Free Republic

> There are about 95 million people of working age in America who are outside the workforce, some willingly, most unwillingly. They just can’t find jobs. For as long as there have been movie theaters, there have been some kids who’ve snuck in without paying. Whether it’s for a single film or a double feature, they know as long as they’re in the theater that there’s a chance they may get caught. At any point, they might be asked to show their ticket stub, and if they can’t… they know they’ll be tossed out. If it happens, they won’t complain,...

For free entertainment in the Trump era, the meltdowns and hissy-fits of the MainStream Media are hard to beat. In such a discussion, perhaps it’s important to define our terms, so here goes: The MainStream Media, or MSM, consists of the major TV networks with news divisions – NBC, ABC, and CBS… the major east coast newspapers – primarily the New York Times, the Washington Post, maybe the Chicago Tribune and USA Today… the straight news syndication agencies – primarily AP and Reuters… and cable news – primarily CNN and MSNBC. These newsrooms, which have acted largely as a block...

I got my notice from the state last month: you can’t renew your plates until you get an emissions test. Naturally, my first thought was “Sounds good to me; so I just won’t renew my plates! There’s a nice hundred dollar savings…” But of course, realistically, that’s not an option. So I awakened early and drove to an Illinois Air Team location for the test. I can’t complain, exactly… the employees are always polite and efficient; since I arrived before they opened, I was first in line; it took no time at all. So, let me make this clear: I...

With a new administration comes, for once, a new clarity. President Trump is attempting to bring some sanity to our immigration programs – requiring vetting before admission of refugees, for example, so that we don’t suffer the horrific outbreaks of criminality – car fires, riots, gang rapes, honor killings, and the like – that Europe has suffered for years, at the hands of these very same so-called “refugees.” And before the ink was dry on his Executive Order (almost word for word an executive order issued by his predecessors, with nothing radical about it at all), the George Soros –funded...

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about “vetting” people coming in from the Middle East. In fact, however, it’s a much broader issue than that: it’s a need to vet people who come into the USA from anywhere. While any risk can theoretically originate anywhere, statistically, each region has different primary risks. From some countries, it’s a human trafficking and prostitution risk; from others, it’s a drug trade and organized crime risk. But of course the one most in the news is the terrorism risk, which originates primarily in muslim-majority countries (like the middle east) and...

Reflections on Enemies, Warriors, and Duty… As I write these words, hundreds of Republican, libertarian, and independent politicians, civil servants, and think tank analysts on Capitol Hill are working to finally overturn the monstrous law called the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. And just as many Democrats are working just as feverishly to thwart the effort. Now, before we get into the details, we should first begin by considering a crucial issue: Obamacare is a misnomer: it's not REALLY Obama's program. Barack Obama didn't write the bill (in all his years as a legislator, he’s never written a...

Reflections on Barack Obama's legacy... While there is nothing particularly “happy” about warfare, some aspects are even more distasteful than others. There must be shooting in battles; there must be conquest of land; this is what warfare is made of. But some tactics go too far… such as mines. In the 1990s, for example, the Ottawa Convention sought to put a global end to the use of mines – both land and sea varieties – an aspect of warfare that still costs several thousand lives per year worldwide, even long after the wars in which they were used have ended....

Reflections on the future of retail… As the new year began, right in the midst of outgoing Resident Barack Obama’s ever-more-urgent pleas for a “legacy,” two announcements hit the news: the family of Sears and K-Mart will close yet another 109 K-Marts and another 41 Sears’ stores in 2017, and Macy’s will close another 68 of theirs. It was to be expected, of course. The analysts say that these stores are of an old breed that hasn’t kept up; they still use brick and mortar, unlike the darlings of the new age of retail, Amazon and Etsy et al, which...

On December 28, 2016, the outgoing Secretary of State of the outgoing Obama administration held a press conference. He spoke to the cameras for almost an hour and a half, hoping to wear down his opposition on one of the great political miscalculations of modern times. The prior week, the Obama administration’s representative at the United Nations – Ambassador Samantha Power – engineered the passage of a remarkably anti-Israel resolution at the UN. The resolution condemns Israel for building housing units on its own land, and grants legal status (to the extent that the United Nations has such power, which...

By John F. Di Leo - On Monday, December 19, the last shopping week before Christmas, an islamofascist terrorist (most likely a recently-arrived “refugee,” as over a million such have arrived in Germany from the middle east this year alone) hijacked a truck and charged through a Berlin Christmas market, killing at least a dozen innocent shoppers, injuring some fifty more… in exactly the way that ISIS has been ordering its pretend “lone wolves” to attack innocents. As Europeans have watched their birthrate plummet, leaving the tax base for their generous pensions in doubt, they have opened their doors to...

Reflections on the anniversary of the death of General Washington... On December 12, 1799, General George Washington, at 67 years of age, was still a busy and healthy man. Despite the snow and ice that day, he rode around his holdings at Mount Vernon, as was customary, checking on the ongoing projects, such as improvements to the main building and consideration of improvements to outbuildings, along with everything else that a busy plantation must do in the winter. Even when the land shuts down for the season, there’s still work to do, when you make your own clothes for your...

The first week since the Trump/Pence ticket’s solid electoral victory (winning 3084 of the USA’s 3141 counties) has been odd indeed, causing many pundits, both great and small to admit having gotten it wrong. (I, for example, always knew that between Hillary and Trump, one of them had to win, but my prediction was that if he headed the GOP ticket, the GOP would suffer devastation downballot, which blessedly turned out to be completely wrong). But the attention from coast to coast this week has not been directed at errant predictions. Rather, the focus has been turned to groups –...

Should we be worried if the stock market doesn’t seem to be? We get the oddest mixed signals from the economy sometimes, don’t we? In recent months, we have learned of 95 Ruby Tuesday restaurants that will be shutting their doors… and that Macy’s will be closing a hundred department stores… and that 255 Hancock Fabric stores will be closing… and that Sports Authority will close virtually all 450 of its locations… the list goes on and on. Every week, there’s another such announcement, and yet the Dow Jones Industrial Average keeps setting record highs. And so, some of us...

DOUBLING DOWN ON RECESSION The United States economy had its last severe turn for the worse in November of 2006, when Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats won their majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The country immediately dipped into recession, which Barack Obama’s election two years later locked in for good. Historically, recessions are followed by economic growth, including heavy GDP increases and sufficient job creation to rehire people who lost their jobs in the last recession. The Obama administration expected the same to happen this time, apparently not realizing that their policies made it impossible. We have therefore seen an...

Reflections on the cross-section of crime, war, and public policy... Loudly, clearly, proudly, the Obama administration has declared its solidarity with the immigrant wave from the middle east. Throughout Barack Obama’s two terms – while the United States were at war, trying to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, even while he himself started a war against Libya and approved military actions in other countries in the region – the Obama administration has continuously facilitated the immigration of “refugees” from that dangerous, alien territory. We have watched the waves lap up onto our shores, depositing middle easterners in ever greater numbers –...

Join us, as our fictional young campaign volunteer learns the “benefits” of postponement... to a party that practices vote fraud… Pavel Syerov, Jr. was home from college, doing errands, when he found himself in the old neighborhood, about to pass by the old 51st Ward Party Headquarters where he had spent so much time as a youth. When he was a teenager, unable to get a summer job in Obama’s “summer of recovery,” his parents encouraged him to volunteer at the local party office. “It would be a learning experience,” Mr. and Mrs. Syerov had told him. And was it...

When the modern abortion movement first began, a century ago, Planned Parenthood founder and hero Margaret Sanger was quite clear on her belief in the theory of eugenics. She wanted to reduce the numbers of undesirable people in America (you know, all those “other” races and ethnicities), and abortion was the easiest way that sprung to mind. But it didn’t catch on; it was too extreme. So, when a renewed effort for legalization of abortion really kicked into high gear in the 1960s, it was couched in a mantle of compassion instead. “Since people will get abortions anyway,” we were...

A traveler with a camera filmed a scene at Chicago’s Midway Airport: a three-hour-plus TSA security line that snaked across the terminal, out the door, and around the building… and uploaded it to YouTube. The fury of the day, in an age beset with furies, is therefore an anger directed against the TSA for our often unforgivably-long airport security lines. The DHS secretary even took to the podium to answer complaints, and to assure us that his system is not in fact "a national crisis." Sure, in this case, there was an alleged excuse – Chicago had seen hundreds of...

You may remember a silly little youth comedy from the 1980s entitled “Real Genius,” in which the minor character Lazlo Hollyfeld has put his mathematical mind to work and decided to enter “the Frito-Lay Sweepstakes – No purchase necessary, enter as often as you want.” So he entered 1,650,000 times. “I should win 32.6% of the prizes,” he added, “including the car.” When Chris Knight, star pupil, commented, “That kind of takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?”… Lazlo shrugged and replied “They set up the rules.” I have always wondered if I was alone in my anger when...

As cities contemplated doubling their minimum wage, conservatives warned that employers would flee. And that’s exactly what happened. Then as states contemplated doubling their statewide minimum wage, conservatives warned them again; but again their warnings were drowned out in the cacophonies of popular liberalism. So now California companies are already collecting bids from moving companies, and ordering new stationery for new digs in Arizona, Nevada, and of course, Texas. The destruction that minimum wage increases cause is no longer even denied by the left. Their politicians happily proudly admit the damage they do, even as they inflict these pains on...