Free Republic

Pardon me for the vanity. I'm just windering if anyone else has gotten a weird "Account Suspended" page when trying to access Pat Buchanan's official website. Or know if anything may be going on with his website that is out of the ordinary. _For everyone's web-surfing safety, I am not asking anyone to go there! In fact, please don't if you haven't today._ Using duckduckgo to try to figure out what's going on, it reports that the site's server is up and responding to pings. If you've visited his site today and know it's up, just say so and I'll...

Looking for advice from FReeper A/V gueus on how to approach a player problem. I bought new a Live Good (LG) Blue-Ray/DVD player, model BP350, from Best Buy. It was fairly inexpensive ($79). Really, my first purchase of this sort of device. I'm a newb that way. My collection of video consists solely of DVDs (nearly all bought used) for now. I've been testing it all afternoon on perhaps five movies/shows and noticed something rather aggravating: one DVD (300) freezes midway through and won't play the last half of the movie. Another (A Bridge Too Far) plays most of the...

By letting the Rats be Rats, Trump shows us how really ratty the Rats can be in a crisis! Before mid-March, we lived in Trump World. Despite a lot of Rat shenanigans, we were winning bigly with the roaring economy and acquital after impeachment. Afterwards, when the ‘rona reared its ugly head, Trump listened to experts and followed recommendations for “flattening” the curve with stay-in-place orders. This lead to an economic shut-down, prompted the stimulus and explosion in debt, and opened the hospitals to ‘rona patients while _closing_ them to patients that were scheduled for other treatments and surgeries. We...

A simple vanity post seeking recommendations from FReepers. I gave up TV twenty years ago. But I still like watching DVDs. The player on the computer I watch mine on is giving out. I’d like to move on to a flat screen/player combo for both DVDs and Blu-Ray discs that’s in the 36” diagonal range. Larger is really no problem, but a huge, wall-mounted flat screen isn’t my style. Surround-sound and all that aren’t important to me either (good fidelity stereo is plenty nice for me.) My tastes are pretty simple that way. My home entertainment-fu is weak, so the...

I listened to part of the President's speech at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, given last Thursday (July 10, 2014) on the radio as I drove to Lockhart. One part of his speech leapt out at me and I haven't heard or read of anyone commenting on this particular quote. "When I think about equal pay, I think about my grandmother working her way up at a bank with nothing but a high school education and becoming the vice president of the bank, but always being kind of passed over for the next stage by men who were less...

C. Everett Koop popularized wearing a naval Vice Admiral's uniform since the office of Surgeon General is an equivalent rank in the Navy (as I understand, perhaps I'm wrong). Jocelyn Elders wore the uniform during her tenure (not sure if it was for the entire time during her tenure). Now I see that an associate Surgeon General who works for/ with the Center for Disease Control is wearing some naval-looking uniform too. I understand that the uniform is optional--but it seems to be surprisingly popular to wear since Koop wore one. Can anyone tell me WHY?

A friend asked me to consider Dwight Eisenhower as the last "fiscally responsible" President. Until the launch of Sputnik and the subsequent advent of the Space Race, he says that Eisenhower tried hard to blunt Soviet expansion and meet them head-on during his administration while also doing his utmost to keep the budget of the government balanced and its growth checked. Basically, once Sputnik was launched and the CIA caught flat-footed on estimates about the advanced level if the Soviet rocketry program and ICBM capabilities, subsequent administrations spared no expense in meeting any perceived threat. This sort of "spare no...

Hello! Pardon for the vanity, but I've finally decided to ask a question about something I've long wondered about. I as prompted by the current photo that Matt Drudge has posted of the latest Space Shuttle landing. (Sorry, but my linking skillz are teh suxors.) Sometimes when watching footage of aircraft landing taken directly from the front or rear, (in movies, news clips, whatever) I've noticed that just before touchdown, the aircraft is often at a barely perceptible angle to the left or right of the approach, even though it is soaring straight down the runway. Almost as though it...

October 24th was my 40th birthday. I can't say that I really felt 40 until this afternoon, when several of my best friends from high school, one an attorney with one of the Federal agencies, filled me genuine sadness and a bit of embarrassing loathing for the very first time in my life. Beginning this morning, I received a string of e-mails from this bunch expressing their disgust at the prospect of another 4 years under President Bush. I can tell when folks are grousing, but these guys were Michael Moore serious. And Kerry's concession only made it worse. Promises...

R and I saw the Two Towers last night - that was a cool movie. Some spots were a little slow (ie., frog creature argueing with himself too much, human reflecting/dreaming of elf women, etc.)but overall it was cool. Elf warrior kicked butt and the trees were cool. Sorry I don't know the names yet - I'll remember them next time. --C

TOP TEN REASONS WHY THE TWO TOWERS SUCKS!!! 1. The Man of SteelDidja notice? Gandalf "falls" off the bridge and flies through the air to grab his sword. Before he even hits the bottom, Gandalf has grabbed the firebeast and starts kicking his ass! Hey, Superman! Why didn't you do that while you had your sword and you were on the bridge? 2. How to Climb Mount EverestStep 1. Fall with a firebeast until you reach the lake at the bottom of the mountain. Step 2. Firebeasts hate water, so you can just bet he'll use his great wings of...

Suppose Government works together to roll back taxes to a 10% flat tax/sales tax. Whatever. States and Municipalities roll back taxes, too. Government does just what it's supposed to by the Constitution. It happens in, say, 20 yeras Okay, what happens to the buying power of our income? I think it should at least remain constant, which would allow people to save and invest without any problem. But is there a danger that inflation would explode to eat up all the dollars that would return to us? I know it may sound naive or even stupid, but I think this...

With the 9th's decision, it's only a mtter of time before the Left rewrites the Pledge of Allgeinace. I caught one busy-body hard at work on writing a new Pledge. Here's what he suggested. Any others?

Moderators: Pure fluff, I suppose, remove if you really think it necessary.But I'd like to ask FReepers what sort of society it was that built the Great Pyramids. Were the workers really slaves? Paid laborers? What sort of technology did they have to create them? Could such lasting monuments on a massive scale be built today? Should they be? Could we build a better one faster?One resource I have states that it took 100,000 builders working on average 3-4 months each 30 years to build Cheop's Pyramid alone. Some suggest there may still be hidden chambers.And there is no (or ...

It seems that when you become an adult, (I'm 37. I'll let you know when I get there! ;) ) all sorts of complicated situations arise when you're expected (or at least asked) to give gifts (or something. Money, etc.). Frankly, for some occassions, I fee very reluctant to give. I'm trying to guage what the opinons of others are on this topic and find out if I'm totally out line or what. For example: I like Girl Scout cookies, candy bars, cookies, gift wrap, etc., just fine but it bugs me when the parents of the sales staff canvas ...

I tip: Barbers, Wait Staff, Cabbies, Movers, and even slackers in their ice cream and coffee shops! (I live in Austin.) I give 15% though I honestly think that's high. I'd be happy giving 10% but some folks insist it's 20%. No one gets less than 10% and you have to be in some sort of foul mood or darned incompetent to get nothing from me. I've given 25% for superlative service and/or a great meal/time. Does that sound fair? Who should I give to and to whom shouldn't I?

We're still here. This thread has longer legs than I thought it ever would. For a while, I wondered if timestax was x42 himself! It occurs to me that script-writing in HTML is pretty code intensive, but I still think Bill would be a better gameshow host than political analyst. Maybe he can fuse the two: x42: "Alright Bob, for $10,000, can you name for me the greatest President to ever serve this nation?" Bob: "Hmm. I'm torn between two answers, Bill. Er, I mean, Mr. President." x42: "You're on the right track, Bob! *wink!* So, what's your answer? History-- ...

What is the Southern Poverty Law Center?

One of the things that I find most welcoming about FR is the sense of humor by most of the posters and the original comic skill of a few of you, such as the now-famous "registered" of Sore-Loserman fame. I find the comedy of Monty Python and Firesign Theater, whom I enjoy immensely, frequently referenced here. It is ironic, for example, that late night comedy and SNL is not frequently referenced here at all except on those rare occassions where they unwittingly stumble across the blindingly obvious. Scott Adams, Johnny Hart, and Douglas Adams have been referenced as well. By ...

I met an old college buddy, who happens to have his own law office, for lunch today along San Antonio's famed Riverwalk. While walking along, avoiding human traffic and pigeons, I noticed a snake treading through the river. "We'll I'll be... Check it out! There's a snake swimming through the water!" "Please, Mr. Severns, be more specific" my friend dead-panned, "Are you trying to say you see a limbless reptile swimming through the water? Or are you suggesting someone pushed another of my profession into the river?"