Free Republic

I think that men and women should be treated as equal in everything except the three female spheres of activity of being pregnant, giving birth and breast feeding. But I think that there are subtle differences in abilities and tendencies between men and women such as a slight tendency for women to be more empathetic than men. Overall, empathy is also a very common quality in men, but my life experience has been to see a little more empathy in women than in men. To me there is an emotional beauty in the way that the Fitzroy footballer pictured in...

The Hidden Costs and Harms of Wind Energy: A Systems Perspective on Economic Waste, Environmental Destruction, Wildlife Impacts, and Community PowerlessnessIntroduction Wind energy, touted as a "Net Zero" solution, promises low-carbon electricity. Yet, its economic waste, vast land use, unreliability, health impacts, vista destruction, wildlife mortality, and abandonment risks--evident in Washington’s Palouse Hills and Columbia River Gorge--reveal a flawed technology driven by subsidies and eco-idealism. Fierce opposition to wind is arising in Washington and Oregon. This paper, based on discussions with a concerned citizen driving these regions, exposes wind’s true costs and urges alternatives.Economic Inefficiency and Subsidy Dependence Wind relies...

This simple puzzle recently appeared in a members-only newsletter. Think you can crack it? You have two ropes coated in oil to help them burn. Each rope will take exactly one hour to burn all the way through. However, the ropes don’t burn at constant rates; there are spots where they burn a bit faster and spots where they burn a bit slower, but it always takes one hour to finish the job. With a lighter to ignite the ropes, how can you measure exactly 45 minutes?

The St. Anthony was nearly 200 years old, crashing the same year it was initially built. An 8-year-old boy out metal-detecting unearthed a steel spike that, after digging further, he realized was attached to a shipwreck. The ship remains was that of the St. Anthony, a schooner that was built in 1856 and wrecked later that same year. Experts determined that the best course of action was to simply re-bury the wreckage to maintain its structure. ======================================================================= When you’re a kid, and you get your first metal detector, it comes with big dreams of making some great discovery. That you’re...

Things continue to spiral for the embattled UnitedHealth.UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer in the United States, is reportedly the subject of a federal criminal investigation for potential Medicare fraud, according to an exclusive report by the Wall Street Journal.The investigation, led by the U.S. Department of Justice’s health-care fraud unit in New York, has been underway since at least the summer of 2024 and centers on the company’s Medicare Advantage business practices, according to the report.Medicare Advantage, a program that provides private insurance alternatives to traditional Medicare, serves over 8.2 million members through UnitedHealth, making it a significant revenue...

Hiya kids! Hiya, Hiya!Good Morning Crypto-FReepers.I see some of the same old faces out there.But that's OK - I like you anyway.Here's today's quote.It's about NLJAHT, UHNQF VQUVZQ'TFrom DLFP HXLAC. Have fun!!!Ha Ha Ha!I'll be good - I will, (like heck) I will. Ha ha ha.CUHNACK TU CQQMT FQBUFDACK LT UHNQF VQUVZQ'T NLJAHT. - DLFP HXLAC Where'd I put my magic twanger? Oh, here it is - - -boinng!Hal's cryptogram helper

Yellowstone National Park confirmed an 11-year-old male grizzly was captured and killed Wednesday after repeatedly knocking over bear-resistant dumpsters. Officials say the grizzly had repeatedly sought out human food. ======================================================================= A grizzly bear was captured and killed in Yellowstone National Park this week after becoming too used to human food. It’s the first grizzly to be killed within the boundaries of Yellowstone since 2017. The National Park Service (NPS) announced that the 11-year-old male grizzly had repeatedly sought out human food, turning over several bear-proof dumpsters and bear-resistant trash cans in several different areas of the park between April 3...

Ride along in police car saves life of officer. Hodge twins believe this man should become a police man.

There are at least six million job openings in the U.S., yet we have a record number of working age men not working. Maybe one reason is the Feds are still paying people welfare not to work. Brad Wilcox and Grant Bailey of the Institute for Family Studies report: The 2024 Current Population Survey indicates that 31% of men ages 25-40 who are not working full-time collected some form of cash or cash-equivalent benefit in the form of food stamps, Social Security for disability, Supplemental Security Income, or unemployment insurance in the prior year. Such benefits are particularly common among...

Since he first started running for president in 2016, Donald Trump has sought a 15% corporate tax rate. Unleash Prosperity co-founders Larry Kudlow and Steve Moore were in the room with him nine years ago when he first started talking up that rate. In the 2017 bill we got the rate down from 35% to 21%. Corporate revenues increased. Trump ran on 15% in 2024 and won. Still the House GOP tax bill has no rate cut. Even the scaled back 15% rate for made-in-America companies is nowhere to be found. This could have easily been paid for with the...

In a chaotic scene, roughly two dozen protesters stormed the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s budget reconciliation markup, protesting rumored cuts to Medicare. Despite the shameful and potentially illegal actions of the protestors, Democrats capitalized on the event by thanking the protestors, prompting widespread condemnation. For context, since the January 6 debacle, Democrats have treated the date as if it were a national day of mourning. Despite the broad media support for the dangerous George Floyd riots, far-left pundits in the mainstream media have reduced themselves to hysterics while discussing the events of the Capitol riot. Breaking the news on...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession, and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. ~ 1 Timothy 2:1-2 Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. US Military Songs: United States Armed Forces Medley When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. Luke 11:21...

Six Ukrainian drones downed in waters off the port city of Sevastopol... Visiting the United Arab Emirates US President Donald Trump announcing 200 billion dollars... ...the Guyana Defense Force says its troops on the border with Venezuela were attacked... British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he's trying to find third countries to take in illegal... Department of Homeland Security...investigating former FBI Director James Comey... Portuguese politics the leader of the Populist "Chega" party Andre Ventura taken to a hospital... Marco Rubio speaking with Israeli Prime Minister... ...Rubio says he hopes US and Turkish officials will join Russian and Ukrainian officials...

Remember this story from 2018? An armed man shot up the lobby of the Trump National Doral Hotel in Miami (see update), forcing a temporary evacuation while the perp dragged around an American flag. One police subdued him, Jonathan Oddi went off on weird rants during his police interrogation, claiming to have been part of a sex-trafficking ring run by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and other rappers, while also spewing some nonsensical claims about Barack Obama and Donald Trump as well. Police at the time figured Oddi was in a manic-psychotic state after having stopped taking meds. Well, back that...

Middlebury College professor Gary Winslett somehow got the Washington Post (of all places) to print this list of the key ingredients that caused the Midwest to rust and the South to boom. It reads like a greatest hits of HOTLINE themes: Right-to-work laws, cheap energy, affordable housing, low-cost land, fast permitting, low taxes, immigration. That’s a powerful combination, and it has had big effects. In 1992, there was not a single auto plant in Alabama. Today, Alabama is the No. 1 auto-exporting state, producing more than 1 million vehicles a year. That’s brought more than 50,000 jobs and billions of...

NASA has revived a set of thrusters on the nearly 50-year-old Voyager 1 spacecraft after declaring them inoperable over two decades ago. It's a nice long-distance engineering win for the team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, responsible for keeping the venerable Voyager spacecraft flying - and critical one at that, as clogging fuel lines threatened to derail the backup thrusters currently in use. The things you have to deal with when your spacecraft is operating more than four decades beyond its original mission plan, eh? Voyager 1 launched in 1977. JPL reported Wednesday that the maneuver, completed in March, restarted...

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., came out against the emerging House legislation this week, saying it will explode the U.S. budget deficit. “I don’t see any scenario where it’s going to be deficit-neutral. That’s my problem,” he told NBC News. “By my calculation, this is going to increase the deficit by $4 trillion.” “The amount that they’re looking to reduce spending is about 1.3%. It’s a rounding error. It’s completely inadequate,” Johnson said as he insists federal spending be at least lowered to pre-pandemic levels. Republicans have 53 senators, meaning they can only lose three votes before the bill collapses int...

Wildlife authorities in North Carolina have reported that a decapitated dolphin was discovered on Lea-Hutaff Island. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries’ law enforcement office stated the dolphin was initially found on the island intact. Days later, when members of the marine mammal stranding team from the University of North Carolina Wilmington arrived on the island to evaluate the dolphin, they discovered its head was cut off. The office stated, “This animal was intentionally decapitated, a violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The remote location where the dolphin was found adds to the difficulty of investigating this incident...

The entrepreneur tells Michael Odell about inheritance, his new London hotel, dancing on the tables at 74 and why he has stopped afternoon drinkingSo what does a billionaire business tycoon eat for breakfast? I’m sitting with Sir Richard Branson in his spanking new, 120-room Virgin Hotels London-Shoreditch, where I imagine they served him something delicious this morning. I am wrong. “I went to E Pellicci in Bethnal Green, it’s a proper old East End restaurant,” he beams. “The welcome you get and the size of the breakfast is incredible. You should go there — 84-year-old Maria Pellicci still runs the...

Much like its creator, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok was preoccupied with South African racial politics on social media this week, posting unsolicited claims about the persecution and “genocide” of white people. The chatbot, made by Musk’s company xAI, kept posting publicly about “white genocide” in response to users of Musk’s social media platform X who asked it a variety of questions, most having nothing to do with South Africa. One exchange was about streaming service Max reviving the HBO name. Others were about video games or baseball but quickly veered into unrelated commentary on alleged calls to violence...