near-fatal case of whiplash. The left began by chastising conservatives for supposedly building “its own echo chamber,” but by the next day, when news broke that Devin Nunes was resigning from Congress to serve as the CEO of Donald Trump’s new media company, the complained-of conservative ecosystem merely represented grift. Both narratives are false, however, which is precisely why leftists peddled them so hard. Axios launched the “echo chamber” accusation with its article titled, “Right wing builds its own echo chamber.” “Conservatives are aggressively building their own...

Symptoms associated with the Covid omicron variant could be similar to those that normally accompany a cold. Experts are warning that the strain could be easily mistaken for a mild, everyday illness. The Zoe Covid Study analyses thousands of Covid symptoms uploaded to an app by the British public. This initial analysis found similarities between the delta and the omicron variants, suggesting the latter hasn't mutated back into the more flu-like symptoms of previous Covid strains. The team said that the top five symptoms reported in the Zoe app in those two different weeks were: Runny nose Headache Fatigue (either...

December 17, 2021 Friday of the 3rd week of Advent Saint Lazarus Church, Cyprus Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet.First readingGenesis 49:2,8-10 ©Until he comes, the sceptre will not pass from JudahJacob called his sons and said:‘Gather round, sons of Jacob, and listen;listen to Israel your father.Judah, your brothers shall praise you:you grip your enemies by the neck,your father’s sons shall do you homage,Judah is a lion cub,you climb back, my son, from your kill;like a lion he crouches and lies down,or a lioness: who dare rouse him?The sceptre shall not pass from Judah,nor the mace from between his feet,until he...

Dr. Fauci has decided that if people will not take the vaxx, the government will be forced to burn the Covid out, to save them. Heading into the third year of the pandemic, which has, for almost a year, ceased to be a pandemic, one might recognize it as something else altogether. Every variant stirs up panic, at least as much as the media and government officials can wring out of it, but I wonder if they know how badly they’re damaging themselves in the process. The longer they demand to shake the skeleton from the dark recesses of the...