Free Republic

It’s too bad nobody can figure out a way to harness the power of all the gaslighting coming from the Biden White House because all our energy problems would be solved overnight. Here’s yesterday’s example: When I took office, the economy was reeling. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses had closed – and millions of Americans had lost their jobs. We got relief to small businesses fast to jumpstart the strongest recovery of any major economy in the world. — President Biden (@POTUS) April 1, 2023 We saw a lot of April Fools’ Day jokes yesterday, but that one takes...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a tweet from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. on Friday evening, telling her to "Stop hitting on me." Musk was responding to a tweet from Ocasio-Cortez, expressing her frustration with the "massive communication platform." "Tired of having to collectively stress about what explosion of hate crimes is happening bc some billionaire with an ego problem unilaterally controls a massive communication platform and skews it because Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel took him to dinner and made him feel special," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

In a not-so-subtle rebuke of President Obama’s tendency to offer unsolicited recommendations on how Europeans should handle their debt crises on Sunday evening, Germany’s finance minister suggested that perhaps His Munificence should focus on his own problems before trying to fix everybody else’s. Wolfgang Schaeuble told public broadcaster ZDF in an interview late Sunday that “people are always very quick at giving others advice.”He says: “Mr. Obama should first of all take care of reducing the American deficit, which is higher than in the eurozone.” An unfortunate and embarrassing truth — the EU’s debt-to-GDP ratio is well over eighty percent,...

The Obama administration issued a rule today that is sure to disappoint insurance agents: Fees paid to brokers and agents won’t count as medical care, under limits imposed on insurers in the 2010 federal health law. Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr That’s key because under the health law, insurers must spend at least 80 percent of their premium revenue on medical care and quality improvement – or issue rebates to consumers. The target is 85 percent for large-group issuers. Brokers had lobbied hard to have their fees exempted from the calculation of administrative costs, which also includes such expenses...

Silver has been the star performer among precious metals in recent months. But is the vogue for it now getting a little out of hand? Before I began researching this piece, my instinct was to answer that question with a resounding 'yes'. After all, the silver price is now close to levels last reached when the Bunker Hunt brothers (said to be the model for Ewing family in the 'Dallas' TV soap) cornered the market in the course of the 1970s. At the end of the 1980s, at the height of the Hunts' activities, gold was at $850 and silver...

The structural problem is that government has too many mouths to feed. It’s possible to quantify that problem. The result is a metric that I call the Deadweight Ratio. It tells you how many beneficiaries of government spending there are for every private sector job. The Deadweight Ratio suggests that Connecticut and New Jersey are, despite well publicized budget deficits, in better shape than most states. It also says that California and New York are going to be sickly credits for a long time to come. Every state has one set of people contributing to the coffer—namely, private sector workers—and...

Mortgage Deterioration Ratio Climbs: LPS Report 12/02/2009 BY: CARRIE BAY The nationwide loan deterioration ratio is higher than three to one, according to the latest mortgage market report from Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS). What this LPS indicator means is that for every one loan improved, three more loans are deteriorating. The Florida-based company’s November Mortgage Monitor puts that number into perspective. Of home loans that were current as of December 2008, more than two million, or 4.02 percent, were delinquent or in foreclosure by the end of October 2009. LPS said high rates of deterioration are particularly evident in...

Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government began tracking open positions in 2000. And even though the pace of layoffs is slowing, many companies remain anxious about growth prospects in the months ahead, making them reluctant to add to their payrolls. Thomas A. Kochan, a labor economist at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. “There’s not going to be an upsurge in job openings for quite a while, not until employers feel confident the economy is really growing.” The dearth of jobs reflects the caution of many American businesses when no one knows what...

From a Washington Times article "Marriage as a Mormon value" According to [the] Pew [Forum], Mormons have one of the most lopsided gender ratios of any religion: 44 percent men and 56 percent women. You can't argue with the gender gap -- that's what the data is. The question is why such a disproportional gender gap emerges in the LDS Church. [And let's just take it for granted it's not because the researchers just forgot to factor in all those absent 19-to-21-year-old men off serving missions.] One set of possible explanations centers on the men. It could be that the...

Osteoarthritis Risk Linked To Finger Length Ratio ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2008) — People whose index finger is shorter than their ring finger are at higher risk of osteoarthritis, a new University of Nottingham study has found. A study of more than 2,000 people suggests that people whose index finger is shorter than their ring finger are up to twice as likely to suffer from the condition, which is the most common form of arthritis. Index to ring finger length ratio (referred to as 2D:4D) is a trait known for its differences between the sexes. Men typically have shorter second than...

Baby sex ratios linked to latitude 00:01 26 April 02 Emma Young People living in southern Europe have more male children than those in the north - but the latitude link is reversed in North America. The findings rebut suggestions that temperature variations could explain altered sex ratios at different distances from the equator. Victor Grech and his team at St Luke's Hospital, in Malta used data from the World Health Organization to compare the male to female birth ratio in Europe and North America over 50 years. They split the continents into three separate bands: southern Europe, central Europe...