Free Republic

Transcript: 0:00 Bank runs have started I'm your host 0:03 Steve Van Meter and thanks for joining 0:04 me today and our lead story today 0:06 there's Widespread Panic in the U.S 0:08 banking system as fears of a systemic 0:11 liquidity crisis are causing depositors 0:14 to flee in mass now those of you who've 0:17 watched this show for a long time know 0:19 that I've said that the small and 0:21 mid-sized banks will not be immune 0:23 during the next Crisis that they're at 0:25 risk they're going to face liquidity 0:27 issues and many of...

I didn’t think it was possible for Stanford University to sink any lower into the woke abyss, but they have found a way. This week the Stanford Law Federalist Society invited Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan to speak. A mob of students decided to heckle him such that he could not speak.Judge Duncan requested that an administrator come and address the situation, and hence arrived Tirien Steinbach, Stanford’s Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Who then took the side of the heckling students, lecturing Judge Duncan about how his rulings and views inflicted “harm” on Stanford’s students.Here is the...

On Wednesday, Whoopi Goldberg, a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” went ballistic after 45th President Donald Trump was exonerated by new bombshell findings by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson released earlier this week of previously never before seen raw footage of the January 6, 2021 protest at the Capitol. Carlson, in what Trump has called “one of the biggest scoops as a reporter in U.S. history,” was granted access by Speaker Kevin McCarthy three weeks ago to 41,000 hours of raw footage of the Capitol protest unseen by the public. Carlson’s part one of coverage aired Monday evening and his final...

The question of Ron DeSantis entering the race for the 2024 GOP nomination is an issue of ‘when’ not ‘if’. Anyone who is still holding the opinion that nothing is certain until everything is certain are simply being obtuse in the extreme.Before getting to the current status of the Florida governor appearing in Iowa, the context for the appearance needs some background.With former Cruz Crew leader Ken Cuccinelli coordinating the latest Political Action Committee (PAC) “Never Back Down”, the motives clarify when you consider the need to transfer the excess DeSantis 2022 campaign money into a federal race. The best...

On Monday night, following the release of shocking new footage of the January 6 riot, former president Donald Trump called for the release of all prisoners arrested over their participation in the event. The roughly 40,000 hours of clips, which were released by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and aired on FOX News' Tucker Carlson Tonight, revealed never before seen angles of the riot, casting doubt on numerous claims made by Democrats and parroted by the media about what really happened that day. "Congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest 'scoops' as a reporter in U.S. history," Trump posted...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With aged senators increasingly absent from sessions to treat their illnesses and injuries, Congress has passed new rules giving control of the Senate to whichever party has fewer people in the hospital. "These people are dropping like flies," said one anonymous staffer on Capitol Hill. "At this point, I think the average age for a senator is around 98 years old. Their decrepit bodies are finally starting to just give out." Sources confirm that over the last few years, the Capitol Building has become a de facto nursing home to hundreds of elderly politicians who overstayed their...

Yet another of CNBC host Jim Cramer’s hot stock market takes just fell harder than President Joe Biden stumbling up the steps of Air Force One. Cramer listed his top ten biggest stock “winners of 2023” during the Feb. 8 edition of CNBC’s Mad Money. In the ninth spot for Cramer was Silicon Valley Bank’s parent company, SVB Financial Group. Cramer characterized the institution as a “merchant bank with a deposit base that Wall Street has mistakenly been concerned about.” In Cramer’s ludicrous view, the stock was a good buy because “being a banker to these immense pools of capital...

In his recent show, “The White House vs. Tucker Carlson,” Ben Shapiro worries that Republicans may be overplaying their hands by appearing to the media as in solidarity with January 6 defendants still imprisoned. To Shapiro, incentives among some Republicans threaten to become “misaligned” as a result of the footage Tucker Carlson released from January 6; the anger from many in the base who feel they’ve been directly and repeatedly lied to, which Shapiro empathizes with, is politically dangerous insofar as it risks making the 2024 election an referendum on January 6. He singles out, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene,...

THE SCOOP One Monday in early January, the CEO of Politico, Goli Sheikholeslami, sat down to breakfast at the Four Seasons with Robert Albritton, who had sold the publication a year earlier to the German media giant Axel Springer. At a nearby table was a jarring sight: The two Politico reporters who had quit to create the rival Capitol Hill newsletter Punchbowl News, Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer — breakfasting with a top executive at Axel Springer, Jan Bayer. It was particularly awkward because that happened to be the morning that Politico executives were grumbling over my own reporting in...

Its just like The Fed. The Taylor Rule says that The Fed’s target rate should be 10.29%, but now the terminal rate has been lowered to 5.475%, almost half of where the target rate should be. Today’s jobs report for February was a huge disappointment IFF you expected another blowout jobs report like the one from January (504k jobs added). February saw just 311k jobs added, a decline of -38.3% MoM. And just like that, The Fed’s terminal rate fell to 5.475%, a far cry from the 10.29% rate according to the Taylor Rule. Today’s Fed Funds Target rate is...

The number of people employed by government in the United States increased by 46,000 in February, according to the employment report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In January, according to BLS’ seasonally adjusted numbers, there were 22,449,000 people employed by government in this country. In February, that increased to 22,495,000. […] From January to February of this year, federal government employment increased by 7,000, rising from 2,881,000 to 2,888,000. State government employment increased by 2,000 from January to February, rising from 5,162,000 to 5,164,000. State-government employment in the United States hit its all-time high in February 2020,...

“The Lord’s Prayer: ‘Pray Then Like This’” This year our midweek Lenten series is called, “A Catechetical Lent: The Six Chief Parts of the Small Catechism.” And today we come to the third of those six chief parts, namely, the Lord’s Prayer. We call it the “Lord’s” Prayer, because our Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples to pray this prayer. And so this is the prayer that our Lord teaches us to pray, because we too are his disciples. We follow him in faith and learn from him and listen to his voice. So when Jesus speaks, we listen. Today...

Hispanic and black voters are the most likely to believe that President Joe Biden has a conflict of interest when dealing with China’s aggression towards the U.S., results of a new survey reveal. In a national survey of 1,082 likely general election voters, conducted February 22-26 by the Trafalgar Group on behalf of Convention of States, a strong majority said they believe Pres. Biden has a conflict of interest regarding China. Fully 57.2% of all likely voters agreed that “Due to the Biden family's business relationships with China…President Biden has a conflict of interest when responding to China's aggressive actions...

VIDEO Give Jim Cramer credit. His investment advice is almost infallible... You can't lose as long as you do the OPPOSITE of what he says.

In 2020, one hitherto unknown report accurately predicted what was to follow Biden’s election. It also laid out a plan to preserve democracy in an uncertain future. Weeks before the 2020 election, a secret 87-page document outlined in matter-of-fact language the threat posed by Donald Trump’s still-to-come campaign of election denial. The private paper — the existence of which has not been reported before — forecast with chilling confidence the likelihood of violence during the presidential handover and proposed a far-reaching set of political reforms to thwart Trumpism in the future. Americans remember that dark winter well. But the impetus...

There is no way to avoid this moment. The formal letter of apology. From me. To Conservatives and to those who “put America first” everywhere. It’s tempting to sweep this confrontation with my own gullibility under the rug — to “move on” without ever acknowledging that I was duped, and that as a result I made mistakes in judgement, and that these mistakes, multiplied by the tens of thousands and millions on the part of people just like me, hurt millions of other people like you all, in existential ways. But that erasure of personal and public history would be...

The woman in the picture above is Rep Sylvia Garcia (D-TX). Although there was great competition for the it, she clinched the title of biggest clown at the circus staged by democrats yesterday. And that competition was pretty stiff. What democrats did yesterday was a demonstration of why they should never ever be granted control of anything, let alone the country. With every minute and every witness, their true fascist hair color grew in. Whether it was trying to learn from the Twitter files or uncover the origins of COVID, they did their absolute best to steer the country away...

The proverbial Martian would find contemporary discourse about race in the West peculiar, even paradoxical. On the one hand, many modern intellectuals insist that race is a pernicious reification of superficial human differences that has been decisively refuted by modern science. On the other hand, many of these same intellectuals obsess about racial disparities and injustices and actively promote policies that treat people of different races differently (e.g., affirmative action). Thus, mainstream discourse simultaneously contends that belief in race is an anachronistic superstition and that racial equality is an ethical imperative that can only be achieved through racially conscious policy...

Ah, memories! I still remember the 2000s housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis and bank bailout from 2008/2009 like it was yesterday. And I remember Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) claiming that the Dodd-Frank legislation would end bank bailouts. I laughed out loud when I heard Mr. Frank utter those preposterous words. Now here we are again with yet another bank contagion. First it was Silicon Valley Bank, now it is First Republic Bank (down -28% at opening). And there is a trading halt on First Republic. But YoY growth on FRC’s earnings of -34.7% is horrendous.

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...