Free Republic

Brexit leader Nigel Farage has accused the European Union of rank hypocrisy for “funding Putin’s war machine”, as the bloc admitted to spending €35 billion on Russian gas since the invasion of Ukraine. Once again taking up the mantle of criticising the globalist bloc, Nigel ‘Mr Brexit’ Farage said that German and other EU member states are propping up the Russian economy with one hand while sanctioning the country not the other. “Not only is the Russian ruble back to where it was before the invasion, but the Germans keep buying huge volumes of gas and oil. Germany and...

We mailed our 1040-SR on February 2, 2022 at the airport post office. We normally receive our IRS refund direct-deposited by March 10. Like clockwork every year. Except this one. As of April 6, on "Where's My Refund", the IRS can't even tell us when they received our return, much less when our refund is likely to arrive. We have seven telephone numbers to the IRS yet none of them are answered by a live person. The Taxpayer Assistance Service automated message says if you leave a message it will take 4 weeks for them to return the call. The...

Government response to COVID in the form of business shutdowns resulted in massive job losses, then as governments opened the economy up again, job gains were incredible. The Hill had an article discussing the whipsaw in jobs entitled “Biden is delivering the fastest economic recovery in history. Why hasn’t anyone noticed?” Well, the US have gone from “fastest economic recovery in history” to real GDP growth of less than 1% (Atlanta Fed GDPNow for Q1). In addition, the flexible price CPI less food and energy is a whopping 20%. You can see “The Biden Miracle!” in the following chart. Hires...

USGA 2022 RULE CHANGES IN EFFECT FOR Senior GOLFERS Rule 9k.34– If a tree is between the ball and the hole, and the tree is deemed to be younger than the player, then the ball can be moved without penalty. This is so because this is simply a question of timing; when the player was younger, the tree was not there so the player is being penalized because of his age. Rule 1.a.5– A ball sliced or hooked into the Rough shall be lifted and placed on the Fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled...

A Turkish court ruled Thursday to suspend the trial in absentia of 26 Saudis accused in the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and for the case to be transferred to Saudi Arabia. ... The Istanbul court's decision comes despite warnings from human rights groups that turning the case over to the kingdom would lead to a cover up of the killing, which has cast suspicion on the crown prince. It also comes as Turkey, which is in the throes of a deep economic downturn, has been trying to repair its troubled relationship with Saudi Arabia and an...

Given what Hunter didn’t delete—emails exposing business Joe Biden-adjacent business deals plus obsessive homemade porn—it’s hard to imagine what’s left! There is nothing more disgusting and demoralizing than watching homemade porn made by a drug addict utterly fascinated by his own genitals and what he can do with them. I know this because, when the story of Hunter Biden’s hard drive first emerged in October 2020, the mainstream media refused to investigate its contents. Therefore, it fell to the conservative media to investigate. That’s how I read the emails and videos made available on the internet. Awful stuff—and now we’re...

Even a truncated Russian Federation has four times the pre-war population of Ukraine. It enjoys well over 10 times the Ukrainian gross domestic product. Russia covers almost 30 times Ukraine's area. And how does Ukraine expel Russian troops from its borders when its Western allies must put particular restrictions on their life-giving military and financial aid? The interests of Europe and the United States are not quite the same as those of a beleaguered Ukraine. NATO also wants Russian President Vladimir Putin humiliated, but only if the war can be confined within the borders of Ukraine. Even a truncated Russian...

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemRevelation 2To the Church in Pergamum 12 “To the angel of the church in Pergamum write: These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. 13 I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, not even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in your city—where Satan lives. 14 Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who...

Last year my refund was posted to my account via the IRS. This year it's a third party LLC. What's up with that?

Democrats have a new pathway to self-martyrdom: pretending to be upset about being called “groomers” by people who don’t want confused or mentally troubled teachers getting explicit with their five-year-olds about sex and the myths they are creating about gender. Think piece after think piece, with “think” being used in the loosest interpretation of the word, has been written in the last couple of days about how this is nothing more than veiled homophobia popping its head up. But this uniform, coordinated deflection is an indication that, deep down, some part of them knows what they’re doing is wrong. Rational...

Obama’s ugly display of contempt at the White House is uncharted territory. Who knows what the Democrats are plotting? Isn’t the Democrat Party the party of empathy, love and inclusion? Oh wait, that’s what they say, not exactly what they do. No putsch here. Oh no, this Svengali is way too cool to actually show his fangs as he destroys his former vice-president, Joe Biden. Forgetting also that Joe Biden was the man who made him. Or perhaps, that’s it! Obama just can’t forgive Joe’s racist past and assumed white privilege. But, have you ever watched any politician, or ex-president...

Proprietors of a series of green energy wind farms have been placed on probation and ordered to pay $8 million in fines and restitution after pleading guilty to killing upwards of 150 eagles across the past decade in eight states, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The criminal case was decided against the backdrop of President Joe Biden pushing for more onshore and offshore renewable energy from wind, solar and other sources, as Breitbart News reported. It’s illegal to kill or harm eagles under U.S. federal law. AP reports NextEra Energy subsidiary ESI Energy pleaded guilty to three counts of violating...

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Even without formally recognizing Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, Beijing is making fast inroads into the war-torn country effectively governed by the United States until last year’s ignominious retreat and withdrawal. With the US and West now firmly focused on the war in Ukraine and the Afghan “forever war” a fast-fading memory, China is now helping the Taliban consolidate its power in exchange for guarantees it won’t allow terrorist groups, including the anti-China East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), to operate from its territory. In a recent multinational meeting in the ancient town of Tunxi that gathered representatives from Afghanistan’s neighbors, namely Russia,...

The British government will seek to construct eight nuclear power plants and expand domestic oil production in order to ensure energy security amid the global crisis. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s long-awaited energy strategy will include a major shift towards nuclear power and open up oil exploration in the North Sea in a tacit admission that so-called green energy sources will not be enough in order to secure energy security. The government said that it wants to see a “significant acceleration of nuclear” with the aim of producing 24GW of energy from nuclear by the year 2050, or about a...

Nothing personal, but the Mouse must die. Oh wait, it is personal, especially for people with little kids who this giant corporation has targeted at the behest of the minority of blue-haired, nose-ringed strange-os in its employ. That Walt Disney is likely turning over in his cryogenic chamber beneath the Disneyland Castle is irrelevant. The man who created an American institution is gone, as is said American institution. It's now a global institution, and the America part is vastly outweighed by the Chi Com component. We used to trust Disney to take care of our kids, not take them over....

Do you know the definition of insanity? It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Sadly, this is precisely what socialists are trying to do. Without exception, every socialist experiment throughout the world has failed over the past century. (And, in most cases, the failure is swift, messy, and disastrous.) Author Kristian Niemietz says it best in the title of his book, Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies. Socialism is, factually, a deeply flawed and failed idea. Yet it continues to be hailed as the savior. Even worse, it’s juxtaposed against capitalism as a...

Among the talking heads discussing Ukraine, more than a few have said things like "Ukraine is very corrupt. We don't need to get into that fight" and "We don't have a dog in that fight. The corruption in Ukraine is massive." But how corrupt are we? I don't know much about corruption in Ukraine, but corruption in the United States is a glaring problem that just about every citizen who is paying attention would acknowledge. Are we any better than Ukraine? Maybe worse? It is the nature of corruption in a culture that only a fraction — often a small...

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Years back, when I lived in Northern California, a huge controversy erupted in a town called Novato about implementing a pro-LGB curriculum and movie called That's a Family in the elementary schools. Parents were outraged, including liberals, and it made national news for months. California was the epicenter for gay education/indoctrination in the schools, and I was fully enmeshed in these issues, with kids in public and private schools in Marin and San Francisco. The school my kids attended at the time was grappling with the same That's a Family brouhaha. I led the opposition, with tremendous support from mostly...