Free Republic

Broadway veteran Patti LuPone is speaking her truth about the current state of America and she says that if it continues under President Trump's reign come November, she's packing her bags. Like many other performers around the globe, LuPone's career has been placed on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. The current state of the economy and the country was solely orchestrated by Trump, she says. "This country is doomed," LuPone told Variety, of which she is one of its Power of Women honorees. "I think it is a failed experiment. I don't see us pulling ourselves out of this."...

Over 74,000 tickets sold in 90 minutes.

It is another very, very bad day in the market. As I write, the Dow is flirting with another 1000 point drop, an inevitable result of a good market day yesterday or, what some would call a dead cat bounce. Like most Americans, I have seen a carefully saved and self-managed retirement account (about 65% is managed by myself in self-directed brokerages like Schwab; 35% in professionally managed accounts affiliated with a bank, insurance company or employer) drop more than $70,000 in value over the last month. But, for the record, what I have self-managed has lost about 35% less...

Todd Palin appears to have filed for divorce from former Alaska governor and one-time vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, his wife of 31 years. In a document filed Friday in Anchorage Superior Court, Todd Palin, 55, asked to dissolve the marriage, citing an “incompatibility of temperament between the parties such that they find it impossible to live together as husband and wife.” The divorce filing uses initials rather than full names, but identifies the couple’s marriage date and the birth date of their only child who is a minor, Trig Palin. The filing asks for joint legal custody of the child.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks rallied Tuesday as investors scooped up shares battered in the bloodletting that followed Congress' failure to pass a $700 billion bank rescue plan. Credit markets remained tight, with several closely-watched measures of bank lending hitting all-time highs, as banks hoarded funds. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) added 284 points, or 2.7%, more than 3 hours into the session, recovering some of the record 777 points lost the day before. The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) each gained about 3.5%. The advance was largely in response to the previous...

Don’t look now, but stocks are down a whopping 1 percent in Germany and are flat in Britain and France. U.S. markets are poised to open higher. Most Asian stock markets are holding up well too. The Shanghai Composite closed down just 0.2 percent; the Hang Seng closed up 0.8 percent; Bombay’s BSE 30 closed finished the day up 2.1 percent. Flashback: “The US stock market could suffer a devastating crash with shares losing a third of their value this week if Hank Paulson’s financial bailout plan fails, US Treasury officials have warned.”

Dubai Ports Worls to divest itself of all American interests

<p>A month after his wife learned she was pregnant, 19-year-old Patrick O'Day shipped out to Iraq, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps who took pride in being rough and tough and always ready.</p> <p>Before he left, the excited young husband made sure to check on his health plan so it would accommodate the baby-to-be. In his daily letters, he playfully reminded his wife, Shauna, to see the doctor and eat something green every day.</p>

The new "taglines" after people's usernames are really distracting to me. Is it the intense pressure to think up something too cute? Is it the odd little eye-pulling font that makes it less comfortable to read the article? I can't say for sure. It just doesn't seem to detract from the message board format, at least for me. Does anyone else think so? I love FR but find this new tagline thing a little annoying. Maybe Jim could give us the option to view or not view taglines as part of our user preferences.

About a month after September 11, I went along to Carnegie Hall to see "Stand-up for New York", a comedy benefit for the victims of that day. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani opened the evening, saying: "I'm here to give you permission to laugh. And if you don't, I'll have you arrested." Colin Quinn, a sitcom star born in Brooklyn, shambled on stage in a T-shirt and jeans, scratching himself and talking about how his friends had changed during the past month. Otherwise normal people had suddenly became military experts, boring on about new missile systems and anti-bacterial warfare devices. Others were...