Free Republic

New Census figures reveal a troubling trend. After tumbling in 2021, poverty spiked sharply in 2022. Despite steady job growth, the Supplemental Poverty Measure jumped 4.6 points, from 7.8 to 12.4 percent. That’s a historic, nearly 60 percent increase just one year after the measure reached a record low. And the rate for children more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022.

The number of people who signed up for health insurance through HealthCare.gov jumped by 40 percent compared to last year, President Biden said on Friday. “Right now, four out of five folks who sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act can get healthcare coverage for $10 a month or less. These lower rates were set to expire on Jan. 1 of this coming year, but instead we were able to extend them,” Biden said during remarks addressing business and labor leaders.

President Joe Biden joked with cancer survivors Monday, urging them not to jump from a balcony above him as he spoke at the JFK library in Boston. “I want to thank all of you. The cancer patients, survivors, caregivers. And don’t jump from up there, okay?” He added, motioning up to a group of people on a balcony at the museum.

Archaeologists working near the site of an iron age home near Cambridge were perplexed when they uncovered a vast trove of frog skeletons. Quite why more than 8,000 bones had been piled up and preserved is a prehistoric mystery.They were all recovered from a single 14-metre-long ditch, right next to the site of an iron age roundhouse at Bar Hill, where there was a settlement during the middle and late iron age (400BC-AD43)...It is unlikely that these amphibians had been eaten by the people living at the settlement. The archaeologists say that, while there is evidence of amphibian consumption in...

Daryl Hall said that Eddie Van Halen once asked him about replacing David Lee Roth in Van Halen. "Yeah... actually yes," the Hall & Oates frontman said with a big laugh when asked about the rumor during an interview on Q104.3. "I knew those guys really well and we actually shared some people - crew and things like that. Eddie came to a show with [his then-wife] Valerie [Bertinelli], and David had just left the band. Eddie said, 'do you wanna join Van Halen, man?' He was half-joking, but I think he was serious, I really do believe he was...

The young girl broke both her legs, but is expected to survive, according to the New York City Fire Department, NBC New York reported. The fire broke out Wednesday around 6 p.m. ET in the 500 block of 169th Street in the Bronx, the FDNY said. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the blaze, but it took more than 100 firefighters to put it out. When the smoke became too overwhelming, the girl leaped from her balcony — at least a 60-foot drop to the ground, NBC New York reported.

“I usually don’t go on FOX on principle, but misinformation about coronavirus has made me concerned about risk,” the lawmaker tweeted ahead of her appearance on “Special Report with Bret Baier.”

A senior CIA official has died in an apparent suicide this week from injuries sustained after jumping off a building in northern Virginia, according to sources close to the CIA. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D., Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has said the CIA has blocked efforts by the committee to investigate harsh interrogation of terrorists. Committee staff members working at a CIA facility in Northern Virginia to investigate agency interrogation practices also have charged that the CIA covertly searched the agency’s computers that were being used in the investigation. The agency subsequently reported that several Senate...

VIRGINIA BEACH Collin Dozier is rarely up late. But a fun night with friends riding their motorized skateboards at the Oceanfront had him headed home a little past midnight. As he drove over the Lesner Bridge on April 25, just a few hundred yards from his house, he noticed a parked car on the opposite side of Shore Drive. Its blinkers were on. Probably just broken down, he thought. But when he parked at his house, something told him to go investigate. So he hopped on his skateboard and road back up to the top of the bridge. There he...

A veteran Houston police narcotics officer has been relieved of duty due to "ongoing questions" that have emerged over his role in a raid last week that ended in a deadly mid-afternoon shootout, police said Thursday. "We have confirmed that at least one narcotics officer has been relieved of duty due to ongoing questions that cannot be answered until the case agent is interviewed," HPOU President Joe Gamaldi said in a written statement. "The department made the decision to relieve the officer of duty while a thorough investigation continues. Nearly all officers relieved of duty return to work quickly after...

President Trump on Friday is expected to sign an executive order that could open large parts of the Pacific, Arctic and Atlantic oceans to new oil and gas drilling, a prospect that elicited a fierce backlash in California and elsewhere even before details of the order were clear. The move, which is certain to face legal and political challenges, could undo a plan finalized late in President Obama’s second term that sought to limit fossil fuel development and fight climate change by not including new drilling leases off the coast of California or Alaska during the current five-year federal offshore...

Arizona will be hit the hardest whenObamacare premiums go up next year. The Department of Health and Human Services revealed Monday that premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, and that about 1 in 5 consumers will have plans only from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles. However, in Arizona, unsubsidized premiums for a hypothetical 27-year-old buying a benchmark “second-lowest cost silver plan” will jump by 116 percent,...

What If Everyone JUMPED At Once? Geek & Sundry

An alleged prostitute who jumped off the Bay Bridge to avoid arrest in August was “hella drunk” from splitting a fifth of Hennessy, according arrest affidavits reported by the Contra Costa Times. According to the report, 25-year-old Erlynn Kay Sanchez-Edwards was arrested in Oakland after police searched for the woman for nearly a month after they say she crashed a car she had stolen, then jumped off the Bay Bridge to icy water nearly 70 feet below, swam and hitched a ride with a truck driver. Sanchez-Edwards was charged with three misdemeanor counts of hit-and-run driving, evading a police officer...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/the-battle-for-the-middle-easts-future-begins-in-yemen-as-saudi-arabia-jumps-into-the-abyss-10140145.html

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room Monday afternoon and when Wolf Blitzer asked him to explain his statement that compared Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to a “carnival barker,” the Republican congressman opted not to walk back his comments but instead take about a dozen steps forward. “We need intelligent debate in the country. Ted Cruz may be an intelligent person, but he doesn’t carry out an intelligent debate,” King said. “He oversimplifies, he exaggerates and he basically led the Republican Party over the cliff in the fall of 2013. He has shown no qualifications, no legislation...

This video was taken at the 2011 Pea Ridge Mule Jump. If you don't like it, you can....hehe....kiss their

Watching a guy jump. Should break the sound barrier.

Watch live: Felix Baumgartner's jump from space in skydiving record attempt.