Free Republic

Blue Note From crypto-focused site Blockworks: With bitcoin nearing its all-time high, eye watering nonfungible token sales appear to be cropping back up. A CryptoPunk just sold for 4,500 ether, worth over $16 million at current prices. That’s the second largest sale ever for the blue-chip NFT collection, trailing only a $23.7 million CryptoPunk purchase made in Feb. 2022. CryptoPunk 3100, the one that sold Monday morning, sold for $2,127 in 2017 before changing hands again for $7.58 million in 2021. There are 10,000 unique CryptoPunks. Each punk has randomly generated attributes, like differing glasses or hairstyles. Punk 3100 is...

Abramorama has unveiled official trailer for Billion Dollar Babies (2023). Feature-length documentary that captures the incredible true story of the Cabbage Patch Kids, leaving nothing untouched, including the fundamental dispute over who originated the idea. From the marketing genius of the “hospital” in an idyllic North Georgian town where children “adopted” the dolls and solemnly pledged to love and care for them, to the subsequent business deal that gave rise to utter retail pandemonium, the film takes viewers on the wild ride through the Cabbage Patch Kids...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here. Small arms, ATGMs, MANPADS, loitering munitions, drones used as unmanned bait, civilian vehicles, trailers and derelict equipment are not included in this list. All possible effort has gone into avoiding duplicate entries and discerning the status of equipment between captured or abandoned. Many of the entries listed as 'abandoned' will likely end up captured or destroyed. Similarly, some of the captured equipment might be destroyed if it can't be recovered. When the...

In every century the same thing happens at one point or another. Society loses the plot and gets caught up in a mania, a grandiose exercise in self delusion. It can be political, it can be religious, and yes it can be economic. Sometimes these manias are confined to regions or small groups of people, sometimes they are vast in reach and impact and have global consequences. We can all think of examples. Religious? How about witch burnings? Politics? How about Nazism? Economics? How about all the manias that had fervent believers and adherents that with the hindsight of time...

Before the Coronavirus Panic was instigated in the U.S., Torsten Engelbrecht and Claus Köhnlein, M.D., Kiel, Germany, wrote a book in 2007, “Virus Mania: How the Medical Industry Invents Epidemics Making Billion Dollar Profits at our Expense.” This book will make most people mad who have lost businesses and jobs due to the overkill governmental response in California to the so-called virus epidemic. Dr. Kohnlein scientifically debunks the popular notions that SARS Coronavirus, AIDS, Asian Flu, Hepatitis, Polio and Cervical Cancer are caused by a virus. According to his research viruses are blamed for many epidemics manufactured by the pharmaceutical...

Hold the bacon! If you are a fan of beef jerky, salami, hot dogs and other cured meats, you may be putting yourself at risk for manic episodes, according to a new study. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered an apparent link between consumption of nitrate-cured meats and hospitalization for mania, an elevated mood characterized by hyperactivity, euphoria and insomnia. Manic episodes, which are associated with bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder, may last for weeks or months and can lead to delusional thinking and risk-taking behavior. Researchers seeking to find what factors, other than genetics,...

Some day soon, even as sweet, skunky smoke drifts in from the streets outside, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and other staunch opponents of marijuana may draw inspiration from a true believer named Morris Sheppard. After the repeal of national Prohibition in 1933 and until his death in 1941, the Texas senator embraced a yearly custom. A progressive Democrat often considered “the father of Prohibition,” Sheppard would rise on the Senate floor to rail against alcohol and call for a repeal of Repeal. “It was a ritual,” Daniel Okrent, author of the 2010 book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: So what we're gonna see here, we're gonna see an increased media presence in Charlotte. Even when we reach the time where tensions have subsided a bit, there are planeloads of Drive-Bys even as I speak probably on the way to Charlotte now with their cameras. They can't wait to get there because this is all about black turnout. And in a specific sense it's about winning North Carolina for Hillary. They can't believe it, folks. They can't believe where they are. They can't believe this is happening. They can't believe that Hillary isn't running away with...

  Smoking cannabis can lead to manic behaviour: Hyperactivity, aggression and delusion are all strongly linked with the drug, researchers warn  

Make no mistake, the Bitcoin opportunity is creating a fast evolving trillion dollar new market in cryptocurrency eCommerce and more importantly mCommerce or mobile-Commerce. The future of cryptocurrencies is being secured right now with the launch of many new apps to enable digital cash, electronic payments and secure eWallets using cryptocurrencies via smart phones and other digital devices such as secure pens, sophisticated crypto-watches and customised memory sticks. Cryptocurrency adoption is growing very fast, in a similar exponential curve to the adoption of the world wide web in the years following 1995 or even the spread of electric power exactly...

I was just starting to work on a column about silver mania Tuesday morning when a big, beautifully produced ad insert on silver, of all things, arrived with my Financial Times. Proclaiming that “silver is the single greatest profit opportunity of our time,” the insert featured a huge, nearly three-dimensional replica of a one-ounce U.S. silver eagle, with Liberty herself reaching out her hand and In God We Trust right there for all to see. The coin replica, some 3 ½ inches in diameter, shone like a harvest moon, glittering with the possibility of instant riches. And — you just...

David Frum takes Sarah Palin to task for not being more public in her reaction to the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords, not being sufficiently empathetic, and not grasping the scope (no pun intended) of the accusations against her, What Palin Needed To Say After Giffords' Shooting: "Palin failed to appreciate the question being posed to her. That question was not: “Are you culpable for the shooting?” The question was: “Having put this unfortunate image on the record, can you respond to the shooting in a way that demonstrates your larger humanity? And possibly also your potential to serve as leader...

The conventional wisdom on Wall Street is that the gold bubble is about to pop. After all, people will tell you, the little guy is now totally on this bandwagon. Ordinary Mom and Pop investors from Bakersfield to Boston have dumped their stocks and poured their money into gold coins and bullion funds. It's a mania–just like Nasdaq '99, real estate '04, gold '10. Look at all the TV commercials. Look at these new gold coin vending machines. Everybody knows that when the ordinary public get into a boom, the smart money gets out. Right? I decided to check out...

Do you hear that music? Sure sounds beautiful. As the Left becomes more disenchanted with Zero, folks inside the Zero White House are leaking what's going on to leftie blogs. Here is a compilation of those leaks that is appearing all over the liberal-left blogosphere. Disturbing and mesmerizing whispering that the Oval Office is the scene of stormy and romantic melodrama between POTUS and his most senior and trusted advisers. Whispering that POTUS is sleeping poorly and is much aggrieved at slights, shortfalls, interruptions. Whispering that POTUS is vulnerable to jet lag. That POTUS has returned to chain-smoking. That POTUS...

Kagan ManiaKagan's Hidden, But Obvious, Agenda Why Do They Hate Elena Kagan? The left-wing blogosphere hates Elena Kagan. Really. The venom percolating up from the depths of the nutroots is getting pretty toxic. A sampling of names of the list and why they hate her so much...The left comes out against KaganVIDEO:White House video interview done with Obama's Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. The interview was done by White House staff, and was posted to the internet to allow people to hear from Kagan "unfiltered."TheWhite House Press Corps was not happy that they were not allowed to interview Kagan, and...

This clown Barack "Ogaffa" has taken "dumb", beyond the occasional gaffe, to a whole new level. From Khruschev to Chavez and more. Also be sure to watch BO's Gaffe Mania II.

I'm not saying the stock market will crash, only that if it had any relation to the real U.S. economy that it should crash, and soon. The current politics of experience is so warped by misleading statistics and orchestrated propaganda that it feels strange to state the obvious and find it is "that which cannot be spoken" -- the credit-dependent, consumer-dependent U.S. economy is going down, and going down hard, and the trillions of dollars borrowed and spent by the U.S. government and Federal Reserve to crank up a recovery have failed completely, utterly and totally.

Remember the 1990s tech bubble? When it burst, the experts were telling you - you should have been into Blue Chips. After you shifted your money - BANG - the market collapsed with ENRON, WORLDCOM and the others then Sarbanes-Oxley was enacted and the experts declared that you should have diversified and had some money into the "fourth asset class" - real estate. Many cashed out whatever was left in mutual funds and bought "investment condos" thinking they were going to "flip and buy" which was a strategy that lasted for a bit then they got caught up in the...

Anti-psychotics are not effective long-term, shrink the brain and almost triple the risk of dying early, a London NHS psychiatrist and academic has written in a new book. Isn't it about time for a deep examination of the validity of such drugs asks Adam James? ..... Christian was slouched in a chair in Bradford psychiatric unit. He was, seemingly, only half-conscious, half alive. He could hardly speak, let alone raise his head. Christian had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Two days before, in a haze of paranoia, he had punched a colleague of mine at a day centre. So Christian was...