Free Republic

The American pickup truck market is dominated by domestic brands, primarily Ford , Chevrolet , GMC and Ram . U.S. brands benefit from a loyal buyer base, and a 25% tax on imported trucks. But the Toyota Tacoma shows how a foreign automaker can find and control a niche within that market. The top-selling full-size pickup line is Ford’s F-Series, especially the F-150, which is also the bestselling vehicle in America, according to Edmunds. GM and Ram pickups trail Ford, which also has the top-selling compact pickup truck — the Maverick. But U.S. automakers have wavered in their commitment to...

Red Lobster has filed for bankruptcy just days after closing dozens of its restaurants.In its bankruptcy petition filed on Sunday, May 19, the company listed assets of $1 billion and liabilities of $10 billion. The filing stated that the company "intends to use the proceedings to drive operational improvements, simplify the business through a reduction in locations, and pursue a sale of substantially all of its assets as a going concern." The company said restaurants not listed as "temporarily closed" on its website will remain "open and operating as usual during the Chapter 11 process." Founded in 1968, Red Lobster...

May 16 (Reuters) - Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump plan to face off in a presidential debate on June 27 and another Sept. 10 ahead of a Nov. 5 election, part of a tradition marked by some of the most memorable moments of modern U.S. political history: - 1960: The first televised debate pitted Democratic nominee John F. Kennedy against Republican Vice President Richard Nixon, who was recovering from a hospital visit and had a 5 o'clock shadow, having refused makeup. The 70 million viewers focused on what they saw, not what they heard. Kennedy...

In 2014, former Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Robert Gates, said that Joe Biden had made the “wrong” call on “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue” for the more than 40 years (at that point) he’d been in politics; Obama once famously warned, “don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f–k things up.” Joe Biden isn’t qualified to be dog-catcher, yet here he is commanding our military, getting our troops threatened and killed as he bungles the job. We’ve got all the death and destruction from the unplanned and idiotic rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan....

President Joe Biden, who wears bespoke sneakers to prevent embarrassing collapses and whose command of the English language rivals that of most kindergarteners, is in bad political shape. Uncle Joe’s reelection campaign faces an uphill climb, given his disastrous handling of the economy—including a formal recession and four-decade-high inflation—and his abetting a catastrophic and historically unprecedented invasion on our southern border. Cynicism and a sense of malaise are ubiquitous, and Americans overwhelmingly think the nation is headed in the wrong direction. Monday’s New York Times/Siena College poll reflects this: former President Donald Trump currently leads in five of the six...

NATIONAL QUICHE LORRAINE DAY We celebrate May 20 as National Quiche Lorraine Day. This versatile French delight makes it an excellent dish for any time of the day. #NationalQuicheLorraineDay Quiche Lorraine has origins beginning in the rural Lorraine region of France. While it's considered a French dish, it developed during a time when the Lorraine Region was under German rule. Even the word Quiche comes from the German word kuchen, meaning cake. The Lorraine region of France is also known for many other delicious dishes such as madeleines, Jordon almonds, macarons, and Lorraine hotpot. Of course, the area is also...

“The crisis of meaning only becomes a problem when society becomes resigned to it, accepts a condition of meaninglessness, and seeks to dispossess humanity from the insights and truths it learned through the ages.” — Frank Furedi. Really, you must agree: just about anything can happen now, and probably will, and possibly all at the same time — war, sickness, a disordered economy, chaos in money and finance, savages pouring across the open borders, assassination, mayhem in the streets, systems failure, mental illness everywhere you look. You have a sinister, blob-infested government acting like a desperate, cornered animal, fronted by...

Jay Valentine of Omega 4 America, “a FractalWeb.App microsite, demonstrating how state governments can deploy advanced quantum result technology to identify Medicaid and program roll fraud.” He discusses how AZ and CO are two of the worst states for voter integrity, the flying in of illegal aliens to register to vote in swing states, his slide show demonstrating the FRACTAL TECHNOLOGY, and much more.

So many reasons to be optimistic, but of course, caution is in order. The 2024 presidential election is five months away. Corporate media is calling it a “tight race.” It probably is, as have been most recent presidential elections, but what do the polls say? Remember this caveat about polls: They are a snapshot in time, reflecting the views of a tiny fraction of a percent of the population, registered or likely voters, and are fluid depending on the news and issues of the day. Current events rapidly change, as do voter sentients, and voter preferences may shift over the...

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) responded to remarks made from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) who bashed him for not defending Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX).

Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said Thursday that many officials who tried to warn the public about potential problems with COVID-19 vaccines were pressured into silence and that it’s high time to admit that there were “significant” side effects that made people sick.Dr. Redfield made the remarks in a May 16 interview with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation, during which he lamented the loss of public confidence in public health agencies because of a lack of transparency around the vaccines, which he said “saved a lot of lives” but also made some...

The central US is bracing for what could be a potentially dangerous end to the weekend as forecasters track the threat of severe weather on Sunday, including the potential for a derecho that could sweep across portions of Kansas and Oklahoma with destructive wind gusts higher than 100 mph and baseball-sized hail. This comes on the heels of another deadly derecho that barreled across Texas and Louisiana on Thursday, blasting the Houston metro area with winds up to 100 mph that left at least seven people dead and more than 1 million customers without power.

Conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered his officials to begin a “complete review” of all federal policies to encourage Koreans to have children on Friday, following his announcement of the future establishment of a “low birthrate response planning ministry.” Yoon announced the planned creation of a new ministry to address the nation’s birth rate collapse on May 9 during an extended press conference filled with newsworthy moments, including an apology offered for a corruption scandal involving First Lady Kim Keon-hee. The scandal, in which Kim was reportedly caught accepting a $2,200 Dior handbag as an illicit gift, peaked right...

Rep. Hank Johnson attempts to insult Donald Trump's cognitive ability and is promptly reminded by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie that Johnson arguably said the dumbest thing in Congressional history when he suggested the island of Guam could "TIP OVER."

The publication of the U.K.’s groundbreaking Cass Review last month, addressing the flaws in the gender transition industry, resulted in a seismic shift across the pond: both England and Scotland halted the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to children, top clinical psychologists publicly apologized for their role in endorsing “gender-affirming care,” and the British National Health Service (NHS) formally defined sex as a “biological” reality, regardless of an individual’s “gender identity.”

Norfolk, Massachusetts’ 11,500 residents voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden in 2020. Now, residents are up in arms that they are getting exactly what they voted for. The state announced it is refurbishing the Massachusetts Bay State Correctional Center in Norfolk, which formerly served as a minimum-security dorm-like facility. The move will alleviate the hundreds of illegals currently camped out at Boston’s Logan International Airport and provide housing for six to twelve months.

The Federal Trade Commission chair seeks expansive powers to regulate businesses through an ahistorical reading of antitrust law. Since becoming chair of the Federal Trade Commission three years ago, Lina Khan has sought doggedly to politicize antitrust law. For decades, regulators and judges have adhered to the consumer-welfare standard, under which antitrust ensures merely that firms pursue low prices, high product quality, and innovation. Khan, by contrast, sees antitrust as a vehicle for “shap[ing] the distribution of power and opportunity across our economy.” Generally, Khan’s strength has not matched her ambition. In its long-awaited lawsuit against Amazon, for instance, the...

This powerful conversation with Bill Federer will expose the silence of the church through the history of Marxism - and convince you that even your silence is actually consent!

A bad move from a totalitarian-minded leftist leader in Germany is sure to give Joe Biden ideas. Germany’s transport minister (and progressive politician), Volker Wissing, last month vowed to ban driving on weekends to meet Germany's climate-related goals. It's either do that or else he wants the ruling coalition to pass more restrictions within the Climate Protection Act come July. According to the German newspaper BILD, as cited by Politico, Wissing penned a letter to the coalition’s parliamentary group leaders, in which he bemoaned the fact that the reforms haven’t yet been approved. Wissing, whose initials are ironically those of...

There was plenty of calculated strategy behind Western governments’ COVID madness. The COVID police state revealed Western governments’ zeal for totalitarianism. Forced masking, forced experimental injections, forced school and business closures, forced isolation, and forced compliance provided Western citizens an opportunity to see the tyrannical inclinations hiding just beneath the surface of their supposedly beneficent “democracies.” None of it was pretty. Mass propaganda disguised as medical expertise (remember when Joe Biden and his CDC army of Goebbels clones demanded that we wear three or more masks outside?) and mass censorship of social media conversations (because, we were frequently told, disinformation...