Free Republic

The Washington Post's CEO Will Lewis, announced that "we will be replacing most of our human reporters with artificial intelligence (AI). We are in a hole, and we have been for some time. It's clear that we cannot afford to continue as we have been. Many on our staff have already been submitting AI-generated text as their own work. They have, effectively, made themselves redundant. So, we are eliminating the middle men, their salaries, and their benefits. The electricity to run our AI is dirt-cheap by comparison." Recently, Google's AI has recommended "adding glue to pizza sauce" and suggested that...

A spot check of fast food prices over the past five years shows prices rising much faster than the official Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index's 21% rise. Big Macs are 88% more costly. Taco Bell burritos are up 118%, and Chick-Fil A nuggets are up 96%. Erika McEntarfer, Commissioner of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, explained that "we use a 'hedonic' adjustment factor to account for the technological improvements that make products more enjoyable. A simplistic comparison of a 2024 Bic Mac with a 2019 Big Mac fails to account for the value of the increased consumer...

This week, former President Trump held a campaign rally in the Bronx Borough of New York City. An estimated crowd of 25,000 enthusiastic fans attended. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) called the attendees "clowns" and the rally "a waste of time." "Anyone who thinks that enthusiastic voters are going to decide this election is sadly mistaken," Hochul proclaimed. "In the 2020 election Trump had slews of rallies with tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters. Then former Vice-President Biden had only a few dozen attendees at his infrequent campaign appearances. Yet, he easily defeated Trump when the votes were counted." "The secret...

At a hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Mn) sharply criticized University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Chancellor Gene Block for allowing pro-Israel counter protesters on their campus to publicly show a video of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians. "This one-sided, out-of-context view of beheaded babies, raped women and children, and slaughtered unarmed persons defamed the Muslims fighting to free Palestine from its Jewish oppressors," Omar asserted. "They made no effort to present Hamas' justification for the raid. The insinuation that targeting civilians is per se wrong overlooks the fact that Israeli...

On the one hand, William McGuire, an Emeritus Professor of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at University College London, says "the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate. It looked like the coronavirus pandemic might do the trick, but its lethality was way over hyped by the World Health Organization. Maybe a breakthrough in ongoing gain-of-function bioweapons research can boost the death toll from the next pandemic to the 90% fatality rate that is...

Rumors that former President Trump has asked major oil companies to donate a billion dollars to his campaign has irked Democrats such that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md) warned the eight energy company CEOs that were said to have had dinner with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month "to not put all your money on one horse in the race. If that horse loses the race you could suffer much more than the loss of your investment." "Giving money to both sides has been a long-term insurance policy that has spared your industry from extinction," Raskin reminded. "If you think...

Though recent polls of registered eligible voters in swing states show former President Donald Trump is ahead of him, recumbent President Joe Biden remains confident that he will be reelected. He has been telling donors that "the polling data is wrong because it only includes registered voters. It completely overlooks our strength among unregistered and ineligible voters, our robust ballot harvesting operation, the proliferation of unsupervised drop boxes where anyone--registered or not, eligible or not, citizen or not can deposit as many ballots as they desire." "A new study published by Just Facts found that up to 27% of non-citizen...

Fox News reporter Bill Melugin's request to know the nationalities of persons on the terrorist watch list arrested after illegally entering the US was rebuffed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Spokesperson Ikhil Yudhimmi explained that "the privacy interests of those apprehended outweigh the minimal level of public interest in such information." Melugin found the rejection and explanation "inane. I did not ask for any names, IDs, addresses, or law-enforcement information. The people on the terrorist watch list are not families with children seeking a better life. They are suspected of being here intending to attack, damage, and kill....

This week, Harrison Butker, a player on the Kansas City Chiefs football team gave a commencement speech at Benedictine College--a small Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas. In this speech Butker said to the women graduates "some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world." USA Today featured a column denouncing Butker's "extremist, Neanderthal views." On ABC's The View, the panelists chastised Butker for "not following the example of...

While Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg has been pouring his energy into prosecuting Donald Trump for the crime of winning the 2016 presidential election against the heavily favored former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, crime in New York City (NYC) has taken a dismal turn. In 2023, of NYC's 109,000 prosecuted arrests only 7% resulted in imprisonment. Worse, over 70% of NYC's reported crimes remain unsolved. Repeat offenders, some of them violent, are routinely released without bail while awaiting prosecutions that may never occur. Bragg insists that "my priorities are not out-of-whack. All the assaults, robberies, rapes, and murders that...

In Britain, the vast majority of gang rapes are committed by Pakistani Muslims. In Denmark, "asylum seekers" from Muslim countries commit more crimes than citizens born in Denmark. In Sweden, more than 50% of the rapes are committed by "foreign born" assailants. Because of its open borders policy toward refugees from Muslim countries Sweden also has a firearms homicide rate twice that of any other European nation. In Germany, Marie-Thérèse Kaiser was fined $6,500 for publicly mentioning official government statistics showing that a disproportionate number of rapes are committed by Afghan "refugees." In the United Kingdom, the prediction that admitting...

Former Congressman and Republican vice-presidential candidate in the 2012 election Paul Ryan confirmed that "I will not be voting for Donald Trump no matter what. Character matters. I cannot support a person of low character for the top job in our government." Ryan fended off criticism of President Joe Biden's character, saying "using his position in government to obtain bribes for his family and himself are the normal kind of abuse of power that is common in our politics. Almost everyone does it--Republicans and Democrats alike. Our country has and can continue to survive this type of self-serving misuse of...

In a bid to outflank Biden for the women's vote, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. came out in favor of abortion at any time and for any reason up until birth, saying "every baby's death is a tragedy. Many of them leave permanent trauma on a woman. But I think, ultimately, I don't trust government to have jurisdiction over people's bodies." This announcement stunned RFK's running mate Nicole Shanahan who insisted "that is not Bobby's position, at least as far as I understand it. My understanding is that he absolutely believes in limits on abortion, and we've talked...

Former President Donald Trump's unusual request to be given "liberty or death" after the latest gag order fine imposed on him by Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the trial in New York City, is being taken under consideration. "Strictly speaking, it would not appear that a judge could normally decide whether to grant a plea of 'give me liberty or give me death,'" Merchan observed. "However, this is not a normal prosecution. Unprecedented actions have been taken to overrule the statute of limitations that normally would've prevented this trial from taking place. Charges that were previously dismissed by...

This week in an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett, President Biden dismissed the 30% rise in food prices since he took office, saying "people can afford it. Thanks to Bidenomics, they have the money to spend. I've personally canceled billions of dollars in student debt. We're putting newly arrived immigrants up in hotels and feeding them. We're subsidizing electric vehicles so drivers don't have to pay high gas prices. Most of us have credit cards, savings, or EBTs. Many of our cities have effectively legalized shoplifting items of less than a thousand dollars. There's no crisis. The Republicans are gas-lighting...

Even though US District Court Judge Terry Doughty found the FBI's efforts to pressure social media companies to censor content the government maintained was disinformation violated the First Amendment and issued an injunction barring federal agencies from continuing the practice, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says "FBI spokesman William Truncheon informed me that they are gearing up to resume these efforts heading into the 2024 election season. Though Judge Doughty's ruling was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court lifted the injunction until it rules on the Murthy v. Missouri case...

This week, the case against former President Trump for mishandling classified documents took some surprising turns. Investigative journalist Julie Kelly discovered that the boxes of documents seized from Trump's Mara-La-Go home were boxes that the General Services Administration told Trump he needed to take off their hands. He is now being tried for having these documents in his possession against the wishes of the National Archives. Despite claiming he had no role in the decision to prosecute Trump for unauthorized possession of classified documents--something he has done, but was excused because of his dementia--newly unredacted documents reveal that President Biden...

The unbroken string of economic disasters that is Bidenomics now has a solid explanation. Jared Bernstein, the Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers doesn't understand economics. While being interviewed for the newly released documentary Finding the Money, he was unable to explain how the Federal Reserve creates money--something I taught to freshmen in macroeconomics classes for 23 years. "The government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money by selling bonds," Bernstein guessed. "Is that what they do? They sell bonds, yeah, they sell bonds. Right? Since they sell bonds, and people buy the bonds and lend...

In South Carolina, state representative and congressional candidate Adam Morgan wondered "why is the state Medicaid Office giving voter registration forms to non-citizens seeking health care?" In response, Gov. Henry McMaster (R) said "the integrity of our elections is and must remain a top priority. I have asked the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to investigate." Presidential Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pointed out "in March 2021 President Biden issued an executive order called Promoting Access to Voting that authorized the expenditure of public funds to increase the number of people who vote in our elections. This non-partisan initiative has...

Calling himself "a nervous wreck" after the prolonged struggle in the US Congress over whether to extend more aid to him, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky is "working on a new, more secure status for my country. Whether aid will or won't be given to a foreign country is too 'iffy' to ensure we won't be engulfed by Russia. Even if we are allowed to join NATO there would always be a chance that a future US President or Congress would demand we defend ourselves. It is clear to me now that the only way we can be free from Russian...