Free Republic

Americans are fed up with the price of food, and many are looking to President-elect Donald Trump to lower their grocery bills. Trump often railed on the campaign trail against hefty price increases for bacon, cereal, crackers and other items. “We’ll get them down,” he told shoppers during a September visit to a Pennsylvania grocery store. But the food price inflation that stunned the U.S. — and other parts of the world — in 2021 and 2022 had complicated causes that are difficult to unwind, from the pandemic to the Ukraine war to avian flu. And many economists think Trump’s...

Day #51 of the Top 50 songs on my iTunes playlist -- ranked in reverse order by play frequency from #50 to #1 and presented here on a series of FR threads. I've been posting them here on a new thread that compiles the growing list one day at a time over the last couple of months. We are down to the last two days, folks! There are two "extra" days at the end because we had a tie at #50 and an Honorable Mention collection a few days ago. To show my gratitude to the FR management for giving...

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday Sen. Mazie Hirono (D) claimed the Supreme Court of the United States created the ability to own guns via Heller (2008). In video published by Forbes, Hirono began her opening remarks by referencing an earlier hearing in which the “entire panel” of witnesses agreed that “this nation is awash in guns. She went on to stress the phrase “awash in guns” at least three more times, then said, “Meanwhile, the Supreme Court in various decisions, Heller was pretty much an astounding decision to me when suddenly, individual could, [under] the Second Amendment,...

Experts say the presidential election may overwhelm Americans with emotions — from optimism to disappointment, frustration, and fear. One woman in Sauk City, WI is seeing more people stop by her business to smash their rage away. Disorderly Conduct Rage Rooms has seen an uptick in bookings this week, according to owner Amanda Chestnut. “They're feeling the anger of maybe their nominee didn't get elected,” Chestnut said. “The election being sort of a key point in time where people are focused more on things maybe outside of their control, so they're feeling a little out of control and they want...

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are tasked with cutting down the $6,750,000,000,000 that the federal government spent in 2024 under their new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The group will work outside the government to “dismantle bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies,” according to a statement from President-elect Donald Trump. John Hart, CEO of watchdog Open the Books, which monitors fiscal waste, told The Post they will curb “spending that has been on autopilot where there’s no real thought or purpose behind it.” Finding areas to cut isn’t hard — many jaw-dropping examples are revealed...

06/NOV/2024 Newark Tracon was affected by a massive radio failure that shut down all their Tracon frequencies leaving all aircraft flying on their own and unable to communicate with any of the Newark Tracon controllers. The airspace was closed and flights experienced lengthy delays or diverts. RAW UNEDITED VERSIONS ATC RADAR [N90] (EWR Final)ATC RADAR [N90] (LGA Departure)ATC RADAR [N90] (EMPYR)

The satirical news publication The Onion won the bidding for Alex Jones' Infowars at a bankruptcy auction, backed by families of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims whom Jones owes more than $1 billion in defamation judgments for calling the massacre a hoax, the families announced Thursday. "The dissolution of Alex Jones’ assets and the death of Infowars is the justice we have long awaited and fought for,” Robbie Parker, whose daughter Emilie was killed in the 2012 shooting in Connecticut, said in a statement provided by his lawyers. The sale price was not immediately disclosed. Jones confirmed The Onion's...

BAKU, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Developing countries need at least $1 trillion per year by the end of the decade to cope with climate change, economists told U.N. talks in Baku, where early efforts to reach a finance deal risk being overshadowed by diplomatic disputes. Money is a focus at COP29 whose success is likely to be judged by whether it can agree a new target for how much richer countries, development lenders and the private sector must provide each year to help developing countries finance the transition to greener energy and protect against extreme weather. A previous finance goal...

AI Just Analyzed Philosophy—And Its Questions Are Terrifying | 16:44Lucas A. Baxendale | 39.2K subscribers | 209,601 views | November 4, 2024

NEW YORK (AP) — Maribel Hidalgo fled her native Venezuela a year ago with a 1-year-old son, trudging for days through Panama’s Darien Gap, then riding the rails across Mexico to the United States. They were living in the U.S. when the Biden administration announced Venezuelans would be offered Temporary Protected Status, which allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their homelands are deemed unsafe. People from 17 countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, Sudan and recently Lebanon, are currently receiving such relief. But President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have promised mass...

Daily Readings from the USCCBAsked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God would come, Jesus said in reply, “The coming of the Kingdom of God cannot be observed, and no one will announce, ‘Look, here it is,’ or, ‘There it is.’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is among you.” Luke 17:20–21Why did the Pharisees ask Jesus this question? Why did they want to know when the Kingdom of God would come? To answer this question, we must first look at the full context of the various communications between Jesus and the Pharisees. When we do this and see...

As many as 20 human skulls were found in a New Mexico home after the man who lived there tossed bones out of a car while hitching a ride, according to police. Police made the grisly discovery earlier this month at a residence in Jal “associated with rumors of human remains,” according to the Lea County Sheriff’s Office, which said some of them appear to belong to a woman who vanished in 2019. Authorities began investigating after they received a troubling phone call from a resident who reported an “unsettling encounter” while offering someone a ride on Nov. 5. The...

Russia is open to contact with the US under the Donald Trump administration, but the ball is in the US court, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with journalist Marina Kim as reported in by its state media TASS. Days after the Kremlin denied media reports that US President-elect Donald Trump held a call with Vladimir Putin, in which he is said to have warned the Russian president against escalating the war in Ukraine, Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday said that his country has no expectations from the new US administration, but will assess its concrete...

Talk about election denialism! A whiny columnist for The Chicago Tribune is trying to convince herself that the only reason President-elect Donald Trump won the 2024 election was because of disinformation. Yawn. Sabrina Haake, a columnist for Post-Tribune, a local subsidiary of the Chicago newspaper, wrote one of the dumbest takes on why the American people repudiated the media’s incessant leftist propaganda and elected Trump. “As I see it, Trump didn’t win this election. Disinformation did, demonstrating that the world’s richest men, by funding disinformation, will stop at nothing to end government regulations and taxes, or to defeat democracy itself,”...

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) predicted Wednesday that former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), President-elect Trump’s pick for attorney general, will not get confirmed by the Senate. Asked for his response to Trump’s Cabinet picks so far, McCarthy told Bloomberg Television in an interview, “I think the choices are very good, except one.” “Look, Gaetz won’t get confirmed,” he continued. “Everybody knows that.” McCarthy, a loyal Trump ally while serving in the House, was asked why the former president would bother tapping Gaetz if he knew the Florida Republican couldn’t get confirmed. “You can talk to [the] president, but it’s a...

The news came four years ago, at the end of a casual phone call. Bill’s family had always thought it was a freak coincidence that his father and grandfather both had ALS. But at the end of a catch-up, Bill’s brother revealed that he had a diagnosis too. The familial trend, it turned out, was linked to a genetic mutation. That meant Bill might also be at risk for the disease. An ALS specialist ordered Bill a DNA test. While he waited for results, he applied for long-term-care insurance. If he ever developed ALS, Bill told me, he wanted to...

VIDEOThe Director of the FBI reports to his boss, the Attorney General. That means if Matt Gaetz is confirmed as Attorney General, FBI Director Christopher Wray MUST report to him. Yes, Matt Gaetz would become Christopher Wray's boss. This would be Wray's WORST nightmare. Would Wray stick around for this to happen? If he did, I doubt he would last a week with Attorney General Gaetz hovering OVER him. This could be President Trump's way of saying "YOU'RE FIRED" to Wray without actually having to say the words.

Have a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS)? Want to leave the country but don’t know where to go that’s actually better than living in the U.S.? Why not go everywhere? A cruise line is offering potential passengers a four-year “Skip Forward” cruise that would take cruisers on a one to four-year cruise depending on how bad someone’s mental illness seems to be. Villa Vie Residences is now promoting a new “Tour La Vie program,” which starts at “just under $40,000 per year, according to a recent company news release. The offer was announced just a day after President-elect...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland: Every bishop should state ‘Francis no longer teaches the Catholic faith’Bishop Joseph Strickland strongly rebuked ‘silent’ US bishops in a powerful letter outside the USCCB meeting in Baltimore, warning them that God will punish those who do not speak out against ‘false messages constantly flowing from the Vatican’ under Pope Francis.Editor’s note: The following is an open letter by Bishop Joseph Strickland addressed to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) during their 2024 fall plenary assembly in Baltimore.(LifeSiteNews) — Dear Bishops, You gather here today, present-day apostles, as the Church and, therefore, the world...

Sen. Dick Durbin (D) called for a ban on bump stocks Wednesday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Local News Live reported that Durbin framed the bump stock ban as a way of responding to the Supreme Court’s June 14, 2024, decision which struck down the ATF’s bump stock ban. Breitbart News noted that the SCOTUS majority opinion in the bump stock case was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, who pointed out that the ATF’s attempt to stretch the definition of machineguns to include bump stocks was a non-starter: