Free Republic

Democrats would not have had such a good election night without the support of independent voters. ...Despite plenty of polling this year showing that independents were, like Republicans, primarily concerned with the state of the economy and inflation, they ended up making nuanced decisions in key statewide races — and that worked to benefit Democrats.... ...Perhaps the most confounding result for pundits across the spectrum was how the negative perception voters, and especially independents, had of President Joe Biden’s job performance and the state of the economy did not translate into a massive swing for Republicans. But voters weren’t viewing...

20 Minute intro to the Ganymede Hypothesis Ganymede is Jupiter's largest moon. Just a bit smaller than Mars, it is an icy wasteland now but that appears not to have always been the case. There is reason to believe that a few tens of thousands of years ago, it would have been a warm, fresh-water ocean world with islands and floating bergs of pumice and luxuriant vegetation. There is a Youtube channel called Ganymede Hypothesius containing related materials.The unabridged version of the story is a free download in pdf format, around 340 pages. This theory is not exactly genesis but...

Prayers up. FR is funded solely by contributions made by the liberty loving patriots who love and use it. We are beholden to no political party. No advertisers, no outsiders, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers. Definitely no government subsidies or tax breaks. No 501c or other IRS non-profit status. This means no commercial ads. No annoying pop-ups. No ad tracking. No mail campaigns. No spam. No third-parties -- not even the IRS -- trying to control what we do or say. We are self-funded, fiercely independent and enjoy our freedom to speak plainly in the support of God,...

An iconic ice cream business has threatened to move its Portland headquarters out of Oregon as crime, drug use and homelessness continue to plague the woke Democratic city. Salt & Straw was created to be a community gathering place, according to its website. It was set up as a parlor in 2011, and quickly became known as one of the United States' best scoop shops, further bolstering Portland's reputation as one of America's best foodie cities.

President Joe Biden said Saturday that he'd tabled plans to discuss a 2024 run with his family during their Thanksgiving trip to Nantucket - spending the day shopping on the island instead. 'We're not having any, we're celebrating!' Biden told reporters when asked how those 2024 discussions were going as he walked from store to store downtown. DailyMail.com later asked him if he'd made a decision about launching a reelection bid.

Controversial Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz has slammed her own newspaper's reporting on China and its opposition of Covid lockdowns in the country. On Saturday, the Post tweeted an article about China's record number of coronavirus cases, noting how only a tiny proportion its billion-strong population are vaccinated. 'A coronavirus outbreak on the verge of being China's biggest of the pandemic has exposed a critical flaw in Beijing's 'zero covid' strategy: a vast population without natural immunity,' the post said.

“As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his praise. Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him” (Proverbs 27:21-22).

Elon Musk on Saturday shared slides he said were from a Twitter company talk he delivered. The slides included graphs that showed Twitter downloads and usage were at record highs.They also noted features Musk plans to implement, including long-form tweets and encrypted DMs Elon Musk on Saturday said Twitter signups and active minutes are at an all-time high as he continues to roll out his 2.0 version of the platform.Musk shared a series of slides he said were from a Twitter company talk he delivered. The slides included graphs as well as features he plans to include in Twitter 2.0,...

Maine needs to get more adults into the workforce and create affordable housing options for them if it wants to strengthen the state’s economy and quality of life, according to a report released Wednesday. The Measures of Growth 2022 examined 31 indicators, awarding Maine gold stars in areas such as entrepreneurship because the number of business starts exceeded closures by 9% in 2020. Wages are strong too, rising 0.5% in 2021. But the council, made up of business owners and lawmakers from both parties, issued red flags for housing affordability, labor force participation, mental and behavioral health and research and...

A break from politics for ingenuity in construction. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGegneT9KfQ&t=1s Indiana Bell Central Office building, all 11,000 tons, moved 90 degrees while employees worked inside. Kurt Vonnegut's father was the local architect who came up with the idea.

The last time a vote for speaker went to multiple ballots on the House floor was in 1923. The longest was 133 ballots over two months.... ...In this game of chicken, if the conservatives don’t blink and McCarthy refuses to back down, it could result in a chaotic floor fight with House members taking multiple votes for speaker — something that has not happened in a century. Here are other examples throughout history where the speaker's gavel didn't come easy....

...After the predicted “red wave” failed to materialize on Nov. 8, it’s safe to believe that not only are a large number of these conservative and faith-based voters depressed, they’re also shocked that the Republican leadership — which failed so miserably — will remain in power once again.... ...With literally hundreds of millions of dollars spent, much of it donations from these constituencies, combined with an election perfectly teed up for the Republican establishment and leadership to win after two years of one White House/Democratic failure after the other, the GOP still managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws...

In December 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke and her mother were traveling to see her father on LANSA Flight 508 when the plane was felled by lightning and broke apart. Considered the worst lightning strike in history, the crash ultimately led to the loss of every passenger on board - except Koepcke. The teenager plunged two miles through the air to the floor of a Peruvian jungle, still strapped to her seat. Despite this harrowing experience, she lived to tell the tale. Koepcke, who miraculously suffered only minimal harm, ventured through the forest for 11 days seeking help. Just 10 minutes...

The White House has condemned former US President Donald Trump for meeting at his Florida estate with renowned white supremacist Nick Fuentes and with rapper Kanye West, who was recently embroiled in antisemitic controversy. “Bigotry, hate, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in America - including at Mar-A-Lago. Holocaust denial is repugnant and dangerous, and it must be forcefully condemned,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNN. According to media reports, Fuentes and West were seen dining with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate on Tuesday, when West said he had asked the former president to be...

This week-long pity party running 24/7 for the pedophiles and groomers that were shot in the Springs has gotten just nauseating in its bias against normal society. Just like BLM and Pantyfa, they are just turning off any consideration for them. They are like screaming children in the store. Just knock it off and go away.

Oil futures and swaps globally are increasingly showing signs of easing supply concerns and resurfaced concerns about further weakness in crude oil demand.The prompt spreads in the U.S. benchmark, WTI Crude, are already in contango, signaling enough near-term supply. Brent Crude front-month to second-month futures prices also dipped into contango earlier this week.Contango is the state of the market in which prices for delivery at later dates are higher than prompt prices—a market situation signaling oversupply and one which traders use to store oil for delivery at a later date. The opposite market situation—backwardation—typically occurs at times of market deficit...

The Biden administration has quietly approved plans to build a new crude oil terminal in the Gulf of Mexico off Texas, seemingly in contradiction to the president’s climate agenda.The Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration approved the application (pdf) for Enterprise’s Sea Port Oil Terminal, one of four proposed offshore oil export terminals, on Monday.According to the application, the port will be located offshore of Freeport, Texas. It will have 4.8 million barrels of storage capacity and add 2 million barrels per day to the U.S. oil export capacity.In its 94-page decision (pdf), the Maritime Administration said that it had approved...

The United States' 92 nuclear reactors currently in operation have a mean age of 41.6 years, the third oldest in the world. As Statista's Katharina Buchholz reports, the only nuclear fleets that are older are those of Switzerland (46.3 years) and Belgium (42.3 years). Also older are the singular reactors in use in Armenia and the Netherlands.You will find more infographics at StatistaThe U.S. was among the first commercial adopters of nuclear energy in the 1950s, explaining the number of aging reactors today. A building boom between the 1960s and 1970s created today’s nuclear power plants in the United States....

The Internal Revenue Service is reminding tax filers to prepare to report transactions of at least $600 that are made through so-called “third-party” facilitators such as Venmo and PayPal. The agency on Tuesday posted an explainer warning American business owners earning $600 or more per year on payments that are received through apps such as Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, and PayPal to file a tax form known as Form 1099-K. The IRS is interested in transactions involving part-time work, side gigs, and selling goods, according to the agency. The rule does not apply to noncommercial payments like reimbursing someone for...

The brave Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, is the enemy of all globalist power seekers with her ideas of empowering the people of Italy and saving her country from the ultimate weakness and co-dependent mindset that is needed for greedy globalists to establish dominance in the Italian Republic.Meloni is an Italian politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Italy since 22 October 2022, she is the first woman to hold this position and she is the focus of the media and of the Globalist Communist movement.She is making the news cycles go crazy with talk about...