Free Republic

President Biden laid out a three-part plan on Tuesday for combating high inflation, which has been a major strain on his job approval rating. The first part of his plan was an acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve “has a primary responsibility to control inflation.” The second part involved making goods more affordable for families with a focus on high gas prices. His administration has blamed Russia’s invasion into Ukraine for the high price of gas and Biden touted the release from global oil reserves and called on Congress to pass clean energy tax credits. “and cracking down on the exorbitant...

Musk will next make a $54.20 tender offer to raise his shareholding in Twitter to at least 50% or higher. A tender offer is where he asks shareholders to sell him their shares. He owns 9.2%, some 73.5 million shares. To get over 50%, he needs another 319.5 million shares, which will cost $17.2 billion. Easy-peasy. He has $46 billion in financing lined up. As the board deliberated last weekend, Musk reportedly spent the weekend on the phone with big shareholders, wooing them. From there, it doesn’t require any rocket science: Musk or some member(s) of Team Musk have undoubtedly...

[18%-34% per annum median home price increases] And that market, Longmont, was no slouch either with a 17.9% increase, from $509,000 in February 2021 to $600,000 in 2022. The data, compiled by Information and Real Estate Services LLC based in Loveland, also showed that Longmont had only 47 active listings during the month, compared with 78 in the same month a year ago. Forty-one homes were sold in February 2022 with an average time on the market of 23 days. The Loveland/Berthoud area topped the charts during February with a 33.8% increase in median sales price for single-family residential homes,...

Judge Frank P. Nervo on Tuesday issued a temporary stay on Bill de Blasio's vaccine mandate for city employees De Blasio's order was issued on October 20, and all city employees - except uniformed correction officers - had until October 29 to get their first dose Staff were given a $500 bonus for getting vaccinated: if they refused, they were placed on unpaid leave The mandate applied to 160,500 city workers, of whom 71 per cent had already been vaccinated Last month reports suggested that 9,000 city workers, representing 5.6pc of the work force, were put on leave for failing...

In Sweden, a new study followed 840,000 people who were double vaccinated for nine months which is longer than any previous study. The researchers matched them or “paired them” with another 840,000 people who were the same, age, sex and from the same area. Out of this 1.6 million pooled sample, 27,000 people went on to get infected, and most of them were unvaccinated (21,000). So that’s not surprising, but underlying this data was an extraordinary trend showing efficacy falling month after month. In the first two to four weeks, the double vaccinated were very well protected. But by nine...

Merck would turn their back on their creation with three lies about Ivermectin before they would accept the payoff from the United States government. On February 4, 2021, Merck, the corporation behind the monumental Mectizan Program, which rescued the world from River Blindness, told three untruths about Ivermectin. https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/ Lie #1: No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from preclinical studies; FALSE: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011 Lie #2: No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease. FALSE: https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/FLCCC-Alliance-Response-to-the-NIH-Guideline-Committee-Recommendation-on-Ivermectin-use-in-COVID19-2021-01-18.pdf https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/One-Page-Summary-of-the-Clinical-Trials-Evidence-for-Ivermectin-in-COVID-19.pdf Lie #3: A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies. FALSE: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/36858/pdf/

Although data are not available for COVID-19 vaccines administered simultaneously with other vaccines, extensive experience with non-COVID-19 vaccines has demonstrated that immunogenicity and adverse event profiles are generally similar when vaccines are administered simultaneously as when they are administered alone. COVID-19 vaccines were previously recommended to be administered alone, with a minimum interval of 14 days before or after administration of any other vaccines. This was out of an abundance of caution during a period when these vaccines were new and not due to any known safety or immunogenicity concerns. However, substantial data have now been collected regarding the safety...

the current environment of monetary stimulus, and fiscal stimulus in the form of trillions in government spending designed to boost borrowing and spending, combined with supply chain disruptions, has created the perfect conditions for inflation. The average person may not see it yet, but it’s coming. The numbers don’t lie. Over the past year the entire commodities complex, everything from copper and steel to crude oil, cotton and soybeans, has climbed steadily; the Thomson Reuters/ Core Commodity (CRB) Index is up 70% since last May. As the largest economies rebound from the pandemic amid massive government stimulus spending, manufacturing and...

Employees of a vendor paid to conduct COVID-19 contact tracing in Pennsylvania may have compromised the private information of at least 72,000 people, including their exposure status and their sexual orientation, the state Health Department said Thursday. Workers at Atlanta-based Insight Global “disregarded security protocols established in the contract and created unauthorized documents” outside the state’s secure data system ... “We are extremely dismayed that employees from Insight Global acted in a way that may have compromised this type of information and sincerely apologize to all impacted individuals,” Ciccocioppo said. Insight Global acknowledged it mishandled sensitive data and apologized. The...

People who've received both doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna coronavirus vaccines will probably need a booster shot this year, top executives for those two pharmaceutical companies said this week. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said people who've gotten both doses would likely need a third shot within 12 months and might need an annual shot thereafter.

TurboTax and H&R Block updated their online software to account for a new tax break on unemployment benefits received in 2020. The American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill signed this month by President Joe Biden, waived federal tax on up to $10,200 of jobless benefits per person. State returns may still pose a problem for e-filers. TurboTax and H&R Block updated their online software to account for a new tax break on unemployment benefits received last year, according to company officials. However, state tax returns may still be a source of trouble for some taxpayers filing electronically.

Multiple variants can “escape” vaccines Antibodies induced by the Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE vaccines are dramatically less effective at neutralizing some of the most worrying coronavirus variants, a new study suggests. Researchers obtained blood samples from 99 individuals who had received one or two doses of either vaccine and tested their vaccine-induced antibodies against virus replicas engineered to mimic 10 globally circulating variants. Five of the 10 variants were "highly resistant to neutralization," even when volunteers had received both doses of the vaccines, the researchers reported on Friday in Cell. All five highly resistant variants had mutations in...

In the parking lot of Boulder’s Base-Mar Shopping center, more than a dozen people worked Saturday morning to fasten flags and signs to their cars and bicycles in preparation for a “Ridin’ With Biden” rally to show support for presidential candidate Joe Biden.

[from the boulder county Ballot Track web page] "Ballot Track is a free service for Boulder County voters that can send you notifications by text message, phone call, or email when your mail ballot has been sent and received by our Elections Division."

Amy Coney Barrett is slated to be sworn in to the Supreme Court by Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House on Monday evening following her expected successful Senate confirmation vote, according to a senior White House official.

Convalescent plasma generated great enthusiasm in the earliest days of the coronavirus disease The PLACID Trial was a rigorous randomized controlled study on a topic of enormous global importance In prespecified, intention-to-treat analyses, the PLACID Trial investigators found no net benefit associated with convalescent plasma in patients admitted to hospital with moderate covid-19 there was no net clinical benefit to patients

Here’s a look at what will likely happen in the coming week: McConnell has said he would put the nomination on the floor of the Senate on Friday. McConnell cannot put the nomination forth on the same day it comes out of committee via Senate rules. When he does put it to the Senate as a whole, he must move the Senate into executive session, meaning that the senators take up that issue alone. After the nomination is read, McConnell could file cloture – or a measure to end any debate on the nomination – then a day must go...

“The Breakfast Club” co-host Charlamagne tha God said some young black voters support President Trump because the Republican nominee courts them. “When it comes to black people you see who maybe are showing support for Trump, I think it’s because Trump is actually talking to young black male voters. He’s directing ads toward them. They are a group that never get courted,” he said. “Black people don’t get courted either as a whole. But that old Democratic regime speaks to old black men and they think everybody else in the black community and black families are going to fall in...

A top U.S. health official said on Friday that the government expects to have access to over 1 million doses of Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc's and Eli Lilly's & Co's antibody treatments for COVID-19 in 2020. The official, speaking on a call with reporters, said that the government will allocate the treatments to the states based on need, similar to the mechanism they used with Gilead Sciences Inc's antiviral drug remdesivir for COVID-19. Both companies have said the drugs were shown to work in clinical trials and that they have submitted an emergency use authorization to the U.S. Food and Drug...

Colorado secretary of state deletes request, then whole thread Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold asked national media to refrain from calling races or even announcing election results in a series of posts Thursday evening on Twitter. She later deleted the thread and posted an apology. “ATTN NATIONAL MEDIA EXECUTIVES: Our democracy cannot be held hostage to a ratings race,” Griswold said in the first tweet. “If you care about our democracy, you will protect it. Full Stop. “We are in the middle of a pandemic and the President of the United States has telegraphed that he may claim victory...