Free Republic

RINO January 6 Committee vice chair Liz Cheney told ABC’s Jon Karl that the Republican Party cannot survive if Trump is the 2024 nominee.“Will the party survive in the way you’ve known it if Donald Trump is again chosen?” Jon Karl asked Cheney.“It can’t survive if he’s our nominee,” Cheney said. “I think that he can’t be the party nominee. I don’t think the party would survive that.”“Those of us who believe in Republican principles and ideals have a responsibility to try to lead the party back to what it can be and to reject so much of the toxin...

President Donald Trump slammed Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report Sunday and Monday, and while it’s subjective to argue whether the right-leaning news aggregator has moved away from positive Trump stories, one thing is true: Drudge’s readership is down a whopping 38% from last year. According to Comscore data, the Drudge Report had 1.488 million unique visitors in July 2020 — the most recent month for which data is available. That’s down 38.0% from July 2019, when the site boasted 2.399 million unique visitors. Remarking on a post that said the Drudge Report had seen a “historic crash,” the president...

WASHINGTON - The financial conditions of the government’s two biggest benefits programs remain shaky, with Medicare projected to become insolvent in six years and Social Security on track to no longer be able to pay full benefits starting in 2035. And that’s without accounting for the impact of the coronavirus, which is sure to impose further pressure on the two programs. For Social Security, the projected 2035 date for exhausting the trust fund reserves means that it would be able to pay only 79% of benefits at that time. The projected timetables, which remained unchanged from last year’s estimates, were...

Aging population is boosting the costs of Social Security and Medicare as growth projections ease The Social Security program’s costs will exceed its income this year for the first time since 1982, forcing the program to dip into its nearly $3 trillion trust fund to cover benefits. This is three years sooner than expected a year ago, partly due to lower economic growth projections, according to the latest annual report the trustees of Social Security and Medicare released Tuesday. The program’s income comes from tax revenue and interest from its trust fund. The trust fund will be depleted in 2034...

Social Security will spend more than it collects this year, the program’s trustees said Tuesday, marking the first time in more than 35 years that it will run an annual deficit as it slides toward insolvency by 2034. Medicare’s main trust fund is in even worse shape, scheduled to hit insolvency in 2026 — three years earlier than last year’s estimate, the trustees said. The twin warnings add even more pressure to a budget already strained by last year’s tax cuts and this year’s deal to boost spending on defense and basic domestic needs, leaving few bright spots in the...

Medicare’s trust fund will run out of money in just over 10 years, according to a new report from the program’s trustees. Once that happens, the federal government won’t collect enough in payroll taxes to cover beneficiaries’ hospital bills. Congress could hike taxes to cover the shortfall. Or it could ration care to save money. Or it could modernize and restructure Medicare — by giving beneficiaries means-tested vouchers to buy private insurance. Doing so would protect taxpayers now, preserve the program for future generations and even provide higher-quality care to seniors. Medicare‘s spending isn’t sustainable. Congress can stave off massive...

The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), now up for reauthorization, is in major need of revision. Its billion-dollar-a-year price tag spent by the radical feminists to pursue their ideology and goals (known as feminist pork) make it an embarrassment to members of Congress who voted for it. For 30 years, the feminists have been pretending that their goal is to abolish all sex discrimination, eliminating all gender differences no matter how reasonable. When it comes to domestic violence, however, feminist dogma preaches that there is an innate gender difference: Men are naturally batterers, and women are naturally victims (i.e., gender...

The immigration deal foundered yesterday, on the verge of collapse under its own weight just days after it appeared to have a clear path to pass the Senate. By late in the afternoon, Republicans were accusing Democrats of trying to "stuff" them, and Democrats said Republicans were trying to kill the bill by obstructing the process. Both sides were saying they don't know whether the process can be put back on track. A showdown is scheduled for tomorrow, when Democrats said they will force a vote to set a time limit on the bill, and Republicans have promised to block...

Self-confessed Star Wars obsessive, Ash guitarist Mark Hamilton, has said news that the story is to be turned into a TV series will be a saviour for its fans. The County Down musician - who has spent thousands on Star Wars memorabilia over the years - said there had been some gloom after the film series ended with Revenge of the Sith. But fans across the world have been celebrating the announcement that more than 100 hours of new TV episodes are planned. Mark, who is currently in the United States, said many fans feared with the final film that...

It's a clear, chilly, noir midnight on bombed-out Jasper Street in Kensington. An El train chugs against the sky two blocks away. To the right, peeking above a roof, One Liberty Place shines brightly, a million miles away. Beneath lonely streetlights, a film crew huddles around a white van parked outside one of the two habitable houses on the block. Inside the van, Rocky Balboa is listening to his friend Marie: Go for it. Get in the ring one last time. That also happens to be why Sylvester Stallone is in Philadelphia. Rocky's creator is giving the big lug one...

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum. We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is...

Pittsburgh Brewing, forced into bankruptcy yesterday to avoid a cutoff of its water supply, plans to get rid of more than $6 million in pension obligations and emerge from bankruptcy with its ownership group intact, Vice Chairman Joseph Piccirilli said.From left, Pittsburgh Brewing Co.'s Valerie Stoltz, director of human resources; Tony Ferraro, vice president of sales and marketing; Jeff Vavro from media relations; and Joseph Piccirilli, vice chairman, talk after a news conference at the brewery in Lawrenceville yesterday afternoon

WASHINGTON - A school closes that once housed a polling place. For the next election, city officials send voters to a new site across the street. In Boston, no problem. In Atlanta, no problem provided the federal government grants permission. Such has been the law for 40 years under the Voting Rights Act, which sought to end racist poll taxes and literacy tests by putting Southern states - then the worst offenders, without question - on a shorter leash than most other places. Now President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and congressional leaders from both political parties are pushing to...

Capital Sports & Entertainment Inc. knows something about comebacks. After all, cyclist Lance Armstrong is its marquee client. Now, the Austin management and marketing firm is resurrecting Lollapalooza, a touring musical extravaganza that dominated U.S. concert venues in the early 1990s. Founded in 1991 by Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, Lollapalooza toured for seven successful summers, encapsulating youth culture for Generation X in the same way Woodstock did for hippies in the 1960s. But in 1998, the tour was canceled because of poor ticket sales. After a five-year absence, the festival attempted a comeback in 2003, which culminated in more...

I consider the DUmmies to be like my personal ant farm. Every day I look through my computer screen window at my DUmmie Ant Farm and they never disappoint. It is fascinating to stare at my DUmmie Ant Farm because they go though so many interesting variations. Some days the DUmmies are in a state of hilarious despair. Other days they act like drama queens. Since the election they often scream in helpless rage at the lousy deck of cards fate has dealt them. Today’s DUmmie FUnnies is one of the best in the FUN department as DUmmie mopaul describes...