Free Republic

For sale: one early 80’s Craftsman riding lawn mower with an 11 horse power engine and 30″ mowing deck. Bottom line, this beast is a sick ride! In fact, I’d even say it’s the El Camino of yard whips. Just take a look at those sweet ass rims. So dope they look rented. #arethosedubs? Wait, is that a chicken in the background? Damn straight! Because the Craftsman riding lawn mower was considered the barnyard pimp of its day. Get yer yerrd on, fool! Is it fast? Ever heard of old school 3 on the tree? Well, this whip’s got 8...

A 33-year-old naked Manitowoc man was taken to the hospital and arrested after a struggle with police. According to WBAY, Friday night Manitowoc police were called to the report of a man standing in the middle of the street yelling he had a knife and was going to "gut" someone. When officers arrived and asked what the man was doing, he responded he wasn't doing anything and wasn't against the law to walk around naked. Police say the man had an active warrant out for his arrest in Two Rivers, so they attempted to escort him to the squad. That's...

Chris Daughtry as Judas in "The Passion" from 2016. His version of Evanescence' "Wake Me Up Inside" is simply stunning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_WEA_wfAW0

An Australian senator has been forced to step down because she is a dual citizen of Australia and Canada. The Australian constitution disqualifies potential candidates from seeking election if they hold dual or plural citizenship. Larissa Waters, who was also the deputy leader of the Green party, told a news conference Monday that was only found out about her status on Monday with “great shock and sadness.” Waters was born to Australian parents in 1977 while they were studying and working in Winnipeg. She left Canada as an 11-month old baby and said she always believed she was just Australian....

WASHINGTON — A last-ditch plan by Senate Republicans to repeal ObamaCare with a two-year delay in implementing a replacement now appears dead. Three GOP senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — said Tuesday they won’t support any plan that gets rid of ObamaCare without a replacement in place.

A dog owner was left baffled when her pet golden retriever gave birth to a GREEN puppy. Three-year-old family pet Rio had a litter of nine puppies last week, but when one came out mint green Louise Sutherland was gobsmacked.

The woman, who has been questioned by Riyadh police, told them that the video was broadcast on her social media account and was attributed to her without her knowledge... On Sunday, the spokesperson for the Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice ... said the group was monitoring the issue and taking the “necessary steps” to address a viral video depicting a “girl in offensive clothing.” ... The video showed the woman walking along an empty street in the historic town of Ushayqir, according to the police statement. Ushayqar officials have called on...

I can show a brighter pink. I can show a more saturated pink. But I can't show you this pink. Not quite. (I reached out to Anish Kapoor's studio twice for comment; I didn't get any response.) Colour grading this video was a nightmare! I've got as close as I can to the real colour - Stuart gave me a small pot of the pigment to take home! - but it's just not quite there. It's not more saturated, it's not brighter, it's just... a tiny bit more pink, somehow. More about Stuart Semple and his pigments: https://www.culturehustle.com/ [that's his...

More students in the U.S. are coming homes with A’s on their report cards, while overall SAT scores are dropping, according to a Harvard study. The Harvard Graduate School of Education found that nearly half (47%) of all high school students in 2016 had an A average on their report cards, compared to 38.9% in 1998. Meanwhile, their average SAT score fell from 1,026 to 1,002 on a 1,600 point scale. Additionally, the study found that only 56% of those students end up completing a four-year degree within six years of entering college.

Pakistan Causes Youtube Outage for Two-Thirds of World, Other Glitches"Most of the world’s Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan’s government to block access domestically affected other countries."..."On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered 70 Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.com, because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google."

Despite the objections of local fishermen, the tritium-tainted water stored at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant will be dumped into the sea, a top official at Tokyo Electric says. “The decision has already been made,” Takashi Kawamura, chairman of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc., said in a recent interview with the media. Tritium typically poses little risk to human health unless ingested in high amounts, and ocean discharges of diluted volumes of tritium-tainted water are a routine part of nuclear power plant operations. This is because it is a byproduct of nuclear operations but cannot be filtered out...

Far be it from us to throw shade on your home sweet home, but the data does not lie. The Quality of Life category in our annual America's Top States for Business study ranks all 50 states on overall livability based on metrics, including crime rate, attractions, air quality, health and health care and legal protections against discrimination... 10. KENTUCKY.. More than a quarter of adults are regular smokers in Kentucky, the highest rate in the country. The state also has the nation's highest rate of cancer deaths and one of the highest rates of cardiovascular deaths... 9. (tie) NEW...

First of all, I want to be totally upfront. I was born and raised Muslim by liberal parents and stopped practicing the religion in my early twenties. I was also born and raised a feminist by the same parents and have only become more fanatical about my feminism as I grow older. My mother is a practicing Muslim feminist woman from whom I have practically no secrets. That being said, up until about 15 years ago, I had never actually read a word of the Qur’an myself. Like many people who are raised Muslim, it was told to me and...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — O.J. Simpson, the former football star, TV pitchman and now Nevada prison inmate No. 1027820, will have a lot going for him when he asks state parole board members this week to release him after serving more than eight years for an ill-fated bid to retrieve sports memorabilia. Now 70, Simpson will have history in his favor and a clean record behind bars as he approaches the nine-year minimum of his 33-year sentence for armed robbery and assault with a weapon. Plus, the parole board sided with him once before.

I guess it had to happen. Chocolate is so addictive that eventually, someone would figure a way to get it into their bloodstream more quickly. Chocoholics across the land will be glad to know you can now buy a chocolate powder that can be snorted up the nose for an instant choco-high. The product is called Coco Loko and is sold by a company called Legal Lean. Twenty-nine-year-old Nick Anderson founded the company to sell products that can give you a legal, drug-induced buzz. His first product was a grape flavored cough syrup drink that is popular in the hip-hop...

It would be very interesting to see what the benefits plan looks like. I hope someone can post a copy for everyone to see.

Researchers at Facebook realized their bots were chattering in a new language. Then they stopped it. Bob: “I can can I I everything else.” Alice: “Balls have zero to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to me to.” To you and I, that passage looks like nonsense. But what if I told you this nonsense was the discussion of what might be the most sophisticated negotiation software on the planet? Negotiation software that had learned, and evolved, to get the best deal possible with more speed and efficiency–and perhaps, hidden nuance–than you or...

LAS VEGAS (FOX5) - Abuse and neglect detectives are investigating the death of a toddler at a resort south of the Strip Saturday afternoon. Metropolitan police responded to a call of an injured child at the Grandview Resort on 9940 South Las Vegas Boulevard at 4:50 p.m. Officers located a 3-year-old boy suffering from heat-related injuries, according to Lt. Carlos Hank. Emergency medical personnel transported the child to St. Rose Hospital where he was pronounced deceased. Lt. Roger Price of the Special Victims Unit said the parents of the boy realized he had been left in the car in the...

I was born a liberal, in the mid ‘50s, in Southern California. Everyone was. We weren’t political, we were righteous. We weren’t informed, we were pliable. Craving fan-boys gorging flowery rhetoric. Low-caloric in substance, refute free. Facts are mean. And there is nothing new under the sun. Planted my grubstake in the South after the ’94 earthquake. I like these people, they’re real. Most seemed to go hog wild on honesty. And one boasting they’re basking in high cotton is as scarce as hen’s teeth. Hypocrisy is answered with, “well bless your heart”. And then you’re out. I came from...

The minute you walked in the joint, I could tell you were a man of distinction — a real big tipper. Granted, today’s crop of servers at the city’s restaurants are probably not humming anything close to this old standard, but experienced waiters and waitresses say that they usually know how much they are probably going to get tipped as soon as a customer walks in. “Generally, men tip better than women,” says Meleck Verbay, who tends tables at Le Midi, an East 13th Street French restaurant where dinners range up to $50. She says that she “hates to generalize,”...