Free Republic

K 12: Excuses, excuses, always excuses For many decades, the Education Establishment has shown itself unable or unwilling to improve public schools. I suspect they actually prefer wallowing in failure; this serves their ideological goals – namely, Americans should settle for mediocrity because that's how we make the world more equitable.A big topic now is how will students recover from the Covid pandemic. Sounds reasonable, but the Washington Post ran a long article full of double talk: on the one hand this, on the other hand that. This smorgasbord of expert opinions pointing in every direction gives each teacher and...

Reuters reported on Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which informed their audience that the growing trend of those two using national or third-party currencies like the UAE’s is something significant for everyone to pay attention to. To that outlet’s credit, it also reminded readers that IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath foresaw in the month after Russia’s special operation began that the West’s sanctions “could erode the dollar’s dominance”.Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened, with India of all countries accelerating de-dollarization through its non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia. About them, Russia has since...

PNC Financial Group decided against bidding on Silicon Valley Bank as regulators struggled to find a buyer for the failed bank’s assets over the weekend, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Pittsburgh, Penn.-based bank sent an initial notice of interest to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp for a deal for SVB and held brief and preliminary discussions with the agency, the source said. However, after conducting initial due diligence, PNC informed the FDIC on Saturday that it decided not to move forward, the source said. The FDIC was conducting an auction for SVB this weekend, with final...

A giant seaweed bloom – so large it can be seen from outer space – may be headed towards Florida’s Gulf Coast. The sargassum bloom, at around 5,000 miles wide, is twice the width of the United States and is believed to be the largest in history.

Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus asked Americans to “wake up” to the reality that the U.S. economy is in “tough times,” following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).“I can’t wait for [President Joe] Biden to get on the speech again and talk about how great the economy is and how it’s moving forward and getting stronger by the day. And this is an indication that whatever he says is not true,” Marcus told Fox News on March 11.Marcus added,“And maybe the American people will finally wake up and understand that we’re living in very tough times, that, in fact,...

In what could bring back the memories of the 2008 Lehman Brothers fall for the global stock markets, trading in a number of regional US banks was halted on Friday amid a massive sell-off. Some of the affected regional US banks are First Republic, Signature Bank, PacWest Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp.Share price of First Republic declined nearly 50 percent, while PacWest Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp lost over 30 percent each. The stock price of Signature Bank fell about 25 percent. However, among the major banks, JPMorgan gained 1 per cent, while Citigroup and Morgan Stanley were down about...

I rolled over in bed this morning and glanced at the clock. I never set an alarm (wouldn’t know how to do it if I wanted to) so you can imagine my relief when the clock said it was only 5:30 a.m.I almost allowed myself to doze off but then I remembered; the bi-annual fiddling with time meant it was actually 6:30 a.m. and I was already behind schedule. Cursing Ben Franklin (who really didn’t invent Daylight Saving Time), I stumbled out of bed and prepared for a few days of trying to adjust my body rhythms to the unnatural...

The following statement was released by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome H. Powell, and FDIC Chairman Martin J. Gruenberg: Today we are taking decisive actions to protect the U.S. economy by strengthening public confidence in our banking system. This step will ensure that the U.S. banking system continues to perform its vital roles of protecting deposits and providing access to credit to households and businesses in a manner that promotes strong and sustainable economic growth. After receiving a recommendation from the boards of the FDIC and the Federal Reserve, and consulting with the...

We've all heard about the four Americans who ran into a cartel at the U.S.-Mexico border. It was two dead in Matamoros. Shortly after, Senator Graham said we should "designate Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations and authorize the use of military force against them."Then came a speech by President López-Obrador. The first part was nationalism and totally expected:"We are not going to allow any foreign government to intervene, much less a foreign government's armed forces," López Obrador told reporters during a press conference. "We are not a protectorate of the United States, nor a colony of the United...

Government must not be given the power to criminalize speech it deems distasteful or annoying' . . ... The Supreme Court refused to hear arguments in the case Barton and Sanders v. Texas, meaning that it gave a pass to Texas' plans to "criminalize protected speech." . . ... The state's new law, Penal Code section 42.07(a)(7), provides that "a person is guilty of a criminal offense simply for sending multiple electronic communications with an intent and in a manner likely to 'harass, annoy, alarm, abuse, torment, embarrass, or offend another.'"

Best Picture WILL WIN: Everything Everywhere All at OnceA24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once is the likeliest winner, having swept the guilds’ top honors, including the Producers Guild’s, which is decided on a preferential ballot, and also won Critics Choice and Spirit Award prizes, among many others. But the Academy’s preferential ballot wouldn’t seem to favor such a polarizing film — many Academy members love it, but many others found it incomprehensible — so an upset could come from German-language All Quiet on the Western Front, which dominated at the BAFTA Awards (indicating strong European support) and would be Netflix’s...

Investigative reporter James O’Keefe went viral with his first independent release since losing his position at Project Veritas, the undercover investigative journalism outlet he founded.O’Keefe confronted New York Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg over previously recorded instances in which he claimed that “they [media] were making too big of a deal [of January 6, 2021]” and claiming it was “an organized thing that it wasn’t.”“There were a ton of FBI informants who attacked the Capitol,” Rosenberg admitted while being secretly recorded. “The left’s overreaction in some places were so over the top,” he added. Rosenberg also admitted that he and other...

Fox News host Tucker Carlson promised never-before-seen footage of the Jan. 6 riot that would reveal new details and alter public perceptions of the Capitol breach. But in his first shows dedicated to the topic, he largely came up short in delivering smoking guns. Carlson gained access to some 44,000 hours of the attack by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), a move that was opposed by former members of the Jan. 6 committee and alarmed Capitol Police who said it had remained unaired due to security concerns.

Alexander Cloudley, 29 and Katrielle Chan, 21, both from Glasgow, pleaded not guilty to vandalism in Stirling Sheriff Court last week. They allegedly damaged and spray-painted the case holding Wallace of “Braveheart” fame’s sword. They each face a single charge alleging that, on March 2, they entered the National Wallace Monument and “willfully or recklessly destroyed or damaged property belonging to another” by “repeatedly striking a glass display cabinet with mallets and chisels.” The activists also allegedly spray-painted the case with “This is Rigged,” the name of their protest group, The Scotsman reported. The Crown court did not oppose bail...

Although Twitter CEO Elon Musk and former Donald Trump strategist Steve Bannon tend to sit on the same side of the political aisle, the two men don't seem to like each other very much. Tim Pool, a right-wing podcaster, recently asked Bannon to comment on the CEO of Razer, Min-Liang Tan, encouraging Mr Musk to buy the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank. The tech-focused lender crumbled on Friday, making it the second-largest bank failure in US history. Mr Musk replied that he was "open to the idea”. Mr Bannon scoffed at the idea, which Mr Pool called "a bit silly”, and...

Madison Square Garden concert in 1999. 150 million views to date.

Maybe it's age, but I'm starting to warm up to the God of the Old Testament big-time. That's the one you're not supposed to like. The one you're supposed to feel embarrassed by. Even outraged. To hear religion-hater Richard Dawkins (and his tedious hordes of mini-mes) tell it, the Old Testament God is the personification of all cosmic vice. In Dawkins' words, he is "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction". My immediate response is: okay—maybe he was unpleasant at times. Who isn't? And besides, anyone who ever does anything big is "unpleasant" every once in a while. Goes...

Bloomberg reports Signature Bank has been closed by state authority

A Florida woman crashed a city planning meeting to call for March 10 to be 'Sugar Daddy and Mommy Appreciation Day' to 'honor those who have given us so much.' The woman, identified as Ashley Cream, took to the public speaker podium during a Boca Raton city planning meeting about flammable liquid storage. Cream, who wore ski-like sunglasses and styled platinum blonde hair, wheeled her elderly sugar daddy to the mic and told officials the sunny state, especially Palm Beach, Boca Raton and Miami, had the most sugar daddies in the nation. 'Sugar daddies both gay and straight, and yes,...

Stanford has been a leader in going woke. It dropped its Indian mascot in 1972, and never replaced it. Maybe administrators anticipated that any 3-dimensional “thing” would be considered controversial so Stanford is just a color. Cardinal. Cardinal – as in on the RGB value scale – 196,30, 58. Remember that “cardinal’ isn’t a “color” on the alphabet soup flag. Something the wokest of the woke can now complain about. In the several-minute-long speech, the associate dean launched into the usual talking points that Duncan was “literally denying the humanity of people”. She said: Although she was “uncomfortable”, with law...