Free Republic

One of the fighters holed up in a steelworks besieged by Russian forces in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol has appealed to SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk to help evacuate them. Many civilians were rescued from the sprawling Azovstal plant last week under an agreement with Russia, but no deal has been reached with Moscow on allowing out hundreds of fighters, some of whom are wounded, after weeks of bombardment. “@elonmusk people say you come from another planet to teach people to believe in the impossible. Our planets are next to each other, as I live where it is nearly impossible...

When all you have is a hammer, everything does indeed look like a nail. This is the best way to describe government officials' unoriginal and often destructive thinking. No matter the problem du jour, the answer is always more government spending. But more spending requires more tax revenue, which is not always easy to acquire in the modern global economy. That's how we got the current effort by some United States officials to impose a global minimum tax. They are hammering away to extract more revenue from U.S.-based multinational corporations by limiting competition from countries with more welcoming tax systems....

John Lassiter, a close friend and informal adviser of McCrory who began working with him in Charlotte government in the mid-1980s, remains hopeful about McCrory’s chances Tuesday. He said he expected voters would “wake up” at the end of the campaign, and decide to vote for the person they supported previously. “It’s really unfair,” Lassiter said. “He is very conservative, particularly on fiscal matters and the role of government. At his core, his politics are pretty tried and true, and he has stuck to those despite the trade winds that come every cycle.” Lassiter, whom McCrory tapped to oversee and...

Public pension fiduciaries may soon be looking to distance themselves from advisors leading them down the ESG path. Reputational risk is the wonderfully vague term that is being used more and more to justify decisions to terminate a business relationship when an objective reason is unavailable. According to an excellent article in the Georgia Law Review, "Regulating Bank Reputation Risk," the concept of reputational risk really took off in the 1990s when federal regulators were looking for a way to incorporate subjective policy and social considerations when examining financial institutions. The first phase of using reputational risk as a regulatory...

John Hinderaker has been writing at PowerLine about the economic catastrophe taking place in Sri Lanka. Until very recently, that country was “not only food-secure, but a major agricultural exporter” of products like rice, tea and rubber. One would think that creating prosperity and lifting millions out of poverty would be welcomed by government and social activists. But no. The government of Sri Lanka decided to mandate new policies prompted not by the recommendations of anyone with experience in industry, commerce or basic economics, but by the howling of environmentalists demanding “all organic” farming. Despite the fact that more than...

MEXICO CITY/SAO PAULO, May 10 (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Tuesday he would not attend the U.S.-hosted Summit of the Americas next month if all countries in the region were not invited, while Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is also likely to skip the meeting, sources told Reuters. The absence of the leaders of Latin America's two biggest economies would be a blow for the get-together of regional heads of state, which is expected to tackle issues from migration to the environment but also showcase democracy in the hemisphere. Mexico's leader, a leftist, has said he wants...

Click on link

Washington -- Do you remember the days when our liberal friends were forever claiming the moral high ground on almost any issue no matter how devoid of moral content the issue might be? They claimed it, of course, on issues of war and peace. "All we are saying is give peace a chance," the chorus would sing out. Yet they even claimed the moral high ground in the controversy about tobacco, though I do not recall what they sang. Possibly it would be something denouncing Winston Churchill as a colonialist or an empire-builder. I recall with great clarity their insistence...

Troops and armoured vehicles have been deployed across the city of Colombo and security officials given orders to shoot on sight anyone deemed to be participating in violence as anti-government protests continued to rock Sri Lanka. The crisis turned volatile earlier this week after pro-government supporters began attacking a camp of peaceful demonstrators who had been protesting against the government and the devastating economic crisis that has engulfed the island of 22 million people. As footage emerged on Wednesday of armoured military vehicles in Colombo and military checkpoints being set up across the country , fears grew that the path...

After angry public reaction to the leaked Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito draft opinion on reversing Roe v. Wade, Justice Clarence Thomas said: "We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don't like. We can't be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that." The kind of events to which Thomas referred include pro-abortion activists blocking church entrances and protesting at the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Alito. It is difficult...

Democrats are insane. We know this, they can’t hide it. They’re also evil. They used to hide this, but can’t or won’t anymore. Whatever the case, the curtain has been pulled back. But unlike the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz, Democrats aren’t even bothering to try to close the curtain, they’re quite proud of it. Good for them, I guess, but better for the rest of us – we can see these people for who and what they are. It ain’t pretty. The Treasury Secretary, former chair of the Federal Reserve (and someone I assume identifies as a woman,...

In the Senate, Hunt won a three-candidate race Tuesday for the GOP nomination in a district spanning five counties. As a Democrat, Hunt served 14 years in the House of Delegates before losing in the 2016 general election for a U.S. House seat. He also lost a 2018 nonpartisan race for an unexpired term on the state Supreme Court. Now as a Republican, Hunt defeated former Delegate Joshua Higginbotham and Mark Mitchem by a double-digit margin Tuesday. A fourth GOP candidate, Andrea Garrett Kiessling, was disqualified from running after a successful challenge to her residency. Kiessling had been promoted by...

A soft landing is better than a hard one, especially when it comes to the economy. It’s the difference between turning the booming Biden years—even with 40-year-high inflation—into a sustainable trend, instigating a mild recession, or something even worse. The Federal Reserve, the institution caught between a rock and a hard place, got even more bad news on Wednesday: inflation remains an issue. Although the Consumer Price Index saw a deceleration in April, consumer prices are still increasing at an 8.3% annual rate. The Fed famously has a dual mandate to promote price stability and maximum employment, and the central...

as Donbas offensive stalls and Kyiv's troops counter-attack Russia was attempting to cross the Donets river at Bilohorivka to surround the city of Lysychansk, in Donbas But Ukrainian engineer claims to have successfully guessed where they would try to cross and laid a trap Sound of tugboats putting temporary bridge in place triggered a massive artillery and airstrike barrage Satellite images show bridge was destroyed along with dozens of Russian vehicles, inflicting heavy casualties Russia has suffered yet another battlefield humiliation after Ukraine successfully thwarted its attempt to cross a river in Donbas, destroying dozens of vehicles and inflicting heavy...

Some Wyoming Democrats are switching parties to register as Republicans for the upcoming primary election, according to a longtime county clerk, prompting her to urge voters to practice their own form of election integrity. Incumbent U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, who was censured by her own party in February, is being challenged in the Republican primary election for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat by Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman and others. Julie Freese, Fremont County’s clerk for 28 years, said she is hearing on-the-ground commentary from traditional Democrats saying they’re registering as Republicans solely to vote for Cheney in the Republican primary....

It’s an absolute delight to watch the Democrats go all-in on Hispanic voters and then, in the way one might expect from pasty ruling caste goofs, unwittingly do everything in their power to make Hispanic voters despise them. And the results are undeniable – Latinx voters not only hate being called “Latinx” but hate pretty much everything else that the Dems are doing. The faculty lounge set that sets the party’s agenda is utterly oblivious. They don’t know any Hispanics – except maybe ones they hire to work around the mansion – and the Dems have certainly never thought to...

Of course, the Keystone XL pipeline is gone, thanks to Biden. Alaska drilling — gone. Other smaller pipelines — gone. Those decisions have already been made by Biden's Energy and Interior departments and his EPA. But just a few weeks ago, after bragging that at least a small amount of leases on federal lands will become available, the White House Council on Environment Quality put out the most restrictive, onerous infrastructure regulations in history. Any new infrastructure projects — be they fossil fuel-related, or pipelines, or even bridges, roads highways, tunnels — will be subject to direct, indirect and cumulative...

The world's second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum has joined the cryptocurrency crash - plummeting in value by 20 per cent over the last 24 hours. Cryptocurrencies have sharply declined in value during the past few days as fears for the global economy spread and investors start to sell off risky assets. However investors in more traditional stocks are also hurting, with US tech stocks also plunging in recent weeks including Amazon which has fallen 30 per cent in a month. Ethereum has now lost more than half of its value this year, Bitcoin has shed a third of its value since...

With a subject like abortion, where people are easily controlled by their passions, it becomes easy to base our opinions on what we “feel” as opposed to logical thinking about the issue. Thousands of years ago, Jewish Sages were dealing with the same issue of when/if/how abortion should be permitted or forbidden. With the national chaos regarding a potential reversal of Roe v. Wade, this ancient wisdom and unique understanding is more valuable than ever. The ancient Sages were supported by their communities, and so were able to devote great thought about many important issues, including abortion. To understand their...

(Click link to watch Video) “A decade ago when I talked about chemicals in the water turning the frogs gay, the media only took a short clip out of a 30-plus minute report where I laid out university studies and documents from South Africa, the U.S., Europe, you name it, that Atrazine alone in the water was making the frogs hermaphroditic: both male and female,” Jones said. “And that male frogs were attracted to other male frogs, so that those populations of frogs and toads were collapsing, dying out. In some cases, becoming extinct.” “And this same chemical is bombarding...