Free Republic

This writer suggests -5 in western Pennsylvania is as low as it’s gotten this winter. I drove through Kittanning this morning. It was -15 F. That was the actual temperature, not the wind chill according to the outside temperature gauge on my car. He’s correct that the snow isn’t melting. Maybe some will this week when the forecasts are for temperatures barely above freezing for a couple of days.

These temperatures coupled with nights and days with wind gusts over 30 mph. I’ve been watching one of the power plants in this area that I drive by every morning. It’s still powered by coal. It appears to be operating at full capacity—its four towers are spewing enormous clouds of water vapor every day for the last two months. That’s what’s keeping your furnace filling your home with warm air—that trusty old plant and the coal trucks I pass that are loaded with good Pennsylvania coal that is heading to the plant to keep the lights on and people from freezing to
death.

No windmills or solar panels can manage that.

Nancy is dead. They’re asking for her body so they can “celebrate with her.” Her mother was a Presbyterian church goer for 30 years. Nowadays, we Presbyterians refer to a funeral service as a “celebration of life.” The mother is with her Savior, and they are going to “celebrate” with her. That’s what Savannah’s statement means when she says they want to “celebrate with her.”

The sister is crying; the brother looks stricken; Savannah looks sad and defeated in the video tonight. They know their mother is dead. Now they just want to pay to get her body back or, as Savannah says in the video, “it’s the only way we will ever have peace.” “We beg you to return our mother to us.” “We understand,” she says. Maybe the kidnappers have said she is dead, that they didn’t mean to kill her, but now, they’re still looking for a payoff.

Savannah isn’t looking for any proof of life in this latest video; she just is asking for her mother’s body.

All this commentary about investigating is just to try now to locate the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

Delaware County is in the eastern part of PA. Western PA people don’t do such things.

“Very simply, detectives have recovered an awful lot of bones at this point, and we are still trying to piece together who they are....”

The leg bone is connected to the knee bone...

The detectives who have this job have a lot of piecing to do.

I agree with you. Dhillon should be AG. She is awesome.

Bondi reminds me of a cousin of mine. She was a cheerleader in high school 60 years ago, complete with the long blonde hair and pert behavior. She’s still trying the same look despite the fact that she’s now in her late seventies. Bondi is at least 60 years old. The long blonde tresses are a joke. Senator Grassley once in hearings accidentally referred to her as Attorney General Blondie. She never presents a professional appearance.

Every time you see a lawyer associated with Trump, it’s a blonde bimbo. And most often they’re doing a lousy job.

The U.S. Attorney in Boston is detailing how the perp used phones that couldn’t be pinpointed; that he was sophisticated enough to hide his communications. She is fully informed and is excellent. She knows how long he was in New England, when he rented the car, how they entered the storage facility and found him dead. She has seen video of him entering a building near the dead professor’s house. This is so much more competent than Rhode Island’s sorry performance.

The Boston presser is SO much better than the idiots in Providence. The U.S. attorney has detailed information, no B.S., just the facts. She is directly answering questions, and she knows dates and extensive facts. Much better than Providence. The podium isn’t full of politicos congratulating themselves.

This press conference is a joke. Each law enforcement person in turn congratulating himself and his team for their wonderful detective work. No explanation of who the shooter was and why he killed. Is there a connection between the MIT professor and the shooting at Brown? A technology that scans license plates solved this thing, not the law enforcement personnel who are patting themselves on the back. Pitiful.

I remember a documentary I watched entitled “Hitler’s Architect.” It was a biography of Albert Speer. He was a favorite of Adolf Hitler for his megalomaniacal designs to glorify the Fuhrer and the Third Reich. Here’s a description of their collaborations:

“Hitler and Speer’s most megalomaniacal project was the proposed reconstruction of Berlin. They dreamed of converting the city into Germania, the Nazi capital of the world. There, they planned, would sit a Great Hall larger than any other indoor space on Earth and an imposing stone arch big enough to fit the Arc de Triomphe beneath it.”

Republicans are trying to overcome the Democrats’ charge that Trump is behaving like the dictators he supposedly admires. How are they going to do that when every day brings another abomination. Arches? Renaming the Kennedy Center at the direction of a Board whose members he appointed? Will the ballroom also be called the “Trump Ballroom?” The artist’s rendering of the proposed interior that I’ve seen shows gilt everywhere and gold chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. It’s hideously excessive. The White House is a historic government building. It’s not a palace.

Hitler wanted to reconstruct Berlin in his image, to install arches and buildings to honor himself and the Third Reich. His buildings were decorated with eagle statues just like the golden eagle decorations Trump is installing everywhere—even as supports for the podium he’s using for speeches.

Is Trump covering everything with gilt to associate himself with the trappings of Mideast potentates? Is the Oval Office to become the Throne Room a la Buckingham Palace? Enough of this hideous, vulgar, cheesy redecoration of everything. If the Trump-Kennedy Center renaming goes through, Republicans are going to have an impossible task to keep the House and Senate.

Republicans better start speaking up and reminding Trump of what his place is—he’s a government bureaucrat whom the American people put in office. The temporary occupant of a government building the people own. That’s it.

In some states, they get in-state tuition. American citizens who want to attend colleges out of state don’t get such benefits. Their parents pay taxes to support many of these schools, but their own kids don’t have the same opportunities as an illegal alien. When is this going to end?

If Trump continues with this kind of vitriol, he’s going to cost Republicans in the midterms. People are getting sick of this kind of thing. It’s beneath the office Trump holds. Non-aligned types and Democrats who voted for him in the past are going to vote out Republicans just to smack Trump and teach him a lesson.

It seems in his second term Trump is getting more and more odious. Meanwhile, we have terrorists running loose in the country and Islamists in attack mode everywhere. Why isn’t Trump focusing on this instead of involving himself in a Hollywood tragedy that has nothing to do with him or us?

Can’t he just shut up and not comment on everything under the sun? Reiner and his wife were stabbed to death in their own home by their own son, allegedly. It’s horrific just to think about it.

Where is Trump’s sense of common decency? Sure, Reiner was a flaming liberal who made clear what he thought of Trump. Does Trump have to descend to the lowest level to get back at people like Reiner? Can’t he for once rise above his base instinct for payback and retribution?

Just take down your stupid comments, Trump. Leave the family alone. I, for one, don’t care what you think about it and why you’re idiotically blaming it on TDS. Not everything that happens is about YOU. If you think so, you need to see a shrink asap.

Steve Bannon’s experts said the defectors were from the George Bush and Mike Pence camps. They think Trump is finished and they’re positioning themselves to move back in and take over the Republican party. Bannon suggested the White House politicos better get off their duffs and get to work.

I’d suggest the same for Trump. His approval rate is falling. I think people are tired of his overseas emphasis and the preoccupation with building his ballroom and the gilt he’s splashing on everything. He’ll lose the House and Senate for us if he doesn’t focus on his real responsibilities—following through on the issues that won him the election. I don’t care that he settled a war in Timbuktu. Stop making big promises and start showing some results, Trump. Stop attacking Biden; he’s as good as dead.

I think she is overexposed. Who’s taking care of the little kids at home while she travels around making the most of her celebrity status and fifteen minutes of fame? Sure, she has to keep Turning Point going, but is all of this media exposure really necessary?

She showed up at Ol’ Miss recently dressed in a tee shirt and skintight, black leather pants. They looked like they had been sewn on her. I’m not saying she has to dress in widow’s weeds like Queen Victoria with a black veil over her face for the rest of her life, but all that heavy eye makeup and long shawl of bleached blond hair is a bit much. Every shot of her shows her bejeweled fingers clutching a hanky, decorously dabbing her moist eyes oh so carefully so as to preserve the mascara and eyeliner.

She needs to withdraw for a little while before she wears out her welcome. She’s becoming a prime candidate for a SNL parody.

You are right on. I watched the entire series and found it to be absolutely fascinating. British soldiers gang raping an American woman who was six months pregnant. The soldiers destroying the homes in Philadelphia they were occupying was another revelation—cutting holes in the floors to use as toilets, for example. Burns also showed in great detail how heroic Americans kept fighting even after losing battle after battle to superior British forces. How difficult it was to cross the Delaware in the dead of winter to attack the Hessians, but the Americans did it under the command of the heroic and unstoppable George Washington.

Burns explains the slaves fighting for the British and the various Indian tribes fighting with the British against the American settlers. He describes double-dealing tribes selling their land to the settlers against the wishes of the British who were trying to keep the settlers on the eastern side of the Alleghenies. I thought much of this was very even-handed. Indians were not portrayed as noble savages except on a few occasions. All of this made me admire the settlers even more. They were up against hostile Indians, British-aligned slaves, and professional British and Hessian soldiers. How they finally managed to outsmart and outfight the British amazes me. It makes you humble to consider the determination and sacrifices of our ancestors (including mine who commanded a frontier militia in Pennsylvania).

Yes, it did. It showed a map of the United States and where there were major outbreaks of smallpox during the period of the Revolution. The subject wasn’t ignored at all. The documentary explained that live smallpox was inserted in a cut to protect the soldier. I didn’t know they had that knowledge that early.

I don’t care for Burns’ politics, but I’ve been watching his The American Revolution and it is fascinating. He’s not taking sides, either. There’s really no preaching and the historians who are interviewed are excellent. Last night’s episode on PBS concluded with Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and the incredible significance of the document not only for the United States but for the world. It brought tears to my eyes.

Another great segment—farmers and frontier militia from all of the adjoining colonies coming to the aid of Massachusetts which was being attacked by the British. They weren’t disparate colonies and peoples any longer—they were reacting, perhaps for the first time, as Americans coming to the defense of fellow Americans. Powerful stuff. I’d urge Freepers to watch it. Some of my ancestors commanded a frontier militia in western Pa. during the Revolution which adds to my fascination with the whole period.

Is it possible to find a link to that program? I’d love to see it.

I saw this interview and was shocked by how stupid and out of touch Trump is. He didn’t invent MAGA; it began with the Tea Party and he had nothing to do with that.

This interview should have opened the eyes of any MAGA supporters who saw it. This guy is an internationalist as sold on that as Bush or any other RINO has ever been. Our own people are too stupid to do high tech jobs he as much as said. They’re incompetent so we have to import Chinese and Indians and South Koreans. It’s good for the national psyche, too, to be exposed to all of these foreigners. MAGA loves it, Trump claimed. I really don’t know how Laura kept her cool.

Her interview showed me exactly what I’ve suspected all along. Trump isn’t above gaslighting us. I’d hate to work for this guy. He won’t accept anything that doesn’t match his illusions about himself or his policies. He hasn’t a moral to his name. Everything is up for revision to get a “deal” that will make him look good. That’s his bottom line. What an egomaniac this guy is. I held my nose and voted for him three times. His ego is going to prove to be his undoing.

He not only defended it, he celebrated it. We have to import 600,000 Chinese because we don’t have smart enough people to do the jobs here at home. Ingraham challenged him on that saying we’ve always been successful with our own citizens doing the work, so why do you think we can’t any longer.

Here’s Trump’s unbelievable answer: Americans who’ve been out of work for five years aren’t qualified to do important, complicated jobs like manufacturing batteries. It’s beyond their capabilities so we have to import talented, experienced workers instead. He gave as an example the Hyundai plant in the U.S. and the South Korean workers imported for the plant because Americans couldn’t do the jobs there, says Trump. How about training these out-of-work Americans to do the jobs, Trump? That idea never entered your stupid head? That’s America first.

If MAGA supports this disgraceful idiocy from Trump they are not America first, nor is he. He wants to import 600,000 Chinese students. That’s okay with him? Really? Is he not aware that they are sent here to spy, to steal intellectual property, to take the high-tech knowledge we’ve developed back to China to use against us? How about the recent arrest of more “students” who were smuggling dangerous biologicals into the U.S.? How about the arrest time and time again of Chinese spies discovered passing secrets they gained while employed in our national labs? Or caught photographing our defense establishments?

He sees all of this as just making deals with these criminals. Sell them more soybeans and, in exchange, they demand access to our best universities for hundreds of thousands of their students. Trump agrees because he loves making another one of his trade “deals,” and, besides, he really likes Xi or whatever the name is of that ugly, murderous criminal he so admires. Anybody who thinks this is a good idea is as dumb and naive as he apparently is.

He said in an interview with Ingraham that she played on her show last night. I heard the words come right out of his mouth. He even said the ChiComs are no more a threat to us than the French who have screwed us as bad on trade relations. Ingraham tried to point out that they are sending spies, that the Japanese are really sounding the alarms that the Chinese are an existential threat to them and Taiwan and that the threat is increasing.

Trump would have none of that. He and Zi get along really well, he insists. Having people come into this country from all over the world is good for us, he says. It’s good for MAGA, he says.

She has part 2 with him tonight. Listen to his superficial answers to everything; judge if he even has the ability to answer one of her questions with any depth. I voted for this guy three times, but I’m convinced he’s an idiot. And he’s blinded by Chi Coms flattery or something. He’s so in love with himself it’s sickening and scary.