Free Republic

The media brags that the economy grew faster under Joe Biden than it is under President Trump, but they intentionally hide the reasons why. Here’s the mainstream take, from a new item from AP: It’s Trump’s economy now. The latest financial numbers offer some warning signsJob gains are dwindling. Inflation is ticking upward. Growth has slowed compared with last year.The reason the economy grew last year faster than Trump is because Biden masked the weakness in the private sector with massive government spending increases. Here are some easily attained facts from the internet: - FY 2019: Federal spending $4.4 trillion,...

US President Donald Trump has said he will try to get some territory back for Ukraine during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. "Russia's occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They occupied prime territory. We're going to try to get some of that territory back for Ukraine," he told a news conference. Trump said the talks in Alaska would be a "feel-out meeting" aimed at urging Putin to end the war, and that there would be "some swapping, changes in land". It is not the first time he has used the phrase "land-swapping", though it is unclear...

Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States. What do Minnesota’s Somali citizens think of us? We know amazingly little about the community, probably because we are afraid to ask the relevant questions. We know they are mostly Muslim — we can see the hijabs, we are familiar with the many local controversies ... over the past 35 years — but are they loyal residents or citizens of the United States? In the conflict between the United States and Muslim terrorists, for example, whose side are they on? Acting United States Attorney Joe Thompson observed at...

When arrests at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally get too high, officials resort to an overflow jail, a quasi-retired 1950s era jailhouse. “When you have 50+ drunk individuals who aren’t happy to be there, haven’t showered in a few days, highly intoxicated, it gets thick back there,” a prison official said. “If you know anything about bikers, we have fun, we party. Sturgis is a giant party. It’s the freedom to do whatever you want, ride a bike naked if you want,” he said, adding an important addendum. “But you might get messed with by the cops.” Rally arrests are so...

This one seems to be playing some kind of crazy shoplifting game while high as a kite on meth. People like her are everywhere in America these days, don't think they're not.

While a new Pentagon policy makes it easier for Marines to acquire and experiment with small drones, the U.S. military faces a catastrophic drone gap with Russia and China. A recent exercise highlighted the poor performance of the few approved, American-made models. The root of the problem is a nearly extinct domestic manufacturing base, leaving the U.S. unable to produce drones at scale without relying on Chinese components.

Once, not too long ago, people with ideas aspired to enter politics by presenting their ideas, which were debated during rallies and speeches. Worthy candidates laid out a map to follow for election, and voters judged the best route. Within the past year, many high-profile Democrats have replaced maps with megaphones and words that would make World War II-era merchant marines proud, remaining confident that their volume equaled clarity, while anger equaled authenticity. Although rhetorical shifts such as these grab attention for a single moment, the speakers never learned the lesson that attention without persuasion turns into nothing but a...

OpenAI’s latest AI models, GPT o3 and o4-mini, hallucinate significantly more often than their predecessorsThe increased complexity of the models may be leading to more confident inaccuraciesThe high error rates raise concerns about AI reliability in real-world applicationsBrilliant but untrustworthy people are a staple of fiction (and history). The same correlation may apply to AI as well, based on an investigation by OpenAI and shared by The New York Times. Hallucinations, imaginary facts, and straight-up lies have been part of AI chatbots since they were created. Improvements to the models theoretically should reduce the frequency with which they appear.OpenAI’s latest...

VIDEOTwo loons. The second one is using the same sick script via voiceover as the first one. It is not certain if the first loon is using someone else's voice since her normal voice does not quite match the sick snarky voice you hear on this video. In both cases they could be in trouble. Not coming right out and saying what they wish but strongly hinting at it while Mozart's Funeral Mass music is playing is more than enough to place both of them on a watch list at the very least. Sick stuff. Oh, and if their not...

'Israeli hostages may be the only people purposely starved in Gaza'. Dan Perry says that there is "clearly hunger in Gaza". You cannot deny that there is hunger in Gaza, according to Dan Perry, former head of the Associated Press Africa, Middle East, and Europe desks. “There clearly is hunger in Gaza,” Perry said last week on the ILTV News Podcast. “Half of Gaza has been flattened, the economy has been destroyed. It's not by any means self-sufficient. It's blockaded from all sides — from the sea and from the air. It's under very severe military assault. I don't think...

Rescue crews raced to save multiple people trapped beneath the rubble after an explosion at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh on Monday, an official said. The blast happened just before 11 a.m. at the Clairton Coke Works. Abigail Gardner, director of communications for Allegheny County, told The Associated Press there are no confirmed fatalities yet.

"Nice city you have here — it would be a shame if something were to happen to it."Something bad is about to happen to New York City. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. The greatest city in the world deserves something better than a commie-racist/nepo-red-diaper-baby like Zohran Mamdani as its mayor.But recent news has me convinced that the commie-racist/nepo-red-diaper-baby will be the city's next mayor.President Donald Trump called Mamdani a "communist lunatic" back in June, and he isn't wrong. Every time some old social media post of the Democrat mayoral nominee resurfaces, he's boasting that "the end goal is...

By any reasonable historical measure, Donald Trump should be a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize. In his first term, he brokered the Abraham Accords — a cascade of normalization agreements between Israel and multiple Arab nations that foreign policy elites had long claimed were impossible. In his second term, the pace has been even more remarkable: Armenia-Azerbaijan, Rwanda-DR Congo, Israel-Iran, Cambodia-Thailand, and India-Pakistan ceasefires or peace frameworks — some signed within months of his return to office, spanning three continents. Trump has now received at least a dozen Nobel Peace Prize nominations in his lifetime, putting him squarely in...

A Florida man has been arrested for stealing two Smokey the Bear signs from state forests and selling them for $1,900 each on Facebook Marketplace. Reacting to the arrest, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson thanked Smokey the Bear for assisting law enforcement in apprehending the as-yet-unnamed suspect. For context, Simpson criticized the crime and warned potential thieves against targeting state forests, noting the state’s vigorous law enforcement. Florida has invested over $93 million in equipment to preserve its forests and treats them as a high priority. In any case, Simpson began his hilarious announcement with a rhetorical question, asking, “What...

SNIPWhen Canada’s Parliament in 2016 legalized the practice of euthanasia—Medical Assistance in Dying, or MAID, as it’s formally called—it launched an open-ended medical experiment. One day, administering a lethal injection to a patient was against the law; the next, it was as legitimate as a tonsillectomy, but often with less of a wait. MAID now accounts for about one in 20 deaths in Canada—more than Alzheimer’s and diabetes combined—surpassing countries where assisted dying has been legal for far longer.It is too soon to call euthanasia a lifestyle option in Canada, but from the outset it has proved a case study...

Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, who is visiting the United States for the second time since the four-day conflict with India, has issued a nuclear threat against India, warning that Islamabad would "take half the world down" with it, if his country faces an existential threat in the future from New Delhi. Munir issued this nuclear threat from US soil during a black-tie dinner he hosted for businessman Adnan Asad, who serves as Pakistan's honorary consul in Tampa. "We are a nuclear nation, if we think we are going down, we'll take half the world down with us,"...

NEW YORK (AP) — A top official at the Federal Reserve said Saturday that this month’s stunning, weaker-than-expected report on the U.S. job market is strengthening her belief that interest rates should be lower. Michelle Bowman was one of two Fed officials who voted a week and a half ago in favor of cutting interest rates. Such a move could help boost the economy by making it cheaper for people to borrow money to buy a house or a car, but it could also threaten to push inflation higher. Bowman and a fellow dissenter lost out after nine other Fed...

Nvidia’s (NVDA.O) H20 chips present security risks for China, according to a social media account linked to Chinese state media, which made the claim on Sunday after Beijing raised concerns about potential backdoor access in the chips. The account, Yuyuan Tantian- affiliated with state broadcaster CCTV also argued in a WeChat post that the H20 chips are neither technologically advanced nor environmentally friendly. “When a type of chip is neither environmentally friendly, nor advanced, nor safe, as consumers, we certainly have the option not to buy it,” the article concluded. Nvidia did not immediately comment. The H20 artificial intelligence chips...

Republicans are continuing to receive labor union support amid Teamsters Union President Sean O’Brien repeatedly lambasting Democrats for allegedly deserting the working class. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ Democrat, Republican, Independent Voter Education (DRIVE) PAC has doled out nearly $70,000 to Republicans this year. The donations mark the second cycle in a row that the Teamsters’ political arm has donated to Republican candidates after contributing to Democrats exclusively for roughly two decades. “Our members are working people whose interests cut across party lines,” Kara Deniz, a Teamsters spokesperson told POLITICO’s Playbook, who was first to report the DRIVE PAC contributions....

> You would have never guessed that Bill Gates was backing this new carbon-based butter, would you? Butter made from carbon tastes like the real thing, gets backing from Bill Gates A company in Batavia, Illinois is making butter in a way you've never seen before. No animals, no plants, no oils; this butter is made from carbon. WWW.CBSNEWS.COM https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/butter-carbon-bill-gates-batavia-illinois/ This stuff is being produced by Savor in the Chicago suburbs. The butter uses no animals, no plants, and no oils. I simply cannot fathom the idea, so I'll quote Bill Gates' blog: They ultimately developed a process that involves...