Free Republic

It’s the most busted salary in news. CNN is reportedly paying anchor Anderson Cooper $18 million a year — an eye-popping sum that could be in the crosshairs when the ratings-challenged network is spun off by its debt-ridden parent company. Cooper, the face of the network and host of its primetime show at 8 p.m., has an uncertain future following Monday’s stunning announcement by Warner Bros. Discovery boss David Zaslav about the looming split, according to the Puck newsletter. Zaslav tapped WBD Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels to start looking for ways to cut costs when he takes over CNN...

More New Yorkers than ever before are heading to the polls early — and the results appear to be good news for Republicans. Through Thursday, 1,964,393 votes were cast in New York – including 701,402 in NYC, according the state Board of Elections. This puts the state on pace to exceed early-voting totals during the last presidential election, when 2,507,345 New Yorkers voted early over nine days.. In the Empire State’s seven battleground congressional districts, many more Republicans are voting early than in 2022, when the GOP flipped four New York seats on its way to score a slim edge...

DEVELOPING🚨: Ron DeSantis has asked Bob VanderPlaats, Steve Deace, and Kim Reynolds to go on the campaign trail with him in New Hampshire after results of a Monmouth University poll came out showing him in fifth place.

Its decline wasn’t inevitable. It stands as a warning to all Western nations about the speed with which bad (read: leftist) management will destroy a country. I received an email from a South African friend today, infuriated at his country’s destruction at the hands of his own government’s ideology and incompetence. This was not hyperbole. In fact, the power grid is on the verge of complete collapse, which will leave people without food or water, and, when combined with South Africa’s decay in all other areas, may lead to civil unrest on a scale that could trigger a full civil...

<p>A 14-year-old boy has died after falling from a 430-foot-tall thrill ride at an amusement park in Orlando, CBS Miami reports.</p><p>The Orange County Sheriff's Office says they received 911 calls about an emergency at the "Orlando Free Fall" at ICON Park just after 11 p.m. on Thursday night after witnesses reported seeing a person fall from the ride to the ground.</p>

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on Tuesday attempted to dismiss a recent survey revealing her support has plunged nationwide in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary race. “It’s the same answer it’s always been. I don’t do polls,” Warren said during a campaign stop Knoxville, Iowa. “I’m out here fighting every day on behalf of working families.”

A New York City couple jumped to their deaths from the 9th-floor window of a 17-story office building because they couldn't afford health care, according to their suicide notes. The Daily Mail reports that eyewitness Perry Kim, 49, was outside the Murray Hill building at around 5:30 a.m. on Friday morning when he heard screaming and saw two people falling from the sky. The bodies of 53-year-old man and a 50-year-old woman were found shortly thereafter on 33rd Street between Park and Madison avenues, according to the New York Post. Heartbreaking suicide notes were discovered in the pockets of both...

WASHINGTON Oct. 28 (UPI) -- The UPI/CVoter daily presidential tracking poll for Friday shows Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by less than 2 percentage points. The online poll shows Clinton with 48.84 percent to Trump's 46.95 percent. The most recent data reflect a shift of almost a full percentage point toward Trump compared to data collected a day earlier. As Trump moves further away from the scandal over a video tape speaking crudely about women, the poll has shown the race tightening. Over the past week, Clinton has lost 1.43 points, while Trump has gained 1.38 points, with "others" --...

For the first time ever, a meteor has been captured on camera falling through the sky after it has finished burning. And that’s not all: the baseball-sized space rock nearly slammed into the man behind the camera.

It sounds like a remarkable story, almost unbelievable: Anders Helstrup went skydiving nearly two years ago near Hedmark, Norway and while he didn’t realize it at the time, when he reviewed the footage taken by two cameras fixed to his helmet during the dive, he saw a rock plummet past him. He took it to experts and they realized he had captured a meteorite falling during its “dark flight” — when it has been slowed by atmospheric braking, and has cooled and is no longer luminous. Norwegian astrophysicist Pål Brekke confirmed to Universe Today that the story is true. “I...

Stocks took a sharp nosedive across the board Wednesday in the wake of President Barack Obama's re-election, triggered by worries over the looming "fiscal cliff" and as fears over Europe's economy reemerged. The Dow fell below 13,000, while the S&P 500 traded under 1,400 for the first time since early September...

A year ago, a number of "moderate" Republicans and Democratic stalwarts, in the gush of the inauguration, warned us of new Democratic majorities for years to come. A new race/class/gender dynamic would doom conservatives and their-old-white-guy party and its reactionary fellow-travelers. And, of course, the post-national, post-racial, post-modern president would hope and change his way to just about anything he wanted. All of this was nonsense, but the narrative did mesmerize quite a lot of DC-NY pundits, who mistakenly fell for the Emanuel/Axelrod thesis that popular outrage at Wall Street banditry, weariness with Iraq, and the lackluster McCain campaign would...

Here’s Felix Baumgartner’s plan: Float a balloon to 120,000 feet. Jump out. Break the sound barrier. Don’t die. Simple, right? If Baumgartner, a world famous base jumper and skydiver, pulls off the feat, he’ll set the record for the world’s highest jump and become the first person to break the sound barrier with his body alone. During the jump, he’ll also collect data on how the human body reacts to a fall from such heights, which could be useful for planning orbital escape plans for future space tourists and astronauts. Dubbed the Red Bull Stratos and sponsored by the...

Rasmussen reports Sunday's Obama's Presidential Approval Index, fell to -19.

LINKNot too hard to figure out, folks!

In October, for the third straight month, 39% Strongly Disapproved of the president’s performance. The number who Strongly Approved fell two percentage points to 29%, the president’s lowest full-month total to date. That leads to a Presidential Approval Index rating of -10, also a new low for Obama. Also in October, the president’s total approval slipped a point to 48%. His total disapproval remained stable at 51%.

On August 16, 1960, Kittinger made his most famous free-fall. In this flight, he made it up to an altitude of 102,800 feet, breaking a previous record made by David Simons during Project Man High. He stayed at this altitude for about 12 minutes, which must have been very unpleasant – not only was it as cold as 94 minus Fahrenheit, but he had a severe pain in his right hand from a malfunctioning pressurized glove. Then, he jumped. He fell for almost five minutes before reaching a safe altitude to open his main parachutes and float down to the...

President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke on Tuesday voiced wary optimism that the US economy is no longer in freefall, even as new data showed retail sales fell in March. In a speech at Georgetown University, Mr Obama reiterated that he detected “glimmers of hope” in the economy. He said the $787bn stimulus, the $700bn bank recapitalisation programme, $70bn housing plan and extra federal aid to Detroit auto-companies were “starting to generate signs of economic progress”. Meanwhile, Mr Bernanke said: “We have seen tentative signs that the sharp decline in economic activity may be slowing.” He added...

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