Free Republic

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that President Donald Trump does not understand there were entire sectors of the U.S. economy “cannot function without immigrant labor.” Host Dana Bash said, “Officials say more than 20,000 demonstrators took to the streets in L.A. yesterday as part of the nationwide No Kings protests, which were largely peaceful. There was a pocket of unrest outside the federal building. How violent did things ge in reality last night in your town?”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has issued a plea to President Donald Trump to personally visit Ukraine and see the impact of the war himself, claiming that others simply can’t understand what’s happening without witnessing it first-hand. Ukraine’s President Zelensky has appealed to President Donald Trump to visit Ukraine, and argued that figures like Vice President JD Vance, Trump envoy Keith Kellogg, and United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio can’t understand Ukraine without seeing the battlefield. Asked whether he would invite Trump to Ukraine, Zelensky said in a now-published interview recorded on Friday: “With pleasure. Please. I always wanted very much,...

WASHINGTON — Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer backed the idea behind President Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariffs Wednesday morning, but argued that levies should be “used like a scalpel.” Whitmer, seen by many as a possible contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, told an audience in the nation’s capital that “I understand the motivation behind the tariffs,” the application of which has sent the stock market into free fall. “Here’s where President Trump and I do agree,” the 53-year-old said. “We do need to make more stuff in America. More cars and chips. More steel and ships. We do need...

On Thursday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said President Donald Trump is not sophisticated enough in terms of the intelligence community to understand what is happening when they comply with his executive orders. Pelosi said, “We are very proud of Hakeem Jeffries, our leader; he has given us guidance on our priorities of what we’re here to fight for, but also how we counter the Trump administration with litigation in the courts, legislation on the floor of the House, as well as communication and mobilization at the grassroots level. Our focus has largely been on domestic;...

Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) acknowledged his confusion that the American people did not accept his and Kamala Harris’s vision for America, after a historic Election Day shellacking in which Donald Trump won the electoral college and the popular vote. In a post-election loss speech Walz touted as offering a plan for “our path forward,” the governor called to bring down the temperature while taking multiple shots at Trump. “It’s hard to understand why so many of our fellow citizens, people that we have fought so long and hard for, wound up choosing the other path,” Walz pondered aloud. “It’s hard...

Political analyst Jonathan Alter commented Friday on CNN’s “The Situation Room” on President Donald Trump‘s rise in the polls, which he attributed to voters not grasping “fascism.” Host Wolf Blitzer said, “Trump’s latest praise for dictators as a new ABC poll finds that nearly half the country thinks Trump is a fascist, will put those numbers up on the screen there you see 49% believe Trump is a fascist and yet our new CNN national poll today shows the race is tied you can see it over there, 47% to 47%. How do you square that?”

Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that former President Donald Trump did not understand women’s medical needs because he has not lived a normal life. Host Jake Tapper said, “Donald Trump was rallying supporters in North Carolina Saturday afternoon. I want you to take a listen to what he said would happen if he wins in a few weeks?” At a campaign rally, Trump said, “Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”

If you've been on Instagram or TikTok recently, you've likely come across those viral videos of dogs hitting soundboard buttons while their proud owners feign exasperation at their furry friend's seemingly eloquent demands. Who wouldn't want to give their beloved pet the opportunity to talk back in a way we can understand? Skeptics such as this biologist have unsurprisingly raised their eyebrows at this fad, which has owners claiming their dogs can use the soundboards to form near-sentences asking for food, requesting help, raising alerts, and even questioning their mirror reflection.

On Thursday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” White House Council of Economic Advisers member Jared Bernstein said that he agrees with President Joe Biden’s vow to not change his policies and Biden “is on extremely solid ground” and “there’s going to come in some evidence from the election that people understood that.” Bernstein stated, “I’m exactly where he is. I mean, again, if you look at the actions that we’ve taken to help ease inflationary pressures, I think there’s evidence that they are yielding results. We talked a little bit about energy, we’ve got more work to do there,...

During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Situation Room,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted that she “was wrong” about inflation and that while “unanticipated and large shocks to the economy” are a part of the reason, she also “didn’t fully understand” supply bottlenecks that have hurt the economy. Yellen reacted to clips of her downplaying the inflation threat in 2021 by stating, “I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices, and supply bottlenecks...

(excerpt) All Obama cares about is that every day the general direction of the country is toward where he wants to go. The day-to-day minutia and the problems and the apparent failures of what he's trying to do, irrelevant. Because the chaos and the dismantling is the success. And when you're gonna start dismantling something as big as the health care system, of course it's gonna be a mess. These guys don't know what they're doing. They don't really have an alternative and they don't care right now. All they care about is that it gets so bad that there...

Video at link

Many Americans feel insecure. They are worried. Their financial condition is not good. They know they are dependent upon their employers, and they also know that losing their jobs could lead to disaster. An insecure nation is not going to re-elect its leadership. Franklin Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Well, with all due respect to FDR, that's no longer the case. Americans have a legitimate fear that government is simply out of control, spending the nation into bankruptcy and failing to fix economic problems. That fear is real, and it's a present danger....

The people who are cheerleading immediate democracy in Egypt don’t recall the lesson learned in Gaza, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) warned MSNBC this morning. Feinstein warned of “fundamentalist Islamic sects” taking control of Egypt in the present chaos and told Andrea Mitchell that “we don’t understand the ebb and flow” of politics in the Middle East, and that simply demanding elections in an environment as unstable as Egypt’s at the present could lead to some very undemocratic long-term outcomes (from The Blaze):

Please share your thoughts with me after reading the following: Background: Private co-ed Christian school. 65 students in this grade level. Student elections for Student Council. Positions on the Council: Two Officers & unknown number available for specific events. 11 students running - all girls. All students required to make one poster and give one short speech to the 8th grade class. FFw to speech & election day. All students presented their speeches. Prior to students returning to their respective classrooms to cast their votes, the students were told that the ballots would have all 11 girls' names listed. Each...

This has got to be McCain's new slogan . . .

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24, 2006 – The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today expressed confidence that the American people will unite to defeat the terrorist threat once they see it for what it is. At a Pentagon news conference, Marine Gen. Peter Pace said he is not “discouraged or disappointed” with the situation in Iraq and that the United States faces a long fight against an enemy that wants to destroy the American way of life. The terrorist enemy has a 100-year plan, the chairman noted. “They've told us they want to go and establish a caliphate from Spain...

Sonny Bono, in the fight over Proposition 187 (the 1994 initiative that would have rescinded welfare benefits for illegal aliens) had the best line about the debate over illegal immigration. Many charges were tossed back and forth about the initiative and the motivation of its sponsors. The response of the future Congressman to those charges was always: “What is it about illegal that they don’t understand?” Exactly! Like many others, I watched television as the protestors waved their Mexican flags, then changed those flags to American flags, then yelled “Si Se Puede,” then yelled “Yes, We Can,” then demanded the...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2006 – The American people must remind themselves every day that the United States is at war, a top Army general said today. Army Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute here, said that 21st century warfare is more about "will and perception, than taking territory or enemies killed." The will of the American people and people around the world to confront the terrorists and defeat them is the center of gravity in what Pentagon officials are calling "the long war," Odierno, assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. The...

Humans Do Not Understand Mirror Reflections, Say Researchers General Science : December 21, 2005 Newsletter Psychologists at the University of Liverpool have found that people still find it difficult to understand how mirrors work. Dr Marco Bertamini, from the University’s School of Psychology, conducted a number of experiments by covering a mirror on a wall and inviting participants to walk along a line parallel to the mirror. He asked them to guess the point at which they would be able to see their reflection. Results showed that people believe they can see themselves even before they are level with the...