Free Republic

Jim McCarthy is a 57-year-old public-relations boss known for being unusually combative with the press. As the head of the boutique firm CounterPoint Strategies, which has offices in New York and Washington, D.C., he is a spokesperson for big seafood (he helped “the shrimp industry to go hard at the AP just a few weeks ago”) and big vape (“my poor little vaping guys,” as he describes the industry to me, referring to its alleged persecution by the FDA). He speaks in a mannered drawl in keeping with his role as the flack who represented Augusta National Golf Club in...

The reputation of the “Iron chancellor” Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) was established by his remarkable achievement in unifying Germany through three short victorious wars, from 1864-1870, that completely remade the European balance of power, and then orchestrating a generation of peace through a series of complex treaties that placed his country in amicable relations with all the continent’s great powers, except the irreconcilable French who were kept in a permanent state of diplomatic isolation. However, in 1890, Germany’s blundering new sovereign, Kaiser Wilhelm II, dismissed Bismarck from office and subsequently rejected the renewal of the Russo-German Treaty of Accord, which...

image Tom's Guide Apple remained the most profitable smartphone brand through the fourth quarter of 2017, according to a new market research report. The Cupertino tech giant managed to capture 86 percent of the total smartphone market profits Q4 2017, even though the premium handset segment didn’t grow as expected, according to a new report by Counterpoint Research (via CNBC). Additionally, the iPhone X accounted for 21 percent of total revenue and 35 percent total of the profits made by the entire industry in the fourth quarter — allowing Apple to grow about 1 percent, year-over-year. That’s despite the fact...