Free Republic

America faces a crisis that we acknowledge yet shamelessly exacerbate for political expediency. Our leaders sit on their hands, under the impression that the consequences will patiently wait for their willingness to address them. Meanwhile, our cities and quiet suburbs are oblivious to a grim reality gathering overhead. This crisis is our national debt, standing at a colossal $33 trillion. That's the equivalent to the economies of China, Japan, Germany, India, and the United Kingdom, combined. This figure provides useful context, yet the true challenge lies in the annual amount required to repay that debt. In 2023, the government shelled...

As Americans deal with stubborn inflation, they’re increasingly turning to credit cards to make ends meet. In fact, credit card originations rose 0.16% month-to-month in August, according to the latest data from VantageScore. And the average credit card balance jumped 11.1% year-over-year to reach $6,082. "In August, lenders tightened access to credit across most products and consumers continued to remain cautious about adding to their debt levels," Susan Fahy, the executive vice president and chief digital officer at VantageScore, said in a statement. "The data shows that over the summer many U.S. consumers began to feel the strain of rising...

Rep. Brad Westrup, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, wants to know if Dr. Anthony Fauci’s covert visit to the Central Intelligence Agency succeeded in gaining CIA support for Fauci’s contention that the pandemic arose naturally in the wild, what he calls “proximal origin.” Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor who has called for a criminal investigation of Fauci, has a few thoughts. Fauci may have outright “convinced the CIA to dishonestly obscure the lab origin of COVID.” It is also possible that the CIA “convinced Fauci to obscure the lab origin of COVID.” Or, as Paul...

Fool's Ball Week 5!!!!!!!!!! Your home for all things Fool's Ball! In Memoriam Danny Lee (BENDER2)

The chickens continue to come home to roost for progressive cities. While it is tempting to make remarks about savoring the schadenfreude of the various moments, karma being a b***h, or getting what one voted for, it is more like driving by a fatal car accident on the highway. Mainly because for every arrogant progressive who is getting a proverbial snootful from the uptick of crime due to Democrat policies, there are people who are getting caught in the crossfire. Lately, Philadelphia has been in the news for riots, a motorcyclist smashing the back window of a car with children...

John Cornyn is a snake in the grass.Forever war enthusiast Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) declared Tuesday that the ouster of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House was tantamount to a “terrorist attack,” suggesting that the eight House members who voted with Democrats to remove McCarthy were, themselves, terrorists.“We saw a similar thing happen to Boehner, Ryan, and now McCarthy. I’m sure the next speaker is going to be subjected to the same terrorist attacks,” Cornyn said. Later, Cornyn doubled down on his remarks, writing on X, “A handful [of] House members just want to blow up the institution and...

"Those who say that we're in a time where there are no heroes, they just don't know where to look." - Ronald Reagan

“How bad is the border crisis, really?” you might ask. You’re probably aware that a mini Democrat Civil War is brewing — in New York, of all places — where the arrival of a few tens of thousands of illegals had Gov. Kathy Hochul sniping at Presidentish Joe Biden last week. Just a couple of days ago, in Chicago, residents of the West Side’s Galewood neighborhood were “livid” over plans to house illegals there. Advertisement None of that is anything compared to today’s news that the White House just hit the panic button so hard that it almost made me...

A visitor to a California reservoir took a closer look at what he thought was pollen floating in the water and discovered it was actually a school of jellyfish native to China. Casey Neet captured video when he spotted the jellyfish in waters near the Stumpy Meadows Reservoir in Northern California's Eldorado National Forest. Experts identified the tiny creatures as peach blossom jellyfish, a species native to China's Yangtze River valley. The jellyfish, which have the ability to reproduce asexually, have been spotted in other bodies of water around the world, but their impact on local ecosystems has not yet...

I've used several email programs in the past. Mozilla's, Outlook, yahoo. Right now I use gmail because my late wife and I used it for so much that I had to consolidate stuff to work on an assortment of issues. If they still work as easily I should be able to put in the SMTP settings and have the emails all imported into whichever email program. Does that still apply? I'd like from FR folks a few suggestions that are user friendly and as insulated from leftist manipulations as one can get. Thanks.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams attended Chinese government-linked festivities that included raising the red flag of China in Manhattan on Sunday, marking China’s “National Day,” the anniversary of mass murderer Mao Zedong imposing communism on the people of China. According to the Chinese consulate in the city, Adams, New York State Assemblywoman Grace Lee, and New York City Council member Christopher Marte joined a “China Day Celebration Parade Festival” in Chinatown. Adams’ participation in the events on October 1, the anniversary of the founding of the “People’s Republic of China,” is notable given mounting reports of Adams maintaining close...

Ron DeSantis has less money and more problems. The Florida governor's presidential campaign entered this month with just $5 million in cash available for the primary, a sum that reignites doubts about his solvency, budgeting and ability to gain ground on front-running former President Donald Trump. The pain is so acute that DeSantis is redeploying aides from his Tallahassee headquarters to Des Moines for the stretch run of a do-or-die Jan. 15 Iowa caucus. At the end of the second quarter, DeSantis had $6.6 million in primary funds available, according to an NBC News analysis of his last campaign finance...

In the early dawn's orange glow, a Texas Rangers commander briefs a heavily armed invasion force. They're preparing to seize a remote, 170-acre Mexican cartel-controlled island in the middle of the Rio Grande River overlooked by sniper nests and potentially booby-trapped. Some of the dozens of assembled men shift from one foot to another or reposition their M-4 rifles as they listen to their commanders' instructions. 'Keep a close eye on those structures up there that have height advantage on us,' he warns. 'In case we do get engaged and someone is shot' medical evacuation plans are in place and...

Democrat Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell announced Monday the creation of a “reproductive justice” unit in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022. The unit is purportedly designed to ensure the state is a “national leader” in expanding access to abortion and “gender-affirming care,” a euphemism created by left-wing activists intended to make the sexual mutilation sound like a compassionate course of action. The unit will also be “tackling misinformation and disinformation that prevents access to care, working across state lines to respond to national attacks on reproductive health care,” according to a...

A man illegally brought a handgun into the Wisconsin Capitol, demanding to see Gov. Tony Evers, and returned at night with an assault rifle after posting bail, a spokesperson for the state said Thursday. The man, who was shirtless and had a holstered handgun, approached the governor's office on the first floor of the Capitol around 2 p.m. Wednesday, state Department of Administration spokesperson Tatyana Warrick said. The man was demanding to see the governor, who was not in the building at the time, Warrick said. The man was taken into custody for openly carrying a firearm in the Capitol,...

In the pathological storytelling of our intellectual culture, illegal immigration is simply a timeless story of oppressed innocent people seeking refuge in the worst country in the world: America. Mysteriously, more than five million people have chosen to enter the most racist, sexist, and discriminatory society ever known in human history. More profoundly, this immigration is only a benign trek for refuge. There is no vast army of international corruption in the form of cartels delivering human beings at an average cost of $15,000 per person into the United States. There is no vast regimen of violence against children that...

Special Counsel David Weiss dropped one of the gun charges count against Hunter Biden on Wednesday. The move is apparently a procedural step, according to the Associated Press: The procedural step removes a charge alleging he broke a law against drug users having guns when he bought a gun in 2018, during a period he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. The president’s son is now facing a three-count indictment focused on the same purchase that includes both gun possession and false statement charges. No new tax counts have yet been filed by special counsel David Weiss, who is overseeing the...

A terrified electric car driver has revealed he was kidnapped by his runaway £30,000 MG ZS EV after the vehicle suffered a 'catastrophic malfunction' in a bizarre case which forced him to dodge red lights and roundabouts before calling police to ram it into their van. Brian Morrison, 53, claims he was heading home from work at around 10pm on Sunday when his new Chinese-made fully electric car began driving itself at 30mph. Unable to use the brakes, the Glaswegian - who runs his own social enterprise - called police who stopped the vehicle by allowing it to slowly crash...

Disney went from being the "Magic Kingdom" to the "Tragic Kingdom" in just a few short years. The once uncontested king of family entertainment infused itself with leftist politics, DEI practices, and LGBT activism to the point where it's become nigh unrecognizable. As such, Disney's self-inflicted wounds have it bleeding out and despite talk of healing itself, no steps have been made to do so. [snip] According to the poll, 60 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of the company with 35 percent having a "very unfavorable" opinion. Democrats have almost a mirror opposite view with 61 percent favorability...

It’s definitely not a new challenge. Nearly a half-century ago, Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer asked “How should we then live?” in a landmark book by the same title (pulled from Ezek 33:10). So then—how should we? As believers today, we’re still pondering that question. The irony is the further our culture slides into a postmodern ditch, the more relevant the perspectives of earlier Christians seem to become.