Free Republic

If it floated, it was needed. Half a million New Yorkers were rescued by a Coast Guard-led fleet of tugboats and yachts. When disaster strikes, ordinary Americans help fellow citizens...... Click Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ZF4_iFr30

Some girls at La Guardia HS of Music & Art and Performing Arts were not amused that a boy stole their stiletto-heeled thunder and became this year’s prom queen — and their claws have come out on social ­media. “I know I go to LaGuardia because a boy won prom queen,” snarked Asia Pierre in a Facebook post that attracted 500 homophobic comments and 100 shares before it was removed. “It just sucks that men win everything and we thought we at least deserve that,” wrote a classmate under the name Taj Mahal. Matthew Crisson, an 18-year-old Staten Islander who self-identifies...

The ongoing criminal probe surrounding Hillary's email server has been marked by opacity and lack of virtually any disclosure, not to mention a major turf war between the FBI and the DOJ, which is why many were surprised when overnight the WSJ revealed that at the center of the probe over Hillary's handling of classified information are a series of emails between American diplomats in Islamabad and their superiors in Washington about whether to oppose specific drone strikes in Pakistan. As the WSJ writes, the 2011 and 2012 emails were sent via the “low side’’—government slang for a computer system...

Donald Trump calls Ted Cruz to give him a prep interview before his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Where the Race Stands Donald Trump continues to lead his Republican rivals by double digits among Republican primary voters nationally. Forty-six percent of Republican primary voters would like Donald Trump to win the Republican Party's nomination for President, the same percentage as Ted Cruz (26 percent) and John Kasich (20 percent) combined. 4 percent say they would vote for none of these candidates. Although the percentage that supports each of the three remaining candidates has risen since Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio left the race, Donald Trump has made the most gains. Support for Trump has risen eleven...

New polling data from Reuters finds a nationwide toss-up 2016 contest between GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton — but he’s beating her by 20 points, 46 percent to 26 percent, among white working-class voters. That’s up from a five-point lead in mid-December. Trump’s January lead is so huge, in fact, that Hillary just barely edges out the option “don’t know.” In fact, he is beating Hillary Clinton among all working-class voters, regardless of race. Trump leads Hillary by five points among all voters earning between $25,000 and $75,000. Just among whites, Trump gets the support of...

Trump's Appeal as American as Andrew Jackson After the Paris attack, conventional wisdom held that Republican voters would finally turn away from political outsiders and reward candidates representing sobriety and experience. No one stopped to consider that, actually, voters might be drawn to the guy who memorably said of ISIS that he would “bomb the [expletive] out of them.” Not only has Donald Trump not been hurt by Paris, he has bumped up in the aftermath (Ben Carson, on the other hand, has indeed dropped). The cliché about Trump is that he’s defying the laws of political gravity. If Trump...

There's never been a better time to rent in Manhattan — if you want to pay the purchase price of a new car to your landlord every month. An analysis of exclusive listings on the site On-Line Residential* conducted by The Real Deal found that there are more rentals priced at $15,000 a month and above than $2,000 a month and below. But before you start calculating how much it would cost to commute from Binghamton, there was one bit of hope for bargain hunters in the real-estate magazine's report: The Upper East Side has a surprisingly large number of...

With a 54-0 record without a rate hike (better than Floyd Mayweather's), and 58 Economisseds expecting no change, 3 a half-pregnant 13bps hike, and 53 expecting a 25bps hike, The Fed was always going to break someone's heart today. Bond yields and the USD were tumbling into the decision, which appeared correct as The Fed chickened out again... **FOMC: NO POLICY CHANGE, 0-0.25% TARGET 'REMAINS APPROPRIATE' **FOMC: GLOBAL ECON,FIN EVENTS 'MAY RESTRAIN ECON ACTIVITY' **FOMC: VOTE 9-1; LACKER DISSENTS, WANTED 25 BPS HIKE Given the "no hike", it is clear that, as we noted, Goldman is still in charge and...

In cities like San Francisco, New York and Boston, parking prices have reached an all-time high. At least two new developments in Manhattan are asking $1 million for a single parking spot. Condominium developers are touting parking spaces with glossy brochures and promotional videos, marketing the small patches of concrete as luxury amenities. Price tags are rising as parking options become scarce in major cities. Until recently, the rule of thumb for San Francisco developers in prime, central areas was to build one parking space for every unit, the maximum allowed by the city planning department in some locations, says...

Check out the talking yo-yos over at the Ultra Leftist Young Turks talk about "giving in" to the Trump wave....Full panic mold!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJb7xUXM_-8

Reuters Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, left, and Sen. Richard Shelby Congress kept Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen busy during the month of May, as Republicans demanded more details on a criminal leak investigation and introduced measures to revamp the central bank. Yellen met with lawmakers or spoke with them over the phone 11 times that month, according to her calendar, which was obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request. That’s nearly twice as many meetings with lawmakers as she held in March, her second-busiest month for Hill outreach since taking the Fed’s helm in February 2014. Of the...

With all the chaos unravelling in Greece, Congress would be wise to do what it takes to avoid reaching Greek debt levels. But it’s not a matter of sticking to the status quo and avoiding bad decisions that would put the budget on a Greek-like path, because the budget is on that path already. A quarter-century ago, Greek debt levels were roughly 75 percent of Greece’s economy — about equal to what the U.S. has now. As of 2014, Greek debt levels are about 177 percent of national GDP. Now, the country is considering defaulting on its loans and uncertainty...

As regular readers are no doubt aware, shifting demographics are affecting everything from the labor market, to homeownership, to race relations in America. In “The ‘Illegal Immigrant’ Recovery” for instance, we documented the stunning fact that in May, the number of foreign born workers lept 279K which means that, assuming the Household and Establishment surveys were congruent, there were just 1K native-born workers added in May of the total 280K jobs added. Alternatively, assuming the series, which is not seasonally adjusted, was indicative of seasonally adjusted data, then the 272K increase in total Household Survey civilian employment in May would...

The Knight Frank Wealth Report has just published the top 40 cities in the world which work out to be the most expensive for property prices in its Global Cities Survey........ Here are the top ten places (reverse order) if you have a spare million dollars laying around to get rid of somewhere in the world: Top-Ten Cities 10. Los Angeles, where it would take $1 million to get 57 square meters of property in the city center. 9. Paris would set you back $1 million and get you just 50 square meters of some chic place to crash in....