Free Republic

- U.S. competition enforcers are preparing a possible antitrust lawsuit against Facebook Inc., according to a person familiar with the matter. The Federal Trade Commission has been investigating Facebook for more than a year over whether the social media giant has harmed competition and could file a case by the end of the year, said the person, who was granted anonymity because the inquiry is confidential. No final decision has been made, the person added. A lawsuit by the FTC would mark another major escalation by U.S. officials in their campaign against America’s technology giants, which have come under intense...

New York beachgoers were greeted with what appears to be a grim anti-Cuomo banner in the sky Saturday. “THE GOV KILLED NANA,” read the banner carried on a propeller plane that flew across New York City and Long Island beaches, according to accounts on social media. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been widely criticized for his handling of the state-regulated nursing homes, where at least 6,447 New Yorkers died during the health crisis. One Rockaway beachgoer told The Post the plane flew by around 4 p.m. as observers stopped to take pictures and applauded the message. “The people were going crazy,”...

Facebook Inc on Tuesday placed a “voting info” disclaimer on U.S. President Donald Trump’s post on mail-in voting.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday that public protests are likely causing the number of citywide coronavirus cases to spike, just two days after claiming there wasn’t “any conclusive evidence” showing a connection between the two. Garcetti, a Democrat, was speaking at a press conference concerning the recent Black Lives Matter protests in Los Angeles when he was asked if the demonstrations were contributing to the spread of COVID-19. He claimed he’d consulted with Dr. Barbara Ferrer, LA County’s director of public health, and determined the protests were in fact contributing to the spread of the virus. “I talked...

California, New Jersey and New York have made nursing homes accept Covid-19 patients from hospitals. Residents and workers fear the policy is risking lives.Neal Nibur has lived in a nursing home for about a year, ever since he had a bad bout of pneumonia. Now, the 80-year-old man has not only his own health to worry about but that of his neighbors at the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., residence. Four new patients recently arrived from the hospital with Covid-19.They were admitted for one reason, according to staff members: A state guideline says nursing homes cannot refuse to take patients from hospitals solely...

In “Here is New York,” a 1949 love letter to his adopted home, author E.B. White declared it a miracle that the city managed to exist at all. “The whole thing is implausible,” he wrote. “Every time the residents brush their teeth, millions of gallons of water must be drawn from the Catskills and the hills of Westchester.”

Nearly half of all deaths from the coronavirus in the United States have occurred at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, according to new reports. The rate of cases to deaths from such facilities has been disproportionate: while only 11 percent of positive cases – around 282,000 – have occurred at nursing homes and long-term care facilities, about 43 percent of deaths – or 54,000 deaths – have come from the same, the New York Times reported. The Times cited its database for the numbers, arguing that some states and the federal government have not provided comprehensive data. The...

a chart worth looking at before listening to cuomo preach to florida about how to "flatten the curve" NY has had 24,830 COV deaths vs 3,489 in FL. FL has a 10% larger population than NY. pop adj, NY has 7.8X the COV deaths of FL. median age in FL is 8% higher. pic.twitter.com/KzAWqVShqA— el gato malo (@boriquagato) June 28, 2020

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on Monday denied his office was at fault for the coronavirus deaths of more than 6,000 nursing home residents in the state, calling such accusations a "political charade." Cuomo defended his office's response to the pandemic during an interview with MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle. “Yes, we had more people die in nursing homes than anywhere else, because we had more people die, because the federal government missed the boat and never told us this virus was coming from Europe and not from China,” Cuomo said. “And January, February, March, before they did the European travel...

NBC News was called out late Sunday over a pair of tweets it sent about an hour apart that critics said showed bias when reporting on President Trump rallies and the protests that have emerged in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody. NBC News first tweeted a link to a protest in Brooklyn and wrote, “Rally for Black trans lives draws packed crowd to Brooklyn Museum plaza.” About an hour later, the news outlet tweeted out another story, “President Trump plans to rally his supporters next Saturday for the first time since most of the country was...

Mayor Bill de Blasio on Sunday fired back at Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s threat to shut down Manhattan again if the city didn’t enforce social-distancing better — saying through a rep that “imprisoning people” isn’t the answer. “We must balance safety with people’s need to reopen their businesses,” a City Hall spokeswoman said in an e-mail. “We had social distancing ambassadors out all weekend distributing masks and encouraging people to disperse after making their purchases.

At least 250 convicted and accused criminals freed from New York’s Rikers Island prison have been rearrested 450 times thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) jailbreak directive. New York Police Department (NYPD) data reported by NBC New York’s Melissa Russo reveals that since Cuomo issued a statewide order demanding jails and prisons release inmates to abide by social distancing measures in late March, at least 250 inmates from Rikers Island have been rearrested.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and cabinet members of his health and human services agencies collectively condemned the Trump Administration’s revoking of protections for equal access to healthcare because of their sexual orientation or gender identity in a Sunday press release. The Obama-era Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) previously secured the right. “This rule flies in the face of every policy and protection my administration has put in place,” Wolf said. Wolf said the action will put the LGBTQ community at greater risk and is “especially egregious” since it came during a pandemic and on the anniversary of the...

For no good reason, they’re placed on breathing ventilators. They’re sedated, to keep them from moving around and feeling the discomfort and pain of the invasive intubation. But these patients are HEAVILY sedated for long periods. As much as a MONTH. Completely cut off from the outside world, they never wake up. This is no mystery. Any medical professional, doctor or nurse, WOULD KNOW DEATH IS THE INEVITABLE OUTCOME. It’s a protocol for killing. What about the doctors and nurses inside the Elmhurst Hospital? What do they have to say? Who set up the protocol of death? Why are these...

In a letter appearing online Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan write that President Trump’s “divisive and incendiary rhetoric” has left them “deeply shaken and disgusted” in a volatile time that they say requires “unity” in the U.S. Writing under the letterhead of their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which focuses on technology solutions to social problems, the couple were responding to last week’s call by more than 270 scientists that Facebook address what the scientists described as “misinformation” appearing on social media. A copy of the Chan-Zuckerberg letter was posted on Twitter by Recode journalist Teddy Schleifer.

These 11 graphs look at infection and death rate from every possible angle. And from every angle the SAME blue states responsible for most of the death. I can't believe on cable news they are still praising Cuomo. SEE THE 11 GRAPHS...........

Thousands of Facebook workers demanded that their boss, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, flag President Trump’s controversial post about ‘looting and shooting’ as a third employee has resigned in protest of the company’s hands-off policy. Internal documents leaked to The Washington Post revealed that most of the 5,500 Facebook employees who voted in a poll wanted Zuckerberg to change the company’s policy allowing politicians virtually unfettered free speech. ‘Fact checking and removal of hate speech shouldn’t be exempt for politicians,’ the Facebook employees wrote. This demand was raised before Zuckerberg when the boss held a virtual town hall this week.

Twitter said Wednesday it will not tackle all the misinformation on its platform but will instead focus on posts with the “highest potential for harm” as it works to curb false or misleading information from spreading. The social media giant said it is responding to a survey from last year in which respondents said that “Twitter shouldn’t determine the truthfulness of Tweets” and “Twitter should provide context to help people make up their own minds in cases where the substance of a Tweet is disputed.” “Hence, our focus is on providing context, not fact-checking,” the company said. “We are NOT...

Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly considering adding warning labels to Facebook posts penned by government leaders if they incite violence - less than a week after he criticized Twitter for doing the exact same thing. Vox obtained access to a video conference call between Zuckerberg and several of his Facebook employees Tuesday, during which he revealed he was toying with the idea. According to the publication, Zuckerberg also predicted that the United States could be entering a 'prolonged period of civil unrest', meaning that the company may 'alter its policies on what kind of announcements government leaders can make about state...

As protests stemming from the death of George Floyd wrack the nation, a number of leading tech companies have offered their support for demonstrators and funding for social-justice organizations. Twitter Inc. changed its profile bio to read simply “#BlackLivesMatter,” while Alphabet Inc.’s Google said on its main search page: “We stand in support of racial equality, and all those who search for it.” Google’s YouTube said it would donate $1 million “in support of efforts to address social injustice.” Major streaming services — such as Netflix Inc.,, Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video, Walt Disney Co.-controlled Hulu and AT&T’s T, HBO Max,...