Free Republic

A new video documenting the growing number of high-profile stores in Beverly Hills that have closed recently, places renewed emphasis on the crisis facing the retail sector in most major cities. The video, posted by an account called cody90210, shows some 11 popular Beverly Hills retail stops now entirely shuttered, including the iconic former Barneys location, Brooks Brothers, All Saints, and the high-end women's fashion boutique Escada. Both Escada and Barneys filed for bankruptcy in recent years. The closed shops, which also include convenience retailers like Rite Aid and Chipotle, and even popular workout class option SoulCycle, have shuttered their...

Discarded surgical masks strewn along the sidewalk aptly represent COVID-19’s lasting legacy. The federal medical bureaucracy’s response to the pandemic has resulted in a wasteland of lost economic and educational opportunities, psychologically damaged children, terminally lonely nursing home residents, and lives lost to suicide, illicit drug overdoses, and missed diagnoses.Thanks to the lockdowns, 140,104 businesses were temporarily closed and 97,966 were permanently closed by September 2020 according to a Yelp survey. Significantly, more than half of these were local small businesses—and small businesses employ nearly half of all American workers. Predictably, the workers who were most affected were not the...

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.

Norman Lear continues to defy convention about career longevity and age. The TV icon, who today celebrates his 96th birthday, and his Act III production company have signed a two-year first look deal with Sony Pictures TV. The pact includes the option to re-imagine titles from Lear’s extensive library including All In The Family, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Maude and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, among others. “I couldn’t be prouder and more excited about joining Sony Pictures Television, who has the guts to go with a kid,” Lear quipped. Sony Pictures TV, which owns the Norman Lear library, has been...

<p>California City (United States) (AFP) - In combat boots, satin thongs and matching nipple tassels, the burlesque girls of the apocalypse celebrate the end of the world deep in the merciless dust of the Mojave Desert.</p>

In 2005, the Fort Trumbull area of New London Connecticut was a growing middle class neighborhood. The people there were hard working and spent much of their lives building their homes and living out prosperous lives. That came to an end in 2000 when Liberal Fascist Democrats in City hall and in the state capitol of Hartford made a deal with Pfizer corporation to allow them to build a research laboratory and upscale housing in Fort Trumbull. According to estimates by the same lying fascists, over 5000 new jobs would be created. Connecticut was one of the states hardest hit...

For many, the end of the world might seem daunting, but for these festival goers a post-apocalyptic world in the middle of a Californian desert is a form of escapism. At least this is the case for Mike Orr who is known as 'Sweet Lips' at Wasteland Weekend - the annual four-day festival that allows lovers of the Mad Max movie franchise to see what it is really like to live in a society where civilization is crumbling. 'It's the end of the world,' Orr said of Wasteland which attracts thousands from across the country. 'You get to do whatever...

SEATTLE (AP) -- A Washington state lawmaker said Sunday he was just engaging in some sports trash talk when he called the state of Arizona a ''racist wasteland.'' **SNIP** ''If folks are going to take that too seriously, then I'm sorry about that,'' Fitzgibbon said. Still, Fitzgibbon said people in Washington state ''have not appreciated'' how Arizona has treated immigrants, particularly citing a 2010 immigration law that was subject to a legal challenge from the federal government. He said Arizona leaders need to look at changing laws that he believes amount to racial profiling.

Not long after his appointment as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Norman Minnow famously delivered a keynote speech at the annual convention of the National Association of Broadcasters. He challenged the television executives gathered in the convention hall “to sit down in front of your own television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off,“ he said. “I can...

Energy: Oil is rising sharply from two disasters in the Caribbean region — one, a fierce storm, and the other a massive blast at the world's second-largest refinery in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Only one was perfectly preventable. When the strongman cracked the whip on Venezuela's oil industry in 2003, firing 20,000 experienced oil managers from state-owned Petroleo de Venezuela (PDVSA) to break a strike he admitted he had provoked, he insisted that merit didn't matter anymore, only political loyalty. "There will be no more meritocracy," he told his cheering red-shirts. That philosophy has been laid out in all its glory...

Twenty of the bills the Assembly sent to the Senate on Friday were empty vessels. All of them are budget trailer measures that leaders in both houses hope quickly fill up with nuanced details, preventing Controller John Chiang from clamping down on their paychecks. Lawmakers have 10 days until the constitutional deadline arrives to deliver a budget to the governor's desk for him to sign. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said Friday he is still committed to a floor vote this week to "make sure that we have as much time as possible to debate these issues before the...

No one knows more about the massive failure of public housing “revitalization” than Team Obama and its hapless Chicago social engineers and architects. In 2009, I put the spotlight on Altgeld Gardens and the unfulfilled promises of Richard Daley and Valerie Jarrett’s “Plan for Transformation.” Flashback: For decades, the public housing boondoggle has provided lucrative jobs and windfalls for Daley cronies and developers. The failure to make the communities safe for families and kids touches not only Obama, but his closest advisers — including real estate mogul/Daley operative/consigliere/city planning commissioner/Habitat Company chief Valerie Jarrett. Daley/Jarrett’s “Plan for Transformation” for Chicago...

A quarter of teenagers were jobless in March, representing a surprising increase from February, even as the unemployment rate for the rest of the population decreased. AP This figure may only get worse if budget-strapped states raise the minimum wage, and it could also be a sign of greater structural damage underlying our economy, analysts said. The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year olds jumped back up to 24.5 percent in March, up from 23.9 percent the prior month, according to the latest jobs data from the Labor Department. The total unemployment rate fell to 8.8 percent from 8.9 percent....

DETROIT (Reuters) - In a crowded ballroom next to a bankrupt casino, what remains of the Detroit property market was being picked over by speculators and mostly discarded. Taken together, the properties seized by tax collectors for arrears and put up for sale last week represented an area the size of New York's Central Park. Total vacant land in Detroit now occupies an area almost the size of Boston, according to a Detroit Free Press estimate.

FORT HUACHUCA — A longtime critic of Fort Huachuca’s impact on the San Pedro River claims the 2002 biological opinion between the post and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is badly flawed which has led to the errors being incorporated into the 2007 biological opinion. Phoenix physician Dr. Robin Silver said a 21-page study from the Center for Sustainable Economy, a Santa Fe, N.M., based organization, challenges the Army’s figures based on per capita instead of the more scientific economic model. Silver is chairman of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. Garrison Commander Col. Melissa Sturgeon said “the fort...

Isaiah Washington has lost his job on the hit ABC medical drama "Grey's Anatomy," five months after creating a furor with his use of an anti-gay slur. Washington's contract option was not renewed for next season, series producer ABC Television Studios said Thursday. "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore," Washington said in a statement released through his publicist, Howard Bragman, without elaboration. He drew fire after using the anti-gay epithet backstage at the Golden Globe Awards in January while denying he'd used it previously on the set against cast mate T.R. Knight. Gay rights...

Ivy League? What Ivy League? The quality of a campus is all in the eye of the beholder, according to a survey of 115,000 students released today, which reveals that political leanings, food and mood sway collegians rather than academic prestige alone.-snip-Where do students wax most nostalgic for former President Ronald Reagan? That would be Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Mich. Alternatively, they pine most for former President Bill Clinton at Warren Wilson College in Asheville, N.C. -- which, incidentally, ranked tops in "Reefer Madness" -- marijuana use -- in the poll.

Cold hand of KGB haunts oil-rich wasteland By Adrian Blomfield in Nefteyugansk (Filed: 22/06/2006) Even by the desolate standards of Siberia, Nefteyugansk is a forbidding place. Last winter temperatures sank as low as minus 58 Celsius. Summer brings with it a sapping humidity, melting the ice and turning the area into a vast, mosquito-infested swamp. No one in his right mind would want to live in Nefteyugansk. Indeed, until the 1970s, no one apart from the local Khanti people did. Yukos is now owned by Rosneft Yet this stretch of Siberian marsh is now perhaps Russia's most valuable piece of...

NBC affiliate WTWO in Terre Haute, Indiana, has become the first station to announce they will not be showing "The Book of Daniel.” "We expect other NBC affiliates will join WTWO in their decision,” said American Family Association (AFA) Chairman Donald E. Wildmon. He also said that NBC is having trouble finding sponsors for the show. AFA says it has been notified by several companies that they have no plans to sponsor the show. "It appears that NBC will be forced to fill the available ad spots with ‘distressed merchandise’ ads which are sold at pennies on the dollar of...