Free Republic

One of the preposterous charges made against Israel by the Palestinians is that the Jewish state “harvests the organs” from dead Palestinians. This is a variant on the medieval blood libel that accused Jews of using the blood of Christian children in making matzos. Think of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, and William of Norwich — two children whose deaths were falsely attributed to Jews wanting to use their blood, which led to pogroms being unleashed against local Jewry in medieval England. But the Palestinian charge was apparently not preposterous enough for the Washington Post, which reported the charge as...

For four years, Amy Nelson and her family have endured one of the most disgusting abuses of power and privilege we’ve seen waged against an American family. It involves mega-retailer Amazon, their team of fifty attorneys, and the Department of Justice. In short, the Nelson family have been targeted for complete financial destruction. Seizures have been made. Threats continue incessantly. All the while, no charges have been filed and all of the evidence points to the Nelsons being innocent. ...

“In addition to churning subscribers and losing $100 million a year, the Washington Post is also failing to engage audiences. Four years ago, the Post boasted 139 million monthly visitors. By the end of last year, it had less than 60 million”

White House officials are concerned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could initiate a full-blown war against the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon in order to save his own political career, according to a Sunday report. “If the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict,” anonymous US officials told The Washington Post. Netanyahu has dipped sharply in opinion polls since the war with Hamas began, with the public evidently attributing to him a significant portion of the blame for the failures that enabled the terror group’s October 7 massacres. “The prime...

Is The Washington Post in full-scale collapse? A recent look at the numbers provides a fairly convincing answer to that question. According to the report, not only is the Post losing $100 million a year, but it lost over half of its online engagement by the end of 2023. The signs were already there by mid-year, and the worst has come to pass. See: The Washington Post Is Facing a Financial Buzzsaw“Of that audience, less than one in five read more than a single article per month, while less than one in 500 actually convert to a paying subscription.”— Josh...

Perplexity, a startup going after Google’s dominant position in web search, has won backing from Jeff Bezos and venture capitalists betting that artificial intelligence will upend the way people find information online. Started less than two years ago, Perplexity has fewer than 40 employees and is based out of a San Francisco co-working space. The company’s product, which it calls an answer engine, is used by about 10 million people monthly. Those ingredients were enough to persuade Institutional Venture Partners, Bezos and other tech executives to invest $74 million in the company, the largest sum raised by an internet search...

Washington Post crybaby and COVID advocate Taylor Lorenz is skipping her fourth Christmas because of "selfish people" who refuse to wear masks against a non-life threatening virus. Lorenz has labeled herself "disabled" due to an "illness" that puts her at a higher risk of contracting COVID. However, I think her "illness" is more along the lines of a radical Leftist disease that clouds her common sense abilities. She also claims she has "PTSD" from online "harassment." "Literally, what is the plan for high-risk/medically vulnerable and disabled people? Just let us die while the world marches on??" Lorenz wrote in an...

Shuttered stores at Schuylkill Mall in Pennsylvania in 2017. By the 1980s, the mall had become the center of American social life and accounted for the bulk of all retail sales. But a shrinking middle class, the rise of online shopping, and the fact that there were simply too many malls contributed to the decline of the American mall.

We need more humans. That’s the message from two of the world’s richest billionaires, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. While the two compete in the space business—Bezos owns Blue Origin while Musk has SpaceX—they agree on certain aspect’s of humanity’s future.“I think in a lot of these endeavors we're very like-minded,” Bezos said on an episode of the Lex Fridman Podcast released this week. He added, “I don't really know Elon very well,” but he said that he liked the idea of forming a friendship with him. Asked what he hoped for humanity’s future in outer...

The House, in a decisive vote Thursday, passed the annual defense authorization bill, delivering a bipartisan rebuke to its most conservative members who had sought to infuse the legislation with a wishlist of provisions targeting Pentagon policies on abortion, diversity and LGBTQ+ rights. The $886 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved by a vote of 310-118, having passed the Senate by an overwhelming margin Wednesday night. It proceeds next to the White House, where President Biden is expected to sign the legislation into law.

The testimony of three university presidents before a House committee last week provoked outrage after they suggested that calls on their campuses for Jewish genocide might not have violated their schools’ free speech policies. One of them, Liz Magill, was forced to step down on Saturday as president of the University of Pennsylvania, where I am a faculty member. But their statements shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Congress could have assembled two dozen university presidents and likely would have received the same answer from each of them. This is because the value of free speech has been elevated to...

Amazon on December 1, 2023 announced it has signed a three-launch contract with SpaceX to place its Kuiper satellites into orbit, supplementing the launch contracts it presently has with ULA, Arianespace, and Blue Origin. From the Amazon press release: ""SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage launch vehicle designed for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond, and it has completed more than 270 successful launches to date. Project Kuiper has contracted three Falcon 9 launches, and these missions are targeted to lift off beginning in mid-2025."" In 2022 Amazon had signed contracts...

The Washington Post threw a temper tantrum over “far-right economist” Javier Milei sending a shockwave throughout the world with his victorious presidential bid against leftist Economy Minister Sergio Massa in Argentina. The Post attempted to denigrate Argentina’s president-elect as a “Trump-like radical” with “no governing experience” who rode a “wave of voter rage” to victory with 56 percent of the vote. The rag characterized Milei’s win as a “stunning upset” over Massa, “the center-left economy minister who has struggled to resolve the country’s worst economic crisis in two decades.” Oh, who knew that voters didn’t want to reward the government...

Hyundai Motor customers who want to skip the dealership will have a new option next year: shopping on Amazon.com. The Korean automaker announced the move Thursday with Amazon at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Starting in 2024, U.S. auto dealers will be able to sell vehicles on the tech company’s platform, making Hyundai the first automotive brand to offer such an option for customers

A Washington Post reporter has published an article declaring his endorsement for Hollywood actor and former WWE wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for president in 2024. Washington Post deputy opinion editor David Von Drehle argues in a new column that Johnson is the best nominee for president. “For four years, I have been saying to anyone who will listen — not many people, I must admit — that America has a sure and happy pathway out of the doom loop of Biden vs. Trump, Trump vs. Biden, seemingly for the rest of eternity,” Von Drehle writes. “Johnson is that pathway....

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — From targeting Chinese-owned farmland to banning gender-neutral terms like “pregnant people” from state documents, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has rolled out announcements in recent weeks in quick succession, cheered on by her Republican base. Washington — has also fielded questions from behind a lectern at the state Capitol. But it’s the lectern she’s not using — a $19,000 purchase that’s led to an audit and claims her office illegally altered public records — that remains a problem for the first-term governor. That lectern hasn’t been seen at Sanders’ public events, and the governor’s office...

In the adjacent post Cliff May refers in passing to Washington Post global affairs columnist Karen Attiah’s sympathy for Hamas and hostility to Israel. Megyn Kelly commented on Attiah’s sympathies on X/Twitter and the New York Post set forth the background necessary to understand what it’s all about:Megyn Kelly slammed a Washington Post columnist as a “rabid antisemite” after the opinion writer liked a tweet that shrugged off Hamas’ horrifying displays of violence in its bid to replace Israel with an Islamic state.The SiriusXM host on Tuesday tweeted a screenshot showing Karen Attiah — who pens a weekly newsletter for...

Cordell Cox has volunteered for a Democrat in every presidential race since Barack Obama’s 2008 run. Next year, he might sit it out. Cox, a 33-year-old in Michigan, said he’ll probably still cast a ballot for President Biden if he’s the Democratic nominee. But, Cox said, he won’t work to increase turnout and fears that some of his friends will choose a third-party candidate or decline to vote altogether. To them, Biden’s handling of the violence in Israel and Gaza has been unacceptable. As the White House advocates for sending $14 billion in aid to Israel, Cox and his like-minded...

Reporters at The Washington Post wanted answers about major job cuts during a contentious one-hour meeting Wednesday with top brass. The paper announced on Tuesday that it would be offering buyouts, with the aim to cut 240 jobs from the newsroom. But management offered little clarity about who would be affected or why the cuts were necessary. A day later, Post journalists pressed their interim CEO on why their jobs were on the chopping block, with reporter and Guild president Katie Mettler telling Stonesifer she was frustrated by reporters “bearing the consequences of very poor decisions” made by management. Interim...

The old rule about incumbents was that if they are under 50 points in approval, they're toast. President Joe Biden is under 40. There's almost no chance he's going to win. I've never heard of an incumbent polling under 40 points who went on to win reelection. When it comes to Joe Biden, three in six recent polls had him in the thirties. In one recent poll, President Biden was at an abysmal 32 percent. MAGA should be doing everything they can to keep Biden in the race. He's their only hope. President Biden needs to step down immediately and...