Free Republic

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is ah-live! Maybe. He sent a message giving his appreciation to people building a complex at his father’s hometown on the border of China although state radio didn’t say anything about the 36-year-old’s health. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported no photos of Kim have been published since his vanishing on April 11th amid speculation heart problems either felled or left him comatose. South Korea’s official stance is Kim remains in the realm of the living. South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s foreign policy adviser sent a statement to American media saying Kim is “alive...

Young Turks employees vote to unionize over Cenk Uygur’s strenuous objections John SextonPosted at 2:41 pm on April 10, 2020 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter The Young Turks is a progressive media company co-founded by Cenk Uygur. When a group of employees announced plans to form a union earlier this year, CEO Uygur suddenly started sounding like a conservative union-buster. He warned that a union couldn’t make a magic pot of money appear and begged employees to reconsider. Thursday, over his objections, the employees voted to unionize: We have voted again and have reaffirmed our decision to organize. We...

More to the point, Donald Trump doesn’t think Democrats can work with him either. In his Super Bowl interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump complained bitterly about the “damage” done to his family and the country in the impeachment and trial. “I’d like to” work with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Trump told Hannity, but they’re so dishonest and obsessed with winning that he doesn’t think it’s possible.That sounds like exactly what Pelosi and Schumer would say, too: HANNITY: Two hundred and seventy days from now, I guess the ultimate jury –the American people — go to...

In the scientific community, there is still a great deal of energy devoted to “listening” for evidence or hints of intelligent, extraterrestrial civilizations out among the stars. Most of you are probably familiar with the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and their decades of work in this field. They’re still at it and, in fact, are upping their game with a new generation of laser sensors. These projects drew fresh attention after the discovery of Tabby’s Star and the frantic speculation over whether or not some ancient civilization had built a Dyson Sphere around their own sun. This has led...

Do Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump want John Bolton to offer a deposition to House Democrats? One might think that, under the circumstances, the president and his attorney might want to lower the temperature with Trump’s former national security adviser after Fiona Hill’s testimony. Instead, Giuliani wasted no time in trolling Bolton over Hill’s reports about his reaction to Giuliani’s work in Ukraine.His conversation with New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi wasn’t too bad: I asked Rudy Giuliani, “If you had to describe yourself as a weapon other than a hand grenade what weapon would you be?” Giuliani responded, “I’m...

President Trump has harshly criticized the Federal Reserve in recent weeks for inching up the standard interest rate to guard against rising inflation and threatening the four percent economic growth rate the billionaire likes to brag about. Here’s another reason: The higher interest rates on your credit card balances and car loans also apply to the federal government’s borrowing. RECOMMENDED

The Renewable Fuels Standard — that oh so ingenious method of creating a fake market for a not-green, not-clean, food-price-spiking, special-interest-serving and overall terrible product — requires that the nation’s refiners blend an ever-increasing volume of specified and so-called biofuels into the fuel supply. Refiners, however, are insisting that we’re now getting to a point at which mixing the required volumes will exceed the 10 percent ethanol threshold they find acceptable for use in cars and trucks, a.k.a. hitting the “blend wall.” Refiners that don’t manage to achieve the mandated volume of biofuels are required to purchase credits (RINs), and...