Free Republic

Federal officials gave more than $23 billion COVID-19 aid to the nation’s top 20 nonprofit hospitals even as a 62 percent increase in their collective net assets led parallel surges in the institutions’ total profits and revenues during the 2018-2021 time period spanning the Coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report. Only two of the 20 institutions have repaid the government for the COVID-19 aid they received. “The 20 largest nonprofit hospitals in the country continued making massive profits while their cumulative net assets soared to $324.3 billion in 2021, up from $200.6 billion in 2018. The year 2021 is...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has made the decision to charge Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old former Marine, in connection with the incident on a New York City subway train earlier this month involving a deranged homeless man named Jordan Neely. It is expected that Penny will turn himself in on Friday to face criminal charges. Penny was one of three individuals who helped subdue Neely to protect fellow passengers and is seen in video of the incident keeping Neely in a chokehold.NBC 4 New York is told this decision to charge Daniel Penny was made by the Manhattan District Attorney’s...

Still, that upward [revenue] revision for the upcoming year would not be enough to cover a shortfall created by a cost overrun related to a state expansion of health care to noncitizens who would otherwise be ineligible for Medicaid benefits. Those programs, which provide health care benefits similar to Medicaid to noncitizens aged 42 and older, are now expected to cost about $1.1 billion next year – a 400 percent increase from the original estimate of $220 million included in Pritzker’s February budget proposal.

Senate Republicans are disavowing former President Trump’s call to let the federal government default on its debts unless President Biden agrees to “massive” spending cuts, dismissing Trump’s suggestion as something far too risky to seriously consider. The cold reception to Trump’s bold statement is the latest sign of the widening rift between Trump and his party’s Washington establishment. While Trump maintains strong influence in the House, where he helped Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) nail down enough votes to be elected Speaker, it’s a different story in the Senate. GOP senators largely ignored Trump’s participation in a CNN’s town hall Wednesday and...

The U.S. Administration could begin crude oil repurchases to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as early as in June, after a Congressionally-mandated sale from the SPR is completed next month, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said on Thursday. “That congressionally mandated sale of 26 million barrels will be completed by June, and it's at that point where we will flip the switch and then seek to purchase,” Granholm said during a hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives. In October of last year, the administration announced that it would repurchase crude oil for the reserve when prices were at...

Wasting away again in Bidenville, look for my lost economy. Face it, nothing has been the same since 1) the Covid economic shutdowns, 2) the massive spending spree by Congress, the massive expansion of monetary stimulus by The Federal Reserve and 3) the election of Unaffordable Joe Biden, The latest University of Michigan consumer survey is out and it is ugly, reflecting Biden’s ugly approval ratings. A sentiment value of 100 is a good baseline and US consumers were about at 100. Then Covid struck and the ensuing economic and school shutdowns (thank a lot Randi Weingarten, President of the...

In a conversation with Forgetting Sarah Marshall actor Russell Brand, Kennedy revealed that he openly communicated with Donald Trump's likely primary opponent and discussed the 2024 election. We talked about him possibly running for the presidency, and I said, how will you handle the NIH?" Kennedy told Brand on his Rumble talk show with 1.1 million subscribers. "And he said: 'I'll burn it to the ground.' You know, I understand the impulse. But I think I can have a more surgical impact on these agencies." Kennedy didn't give details on when the conversation occurred or where the meeting was. In...

This will not go down well with the climate alarmists and ESG grifters...No lesser mortal than Fed Governor Christopher Waller has dared to proclaim that climate change does not pose such "significantly unique or material" financial stability risks that the Federal Reserve should treat it separately in its supervision of the financial system."Climate change is real, but I do not believe it poses a serious risk to the safety and soundness of large banks or the financial stability of the United States," Waller said in remarks prepared for delivery to an economic conference in Spain. "Risks are risks ... My...

Car thefts are a MAJOR problem in gang-infested US cities. We've covered the Kia Boys in Milwaukee, who specialize in stealing Kias and Hyundais, and similar street gangs, stealing Kias, are in other major US cities including Baltimore. And Baltimore has finally decided to do something about it: VIDEOS AT LINK............. The city of Baltimore has filed a federal lawsuit against car manufacturers Kia and Hyundai, joining a number of cities who say the companies created a public nuisance by making cars that can be easily stolen. "Hyundai and Kia's decision to put cost savings and profits over public safety...

Elon Musk’s search for a Twitter CEO is over and reports say Linda Yaccarino is in talks to replace him as chief—she is a seasoned ad executive whose arrival would likely soothe skittish advertisers following months of drastic overhauls to content moderation and verification, but whose background may alienate some of the billionaire’s loyal and free speech-loving fan base. Key Facts Yaccarino was chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal (NBCU), where she worked for more than a decade and manages a global team of 2,000 people who have generated more than $100 billion in ad sales, according to...

(Daily readings from the USCCB)“You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.” John 15:14–15To some, Jesus’ definition of friendship may, at first glance, seem odd. He says that we are His friends only when we do what He commands us to do. Imagine saying that to one of your best friends. Such a statement would most likely be met with a laugh and...

There are countless Linux distributions available, a vast majority are free to download and use. Some are more appropriate for performing particular tasks than others. For example, Ubuntu, Mint, and Elementary OS are more recommended in desktop and laptop PCs than Arch Linux or Alpine.In this guide, we seek to compare RHEL and Debian from an administrative point of view. We will look at the technical and philosophical differences between the two and see which fairs better than the other.Software LicensingRHEL is an open-source and commercial Linux distribution developed by Red Hat, Inc which was acquired by IBM on May...

Former President Donald Trump applauded the “sky high ratings” his town hall delivered for CNN, taking to social media Thursday night to proclaim “many minds were changed.” He used his own Truth Social network to outline his pleasure at the result and the three million-plus viewers who tuned in. “People are criticizing CNN for giving me a Forum to tell the TRUTH. I believe it was a very smart thing that they did, with Sky High Ratings that they haven’t seen in a very long time,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “It was by far the biggest...

At the Teens4Truth Conference, Ft. Worth, TX, Nov. 18, 2017. A physician who was in the Johns Hopkins Univ. Hospital group where "transgender medicine" was developed describes the lies, bad medicine, and fraud behind that movement. Quentin Van Meter, MD, FCP is a pediatric endocrinologist. He is a Fellow of the American College of Pediatricians and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. (video is 43 minutes long, may want to bookmark for later)

Elon Musk has reportedly hired Linda Yaccarino as the CEO of Twitter. Unfortunately, this decision is the exact opposite of what everyone hoped about Musk’s intentions with the platform. Ms. Yaccarino is the head of NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships [Example Here], and she is the tip of the spear in the creation of DEI (Diversity Equity and Inclusion) indexing and corporate scoring. You might be familiar with ‘DEI’ as a result of the Bud Light woke advertising campaign to promote beer for transgenders. Well, that’s DEI in action, and Ms. Yaccarino is one of the pioneers in the advertising industry....

“Death to Putin, you brought up a monster and a murderer,” the note said, urging the deceased parents to “take him with you, he’s causing so much pain and trouble”, according to Novaya Gazeta Europe. “The whole world is praying he would die,” the note said. ...Also on Thursday, a Russian military court sentenced Nikita Tushkanov, a history teacher from Komi in northeast Russia, to five and a half years in prison for comments he made about last year’s explosion on the Kerch bridge linking Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula to mainland Russia.

a microscopic image of a retina. It looks like an orange circle, with red blood vessels...Credit: noon@photo / Adobe Stock / Annelisa Leinbach The path to reversing a common cause of blindness might be in our eyes already — and a new gene therapy shows how to take advantage of it. Retinal degeneration: When light enters the eye, it travels to the retina, where nerve cells called “photoreceptors” convert the light into electrical signals that are eventually sent to the brain. Genetic diseases and other health issues can damage retinal cells. This condition, called “retinal degeneration,” is one of the...

For anyone who had a parent, grandparent, or great grandparent receive benefits of any kind from the LBJ 'Great Society" handouts (over $10 trillion and counting) they repay for the benefits received by their ancestors from which they now benefit. Say, up to 5% of gross income until the $10 trillion is paid back. Seems just as fair as 'reparations'...

Given powerful hormones to delay puberty, for body mutilation operations later We don't think that demonic is too strong a word to describe this. It brings us thoughts of the Nazi doctors who thought they were doing good things. The world-renowned Children's Hospital in Boston has set up a clinic for pre-adolescent children to be given hormones and drugs to delay puberty (with side effects that include infertility) in order to facilitate body-mutilating operations to change their sex. It is run by a Dr. Norman Spack. Here's the hospital's online announcement of the clinic As we first reported last year,...