Free Republic

Ever wonder why prices are rising so fast? One reason is that with rapidly rising energy prices under the Biden Administration, the costs are getting passed-through to consumers in the form of higher prices. According to the Cass Corp Freight Index, the total spent in December on shipping goods to their customers in the US spiked by 43.6% from December 2020 to December 2021. Not surprising since energy prices over the past year have soared by almost 50%. But at the same time, the Baltic Dry index (The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is a shipping and trade index created by...

Will You Only Be Allowed To Carry Smart Guns In The Near Future?

Pope Francis has sent an encouraging letter to an American nun thanking her for her 50 years of ministry to LGBTQ Catholics, more than two decades after she was investigated and censured by the Vatican for her work. In his letter dated Dec. 10, Francis wrote that Sister Jeannine Gramick has not been afraid of “closeness” and without condemning anyone had the “tenderness” of a sister and a mother. “Thank you, Sister Jeannine, for all your closeness, compassion and tenderness,” he wrote. He also noted her “suffering ... without condemning anyone.” Gramick, who lives just outside of Washington, D.C., in...

Although I myself have not been vaccinated (more on that shortly), I have never been remotely anti-vax, nor have I ever downplayed the lethal nature of the virus. Not for a second. As I wrote in my very first article on COVID on March 2, 2020, “There is no denying the seriousness of the virus. “As Bill Gates noted in the New England Journal of Medicine on February 28, ‘In the past week, Covid-19 has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.’ And even at this early stage, ‘Covid-19 has already caused 10 times as...

Kittitas County leaders revealed Wednesday that the Washington State Department of Transportation refused assistance to clear snow from roadways in the region over the county’s lack of a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for its workers. According to a press release from the county, the state’s own vaccine mandate saw WSDOT terminate 48 employees who were previously tasked with “maintenance and snow removal in Kittitas County.” Days after the arrival of significant snowfall in early January, Kittitas County’s Department of Public Works says it “offered assistance [to WSDOT] to clear State roadways,” and that its offer was refused “due to Kittitas County...

If California is ever going to achieve true equity, the state must require parents to give away their children. ... Fathers and mothers with greater wealth and education are more likely to transfer these advantages to their children, compounding privilege over generations. As a result, children of less advantaged parents face an uphill struggle, social mobility has stalled, and democracy has been corrupted. .. My solution — making raising your own children illegal — is simple, and while we wait for the legislation to pass, we can act now: the rich and poor should trade kids, and homeowners might swap...

San Francisco home that has zero bedrooms and has been described as “the worst house on the best block” has sold for nearly $2m.

Paul Hodgkins, according to Joe Biden’s Justice Department, is a domestic terrorist. A working-class man from Tampa, Hodgkins committed what Democrats and the media consider a murderous crime comparable to flying a packed jetliner into a skyscraper or detonating a truck filled with explosives under a crowded federal building. Paul Hodgkins entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. What exactly did Hodgkins do on that day of infamy? He followed a group of like-minded Donald Trump supporters SNIP When he entered the sacred Senate chambers, Hodgkins carried with him a weapon so offensive that the mere sight of the...

Nests of icefish. Credit: AWI OFOBS Team Researchers detect around 60 million nests of Antarctic icefish over a 240 square kilometers area in the Weddell Sea. Near the Filchner Ice Shelf in the south of the Antarctic Weddell Sea, a research team has found the world’s largest fish breeding area known to date. A towed camera system photographed and filmed thousands of nests of icefish of the species Neopagetopsis ionah on the seabed. The density of the nests and the size of the entire breeding area suggest a total number of about 60 million icefish breeding at the time of...

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The nation is in the middle of a pandemic that is becoming endemic as the omicron variant lessens serious cases. This past week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted that a Kaiser Permanente study in Southern California found omicron has a 91% reduction in the risk of death compared to the delta variant. It has a 74% reduction in intensive care unit admissions and a 53% reduction in symptomatic hospitalization. No one in the country with the omicron variant is on a mechanical ventilator. This is all good news. But as omicron spreads, small businesses have had to...

An illustration of antibodies attacking neurons. (Kateryna Kon/Science Photo Library) ***************************************************************************+ Multiple sclerosis – an autoimmune disease that affects the brain and spinal cord – may emerge after infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). An estimated 90 to 95 percent of people catch EBV, also called human herpesvirus 4, by the time they reach adulthood, according to the clinical resource UpToDate. In children, the virus typically causes an asymptomatic or very mild infection, but in teens and young adults, EBV can cause infectious mononucleosis, better known as "mono." Despite EBV being a commonly-caught virus, there's evidence to suggest that infections with...

The Chinese state propaganda outlet Global Times reported on Thursday that authorities in the locked-down metropolis of Xi’an had shut down two hospitals for three months, despite the Chinese coronavirus situation there being so severe that authorities largely ban people from leaving their homes. The two hospitals — Xi’an Gaoxin Hospital and Xi’an International Medical Center Hospital — were implicated in separate cases of patients enduring severe health conditions losing their lives because the hospitals refused to treat them. “With a weak sense of responsibility, both hospitals failed to fulfill their duty to rescue the wounded and save lives, and...

The Republican Party is a 'front for a terrorist movement,' MSNBC contributor and controversial political scientist Dr. Jason Johnson argued on the network Thursday, comparing the GOP to a 'terror cell.' Dr. Johnson made an appearance on 'Deadline: White House,' where he proceeded to make the brazen comparison while discussing the relationship between former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party as the 2024 presidential election draws ever near. Dr. Johnson, who is an associate professor of communication and journalism at HBCU Morgan State University, referred to Trump as 'the bad guy' and called the Republican Party itself a 'front...

Journalist Carlos Ferrara collapses pic.twitter.com/QDHhHbU5HN — The Juggernaut (@TheJuggernaut88) January 14, 2022 https://twitter.com/TheJuggernaut88/status/1481783225928552452 Buenos Aires Channel 9 reporter Carlos Ferrara goes down live on air. Queremos llevar tranquilidad sobre la salud de nuestro compañero, el periodista Carlos Ferrara, quién sufrió una descompensación al aire y fue asistido por el SAME pic.twitter.com/VYWB5YvKYc — Telenueve (@telenueveC9) January 13, 2022

Do we all get it that as of yesterday, Joe Biden is officially a LAME DUCK?Let's look at the facts as of today, shall we? 1. Build Back Broke --- DEAD. At least as of now and assuming Joe Manchin, who typically folds like a cheap suit on everything else, actually holds his ground here.2. Changing the Senate Fillibuster Rules so the Dem's can rig elections in their favor forever --- DEAD. Krysten Sinema, a Democrat is showing she has more balls than just about the entire Republican Party combined. That is, assuming she hold her ground as well.3. Biden's...

resident Joe Biden delivered another one of those COVID-19 speeches Thursday morning. It was the languid Joe today, more reminiscent of a Franklin Roosevelt fireside chat than the absurdly torrid speech he delivered in Atlanta this week that would have made the always bombastic Louisiana Gov. Huey Long appears placid. Biden may think he’s doing an excellent job at playing the good cop, bad cop routine, but in both roles he not only appears unhinged, but always struggling to grasp the issue at hand. Thursday was no exception. Biden gently chided the unvaccinated whom he continues to blame for the...

he intended role of representative central government is to fill vacuums -- to formulate and implement constructive policy towards the resolution of issues only when such cannot be achieved at a grassroots level. SNIP We are guilty of being a systemically racist nation, fueled by white supremacy and patriarchy. Riots are “what people do.” Equity trumps merit. Identity politics trumps unity. Cancel culture precludes conversation. Criminal behavior is acceptable. Income inequality is a crime against the people. Hysteria and fear are the proper response to COVID. American imperialism justifies open immigration. The January 6 “insurrection” heralds the downfall of democracy....

America has made a habit of exporting democracy at the point of the bayonet, be it by fomenting war or agitating for color-coded, plant-based revolutions, blessed and backed by the duopoly. While not as lethal, cultural trends and products exported can be toxic, too. They, moreover, displace and contaminate indigenous culture. To wit, Wokeism is made in America, is entirely toxic, and, sadly, suffers no supply-chain disruptions in its spread abroad. In case you’re not awake to it, woke is the current state-of-being in America. In particular, to be woke in America is to be anti-white and to be anti-white...

Biden and his team obviously don’t have time to address inflation, the border, or crime. They are too busy lying about “voting rights” laws that open the door to massive cheating, spreading lies about systemic racism, targeting parents and seeking to destroy their political opponents. President Trump’s policies basically consisted of smaller government, fewer regulations, lower taxes, and energy independence. The results of Trump’s policies were good economic growth, reasonable energy prices, wages rising, especially for those at the bottom, and record low unemployment rates for all races and people at all education levels. Energy independence gave all people affordable...