Free Republic

Alarm! The Federal Reserve is reversing its excessive monetary stimulus policies left over from the financial crisis of 2008 (and Covid) and the mortgage industry and potential home buyers are paying the price. Mortgage applications decreased 1.7 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending July 8, 2022. This week’s results include an adjustment for the observance of Independence Day. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 4 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 14 percent compared with the previous week and was...

The Department of Justice is well aware that the Proud Boys who attended the Stop the Steal rally on January 6 were not violent and did not conspire to enter the Capitol—yet are prosecuting them on conspiracy charges anyway, FBI documents obtained by Gateway Pundit reveal. Five members of the group are currently in pre-trial detention on federal charges: Enrique Tarrio, Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Dominic Pezzola and Zachary Rehl. A whistleblower leaked “a treasure trove” of exculpatory documents, and text messages—some marked “Highly Sensitive”—to the Gateway Pundit reporter Cara Castronuova. “These documents would be buried forever and never see...

IPray For The Peace of JerusalemGenesis 36Esau’s Descendants 36 This is the account of the family line of Esau (that is, Edom). 2 Esau took his wives from the women of Canaan: Adah daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Oholibamah daughter of Anah and granddaughter of Zibeon the Hivite— 3 also Basemath daughter of Ishmael and sister of Nebaioth. 4 Adah bore Eliphaz to Esau, Basemath bore Reuel, 5 and Oholibamah bore Jeush, Jalam and Korah. These were the sons of Esau, who were born to him in Canaan. 6 Esau took his wives and sons and daughters and all...

From some time in 2019 to the present, the Department of Homeland Security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, has been running an Operation Silent Night to intercept items coming from China that can be used to make suppressors/silencers. The operation has seized a lot of material, with relatively few arrests. The items seized are routinely marketed as solvent traps, fuel filters, or pill containers. As most of them do not have holes so that a bullet can travel through them, it is difficult to prosecute people for importing a “silencer” or even “silencer parts” when similar items...

On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R) discussed claims that a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio had to travel to Indiana to obtain an abortion due to Ohio law and said there has not been a “whisper” from local law enforcement anywhere in the state about an investigation into such a crime. He also stated that in a case like this, “you would be looking for DNA analysis,” and “There is no case request for analysis that looks anything like this” in the Ohio crime lab that his office runs...

The 10th stage of the Tour de France was halted for 10 minutes on Tuesday after half a dozen climate activists tried to stop riders on the road before being pulled out by police and a senior organisers' official. The activists, one of them wearing a t-shirt saying 'We have 989 days left', sat on the road some 36 kilometres (22 miles) from the finish in Megeve. The activists were pulled off the road by police, helped by Tour organisers' Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) general director Yann Le Moenner. Contacted by Reuters, ASO declined to comment. Stage leader Alberto Bettiol...

Having brought onto stage the weapon of political intimidation, the Left intends to use it at every turn. Groups like Shutdown D.C. and Ruth Sent Us are just the latest examples. "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." - — Anton Chekhov An attempt to accost Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at Morton’s Steakhouse, a popular D.C. hangout, made national news last week. The move represented a mobile...

Montgomery County to teach Southern Poverty Law Center-inspired ‘social justice’ curriculum Maryland’s largest school district next school year will teach elementary schoolers how to combat "privilege" and "systemic racism," even as about half of its students lack proficiency in math and language arts. The Montgomery County Board of Education amended its fourth and fifth grade social studies curriculum to include "Social Justice Standards" for "antiracist" education, according to a July 5 announcement. The revised standards, which were developed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, lay out scenarios for students to exercise "antibias," such as responding to a classmate with two...

Here we go loop de loop! Traders are pricing in a 75 basis point rate increase at the July FOMC meeting despite collapsing Fed 5-year inflation breakeven rates. Money markets are betting on a three quarter-percentage point hike by Federal Reserve officials later this month, wagering the US will need to ramp up the pace of monetary tightening to tame inflation. The repricing comes ahead of a key inflation report due Wednesday. The headline figure for June is set to accelerate to 8.8% year over year, the highest since 1981. Bankrate’s 30Y mortgage rate fell slightly ahead of today’s inflation...

Would be most appreciative for any advice. Need to add accessories like crash bars, skid plates, tank and top bag, windshield extender, etc. If youse guys have experience, your thoughts would be most welcome. I considered a KLR 650 (too heavy and still needed doo-hickey and thermobob) and several other small "adventure" bikes but finally settled on this. Love it so far.Have about 300 miles so far, mostly practicing riding in sand and standing.Several years ago, I owned a cruiser but have never done any off-road motorcycling so still need a lot of practice.That said, I do ride a mountain...

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently told Russian lawmakers that the war in Ukraine has signaled the end of the U.S.-led international order."They should have realized that they have already lost from the very beginning of our special military operation," Putin said on July 7, using the official Russian term for the war in Ukraine. "Its beginning also means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the American world order."Putin said that "this is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world" and that this process "can no longer be stopped."

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With the examples of Sri Lanka and Ghana already before us, Tucker spells out exactly where the Biden administration’s policies are taking us. When Congress—the people’s representatives—had the chance to vote on the Green New Deal, it emphatically said “no.” Were we still a functioning representative democracy, that would be the end of the Green New Deal until such time as We the People elect (God forbid) a majority of Senators and House members who want that legislation. The unconstitutional leftist model since FDR, though, has been for the executive branch to do what Congress refuses to do and, sadly,...

The first version of the war is the Russian one. Moscow lost politically because it thought the invasion of Ukraine would be a stroll in the park. It would have put the Kyiv government under Moscow’s control, split the European Union, and politically distanced the United States from Europe. None of these goals has been realized. The advance into Ukraine was a massacre and therefore failed. The attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in the country’s east also failed. Today the Russians have reverted to World War I tactics. They bombard, razing a target to the ground. When the target has...

Taiwan has started sea trials of its first indigenously built Landing Platform Dock (LPD), known as the Yu Shan, with the ship expected to be commissioned this September, Taiwan News reported. The Yu Shan was constructed by Taiwanese shipbuilder China Shipbuilding Corporation (CSBC) and will be tasked with carrying out amphibious combat operations supporting Taiwan’s outer islands and disaster relief missions. The vessel can also reportedly serve as a floating hospital. It is also being viewed as an essential step in the Taiwanese government’s national shipbuilding program, with four additional units planned for the Taiwanese Navy, Naval News reported. According...

Proxy advisors are the hidden force behind the rise of the ESG movement and its morph into a large-scale grift where American companies and investors are the victims. This little-known industry, dominated by Institutional Shareholder Services ("ISS") and its smaller competitor Glass Lewis, has fundamentally changed ESG. What began as a public relations and marketing effort for corporations to show employees and customers they are responsible actors now functions as a corporate credit score where those who refuse to play the game are denied access to investor capital. Publicly traded companies have often been slow to fully understand the power...

BMW is now selling subscriptions for heated seats in a number of countries — the latest example of the company’s adoption of microtransactions for high-end car features. A monthly subscription to heat your BMW’s front seats costs roughly $18, with options to subscribe for a year ($180), three years ($300), or pay for “unlimited” access for $415. It’s not clear exactly when BMW started offering this feature as a subscription, or in which countries, but a number of outlets this week reported spotted its launch in South Korea. BMW has slowly been putting features behind subscriptions since 2020, and heated...

The wheels are coming off the Democrats’ wagon, and not just in Washington either. They’re losing it here in Massachusetts too, even though most of the attention is focused on the unprecedented catastrophe that is the Brandon administration. On Monday, for instance, Dementia Joe Biden said that the Parkland High shootings occurred, not in 2018, but in 1918. He didn’t even correct himself. On the same day, his wife Dr. Jill compared Hispanics to “breakfast tacos” and mispronounced bodegas as “bogodas.” And then there’s the vice president, who when asked by an interviewer about why the Democrats did nothing legislatively...

That the left has chosen to die on this hill is insane. It has become a form of mass psychosis. How to explain the Democrat party’s obsession with transgenderism, with shoving it down the throats of every American, from ages five and up? It’s inexplicable. Does every registered Democrat support confusing small children with gender identity indoctrination? That can’t be true. But school districts across the country are using books about all manner of sexual issues, including pornography, topics way beyond the grasp of small children. And they are using those books without parents’ knowledge. When parents discover these books...

Rep. Bennie Thompson, the January 6th Commission Chairman, threw his support behind a secessionist group called the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), an unearthed video has revealed. According to Just The News, Thompson uttered support for the guerilla warfare secessionist group who attempted to take control of several U.S. states in exchange for peace with law enforcement throughout the 20th century. Thompson’s advocacy on behalf of the RNA has been well documented in newspaper clippings, video footage, FBI and local law-enforcement archives. From this evidence, Thompson has been found to blame law enforcement for instigating violence that led to the...