Free Republic

As has been well documented, the pandemic had many unexpected consequences over the past few years, not the least of which was a boom in trade book sales in both 2020 and 2021. But while the trade segment fared well in 2020, the other major publishing segments did not, and total industry sales had only a 0.2% gain that year over 2019. In 2021, trade sales jumped again, but so did sales in the other segments, resulting in a 12.3% increase in total sales, to $29.33 billion, according to the Association of American Publishers’ final statistics for the year. The...

The Biden family was selling U.S natural gas to China long before Joe Biden became president, who was aware of how his son Hunter Biden was making the sale possible, according to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, citing documents and information provided by a whistleblower. Hunter Biden had a Chinese Communist Party member as his assistant while dealing with the Chinese side for the shipping of American natural gas to China in 2017, and the Biden family was promising business associates that they would reap rewards once Biden became president, said Comer in a...

A teenager who had dreams of becoming a bull rider and competing in the United States died from a heart attack after falling off a bull at a rodeo in southeastern Brazilian state of São Paulo. Thiago Castilho, 18, was participating at an event in the São Paulo city of Ribeirão Preto on Thursday night when he suffered the fall. Multiple videos surfaced online that show Perez mounted on the bull for nearly eight seconds as the animal was trying to buck him off. The teen ultimately lost his grip on the bull rope and appeared to hit his neck...

At first glance, the narrative for Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) appears overwhelmingly negative. Just from a brief peek at its price chart, investors recognize that META stock hemorrhaged more than half of its market value. With even CEO Mark Zuckerberg sounding the alarm about broader economic conditions, I am cautiously bullish on META. As mentioned above, market participants with a dim view of META stock have plenty of reasons for their pessimism. Broadly speaking, soaring inflation devastated consumer sentiment in the first half of this year, which saw the dollar’s purchasing power diminish by 5.3%. Now, with the Federal Reserve making...

President Joe Biden claimed that the cost for a gallon of gasoline was under three dollars, during a White House event on Monday about higher costs experienced by consumers. “In some few states, it’s below three bucks,” he said. “It’s in the low threes in other places.” No state has an average price of under three dollars, according to the American Automobile Association. The lowest price for a gallon of gas is in Mississippi, according to Gasbuddy.com, which is $3.04. But Biden did not correct his statement. Last week, Biden made a similar claim, which was fact-checked and corrected by...

WASHINGTON, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Negotiators of a stop-gap spending bill in the U.S. Congress have agreed to include nearly $12 billion in new military and economic aid to Ukraine, sources familiar with the talks said on Monday, reflecting continued bipartisan support for the Kyiv government in the wake of Russia's invasion. In response to a request from the Biden administration, the funding would include $4.5 billion to provide defense capabilities and equipment for Ukraine, as well as $2.7 billion to continue military, intelligence and other defense support, said the sources, who asked not to be identified ahead of the...

Russian quartermaster: "I say right away, if you are near the fire you are effed. So what do we have next? Take sleeping bags with you. You will sleep where you have to. Sleeping bags definitely, plus travel mats (bed rolls) or their replacements. Everyone get it?" New conscript: "So we won't get anything from the army"? Russian quartermaster: "It should be all yours, BOYS! All the army provides you is uniforms and armor. There is nothing else. We equipped our men with our own scrounging. All this also applies to medicine, diarrhea tablets, hydrogen peroxide, tourniquets. I don't have...

Executive Summary In the decades since the 1971 inauguration of President Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs,” successive Mexican presidencies have—until recently— sought to cast themselves as partners of the United States in the fight against criminal cartels and trafficking. Mexican officials have used high-profile arrests as evidence of their fight against organized crime (Smith, 2014). Yet, despite these efforts—often sincere, sometimes not—the intersection between Mexican state power at every level and Mexican criminal organizations broadened and deepened. The formal state’s oscillation between (secret) support and (overt) repression across decades introduced a profound ambiguity into the cooperative relationship with the United...

Explanation: How much of planet Earth is made of water? Very little, actually. Although oceans of water cover about 70 percent of Earth's surface, these oceans are shallow compared to the Earth's radius. The featured illustration shows what would happen if all of the water on or near the surface of the Earth were bunched up into a ball. The radius of this ball would be only about 700 kilometers, less than half the radius of the Earth's Moon, but slightly larger than Saturn's moon Rhea which, like many moons in our outer Solar System, is mostly water ice. The...

Florida-based Hispanic conservatives tell Fox News Digital their community largely approves of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ move to relocate migrants to Martha’s Vineyard despite the media narrative to the contrary. Media Research Center Latino director Jorge Bonilla, who resides in Florida, believes coverage of the incident has been wildly dishonest. He took particular exception to a Politico piece headlined, “‘Huge mistake’: DeSantis’ migrant transports could undercut support in South Florida,” that claimed the decision “could hurt the Republican governor in November” when he faces Democratic challenger Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Fla. “There are some who are speculating, openly speculating in media,...

Tiffany Smiley actually has a chance to defeat Dinosaur Dem Patty Murray in Washington State. But, this ad is being trolled by Seattle libs. Please take a minute to infurage the liberals and say that you support her. FREEP comments in Youtube.

Violet Charlesworth was missing and presumed dead after her car was found on the side of a cliff in Penmaenmawr. But all was not as it seemedIn the quaint town of Penmaenmawr in Conwy there is a sea wall called Violet’s Leap. Perhaps little is known about the story behind its name but it is arguably one of north Wales’ most scandalous stories. It was a cold January night in 1909 when an expensive Minerva car, a Belgian brand of automobile available at the time, was discovered hanging over the edge of a sea wall. Dangling above the roaring sea...

Governor Greg Abbott today issued an executive order designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and instructing the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to take immediate action to keep Texans safe amid the growing national fentanyl crisis. At a roundtable discussion and press conference in Midland today, the Governor also sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris requesting federal terrorist classifications for the Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, as well as other cartels producing and distributing deadly fentanyl.“Fentanyl is a clandestine killer, and Texans are falling victim to the Mexican cartels that...

Where to Hope When You Have a Bad Pope Pope Francis has declared war on Traditional Catholics, and he has “stacked the deck” for the next papal conclave. It is possible that Francis’s successor will be even worse than he is. Where do we find hope when we have a bad pope? Well, we can get perspective by looking at Church history; especially those times when the Holy Spirit provided for lay rulers to solve the problems that popes could not.Below are a few examples where uncontrollable crises were only solved through lay intervention in Church affairs. In these...

For the Central Coast town of Solvang, its signature will always be its faux-traditional Danish village, built in the 1940s. It now stands today as a mile-long cartoon backdrop of gift shops and Danish Renaissance-style buildings. But beneath the surface of the town’s kitschy appeal, a new generation of world-class chefs, barkeeps and merchants is making steady gains to revitalize Solvang. Yet they’re discovering that changing a beloved place’s carefully orchestrated image — transforming Solvang from a spot to roll in on a tour bus and grab a mini Danish flag into a true destination — is a heady task....

Gerard Nolst Trenité The Chaos (1922) Dearest creature in creation Studying English pronunciation, I will teach you in my verse Sounds like corpse, corps, horse and worse. I will keep you, Susy, busy, Make your head with heat grow dizzy; Tear in eye, your dress you'll tear; Queer, fair seer, hear my prayer. Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it! Just compare heart, hear and heard, Dies and diet, lord and word. Sword and sward, retain and Britain (Mind the latter how it's written). Made has not the sound of bade, Say-said, pay-paid, laid...

Shocking surveillance footage shows a woman being viciously assaulted by a homeless man in a Queens subway station after ignoring him on a train, police said Monday. The attack happened just after 5 a.m. Sept. 20 as the 33-year-old victim tried to exit the northbound A train at the Howard Beach stop without engaging with the vagrant, cops said. The suspect, 41-year-old Waheed Foster — who has two prior busts for attacking women — then chased the woman off the train, attacking her near the subway entrance, cops said. The sickening footage shows Foster throwing the woman into the wall...

The Shasta County Registrar of Voters issued a warning Monday of potential voter intimidation ahead of the November election.

"And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints." "Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Revelation, Chapter 19 1 And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and...

Though the agreement provided for arbitration, under Texas family law challenges to the validity of a family law arbitration agreement can't wait until after the arbitration takes place.From In re Ayad, decided Friday by the Texas Supreme Court: Relator Salma Mariam Ayad married real party in interest Ayad Hashim Latif in 2008. In connection with their marriage, they signed … [an] "Islamic Pre-Nuptial Agreement" …. In the Agreement, the parties recite their "belief that Islam … is binding on [them] in all spheres of life." As relevant here, the Agreement provides that "[a]ny conflict which may arise between the...