Free Republic

At the end of the movie "Casablanca," after Rick hands Viktor the letters of transit for him and Ilse, Victor tells Rick, "Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win." I thought of this 13-second moment in the movie upon noticing a New York Times story, November 19, on page 5 of the Business Section (media) with this headline: "New York Post Tears Down 'Florida Man' That It Had Supported."(I hasten to add that I am not usually a Business Section reader; this is where the skimpier-by-the-day Sports Section happened to appear on November 19.)...

Nationwide, truckers and trucking companies have been dealing with the rising prices of diesel since this summer. They say they are seeing no sign of these prices coming down. Chris Shelton is a driver for Lightning Logistics. He says his company added an extra charge for fuel that lowered his expenses, and it is the only thing keeping food on his family’s table. “It makes it harder and harder to budget yourself out each week,” Shelton said. […] According to AAA, one year ago a gallon of diesel fuel was $3.65, on average. Now, it is up to $5.33. Shelton...

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs will be the next governor of Arizona, barring a recount that says otherwise. And when the Democrat is sworn in, she’ll likely thank her handlers privately for their media strategy in getting her over the finish line after looking like the underdog going into Election Day against outspoken Republican Kari Lake. Hobbs embraced the same strategy that served Joe Biden as a candidate and continues to serve him as president: almost entirely avoiding the media, shunning any interviewer who may ask a tough question and rejecting the opportunity to debate an opponent. Hobbs did...

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is expected to lead House Democrats in the next term, pushed back on notions that the caucus is in “disarray” and expressed optimism on Sunday that Democrats will maintain unity in the face of a GOP majority. During an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” co-anchor Jake Tapper asked Jeffries about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) telling The New York Times there was “healing that needs to be done in our caucus” after Jeffries emerged as Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) likely successor.

As Georgia gears up for a runoff between Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock and his Republican challenger Herschel Walker, Democrats in the state are once again crying wolf — aka, voter suppression — over a state law that prohibits early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The Democratic Party of Georgia — along with Warnock’s campaign and prominent Democratic lawyer Marc Elias — have filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the Peach State from banning early voting on Saturday, Nov. 26, two days after Thanksgiving. But Georgia law clearly states that if the second Saturday before the election follows a Thursday...

-snip- The propaganda display left Katya, a middle-aged Moscow schoolteacher, who had brought along a group of 11-year-old pupils, with more questions than answers. She said she wondered what all the casualties were for. “No one understands anything,” she said as she left the exhibition hall. “First we came up to Kyiv, and then we left — and how many people were killed? Then we took Kherson, and then we left it again. And how many people were killed?” “Even military men,” she said, referring to veterans of earlier Russian wars in her family, “they know how war works. But...

As Meryl Steep said in Death Becomes Her, “NOW a warning??” Joe Biden Leads ‘Critical’ Call For Game-Changing, Global Bitcoin And Crypto Rules After Shock FTX Collapse. After Sam Bankman-Fried helped Democrats avoid a red wave. NOW a warning?? The chaos created by Sam Bankman-Fried (FTX Crypto Exchange) and Alameda Research (SBF’s hedge fund) will go down in history as one of the biggest scams. And should earn a top spot on Phil Hall’s 100 Years Of Wall Street Crooks. Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt crypto empire owes its 50 biggest unsecured creditors a total of $3.1 billion, new court papers show,...

Arizona Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright — with the Elections Integrity Unit — wrote a letter to the Maricopa County officials Saturday demanding an accounting for the widespread ballot tabulation and ballot printer problems seen during the general election on Nov. 8. Among the most troubling issues raised in the letter directed to Thomas Liddy with the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office was the apparent co-mingling of ballots in black duffle bags in at least one polling location, which were successfully run through the on-site tabulators with those put in “Door 3” to be sent to the Election Department’s downtown Phoenix...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemned a shooting overnight at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo. that killed five people, calling it a “senseless slaughter.” “Americans awoke this morning to horrific news: a brutal attack on an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Our hearts break at the senseless slaughter of at least five beautiful souls and the many more injured or forever traumatized, at what was a sanctuary of safety and solidarity.”

President Biden on Sunday said the country “cannot and must not tolerate hate” and called for action on “the public health epidemic of gun violence” after a gunman killed five people and wounded 18 others at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo. “Places that are supposed to be safe spaces of acceptance and celebration should never be turned into places of terror and violence. Yet it happens far too often. We must drive out the inequities that contribute to violence against LGBTQI+ people. We cannot and must not tolerate hate,” Biden said in a statement.

Not a good day for the woke LOL

Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) on this week’s broadcast MSNBC’s “The Sunday Show” that she was “very disturbed” former President Donald Trump will lead domestic terrorists now that his account is reinstated on Twitter. Anchor Jonathan Capehart said, “Congresswoman Waters, what is your reaction to Trump being back on Twitter?” Water said, “I am terribly disturbed about it. I know that he is going to try to use it to continue to organize his constituency. It also gives him an opportunity to try and make people believe why he should be president of the United States. S0o he is going to...

Twitter is “taking child exploitation seriously,” the platform’s toughest critic on child sexual exploitation (CSE) told Teslarati in an exclusive interview. Eliza Bleu is a survivor of human trafficking and an advocate for victims, especially children. Bleu has been putting pressure on Twitter for several years to remove CSE material at scale, and up until Elon Musk’s acquisition, Twitter has been slow to remove most of the content. She told Teslarati that she is happy to see the new changes the platform is implementing under Elon Musk’s new leadership.

The Education Department is sending mass notices to borrowers who were approved for student loan forgiveness as a result of alleged school misconduct. Hundreds of thousands of borrowers will not have to pay back their student loans under a group discharge initiative. “The Department of Education... has determined that the loan(s) you received... are eligible for full loan discharge,” says an email sent to thousands of borrowers. “This means the remaining balance on the loan(s) will be forgiven. You do not have to make any more payments on the loan(s).” Here’s what borrowers should know. The Biden administration is providing...

We are just a few days removed from President Donald Trump’s big announcement that he is planning on running for president again in 2024.Everyone and their brother has an opinion of how the speech went.Scared democrats claim it was “boring” and that Trump stands no chance.The RINOs also appear unimpressed.Trending: Maricopa County Attorney Caught On Camera Over “Canceled” Ballots: “I Don’t Give a F***”However, others had a more positive reaction to Trump’s latest announcement.Count former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee among the latter.Huckabee claims that the message delivered by President Trump in his speech will make him “unbeatable” in 2024, no...

Legal experts rallied to Donald Trump's defense Friday in criticizing Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointment of former federal attorney Jack Smith as special counsel to head the Department of Justice's investigations of the former president.Smith was the chief prosecutor at The Hague investigating war crimes in Kosovo and who led the DOJ unit involved in investigating public corruption in the Obama administration. Smith, said to be a political independent, will oversee the investigations of Trump's alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and of his storing presidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Trump has denied all...

Exhausted and overwhelmed, Gretchen Miller felt the frustration of the past three years rise up within her. On a whim the 54-year-old from Sydney posted a message to her local community Facebook group. “Does anyone else feel like screaming?” she asked. The responses poured in. “I want to scream because of climate change and economic inequality,” one woman wrote. “Because of real estate agents and landlords,” said another. “My fiancé decided he didn’t love me anymore,” read one reply. Miller said she received more than 100 messages in the first hour. From that callout, the Shout Sisters group was formed....

Former Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that former President Donald Trump asked him to violate his oath to the Constitution on January 6, 2021. Pence said, “I write did it in the book, I will never forget, it was the night before January 6, the president and I were alone in the office in what was ultimately a tense conversation. I had made my position clear, as vice president, I did not believe I had the authority to return or reject electoral votes when the House convened to count the electoral votes, but there...

Representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) will not last long as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Host Jake Tapper asked Pence what kind of Speaker he expected McCarthy to be. Kinzinger said, “If you had asked me five years ago, I would have said a pretty good one. Now, I think he has cut so many deals with bad people to get to this position that I think he’s not going to be a leader.”

<p>A brave 19-year-old fast food worker from the Bay Area lost her eye after she tried to stop a man from bullying a special needs boy.</p><p>Bianca Palomera was working at Habit Burger Grill in Antioch, California on Nov. 12 when she noticed four men harassing a special needs boy — the brother of one of her coworkers who was waiting until their shift ended, KNTV reported.</p>