Free Republic

One of the things I like to analyze in political events is evidence of strategy. For instance, when Nancy Pelosi says the California wildfires mean that “Mother Earth is angry,” I think that is just reactive -- and primitive, because Mother Earth goddesses go way back. But when President Trump (or Jared Kushner) comes up with almost one peace deal a week -- first Israel-UAE, then Serbia-Kosovo, and now Israel-Bahrain -- and lo and behold, as if on cue, Swedish politicians start nominating him for Nobel Peace Prizes -- my strategy detector goes crazy. And now the Black Swan guy,...

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the video of a mask-less Nancy Pelosi caught having her hair done at a shut-down San Francisco salon this past week is worth an entire dictionary. The Speaker of the House immediately deployed the Marion Barry defense. When caught on video smoking crack with a hooker in 1990, the former mayor of Washington, D.C. and city councilman at the time exclaimed, “B**** set me up!” Mrs. Pelosi said the same thing, albeit less colorfully. At least, in public. On August 26, in an interview with Fox’s Tucker Carlson, salon owner Erica Kious...

This week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) slammed President Trump’s acceptance speech before the 2020 Republican National Convention for not having the audience engage in social distancing. Pelosi told MSNBC: “what further evidence does anyone need that this president doesn’t care less about the spread of this virus than to see what he did, vandalizing, by the way, the White House by bringing all those people there, no mask, no distancing, and the rest? He slapped science right in the face, and what a bad example that was.” Of course, there is a certain irony with Nancy being caught this week...

We are living in truly dangerous times. In the midst of a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 180,000 Americans, protests, riots, looting, vandalism, and violence have gripped cities across the country for months.The most recent example occurred on Thursday, following President Trump’s Republican National Convention speech.Attendees of the address, including several convention speakers and members of Congress, were ruthlessly harassed and threatened by a mob of left-wing radicals as they exited the White House.Among those most in danger were Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., his wife, and two of their female friends. Just one block from his...

The Democrat Party does not have what it takes to unify America. By going to war against people of faith — and Christianity, in particular — the left is laying siege to the very soul of our nation.  Contrary to the claims of the “Black Lives Matter” activists, violent Antifa mobs are not rioting to promote justice and peace in our communities. In recent years, the main objective of the progressive movement has been to destroy America’s Christian heritage and to turn our country into a secular society.The Black Lives Matter platform, for instance, publicly condemns the very concept of...

Traditionally, funerals are supposed to serve at least three purposes: honor the life of the deceased, comfort those who mourn his passing and preach a message about eternity and the brevity of life. Tradition was discarded during John Lewis' funeral last week in Atlanta. Like the memorial service of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) in 2008, the Lewis service was a political event that included veiled denunciations of President Trump. There were allegations of voter suppression by Republicans and a comparison of Trump by former President Obama to the late Alabama governor and segregationist, George Wallace. On that last...

The Democrats keep coming up with new and creative ways to appease Communist China.  In late July, the Trump administration issued a warning that America’s biggest geopolitical adversaries, including China, Russia and Iran, are working to influence the outcome of the upcoming presidential election. But the statement didn’t sit well with some prominent members of the Democratic Party, who indignantly rejected the idea of holding Beijing to the same standards as Moscow. "The statement gives a false sense of equivalence to the actions of foreign adversaries by listing three countries of unequal intent, motivation and capability together," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and...

On July 20, Nancy Pelosi said that if President Trump refuses to accept the results of the November election, he will have to be "fumigated" out of the White House. Fumigation is a technique used against insects, and the idea that human beings are insects has a long history in totalitarian discourse. Hitler described Jews as "vermin" and "parasites," a form of dehumanization that is always just one step away from physical violence. Speaker Pelosi should apologize immediately, and profusely, for her use of this inappropriate rhetoric. Most thoughtful persons would agree that labeling another an "insect" is uncivil. A...

Is her racial diversity America's greatest strength? So we are told. Yet, even before America becomes a majority-minority nation, 25 years from now, recent changes in the composition of the country are going to impact both parties in 2020. According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, between 2010 and 2020, while America's population grew by 20 million, our white population fell for the first time since the 1790 census. White Americans fell as a share of the population in all 50 states, in 358 of 364 metropolitan areas, in 3,012 of 3,141 counties. During that same decade, our Black population...

In poker they call it a “tell” when someone inadvertently signals their hand. So what do you call it when all the usual Democratic suspects pile on when Trump’s G-men take on the Antifa regime thugs in Portland? And why Nancy Pelosi? Why is she so concerned? And now even “moms” are peacefully protesting for the right of their children to riot. Hey Midge Decter! That you would have lived to see a rerun of your Sixties reportage, Liberal Parents, Radical Children! The question is, do Democratic leaders believe that the riots help them win in November? Or are they...

Unlike the long-dead figures whose statues and other honorifics have been assailed in recent weeks, Robert Byrd, a former Ku Klux Klan organizer, remains basically untouchable. CHARLESTON, W.Va. — While monuments and building names said to be stained by racism are being erased across the country, one former Ku Klux Klan organizer remains virtually untouchable.The late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat and Senate majority leader who organized a Klan chapter in 1941 and filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, is celebrated in the state, his name gracing over three dozen public works projects, including two federal...

The drive to make Washington, D.C., a state has been a favorite of some Democrats for years. Why wouldn't it be? If enacted, a new state, formed from deepest-blue D.C., would create two new Democratic senators and one new Democratic member of the House. For a Democrat, what's not to like? But while there have been lots of D.C. statehood bills over the years, the issue has been voted on only once before. In 1993, it failed badly in the House, losing 277 to 153. Back then, moderate Democrats put their judgment before partisan interest, splitting on whether statehood was...

<p>That was the plea of Rodney King after a Simi Valley jury failed to convict any of the four cops who beat him into submission after a 100-mile-an-hour chase on an LA freeway.</p> <p>King's plea came after the 1992 LA riots, the worst since the New York City draft riots in 1863 when Lincoln had to send in federal troops.</p>

Cancel culture refers to the popular practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. It may be an innocuous word or tweet from years ago, that through the long memory of social media can resurface, leading to public group shaming of an individual. Such shaming typically goes only one way, based on one’s politics. For others it’s just a matter of being caught in the stampede. A “Saturday Night Live” cast member, Shane Gillis, made a derogatory comment about Asians a few years ago and was fired...

As direct action movements, left-initiated political violence and mass street mobilization continue to roil our society, what we’re seeing now is the creation of an Overton window that moves us closer to where we’ll be mentally by the election, as our fractured body politic convulses towards November. Apart from the legitimate grievances and outrage over the death of George Floyd, this moment can also be understood as one along the continuum of the 2020 election and the partisan binary that will continue to overtake us. So in a few months when you hear people say that the election is an...

The Dems will not allow any semblance of normalcy to return until Trump and recalcitrant Republicans in the Senate agree to bail out Democrat-run states facing fiscal insolvency. Democrat socialist policies have left states like California and Illinois with unsustainable pension obligations and exponentially growing deficits too dear for a shrinking tax base to sustain. Buying votes ain't cheap. Yet why would citizens, prudently residing in red states, acquiesce to paying for votes Democrats have bought in the past and wish to purchase in the future? They would not unless forced to. Democrat governors, in particular Newsom (Calif.), Pritzker (Ill.),...

Think about an election where a ballot is sent to a person regardless of eligibility or to an address that person may not live at anymore; signed by someone else; picked up and delivered by a Democratic campaign operative; and still counted. If Democrats were to get their way, that is what would happen in my home state of Nevada this June, and nationwide in the November presidential election. This is clearly a trial run by Democrats to see if they can get away with The Scam of the Century with which they have one goal in mind: to steal...

As a nation and a society, we found ourselves not fully prepared for the sudden global pandemic of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. One of many ways that our society is struggling to keep up is for the public to understand basic concepts about medication and how to battle this new virus. We heard about the couple in Arizona who drank a fish tank cleaner designed to kill parasites in fish aquariums. This was somehow blamed on President Donald Trump — even though the wife is alleged to be a Democrat donor, not a Trump fan. There are some...

As soon as the Bolsheviks took over Russia in October 1917, Vladimir Lenin began churning out rubles. In fact, he spent half the state's revenue on just the printing of new currency. Within a year, the ruble was worth 100,000,000 times less than it had been before the communists took over. Existing rubles, and any investment denominated in rubles, were worthless. Lenin's inflationary program was not a response to the need for an increased money supply. It was a deliberate strategy designed to eliminate money as a means of transactions and, with it, to crush capitalism. From that point on,...

The 1800-page HEROES Act was passed along party lines on Friday in the House of Representatives, without hearings, without input from any Republicans and likely without meaningful input from most Democrats. How striking is it that the HEROES Act includes the grand sum of $1,200 in aid for individuals who desperately need the funds because they lost their jobs due to the pandemic and simultaneously, with zero transparency, includes a reduction in federal income taxes over the next two years for the Speaker of the House of Representatives of an estimated $50,000? It is instructive to read the two-page summary...