Free Republic

The United Nations Says We Should All Be Eating Insects The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a part of the United Nations, has released a report saying that we should all get ready to start eating insects. There’s a certain amount of truth in the report but not all that much: “ World population is slated to top nine billion by 2050, and seeing as how arable land is being rapidly swallowed by towns and cities, oceans are increasingly overfished, and climate change is disrupting traditional farming, a new United Nations study proposes a twist on Marie Antoinette’s dietary advice:...

Should we all quit working and jump on board the Obama gravy train? Of course I am being facetious, but when you are barely surviving does there come a point when it just becomes easier to give up and totally rely on the government? Today, the federal government runs nearly 80 different means-tested welfare programs, and many state and local governments have their own welfare programs on top of that. If you become an expert on those programs and you learn how to game the system, can you live more comfortably than someone that lives honestly and works as...

Louisville, Kentucky - Tracy Browning, a 38-year-old Louisville woman, was jailed after she allegedly tried to purchase several iPads with a food stamp card, then fled to another location where she tried to make the same transaction. According to Louisville police, Browning went to the Valley Station Walmart and tried to purchase two iPads with an Electronic Benefit Transfer card. When the transaction was denied, she assaulted a store clerk, pushed another employee to the ground and fled from the store with the merchandise. Investigators say Browning went to another Walmart in the area a short time later and again...

Data from a Congressional Research Service report reveals that the amount the government spends on welfare per family below the poverty line exceeds the median earned income. The median for earned income in the United States is about $50,000 per year. The amount spent per family on welfare exceeds $60,000 per year. Assuming a 40-hour work week, welfare equates to an after-tax wage of over $30 per hour. Congressional Democrats used these figures to make the case against prospective cuts to the government's entitlement spending. “The GOP's notion that we ought to be pushing people to get jobs is completely...

Scientists in Denmark have designed a new sensor to detect cells that over-express folate receptors, including cancer cells. Jaime Castillo-León from the Technical University of Denmark and colleagues' sensor consists of an electrochemical platform composed of graphene and peptide nanotubes with folic acid.Cancer cells have a high requirement for folic acid as it is necessary for their metabolism, so the cells have 500 times more folate receptors compared with a healthy cell, explains Castillo-León. The receptors are like antennas on the surface of the cell membrane that seek out folic acid. The cancer cells interact with the electrochemical platform,...

In too many posts to count, I’ve argued that the reason Romney was the overwhelming choice of the Washington campaign consultant class since the day after McCain lost in 2008 was that he was their dream candidate. He possessed the two qualities most prized by this insular population of political parasites who occupy the D.C. beltway: An enormous amount of money and an equally enormous dearth of core convictions. For this reason, they correctly recognized Romney as someone who could easily be fleeced for a virtually limitless amount of money. He’d shower them with tens of millions of dollars in return for their sage “advice” on...

Ever since I moved to the inner city one thing has puzzled me more than any other, and that is how my low-income neighbors get by. Assuming they aren't doing anything illegal, how do they afford their homes, their meals, their gadgets, their cars? Few seem to work, even part time, for they are home in the morning when I leave for work, home if I stop by for lunch, and home when I return in the evening. They can't work the graveyard shift, for they keep me up half the night with their raucous music. I am left to...

A recent poll of people saying they will vote for Obama’s reelection yielded confusing implications. Only 4% said they wanted a second term to be like the first. Over 60% said they hoped a second term would be “significantly different.” The rest said they didn’t know enough about the first term to decide. “Nothing seems to have gone right the past four years,” said one of the 60%. “I still haven’t got a job. I had to move back in with my parents.” As for why he’s still voting to reelect Obama, he said “I believe a person learns from...

A report just issued by the Congressional Research Service reveals that federal government outlays for means-tested welfare programs have surged by more than 30% over the last four years and now top the trillion dollars per year level. Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod called this “very encouraging news.” “The entire Republican campaign is premised on the idea that only 47% of the population is dependent on subsidies from the government,” Axelrod observed. “They think that they can count on the productive 53% to carry the day for them. However, this report indicates that their constituency may be smaller than they...

There was a time when the far left wing of the Democratic Party in San Francisco stood for something. Sure, they could be shrill, exasperating and self-righteous, but they took a stand. Their causes were clear - the homeless, the downtrodden, and those who didn't have a voice in big money politics. The truth is, as infuriating as they could be; those efforts were good for the city. They pushed everyone to think about the bigger issues: affordable housing, thoughtful development and, of course, more pot clubs. That seems like another era. Now we see them booing women who work...

IRVINE – The tents have folded. The handmade signs denouncing the 1 percent are tucked away in the garage. But the 50 or so activists who gathered in the shade of a gazebo at Bill Barber Community Park on Sunday brought their same passionate spirit to a picnic potluck marking the one-year anniversary of Occupy Orange County CA. They wiggled their "spirit fingers" – silent applause – as speakers discussed some of the state propositions in the upcoming November election. They joined members of the Local Vocal Peace Choir in singing protest songs that included Bob Dylan's "Blowing in the...

This is hilarious. I'm thinking about making it my ring tone. XD

Perhaps no Prince of Wales in history has been less trusted — or more spied upon — than the boy everyone knew as Bertie. When he attended a military summer camp, at age 19, the future King Edward VII was surrounded by minders: two stern Grenadier officers, a colonel and a general. He even had to share a general’s quarters. Happily, however, they had not thought to lock Bertie’s bedroom window. So, one night, the heir to the throne wriggled out, made a beeline for the camp prostitute — one Nellie Clifden — and triumphantly lost his virginity.

How to Kill a Parasitic Worm Living Inside of You Parasitic worms are the stuff of nightmares — worms as big as twelve feet long can rummage through your intestines, and then leave in the middle of the night. Urban legends tell tales of tapeworms carried by diet pills. Some of the weird schemes for removing these parasites include a combination of duct tape, candy bars, and bodily orifices. What is the reality behind these parasites? And how can you really get rid of one, without the need for extreme measures? Tapeworms hide in your food Obtaining a beef or...

Has anyone else noticed the food stamp ads on the radio. I guess Obama need smote parasites on the dole at taxpayer expense. Aren't you glad that you work. I have no issue with a safety net for the truly needy, but to condone parasitical behavior is obscene.

San Jose police officers Wednesday made good on promises to legally challenge San Jose's voter-approved pension reform with a lawsuit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court. San Jose Police Officers' Association President Jim Unland said the lawsuit argues that the measure -- approved by almost 70 percent of voters Tuesday -- violates employees' "vested rights" to their pensions. He based that on a history of court rulings that effectively hold that government employers cannot cut back workers' retirement plans without offering a comparable benefit in return. The officers asked the court to block implementation of the measure's provisions until...

(Reuters) - Occupy Wall Street's call for a general strike to mark International Workers Day got off to a slow start on Tuesday, with sparse gatherings at a handful of spots around a rainy New York City. At Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan, about 100 activists gathered where the group had promised a "pop-up encampment" emblematic of the movement's early days in lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park near the Wall Street financial district.

Lampreys from Great Lakes destined for queen's pie DETROIT — A few unwanted, invasive sea lampreys from the Great Lakes have been shipped to England for use in a traditional pie for Queen Elizabeth II. The Detroit Free Press reports (http://on.freep.com/IdmZkP) the City of Gloucester, which has given the pie as a gift to the monarch since the Middle Ages, requested the eel-like creatures from the Great Lakes Fishery Commission because they're a protected species in England. The pie is for June's Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of the queen's ascent to the throne. Commission spokesman Marc Gaden shipped 2...

Sex is one of the great mysteries of evolutionary biology -- why do organisms have it? It has numerous costs associated with it, including the two big ones, which are that only half the population will produce offspring in the next generation (technically really a problem more of anisogamy than sex, per se) and that successful gene combinations can be broken up via recombination. There are other costs as well. For instance, finding and wooing mates can be costly to an organism. Nematomorphs, sometimes called hairworms, are parasites that live inside arthropods as larvae, but then exist as free-living aquatic...

eXiled editor Yasha Levine still has a host of legal woes hanging over his head from being arrested while covering last November’s LAPD crackdown of OccupyLA. Turns out, those are the least of his worries at the moment. During his two-day stay in Los Angeles Metro Jail, Levine says he contracted a wicked case of scabies. Until a few days ago, I thought my scabies was just a gnarly poison oak rash that I had picked up in the Santa Monica mountains after losing the trail and having to cut through the overgrown backyards of multimillion dollar mansions. For weeks...

Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? A biologist’s science- fiction hunch is gaining credence and shaping the emerging science of mind- controlling parasites.

This weekend's Wall Street Journal had a masterful article by Matthew Kaminski where he interviews well known good government wonk Fred Siegel. Siegel explains how the public employee unions have co-opted New York City and New York State's Governments. It is no longer government for and by the people, rather it has become a closed parasitic system that exists to enrich government workers of all stripes. While the "public servants" on the top of the pyramid reap the biggest ill gotten rewards, even the lowliest janitor gets full medical benefits, free health insurance for life, bloated salaries and obscene pensions....

Why work in America?

On the eve of the Occupy Wall Street protests, it’s useful to take a look at its legacy. There are plenty of ways to measure the depravity that we’ve seen during the past several months, but it’s simplest to focus on the following themes: arrests, assaults, death and disease – plus the financial burden that the rest of the country has to shoulder in order to clean it all up:Number of arrests: 3,621 (via Occupy Arrests )Number of deaths: 4 – one murder, one suicide, one suspected drug overdose and one mystery.Number of sexual assaults: At least seven that have...

As cities across the nation clean up after the Occupy Wall Street peeps they are coming across all sorts of rubbish and filth. Needles, human feces, garbage, and now disease have all been found at the park where the occupies have been encamped. Now tomorrow the are threatening violence? I am more concerned with them associating with the public. Time to bring back leper colonies.

George W. Bush-era energy policy wonks are finding a new home with Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor can count on support from a who’s who of former Bush officials willing to raise money, brainstorm policy ideas and generally help spread the word among the ranks of like-minded GOP energy experts. Already on board the Romney train are Jim Connaughton, who ran Bush’s White House Council on Environmental Quality for all eight years; former Assistant Energy Secretary Andy Karsner; former EPA air chief Jeff Holmstead; and former EPA congressional affairs liaison Edward Krenik. The former Bush officials all told POLITICO...

Police and emergency services are at the scene to recover the body of a dead female protestor from her tent that overdosed on heroin. Occupy Vancouver heroin assault guy filming protestor overdose tent police 2011 Location Vancouver British Columbia Canada

DES MOINES, Iowa - Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann is telling college students in politically important Iowa that all Americans should pay taxes since they all benefit from services such as roads and bridges, national defense and the courts. Her position, which she was outlining today at Iowa State University in Ames, is a direct challenge to rivals Rick Perry and Herman Cain, who are advocating plans that would allow low-wage earners to continue paying no taxes while implementing a form of a flat tax on all other workers. The Tax Policy Center estimates that some 46 percent of households...

A monument to honor the Fair Housing movement and the historic struggles against discrimination in housing has taken a step forward in possibly getting its place in the nation’s capital

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4fPuRzHaxU More of occupy other people's money!

Sergio Hidalgo was in line with his wife and two teenage daughters. All four needed to see a dentist. One daughter had a hole in one of her teeth, his wife had inflamed gums and all of them had pain. "We don't have the money to pay for this," said Hidalgo, 36, who lost his job a year and a half ago. Hidalgo and his wife are undocumented immigrants, as are a number of others waiting in line.

All over america, bums illegal aliens Islamic Jihadists moochers pedophiles drunks addicts anarchists and other low life bottom feeders who make up the scum of society have been rallying and demanding the end of capitlism and freedom and in place a socialist dictatorship. Their unacceptable demands include a 20$ minimum wage, the collapse of our system, environmental laws, open borders, government restrictions on constitutionally guaranteed free speech/press and gun ownership and solidarity with Islam. With few exception the police have been quiet and done nothing when these gatherings spread into private property and/or become violent. Nudity, drug activity and public...

Protestors [sic] are assembling in New York and around the country to let billionaires, big oil and big bankers know that we’re not going to let the richest 1% force draconian economic policies and massive cuts to crucial programs on Main Street Americans. Out-of-touch Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor said he is “increasingly concerned by the growing mobs.” Mobs? That must be what Republicans refer to as the middle class, or maybe the millions of unemployed Americans across the country. As Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters, “The message of the American people is that no longer will the recklessness...

An estimated 200 social justice protesters demonstrated in Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C., Thursday, expressing solidarity with the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that has spread to more than 150 US cites. The protesters, part of a larger group that had gathered earlier near Capitol Hill for a long-planned antiwar rally, beat drums, carried signs that said “Tax the Rich,” and rang cowbells. As expressions of solidarity with Occupy multiply – labor unions marched in New York Wednesday while student and labor groups joined in Boston – the question is being asked: Can the protest movement carry the newcomers, or will...

New York - In a sign that it is shifting from a loose-knit fringe group to a bloc that could draw in mainstream America, the movement called Occupy Wall Street brought thousands of people to the streets of New York on Wednesday after major labor unions gave their backing to its anti-greed message. The march, from Occupy Wall Street's makeshift headquarters at a small park in the financial district to Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, was the largest since the group launched its movement Sept. 17. At its peak, the crowd of several thousand filled Foley Square and covered the...

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Thousands of people in Philadelphia are waiting in long lines for aid due to losses caused by Hurricane Irene; however, there is a lot of confusion over who exactly qualifies. At several locations throughout the city, thousands lined up to get a month’s worth of food stamps for food that was ruined by Hurricane Irene in late August. However, confusion of who is exactly qualified for the food stamps has lead to long lines and short tempers. Officials say the application deadline is 7 p.m. Tuesday for the Federal Emergency Management Agency program, which is administered by...

Providing fresh evidence that it is intellectually exhausted, the Obama administration is flirting with revisiting the mortgage-refinancing market. And like the semi-criminal scam that was the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, this new push is not really about helping out innocent bystanders crushed by the housing crash, but about the hundreds of thousands of market-massacring new foreclosures that are coming down the pipe — foreclosures that may be delayed, even if they are not prevented. The Committee to Reinflate the Bubble is in session. Banks are reasonably eager to refinance certain kinds of mortgages — what they lose in interest, they...

Engraved at the base of the statue of Liberty Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send...

Why They Hate Us It’s the reflexive reaction of those who have the most to lose, and their numbers are substantial. In their self-delusions, they’ve continued to pretend to themselves that everything will go on as it has for more than two generations, with no interruptions in the gravy train, and their stubborn indifference to the mathematical certainty permits them momentary refuge against a reality they’ve created but wish not to endure. When a voice rises to warn them, they dutifully dismiss it. When the Tea Party arose, they were faced with a messenger they could not so easily...

This time the wild and crazy bunch attempts to defy an Order to Stay by a Federal Judge. Paragraph 4 - "All mortgage foreclosure cases are hereby STAYED and shall remain so until further order of the court. Any deadlines for filings on any issue are hereby suspended." Seems pretty clear to me. Maybe the good folks at Harmon Law accidently sent their copy of the order to LPS for some repair work. Or could it be that they interpret the STAY order to exclude evictions?

Providing for the defense of the United States is Congress’ constitutional obligation. Lawmakers should recognize defense is a necessity, if not the federal government’s most important responsibility. In recent years, however, defense spending has continued to decline as entitlement spending increased. Priorities are being misplaced as the gap between entitlement spending and defense spending continues to widen. This chart is part of Heritage’s 2011 Budget Chart Book, featuring infographics on federal spending, revenue, debt and deficits, and entitlement programs.

Yesterday my son and I were travelling down the road when he turns to me and tells me that the lady on the corner panhandling is holding a sign with one hand and talking on her smartphone with the other. Am I missing something here?

Link only, per FR posting rules

NAIROBI, May 18 (Xinhua) -- An international research team using a new combination of approaches has found two genes that may prove of vital importance to the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers in a tsetse fly-plagued swathe of Africa. The research, aimed at finding the biological keys to protection from a single-celled trypanosome parasite that causes both African sleeping sickness in people and a wasting disease in cattle, brought together a range of high-tech tools and field observations to address a critical affliction of some of the world' s poorest people. "The two genes discovered in this research...

NPR would like to talk with first-generation immigrants who send money to family or friends in their home countries. Tell us in the comments what country you're sending money.

A group of African students whose college tuitions are being paid by the U.S. government yesterday received a boost of additional funds to continue their educations – and an executive from the private contractor coordinating the program just happens to be the wife of a senior Obama administration official...the U.S. Agency for International Development under the current initiative has already spent nearly $2.1 million to send 16 students from the southeast African nation of Malawi to colleges in their homeland as well as in the U.S. and Kenya... World Learning's senior vice president for international development and exchange programs is...

...Census Bureau data reveals that most U.S. families headed by illegal immigrants use taxpayer-funded welfare programs on behalf of their American-born anchor babies. Even before the recession, immigrant households with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives, according to the extensive census data collected and analyzed by a nonpartisan Washington D.C. group dedicated to researching legal and illegal immigration in the U.S...The majority of households across the country benefitting from publicly-funded welfare programs are headed by immigrants, both legal and illegal. States where immigrant households with children have the highest welfare use rates are Arizona (62%), Texas,...

Came across this while on youtube yesterday. HILLARIOUS! Shows the mindset of Democrats. Here is the about page of a typical Obama supporter in Bolshevik redTo all conservatives suffering from me-ism. The price of living in great societies like America is "progressive" taxation. You "individuals" all enjoy the services made possible by a collective society such as the Internet you are enjoying now. The leaders of these said societies are elected to disperse the revenues gained through taxation for the well-being of the "society" not the "individual". It's called "socialism" and without it, there can be no society. Without a...

Right now, 30,000 people are gathered outside of the Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin speaking out against Republican Governor Scott Walker's attempt to take away collective bargaining rights from public employees. Our SEIU brothers and sisters stand to lose their rights as well and are speaking out in force. Use this form to send a message to SEIU members - and everyone - who have been fighting for their rights all week outside (and inside) the Capitol. We'll make sure they receive your thoughts this weekend.

ROME — Italy’s interior minister said Sunday that the country hoped to send its armed forces to Tunisia to help stem the flow of illegal immigrants, after more than 3,000 Tunisians arrived by boat on an Italian island in recent days.“I will ask Tunisia’s foreign minister for authorization for our forces to intervene in Tunisia to block the influx,” Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said in an Italian television interview on Sunday.......in 2009, Italy signed a renewed bilateral accord with Tunisia, pledging financial support in exchange for help in preventing would-be immigrants from leaving the country’s shores. But that accord seems...