Free Republic

Unlike celebrity influencers with large followings, these creators produce a blizzard of videos for a fraction of the cost of traditional online campaigns and, in the process, shift public conversation. Judging from his TikTok feed, Drew was struggling to get by as a young man living near Dallas. Grocery bills were skyrocketing, he said, and he was looking for thrift stores to help keep costs down. In reality, according to his LinkedIn profile, Drew was a man from Utah named Alex Forrester, who said he was now in Florida. “All of it was paid for,” he said in a video...

Social Security’s financial problems are moving from a distant concern to something millions of Americans may have to plan around. The program’s retirement trust fund is now projected to run out of reserves in 2032, potentially forcing benefit reductions that could eventually cost the average retiree nearly $600 a month in today’s dollars. That does not mean Social Security disappears in six years. Payroll taxes would continue coming in and benefits would continue being paid. The problem is that those revenues would no longer be enough to cover 100% of the benefits currently scheduled. The 2032 Deadline Is Getting Harder...

Apple is making a much clearer bet on local AI computing with its latest Mac mini and Mac Studio desktops. Announced on August 25, 2026, the new machines are built around Apple’s new M6 and M5 Ultra chips, with the company emphasizing on-device AI, AI agents, large language models and professional workloads rather than treating AI as simply another feature. The new Mac mini starts at $899, while the Mac Studio starts at $2,499. Both are available for preorder, with availability beginning September 22. The bigger story, however, is not just faster Macs. Apple is increasingly positioning its desktop hardware...

My latest song. Getting Hungary yet?

Oregon's spending on low-income housing has exploded in the past five years. The state has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for an additional $850 million in future state funding. Federal tax credits, which the state oversees, will bring even more money to bear. Yet one thing has remained constant: The public isn't allowed to see the details of how all these dollars are being spent. Oregon is one of the only states in the country with a carve-out in its public...

Earth is 71% water, 29% land, and only a fraction of it is useful. Scarcity—and who owns what—drives every economic system humans have ever built. From Karl Marx writing Das Kapital in deep poverty to the 28-year natural experiment inside divided Berlin, we trace how socialism evolved from a radical economic theory into a system governing a third of the planet—and why central planning keeps running into the exact same problem. The Simple Question Socialism Couldn't Answer | 25:44 Maxinomics | 596K subscribers | 890,206 views | August 7, 2026

Gold has surpassed US Treasuries to become the world's top reserve asset, a European Central Bank (ECB) report has revealed. The shift highlights a major change in the global financial landscape as central banks continue to increase their gold reserves amid geopolitical uncertainty. By the end of 2025, gold accounted for 27% of official reserves, surpassing US Treasuries at 22% and euros at 15%.....

Something Suspicious Is Happening The accumulating evidence has led me to believe Gold is going to get revalued… and sooner than most think. Bond yields are blowing out now. Central banks are buying gold at record levels. President Trump recently announced he wants to audit Fort Knox. States across America are reintroducing gold and silver into the monetary system. And every single day, I watch one expiration: December 2026. Deep out-of-the-money COMEX gold calls. $10,000/oz — 1.1M oz in open contracts $15,000/oz — 2.4M oz in open contracts $20,000/oz — 2.65M oz in open contracts Thousands upon thousands of contracts....

There is an interesting article in the Telegraph by a psychotherapist called Jonathan Alpert, called ‘There’s a reason the Left seems more psychologically distressed than the Right’ (you can read it here). This is how he opens: In my clinical practice, one pattern has become increasingly difficult to ignore. Among a subset of patients on the political Left, hostility toward political opponents goes beyond dislike or even hatred. It sometimes takes the form of moralised fantasies about an opponent’s death, disappointment that Donald Trump’s shooter did not have better aim, or statements that certain public figures ‘deserve’ to be...

Has anyone put Openclaw on their MacOS? It seems beyond my skill set.

A new study published in Scientific Reports suggests that the connection between a young adult’s cognitive ability and their future socioeconomic status is largely driven by their genes. The findings provide evidence that genetic factors play a larger role in educational and occupational success than environmental conditions. This underlying biology may help explain why some social interventions aimed at reducing inequality tend to fall short over the long term.

As fascinating as drone warfare can be — particularly the seemingly sci-fi drone-vs-drone variety — keeping up with all the developments is a fool's errand. Yesterday's hot new thing is practically outdated today, and today's hot new thing may look obsolete tomorrow. That's an exaggeration, of course, but some days it doesn't seem like much of one. That's why today's news about Ukraine's Sting counter-drone caught my eye, and what it might mean for U.S. and other Western forces going forward. I vaguely remembered reading something about the Sting a year or more ago, but I just learned today that...

If you’ve got some frozen Asian food in your freezer, you may want to double check it. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a “Class I” recall of Ajinomoto Foods North America products that had been sold across the country under various labels. In total, an eye-watering 36,987,575 pounds of frozen foods are being recalled. The USDA noted that “various ready-to-eat (RTE) and NRTE chicken and pork fried rice, ramen, and shu mai dumpling products” are included in this recall. Of note, this is an expansion of an already-existing Ajinomoto recall. The expanded recall now includes products made...

The men in Zhongnanhai do not rattle easily. Decades of patient statecraft, a foreign policy built on studied ambiguity, and an economy engineered to absorb external shocks have granted Beijing’s leadership a remarkable tolerance for turbulence. Operation Epic Fury, the American-Israeli air campaign now dismantling Iran’s military architecture, has produced something unusual in the corridors of Chinese power: visible confusion. Xi Jinping is scrambling. The word is not used lightly. For a leader who has built his image on strategic composure and long-horizon thinking, the current moment is acutely dangerous. Not because China faces a direct military threat, but because...

Rep Thomas Massie receiving the Quincy award from Trita Parsi, an actual Iranian lobbyist, alongside progressive Democrat Ro Khanna.

VIDEOCBS reporter Scott MacFarlane, who was wounded with severe PTSD at the Battle of Butler when he heroically survived an attack of extreme glaring by a MAGA crowd, has weighed in about Congress needing to vote on a War Authorization Measure for the Iran attack. Because MacFarlane is such a war hero, Nancy Pelosi herself provided the answer he is seeking for his question.

The Senate bill to swap the gas tax vote from a November General election to a May election has hit a Constitutional wall. As a result the bill is stalled. The petition itself on the front page in bold sets the election date. Politicians cannot just move the election date — if they could, they then could conceivably move it to 10 years in the future. Our legal commentators shared this analysis: “In 1902 the voters of Oregon voted the referendum into our Constitution by an 11 to 1 margin. They gave the legislature an explicit message: When you try...

The elderly are physically and financially healthier than ever. So why do their needs keep taking priority over younger generations? Demographics, rising profits and soaring asset values have together wrought a quiet transformation in the American economy. Much of it is now in the hands of the elderly. As of the third quarter of last year, people 70 and over controlled roughly 39% of all equities and mutual funds owned by households, compared with 22% in 2007, according to Federal Reserve data. Their share of net worth—assets minus debts—

The oldest known pieces of sewn clothing have been discovered in a cave in Oregon, potentially rewriting all of human history. Researchers from the US uncovered pieces of animal hide stitched together from the end of the last Ice Age, approximately 12,000 years ago. That would mean that humans in North America had advanced skills, specifically for working with plants, animals, and wood, thousands of years before the Great Pyramid of Egypt was constructed.

President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies are not the only reason for the decline, but they are a big contributing factor. Enforcing immigration law and allowing more homes to be built are doing more for renters than slogans and rent control ever did. I