Free Republic

“Gaslighting” — behavior that’s mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year. Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year. The gaslighting was pervasive. “It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at...

San Francisco Unified school board commissioner Ann Hsu, who was widely condemned for racist comments she made earlier this year, has lost her seat to challenger Alida Fisher. Though previously Hsu was in third place in the Board of Education race — for three open seats — she dropped to fourth place on Monday, and never recovered. As of Thursday, Hsu had no viable path to win. Hsu has 17.14% of the vote, with challenger Alida Fisher surpassing her at 17.75%. Fisher is leading Hsu by 4,054 votes — an insurmountable lead considering the 800 ballots left to count by...

Nov. 28 was the deadline set by Arizona law for counties within the state to approve the official tally of votes for the 2022 election, a process that is also known as the canvass. For 2022, all Arizona counties, except one, have done so, despite pressure from some Republicans not to officially approve a vote count that had Democrats winning for U.S. Senate, governor and other statewide races. Initially, Republican supervisors in Mohave County postponed a certification vote until later Thursday after hearing comments from residents angry about problems with ballot printers in Maricopa County. The northwestern Arizona county, however,...

by Jim Clayborn | RNNTwo men attempted a broad-daylight theft from an Alabama Tractor Supply store on Black Friday, but some customers weren't having a bit of it — including one who pulled out his gun and blew out at least one tire on the getaway vehicle. What are the details?Witnesses said the two men were trying to steal merchandise from a Tractor Supply Co. location in Theodore on Friday morning, WPMI-TV reported. Theodore is about 15 minutes southwest of Mobile. Ryan Maxie and his fiancée, Katie Clark, were in the store's parking lot when they heard shots after two...

"And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." "And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." "Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." Luke, Chapter 10 1 After these things the Lord...

The Woke want us to eradicate our culture as we know it and replace it with a simplistic worldview in which everyone is either an Oppressor or the Oppressed. “We reject woke ideology. We will never ever surrender to the woke agenda. Florida is where woke comes to die.” So said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis when he won a thumping majority in the mid-term elections. That political use of the term “woke” still has many Australians puzzled.

In a series of tweets on Monday, Mr. Musk accused Apple of threatening to pull Twitter from its App Store and of trying to censor. SAN FRANCISCO — “What’s going on here @tim_cook?” Elon Musk tweeted on Monday to Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, igniting a spat between the world’s richest man and the world’s most valuable public company. In a series of tweets over 15 minutes, Mr. Musk, the new owner of Twitter, accused Apple of threatening to withhold Twitter from its App Store, a move that would limit some new users from downloading the app. The...

You get a car, you get a car — and you get criticized for a lavish lifestyle. Controversial radio host Howard Stern accused Oprah Winfrey, 68, of “showing off” her wealth on social media. “Oprah’s not embarrassed by her wealth at all,” Stern, 68, said during his radio show on Monday, adding she “loves showing it off” on social media.

They say you are the company you keep — and “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin is calling out what she declares Kanye West’s inexcusable ties to racists and anti-Semites. Hostin made the claim during the show’s lively “Hot Topics” segment on Monday, during which the panel condemned former president Donald Trump for hosting West and known Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago last week. “I think the problem with it is, when you provide that kind of access to white supremacists — which is what these two [West and Fuentes] are at this point, because Kanye is also wearing things...

Video at https://twitter.com/NYPDnews/status/1595401963428089864A man arrested in connection with a brutal daytime attack of a 12-year-old Asian boy in Brooklyn earlier this month has been arrested nearly two dozen times in the past, according to reports. Police said Jamal McIlwain, 28, assaulted the victim with a crutch at the intersection of St. Paul’s Court and St. Paul’s Place at around 7:40 a.m. on Nov. 17. He was arrested on Wednesday after someone reported seeing him acting suspiciously outside an unidentified high school. Surveillance footage of the attack shows a man in dark clothes running toward the boy and striking him twice...

The volcanic eruption that originated late Sunday within Mauna Loa’s summit caldera has shifted to the Northeast Rift Zone, prompting HVO scientists to indicate to county officials that there is no imminent threat to the community — particular, those near and around the Southwestern Rift Zone — at this time. Those communities include but are not limited to Pahala, Naʻalehu, Ocean View, Miloliʻi, Napoʻopoʻo, Captain Cook, Kealakekua, and Keauhou — all of which are considered high-risk in the event of Mauna Loa eruption due to the steep slope of the rift zone, according to a Hawaii County media release issued...

Thank you so much to a reader for sending me this video…It is so good and I now want to share it with all of you.It’s only 5 minutes but it’s very powerful and it answers the question we all hear so often:“How can you possibly support Trump?”Have you heard that one before?Usually from brainless automatons who don’t do any thinking for themself, probably haven’t ever listened to a full Trump speech, and just parrot what the MSM tells them to think.So if you want a great response, this video is it.You’ll probably be standing up and cheering by the...

The Biden administration on Monday notified Congress it has approved a possible $323 million arms sale to Finland as the country seeks to join NATO. The administration approved the potential sale of 40 tactical missiles and 48 Joint Standoff Weapons, made by Raytheon, in addition to accompanying equipment, training and support, the State Department said in a release. Finland, which shares a border with Russia, is in the process of joining NATO along with Sweden. Both countries sought to enter the alliance earlier this year. This State Department said the proposed sale “will support the foreign policy and national security...

One person is dead and four wounded after a suspect opened fire on a basketball court near the Florida A&M University recreation center about 4:30 p.m. Sunday. Neither the deceased nor the injured were students at the university. The three wounded individuals are one male juvenile and three male adults, WCTV reports. The Tallahassee Democrat, citing a Tallahassee Police Department news release, points out, “A suspect walked toward the outdoor basketball courts and began shooting into a crowd. When the shooting occurred, there were more than a dozen people at the basketball courts both playing and watching the games.

The World Champion largest number, listed in the latest Guinness Book of Records, is an upper bound, derived by R. L. Graham, from a problem in a part of combinatorics called Ramsey theory. Graham’s number cannot be expressed using the conventional notation of powers, and powers of powers. If all the material in the universe were turned into pen and ink it would not be enough to write the number down. Consequently, this special notation, devised by Donald Knuth, is necessary. 3^3 means ‘3 cubed’, as it often does in computer printouts. 3^^3 means 3^(3^3), or 3^27, which is already...

More than half of Americans say they’ve seen social media posts calling for violence against someone based on their race, gender or sexuality, according to results of a new poll, and women and LGBTQ+ people report higher rates of online harassment compared with other groups. The survey — commissioned by UltraViolet, GLAAD, Kairos, and Women’s March — included a sample of over 1000 social media users, with oversamples of people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ respondents. “The alarming poll results reinforce just how badly social media companies are failing when it comes to protecting LGBTQ and other marginalized communities online,”...

Sam Brinton, one of the first “openly genderfluid individuals in federal government leadership,” was charged with felony theft last month after allegedly stealing a woman’s luggage at MSP Airport. The MIT grad went viral earlier this year when he announced his new role as the deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the U.S. Department of Energy. “As one of if not the very first openly genderfluid individuals in federal government leadership, I was welcomed with open arms into the Department of Energy all the way up to the Secretary whom I shared the...

The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself. The public deserves to know what really happened …

The Biden administration has determined that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, should be granted immunity in a case brought against him by the fiancée of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom the administration has said was murdered at the prince’s direction. A court filing was made by Justice Department lawyers at the request of the State Department because bin Salman was recently made the Saudi prime minister and as a result, qualifies for immunity as a foreign head of government, the request said. It was filed late Thursday night, just before the court’s deadline for the Justice Department...

For the last 10 days, moral superiors have pressured everyday Americans to heed attention to “football,” or as we deem it, soccer — so as not to be confused with the more popular sport. Americans Still Don’t Enjoy Soccer On Tuesday, the United States men’s national soccer team’s brief run in a Persian Gulf nation riddled with anti-Semites and misogynistic policies will end if the team doesn’t beat Iran, a squad with braver men than ours. If you live in the Twitter cesspool or an urban bubble, you likely are under the erroneous impression that most Americans enjoy soccer, but...