Free Republic

So I just got back from a neurologist for a little more of a precise diagnosis of what for a couple of decades has been called "ADHD." It was actually a very in-depth series of IQ tests. Turns out I'm "genius" level in comprehension, verbal abilities, short-term memory, and so on. But seriously below average in long-term memory. Like 145, 143, 141, 139, 147, 151... 86??? Fortunately, it doesn't fit any profiles of dementia or Alzheimer's, especially since I'd be incredibly young for that. Could be brain damage, given my history. Could just be a weird roll of the dice,...

I say "sort of" because as a Church official, he has not promoted one party or the other, and as a former citizen of Illinois with its non-partisan registration, he's not officially Republican or Democrat. And since he has deliberately avoided partisan identification, it would be misleading to simply say he is a Republican. But, accounting for that inherent inaccuracy, he's a Republican. Maybe you've seen that he voted in a Republican primary; I did and initially I didn't think that much of it. But he voted as a Republican in at least the last three primaries that he voted...

Make no mistake: a Pope from Chicago terrifies me. But I have cause for some hope, which I will share. Pope Francis was, in the surprisingly well-chosen words of the New York Times, "ostentatiously humble." Fully recognizing the irony of a Catholic critiquing the Pope for lacking humility, I also mean to acknowledge that from that humility it took me a long time to give up on Pope Francis. For the longest while, I tried to learn what I could from him, becoming frustrated only after he made it stunningly care that his flock was not the billion and a...

The word, "Cardinal" doesn't go before the first name, it goes before the last name. See, when you call Donald Trump, "President Donald Trump," you're still calling him by his name. You're just adding a title to say what's significant about him. ("Yes, THAT Donald Trump!") You're simply substituting the word, "Mr." It's really grammatically no different than Sheriff John Smith or Coach Harry Brown or Pvt. David Jones. And some day, we'll talk about former president Donald Trump or Sgt. David Jones or retired Gen. Pete Williams. A Cardinal or a Lord will always be a Cardinal or a...

So not too long ago, I moved to Appalachia. For the most part, it's great. Except my wife and son both have been having persistent allergies and lethargy because the locals are CONSTANTLY burning fires in their backyards. They look like campfires: they're not in picnic grills or brick ovens or smokers, but there's always some sort of firesite. They're left unattended almost always. Can anyone tell me what's going on? My wife thinks it's some sort of folk spirit-cleansing ritual, but these people are all supposedly Christians. Her other notion is its for health, but having the air constantly...

Donald Trump never broke 50% job approval ratings in his first term, but he's smashing that barrier now... and the Senate had better pay attention. He's not in office, so the visible job he has is largely putting together his cabinet and establishing his strategy, but voters are loving it. 54% approve, and only 40% disapprove. This indicates that a substantial portion of voters who voted against him are warming up to him. https://harvardharrispoll.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/HHP_Nov2024_KeyResults.pdf A high initial approval rating normally doesn't mean much more than some of the people who voted against a new president are hopeful that the unfamiliar...

America never really gave Donald Trump a chance... until now. The highest his average approval rating ever got to was 43%, in mid-December, 2016. The best that could be said for him by middle-of-the-road voters had been that he was better than Hillary... again, until now. YouGov and Morning Consult were two pollsters that were skewed against Trump the hardest: both predicted him losing to Harris by two to four points. But they're the first two pollsters to poll his current approval rating, and they both have him higher than ever: YouGov has him at 49% and Morning Consult at...

I would have said, "I get it; Gaetz will be appointed by recess appointment, but won't his appointment still have a pointless political cost?" I mean, he's innocent until proven guilty, but hardly exonerated, and it's all still kind of a yucky situation for an Attorney General to have been in. Then I realized: the way to get rid of him is to appoint the next guy he picks. You want to get rid of Gaetz? Then you have to vote for (say for humorous example) Mark Levin as your next Attorney General. BRILLIANT!

I went to the grocery store yesterday and found roast beef for $6/lb. Two weeks ago, it was $16. Heck, when I started working in a deli in 1991, it was $8. Milk for $3.19/gallon? Sharp cheddar cheese for $3.78/pound? Cream cheese for $2.26/half pound? Butter for $2.98/pound? Chicken breast for $1.99? I've been going to Aldi's lately, so I don't know exactly how to compare to before my days of shopping Safeway online since the grocery stores shut down for the pandemic, but these prices seem pre-pandemic to me. My sister reports that where she's from, so much of...

Unavailable due to copyright complaint. So here's a summary in my own words: Trump loses by only 3%, less than Robert Kennedy's vote total. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by 14 points; in 2016, Clinton won by 47 points; Obama won by 48 and 24 points. Republican Jim Moylan re-elected to US House of Representatives as delegate. The Republicans picked up the Guam legislature, now with nine legislators to the Democrat's six. Citation: Moylan wins reelection, Republicans retake Legislature in unofficial tally By Joe Taitano II Pacific Daily News

If you follow international politics, you've probably heard that the anti-immigration the Alliance for Deutchland (AfD) won the most votes in Thuringia, Germany and very nearly won in Saxony. Commentators have been suggesting that the Christian Democrats will have to choose between aligning with AfD, or once again throwing power to the leftists. Given that the Christian Democrats are basically establishment Republicans, you can guess the choice they keep making. But the mainstream Left has given the Christian Democrats an interesting problem: they don't have the votes. You see, another socialist party has emerged, and taken enough votes to prevent...

For a while a couple of decades ago, before Spam filters were effective, I had an email address on the front page of a web site. Such a public address attracted tons of spam, and a bizarrely huge portion of that spam was porn. I was baffled as to why our government allowed such horrors to be legal. And no, perverts disguising as libertarians, I don't just mean nudity. There were a few selling points that would come up again and again, and one was promises of seeing incest and/or rape. I sure hope most of this was merely acting,...

In this map, red does NOT mean more Republican than pink, and pink does NOT mean more Republican than gray. Red represents a state that has not been considered a battleground state. Pink represents a state that had been considered a battleground, but polls show Harris uncompetitive, less so than Biden. Gray represents states without Trump vs Harris polling available. The point is that there is no path to 270 without a huge swing towards the Democrats, far larger than Trump's national lead. There are a dearth of Trump-against-Harris polls in every state, but the key point is that Harris...

For all the talk of the Democrats' gloom at looking at the polls, and despite the presumption that surviving in the most bad-ass way possible being shot, triumphing utterly in a debate and having a convention, you might be a little dismayed looking at the polls. There appears to be no bump. There is. No-one should be surprised it's rather small; the days of people learning where a candidate stands and making up their minds only during campaign season is long gone. But while the bump maybe somewhat hidden, Trump has gained a few points in the polls. The only...

I created two maps to show who polls are indicating are winning. This is not so much a prediction as it is an extrapolation from currently available data. What I mean by that is that a lot of states don't have the sort of multiple polls published since the debates. So let's say I have only one poll from Wisconsin, showing Trump up by a few. But I find that credible because several polls have shown Wisconsin close before the debate, and Wisconsin has been moving in a way similar to Michigan, Minnesota, etc., so I feel comfortable showing Wisconsin...

For context, social workers removed a child from the home of his parents, and tried to find a state willing to perform sex changes. NBC reported that "Republican Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte told The National Desk (TND) Monday state officials acted within their legal limitations by removing a child from parents who objected to their transitioning gender identity." From NBC's coverage, Gianforte said, "“Upon hearing recent allegations related to a child welfare case, I asked Lieutenant Governor Kristen Juras – an experienced attorney, constitutional conservative, mother, and grandmother – to review it," Gov. Gianforte said. "Consulting with the director of...

With news that Bill Clinton has been identified as a client of Epstein by one of his trafficking victims, I wanted to check out the old Pizzagate stories. They're all gone? Pizzagate, James Alefantis, Comet Pizza, all of it. Even web archive hits link to comments on news story threads that no longer exist. Did FreeRepublic have to settle a lawsuit? Were the stories pre-emptively removed? I don't mean to force FR to eat any crow, but if the gist of these stories has been found in some official capacity to be libelous or slanderous, I'd like to know so...

The charge to reject Jim Jordan and to give us a liberal Speaker is Don Bacon. He claims is interest is to prevent the House from being hijacked by the minority which got McCarthy ousted. But some of his outraged constituents have found that he is one of 30 congressmen who serve on the board of a Chinese propaganda ministry, the Humpty Dumpty Institute (HDI). HDI claims their goal is to "put the world back together again" but they mean to establish Chinese hegemony. Many top employmees are from the Red Army itself. Who else in on HDI? A few...

I've gotten three e-mails from ActBlue, which handles ALL of the Democrats' campaigns, about the 2024 presidential race. (I'm on their mailing list so I can keep tabs on them professionally.) It's pretty clear which candidate THEY think THEIR people are most afraid of. It doesn't make sense that this is reverse logic, since this is them trying to tease the worst fears of their own donors. And keep in mind, these aren't get-out-the-vote efforts which often are designed to appeal to moderates; these are fundraising ads designed to appeal to the most red-meat, party-loyal types. (These are all from...

China seems to have thrown down HARD on the side of Russia, and from my news feed, our Google overlords seem like they can't contain their glee. For the last few days, I'm routinely getting news of the Russia-Ukraine war from China Daily, the Global Times, the People's Daily, etc. Now, I might have clicked on one of those (Global Times?) not realizing it was Chinese, which may have triggered an increase in the amount of Chi-Comm news sources I'm getting, but there are still three things I find interesting about this: 1) Of course, I can click on conservative...