Free Republic

The relentless attacks on Elon Musk since he purchased Twitter should be familiar to most Americans. It’s exactly what Democrats and their media and corporate allies did to demonize Donald Trump. The McCarthyite formula is simple: Claim you are defending high-minded principles (Democracy! The rule of law! Civil discourse!) to justify efforts to delegitimize someone you’ve identified as a political opponent. Democrats denied Trump’s presidency from day one; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden themselves declared for years that he had stolen the 2016 election. In the name of election integrity, Democrats turned a bogus conspiracy theory cooked up by Clinton’s...

Tightening food supplies and soaring prices have put food security high on the agenda of Southeast Asian nations, as reflected in discussions at their leaders' summit last month in Phnom Penh. In Laos, inflation reached a 22-year high of 34% in September, largely due to higher food costs. Prices for rice, the staple of Lao diets, were 45.3% higher than a year before. In the Philippines, food prices jumped 9.8% in October, up from a 7.7% rise in September. These developments have complex implications for the agri-food industry across the region. Higher commodity prices may provide a short-term windfall for...

Ursula von Der Leyen’s did the unthinkable today — she told the truth. During a speech condemning Russia for committing war crimes, she noted in passing that 100,000 Ukrainian “officers” (sic) have been killed since the start of the SMO.Ukraine was not happy:Ukraine has hit back at a claim by the European Commission’s president that 100,000 of Kyiv’s troops have been killed since Russia’s invasion in February.Ursula von der Leyen used the number in a video address, prompting Kyiv’s armed forces to state that the death toll was “classified information.” Footage of her speech has since been edited to cut...

A Gwinnett County School District English teacher suffered a violent attack from one of his students, according to reports and video footage. A student at Discovery High School in Lawrenceville, Georgia, was recorded hitting his teacher multiple times on school property Tuesday, according to cellphone video footage shared with WSB-TV2. The video depicts what seems to be the high school student and the teacher engaging in a short discussion before the student is seen striking the teacher repeatedly with his fists. The student continues to beat the English teacher even after one of his blows forces the latter off his...

Russian troops in Lyman and those who retreated took heavy losses, including an elite GRU unit. The town of Lyman quickly became the center of attention as Ukrainian forces partially surrounded it in the final days of September, trapping a large Russian garrison in there. Lyman is a key logistical node commanding an important road over the Siverskyy Donets River in Ukraine's Donetsk region. Its loss compounded Russian setbacks in the final weeks of summer and stoked further anger among pro-war commentators in Russia. British military intelligence assessed after the battle that the Russian force defending Lyman was a hodgepodge...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen blamed consumers' excessive spending habits as a primary cause for the near 40-year-high in inflation on Wednesday. The Biden official appeared on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" where she was asked about the price increases that have plagued the U.S. for more than a year. Colbert asked her to explain to his audience how inflation got out-of-hand when "two years ago everything seemed fine." The late-night host, known for his sycophantic boosting of President Biden and Democrats, even noted the Biden administration dismissed inflation as a "small risk" as recently as last year. Yellen argued...

Canada: A Gruesome, Terrifying Culture of DeathCanada used to be a serious country and a fine place to live and raise a family. Canadians fought valiantly in both World Wars, manned peacekeeping missions and have welcomed refugees, including my own grandparents, from war-torn lands with open arms and warm hearts. Its high taxes have been the foundational stone of a generous social welfare system, a universal socialized medical system, relatively good public schools and public universities among other social programs. As a G7 nation, it has long held a place at the table of the world’s most formidable countries.That country...

MSNBC political commentator and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday on “Morning Joe” that Attorney General Merrick Garland was a “quiet storm” building January 6 cases with “complete bad&&&” special counsel Jack Smith. Partial transcript as follows: DAVID IGNATIUS: The conviction of Stewart Rhodes of Oath Keepers for seditious conspiracy is a big deal. Yeah, obvious that our Attorney General, Merrick Garland, sees it as a significant precedent or basis for further prosecutions of that type. They’re seeing that the courts will accept this very deep description of what happened January 6. And if Merkel decides to...

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen blamed consumers' excessive spending habits as a primary cause for the near 40-year-high in inflation on Wednesday. The Biden official appeared on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" where she was asked about the price increases that have plagued the U.S. for more than a year.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just on Tuesday was talking about the media spreading “false narratives” to divide people. During that press conference in Jacksonville, the Republican governor also noted how he willingly fights back to set and keep the record straight.

On May 22, 2010, 10,000 Bitcoin (“BTC”) were exchanged for two Papa John’s pizzas.[1] Because BTC was the first cryptocurrency, this was the first publicly known transaction involving cryptocurrency.[2] Just a little over a decade later, the price per BTC reached $68,000.[3] To put this in perspective, the amount of BTC paid per slice from one of the Papa John’s pies purchased in 2010 would have been worth $42,500,000 in 2021.[4] The cryptocurrency market reached three trillion dollars at its peak in 2021, which sent shockwaves throughout the economy.[5] One survey showed that 11% of people quit their jobs because...

On Wednesday, Elon Musk gave an update on the advancement of his Neuralink brain implant/interface project. In the update, he noted he expects to begin clinical trials in six months, and he hopes one of the first targeted applications will be in restoring vision. Based in Austin, Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area, Neuralink is developing implantable chips which will be designed to interface directly with the human brain. It is hoped the technology will ultimately allow paralyzed patients to regain motor movement, and ultimately, help meld human brains with computers. Thus far the company has been conducting animal...

LONDON (AP) — Thousands of patients each week are being stranded for long stretches in ambulances outside overflowing British hospitals, a growing crisis that has likely contributed to scores of deaths, health care leaders said Thursday. The U.K.’s ambulance service is seizing up in some areas as the country’s health system faces an inferno of pressures, including rising demand for care after pandemic restrictions were eased; a surge in flu and other winter viruses after two lockdown years; and staff shortages from pandemic burnout and a post-Brexit drought of European workers in Britain. Thousands of hospital beds are also occupied...

This week the Department of Education sent out letters to the 16 million students who expected the government to cancel at least $10,000 of the debt they each accrued to attend expensive colleges. In the letter, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona expressed sympathy for their plight and blamed "enemies of our democracy for thwarting the President's efforts to reduce your suffering." "As we saw this year, the Supreme Court--the most undemocratic institution within our government--cruelly block the President's executive order granting you partial relief," Cardona wrote. "They said he lacked authority to unilaterally do this since the Constitution gave Congress...

@Nigel_Farage GB News reports that 44,000 illegal migrants have now crossed the English Channel. Invasion!

The Iranian government is stepping up its efforts to eliminate the opponents of the regime who have fled the country. The Washington Post reports that the Iranians are offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to mercenaries...

As the crypto industry struggles in the wake of FTX’s collapse, the question of how the SEC will react is unanswered. Here’s what past investigations tell us about how the SEC sees cryptocurrency and may regulate it moving forward. Illustration: Ali Larkin The company behind the tether stablecoin has increasingly been lending its own coins to customers rather than selling them for hard currency upfront. The shift adds to risks that the company may not have enough liquid assets to pay redemptions in a crisis. Tether Holdings Ltd. says it lends only to eligible customers and requires that borrowers post...

(NEXSTAR) – One less day of work, not a dollar less in pay – for an employee, what’s not to love? But even employers like the idea, a recent trial of about 30 companies shows. Thirty-three companies employing about 1,000 people in the U.S., Ireland and Australia decided to test out a four-day, 32-hour workweek as part of a six-month pilot designed by the nonprofit 4 Day Week Global and professors at Boston College. The trial instructed “employees to work 80% of their regularly scheduled hours in return for 100% of their pay and a pledge to deliver 100% of...

A local attorney is speaking out about the terrifying night he was drugged and robbed by two women he met at a bar in Beverly Hills. He says the women drugged him, then ransacked his Hollywood Hills home, running off with thousands in cash and jewelry. The victim says the alleged robbery happened a few months ago on July 25 when he met the two women at a local bar in Beverly Hills. The victim was out with friends enjoying bars on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills when his friends began chatting with the alleged suspects — two women who...

Protests have quickly spread nationwide as the Chinese people express their dissatisfaction with China’s leader Xi Jin Ping.When the Chinese people saw images of maskless fans enjoying the World Cup, they asked why the rest of the world had moved on while they were still cooped up in their tiny apartments like animals, bored and hungry (Chinese censors reportedly stopped showing images of fans during World Cup broadcasts).This is while something extraordinary is happening in China: Residents in multiple cities, at significant personal risk, took to the streets over the weekend to demand an end to the government’s draconian “zero...