Free Republic

Are non-white voters really moving away from the Democratic Party? To partisan Democrats confronting this question on Twitter (sorry, X), it seems preposterous that the party of Donald Trump, whom they routinely call a racist, could be gaining support from blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. But the evidence for eroding non-white support for Democrats is strong. The New York Times’s analyst Nate Cohn, who back in June 2016 was the first to identify Donald Trump’s appeal to previously Democratic-voting white non-college graduates, noted earlier this month that Joe Biden was carrying just 53% of non-whites in 2022-23 New York Times/Siena College...

The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you. If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located. This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked. It is impossible to hijack...

"Change My Vote" is Google Trending in PA, FL, NC, MI, GA, TX, WI - After Biden Lies on Fracking & Vows to "Close Down" Oil. check out the chart....

s a kid, I’d sometimes try to imagine what life would be like without a particular sense or part of my body, like with questions from the Would You Rather? game. Would you rather be deaf or blind? Would you rather have no legs or no arms? I’d try to erase the sound of my mom’s piano playing, the sight of the ground growing smaller as I soared on the tree swing in my backyard, or the feeling of playing basketball so hard my lungs might explode, but I just couldn’t. How could life go on without these sensations that...

After Turkish President Erdoğan said “If the nation says "tamam" ("enough") we will go”, millions of tweets were posted with the word “tamam”, which received great attention from global media. In a speech yesterday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said, “If one day our nation says tamam (enough), only then will we step aside,” and posts with the word “tamam” started popping up on Twitter. There were over 1.8 million posts that included the word “tamam”, while different versions/spellings of the word were also popular. The hashtag “devam” (“continue”) started by pro-Erdoğan groups immediately after lagged behind at 300.000 posts....

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go through the polling data that I mentioned. This is... Well, it's all interesting, and there are... It depends on how you look at these things, folks. I mean, I'm spotting trends. Other people are, too. Some people don't. It just... It's really hard to separate your desire, your prejudicial desire from static analysis of what's actually happening. But I can just tell you that where we are right now is not where anybody of expert status anywhere thought we would be. But it is where a lot of people thought we would be. A lot...

Just a couple of days ago, Hillary was 1/6, and Trump was 5/1 Suddenly, with the release of the news about the FBI re-opening the email investigation, Hillary is 2/7 and Trump is 5/2 (link is above)

Surprised? Not really. I know what you’re thinking. “There are people who get their daily news from social postings on Facebook?” Sadly, the answer to that is yes. At any given moment there are over 150 million users roaming Mark Zuckerberg’s monstrosity, and you can bet that some percentage of them rarely read anything outside the online utopia. So, while we may not like to admit it, the “trending” section at the upper right of the page has become frighteningly important. Facebook swears that it determines what’s “trending” by analyzing reader preference. If it’s popular on the site - meaning...

Two of the media’s favorite tropes met this week in an eye-catching story about the award-winning creative idea of three teens in England: condoms that change color when they detect a sexually transmitted infection. It’s the “whiz-kid-makes-scientific-discovery” tale plus sex. No wonder it’s trending on everything from BuzzFeed to the Washington Post. But we’ve seen before that the whiz kid narrative can be oversold (or, as I’ve chronicled before, incredibly convoluted), and that’s again the case here, at least so far as most media outlets are selling it.At first blush, the concept sounds pretty creative: find out instantly when it...

Don't mess with Texas! Just ask Madonna. Following last week's incident at the "12 Years a Slave" premiere at the New York Film Festival, where the songbird allegedly texted throughout the first half of the film until she was asked to stop by another moviegoer, the "Material Girl" has been banned from attending movies at the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater chain. The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain has a strict no-talking and anti-texting policy for its theaters, and will reportedly ask patrons who violate the policy to leave the theater.

Witness the birth of a hashtag. The suggestion for a topic: FTW RT @dfgalvin: @gabrielmalor that was supposed to be "No blood for O"— Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) September 08, 2013 A hashtag is applied: #NoBloodForO RT @gabrielmalor: FTW RT @dfgalvin: @gabrielmalor that was supposed to be "No blood for O"— jon gabriel (@ExJon) September 08, 2013 With that, “no blood for oil” had found its shortened contemporary version: #NoBloodForO. And with that, many tweeters were off and running: #NoBloodForO No soldiers should die just for a president to save face.— Redness (@mchastain81) September 08, 2013 This is NOT why I...

Currently trending on Twitter: #ObamaGoogleSearchHistory Some of what Obamatron may have been searching for... #ObamaGoogleSearchHistory - What hand to put over heart during national anthem? what dog meats are most tender Where is Wisconsin How do I erase Obama's failures from the Internet? how do you destroy a country How many states are there? How to photoshop fake gun shooting pictures I think my wife is a man Famous things that governments built Who were the United States of America's Founding Fathers? What is Congress? 57 States of America What would Marx do? How much is a Trillion dollars? what...

The political puns won't stop. After being labeled "Romney Hood" - Robin Hood in reverse - by the president Monday, presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney fired back with his own wordplay Tuesday, calling President Barack Obama's jab a bunch of "Obamaloney." "He is serving up a dish that is in contradiction to the truth," Romney said in an interview with Fox News. (Snip) "President Obama recently said the biggest regret of his first term was not telling better stories. He's trying to make up for it now, but his stories just aren't true," Williams wrote. "There's only one candidate in

The latest trend in the media world is “trending.” That is, monitoring what people are buzzing about and directing coverage accordingly. Just as the unspoken sometimes reveals more than the spoken, what’s not trending suggests more than what’s trending. In all the many thousands of words written in the immediate aftermath of the Republican debate in Iowa, two words were scarce: Sarah Palin.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Rural America now accounts for just 16 percent of the nation's population, the lowest ever. The latest 2010 census numbers hint at an emerging America where, by midcentury, city boundaries become indistinct and rural areas grow ever less relevant. Many communities could shrink to virtual ghost towns as they shutter businesses and close down schools, demographers say. More metro areas are booming into sprawling megalopolises. Barring fresh investment that could bring jobs, however, large swaths of the Great Plains and Appalachia, along with parts of Arkansas, Mississippi and north Texas, could face significant population declines. These places...

Washington - Call it an appetizer, with the main course still to come. An independent conservative group says it's going up in some battleground states with a television commercial that's critical of President Barack Obama, one of the first of what could be many ads by similar groups on the right. Joe Wierzbecki, the executive director of the organization, tells CNN that the ad began running this weekend on television stations in Nevada, with ad time being purchased in Michigan and Wisconsin. Wierzbecki says his plan is to eventually also run the commercial in Colorado, Missouri and Ohio.The spot, titled

Three days after her widely-reported gaffe, Rep. Michele Bachmann explained it by essentially saying: I made a mistake, but the media's reporting of it proves bias. Bachmann highlighted moments when President Barack Obama misspoke as a candidate. In one instance, in May 2008, then-Sen. Obama said, "Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go."

Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park' As central banks continue to splash their cash over the system, so far to little effect, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues things are rapidly spiralling out of their control Twenty billion dollars here, $20bn there, and a lush half-trillion from the European Central Bank at give-away rates for Christmas. Buckets of liquidity are being splashed over the North Atlantic banking system, so far with meagre or fleeting effects. ... Glance at the debt markets and you hear a different tale. Not a single junk bond has been issued in Europe since August....