Free Republic

There isn’t much left in this regime to shock the consumer of news. We have grown accustomed to the daily cavalcade of assaults on American freedoms in the Federal Register. Both the autocrat-in-chief and his press secretary have mainstreamed the practice of lying about virtually every issue. They attempt to take both sides of foreign policy issues within the same speech, claiming to be supporters of Israel while supporting Hamas, claiming to be opposed to the risk of nuclear war while encouraging Iranian nuclear advancement. What is left to shock us, in such an environment? Well, sometime Friday, January 5,...

The stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris is publicly raising money for Gaza, The Post has learned. Ella Emhoff, 24 — whose father, first gentleman Doug Emhoff, is Jewish — affixed a fundraising drive “supporting urgent relief for Gaza’s children” on her personal Instagram account. It makes no mention of the scores of Israeli children murdered among the 1,400 Israelis killed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. Her promotion puts the funding appeal in front of her 315,000 Instagram followers. The fundraiser, which has netted more than $7.8 million so far, is being operated by the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund,...

The stepdaughter of Vice President Harris is publicly raising money for Gaza, The Post has learned. Ella Emhoff, 24 — whose father, First Gentleman Doug Emhoff, is Jewish — affixed a fundraising drive “supporting urgent relief for Gaza’s children” on her personal Instagram account. It makes no mention of the scores of Israeli children murdered among the 1,400 innocent Israelis killed by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. Her promotion puts the funding appeal in front of her 315,000 Instagram followers. The fundraiser, which has netted more than $7.8 million so far, is being operated by the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund,...

Henchmen for Venezuela's dictator and many of the South American country's worst criminals have crossed over the US border and are now causing chaos in major American cities, including Dallas, Miami and Chicago, multiple sources tell the DailyMail.com. In Dallas, the Venezuelan neighborhood known as 'Villa Dallas' has descended into mayhem. For months, once peaceful apartment complexes have been the scene of illegal street races, beatings, shootings and extortion attempts. Residents, overwhelmingly migrants who recently made the harrowing trek through several countries to reach America and are seeking asylum, pointed to videos of fights between armed men, broken windows and...

In October, 2020, the national average price at the pump for regular unleaded gasoline was $2.05 per gallon, and the national average price for diesel was $2.38. Both of these critical commodities have doubled in the past two and half years, costing the American economy a mint, costing every American family thousands of dollars per year, entirely because of intentional actions by the Biden-Harris regime as soon as they took power. Stolen elections have consequences. In 2020, the official inflation rate was about 1.2%. Today, the official inflation rate is over six percent. The skyrocketing inflation rates since 2021 have...

Residents of numerous states are receiving “tax rebates” and “stimulus checks" from their state governments this fall. $50 or $100 here, $200 or $300 there… it depends on the state. But they have this much in common: these states started issuing these checks once the general election ballots were finalized, and they should all show up in voters’ bank accounts or mailboxes by Election Day. Hmm… The Social Security COLA (cost of living adjustment) for 2023 has also been announced. Driven by inflation, it’s going up 8.7%, the highest increase in 40 years. And when was this “generous” increase announced?...

Reflections as Joe Biden takes on the furnace manufacturers... Regulator-in-Chief Joe Biden's latest demands on the manufacturing community include attacking the makers of furnaces and other household heating appliances for using too much energy (which is only so expensive because of their policies), and for producing too much carbon dioxide (you know, the stuff we all exhale every day of their lives, without ill effect). The Biden-Harris regime is therefore "proposing" new efficiency standards for manufacturers and distributors of such appliances, requiring the use of much more expensive manufacturing and operating processes. If we had a divided government, with either...

Asparagus is wonderful for you. Depending on how it’s prepared, asparagus provides -- at a minimum -- iron, vitamins C and B-6, potassium, fiber, and a trace of magnesium and calcium as well. But asparagus can be tricky to prepare, and it can be expensive. So, what is a health-conscious family to do? Well, let’s say the government decided to step in. A president might say, on some random Monday, “I hereby declare that, effective this coming Saturday, every American person -- male, female, and gender-bewildered -- is entitled to eight free servings of asparagus every month.” But… how to...

In the great Woody Allen comedy, Love and Death, Allen plays a Russian nebbish who is celebrated for his heroism when, after hiding in a cannon during a battle, he gets fired into the Napoleonic command tent, taking down four enemy generals and thereby winning the battle. His rival, played by Harold Gould, derides his newfound celebrity with the understated line, “I understand your heroism was quite inadvertent.” Americans may soon realize that the newfound celebrity of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin may be due to something similar. The Build Back Better Bill, also known as the $5 Trillion spending plan,...

CALEXICO, Calif. (AP) — A truck driver was arrested after border officers discovered nearly half a ton of methamphetamine hidden inside a tractor-trailer that entered San Diego County from Mexico, authorities said. A search was ordered after officers grew suspicious about one of the walls inside the trailer when the truck was stopped at the Calexico East Commercial Facility. A K-9 team helped officers discover 30 wrapped packages of meth weighing more than 865 pounds (392 kilograms. The drugs have an estimated street value of more than $1.5 million, officials said. The driver, a 27-year-old Mexican citizen, was arrested on...

The US Consumer Inflation Report for October was horrible, showing a 12% annualized rate of price change. But it’s even worse than it looks. The shelter component of the index lags the more reliable private gauges of rent inflation. That means worse is to come. Three US companies publish national rent indexes – CoreLogic, Zillow and Apartmentlist.com – and their readings of year-on-year rent inflation range from 9% to 16%. But the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a year-on-year rise in the rents of just 3.4%. Shelter represents a third of household expenditures according to the Consumer Price Index....

Consumers’ short-term inflation expectations reached a record high in October, according to survey results released Monday by the Federal Reserve of New York. Heads of households surveyed by the New York Fed expected consumer prices to rise by a median of 5.7 percent over the next year, according to the bank’s October Survey of Consumer Expectations. The one-year inflation rate projected by consumers rose 0.4 percentage points since September and reached the highest level since the survey began in 2013. The median expectation for the inflation rate for the next three years stayed even at 4.2 percent, a record set...

Prices of regular gasoline in the United States have risen to a new seven-year high, according to new data from AAA, as elevated crude prices and an uptick in gasoline demand put upward pressure on prices at the pump. As of Nov. 8, the national average price for a gallon of regular gasoline in the United States rose to a seven-year high of $3.422, up slightly from the previous day’s average of $3.421 and a penny more than the week-ago average of $3.402, according to AAA. Last week, gasoline demand rose from 9.32 million barrels per day to 9.5 million...

Americans should expect to pay higher costs to heat their homes this winter, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Sunday, a result of high gas prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic. This is going to happen. It will be -- it will be more expensive this year than last year," Granholm told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union." "We are in a slightly beneficial position, well certainly relative to Europe, because their choke hold of natural gas is very significant. ... But we have the same problem in fuels that the supply chains have, which is that the oil...

Texas Invasion Continues 06 November 2021 Del Rio, Texas Frontline of Freedom vs. Tyranny Mind-dump sans edit I was on Mexico side yesterday with Auden Cabello of America’s Voice and Josh Philipp from Epoch Times. Auden is American who lives in Acuna, Mexico, just across the border from Del Rio, Texas. Auden made the viral video of the invaders under the bridge that spurred the Lying Beast to ban drone flights. Mexico side allows drone flights. We had free access in Mexico. Auden said practically no journalists come to Mexican side, including Fox. Fox will not allow their crews or...

Thousands of intelligence officers could soon face dismissal for failing to comply with the U.S. government’s vaccine mandate, leading some Republican lawmakers to raise concerns about removing employees from agencies critical to national security. Several intelligence agencies had at least 20% of their workforce unvaccinated as of late October, said U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. CIA Director William Burns disclosed publicly last week that 97% of the agency’s officers have been vaccinated. The National Reconnaissance Office, which operates U.S. spy satellites, has more than 90% of its workforce vaccinated....

Duke Energy Corporation warned Thursday that coal and natural gas supplies would be tight this winter, resulting in higher power prices for customers. Duke operates a diverse mix of power plants – including coal, hydro, natural gas, nuclear, solar, and wind – and battery storage facilities across several regions and states, including the Carolinas, Florida, and Midwest. Duke Energy CFO Steve Young said coal and natural gas prices are the highest since 2014, and these two essential commodities are in short supply. "It's been a while," since we've seen commodity prices like this."The winter of 2014, we had a very...

The attacks on America are not accidental ... the attacks are intentional and strategic. The goal is the transformation of America, which would be made possible by the destruction of America’s core institutions. This intention has been stated explicitly by resident Biden, who said in August 2021 that his “Build Back Better” bill would transform America. “Today, the House of Representatives has taken a significant step toward making a historic investment that’s going to transform America.” ... repeating resident Obama’s central promise in 2008 that “[w]e are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” ... Defunded...

[P]ushed about whether the United States would defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack, Biden added: "Yes. Yes, we have a commitment to do that." The remark quickly made headlines, as the U.S. policy for decades has been one of "strategic ambiguity" toward how it would respond to such an attack. The 1979 Taiwan Relations Act commits the U.S. to support Taiwan, including providing it defensive capabilities, but not necessarily to engage in a military conflict. After Biden’s remarks, the White House soon clarified the comment, and said the President was not abandoning strategic ambiguity. A White House spokesperson told Fox...

Introduction: Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe in which a confused old man - Joe Buckstop - stumbles into the presidency, and spends his entire term in his basement. Each evening, an aide walks downstairs and serves him his bowl of soup, and engages him in conversation about current events, in a losing effort to keep his mind hale. Tonight's episode is an excerpt from the ongoing series, "Evening Soup with Basement Joe," by John F. Di Leo, a fictional chronicle of the events of 2021, a political satire available in paperback or eBook from Amazon. "Good evening, sir!...