Free Republic

The scary arm of inflation has found its way to the financials of consistently top performing Target. Target reported a wide first quarter earnings miss on Wednesday as cost increases in areas such as freight and inventory surged, not unlike what rival Walmart shared on Tuesday. The profit shortfall marked the first miss for Target versus analyst estimates since the third quarter of 2018, according to Bloomberg data. "We never expected the kind of cost increases in freight and transportation that we're seeing right now," Target chairman and CEO Brian Cornell told Yahoo Finance.

North Korea appears to be preparing for a possible intercontinental ballistic missile test within the next 48 to 96 hours, just as President Joe Biden is scheduled to travel to Asia, according to a US official familiar with the latest intelligence assessment. "The things we have noticed in the past for a launch are the things we are noticing now," the official said. The launch site under satellite observation is located near Pyongyang. The official would not detail specifics of the current imagery, but typically, intelligence analysts look for signs of scaffolding or other launcher equipment, fueling, vehicles and personnel....

Next Tuesday, May 24th

Assume the worst. That’s the lesson of Bidenomics in 2022. America’s economy is contracting. The U.S. inflation rate remains above eight percent, with gas prices hitting record highs across the country. And the stock market continues to bleed, undoing the gains of the Trump era. Remember when Americans could expect 13.7 percent annualized S&P 500 returns? How times change—and in under two years, no less. If we’re not in an economic recession already, then it’s not far away either. As a longtime entrepreneur, investor, and job creator, I’ve seen businesses large and small struggle to stay afloat in today’s economy....

The generation that did everything it was told to do is keen on burning down the very culture which sold them a lie. Perhaps you too are devastated by this week’s crushing news—Meghan Markle’s Netflix show has been canceled. The show, of course, a one-word title by the name of “Pearl,” is about an oppressed young woman who deigned to overcome obstacles such as someone not validating her every whim, not affirming nor flattering her every thought. I wrote this before bothering to Google the name and premise of the now regrettably canceled show—unremarkably, my assumptions were faultless. Meghan would...

The Islamic Republic of Iran’s announcement this month that an Iranian-Swedish scholar and expert in disaster medicine, Ahmadreza Djalali, would be executed for “collaboration with hostile governments” and “acting against national security” followed earlier declarations by the regime’s Supreme Court that it would uphold the wrongful conviction, despite Djalali’s rapidly deteriorating health. Detained while participating in a series of academic meetings hosted by universities in Tehran and Shiraz in 2016, Djalali’s initial confession was aired on Iranian state media. But the defendant promptly recanted and alleged at trial that his admission had been extracted through torture. Forced confessions are commonplace...

18 May 2022 Wednesday of the 5th week of Eastertide Hermitage of Saint Venantius, Raiano, Italy Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: White.First readingActs 15:1-6 ©They were to go up to Jerusalem and discuss the problem with the apostles and eldersSome men came down from Judaea and taught the brothers, ‘Unless you have yourselves circumcised in the tradition of Moses you cannot be saved.’ This led to disagreement, and after Paul and Barnabas had had a long argument with these men it was arranged that Paul and Barnabas and others of the church should go up to Jerusalem and discuss the problem...

Deborah Samuel, a 200-level Home Economics student of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, was on Thursday said to have made a comment in her school’s WhatsApp platform which her Muslim colleagues considered blasphemous of Prophet Mohammed and killed her before setting her corpse ablaze. In Sokoto metropolis, on Saturday protesters in their hundreds trooped into the streets to express their displeasure over the detention of two suspects arrested by the Police, while also declaring a manhunt for other suspects who appeared in footage of the gruesome murder which trended on social media. During the protest, attempts to attack...

In a speech to mark him taking the oath of office, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that the west is subjecting itself to “suicide waves” of decline in the form of self-inflicted economic wounds, mass migration and an obsession with identity politics.Orbán’s conservative Fidesz party swept to victory in the election last month with another two-thirds majority, despite a massive effort by globalist interests to derail his candidacy. During a speech in parliament, Orbán cautioned that the continent faced perilous times ahead. “Everything that has happened since 2020 points in one direction: Europe and the Hungarian people in it...

Once again, Florida’s Ron DeSantis proves he has all the right enemies. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, you just might be named Ron DeSantis. Let’s recap. On April 22, the Florida governor signed the “Stop WOKE Act,” which, in the words of USA Today, “prohibits any teaching that could make students feel they bear personal responsibility for historic wrongs because of their race, color, sex or national origin.” The law was necessary because, as you can see in any number of YouTube videos of school-board meetings around...

Multiple polling stations in Pennsylvania had to turn voters away on this primary election day after reportedly suffering a shortage of ballots. The ballot shortage impacted multiple polling stations in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, including at polling stations in Stowe Township and Hanover Heights. According to Stowe Township’s Council President Robin Parilla, Alleghany County has not responded to her request for more ballots. As a result, Parilla has had to turn voters away. As local news outlets reported: Stowe Township Council President, Robin Parilla says that some voters have been turned away as a result of the shortage. Parilla has tried...

“An error by a company that prints ballots for several Pennsylvania counties made thousands of mail-in ballots unreadable Tuesday as voters were deciding hotly contested primaries for governor and U.S. Senate in one of the nation’s most important battleground states,” PBS reported. “Officials in Lancaster County, the state’s sixth most populous, said the problem involved at least 21,000 mailed ballots, only a third of which were scanning properly,” the report stated. “The glitch will force election workers to redo ballots that can’t be read by the machine, a laborious process expected to take several days. Officials in the GOP-controlled county...

Libertarian politician, the endorsed candidate of the United Australia Party for the federal parliament seat of Higgins, has been released on bail from jail. He was imprisoned for most of the last few weeks of an election campaign as a result of attempting to communicate with a woman. We do not know what he said or who she is. But the fantasy that Australia is a free democratic society has been shown to be ridiculous yet again.

When are conservatives going to fight back against the violence of the left? It's glaringly obvious that the radicals in the Democrat party are using tactics that put many people in fear of physical assault or damage to their property. This became clear during the Trump presidency, when proud Americans were beaten up in public for wearing hats supporting him. Viral videos of hats being snatched from the heads of people in restaurants, in shopping malls, or just walking along a street became common. Did we ever think the time would come when people wearing caps that read "Make America...

Scratching my head on this one. Explain it to us Pelosi.

"Anti-racism" is a totalitarian religion dressed up in noble language. It is not uncommon in today's racially saturated political climate for a student of higher education to receive a handful of emails from their university's president or provost with a reminder that it is no longer satisfactory to unostentatiously declare yourself "not racist." Instead, you must "do the work" (as Karl Marx would say) and be a fervent "anti-racist." Students with little or zero understanding of their university leaders' unadulterated ignorance, or a calculated warped propaganda campaign (which is more likely the case), would be forgiven for taking the term...

The current infant formula shortage crisis didn’t occur overnight. In fact, it can be traced back to the beginning of the pandemic, when families across the country, facing lockdowns and closures stocked up on many basic foods including formula. Of course this problem was exacerbated this February, when the FDA instituted product recalls and closed the big Abbott plant in Sturgis, Michigan, with more than 483 "observations," including the possible though unproven tie of several cases of bacterial contamination causing illness and death of two infants. But this closure has now stretched on for months which is far too long,...

U.N. chief Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called for an end to oil, gas, and coal use in favor of renewable sources as part of a self-described global climate Marshall Plan. The veteran Portuguese Socialist spoke ahead of the upcoming World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which has already issued its own call for net-zero carbon emissions to be driven by a wider embrace of solar and wind power sources without delay.

Thomas Bakondy, Ainsley’s dad, told me that he has sent a number of NTEB articles to school board member Tom Edwards, an openly-gay “married” man, and that Edwards has led the charge with drafting policies that allow children to choose their pronouns without parental consent or notification. So what did the longtime NTEB-reading Bakondy family do? They did exactly as we are always calling people to do, to respectfully push back against this rising tide of darkness and preach Jesus! Kudos to you, Bakondy family, that’s real front lines stuff, keep it up. Another NTEB’er named Kim wrote to me...

Bill Gates and the World Health Organization have started drafting a New World Order global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness that would grant it absolute power over global biosecurity, such as the power to implement digital identities, vaccine passports, mandatory vaccinations, and travel restrictions. World Health Organization Pandemic Treaty: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It FROM THE DEFENDER: The globalists that brought us the wildly exaggerated COVID pandemic in an effort to cement a biosecurity grid into place are now hard at work on the next phase of this New World Order. The World Health...