Free Republic

You feel it, most days in Santa Cruz, some more than others, a kind of vibe, a kind of magic in the air, like that feeling just as the fog is burning off and the chill salt air comes alive with an extra tingling energy in the fresh late-morning sunlight. If you take THAT feeling, that giddy energy suffused with possibility, and try to find the living human embodiment, the avatar if you will of Santa Cruz creative energy at its potent and playful best, that avatar has a name, and it’s Wallace Baine. Talk about energy. The man spent...

“Disclosure Day” may be the most alien film in Steven Spielberg’s catalog. The really terrific story of UFO info finally being divulged to the world went over as a dud last night at the box office. The film made just $6.5 million in previews. Tonight, if the film makes $10 million, and then does the same Saturday and Sunday, it will be a historic flop. Timing is everything in the movie release world, and this is not a great weekend for a hit. The weather is stormy. (An ironic problem since Emily Blunt plays a metereologist.) The World Cup has...

3:06 Half a century after Steven Spielberg challenged audiences to think about what lies beyond the starry canopy that defines our universe in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the director is again challenging accepted precepts of faith and singular belief in a supreme being. His new film Disclosure Day sees him revisit the possibility of aliens: “I absolutely think that they have been here, and they are here,” he outlined in an interview with CBS News. First he outlined the themes behind the $115 million creation and the answers it (possibly) posed to questions of life, faith and mortality.

From YouTube: Universal Pictures is proud to release a new original event film created and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars SAG winner and Oscar® nominee Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer, A Quiet Place), Emmy and Golden Globe winner Josh O’Connor (Challengers, The Crown), Oscar® winner Colin Firth (The King’s Speech, Kingsman franchise), Eve Hewson (Bad Sisters, The Perfect Couple) and two-time Oscar® nominee Colman Domingo (Sing Sing, Rustin). Based on a story by Spielberg, the screenplay is by David Koepp, whose previous work with Spielberg includes the scripts for Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds...

🚨 Fetterman Drops a Bomb on Oprah: Senator John Fetterman just exposed how Oprah Winfrey allegedly tried to buy his vote on the “Big Beautiful Bill.” “She had her assistant approach me and offer me $20 million to vote against the bill,” Fetterman told the Senate Oversight Committee. “I told her that’s not how our country works.” He immediately informed Democrat leadership. Their response? “They swept it under the rug.” A Democrat senator turning down $20M from one of the most powerful liberals in America — and his own party buried it. Integrity over cash. Rare sight in DC. What...

Dear friends and family, It’s been exactly a week since the war against Iran began. I am sure a lot of you want to know how we (we personally and we Israel) are doing and how we are experiencing this. First some hard statistics. Iran launched close to 600 missiles and over 1500 suicide drones to attack Israel and 12 other countries, including a European country (Cyprus), Turkey and even Azerbaijan. Of these, roughly 200 targeted Israel. Almost all of them were intercepted, but there were 3 direct hits. Two missiles hit apartment buildings and one was a direct hit...

On a search to answer the question "Who started the Great War?" the author details his encounter and subsequent journeys with a mysterious stranger - journeys not through towns and countries but through time. This spirit, whom the author names "Mered," - meaning "Rebellion" - acts as a guide and interpreter of many epochs and episodes of human history, explaining how deep are the troubles that bring about conflict, from the interactions of two individuals to the mutual destruction of nations. - Summary by E. Sharp --- Garet Garrett (February 19, 1878 – November 6, 1954), born Edward Peter Garrett,...

Democrats seem to be getting their mojo back as the midterm season heats up. Democrats topped Republicans on the generic congressional ballot by a considerable six points, 52% to 46%, scoring the highest of any party on that metric in the history of the survey commissioned by Fox News.The minority party also made massive gains on key issues, crushing Republicans on affordability by 14 points, health care by 21 points, helping the middle class by 14 points, transgender issues by 22 points, and even taxes by one point.<“Democrats are taking back the House in November,” a confident Democratic Congressional Campaign...

Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird hardly needs an introduction, as I expect everyone in the world has read it, or has seen the film starring Gregory Peck. (If you haven’t read it, perhaps you should.) Lee, incidentally, went to visit the film set, and had this to say about Peck: “an inspired performance. In some mysterious way, Gregory Peck’s Atticus Finch transcended illusion.” If that seems a tad clichéd and not especially insightful, then I’m afraid to say that this is the general tenor of the nonfiction pieces in The Land of Sweet Forever , alongside eight previously unseen...

It was one of the most erotic things I ever heard. A man I know said he was reading all the novels of Jane Austen in one summer. At first, I figured he was pretending to like things that women like to seem simpatico, a feminist hustle. But no, this guy really wanted to read “Northanger Abbey.” Men are reading less. Women make up 80 percent of fiction sales. “Young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally,” David J. Morris wrote in a Times essay titled “The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.”

Geofencing: "Think of it as an invisible fence around you... that will be related to your face recognition, digital identity, and access control" Big Tech whistleblower Aman Jabbi exposes the digital prison being constructed all around us in this clip from The Agenda: Their Vision Your Future.

People coming of political age in the last decade or so were no doubt shocked to learn of the Biden administration’s insane plan for saving the northern spotted owl from purported extinction. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency responsible for implementing the Endangered Species Act, preserving the owl requires slaughtering nearly half a million barred owls at a cost, opponents say, of $1.3 billion over the next 30 years. That is so, the FWS maintains, because the larger, aggressive barred owl is killing its cousin at a prodigious rate. Perhaps more stunning to these political newcomers is...

Why young men don’t read — and publishing doesn’t care.A quiet crisis is consuming the world of literature, and no one seems to care.Male writers are vanishing — not by fluke or market whim, but by design, denial, and quiet cultural disdain. Fewer men are reading fiction, and fewer men are publishing novels. (RELATED: Male Novel Readers Are Not Fiction)Men are reading less because the literary world no longer offers them mirrors.This isn’t a lament for some patriarchal golden age, where men smoked pipes, quoted Hemingway, and felt vaguely superior just for owning hardcovers. It’s a warning. The decline of...

HENCHMAN a short story by Piytar McPherson I am a “henchman.” Someone who gets hired to provide protection when much more powerful people are doing something significant. You’ve all seen the movies. Us henchmen get killed off all the time and nobody really notices let alone cares. We are those people who just get blown away. Now this job: It’s stereotypical. We have the Hero – typical over-large muscle type. The mage – all white hair and radiating power. The Princess – looks frails but tough as nails. Then a few of us henchmen – cannon fodder. Do have a...

Juan Pablo Escobar Henao, son of notorious Medellín cartel drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar, now says his father “worked for the CIA.” In a new book, “Pablo Escobar In Fraganti,” Escobar, who lives under the pseudonym, Juan Sebastián Marroquín, explains his “father worked for the CIA selling cocaine to finance the fight against Communism in Central America.” “The drug business is very different than what we dreamed,” he continues. “What the CIA was doing was buying the controls to get the drug into their country and getting a wonderful deal.” “He did not make the money alone,” Marroquín elaborated in an...

https://youtu.be/qV-wdeDDgNc Do you think this could be THE Phoebe from Romans 16:1

The typically mild-mannered and tight-lipped Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell privately laced into former President Donald Trump and sobbed during the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol, an upcoming book claims. McConnell (R-Ky.), 82, slammed Trump, 78, as “stupid,” “ill-tempered,” a “narcissist” and a “despicable human being” behind closed doors toward the end of his administration, according to a preview of the book “The Price of Power” from the Associated Press.“It’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump’s White House departure, McConnell told associates in confidence, per the AP. “[Trump’s conduct] only...

In May of 2022, a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen had gathered to toast their country’s remarkable success in halting the Russian invasion. Buoyed by alcohol and patriotic fervor, somebody suggested a radical next step: destroying Nord Stream. ... The Ukrainian operation cost around $300,000, according to people who participated in it. It involved a small rented yacht with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers. One was a woman, whose presence helped create the illusion they were a group of friends on a pleasure cruise. ... In September 2022, the plotters rented a 50-foot leisure yacht...

Not all those who wander are lostJust like the otherworldly maps which often grace the inner covers of these wondrous books, the realm of fantasy novels is surprisingly wide-ranging, with numerous sub and hybrid genres existing within. From full-blown fantasy featuring witches, dragons, magic and mayhem, to dystopian takes that offer an almost satirical commentary on contemporary reality – the choices are endless and rather daunting, making it difficult to know where to start. An enduring genre nonetheless, it’s particularly fascinating that so much of our adoration for fantasy novels comes from our experience of them as children. When reread...

A long time ago, there was a Free Republic Book Club ... mostly because I opened my mouth and a bunch of people told me to organize one. I haven't pinged it in a long time. (Actually, another book club started, so I stopped.) Any way, has anyone read any good books lately. Fiction, non-fiction, genre, mainstream. Anything you want to share? Has anyone WRITTEN any good books that the rest of us should check out?