Free Republic

Liberal logic properly explained in 73 seconds

FM Katz dismisses idea that no other agency can do UNRWA work, says it handles only 13% of Gaza aid; Israel’s UN envoy says Israel won’t cooperate with groups that promote terror November 4, 2024. (Photo by Zain JAAFAR / AFP) The Foreign Ministry on Monday officially informed the United Nations that Israel is withdrawing from the 1967 agreement recognizing the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA after the Knesset passed legislation to severely limit the operations of the agency in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Foreign Ministry Director-General Jacob Blitshtein sent the letter to UN General Assembly...

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has slammed the Green Party's presidential ticket for being 'predatory' over its lack of support for transgender athletes in women's sports. Posting on X, Ocasio-Cortez criticized the party's vice presidential nominee, Butch Ware over his comments that biological males should not compete on women's sports teams. Ocasio-Cortez has framed herself as a staunch defender of the rights of trans people, and has launched a series of attacks on the Green Party, which threatens to draw votes from Democrats in Tuesday's presidential election. 'This ticket is predatory and people deserve better,' Ocasio-Cortez wrote. She was responding to...

The decision to not endorse Kamala Harris is more than just too little, too late. These newspapers are disingenuous and patently unserious. Liberals are incensed over the decision by the editorial boards of The Washington Post, The L.A. Times, and USA Today to not endorse Kamala Harris for president. The decisions have provoked endless reporting and commentary across the media, while editorial board members have resigned and hundreds of thousands of readers have canceled their subscriptions. Defending the decision, Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, noted in an Oct. 28 op-ed that this year Gallup found that the journalistic...

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff has a message for young male voters: Former President Trump is “not your friend.” Emhoff joined MSNBC’s Symone Sanders on Sunday, where he was asked about the historic gender gap among voters choosing Trump and his wife, Vice President Harris. Polling shows younger male voters are more likely to say they are voting for Trump, while Harris earns more support from younger female voters. Emhoff said Sunday that Trump is appealing to younger male voters by going on podcasts and appearing with wrestling icons, but called it “all hustle.” “I’m trying to implore young men in...

Twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours to go, I wanna be sedated." —The Ramones The closing week of the 2024 presidential election is perhaps as close to what schizophrenia feels like as the non-afflicted will ever experience. Or at least that's how it's been for me. "Nobody knows anything" was screenwriter William Goldman's pithy summary of filmmaking — and the same goes for this election. That's why I've spent the last week wildly oscillating between confidence in Donald Trump's inevitable victory to existential dread over Kamala Harris's with a few pauses along the rapidly sliding scale between the two. Here's why: Iowa's...

Physicists in 1900 basically accepted the Newtonian model of the universe. The only troubling anomaly was that Mercury, as it came into view in its journey around the sun, appeared to be in the “wrong” place. How was this possible? After much discussion brilliant scientists concluded that it “appeared” to be closer to the sun because the sun’s gravity was bending light rays reflecting off of Mercury on their way to earth. This defied all the “settled science” embraced by classical physicists. It was to them heresy essentially, because by implication it would mean that energy and matter were interchangeable....

CNN last week revealed an excerpt from a new book in which Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized both Donald Trump and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). The headline said, “McConnell says ‘MAGA movement is completely wrong’ and Reagan ‘wouldn’t recognize’ Trump’s GOP.” With the election less than a week away, such attacks are not only divisive but harm the Republican Party’s chances of success. Only a few hours before CNN published this article, McConnell gave this quote to a Fox News reporter: “I’m still a Traditional Republican... there are some on my side now who don’t sound that way. I'm going...

"Most people do not get a clear opportunity to vote against Communism and prevent a historical evil from taking hold. We have that opportunity. Vote Trump." — James Lindsay. You thought Halloween was over, but somehow the horror show won’t stop, and it’s not so much fun anymore. Those oversized ghouls, werewolves, and dead souls you erected in the front yard, like shrines to wickedness, represent something truly roiling and moiling around the zeitgeist of this troubled land: the ruling Party of Chaos. Look at what they have done to you and what they are still doing. Hoaxing you, sucking...

Russia is facing a "butter armageddon" as prices for the staple food product continue to rise sharply. By the end of October, prices for dairy products in Russia had risen by an astonishing 25.7% compared to December 2023. The steep hike in cost has led to a spate of thefts from shops around the country, forcing management to keep the product under lock and key. Images have circulated on social media, showing butter locked in fridges and signs telling customers to contact staff if they want to buy some. A CCTV video posted online also allegedly shows a Russian man...

Last March, when the IDF was preparing an offensive against Hamas in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, Joe Biden was alarmed. He publicly told Prime Minister Netanyahu not to do it, saying that such a move would cross a “red line.” He threatened to withhold military aid to Israel. Kamala Harris also said that having “studied the maps,” she knew that such an operation could only end in disaster because of the one million civilians living in Rafah; she said there would be “consequences” if the IDF went ahead. More on how the Bidenites tried to stop the IDF from entering...

Vice President Kamala Harris is closing her campaign with calls for unity after smearing former President Donald Trump as a “fascist” and a Hitlerian dictator bent on destroying democracy. The final messaging strategy is typical of a campaign that seeks to inspire voters to turn out for a greater cause. The tact might come across to swing state voters as lip service after an extremely divisive campaign. Harris, who rallied supporters in Michigan on Sunday, claimed her “campaign has not been about being against something; it is about being for something,” she said, “A fight for a future with freedom...

Meet historical fascism’s true heirs.In the famous anecdote usually attributed to Bertrand Russel, a scientist lecturing on the earth’s position in the solar system is corrected an old lady who says the earth is actually supported by a giant turtle. When the scientist asked what supports the turtle, she triumphally answered, “It’s turtles all the way down!”Since the Twenties and the rise of Italian Fascism and German Nazism––which eventually become the main referent of the word––the term has become an all-purpose question-begging epithet so promiscuously abused in the Thirties that, as George Orwell said in 1944, “The word Fascism has...

A new poll from AtlasIntel claimed former president Donald Trump is leading vice president Kamala Harris in each of the seven swing states though the margin is narrow. Trump is favored to win in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The new poll comes amid Ann Selzer poll sent shockwaves that Kamala Harris is ahead in Iowa which is a reliably conservative turf that Donald Trump won both in 2016 and 2020. The AtlasIntel survey said Donald Trump is holding the widest margin in Arizona -- with a 52.3 per cent to Harris 45.8 per cent. In...

Daily Readings from the USCCB“When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.” Luke 14:12–14Is Jesus telling us that it is sinful to invite friends and family to a dinner party? Certainly not. He is teaching us about something much deeper. Throwing a dinner party for...

Up to four separate NY State agencies, ten armed agents, with a warrant signed by a judge....for a squirrel? Are you f#$%ing kidding us? And then they execute the squirrel that had been living in this guy's home for seven years and was the mascot for the animal sanctuary he and his wife run for almost 300 animals. The squirrel, by the way, had an X/Twitter account with half-a-million followers. And the Gestapo questioned his German-immigrant wife for nearly five hours, something they wouldn't dare to do to an illegal Venezuelan.

Readers of my Post piece predicting Donald Trump will win and Republicans will have a good night in congressional contests may wonder how I derived the numbers underlying those calls. Here I examine that in detail and show why getting the balance between Democrats and Republicans among voters — partisan preference — is the key unlocking the polls. Polling’s theoretical accuracy relies on the statistics underlying the relation between a random sample and the broader population it’s drawn from. But surveyors can no longer get truly random samples because cellphones and the Internet have changed how people live. Pollsters have...

OGDENSBURGH, N.Y., Thursday, Nov. 3 -- 5 P.M. A large number of armed men are on the islands above and below this place. Many strangers have been in town all day. A raid on the town is feared. Business has been suspended. Everybody is arming. A tug has gone to reconnoitre. Three men have been arrested for firing in the street. Men and arms have been sent for. OGDENSBURGH, N.Y., Thursday, Nov. 3 -- 8 P.M. A propeller arrived here to-day and reported that an organized rebel force was occupying Wells" and Maple Leaf Islands, eighteen miles above this place....

ARLINGTON, Va. — Speaker Mike Johnson will spend election eve campaigning in two critical House districts in the Old Dominion, exclusively telling The Post the “road to keeping and growing our majority runs directly through Virginia, where we have two veterans who will win and deliver results for Commonwealth families.” The speaker will host events for Republicans Derrick Anderson, who’s running for an open seat, and freshman Rep. Jen Kiggans — and bring along some special guests. “Congresswoman Kiggans is a champion for veterans, our troops, and military families and works across the aisle to fight for Virginia’s 2nd District....