Free Republic

What seemed impossible to the rest of the world — the fall of the Soviet Union — only took six years under his leadership, a reminder of how temporary political systems can be. SNIP The relevance of all of this to the U.S. is that over the last seven years, we have seen more political instability, threats of violence, talk of Civil War, political polarization and efforts to undermine key democratic institutions than at any other time in modern American history. While the comparison between the U.S. today and the USSR in the early 1980s should not be overstated, it...

Diane Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG, told Bloomberg that in her mind, these comments signal that the Fed has given up on its hopes for a “soft landing,” and now recognizes a “growth recession” is necessary to reduce inflation meaning the Fed will need to slow economic growth to well below its potential. “It’s a bit like dripping water torture,” she said. “It is a torturous process but less torturous and less painful than an abrupt recession.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will sound an alarm Thursday night about what he views as “extremist” threats to American democracy from the restive forces of Trumpism, aiming to reframe the November elections as part of an unceasing battle for the “soul of the nation.” Nearly two years after he defeated Donald Trump, it’s a reprise of Biden’s 2020 campaign theme, casting the midterm election stakes in as dire terms as those that sent him to the Oval Office. His prime-time speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia will lay out what he sees as the risks from those he...

The 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race is not an ideal situation. We have Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has been plagued with a slew of internal issues facing Democratic candidate John Fetterman, the current lieutenant governor, who is recovering from a recent stroke. Just to vent here a little. Yes, I’ve called this race a dumpster fire due to the appalling lack of depth regarding Republican candidates for statewide office. For all his faults, Pat Toomey is the only candidate as of late where concern about electability wasn’t front-and-center. He appealed to enough suburban voters in the Philly collar counties to...

Last month, Freeper ‘Mylife’ posted a recipe for a version of Mexican Street Corn, made as a ‘bowl’ or salad. When I went to try this, our stores didn’t yet have good fresh corn; so it’s still on my list. I’ve seen some recipes that suggest using frozen corn or canned corn, but I don’t suggest you do this – I don’t think it will really ‘char’ properly or taste right. Make this with fresh corn, carved off of the cob. For the cheese, as the recipe suggests, you can use Feta if your store doesn’t have Cotija, but a...

Each ton of carbon dioxide that exits a smokestack or tailpipe is doing far more damage than what governments take into account, researchers conclude in a scientific paper published Thursday. Currently, the United States government uses a price of $51 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, but the researchers wrote in the journal Nature that the price should be $185 per ton — 3.6 times higher than the current U.S. standard. “Our results suggest that we are vastly underestimating the harm from each additional ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” said Kevin Rennert, a study author. Rennert and colleagues...

Travelling is all fun and games until someone sneaks up behind you and steals your personal belongings. One Singaporean, who goes by the username Eclair_travels on TikTok, experienced this firsthand while holidaying in Paris, a city notorious for its pickpockets. However, he ended up luckier than most victims. In a TikTok video uploaded on Thursday (Sept 1), he shared how the car keys belonging to his Lexus got stolen while he was taking a photo of a building in the city of love. Eclair_travels only realised his backpack was unzipped and the keys were missing after some nine minutes, taken...

If the United States manages to put down the woke revolution, it will be because a critical mass of liberals chooses to reject it. Conservatives, opposed to wokeness from the start, can make arguments and stand up for their principles individually. But they can’t stop the liberal-to-woke conversion process that turns mildly left-of-center Americans into cosplay Black Panthers overnight. The liberals themselves are the gatekeepers of their own movement and its institutions. Given that these institutions—news media, social media, entertainment, academia, and the current majority party in Washington—shape so many aspects of American life, it’s mostly up to liberals to...

Food truck operators in Houston are on edge as police look for a shotgun-wielding robber who has already hit a dozen businesses. The man, caught on surveillance cameras, allegedly started his robbing spree on Aug. 9. “He pointed the gun, a shotgun, at my employee,” Rolando Hernandez, owner of El De La Barbacoa told FOX 26 Houston. “It’s a very powerful gun. We’re blessed he didn’t shoot.” The Houston Police department said that around 10:30 a.m. Aug. 13 food truck workers located at the 600 block of West Gulf Bank stated they heard a gunshot before an unknown man walked...

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) — A Clearwater man was charged with two felonies for throwing pizza at a person 65 years or older during an argument Sunday afternoon. According to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, Kyle Barthelmes, 44, of Clearwater, got into a verbal argument with a woman after she told him to lower his voice because he had been drinking and taking Xanax. When the argument escalated, a third person intervened, separating Barthelmes and the woman. Barthelmes continued to argue before he threw several items from the freezer. Deputies said he also grabbed a piece of pizza and threw...

CNN anchor Don Lemon said Wednesday night on his show “Don Lemon Tonight” that Republicans are hypocritical to criticize President Joe Biden for calling Republicans “semi-fascist” when former President Donald Trump “talked shit about everybody.” CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings said, “He ran his campaign on, ‘I’m going to unify the country.’ His message to the nation was we are all in this together. I’m going to unify the country. And now, he’s out saying two things. One, lots of y’all are fascists, and by the way, if you vote Republican, there’s a decent chance our democracy will no longer...

Mask Up, Berkeley StudentsI was trying to avoid writing more stuff on masks, but this is unbelievable. UC Berkeley, that bastion of California higher education, is now requiring masks -both indoors and outdoors, if one is not vaccinated against… influenza! And, as a virologist and vaccinologist, the use of the slang “flu” makes me cringe. There are no “flu” vaccines. There are a variety of vaccines for reducing Influenza A and Influenza B virus infection and disease. None of them work particularly well. And just as with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the vast majority of deaths from Influenza A and B...

“The relationship between Norway and Israel,” wrote Trond Ellingsen the other day at Document, Norway’s leading alternative news website, “is now at a historically low level.” We’ll get around to the reason in a minute, but first let’s just note that that’s saying a lot, given that antisemitism on a very profound level goes back a long way in the exquisite land of the fjords. The Norwegian Constitution, drafted in 1814, originally contained this sentence: “Jews are still excluded from admission to the kingdom.” Knut Hamsun, probably Norway’s most illustrious novelist, was a Nazi. During World War II, it...

WASHINGTON — The White House on Thursday rejected criticism from Republicans that President Joe Biden is dividing Americans by attacking ardent followers of former President Donald Trump, saying the party’s far-right wing is trying to dodge accountability. At her daily briefing, Jean-Pierre referred to “ultra MAGA Republicans,” those who support Trump, whose signature slogan was Make America Great Again. “We understand that we hit a nerve, we get that. We understand that they’re trying to hide. And we understand that ultra MAGA office holders want to play games here and dodge accountability,” she said. She said these Republicans are pushing...

He wrote a book describing a Russian military so ill-prepared when it invaded Ukraine that he didn’t know his unit had entered the country until he awoke to the sound of artillery fire. Pavel Filatiev, a former Russian soldier, arrived in France on Sunday, after writing a tell-all book detailing his time in Ukraine as a paratrooper in the Russian army. Now 34-year-old Pavel Filatiev, who says he was a paratrooper in Russia’s military, is seeking political asylum in France after arriving there last weekend. He has been greeted as a hero by some in the West, his book embraced...

Alice Speri is a far-left journalist whose work appears in even farther-left Internet site, The Intercept. She recently wrote a piece, which also appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde, on innocent Americans “killed by Israel.” A report on her indictment is here: “Anti-Israel journalists cover up the Palestinians’ murder of numerous Americans,” by David J. Michaels, JNS, August 24, 2022:Alice Speri (Photo: Francesco Ascanio Pepe) …Who are the primary victims of the bloodlust supposedly uncovered by The Intercept and Le Monde?One is Rachel Corrie, a young woman originally from Olympia, Washington who died in 2003.The other is Shireen...

Jeremy Grantham is among Wall Street’s most respected investors. The cofounder of Boston asset manager GMO is well known for having predicted Japan’s asset price bubble in the 1980s, the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s, and even the U.S. housing blowup that came before the 2008 financial crisis. Now the 83-year-old Wall Street veteran is arguing that despite the stock market’s struggles this year, the economy’s real downturn has yet to come. Grantham has been warning of a brewing “superbubble,” and he says it’s yet to pop. In a Wednesday research note, the investor noted that stocks remain “very...

Last week my better half and I, Tess, went to a Southern California thrift store to hunt for treasures that others had all but trashed. Tess found a couple of delicate plates that a young clerk was about to wrap with an old yellowed-out newspaper that she had just torn at the fold. “Wait a sec,” I said before the nonchalant clerk took another rip. “That’s a pretty old newspaper. Mind if I take it off your hands?” “Sure,” she shrugged, quickly handing it to me then reaching for more paper to wrap the plates. The dingy, old broadsheet turned...

Editor’s Note: This post highlights images from Webb science in progress, which has not yet been through the peer-review process. For the first time, astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system. The exoplanet is a gas giant, meaning it has no rocky surface and could not be habitable. The image, as seen through four different light filters, shows how Webb’s powerful infrared gaze can easily capture worlds beyond our solar system, pointing the way to future observations that will reveal more information than ever before about exoplanets....

The Ship of Fools allegory first appears in Plato’s Republic, where Plato uses it to show how a weak and badly trained captain creates chaos among the crew, who bicker over which of them should steer the ship, even though they have little of the knowledge and skills necessary for doing so. They end up mutinying against the captain and spending their time plundering the ship’s stores and eating and drinking, even as they sail towards disaster. Plato, of course, was targeting the Athenian democracy, and its presumption that ordinary citizens have the capacity to govern, even though they...