Free Republic

Have you ever heard of the old expression, “The left can’t meme?” Well, apparently TIME magazine is so broken with Trump Derangement Syndrome it can’t even figure out what a meme is. TIME railed against former President Donald Trump for posting on Truth Social what the leftist magazine described as a “new and bizarre campaign ad” of his “head tak[ing] the place of the moon and block[ing] out the sun in a nod to Monday’s solar eclipse.” Making it seem like the video was an actual campaign ad, the magazine continued: “It shows an image of the glowing sun as...

A Time magazine article analyzing self-immolation as a form of protest drew comparisons between Christians who were burned alive for their faith during the Roman Empire and the U.S. airman who set himself on fire last month to protest the Israel-Hamas war. A Feb. 26 Time magazine article details how self-immolation has been used as a form of protest throughout history, including during the Vietnam War and the Arab Spring. Aaron Bushnell, 25, an active-duty U.S. Air Force member, filmed himself dousing his body in a clear liquid before lighting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington on...

The long-awaited counteroffensive last year failed. Russia has recaptured Avdiivka, its biggest war gain in nine months. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been forced to quietly acknowledge the new military reality. The Biden Administration’s strategy is now to sustain Ukrainian defense until after the U.S. presidential elections, in the hope of wearing down Russian forces in a long war of attrition. This strategy seems sensible enough, but contains one crucially important implication and one potentially disastrous flaw, which are not yet being seriously addressed in public debates in the West or Ukraine. The implication of Ukraine standing indefinitely on the defensive—even...

When U.S. news outlets' lucrative peddling of Chinese propaganda was exposed in 2019 and 2020, it was a scandal. Human rights groups condemned the practice, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal swore off Chinese Communist Party money. In the years since, however, a number of major U.S. newspapers and magazines have kept at it—accepting hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for publishing content by China Daily, a state-owned English-language paper. China Daily's Foreign Agents Registration Act filings show that between October 2020 and October 2023, the CCP mouthpiece paid...

President Joe Biden had some good economic news last week. The American economy added 353,000 new jobs, nearly twice what many people predicted. Previous months’ job gains were also revised upward, and for a change, it wasn’t government jobs that were leading the advances. Wages grew faster than expected. Consumer spending was strong. Simply put, they were really, really good economic numbers. Biden also had some horrible political news last week. A new poll had his overall approval rating at 37 percent, the lowest of his term. He trailed former President Donald Trump by 20 points on who was best...

Notwithstanding the lopsided opinions the editors of Time Magazine foist upon readers, the real Person of the Year is actually Man of the Year: the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.One of the criteria Time Magazine uses for its choice is “who most shaped the headlines over the previous 12 months, for better or for worse.” (Emphasis added.) That seems like a narrow perspective from which to filter candidates. Still, per Google Trends, “Taylor Swift” may have been a more popular online search term than “Jerome Powell.”One wonders who was conducting those Google searches. Perhaps it was adoring girls...

Respiratory disease season is in full swing, with influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 case counts rising in various parts of the U.S. Hospitals in some states are also reporting upticks in pediatric pneumonia diagnoses, which experts say seems to be unrelated to the recent spike of pneumonias reported in China. On the heels of last year’s severe flu and RSV reason, all this contagion has some people wondering if SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may be to blame. Some studies suggest the virus leaves its mark on the immune system even after an acute illness passes, raising an important question:...

Taylor Swift is telling me a story, and when Taylor Swift tells you a story, you listen, because you know it’s going to be good—not only because she’s had an extraordinary life, but because she’s an extraordinary storyteller. This one is about a time she got her heart broken, although not in the way you might expect. She was 17, she says, and she had booked the biggest opportunity of her life so far—a highly coveted slot opening for country superstar Kenny Chesney on tour. “This was going to change my career,” she remembers. “I was so excited.” But a...

Covid and flu shots can be safely given at the same time, and according to a small new study, doing so may even confer benefits. Findings presented Monday at the Vaccines Summit Boston, an annual scientific conference, suggest that giving Covid and flu shots together could produce a stronger antibody response against the coronavirus than administering the vaccines separately. The study measured the antibody levels of 42 health care workers in Massachusetts who were vaccinated last fall. Twelve of the participants received a bivalent Covid booster and seasonal influenza shot on the same day. Another 30 received the shots on...

President Joe Biden bragged on Tuesday about sharing a “great deal of time” with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, which has tentacles throughout Biden family business deals. While speaking at the White House, Biden recalled he was on the Tibetan Plateau with Xi, with whom he “spent a great deal of time with him one-on-one” when he “was vice president and since then.” It is unclear if Joe Biden suggested he met one-on-one with Xi during his time as a private citizen between 2017 and 2020 or if he referred to time spent with...

NEW YORK -- About 3,000 asylum-seekers have been told their time was up in New York City shelters, but about half have reapplied to stay, according to a newspaper report. The United States' most populous city has struggled to contend with the arrival of over 120,000 asylum-seekers in the past year. About 60,000 are currently in shelters run by the city, which is legally required to provide emergency housing to homeless people. The obligation is unmatched in any other major U.S. city.

CNN — If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts. That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist. “Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said during a February trip to Europe that there is no “time limit” on American support for Ukraine, according to a report released on Monday. Politico released a detailed piece about McConnell’s efforts to curb the ascending Trumpist wing of the Republican Party and fend off Trump-leaning Republicans’ noninterventionist sentiment. He told Politico that the “most important thing going on internationally right now is the Ukraine war.”

Just published my first ebook “The Combesville Dome 1888”. It is a story of a group of people who live in 2188. The Dome program is a recreational form where people can spend a weekend living their lives in a different era, completely cut off from the rest of the outside world. Not bad for an 82 year old, first time author, even if I do say so myself.

A Texas man who found a deceased woman in her backyard claims it took several phone calls for Austin police to respond. Retired Austin policeman Robert A. Gross’s letter to Mayor Kirk Watson regarding the woman who had been dead for two days was shared online by another retired officer identified as Dennis Farris, Fox News reported Monday.

Hunter Biden will reportedly receive no jail time upon agreeing to plead guilty to two federal tax violation charges and one violation of gun laws, per reports Tuesday morning. Legal experts believe it is unlikely Hunter Biden’s deal with President Joe Biden’s Justice Department will include any jail time, NBC News reported. “Hunter will get no jail time for being the bagman for Joe Biden’s vast foreign corruption,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the pro-Trump Article III Project and former Chief Counsel for Nominations to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, posted on Twitter. Hunter Biden, 53, has agreed to...

As our nation comes to grip with the horrific events of January 6 and watches the Republican Party descend further into Trumpism as it pushes hundreds of restrictive voting laws across the country, the obvious question is how does American democracy come back from all this? There is a path forward: The super-majority of Americans across the political spectrum who reject the extremism need to come together. This includes the pro-democracy right. But for the pro-democracy right to thrive, we need to reform the U.S. voting system to allow for new parties to emerge outside the existing two-party system. Without...

China’s state-run Global Times propaganda newspaper published an editorial on Wednesday dismissing calls by American Secretary of State Antony Blinken for Beijing to return to communications with Washington, stating the Communist Party has “no time” for “insincere people” like Blinken. The Times was apparently responding to remarks Blinken made during his visit to Japan this week, during which he attended a meeting of the top diplomats of G7 member countries. The foreign ministers published a joint communique condemning communist China for, among other provocative behavior, threatening to invade Taiwan and colonizing parts of the South China Sea that belong to...

Nostalgic photographs from the 1970s and 80s have revealed how Americans partied when life was 'a little bit more free'. Back in the pre-selfie age when smartphones were unheard of, families flocked to the nation's hotspots and revelers danced the night away without care. And while beaches were packed with sun-soaked swimmers and streets roared with muscle cars, photographer Mitch Epstein was on the scene to capture it all. The electric pictures, which bring back the golden days from every corner of America, can be found in Manhattan's Yancey Richardson Gallery until April 8.

How did U.S. exercise trends go from reinforcing white supremacy to celebrating Richard Simmons? That evolution is explored in a new book by a historian of exercise, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, author of the book Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession, out Jan. 2023. Nowadays, at the beginning of every New Year, many Americans hit the gym to work off their holiday feasts. This momentum usually starts to fade in mid-January, according to a 2019 analysis of data on fitness tracking apps by Bloomberg. But such new year’s resolutions are pretty new—as is the concept of exercise...