Free Republic

11 March 2023Saturday of the 2nd week of Lent Restoration of the Church of Archangel Michael, Pologi, Ukraine Original view More stunning photos (Ukr)Readings at MassLiturgical Colour: Violet. Year: A(I).First readingMicah 7:14-15,18-20 ©Have pity on us one more timeWith shepherd’s crook, O Lord, lead your people to pasture,the flock that is your heritage,living confined in a forestwith meadow land all around.Let them pasture in Bashan and Gileadas in the days of old.As in the days when you came out of Egyptgrant us to see wonders.What god can compare with you: taking fault away,pardoning crime,not cherishing anger for everbut delighting in...

Around midnight on Saturday, the levee along the Pajaro River in north Monterey County was breached, forcing thousands of residents of the Pajaro to evacuate in the middle of the night. According to Monterey County, both the Monterey County Water Resources Agency and the California Department of Water Resources were along the levee trying to stop the flooding when the levee was breached. Earlier in the day, the Monterey County Sheriff's Office had issued an evacuation order for the community of Pajaro. Volunteers, including Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo and Santa Cruz County Supervisors Felipe Hernandez, had knocked on doors...

-- Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, said the Kremlin has completely stopped talking to him. -- Prigozhin claims he was cut off after revealing that his troops in Ukraine are running out of ammunition. -- The Wagner boss said he's been desperately trying to get more supplies but has been ignored. The head of Russia's infamous Wagner Group mercenary organization claims that the Kremlin has cut off contact with him. Yevgeny Prigozhin, known for years to be a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said in a Thursday message on his Telegram channel that all of his...

Ripping: Video Jitters You rip a video and it is fully of jitters. Every now and then the video pauses. Maybe for just enough to notice, but sometimes for what seems like a long time. What causes video jitters while encoding them?The Number 1 Cause: Overclocking Most of the systems we use today are built on gaming computers. The first core is built to handle the overclocking most folks give it. The subsequent cores can only handle the overclocking for shorter periods of time as the game gets more intense. When the limits are exceeded, either in watts and time...

This is very scary for athletes and parents of kids who play on artificial turf.If you played a youth field sport at any level you probably had at least some contact with artificial turf. Now there are serious concerns about long-term exposure to the playing surface. Six former Philadelphia Phillies players, Tug McGraw, Darren Daulton, John Vukovich, John Oates, Ken Brett, and David West have died due to glioblastoma, a rare form of brain cancer that seems to indicate a link in their environment — with the turf inside of Veteran’s Stadium from 1971-2003 being a common factor. A ranging...

The 'Star Trek' legend says his new documentary ‘You Can Call Me Bill’ is “a way of reaching out after I die” Star Trek legend William Shatner has said he doesn’t “have long to live”. The 91-year-old recently finished his new documentary You Can Call Me Bill, which is described as ”an intimate portrait of William Shatner’s personal journey over nine decades on this Earth”. While wider release plans have yet to be finalised, the film will air at this year’s SXSW festival. Speaking about his decision to make the doc, Shatner said: “I’ve turned down a lot of offers...

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez married in Vegas in July 2022. But in August, the couple had a big three-day celebration at Affleck’s massive estate in Riceboro, Georgia. While the pair seemed very excited about the wedding, some fans didn’t approve of the location. Many wondered why the couple held the wedding at Affleck’s plantation-style home, allegedly built on unmarked slave graves. US actor Ben Affleck poses as he arrives for the world premiere of “Triple Frontier” on March 3, 2019 in New York City. | Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images Affleck bought the house in Georgia in 2003 for...

Sir Michael Caine has responded to the claim that his 1964 film Zulu incites the far-right, calling it “XXXXXXXX”. Earlier this year, the film was cited as a “key text” for “white nationalists/supremacists” during a review into the government’s counter-terrorism programme Prevent. Speaking to The Spectator, Caine revealed he got the part of arrogant, inexperienced Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in Zulu after playing “a cockney bloke in the West End in a play called Next Time I’ll Sing To You.” “An American director who was in the audience saw me and gave me a part in the film Zulu as a...

On Tuesday afternoon, 45th President and leading 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump reacted to bombshell coverage by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson released on Monday evening of previously never before seen raw footage of the January 6, 2021 protest at the Capitol. Trump demanded the release of the January 6th prisoners and those who covered up the truth about January 6th to be “tried for fraud and treason.”“GREAT JOB BY TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT. The Unselect Committee of political Hacks & Thugs has been totally discredited. They knowingly refused to show the Videos that mattered,” Trump wrote in a post on Tuesday...

DAVENPORT, Iowa – Suzy Barker, a native Iowan dressed in an orange-and-blue University of Florida hoodie, waited in a crowd of fellow Republicans on Friday morning to meet Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.She smiled widely and pointed to her hoodie as she told the governor that her son attended college in his home state. DeSantis – dressed in a dark blue suit with a light blue, open-collar shirt and black boots – stood on the opposite side of 10 metal bike racks separating him from the crowd. He gave a slight nod to Barker and told her about his state’s...

LONDON (AP) - Former England captain Gary Lineker will not present a soccer highlights show on the BBC until an agreement is reached on his social media use, the network said on Friday. Lineker criticized the British government’s new asylum policy in a Twitter post, comparing lawmakers’ language about migrants to that used in Nazi Germany. The BBC considers Lineker posting such views on social media as a breach of its guidelines and has been in discussions with him over his involvement in the “Match of the Day” program that is broadcast on Saturday nights and shows highlights of English...

President Donald Trump is ready to “beat the Radical Left Democrats at their own game,” announcing that his campaign will start to legally harvest ballots in the states “where the left is cheating the system.”In a video posted on Truth Social Wednesday, President Trump said: “The radical left Democrats have used ballot harvesting to cancel out your vote and walk away with elections that they never should have won. They cheat and they cheat like nobody has ever cheated before.”He continued, “Many states have banned ballot harvesting to keep our elections honest and fair. But in the states where ballot...

MSNBC host Katie Phang made the obligatory disclaimer that "we all respect the First Amendment."But in the same breath in her interview of Dem Rep. Eric Swalwell aired on her Saturday show, Phang suggested to Swalwell that there should be "congressional oversight, regulations, some type of gatekeeping" of Fox News.And just like Phang with her phony expression of devotion to the First Amendment, Swalwell piously professed, "I don't want to get into the business of telling troops what they can and cannot watch." But he proceeded to suggest just that: I don't want to get into the business of telling...

As the next presidential election approaches, the leader of the Republican Party, and America, is Donald Trump. In 2015, the Republican Party was dead. There was no clear leader and little enthusiasm even as the end of Barack Obama’s presidency was on the horizon. Republicans suffered convincing losses in the two previous presidential elections, and a Bush versus Clinton rematch reincarnate was plausible for a time. The party’s 2014 midterm election gains were more of a referendum on Barack Obama than an endorsement of the Republican Party. But the key reason those scenarios were short-lived was because of Donald Trump....

Last year the U.S. Senate surprised everyone and unanimously passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would have kept the country permanently on daylight savings time. Not many bills get the thumbs up from every senate member, so there was a sense that switching clocks twice a year had met its final Waterloo. But then the measure went to the House, where it died. So here we are again, ready to do the time change tango tomorrow, March 12, leaving many to wonder if the business of clock changing will ever come to an end. What is Happening Between Fox and...

Yesterday, along with many, many others, I mentioned a major financial concern: The problems of two small banks on the West Coast are rippling across markets and causing new investor concerns about some of the country’s largest financial institutions.Why? Three words: rising interest rates [italics added].The Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign to bring down inflation helped set the stage for major problems at two California lending institutions — SVB Financial (SIVB) and Silvergate Capital (SI) — as an outflow of deposits forced both to sell assets at a loss. Those assets were bonds.BOOM! BOOM! POW! Friday it happened: Silicon Valley Bank...

OLYMPIA — A bill that would strip single-family zoning regulations from neighborhoods across the state to allow duplexes or fourplexes to be built passed the Washington state House of Representatives late Monday. The measure, which passed 75-21 with bipartisan support, is aimed at alleviating the housing shortage by encouraging builders to put more people into existing city neighborhoods rather than encouraging urban sprawl. The bill requires cities between 25,000 and 75,000 people to allow two units per lot anywhere and four units on lots within one half-mile of a bus stop . Cities with more than 75,000 people or with...

Besides spending America into bankruptcy, Joe Biden's legacy as president can be summed up with: If President Trump built it, he broke it. Which brings us to the Middle East. According to Reuters:DUBAI/RIYADH, March 10 (Reuters) - Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed on Friday to re-establish relations after years of hostility that had threatened stability and security in the Gulf and helped fuel conflicts in the Middle East from Yemen to Syria.The deal, brokered by China, was announced after four days of previously undisclosed talks in Beijing between top security officials from the two rival Middle East powers.Let's stop right...

According to a report, sources close to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis say that privately he has indicated he plans to run for the GOP nomination for president in 2024. But, despite his intentions, a Florida law could complicate things for him. DeSantis has certainly been following the playbook of a potential presidential candidate, including writing a book and traveling across the country, particularly to key states on the primary schedule. He plans to visit Iowa on Friday and then Nevada on Saturday. DeSantis is expected to make his announcement following the end of the legislative session in May. Though publicly...

The peasants are rising up again. In Belgium, farmers flooded the streets of Brussels last week with over 2,000 tractors to protest their government’s plan to limit nitrogen emissions. For these farmers, almost everything is at stake — not only their livelihoods, but also their way of life. Of course, the rest of us also have a big stake in all of this: fewer productive farms means less food in the world. How much less? We’ll get to that presently. In a quirky inverted sort of way, what is happening now has been a long time coming. In 1968, Paul...