Free Republic

THE PENTAGON — Shockwaves have rippled across Washington in recent days following surprise orders from Secretary of Defense (and also War and also Pew Pew) Pete Hegseth that the entirety of U.S. military leadership would muster aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday.“This gathering is of the highest secrecy and importance to our national security,” said Hegseth, “which is why I have ordered every general- or flag-grade officer assemble at a highly secure location on Tuesday, September 30, at 12:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, 10 digit grid 0033566203 on your Quantico 1:50,0000 special if you’ve got one. All hands, no...

Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth were accused of 'condescending and insulting' America's top generals and admirals at a highly anticipated summit on Tuesday. The president and Secretary of War hosted hundreds of military chiefs at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Tuesday, for a meeting they hoped would inspire the nation and revolutionize America's fighting force. But ex-Pentagon chiefs warned that the political speeches, which meandered through various topics from fat soldiers to Joe Biden's autopen, risked alienating the top brass. A former national security official told the Daily Mail that he found it 'incredibly condescending ... and a highly inappropriate...

The Corvette ZR1X’s top speed is 233 mph, with a 0-60 mph time of under two seconds, according to GM. The vehicle’s LT7 twin-turbo V-8 engine that’s shared with both ZR1 models is rated at 1,064 horsepower and 828 foot-pounds of torque, the company said. Adding to the performance of the ZR1X is an electric axle that makes the vehicle all-wheel drive and gives it an additional 186 horsepower and 145 foot-pounds of torque, GM said.

Faith Church is a non-denominational ‘word of faith’ church in St. Louis, MO. Led by pastor and pastrix duo David and Nicole Crank, they claim “18,000 members across eight campuses in Missouri, Illinois, and Florida” and have the ethos of your typical “You’re-David-and-here-are seven-life-tips-to-help-you-kill-your-Goliath-of-debt” kind of church. David Crank has a long and sordid history of being unable to preach himself out of a paper bag if his life depended on it, with a lobotomized monkey with a pen taped to its hand frequently giving him a run for his money over who can write a more coherent sermon with...

LOS ANGELES, CA — Reports from the historic Zoom call "White Women: Answer the Call" for Kamala Harris indicate that black men all across America were listening intently, waiting for liberal white women to instruct them on who to vote for. In a speech that moved many on the call to tears, Tiktok influencer and liberal white woman Arielle Fodor used the "gentle parenting method" to helpfully tell black men who they should support in the upcoming election. "I used to think that I was a responsible voter, able to make decisions about policy and candidates for myself, but then...

White liberal women to the rescue! White liberal women are now unleashing their super powers to help Kamala Harris and women of color! According reports, nearly 200,000 white women were on the ‘white women for Kamala Harris’ Zoom call over the weekend. “The meeting was organized by Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, a gun-safety group with about 10 million members.” Reuters reported. A former teacher turned ‘influencer’ named “Mrs. Frazzled,” infantilized the entire group of women and spoke to them like toddlers. “As white women we need to use our privilege to make positive changes,” Mrs. Frazzled...

Just when I thought the racialized madness of 2020 was floating away — that it had being destroyed by reason and sanity. It’s back. And on Zoom no less, the medium of choice for the crazy Covid era. With a woman of color on the Democratic ticket, progressives have fallen back on their worst instincts: performative allyship and race essentialism. Politics by segregation. Last week, Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts organized a massive Zoom meeting — “White Women: Answer the Call” — for Kamala Harris. On the call, which drew over 200,000 participants, reportedly raised $2 million and has...

Joe Biden on Friday participated in a Zoom call (he was an hour late) with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and things went sideways when a lawmaker told Biden to drop out of the race. According to NOTUS, the Zoom call was tightly controlled and only two lawmakers were allowed to ask Biden questions. Biden tried to open the discussion and said more lawmakers can ask questions. Rep. Mike Levin told Biden to drop out of the 2024 race and the host, Rep. Linda Sanchez, abruptly ended the Zoom call.

When President Biden took part in a Zoom call with lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus last weekend, an aide passed him a note that read, “Stay positive. You are sounding defensive.” Sources familiar with the call said Biden “intentionally” read the note out loud for a moment of levity during a call with anxious lawmakers. And on a separate call with centrist House lawmakers — which some sources described as “tense” — the president lashed out at Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), Puck News reported Tuesday. “First of all, I think you’re dead wrong on national security. You saw what...

Three years ago Zoom settled with the FTC over a claim of deceptive marketing around security claims, having been accused of overstating the strength of the encryption it offered. Now the videoconferencing platform could be headed for a similar tangle in Europe in relation to its privacy small print.The recent terms & conditions controversy sequence goes like this: A clause added to Zoom’s legalese back in March 2023 grabbed attention on Monday after a post on Hacker News claimed it allowed the company to use customer data to train AI models “with no opt out”. (This Stack Diary report was...

Zoom is asking all of its employees to return to the office for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began, when the tech company blew up as one of the main means of communication for people forced to work from home. Zoom, which remains a leader in the post-pandemic remote work trend, is now asking all employees within 50 miles of a company office to go in at least two days a week on a hybrid schedule.

One of the central mysteries of the pandemic is why countries worldwide simultaneously decided to jettison a century of experience managing respiratory-virus pandemics, usually with an approach akin to the focussed-protection model proposed by the Great Barrington Declaration, in favour of lockdowns and school closures. While the cause is undoubtedly multifactorial, one of the underappreciated enabling factors is the availability of technologies like Zoom, which made lockdown economically manageable for one crucial subset of the population – the laptop class. While video-conferencing technologies have been around for decades, it is only in recent years that they have matured to the...

The James Beard awards are considered the Oscars of the foodie world, and given that they are judged by journalists instead of other chefs, that has opened the door to political correctness taking precedence over how the food tastes. (snip) According to the New York Times: The chef Sam Fore received an ominous voice mail message this month from an unknown number. The caller identified himself as a private investigator working for the James Beard Foundation. Later that day, Ms. Fore found herself on a Zoom call, answering questions from him and another man. “They said to me, ‘We have...

President Biden told reporters that he has no plans to visit East Palestine, Ohio, and pointed to a "whole video Zoom" that he conducted on the train derailment. Biden made the comments on Friday evening as he was leaving the White House to go to his Wilmington, Delaware residence. "Are you planning to travel to East Palestine, Ohio?" a reporter asked. "At this point, I'm not. I did a whole video, I mean, um, what the hell, on…" Biden said as he struggled to find his next words. "Zoom?" a reported interjected. "Zoom!" All I can think of every time...

During a Pima County Board of Supervisor’s zoom meeting Tuesday, a half-naked man wearing female underwear was seen in the background of one of the supervisor’s video broadcasts. Matt Heinz, the 45-year-old openly-gay Democrat supervisor of Arizona’s Pima County District 2, quickly rushed to turn his video feed off when he realized his male acquaintance was in the background. The four other Pima County supervisors appeared in person for the meeting while Heinz appeared virtually. The interruption to Heinz’s stream occurred over two hours into the meeting. Heinz, a physician at Tuscon Medical Center, first gained notoriety in 2008 when...

Celebrity feminist attorney Gloria Allred will hold a press conference Wednesday with an unnamed woman who will accuse Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker of once driving her to an abortion clinic to abort their unborn baby. Allred issued a press release hours ahead of the event saying the woman, whom Allred referred to as “Jane Doe,” will “allege that she had a romantic, intimate relationship with Herschel Walker and that he drove her to an abortion clinic to have an abortion after she became pregnant as a result of her relationship with him.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan is facing criticism on social media for flying 7,000 miles from the United Kingdom to Argentina to participate in a climate change summit. Khan began his three-day visit to Argentina Wednesday to speak at the C40 summit with almost 100 other mayors after taking a 7,000-mile overnight flight from London to Buenos Aires, Evening Standard reported. The move earned sharp pushback from critics on social media who accused Khan of hypocrisy for the 14,000-mile round trip flight’s carbon emissions.

Today, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed a lawsuit challenging an Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) requirement that day care providers obtain a college degree before taking care of kids. Ilumi Sanchez, a D.C. day care provider who has cared for dozens of children since 1995, challenged the requirement in 2018, along with a parent and another provider. Their lawsuit, in which they are represented by the Institute for Justice (IJ), alleged that the college-degree requirement imposed huge costs on day care workers without teaching them anything useful about caring for...

The numbers: U.S. job openings climbed to a record 11.55 in March -- and the number of people quitting also hit an all-time high -- in another sign of a historically tight labor market. The number of people who quit jobs in March rose to 4.54 million, the Labor Department said Tuesday. Quits topped 4 million last summer for the first time ever. And it's now happened 10 months in a row, part of a pandemic-era trend that's become known as "The Great Resignation." Before the pandemic, the number of people quitting jobs averaged fewer than 3 million a month....

With many people working remotely, everybody should by now know how to behave when in a Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting. Your camera picks up every move even when you think no one is watching, and your microphone can catch the faintest of sounds. Most people assume that muting their computer’s microphone gives them total privacy. That should be the case, but it’s not.Read on to find out how your microphone is sneakily still listening to everything you say.Here’s the backstoryResearchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison discovered that your device’s microphone continues to listen even after hitting the mute switch.While...