Free Republic

The US mortgage market is like Mussgorsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Where are the paintings are bad. US mortgage rates fell for a fourth week in a row, the longest such stretch of declines since May 2019. The contract rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage eased 8 basis points to 6.41% in the week ended Dec. 2, still the lowest since mid-September, according to Mortgage Bankers Association data released Wednesday. Rates have retreated for the past month as the Federal Reserve has signaled it will soon slow down the pace of interest-rate hikes, likely at next week’s policy meeting. Even...

Commentary An EpochTV special report entitled “Border Deception: How the US and UN Are Quietly Running the Border Crisis” reveals that what Americans are being told about the border crisis is an illusion. In the report, which aired Sept. 29, Joshua Philipp, editor and senior investigative reporter for The Epoch Times and host of the EpochTV segment “Crossroads,” uncovers alarming details about what is really happening at our nation’s border. Philipp says his investigation found “a coordinated effort, with the cooperation of foreign governments, financing from the United States, and a pervasive program being run by various NGOs and the...

[T]he culture of higher education has operated to undermine its own continuing existence. The unrelentingly, radicalizing social-justice spirit of contemporary higher education includes open denunciation of people at the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum. They have long made up the lion’s share of families paying full tuition, shouldering a disproportionate part of the work of making higher education economically feasible. I have heard that denunciatory sentiment expressed dozens of times on my campus by faculty members. Wealthy students, and especially wealthy white students, are described as an unwieldy burden on the new mission of higher education, which is, of...

On Tuesday night, police responded to a call at Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) home in response to a report of a stabbing or cutting incident. According to KTRK, Houston Police Department (HPD) responded to a report of a 14-year-old with self-inflicted wounds. However, authorities were unable to confirm whether or not the teenager was a member of Cruz’s family. Fox News Houston reporter, Matthew Seedorff, reported that HPD confirmed it was “not a family violence issue” and that “no criminal activity” was involved. A spokesperson from Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s office released a statement, stating, “This is a family matter,...

Ron DeSantis can save Australia. In Jim Cousen's dreams. In the spirit of Mark Twain and Huck Finn, I hope for the best from people but more often seem to cop their worst. God Bless Laughter. Tyrants fall when exposed as jokes.

Time Magazine has announced the names of the people on their shortlist for this year’s Time “Person of the Year.”They name people for good and sometimes bad reasons, but the idea is supposed to be the significance of what that person has done.But when you peruse the shortlist that The Hill has, for some of the people, you have to wonder about what Time was thinking..@TIME releases its 2022 Person of the Year shortlist pic.twitter.com/8rTCTIJUCY— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 5, 2022I’ll start with the ridiculous — “we need to fill out the list” — inclusions.If you don’t know what the...

On this date in 1938, Austrian Martha Marek was guillotined in Vienna for several murders by poison. She first came to the attention of the discerning interwar crime audience in 1925 when she and her husband Emil were convicted of insurance fraud: Emil claimed to have “lost his leg while chopping wood” just after having taken out a policy, but examination showed that the lost leg had actually been chopped off methodically — and clumsily. They both served a short stint in prison but at least Martha still had four good limbs to go with her wits. Martha before her...

“[Dr. Huff] is the whistleblower of whistleblowers,” said Alex Jones Tuesday. “So much of the intel we got over the last two-and-a-half years came from him.”“This is the guy who sent the documented reports to the senate committees, this is the guy that got massively harassed for it, and now he is standing tall & fighting harder than ever.”Watch & share this explosive interview & be sure to download the unredacted documents provided by Dr. Huff:

Gates Inc has assumed complete regulatory capture over American "public health" institutions.Bill Gates is taking a short break from his efforts to depopulate the planet to join the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Thursday as their “special guest.” Both Gates and Anthony Fauci will participate in the annual meeting convened by the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) of the National Institutes of Health. The ACD is comprised mostly of academics who act as stooges for a variety of interests. Committee members vote on resource allocation and NIH regulation and policy, and can help facilitate government funding for several endeavors....

This coming January, the NCAA will convene in Texas to decide the future of standardized testing requirements for student-athletes. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the NCAA and universities nationwide have taken steps to waive or modify admissions and eligibility criteria. With the pandemic coming to an end, it is yet to be determined which policies and requirements will be reimplemented by these institutions and which may be scrapped entirely. Division I and Division II college athletes are held to a specific set of academic eligibility requirements by the NCAA. These include a minimum GPA (2.3 for Division I...

MRC President Brent Bozell announced new MRC Business investigative research exposing the extent of liberal billionaire George Soros' influence over the global media. He also slammed the liberal media for largely ignoring Twitter owner Elon Musk's document dump that revealed internal communications on Twitter's effort to squash the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher “praise[d] the work” that MRC Business did for “breaking the story about George Soros having his fingerprints on literally media organizations around the world.” Bozell reported during the Dec. 5 edition of Fox News at Night that the MRC uncovered “253 organizations —...

Leftist billionaire George Soros used his charities to build ties with hundreds of media organizations around the world involved in news and activist media. The journalism and activist media groups Soros supports mold public opinion on practically every continent and in many languages. They also insulate him from inquiry because reporters see him as an ally, not a target for investigation. The 92-year-old philanthropist’s multimillion-dollar efforts promoting his bizarre “open society” agenda encompass some of the most radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism. His global media clout is massive. An...

I got a new text scam that I nearly fell for - well, not quite. It claims to be the Post Office asking for an address to be corrected so they can deliver your package Really? How would the post office know my phone number if they don't know my address? Well, maybe the phone number was on the package - let's click on the link. It goes to usppaeckltc dot info, a somewhat convincing imitation of a Post Office web page. It might fool the average person, but not a skill Unix geek. Pulling up my trust Unix command...

In a bid to offset the baleful effects of allowing violent offenders to remain free on their own recognisance, Supervisors in San Francisco voted 8-3 to deploy robots authorized to use deadly force against suspected criminals. Supervisor Connie Chan said she understood that "giving robots a license to kill, so to speak, sounds scary, but the alternative of having dangerous predators prowling our streets is also frightening. We think shifting some of the responsibility for public safety from human police officers to mechanical drones has its advantages." "For one, we'll save money," Chan pointed out. "Robots don't draw salaries, require...

Why is the “secret” Brunson v Adams lawsuit officially scheduled for a US Supreme Court Hearing being met with defeating silence from America’s so-called media elite? This Civil Lawsuit was proactively hand-selected by the US Supreme Court in October of 2022, was written and filed by a band of brothers (an actual band of trumpet playing brothers) without attorney representation, and seeks the most historic and consequential judicial remedy in American history. Why no coverage? This video explores the WHY Questions that aren’t being asked - but should be. The links below provide factual “receipts” available for all to see...

Always behind the curve, US Senators (Warren, Marshall, Kennedy) want to get to the bottom of Silvergate’s decline and its relationship with Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX. This reminds me of the 2008 financial crisis when The Federal Reserve claimed they never saw it coming. Despite the data. But back to crypto bank Silvergate. Crypto bank Silvergate Capital Corp. was asked by three US Senators to release all records about transfers of funds for the collapsed FTX empire of Sam Bankman-Fried. “Your bank’s involvement in the transfer of FTX customer funds to Alameda reveals what appears to be an egregious failure...

VIDEOThus far there has been NO APOLOGY from PBS correspondent Nick Schifrin for spreading DISINFORMATION about the Hunter Biden laptop. Watch Nick Schifrin spread FAKE NEWS about the laptop in October 2020. Nick, you need to PROFUSELY APOLOGIZE for spreading DISINFORMATION that resulted in ELECTION INTERFERENCE or quit the journalism business, preferably both.

Should we be concerned by all of the volcanic activity that we are witnessing all over the planet right now? According to Volcano Discovery, 27 different volcanoes are erupting at this moment and many others are showing signs of waking up. Of course, this comes at a time when we are also seeing lots of unusual earthquakes around the globe. I have been regularly warning my readers about the instability of our planet, and it appears that seismic activity is beginning to spike as we approach the end of 2022. So will this trend continue once we get into 2023?...

In the partisan controversies over changes in voter eligibility and voter ID requirements, the growth of mail voting and no-excuse absentee voting have received little attention. While voter-impersonation fraud at the polls is nearly unheard of, both sides in the voter fraud debate acknowledge that absentee ballots are susceptible to fraud. Early voting has begun, and more Americans than ever are expected to vote by mail this fall in the presidential, state and local elections. A gradual loosening of absentee voting laws in many states, especially in the West, and universal mail voting in Oregon and Washington have contributed to...

You can always count on California’s progressive contingent to mix lunacy with hypocrisy. The state’s nine-member Reparations Task Force last month recommended large state payments to descendants of slaves, now living in California. The task force estimates compensation of around $569 billion, with $223,200 per person: estimates of a national reparations total could top $14 trillion. California, which was never a slave state, although there were some instances during the Gold Rush, is a strange place to start. Given few Californians were enslaved, the expansive policy is justified by the legacy of discrimination that followed Emancipation. This approach ignores the...