Free Republic

Reading a campaign speech in Milwaukee this week, Joe Biden boasted of a plan to spend some $36 million on a stretch of 6th Street, just west of downtown Milwaukee. His speechwriter had him listing such federally funded benefits as bike lanes, newly planted trees, and bus lanes to make 6th Street a prettier place to be. And sure, it might at that. Trees are always lovely for pedestrians, though they can obstruct the view of pedestrians, drivers, and bicyclists alike. And bicycles and buses are always generically popular, even though in Milwaukee they each tend to have about the...

EAGLE PASS, Texas — With just hours to go before the largest yet congressional visit arrives at the border in the small Texas town of Eagle Pass, a source within Customs and Border Protection tells Breitbart Texas what they will witness pales in comparison to the migrant surge and grossly overcrowded facilities experienced during the month of December. A nearby soft-sided processing facility designed to accommodate 1,000 migrants that has routinely held nearly 6,000 during the month is now holding less than 500. According to the source, not authorized to speak to the media, the facility has been nearly emptied...

How long was Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Speaker of the House? She was in power for quite a period. And how long have the Democrats controlled San Francisco? Probably longer than Pelosi has been in office. Yet, Pelosi and the Democrats have allowed the city to deteriorate into a hell hole. Heck, Democratic policies helped it get that way with things like free needles and not holding criminals accountable. As we reported, people who worked in the San Francisco federal building named after Pelosi were told to work from home because the situation around the building was so unsafe. But...

"Are African leaders now ignoring Washington DC and its endless wars? Are they now sensing a new world of opportunities based on development and cooperation? Or are they sheep being led to the slaughterhouse? Putin is also scoring big on global diplomacy. Meetings with Africa, followed by Xi Jinping’s 3-day visit!"

Thousands of US flags have been placed at the National Mall in honor of the nearly 200,000 Americans who were not able to be present for the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. The display, which is called the 'Field of Flags,' is comprised of 191,500 US flags and 56 pillars of light. Images taken on Monday showed the flags carefully placed in rows near the US Capitol. The flags are representative of the Americans who cannot travel to Washington, DC, to attend the inauguration in person due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Democratic presidential front-runner Bernie Sanders likes to market himself as a wise old man who just happens to have clown hair but is right about everything, such as the War in Iraq. Yet his opposition to the Iraq War was dictated not by cool-headed geopolitical calculations, but the lifelong habit of romancing American enemies — as is typical for communism-lovers.The recently surfaced press conference Sanders gave following his return from his honeymoon in Yaroslavl, USSR, is a great example of leftist naïveté about totalitarian regimes. For Bernie to fawn over Soviet culture the way he did indicates a staggering...

College campuses still appear superficially to be quiet, well-landscaped refuges from the bustle of real life. But increasingly, their spires, quads and ivy-covered walls are facades. They are now no more about free inquiry and unfettered learning than were the proverbial Potemkin fake buildings put up to convince the traveling Russian czarina Catherine II that her impoverished provinces were prosperous. The university faces crises almost everywhere of student debt, university finances, free expression, and the very quality and value of a university education. Take free speech. Without freedom of expression, there can be no university. But if the recent examples...

In 1787, Russian Empress Catherine Romanov the Great visited Crimea. Her tour guide was her lover Prince Grigory Potemkin. The Prince's estates in Crimea were shoddy and run down. To give her majesty the impression that all was well and that Crimea was pristine and beautiful, he erected portable settlements and facades along the river that her boat would be travelling. The deception worked, The middle aged aristocrat impressed the Middle aged Empress and Prince Grigory curried favor with the empress. In reality, behind the facade, Grigory's subjects lived in abject poverty and misery. An Austrian delegation toured Potemkin's...

The election is still weeks away but you wouldn’t know it from the various and sundry MSM toadies out-mugging each other on TV crowing that Hillary Clinton has already been elected queen of the universe. After all, the polls prove it. Science, baby, science! Clumsy moves on the chessboard? Wishful thinking pushed to delusional levels? Smoke-and-mirrors? All of the above? Suppose for the sake of argument that Hillary Clinton loses the election. Where does she go from there? Frankly, nowhere. She will not run for office again for the simple reason that the party will only be too happy to...

The New York Times found what it called an “unlikely melting pot” when its reporters descended on a Donald Trump campaign office in Tampa, Fla. “For a campaign frequently depicted as offering a rallying point for the white working class, the people volunteering to help Mr. Trump here are noteworthy for their ethnic diversity,” reported the Times on Sunday. “They include a young woman who recently arrived from Peru; an immigrant from the Philippines; a 70-year-old Lakota Indian; a teenage son of Russian immigrants; a Mexican-American.” The Times article included anecdotes from several campaign workers, and drew some common themes.

Reporters were routinely prohibited from covering former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speeches before some of the nation's most exclusive Wall Street financial investment firms, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation. The list of Wall Street firms that barred reporters from covering her speeches reads like Who’s Who of the country's largest and most prestigious wealth management companies. Those confirmed by TheDCNF to have excluded reporters include: the Goldman Sachs Group, UBS Wealth Management, Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts and Company, the Carlyle Group, Apollo Management Holdings, Fidelity Investments, Morgan Stanley and Golden Tree Asset Management.

Sham parents and bogus homes - film exposes Kim Jong Un's fakery Tom Parfitt The Times December 30, 2015 10:19AM Scene from Under the Sun A documentary film has exposed the artifice and absurdity of life in North Korea, despite attempts by officials there and in Russia to suppress it. Under the Sun, made by the Russian director Vitaly Mansky, is to be released in cinemas in the United States and Germany next year. The film tells the story of an eight-year-old girl joining North Korea's Children's Union, a state-organised youth group, but includes footage showing that party handlers created...

There's apparently less than meets the eye at an OWS occupation in London -- vacant tents masquerading as demonstration participants. The UK Daily Mail headlines: The thermal images that prove 90% of tents in the Occupy camp in London are left EMPTY overnight Here is one of their images:

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and his family are featured in a worshipful profile in this month's Washingtonian magazine. It's the sort of adoring journalistic exercise reserved for only the most handsome of the power elite. In it you can find out details about the Carney dog (a cousin to presidential pooch Sonny!), and how much the press secretary's tie costs ($135). But keen observers may notice the kitchen decor in the photo: Soviet propaganda posters. They really are the perfect pop of color whether you are the dour and sincere Nikita Khrushchev or the cheeky press-wrangler for a...

The truth about North Korea's glittering 'Hotel Of Doom' built to symbolize country's supremacy: There's nothing but a derelict shell inside From the outside, its shiny windows and soaring towers make it look decidedly futuristic and luxurious. But after visitors walk through the doors of North Korea's Ryugyong Hotel - which has taken twenty years to build - they see it is just a concrete shell. The interior of the 105-story, pyramid-shaped resembles a multi-storey car park, with its concrete floors and bare columns. Beijing-based Koryo Tours got a peek at the vast interior of the hotel in Pyongyang, the...

No Hats, No Scarves, No Gloves! By Lee Seok Young [2012-01-03 10:23 ] Daily NK has received information confirming the level of stage management that went into the memorial service for Kim Jong Il on December 28th in Pyongyang. A source from the city told Daily NK on January 2nd, “The day before the event sending off comrade Kim Jong Il, heads of people’s units told us that ‘comrade Kim Jong Eun will also be escorting the General’s hearse bare-handed’ and conveyed a list of important instructions.” According to the source, the authorities were intending to make sure that mourners...

Mourners weep at escalator used by Kim Jong-il 20/12 12:23 CET North Korean state media has released a still photograph of what is believed to have been Kim Jong-il’s last public appearance before he died. He is seen on a supermarket escalator, with his son and future successor Kim Jong-un among those behind him. Today the escalator they travelled down has been turned into a shrine. “I can’t imagine how happy it would make us and our fellow citizens if he could ride on this escalator again,” said one woman, amid a group of mourners, weeping around the moving staircase....

The photos are now widespread online and in newspapers, images of a confident President Obama striding toward the camera to announce the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Not so widespread, however, is the news that the photos weren’t from Obama’s actual history-making speech. According to a Reuters blog post, the photos were taken after Obama’s actual announcement, during a brief reenactment minutes later. ~SNIP~ The reenactment isn’t the only way the administration has edited its media rollout of bin Laden’s death. In a widely used photo of Obama and his national security team in the Situation Room, what...

In the 1700s, the courtesans of Queen Catherine of Russia gave her tours along the Volga river where she witnessed a happy and thriving bourgeoisie living in clean and prosperous villages. But this was all a show to cover disease, poverty, and misery that lay just behind the facade that had been erected for her benefit. This is the origin of the phrase Potemkin Village, a place where a politically generated appearance covers a less impressive underside. Europe is today filled with Potemkin Villages, none as successful as Denmark. Denmark is often cited as an exemplary country within the EU,...

Disgust and Loathing – Report From Congressman Grayson’s So-Called “Town Hall Meeting” I have just returned from Congressman Alan Grayson’s so-called Town Hall meeting on healthcare. I can not tell you how much disgust and loathing I have for him and his system. 1500 citizens were turned away, so 95 pre-selected Dems could fill a room with 126 seats. When the questions were too much for him to handle, he called them off, saying his children in attendance had to go home and to bed! I’ll keep it simple. It wasn’t the answers that were so bad, it was the...