Free Republic

Check all the boxes, then chuck it all aside at forty to follow your muse. Play by the rules and win, only to decide that you don’t want the prize. Most of the rebellions were minor. The devoted housewife informed her husband that she would not be cooking dinner for the family on Tuesday and Thursday nights, as she was finally taking the art class she had always dreamed of. The cliché for men was the red convertible. But some people set off explosions: quitting jobs, filing for divorce, engaging in affairs. For Baby Boomers, the midlife crisis was very...

ORLANDO, Fla. (WFLA) — An Orlando man was arrested this past Wednesday after being connected to a pair of robberies, according to police. NBC affiliate WESH reported that Orlando police first began their investigation when a TD Bank was robbed by a man wearing a hat that said “police” and a pair of sunglasses. Detectives said the teller told them the robber handed the teller a note with the words “assault” and ” money” on it before running off after getting the cash. Two days later, a Circle K was robbed. This time, a store clerk was handed a note...

Visitors to the Chicago zoo showing the 415lb Amare pictures and videos through the glass wall has made him dismissive to other male gorillas A teenage gorilla in a Chicago zoo has been getting too much screen time, according to zoo officials. Amare, a 415-pound gorilla at Chicago’s Lincoln Park zoo, has been staring a little too frequently at the screens of cellphones from visitors who show him pictures and videos through the glass wall – including selfies, family photos, pet videos and even footage of Amare himself. He has apparently become so distracted as a result that last week,...

Just as physicists look for equations to explain the natural world, I have always thought it useful to look for equations to explain human nature. For example, in my book on happiness, I offer this equation: U = I - R. Unhappiness = Image - Reality. The difference between the images we have for our life and the reality of our life is one way of measuring how much unhappiness we experience. Here, I offer another theorem, this time to help explain leftism. A + S = B = L Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism The search for...

Things went a bit sideways this week, but it's all good.

If you watch cable or network news, all you hear about is impeachment. To the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC, it’s as if it already happened. Reps Pelosi, Schiff, and Nadler speak as if it’s a foregone conclusion, and shed crocodile tears about being “heartbroken and prayerful” over the process.The fact is, an impeachment inquiry has yet to begin. Opening such an inquiry would require a full House vote, making vulnerable representatives in districts President Trump won handily in 2016 go on record in favor of removing a duly elected president for the high crime of doing his...

Valerie Jarrett, Obama's Rasputin, unwittingly provided us an answer to the question of why the Obama Presidency is such a man-caused disaster. There are few people who are close to the notoriously insular Barack Obama (a former aide, Neera Tanden, said that "Obama doesn't call anyone, and he's not close to almost anyone. It's stunning that he's in politics, because he really doesn't like people") but Valerie Jarrett is among the select few. They have been friends for decades; she introduced Barack to Michelle; she is a constant presence in the White House, and highly unusual for a White House...

Perhaps, but I don't know which. Maybe He is simply a bad person. A psychiatrist would need to examine Him professionally to draw any useful conclusions. Still, it can be fun to guess.Here's a Trifecta video that raises the question about his boredom or incompetence. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nt0eBMQcO4&w=640&h=390] Video linkA psychiatrist friend once told me (in jest, of course) of three categories into which psychiatric patients fall: sad, mad and bad. I don't know whether President Obama is sad, mad, bad, bored or incompetent. However, it seems clear that He is either maliciously competent enough to fail America intentionally or that He is an...

President Barack Obama portrays himself as a hard worker who constantly rolls up his sleeves to help Americans amid the economic recession. But he’s spending more of his energy and time running for re-election than he’s devoting to the ordinary tasks of pushing back special interests that profitably clog government, curb personal freedom and constrict entrepreneurship. (RELATED: Full coverage of Barack Obama) Out on the stump, he’s animated, active and energetic. That’s where his extraordinary talents as a political campaigner show up on TV. It’s a different story inside Washington,

It happens occasionally even to the best chess players in the world. You're only eight or nine moves into the game, but somehow you've drifted into a position so bad that it looks like the loss is inevitable. But before tipping the king, one last strategic gambit: Seek complications. You try an aggressive counterattack, a piece sacrifice or giving up the exchange for an extra tempo - anything that will make the situation more complicated and confusing. Maybe your opponent will lose his way and you can pull off a swindle, winning a game you should have lost. And if...

Aleksandr Zinoviev wrote a book under the old Soviet Union called The Yawning Heights. He used it to describe, almost obscenely, the speeches of Communist Party boss Leonid Brezhnev. The Russian words for "glistening" and "yawning" are very close and with Comrade Leonid's drunken slurring, "the glistening heights of socialism" to which he was forever summoning his chained peoples came out "yawning heights." President Obama is surely no drunk. And we are not yet a captive people. But President Obama is also a bore. It's not his fault. It's socialism's fault. Irish poet Oscar Wilde was once asked what he...

I noticed there were more than a few vanities posted tonite so I decided to join in and just see who wants to talk.

Many fans of the television series Sex and the City are shocked and disappointed when they read the Candace Bushnell book that inspired it. In the print version of the tale, there is no supportive sisterhood of single friends, no light-hearted banter, no suggestion that anyone actually finds fulfillment in cocktails, casual sex, and Manolo Blahniks — only a cast of cynical, lonely, and alienated men and women jaded by the predatory New York dating scene. A recent collection of “True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts” paints an equally harsh picture of the modern battle of the...

He Shoots, He Scores! Four of the most powerful words on earth. They have the power not only to turn grown men into little boys, but to turn wives into widows at the push of a button. http://www.sportales.com/Hockey/Four-Ways-for-Hockey-Widows-to-Fight-Back.56736

In order to golf well, you need a stick of some kind.

Are your children bored this summer? Good!If your children like to stay in bed until lunchtime, then slouch around saying there’s nothing to do – don’t worry, it’s no bad thing. Joan McFadden explains

I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested...

Hillary Clinton may be the Democratic front-runner for the presidency but she seems to have a lot to learn about campaigning for the White House.In a weighty speech to journalists at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday, the senator squandered an opportunity to shine before a critically important audience - the journalists who will present her to the public if, as expected, she declares her candidacy for the 2008 nomination. It began well enough. Resplendent in a lemon yellow two-piece and expensively bejewelled, her star power was plain the moment she entered the room. Everywhere, necks craned for a...

Children should expect some of their lessons to be boring because life is not a "Disney ride", teachers said yesterday.Too often pupils and parents expected lessons to be "all singing, all dancing" when the reality was that some learning could be tedious and hard work. Zoe Fail, a mathematics teacher. thinks that children are not bored enough because their lives are over-stimulated. "Being bored encourages thinking skills and imaginative play," she said. "I remember being bored but I am not bored now because I know how to deal with it." Miss Fail, from Kent, told delegates at the Association of...

What's up with Drudge? He has the same content on for almost days now... including headlines. He used to move information fast. Currently he doesn't have anything on the raid in Samarra while we have had it reported here at FR for hours. I don't look at Drudgereport to find stuff that was written two days ago as the lead story. Has he cut staff or what? Does anyone know... please report.