Free Republic

Latest column. It's a bit different. Covers egregious disinformation that the media spread Sunday about COVID and lays out some facts about the virus not being reported. But also tries to make how cruel these lockdowns are to people suffering from severe depression and the shamefully ignored massive spike in suicides that occurred as a consequence real to people by imagining what it must have been like for those who took their own lives. It's very very dark, which it had to be, but not sure how successful it is. Hard for me to tell. Also wanted to say thanks...

Doctors in Northern California say they have seen more deaths from suicide than they’ve seen from the coronavirus during the pandemic. “The numbers are unprecedented,” Dr. Mike deBoisblanc of John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, told ABC 7 News about the increase of suicide deaths adding that he’s seen a “year’s worth of suicides” in the last four weeks alone.

A California teen girl died by suicide — likely while grappling with the stress caused by coronavirus lockdowns, according to reports. Jo’Vianni “Jo” Smith, 15, was found dead at her Stockton home, where she hanged herself amid the state’s stay-at-home orders, news station KTXL reported.

To close out her 2019, Lupita Hernandez stopped after every mile to plant a small flag along Interstate-10 between Houston and San Antonio. Each pause in her 200-mile run was to honor a fellow veteran battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), something she has dealt with since she retired from the Marines in 2004. PTSD still affects her life each day, whether personally or in Hernandez’s work in the Veteran Treatment Court in Harris County, Texas. On average, 22 veterans commit suicide everyday, and that’s a statistic that is always on her mind. “I wanted to bring awareness to the stigma...

They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. I think many readers of this article will respond with outrage, and many will see it says things they already knew to be true—and I think these two groups will largely overlap. The most powerful obstacle to confronting a destructive addiction is denial, and collectively we are in denial about pornography. Since it seems somehow relevant, let me state at the outset that I am French. Every fiber of my Latin, Catholic body recoils at puritanism of any sort, especially the bizarre, Anglo-Puritan kind so prevalent in America. I...

Freshman Rep. Katie Hill resigned Thursday in the wake of multiple controversies, including engaging in at least one sexual relationship with a campaign staff member. Conservative website Red State published intimate photos of the California Democrat on Oct. 18 after they were leaked to the site, sparking a debate about inappropriate relationships and “revenge porn.” Hill should not have engaged in a relationship with a subordinate while holding public office, and thus should shoulder the blame for that choice. Nonetheless, there’s little the public can do about her personal choices other than to call for her resignation. There may be...

Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety is out with a new report urging the use of “red flag” laws to deprive veterans of their guns in hopes of reducing suicide, but their gun control solution to a mental health problem is getting pushback from many in the military. We’ve talked extensively about the problems with flag laws here at Bearing Arms, but forget the due process concerns for a moment. Who really believes that the best way to help a suicidal veteran is to take their guns away and then leave them alone? “Red flag” laws are a gun control...

SACRAMENTO, September 17, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The California legislature has voted in a resolution that blames "religious groups" who hold to biblical understandings of sex and gender as responsible for "disproportionately high rates" of suicide among homosexuals and transgenders. Assembly Concurrent Resolution 99 declares that homosexuality and transgenderism are “part of natural variations that occur in sexual orientation and gender identity” and condemns counseling services that help people resolve unwanted gender confusion or same-sex attraction.

Seattle Bishop Approves Funeral for Gay Shaman Who Committed Suicide In 2014 Abp. Sartain approved the funeral Mass of a homosexual priest who abused 10 boys The archbishop of Seattle, Washington approved Catholic funeral rites for an active, unrepentant homosexual whose highly publicized suicide party involved "marrying" his gay partner while being accompanied by clairvoyants.  It's not the first time Abp. J. Peter Sartain has gotten in hot water over a funeral. In 2014 he was criticized for allowing the funeral Mass of a homosexual priest who had admitted to abusing as many as 10 boys. His funeral Mass was concelebrated by...

despite what you may have heard, the frequency of mass shootings hasn’t changed much over recent decades. In fact, such shootings are rare and account for a tiny fraction of overall gun deaths in America. About 33,000 people are fatally shot in the U.S. each year. About two-thirds of these deaths are suicides. Another third of these are homicides, which have been steadily declining for decades. In 2015, some 13,286 people were killed in the U.S. by firearms in non-suicide related deaths. In 1993, that figure was 18,253. In most of the years in between, part of a decades-long trend...

U.S. suicide rates are at the highest level since World War II, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report, per Bloomberg's Cynthia Koons. By the numbers: From 2000 to 2006, the suicide rate in the U.S. increased by an average of about 1% a year. From 2006 through 2016, it increased by 2% a year. There were 1.4 million suicide attempts in 2017 and 47,000 deaths. Why it matters: Despite an improvement of material well-being, emotional distress in the U.S. has reached "crisis levels," according to the CDC. Koons reports that the national mental health epidemic...

Thousands of people who pass over the Golden Gate Bridge likely didn’t notice the four new metal protrusions on its western and eastern flanks. Kymberlyrenee Gamboa did. For the Fair Oaks resident, the four support beams were evidence that the bridge’s ambitious suicide barrier was actually beginning to take form — a project Gamboa and her family had wished was already completed before her 18-year-old son, Kyle, jumped off the bridge five years ago and died. “It was pretty emotional for everybody that has been involved to actually physically see something out there,” Kymberlyrenee Gamboa said. “Because it does take...

As Amnesty International obsessively targets Israel, it turns out that they should be paying more attention to what is going on way closer to home. Amnesty International has a “toxic” working environment, with widespread bullying, public humiliation, discrimination and other abuses of power, a report has found. A review into workplace culture, commissioned after two staff members killed themselves last year, found a dangerous “us versus them” dynamic, and a severe lack of trust in senior management, which threatened Amnesty’s credibility as a human rights champion. It added: “As organisational rifts and evidence of nepotism and hypocrisy become public knowledge...

Saturday's Today show on NBC spent almost two minutes highlighting an obituary for a suicide victim in Vermont that is part of an effort to encourage new laws that would require a 24-hour waiting period before purchasing a gun ..... Co-host Sheinelle Jones set up the segment by recalling that the CDC recently reported that the number of gun-related deaths per year is at the highest level in about 40 years. Co-host Peter Alexander then added: "This morning, an obituary for a young man who took his own life is going viral, his parents now calling for stricter gun control...

“Gun deaths in US reach highest level in nearly 40 years, CDC data reveal,” blared Thursday’s headline on CNN.com. A press release from Everytown for Gun Safety noted that “39,773 people were killed by gun violence in 2017 — approximately 1,100 more than were killed by motor vehicle accidents.” The picture these announcements evoke is of mass shootings and random gun crimes that pose a mortal danger to every American. But that image is not quite accurate. The number of homicides actually declined last year — and is believed to have fallen again this year. Our streets have gotten safer....

Rising seas, vanishing water resources, expanded deserts and disappearing species all have been blamed on global warming. Now it’s to blame for more suicides, says a new report. The Guardian of London reported a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change found warming could be as significant a cause as economic recessions, “which are known to increase self-harm.” “The links between mental health and global warming have not been widely researched but the new work analyzed temperature and suicides across the U.S. and Mexico in recent decades. It found that the rate of suicide rose by 0.7 percent in...

A record 245 people tried to jump off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in 2017, but fewer succeeded, thanks to the city’s men and women in blue. The number of successful police interventions with potential bridge-jumpers jumped from 184 in 2016 to 245 in 2017, while the number of confirmed suicides fell from 39 to 33 over the same period, according to a bridge authority report cited by The Marin Independent Journal. Five new police officers were added to the bridge’s security detail in 2017, bringing the number of officers available to thwart suicide attempts to 36. In May of...

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump tweeted that he wouldn’t allow transgender individuals to serve in the military:

Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election. There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor, once Trump was elected, did transgendered people begin killing themselves in alarming numbers. Nor were there mass resignations at the State Department upon his inauguration. Nor did Donald Trump seek an order to “ban all Muslims” from entering the U.S. Instead, he temporarily sought a suspension in visas for everyone, regardless of religion, from seven Middle Eastern states that the Obama administration had earlier identified as...

Two Columbia University professors recently sent a letter to the institution’s president that linked a “fog” of political suffering to a “cluster of suicides” by students. Professors Robert Pollack and Letty Moss-Salentijn, the co-chairs of the Columbia Faculty Affairs Committee, contacted Columbia President Lee Bollinger on Feb. 24 about the need to help “faculty to reach into themselves and find strength to express themselves.” The two mentioned student suicides before requesting venues for quiet conversations and easy access to websites dedicated to preserving freedom.