Free Republic

I recently posted the following meme and was asked to expand: How to survive a narcissist: Reality is what it is. Not what the narcissist claims it is. Objectivity trumps toxic. My point: You’re less subject to narcissists or other toxic people if you’re confident and competent in the use of your own objective, reasoning mind. Consider the narcissists in our government. They want us to believe we cannot exist without them. They want us to believe we are helpless, perpetually vulnerable people who cannot possibly cope — without their stupid, economy-thrashing, initiative-killing, Constitution-bashing programs. If you’re confident in your...

President Trump will speak in the Rose Garden about the partial government shutdown at 1:30 p.m ET on Friday -- an indication that a possible short-term deal may have been reached to end the stalemate, even as reports emerged that there is no funding for a border wall in the deal. "The President will make remarks regarding the shutdown in the Rose Garden today at 1:30pm," Sanders tweeted. It was not immediately clear what Trump would say, but White House officials told Fox News that the situation was still in flux. Meanwhile, another well-placed source told Fox News that negotiators...

Three Pennsylvania state employees based in Greensburg are suing their union after trying unsuccessfully to resign their membership last year. The employees, all three of whom work for the state Department of Labor & Industry, say they have U.S. Supreme Court precedent on their side, including last year’s controversial 5-4 decision, Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31. “Janus does have a significant impact on this case in that we believe a lot of people trying to resign from unions are trying to exercise their Janus rights,” said Nathan McGrath, vice president and director of litigation for the Fairness Center. The Harrisburg-based...

The government shutdown, now in its 30th day and being the longest ever in U.S. history, has caused massive media coverage on Transportation Security Agency (TSA) employees and their fate due to the shutdown. This is precisely because the TSA could bring the country to a virtual standstill, and thus has more power than most to end the shutdown by pressure. Over this holiday weekend, sick call-ins for TSA employees not getting paid during the shutdown hit 10 percent, suggesting that the problem could spiral out of hand, despite the Agency’s insistence to the contrary. There’s plenty of reason for...

With trust in governments taking a hit since the global financial crisis, people around the world view their employer as the most trusted institution in their lives, according to a survey published Monday. In a survey of trust in institutions that public relations firm Edelman releases each year on the eve of the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the firm found that 75 percent of respondents trusted their employer. That’s a hefty 19 percentage points more than the equivalent trust in business as a whole and 27 points more than governments. …

AMERICANS WARMING TO SOCIALISM OVER CAPITALISM, POLLS SHOW”, states a poll at FoxNews.com Well of course they are. Most Americans are not critical thinkers. They look to the pack or the herd. Either they haven’t been trained how to be critical, independent and objective thinkers, or they’re simply too lazy to learn. Or both. As a result of no critical thinking, it doesn’t occur to people why America is a far, far better place to live materially — even if you’re in the poorest sector — than anywhere else on earth. No country on earth has a crisis of immigration...

“I will be making a major announcement concerning the Humanitarian Crisis on our Southern Border, and the Shutdown, tomorrow afternoon at 3 P.M., live from the White House,” Trump tweeted.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office announced today they are postponing her 7-day trip to Brussels, Egypt and Afghanistan after learning "the Administration had leaked the commercial travel plans," according to a statement. Why it matters: By leaking even more information about this trip — after Pelosi aides had previously asked news organizations not to publicly report the details due to national security concerns — her office said going ahead with the visit would "further endanger our troops and security personnel, or the other travelers on the flights." Show less How we got here: Pelosi sent Trump a letter on Wednesday...

It's hard to read the anonymous posting on the Daily Caller from a "senior Trump official" without coming to the conclusion that the current partial government shutdown should remain shut essentially forever. (It won't.  I know. But hear me out.)  Putting aside whatever pro-administration bias the author might have, the article confirms everything one suspects or knows about bureaucracies, especially government ones. They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil...

**SNIP** Here's a breakdown of the annual salary of members, officers and officials of the House. Salaries have not gone up since 2009, CRS notes. Speaker of the House: $223,500 Majority and minority leaders: $193,400 All other representatives (including delegates and resident commissioner from Puerto Rico): $174,000 Chief administrative officer: $172,500 Clerk of the House: $172,500 Sergeant at arms: $172,500 Chaplain: $172,500 Legislative counsel: $172,500 Law revision counsel: $172,500 Parliamentarian: $172,500 Inspector general: $172,500 Director, interparliamentary affairs: $172,500 General counsel to the House: $172,500 Here's a breakdown of the annual salary of members, officers and officials of the Senate: President...

Philadelphia’s outlandish soda tax is what Democratic-party politics looks like when it lets its freak flag fly. So many classic elements are there: (failed) social engineering and “think of the children!” on one side, paid for with a punitive tax on poor people and destroyed businesses, which means destroyed jobs, which in turn means lives upended. What lives? Greedy capitalists with monocles, maybe? No, they’ll be fine. Think of ex-cons trying to regain their footing in society. To review this debacle, in 2017 Philadelphia, seeking to fund a universal pre-K program, slapped mammoth sin taxes on Coke and Pepsi (and...

WASHINGTON — Taxpayers who are owed refunds will be paid on time, despite the government shutdown that has closed many federal agencies, a Trump administration official said Monday as concern mounted over the risk that the payments could be delayed. The acting director of the White House budget office, Russell Vought, said customary rules will be changed to make the payments possible. He told reporters that an “indefinite appropriation” was available for the refunds, which would go out as normal. As it dragged through a third week, the partial government shutdown could not have come at a worse time for...

Most Americans know that their representation in the U.S. House of Representatives is based on proportional representation as determined by the decennial Census. And, many Americans are aware that the Census takers try to count everybody residing in the country. But, most Americans do not make the connection that illegal immigrants and other foreigners who are not legal permanent residents are part of the calculation for the apportionment of Congressional representatives.... As may be seen from the reallocation of seats based on the distribution of U.S. citizens, the states with the largest illegal and resident nonimmigrant populations currently gain influence...

Dr. Shahid Shafi enters a Tarrant County Republican Party executive committee meeting at Faith Creek Church in Richland Hills on Thursday before a failed attempt to oust him from his vice-chairmanship because he’s Muslim. Leslie Boorhem-Stephenson for The Texas Tribune Shahid Shafi will retain his role as vice-chairman of the Tarrant County Republican Party despite a push from a small faction of precinct chairs to remove him from his post because he’s Muslim. Shafi, a trauma surgeon and Southlake City Council member, came to the U.S. in 1990 and became a naturalized citizen in 2009. The attacks on his religion,...

President Donald Trump often boasts he's presiding over a record breaking presidency. Now he's got another historic notch on his belt, the longest-ever government shutdown -- an impasse that marks a new low for Washington dysfunction. [Snip] Since Trump crowed he would be "proud" to shutter the government over the wall, he gets to shoulder much of the blame for a crisis that is the inevitable result when the nation's political polarization is institutionalized in Washington. The last three weeks have exposed the lack of empathy of a billionaire President who shrugs off the struggles of federal workers who work...

Would it surprise you to learn that the judge presiding over a case of Robert Mueller’s is married to a Mueller protege? When Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted Concord, a Russian company that didn’t even exist, it landed on District of Columbia Judge Dabney Friedrich’s docket. At first, it appeared as though Friedrich had a handle on the malarkey taking place. At the initial hearings, she denied the special counsel’s request to delay everything. She rightfully questioned the validity of the charges — especially the unprecedented charge of “conspiracy against the United States.” As many noted, the Mueller squad did...

Today we investigate one of the biggest medical controversies of our time: vaccines. There’s little dispute about this much-- vaccines save many lives, and rarely, they injure or kill. A special federal vaccine court has paid out billions for injuries from brain damage to death. But not for the form of brain injury we call autism. Now—we have remarkable new information: a respected pro-vaccine medical expert used by the federal government to debunk the vaccine-autism link, says vaccines can cause autism after all. He claims he told that to government officials long ago, but they kept it secret. Yates Hazlehurst...

The partial government shutdown goes on with little hope of resolution.  Democrats want to test Donald Trump's resolve on border wall funding by proposing a plan to reopen the government without any money for a wall.  With Trump having gone this far, you would think he'll maintain his position despite the daily headlines of people starving in the streets, old people getting kicked out of their homes, health care being denied to babies because there's no money, and... Wait.  Those headlines don't exist.  Part of the reason is that 75% of government is fully funded through next September.  But another reason why this shutdown...

WASHINGTON — Democrats have settled on a strategy for attempting to reopen the government when they take control of the House on Thursday, aimed at ending the partial shutdown quickly — but denying President Donald Trump the new money he wants for a border wall. Democrats plan to pass a stopgap spending bill to fund the Homeland Security Department through Feb. 8. The bill would extend the existing $1.3 billion spending level on border fencing and other security measures, far short of the $5 billion Trump has sought to build new walls along the U.S.-Mexico border. But unless Trump retreats...

1. What just happened? On Friday, the federal government entered a partial shutdown after the Senate failed to pass a spending bill that includes border wall funding. President Trump refuses to sign any additional funding that does not include $5.1 billion in additional money to pay for an extension of the border wall, allowing him to fulfill his primary campaign promise.2. What is a partial government shutdown? A government shutdown occurs either when Congress fails to pass funding bills or when the president refuses to sign a funding bill before the current appropriations expire. A partial government shutdown occurs...