Free Republic

The first thing I did when the three Covid vaccines were given their Emergency Use Authorizations between mid-December 2020 and late February of 2021 was to seek out the summaries of the clinical findings that had led to these regulatory actions. I quickly found them and delved into what they had to say on protection against infection and transmission. I did so because my intuitions, backed by my reading of non-mainstream sources, had long suggested to me that the endgame envisioned by those managing the pandemic was to impose vaccine mandates on as many people and as many populations as...

A new scientific paper published by a researcher with a Ph.D in computational neuroscience, a nanotechnology researcher, and a moral philosopher theorizes that there is a “substantial probability” that outside of Planet Earth, there is no other intelligent life in the observable universe. The abstract for the paper states that the conflict between the apparently lifeless universe that we observe and the Drake equation, which suggests the sheer multitude of possible sites for intelligent life should yield a large number of potentially observable civilizations, arises from the use of Drake-like equations, which are not necessarily reliable. The paper notes, “But...

The nation’s largest labor federation took aim Tuesday at the conservative Koch brothers in ads designed to highlight the billionaire industrialists’ political clout and to gin up liberal voters. […] “For years, the Koch brothers have epitomized how corporations and the super-rich have tried to systematically destroy our democracy,” president of the 12 million-member AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said. “Today, they’re finally meeting their match.” …

Blame Hollywood, the media, and even history teachers for perpetuating certain totally ridiculous or unfounded "facts" about history. We're here to debunk some of the biggest myths. 1. Jewish slaves didn't build the pyramids. This popular myth reportedly stems from comments made by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin when visiting Egypt in 1977, according to Amihai Mazar, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "No Jews built the pyramids because Jews didn't exist at the period when the pyramids were built," Mazar told the AP. Recent archaeological finds actually show that Egyptians built the pyramids themselves. "The myth of...

September 14th, Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross “There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it.” John Clavin, Traité Des Reliques Protestants, rationalists, modernists, and other enemies of Christ and his Church...

Fair warning here, some find this funny, others disturbing, most find it both :-)

With Obama keeping a diligent eye out on those terrible straw men, I think it’s only fair that we do our part to help him! We already know about the dreaded ATMs and the diabolical Corporate Jet Owners, but what other sinister entities wait to pounce on our imaginary fears? Nooks/Kindles – These horrendous devices seek to eliminate the jobs of those poor public sector employees known as Librarians. Every time a book is downloaded, a Librarian loses his/her job, and an angel kills a puppy.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Saturday slammed Wall Street's "audacity" for fighting a bailout fee he wants to slap on financial firms and said his Republican opponents had sided with big banks. With Obama's popularity hovering around 50 percent and congressional elections in November, the White House wants to cast itself alongside ordinary Americans while branding Republicans as the party for the rich. "Like clockwork, the banks and politicians who curry their favor are already trying to stop this fee from going into effect," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "We're not going to let...

How many times have we heard the president set up a strawman only to knock it down with ease in order to sell one of his policies? Too often to count. The president has populated a virtual field of scarecrows with his rhetoric and finally, someone is calling him out on it.

... Now that there is a new team at the White House, guess who is knocking down straw men left and right? To listen to President Obama, a veritable army of naysayers has invaded Washington, urging him to sit on his hands at the White House and do nothing to address any of the economic or national security problems facing the country. “There are those who say these plans are too ambitious, that we should be trying to do less, not more,” Mr. Obama told a town-hall-style meeting in Costa Mesa, Calif., on March 18. “Well, I say our challenges...

It’s an old device in politics: Set up a straw man to criticize when you can’t win an argument on your own. Such tactics, unfortunately, are standard fare when it comes to efforts by a handful of special interest groups to bring about amnesty for illegal immigrants. Organizations such as the National Council of La Raza, the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Migration Policy Institute know that most Americans disagree with their desire for amnesty. Most Americans want to see immigration laws enforced. So these groups create straw...

A common tactic in political debate is to set up "straw men" and then knock them down. It is easy to win a debate this way — assuming people believe your assertions.     "Straw men" are phony assertions about what your opponent stands for or about the policies he/she advocates. In other words — falsely assert your opponent proposes something awful — and then remind folks you stand for motherhood and apple pie.     Opponents of Social Security reform are using this tactic in an attempt to convince Americans that Social Security is in perfect shape just as it is. Or, at...