Free Republic

A Bluetooth phone designed to evoke the carefree days of early childhood has been found to instead threaten the very adult prospect of being surveilled in your home. The phone is the Fisher Price Chatter Special Edition, a device that adds Bluetooth and a speaker to the smiling, brightly coloured, wheeled, rotary dial phone on which it's previously been possible to make calls only by using one's imagination. The phone also bears the name “60G LTE” – which stands for “60 great years, Let’s Talk Everywhere” and an infomercial for the handset opens with “The past has finally arrived” before...

2021 has been a very weird year. Inflation has boomed (highest in 40 years) after the election of Joe Biden as President of the USA (called it Bidenflation). Then we have The Federal Reserve barely acting on the booming inflation (keeping rates at 25 basis points while withdrawing the COVID-related monetary stimulus). Then we have the rise of cryptocurrency Ethereum and the surge meme stocks such game store GameStop, a favorite of the internet site Reddit. Given the volatility of GameStop (Reddit-inspired), you can see the strange shape of GameStop’s volatility surface. By contrast, gold is now where it was...

One morning this week, I went to run some errands near my home in the Judean mountains. In addition to being cold out, there have been an increased number of security/terrorist incidents around Israel in recent weeks, leaving several dead and injured, Israelis edgy and on guard, and many more soldiers on duty guarding us. Of course, it’s unspeakable that we should have to live with the threat of terrorists stabbing and shooting at civilians, or ramming their cars into Israelis on the side of the road. But it’s also sad that in response, many more young men and women...

The Nevada Supreme Court recently issued a ruling upholding the immunity of firearm and ammunition makers from civil lawsuits, when their products are used criminally, under Nevada law. The lawsuit stems from the criminal mass murder perpetrated in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017. Many people are desperate to blame the instruments of crime for the crime. There are deep pockets to consider. Gun manufacturers have significant assets. Dead criminals do not.Gun Makers Don’t Pull TriggersA Federal statute The Protection of Legal Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), protects manufacturers, distributors, and retailers on the federal side.Nevada has a separate state...

Just reading this on a Twitter thread (see link for document), the Alberta (Canada) Health System is asking (begging?) the 1400 doctors and nurses they dismissed because of vaccine refusal to return - but they will be forced to be tested frequently.

On December 23 (and just in time for the holidays) the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bizarrely gave a Christmas present to combustible cigarettes in the form of a modified risk tobacco product (MRTP) order for 22nd Century Group, Inc.’s VLN cigarettes. The MRTP order is an enhancement to the already-authorized premarket tobacco product application (PMTA), which the FDA ordered in December of 2019. It doesn’t make sense that a deadly combustible cigarette would be classified as “modified risk.” In the news release, the agency responsible for protecting American public health claims that 22nd Century Group’s products “help reduce...

The arrival of Omicron is causing COVID déjà vu in the U.S. With cases surging, many political leaders are considering lockdowns right before the holidays. In New York, the Rockettes have announced the closing of their Christmas Spectacular, and the fate of NYC’s annual New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square is in question. Meanwhile, existing vaccines against COVID seem to have no effect on the spread of this variant — and even the New York Times admits it. Pfizer is already indicating that it will use the occasion to urge a “fourth dose” of the vaccine. In New...

White coat supremacy -- a major threat to freedom and democracy in America. Francis Collins, the first appointed National Institutes of Health director to serve more than one president, stepped down on December 19, leaving behind a record open to question. For example, in an October 8, 2020 email, Collins told Dr. Anthony Fauci, “there needs to be a quick and devastating public takedown of its premises. I don’t see that on line yet. Is it underway?” Collins’ target was the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by more than 900,000 epidemiologists and public health scientists to show concern about the damaging...

Christmas is a season, not just a day. And it only begins on Dec. 25. The Rockefeller Center tree and elves on shelves and all the rest can be deceiving. We were merely preparing for Christmas, and are now celebrating it, at least until the Epiphany. Others will celebrate until the feast of the Presentation in early February. It's a season that renews Christians' faith and hope, and reminds them of their capacity for joy. "There is no reason to lose heart or give up and be depressed," Jesuit priest Alfred Delp wrote from a Nazi prison cell in 1944....

No, but a recent YouGov poll does prove that about half of us are. Is America officially a nation of sheep? No, but a recent YouGov poll does prove that about half of us are. It showed that Democrats are both more fearful than the rest of us of COVID and more authoritarian when it comes to mandating vaccines for those who have chosen not to submit to the jab, the “Fauci-ouchy” as Michael Knowles calls it. So, one can conclude that democrats are indeed more sheeplike. The Democrat party was not always scaredy-cats, motivated by fear and a will...

Actor Alec Baldwin has posted a video on Instagram days before Christmas where he appears to wallow in self-pity over the 'really tough time' he has been having in recent weeks after accidentally shooting dead a cinematographer on the set of Rust. Baldwin, 63, uploaded a video on himself speaking directly into the camera two months after the tragic shooting on his Western movie set in New Mexico, when the actor accidentally shot and killed Halyna Hutchins, 42. In a three-minute long rambling video, Baldwin appears despondent and weary as he tells followers how the only thing he is living...

All I want for Christmas is… Covid? Our twenty-something son came home for the holidays with the sniffles and we had him take a home Covid test, which came up positive. He’s going to the health department today for a formal test, but it does appear that we have an uninvited guest in the house. My wife, 16-year-old son, and myself are not vaccinated. We are going to keep our distance and take some basic precautions. We will also be consulting our MD for advice and get ourselves tested after a suitable incubation period. We are taking zinc, vitamin D,...

Australia’s chief pharmacist says the public “just need to accept” they will have to take regular vaccine booster shots and continue wearing masks for “many years” to come. Asserting that the bio-security police state will become a permanent fixture, Trent Twomey, National President of the Pharmacy Guild, says Aussies will have to get a COVID booster jab “every six months” if that’s what experts tell them to do. “I think booster shots, just like your annual influenza shot [are] something we just need to accept, its [Covid-19] not going to be with us for many weeks and months, it’s going...

America has two paths before it—the path of fear and neuroses versus the path of courage and mental health—a choice it must make sooner rather than later. America’s bipolar approaches to COVID—with one side seeking totalitarianism, health paranoia, and division, and the other side seeking personal liberty—remind us that the lessons of history are not easily learned. If we are to return to a normal America, one that encourages people to be mentally resilient when it comes to their physical health and is predicated upon health autonomy, we have very little time to stop the modern-day American despots. The 20th...

VIDEOPublic servants getting into the Christmas spirit as you can see.

I've heard it said that all CRT wants to do is to look at American history through the lens of race. But no, it's much worse than that. My grandmother's friend was decapitated in front of her because she made the mistake of not bowing before the Japanese officer as he walked by. I sit on the bed, listening, as she tells me the story. My grandmother's sullen eyes stare out the sliding glass door of our Los Angeles home. Her vegetable garden is directly outside, but she's looking at something farther away. It was hot that day, she recalls....

It's been well-documented that allies of Vice President Kamala Harris are frustrated with how she has been utilized and treated by the Biden administration. In November, CNN reported that Harris' team believes Biden's team hasn't provided enough support while giving her tasks that put her in "no-win political situation[s]." Now, some of Harris' allies are dropping their anonymity and going on the record critiquing the administration's treatment of the vice president. In a New York Times story published Thursday, two Harris allies - prominent San Francisco Democratic donor Mark Buell and, more notably, Rep. Karen Bass, who was in consideration...

As a Christmas present to statistics lovers, the Census Bureau has released its estimates of the population of the nation and the 50 states as of July 1, 2021. The Bureau admits up front that, due to COVID, its numbers are subject to more uncertainty than usual. But overall, they provide important clues as to how Americans have coped with the pandemic, and how it may have changed the trajectory of national growth and contraction. A comparison of these estimates with the April 1, 2020 census covers almost exactly 15 of the first 16 months of the COVID pandemic. The...

Evidence suggests there are powerful actors among us whose intentions, capabilities, and disregard for anyone else effectively render them implacable enemies of humanity. In the movie Aliens Newt, who has witnessed her family’s grisly end and survived being hunted by their monstrous killers, asks Ripley why adults tell little kids there are no monsters. Events since 2016 make that question more resonant now than at the movie’s release. Evidence suggests there are powerful actors among us whose intentions, capabilities, and disregard for anyone else effectively render them implacable enemies of humanity. No one sane wants to reach that conclusion; no...

Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, echoing the complaint of the Democratic Party establishment, believes that Sen. Joe Manchin engaged in an "egregious breach" of President Joe Biden's trust by refusing to support his welfare expansion plans. "The idea that Joe Manchin says that he can't explain this back home to his people is a farce," Ocasio-Cortez said. Elsewhere, Bernie Sanders similarly noted that Manchin would have to do a lot of explaining in West Virginia after abandoning Build Back Better. The reality, as they know, is that the Democrats' legislation is probably more unpopular in Manchin's home state -- with 74%...