Free Republic

<p>We could sure use a boost right about now. We need to collect $18,865 in FREEPATHON donations by Dec 31. Getting the fund raising over with can really make the season bright, and maybe give Jim Rob and co. a few days off from fund raising.</p>

President Joe Biden appears to be struggling with the prospect of retiring from public life, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday. After Democrats ousted him as their presidential candidate in July, Biden, 82, who has been a public official since 1973 (51 years), is not enjoying the prospects of sunsetting his over half a century long career at the center of American politics, the NYT’s Peter Baker and Zolan Kanno-Youngs reported. Biden reportedly told allies after he dropped out of the race that he was bored, moody, and angry. He’s apparently angry because many Democrats opposed his...

Mr. Potter is the former vice president for corporate communications at Cigna. I left my job as a health insurance executive at Cigna after a crisis of conscience. It began in 2005, during a meeting convened by the chief executive to brief department heads on the company’s latest strategy: “consumerism.” Marketing consultants created the term to persuade employers and policymakers to shift hundreds, and in many cases thousands, of dollars in health-care costs onto consumers before insurance coverage kicks in. “Consumerism” proponents contended that if patients had more “skin in the game” they would be more prudent consumers of health...

A shocking number of young people support UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killer, with 41 percent saying Luigi Mangione’s alleged actions are “acceptable,” an Emerson College poll has found. Twenty-four percent of US voters ages 18 to 29 answered that Mangione’s alleged brazen execution was somewhat acceptable, and 17 percent said it was completely acceptable. There was also a stark partisan split among those polled, with 22% of Democrats saying they find the alleged killer’s actions acceptable compared to only 12% of Republicans and 16% of independents who do so. The poll of 1,000 voters was conducted last week. Mangione was...

00:00 Introduction 3:20 The Twitter files 7:35 Suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story 12:35 The anti-proliferation regime 16:26 Russiagate and the preemptive war against Trump 22:25 Conservatives and liberals flip stances on Russia 24:36 Leaving Rolling Stone for Substack 29:26 Matt’s Substack audience 30:40 Young liberals and progressives are turning against free speech 34:17 Breaking with identity politics 38:12 Support for prosecuting Julian Assange 41:52 The eternal villain 44:06 Similarities between RFK Jr. and Trump 46:50 Distrust in government due to COVID 51:11 Race relations and policing 54:14 Binary nature of media

Two US astronauts stranded for months on the International Space Station will remain there at least until late March, NASA said Tuesday as it announced another delay in the mission to bring them home. Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams arrived at the ISS in June aboard Boeing's Starliner spacecraft, and were due to spend eight days on the orbiting laboratory. But problems arose with the Starliner's propulsion system during the flight there, so NASA opted for a big change in plans. After weeks of intensive tests on the Starliner, the space agency decided to return it to Earth...

WASHINGTON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. House Ethics Committee has voted to release its report on former Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, CNN reported on Wednesday, saying the panel's findings could be made public within days as Congress prepares to adjourn for the holidays. The committee's probe centered on allegations against Gaetz of sexual misconduct with a teenage girl and drug use. Gaetz resigned from Congress in November after Donald Trump tapped him to be his attorney general, a bid the former lawmaker later dropped. The Ethics panel met earlier this month and voted secretly to release the report, CNN...

Religious and political signage or advertisements will no longer be allowed on any Broward County Public School grounds after the board approved a policy change... The vote comes after issues at some schools including Cooper City High School, where a banner paid for by Pentecostals of Cooper City was removed from the school... The district is also facing a lawsuit by someone who requested to display a Satan-related message at a school but was refused

'The longer I spend away from Westminster, the stronger my belief that you should only get involved if you really think you can be useful,' says Johnson For Boris Johnson’s allies, there is an alternative history of the past two-and-a-half years of British politics in which he is not toppled from power in July 2022. In this parallel reality, Johnson puts forward a less market-troubling, but still pro-growth Budget in the autumn of that year and, crucially, successfully defends his Conservative majority in a 2024 election. Whether this counterfactual timeline would have actually turned out this way, no one will...

China’s Producer Price Index, measuring factory-gate prices, fell in November year-on-year for the 26th straight month. The gross domestic product deflator, a broader gauge of prices across the nation, has been in negative territory for six straight calendar quarters, the longest period this century. The Consumer Price Index last month showed a 0.2% rise over the same period last year, well below the country’s 3% target. China is gripped by deflation, an economy-killer. Lower prices are putting businesses out of business. And when people expect prices to drop, they hold off purchases, further aggravating the slowdown.

VIDEOIt doesn't take much investigative digging to find out that Farah Griffin helped Liz Cheney illegally communicate with Cassidy Hutchinson behind the back of her lawyer. Why? Because, as you can see here, Griffin admitted it in public on CNN's "The Lead" in September 2023. Of note is how host Jake Tapper went into a state of overjoyed excitement over how Griffin and Cheney worked behind the back of Hutchinson's lawyer.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has cancelled all of his traditional year-end media interviews to “reflect” after Monday’s caucus shakeup. Energy Minister Jonathan Wilkinson says Trudeau is taking some time to reflect after the sudden resignation of Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland Monday.

The bot could even start showing up alongside your tweets with more info on what you’re posting With X facing fierce competition from rival platforms Bluesky and Threads, Elon Musk has decided to give away a feature that was previously locked behind a paywall. Now, everyone can use X’s edgy AI chatbot, known as Grok, to help with their writing, whip up images and fetch the latest news. What separates Grok from its peers is its “rebellious streak” and witty retorts, according to Mr Musk, who has previously slammed OpenAI and Google’s AI tools as being too “woke”. One thing’s...

You’ll be relieved to know that even as time is running out for the Biden-Harris regime, White House apparatchiks are still hard at work for the American people, dealing with the real problems that affect our day-to-day lives. On Thursday, the regime happily announced the launch of what it billed as “the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate.” Now that’s just super, as everyone who knows how important it is for the government to police people’s attitudes and make sure they don’t commit thoughtcrimes, but the initiative, especially coming in these last days of the regime,...

Zelensky defiantly stood his ground in Kyiv as Russia invaded - despite reports that Russia would claim it in days. UKRAINE drafted a secret plan to move its government to London before tyrant Vladimir Putin invaded in February 2022. But when Russian forces launched their illegal assault Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky famously refused Western pleas to seek safe haven. "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride," he told the US, according to the Ukrainian embassy in Britain. The embassy said Ukrainians were "proud of their President" as he stood strong in the face of danger when Putin...

Peace Through Strength -- 2024 Reagan National Defense Survey was published December 5, 2024 shows: 61% of Trump voters believe the US should be more engaged and take the lead in international events.62% of Trump voters support forward deployed US military bases, 33% favor reducing US military presence overseas.Trump voters prioritize the Asia-Pacific and Middle East over Europe. Harris voters favor Europe first.73% of voters want a military strong enough to defeat China and 56% of those want a military strong enough to defeat China and Russia simultaneously.56% of Trump voters now express confidence in the US military, up from...

[OFFICIAL.] WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 -- 5:35 A.M. Major-Gen. John A. Dix: The following official report of the great victory achieved yesterday by Major-Gen. THOMAS and his gallant army over the rebel forces under Gen. HOOD in front of Nashville, was received this morning. One of the most surprising circumstances connected with the great achievement is the small loss suffered by our troops, evincing, among other things, the admirable skill and caution of Gen. THOMAS in his disposition of the battle. In our rejoicings at the defeat of the enemy, thanks are due to the Almighty for his protection...

The very public rise of antisemitic intimidation across the country, especially on college campuses, received a very strong response from the Ohio Senate this week.

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The killer-children whose true stories escape the resolute censorship intention of news media and other special interests, resemble cannibal-zombie characters in the pioneering "space-western" science ficition, the 2002 Fox series "Firefly" homicidal, the insane killer "Reavers". Rather than providing compassionate rehabilitation for sexually abused children, the school-cult exploits their troubles under various pretexts such as "Don't Say Gay", which reposes on the fiction that "we were made that way", whereas the fact is "they HAVE BEEN made that way"--by older children and adults. (Expert on divorce Barbara Dafoe Whitehead notes that the younger a child undergoes initiation, the more likely...