Free Republic

As a new year dawns, we can’t help but look back on recent changes, and wonder what changes are in store for us. The first thing that came to my mind, a downright surprising realization for me, as I look back on this Christmas season, is the realization that it was the first Christmas ever in which I did not set foot inside a mall. And I am not alone. The business pages have followed the ebb and flow of retail for decades. The huge department store has suffered; the small boutique chain has felt it too. The big mall...

Rep. Dan Crenshaw on the 20 Republicans who oppose McCarthy:"We cannot let the terrorists win." https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1610744445917401118

0% of the time, he's right every timeWhen a 90-year-old man says there are too many people on the planet, you’re allowed to ask why he’s still sticking around.60 Minutes @60Minutes “The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to.” Humanity is consuming 175 percent of what the earth can regenerate. Biologist Paul Erlich says that our current way of life is unsustainable. cbsn.ws/3Gvv8mCThis is a lie, of course. It was a lie when Paul Ehrlich started spewing his apocalyptic crap all the way back in 1968, and it’s a lie now.Twitter avatar...

Congratulations to NBC. It passed CBS last year as the most-watched network on television -- because NBC's viewership fell by only 7%, while CBS lost 8% of its viewers.That's according to Variety.45 of the top 50 TV channels and networks lost viewers. Only 3 gained (ESPN, ESPN 2 and the Paramount Network). TV Land and Bounce TV neither gained nor lost viewers. The drop in viewers came despite an Olympics, a popular war and a federal election.It is pretty spectacular that people tuned out coverage of a very close election. Fox News viewership dropped 1%, MSNBC dropped 22% and CNN...

Modernists like to manipulate words, often “spinning” them into meanings that appear simple but are relatively obscure. For example, consider the modern misuse of the terms like “accompaniment,” “social justice,” or even “woke.” Such is not the case with the architectural style known as “brutalism.” The Architecture of Despair Merriam-Webster defines brutal using the words cold, harsh, severe, unpleasant and lacking sensitivity. A bit further down the page, it refers to brutalism as “a style in art and especially architecture using exaggeration and distortion to create its effect (as of massiveness or power).” While many might not be familiar with...

I was going to write a jokey post about the “10 Worst Things That Happened To Us In 2022” or something, when I realized that there was no way I was going to keep it to only ten — cf. Insty: “You’re going to need a bigger blog” — and quite honestly, I can’t find anything funny about any of them.Nevertheless, I’ll turn it into a joke, because if I get serious, I’m going to head for a tall building in D.C. with a scoped rifle and a case of ammo. You all know what I mean.So here’s some of...

In 2022, we learned the government runs social media...The best I can say about 2022 is that it was not a leap year. After 9 months of this year, Queen Elizabeth had all she could take. She was out of here. She had been through the London Blitz, the dismantling of the British Empire and the death of her husband of of 69 years. She always kept calm and kept rolling. But 2022 was just too much for her.The year began with a poll on 2021 by Rasmussen. It found only 2% rated 2021 as one of the best years...

Threats surround us on a daily basis. Being able to recognize them and react are essential. This is ongoing commentary of those threats

This isn't an article, but a very plausible theory is going around that the Idaho alleged killer posted a 5-minute TikTok of himself talking about the murders. You can see a reflection in the computer screen of the video, and some people on Twitter have done comparisons and it certainly looks like him.The link I've posted take you to the users TikTok page. There are thirteen videos on the page. The video I am referencing is on the top left (it's the most recent video).The other twelve videos on this users page are mostly of Harry Styles (he's a very...

Every year we celebrate dropping the ball beginning in NYC. Now, normally dropping the ball is how you lose and the other team wins. This year let's try NOT dropping the ball and WIN! Let's score some touchdowns, especially for America, for the Constitution, and for individual liberty from unconstitutional government coercion. Let this year be the beginning of a resurgence and restoration of our Free Constitutional Republic. Happy New Year.

Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a class-action lawsuit claiming it improperly shared users' information with Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm used by the Trump campaign.The proposed settlement is a result of revelations in 2018 that information of up to 87 million people may have been improperly accessed by the third-party firm, which filed for bankruptcy in 2018. This is the largest recovery ever in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has paid to settle a private class action, the plaintiffs' lawyers said in a court filing Thursday.Meta did not...

Barbara Walters, the trailblazing television news broadcaster and longtime ABC News anchor and correspondent who shattered the glass ceiling and became a dominant force in an industry once dominated by men, has died. She was 93. Walters joined ABC News in 1976, becoming the first female anchor on an evening news program. Three years later, she became a co-host of "20/20," and in 1997, she launched "The View." In a career that spanned five decades, Walters won 12 Emmy awards, 11 of those while at ABC News. She made her final appearance as a co-host of "The View" in 2014,...

From time to time, focus points within the culture pop up that give you a picture of the public mind. At this time, a single actor has become that focal point, and studios would do well to pay attention to what’s happening to him. You might have heard his name recently. Henry Cavill is like many leading men. He’s handsome and talented, and anything he appears in automatically attracts viewers. However, unlike most leading men, his fanbase consists of both typical and atypical elements for someone like him. While he does have the love of moviegoers, women, and the respect...

Arizona might hire Israel to help build a desalination plantA recent Washington Post article on an Arizona proposal states:“But earlier this week the board was suddenly facing a vote on whether to support a $5 billion project led by an Israeli company to build a plant to desalinate ocean water in Mexico and pump it 200 miles across the border.”I myself am a huge supporter of desalination, and I think it’s a great idea that Arizona is considering hiring the world’s best experts to help them. I can see how the specific route might be a bad idea. I hope...

Main stream media and the Biden Administration are playing a game of ‘let’s pretend’, and they really don’t care what you think about it. Every day, the media pretends there is no border crisis, and dutifully works to keep the topic out of print and off the air. In Washington, Joe Biden hasn’t even been to the border one time to see the havoc his policies wreak upon it day in and day out. If you have a problem with any of that, it’s because you’re a racist fascist who hates people of color. See how that works? “He doth...

'Tis the season of endless "best of" lists. Newspapers, magazines, and social media sites have been flooded with their cultural critics' views of 2022's ten best books, plays, restaurants, "hatemongers," and, of course, movies. A glance at these lists, particularly the "ten best films," suggests how utterly out of touch some of the nation's most prominent film critics are with what Americans want to watch. Consider the recommendations of my former employer, The New York Times. Though critics Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott have written some incisive, powerful reviews this year, their "ten best" recommendations were mystifying. But perhaps even...

The year began with a lesson in pronouns and pretending, or dishonesty-on-demand, courtesy of the suddenly ungendered Laurie Penny – now, it seems, a they, depending on who’s nearby and how fashionable they are. And so, we pondered animal pronouns, clown pronouns and pronouns that can change randomly, depending on whim, several times a day. Such is the hamster-wheel world of competitive self-definition. We also flicked through the pages of The Atlantic, where senior editor Honor Jones, a woman oppressed by comfort and fidelity, shared a somewhat bewildering account of her divorce from a loving and faithful husband. Chief among...

Hamline University, a self described “liberal arts” college, fired a lecturer for showing adult students this piece of controversial art that is considered by art historians to be “a global artistic masterpiece.”Some students had complained to the college that the artwork included a depiction the Prophet Muhammad, which is against their religion. Instead of standing up for the “liberal arts,” the college fired the lecturer who showed the artwork. Art historians consider the artwork to be “a global artistic masterpiece.” Source for image and information: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/12/26/hamline-university-apparently-fires-art-history-lecturer-for-showing-depictions-of-muhammed/

The Bail Project paid to bail out a wife beater after he threatened to kill her. Anyone who’s not an idiot can guess what he did just hours after he was bailed out.Source: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-man-convicted-of-killing-wife-hours-after-his-release-from-jail/article_0789f565-4086-5618-ba1a-8331a8bdd536.htmlNow the charity has been sued out of existence after one of their other clients violently assaulted someone after they paid for his bail.Source: https://www.8newsnow.com/investigators/non-profit-that-bailed-out-man-who-shot-chinatown-waiter-ceases-operations-following-backlash-from-critics/

One year people around my age woke up and discovered that the “holiday season” of Christmas and New Year’s Dah became a trio, with the addition of something called Kwanzaa. Oh sure, there were rumblings of a new holiday. This new “holiday” raises the question, why is a day invented in 1966 by a rapist who ran a Black separatist group considered by some as a holiday on par with Christmas or New Year’s. Kwanza begins the day after Christmas, December 26th, and ends on January 1st. Part of the tradition of the 1sti observed by many Americans is drinking...