Free Republic

White House COVID-19 czar Ashish Jha on Tuesday admitted that the six-foot social distancing rule that was implemented in early 2020 isn’t actually effective. Over the past several years, “a lot of time” was spent “talking about six feet of distance, 15 minutes of being together. We realize that’s actually not the right way to think about this,” he said during a White House briefing on COVID-19. “That’s not the most accurate way to think about this,” Jha said, adding that it is about “the quality of air you’re breathing around you.” In a crowded indoor area with poor ventilation,...

European natural gas inventories rose by +105 BCF over past 7 days. EU nat gas storage 76% full. Current inventories at 2898 BCF. 23.4% higher than 1 year ago. EU goal is at least 80% full by Nov 1st for winter.

One of those bursts, called a coronal mass ejection, or CME, is expected to collide and consume another, creating what's called a cannibal CME event. According to The Weather Channel, these events can spark strong geomagnetic storms — and in this case, it's headed in our direction. NOAA expects that the CMEs will hit on Thursday, but before they do, the agency said that Earth will also be blasted on Wednesday with relatively fast solar winds, known as a recurrent coronal hole high speed stream. The solar winds alone could trigger a minor geomagnetic storm on Wednesday, but those conditions...

Liz Cheney accuses Trump of 'insidious lie' about FBI search of his home WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Liz Cheney broadened her attack on Donald Trump after losing her Tuesday night primary, saying the former president was spreading an "insidious lie" in alleging that the FBI agents who searched his Florida home were politically motivated. Federal agents seized boxes of documents, some top secret, from the former president's Palm Beach, Florida, resort last week as part of an investigation into whether critical papers were removed illegally from the White House after Trump left office. Trump has claimed without evidence that the...

Higher income shoppers turned to Walmart looking to cut costs on groceries amid surging inflation, helping to boost sales at the nation’s largest retailer during the second quarter. Those rising prices also led customers to cut back on non-necessary items, however, and that weighed on profits as Walmart was forced to cut prices and clear inventory. “We’re pleased to see more customers choosing Walmart during this inflationary period,” said CEO Doug McMillon. “The actions we’ve taken to improve inventory levels in the US, along with a heavier mix of sales in grocery put pressure on profit margin.” Walmart still beat...

Walensky is appointing an executive to lead a team that will implement changes. The CDC will also create a new executive council that reports directly to Walensky to determine the agency’s key priorities backed up by budget decisions. The agency’s science and laboratory sciences divisions, which play crucial roles in investigating and tracking public health threats such as Covid, will also report to the CDC director. The CDC is also creating an equity office to make sure agency’s workforce reflects the U.S. population and better communicates public health guidance across all groups

Bye bye @Liz_Cheney . On the bright side at least you won’t have to pretend to be from Wyoming anymore.

CNN — Target reported profit plunged 90% in the second quarter, falling far short of expectations, as inflation-weary customers pulled back on spending on nonessential items. Retailers, including Target, have been forced to cut prices on general merchandise, such as clothing, electronics and home goods, because of excess inventory of goods. Consumers had to shift more of their spending to higher priced food and gasoline. But Target reported that its price cuts did little good: It ended the quarter with 1.5% more inventory than it had three months earlier and 36% more than it had a year ago. The company...

Last week, a striking image appeared on Reddit’s r/WellThatSucks forum. The photo, taken from a voyeuristic angle by someone standing outside of a rural concrete outhouse, shows a man protruding out of a hole in the ground inside, resting on his elbows with the rest of him dangling out of sight underground, very obviously too large to shimmy out of this hole on his own. His face has been mercifully censored with a black scribble. A pile of denim—presumably every piece of clothing this man had on his body before taking a dive—is hooked to the back of the open...

Following her humiliating defeat in Tuesday’s Wyoming primary elections, soon-to-be-former Rep. Liz Cheney gave one of the most comically narcissistic speeches by a politician in recent memory. Despite losing to Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman by more than 30 points, Cheney thought it was fitting not only to forecast a potential run for president in 2024 but to do so while comparing herself to former President Abraham Lincoln.

President Biden’s approval rating ticked up 3 percentage points in the past week, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday, as Democrats scored a major legislative win with the passage of their climate, health care and tax reform package. The poll showed that 42 percent of registered voters said they approve of the job Biden is doing as president. The same poll released last week showed Biden’s approval rating was at 39 percent.

None of the 19 sororities at the University of Alabama were interested in having a male student named Grant Sikes join them this year. The student, who uses “she/her” pronouns, called the decisions “extremely upsetting” and “sad” in a TikTok video, where Sikes had been documenting the sorority application journey. Sikes wrote a note on Instagram: First and foremost, I would like to thank my family, friends and everyone who has come along during this journey with me. From the thousands of messages to meeting the funniest people, I had the best time. Unfortunately this chapter is closed. This recruitment...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said on Tuesday that some people “equate Donald Trump with the person of Jesus Christ” in their hearts. “To them, if you even come against this amazing man, Donald Trump, which obviously quite flawed, you are coming out against Jesus, against their Christian values,” he told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner. “And when you go after their religion, that violates the depth of who they are.” Kinzinger made the remark in response to a question Wagner asked him about criticism he has received from his own family members in relation to opposing former President Trump.

Most people infected by the omicron variant of COVID-19 were not aware they had it, according to a new study. “More than one in every two people who were infected with omicron didn’t know they had it,” the study’s first author and an investigator at Cedars-Sinai Sandy Y. Joung said in a media release. “Awareness will be key for allowing us to move beyond this pandemic.” Investigators conducting a study examining COVID-19 and the effect of vaccines identified nearly 2,500 blood samples from patients just before and after the start of omicron’s surge – identifying 210 people who likely had...

Donald Trump did not divide the country: the democrats, driven by their vicious hatred for Donald Trump, divided the country. /well duh

(Reuters) -Californians were urged to ratchet down the use of electricity in their homes and businesses on Wednesday as a wave of extreme heat settles over much of the state, stretching tight power supplies to their breaking point. Temperatures in the most populous state are forecast to climb to well above 100 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) during the afternoon. The extreme conditions are the latest sign of the impact of climate change in the U.S. West, where wildfires and severe drought have emerged as a growing threat. As spells of excessive heat become more frequent, the strain on power and water...

Rep. Liz Cheney, the most renowned anti-Trumper in the Republican Party, went down in flaming defeat in Wyoming's GOP primary Tuesday. CNN projected that her main opponent, lawyer Harriet Hageman, who was endorsed by former President Trump...

Novelist, Hollywood producer, and left-wing Trump-basher Stephen King says he cannot understand why people continue to support former President Donald Trump, because he believes “most people are good,” and Trump is a “horrible person” who “engaged in criminal behavior.” “I think that most people are good,” King said in a recent interview with the Sunday Times. “Most people will give you the shirt off their back.”

Higher oil export volumes, coupled with rising petrol prices, will boost Russia’s earnings from energy exports to $337.5bn this year, a 38 percent rise from 2021, according to an economy ministry document seen by Reuters news agency.

We all want to be able to speak our minds online—to be heard by our friends and talk (back) to our opponents. At the same time, we don’t want to be exposed to speech that is inappropriate or crosses a line. Technology companies address this conundrum by setting standards for free speech, a practice protected under federal law. They hire in-house moderators to examine individual pieces of content and remove them if posts violate predefined rules set by the platforms.The approach clearly has problems: harassment, misinformation about topics like public health, and false descriptions of legitimate elections run rampant. But...