Free Republic

OPINION: As Donald Trump and Republicans continue their misinformation campaign around COVID-19, Black lives in red states literally hang in the balance As the COVID-19 variant strain begins to spread throughout the nation, almost 99% of the time it attacks the unvaccinated. On top that, misinformation politics around the virus and the vaccine in the United States is becoming deadly, particularly for Black people. Former President Donald Trump and his legions on Fox News and other conservative outlets have been spreading anti-mask, anti-virus protocols, and anti-vaccinations propaganda since the beginning of the pandemic. Fast forward to the summer of 2021,...

PAWTUCKET, RI—Hasbro has released a new version of the classic board game Operation where players just keep putting more and more masks on the patient to make him safer and safer. Instead of actual healthcare or removing the broken body parts out of the patient, players will instead just keep layering masks on him. Players earn points based on how high they can stack the mask tower without its toppling and how well they're able to cover the patient's nose and mouth. A new commercial described the excitement of the updated version of the game: "Can you double-mask Cavity Sam?...

#QAnon is literally a carbon copy of a massive #Bolshevik psy-op from the 1920s that was created to neutralize the remaining reactionary forces opposed to the communist takeover of Russia. The name of that psy-op was "Operation TRUST"! #TrustThePlan, guys! #MAGA #Trump #Capitol...

The Trump administration adopted a new rule to prevent big banks from denying services to gun manufacturers and other industries in a rebuke of an Obama-era financial program. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) rule, which was finalized on Thursday, will instruct large financial institutions to only deny services to specific clients on a case-by-case basis instead of making industry-wide blacklists. The regulation came as a rebuke to Operation Choke Point, which sought to pressure big banks to cut ties with businesses disfavored by the Obama administration, including the gun and payday lending industries. Operation Choke Point—coupled...

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Pennsylvania House Representative Mike Reese (R-Westmoreland/Somerset) has died of an apparent brain aneurysm. Reese had recently been re-elected in the November 3 general election as Representative of Pennsylvania’s 59th district, which serves parts of Westmoreland and Somerset counties. He was first elected to the Pa. House of Representatives in 2008, taking office in the 2009-10 legislative session. Reese served as the Pa. House Republican Caucus as caucus secretary during the 2019-20 session and was elected to serve as chairman of the caucus in the 2020-21 session. He died Saturday afternoon at Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital with his...

What Happened: The US Federal government in collaboration with Yale University held clinical trials to determine what the best messaging would be to persuade Americans to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it is ready. The news of this study does show an interest in finding the best way to persuade people into an ideal decision for the Federal government, and likely vaccine makers, and it also shows that a mandatory vaccine campaign may still be the plan B down the road, as opposed to plan A. The official title of the trial is, “Persuasive Messages for COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake: a...

I’m guessing some of the Rush fans here already saw some of the trending tweets asking Rush to launch Operation Chaos 3 by telling his supporters to vote for Yang. In case you haven’t, here’s the idea. New Hampshire and several of the other upcoming states are open primary states (anyone there that is undeclared can go vote in the Dims primary). By getting a few thousand republicans to vote for the candidate that is most likely to pull voters from Bernie, we can prolong the primary and force the dems to waste their time and money attacking each other...

Medical tourism in India: According to information provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs, 4.95 lakh foreign tourists visited India for medical purposes in 2017. New Delhi -- Medical tourism in India has seen an exponential growth of 111 per cent in the last three years from 2015 to 2017. According to information provided by the Ministry of Home Affairs, 4.95 lakh foreign tourists visited India for medical purposes in 2017, a significant uptick from 2.33 lakh in 2015. In 2016, a total of 4.27 lakh foreign tourists visited India for medical purposes. Seizing the opportunity, the Ministry of Tourism...

The President talked over Lesley Stahl in a relentless blast of rhetoric that seemed more rally than interview ......the President’s interview had effectively the same impact as a rally; it allowed him to bulldoze his chief enemy, the media, while airing his own points at ceaseless length..... Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump was an undeniable get; he’d been scarce on mainstream media since around the time he appeared on tape with NBC’s Lester Holt and indicated he’d fired former FBI Director James Comey in part due to the Russia investigation. But the interview seemed governed by two motives, both of...

CNN’s Drew Griffin explicitly accused school shooting survivor Colton Haab of lying over the student’s claim that CNN wrote a question for him to recite at the far-left network’s widely criticized anti-gun town hall. On Thursday evening, President Trump tweeted out criticism of CNN’s ongoing fake news crisis with a quote from Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Haab Thursday night. “‘School shooting survivor says he quit @CNN Town Hall after refusing scripted question.’ @TuckerCarlson,” Trump tweeted, adding, “Just like so much of CNN, Fake News. That’s why their ratings are so bad! MSNBC may be worse.”

Lemon pointed out that Trump attacked CNN's Jim Acosta on Twitter just earlier Tuesday. Trump has also slammed Lemon himself in social media tirades.

Analysis of the PARTNER 2A trial and the SAPIEN-3 Intermediate Risk registry found transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) to be highly cost-effective compared with surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR) in intermediate surgical risk patients with aortic stenosis. Findings were reported today at the 29th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), TCT is the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. Researchers led by Dr. David J. Cohen (Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute, Kansas City, MO) used data from the PARTNER 2A randomized trial and the SAPIEN-3 Intermediate Risk registry...

The Trump administration has ended Operation Choke Point, the anti-fraud initiative started under the Obama administration that many Republicans argued was used to targeted gun retailers and other businesses that Democrats found objectionable. Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told GOP representatives in a Wednesday letter that that the long-running program had ended, bringing a conclusion to a chapter in the Obama years that long provoked and angered conservatives who saw Choke Point as an extralegal crackdown on politically disfavored groups. "All of the department's bank investigations conducted as part of Operation Chokepoint are now over, the initiative is no longer...

A patient in a Tokyo hospital has been left with serious burns after she passed wind during an operation that ignited the laser a surgeon was using during the procedure. The woman, in her 30s, was undergoing surgery at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital which involved a laser being applied to her cervix and lower part of her uterus. However, as the surgeon carried out the procedure, the patient passed wind as the laser was being used. It then caused the gas to ignite, sparking a fire, which set her hospital gown and legs ablaze. She suffered serious burns but...

One member of a US special operations team was killed during an operation to rescue hostages held by Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, the first American killed in ground combat with the militant group, US officials said on Thursday. Hostages were successfully rescued during the operation, a US official told Reuters. CNN said about 70 Kurdish hostages were freed. A US official confirmed to Reuters that one American was killed. No further information was available on the mission, which local residents and a Kurdish military commander said was carried out in the Hawija area in northern Iraq. One member...

The issue? Illegal immigration. The answer? The Republican candidate had an answer. If he were elected president, the illegals swarming into the United States from Mexico would have to go. No, the Republican candidate was not Donald Trump. The candidate in question was Dwight D. Eisenhower. And on Election Day of 1952, Ike was elected the nation’s 34th president in a landslide. On June 17, 1954, using what today would be considered a deeply politically incorrect term, “Operation Wetback” began. Eisenhower had appointed a West Point classmate and veteran of the 10st Airborn, General Joseph “Jumpin’ Joe” Swing to head...

The Carter Center says former President Jimmy Carter has undergone a medical procedure to remove a small mass in his liver, and that he's expected to make a full recovery.

Democratic Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s campaign will go to court Tuesday to ask a judge to extend voting hours in Hartford to accommodate voters who may have been turned away from the polls this morning. Some polling places in Hartford opened at 6 a.m. without a voter list. State Rep. Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, said that he was told by Garey E. Coleman, the Democratic Deputy registrar of voters, that the printer the registrars’ office uses to print its voter lists failed Monday night and there was no backup available. It’s not clear at the moment how long it takes to...

Fifty years ago, John Spinello, a student at the University of Illinois, invented the board game 'Operation' which lets kids pretend to be surgeons. Now at the age of 77, Spinello can't afford his own real-life operation, reports Huffington Post. The oral surgery that he needs will cost him $25,000—a burdensome bill after selling the rights to his 'Operation' game to Milton Bradley for just $500.

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department has come up with a name for the American military strikes against the Islamic State: Operation Inherent Resolve. For two months, Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon’s press secretary, has been batting down queries from reporters about the refusal to name the operation. After all, the reasoning went, the military loves naming operations: Desert Shield (Kuwait); Desert Storm (Iraq, the first time); Iraqi Freedom (Iraq, the second time). So at long last, there is now a name for Iraq (the third time) and Syria, announced on Wednesday by the United States Central Command in a...