Free Republic

During a portion of an interview with CNBC that was recorded in February and aired on Thursday’s “Cities of Success,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston responded to a question on if the city was too open to migrants and too generous by stating that “it’s a balance. We want to be a welcoming city” but doing that without federal help “requires shared sacrifice, it requires compromise. So, we are both making cuts to city budgets to meet this financial need, and we are making cuts to the amount of services we can provide to the migrants that arrive and to the...

Ranked: The Cities with the Best Work-Life Balance in the WorldWhile some careers can be relatively stress-free, maintaining a healthy work-life balance can seem impossible for many.The easy access to technology, blurred boundaries around work and personal time, and fear of job loss push many to work overtime, and fail to use vacation time or sick leave.However, in some cities across the world, the situation is very different. In top-ranked locales, companies offer working professionals an opportunity to maintain a work-life balance through good healthcare, ample vacation time, and so on.In this graphic, we use the Forbes Advisor 2023 ranking...

A new report released by Vanguard shows the average account balance in retirement contribution plans dropped by 20 percent from 2021 to 2022. Vanguard’s report found that the average account balance for its defined contribution plans was $112,572 in 2022, down nearly $30,000 from the average in 2021. The report noted that 1 in 3 account holders had a balance of less than $10,000, about 25 percent had a balance of more than $100,000 and 12 percent had a balance of $250,000 or more. The report attributed the drop in average balances to “market performance and an evolving participant base.”...

First lady Jill Biden told CNN that she offers a “good balance” of insight to her husband, President Joe Biden. During the interview with CNN during her recent trip to Africa, she claims she maintains a “good balance” of insight and advice she offers the president. The first lady noted that she sees what the president does not always see because she goes out daily — since she is also a full-time teacher at a Community College. “Certainly, I tell him stories, and I have things that I’ve seen and things that people want and where their challenges are,” she...

The inability to stand on one leg for 10 seconds in mid- to later life is linked to a near doubling in the risk of death from any cause within the next 10 years, finds research. To improve standardization of the test, participants were asked to place the front of the free foot on the back of the opposite lower leg, while keeping their arms by their sides and their gaze fixed straight ahead. Up to three attempts on either foot were permitted. In all, around 1 in 5 (20.5%; 348) participants failed to pass the test. The inability to...

I don’t think President Donald Trump handled the Coronavirus perfectly. But neither has anybody else. IMHO telling his people not to let it dominate them was magnificent. How close were Trump’s actions as President in a pandemic to the sort of conduct taught in a technologically very different era in Exodus 7-11?

A year ago I looked at the 20th anniversary of Nancy Pelosi's ascension to the speakership and shook my head in dismay. Now things are worse. The likelihood of a Biden presidency (despite determined opposition from many Republicans) suggests government lead persecution of men will get worse. This will be disastrous for America and felt around the world in all places that follow America's lead. Lord God please stand by Ted Cruz and Mike Pence and give them strength.

If feminism destroys spaces for men, society will collapse. Is that inevitable or can the rot be stopped?

When I was a registered midwife in Australia (for just over 3 decades, interspersed with time in Indonesia), I learnt many interesting things. Attitudes to the presence of a male in the profession were open and warmer in Catholic hospitals than in public hospitals. Generally speaking Catholic hospitals had a touch of warmth in most things compared to the secular places. Vietnamese people were also very open to a male presence in midwifery compared with any other ethnic group. The Vietnamese men were the ones least likely to be uncomfortable if the midwife was a male. It was probably a...

SAN FRANCISCO — Since the 2016 election, when Russian trolls and a tsunami of misinformation turned social media into a partisan battlefield, Facebook has wrestled with the role it played in President Donald Trump’s victory. Now, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times, a longtime Facebook executive told employees that the company had a moral duty not to tilt the scales against Trump as he seeks reelection. On Dec. 30, Andrew Bosworth, head of Facebook’s virtual and augmented reality division, wrote on his internal Facebook page that, as a liberal, he found himself wanting to use the...

In early September of this year my wife starting having problems with her feet going numb. Because she had no feeling in her feet she couldn't maintain her balance and it's become harder and harder to walk. The numbness has spread and now she can't feel her legs and even has occasional tightness in her chest. When we have to do any walking outside she now sits in a wheelchair and I push her around. She has been getting a lot of tests done and the doctors believe it is now either Sarcoidosis or Lymphoma. She is going in for...

The robotic tail is designed to help the wearer to stay balanced when moving quickly or carrying heavy objects. A robotic tail that claims to balance out the human body could be used instead of a cane to help prevent elderly people from falling over. The strap-on appendage, known as Arque, has been developed by researchers at Keio University in Japan. It is inspired by a seahorse's tail, which is strong enough to withstand predators' bites but flexible enough to grip things in its environment, like coral. The tail can be be adjusted to fit whoever is wearing it by...

Why Go to Church? One Sunday morning, a mother went in to wake her son and tell him it was time to get ready for church, to which he replied, "I'm not going." "Why not?" she asked. "I'll give you two good reasons," he said. "One, they don't like me, and two, I don't like them." His mother replied, "I'll give you two good reasons why you SHOULD go to church: One, you're 59 years old, and two you're the pastor!" The Picnic A Jewish Rabbi and a Catholic Priest met at the town's annual 4th of July picnic. Old...

The brain is a soft mass of supporting tissues and nerves connected to the spinal cord. Some nerves in the brain go straight to the eyes, ears and other parts of the head. Other nerves connect the brain to other parts of the body through the spinal cord to control the personality, senses, and functions of the body from breathing to walking.Read more

They had the nerve to be thankful that the TPP was DOA. Now the lefty whiners are burning their already-bought NBs. The moment I heard this I went straight to Amazon and bought myself a new pair of their trail runners. They'll be getting more of my business in the future.

Small planes outfitted with video cameras have been flying over Baltimore since January, capturing activity on the streets below and relaying the footage to police to help them catch criminals. The public knew nothing about it until this week — when Bloomberg Businessweek ran a cover story about the trial program. Airplane used to conduct wide area surveillance. Persistent Surveillance Systems The revelations triggered outrage from elected officials, defense lawyers and the American Civil Liberties Union, who said the program raised privacy concerns and could aggravate public distrust in a city that exploded in riots last year after the death...

Analysts generally consider military influence in politics and society to be a critical impediment to the development of democratic political and civil rights and freedoms. According to Freedom House, for example, greater military involvement in government politics decreases civil liberties and political rights in any given country; this infringes on a government's ability to develop democracy. Turkey may be an exception. The military has deep roots in society, and its influence predates the founding of the republic. But rather than hinder democratization, Turkey's military remains an important component in the checks and balances that protect Turkish democracy. Herein lies...

Mary Burke’s position as a member of the Madison Metropolitan School District board has played a minimal role in the governor’s race so far. Gov. Scott Walker tried to change that Sept. 3, 2014, calling on Burke and the board to find savings by using his signature Act 10, which dramatically curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees, including those of the district. In a campaign news release, Walker said Madison "will be the only school district left in the state out of 424 to ignore the law and not take advantage of Governor Walker’s reforms into the 2015-16 school...

Those who love rib-eye steaks and double-cream Brie will feel better about their guilty pleasures after reading Nina Teicholz’s article in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, “The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease.” She writes, for example: Too much whole-grain oatmeal for breakfast and whole-grain pasta for dinner, with fruit snacks in between, add up to a less healthy diet than one of eggs and bacon, followed by fish. Gary Taubes covered some of the same ground in his excellent 2008 book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health. Taubes argued...

Take heart baby boomers, there's life in those aging bodies!