Free Republic

Joe Biden has done Donald Trump the enormous favor of collapsing before our eyes. As the 2024 GOP presidential race heads into the first contests, Biden’s abysmal run of polling has boosted Trump and undercut his Republican opponents by hanging a neon sign on our politics reading, “TRUMP CAN WIN.” It may be that Trump, such is his hold on GOP voters, didn’t need any help establishing a dominant position in the fight for the Republican nomination, but two exogenous events have boosted him. First, the indictments from the Justice Department and Democratic prosecutors created a predictable rally-around-Trump effect that...

Moscow (AFP) – President Vladimir Putin voiced renewed confidence Thursday in Russia's offensive in Ukraine, as he staged a marathon press conference a week after announcing plans to stay in the Kremlin until at least 2030. Looking relaxed and bolstered by Kyiv's recent struggles on the battlefield, the 71-year-old Russian leader brushed off nearly two years of Western sanctions and reaffirmed his maximalist goals in Ukraine. "There will be peace when we achieve our goals," Putin said, speaking at his first end-of-year press conference since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. "They are not changing. I will remind...

A handful of the 51 signatories of the debunked letter which falsely called Hunter Biden’s laptop “Russian disinformation” are now calling on Congress to expand the scope of domestic surveillance in the United States. As reported by the Daily Caller, the letter to House lawmakers on Tuesday was signed by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Deputy Director for the National Security Agency (NSA) Richard Ledgett, former Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell, former CIA Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash, and former NSA General Counsel Glenn Gerstell. All five men had previously signed the controversial letter in 2020 claiming,...

For the past two weeks, I’ve been using a new camera to secretly snap photos and record videos of strangers in parks, on trains, inside stores and at restaurants. (I promise it was all in the name of journalism.) I wasn’t hiding the camera, but I was wearing it, and no one noticed. I was testing the recently released $300 Ray-Ban Meta glasses that Mark Zuckerberg’s social networking empire made in collaboration with the iconic eyewear maker. The high-tech glasses include a camera for shooting photos and videos, and an array of speakers and microphones for listening to music and...

DES MOINES, IOWA — GOP voters planning to caucus for non-Trump Republicans in January have long suspected the former president could be upset in the Hawkeye State. These days, that hope is dwindling. “It seems like it’s almost a foregone conclusion,” says Michael Wright, a Nikki Haley supporter from Grimes, Iowa, who is growing resigned to a Trump victory. "These Trump supporters, they don’t budge,” said a frustrated Joe Pendergast, who is from Des Moines and was firmly committed to North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum before he dropped out of the race earlier this month.

Nihilism is the religion of the Left. Anarchy is now at the core of the new Democratic Party. If the Left wished radically to alter the demography of the U.S., it could have expanded legal immigration through legislation or the courts. Instead, it simply erased the border and dynamited federal immigration law. By fiat, nihilists ended the wall, and stopped detaining and deporting illegal aliens altogether. Or was it worse than that when candidate Joe Biden in September 2019 urged would-be illegal aliens to “surge” the border? As a result, through laxity and entitlement incentives, eight-million illegal entrants have swarmed...

Vladimir Putin found himself facing unexpected challenges at his annual end-of-year press conference, as questions about the perceived "reality" of Russia were prominently displayed on screens throughout the venue. -snip- Among the displayed messages challenging the official narrative, one boldly questioned Putin's version of "reality" compared to the daily experiences of ordinary citizens: "Why is your 'reality' at odds with our lived reality?" Another message highlighted the escalating grocery prices in Russia, saying: "Cucumbers cost 900 roubles per kilo, tomatoes 950 roubles. It costs me 1,500 roubles to make a salad. I won't even mention fruit. Make the prices normal!"...

The Sarasota County School Board on Tuesday called on fellow board member Bridget Ziegler to resign, citing her role in a sex scandal with statewide implications and calling her continued presence a distraction to the school district’s business.

Click on link

Vladimir Putin faced humiliation today during he end-of-year press conference when questions about the 'reality' of Russia were displayed on screens. -snip- 'Why is your "reality" at odds with our lived reality?' one message displayed on the screens around the room asked the Russian president. disappeared says she 'seemed calm' but her behaviour was 'a bit off' - as search enters sixth day Another query said: 'When will the real Russia be the same as the one on TV?', and another, albeit politely, questioned: 'Hello. When will it be possible to move to the Russia which they tell us about...

This is a good discussion between Peterson and Ferguson of Germany's decline into the barbarism that led to WWII.Here are a couple of quotes from the transcript. These quotes make the discussion seem like a Captain Obvious discourse, but it isn't. The back-and-forth between Peterson and Ferguson touches on some interesting insights that are relevant to what is going on in the U.S. and world today.Ferguson: [The critical thing is that] it was the enormous power of Hitler as a demonic and charismatic leader capable of displacing Christian ethics (that led to Germany's downfall). Hitler calls on German Society to...

Hasan Bitmez, a member of parliament from the opposition Felicity Party, collapsed after delivering speech on Turkey's policy towards Israel Hasan Bitmez, 54, an oppositional Turkish lawmaker, on Thursday died in Ankara City Hospital after suffering a heart attack in front of the parliament, Ministry of Health told Turkish reporters.

A male student from Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was met with pure brutality by his peers Tuesday and it was all caught on camera. Local 10 News obtained cellphone video Wednesday depicting a fight among students at MSD at North...

An Amish wagon in Virginia was caught aggressively rocking, and observers were suspicious of what the people inside could be getting up to. A video of the moment a traditional Amish wagon jolted from side to side was uploaded in February of 2021 after a young boy witnessed the suspicious act. The wagon was still attached to its patient and obedient horse as it continued to rock wildly. According the boy who managed to capture the suggestive event on camera, the wagon was parked outside a Food Lion supermarket in Buckingham, Virginia. The hilarious video re-surfaced in November and went...

When it comes to inflation, we know that the Bureau of Economic Analysis releases two inflation reports, the CPI (fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1cCII) and PCE (fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1cCIt), each month. The two differ because they each measure a distinct basket of goods (you can read about the technicals of each here (www.clevelandfed.org/publications/economic-trends/2014/et-20140417-pce-and-cpi-inflation-difference)). These further break down into core (which omits volatile energy and food pricing) and headline inflation, which includes it. So we have headline CPI, core CPI, headline PCE, and core PCE.

See video. He's the only one talking about Jan 6 being entrapment Apart from Trump I guess...

Aclose ally of Vladimir Putin has come up with a solution for Russians who have found their travel plans curtailed by restrictions due to Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine—go to Africa. Dmitry Medvedev, who was president between 2008 and 2012, and is now deputy chairman of Russia's Federation Council, made the comments during a forum in Moscow in which he said his country's deepening ties with the continent made it an ideal vacation destination. In September 2022, the European Union suspended the visa facilitation agreement with Russia which restricted, although did not ban, the entry of Russian citizens into Europe....

SCOTUS has the ability, they are the only ones, to reset this whole mess, and restore the dignity to the Presidency and Dept of Justice. Take the name TRUMP out of the lawsuits, and it would be easy to see that the prosecutions are an injustice to this man, because, with ANY other defendant, all cases would be thrown out long ago. In short, the SCOTUS alone can bring common sense to all the arguments and issues being raised here. A 9-0 ruling to throw out all these ridiculous lawsuits against Trump and others, would go far to unite the...

One aspect of the post-Christian era in the West is that ordinary Christian views held by ordinary Christian people are almost entirely unknown to a growing portion of our populations. It should not be news that Christians in public positions hold beliefs that virtually all Christians have held for thousands of years and yet, because of the monumental ignorance of the press and several successive generations cut off from their civilizational inheritance by a derelict and deformed public school system, many seem to treat these revelations with shock.

Update on Hungarian Funds: Show Me the Money! In the past 4 hours the European Commission has decided to release the 10.2 billion Euro in aid that was still frozen 6 hours ago when we first reported. This all comes on the eve of an EU Summit at which Hungarian President Orbán had promised to block 50 billion Euro in funds promised by the European Council to Ukraine. This is just part of the 30 billion Hungary may receive contingent on meeting EU human rights requirements. Those requirements seem to be a little ambiguous: "After a thorough assessment...the horizontal enabling...