Free Republic

"Melania” was among the top five baby names in rising popularity last year, the first year of Melania Trump’s time as first lady of the United States. The name “Melania” came in just behind “Ensley,” “Oaklynn,” “Dream,” and “Oaklyn” in rising popularity for 2017, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration. The name Melania flew 720 spots up the chart from 2016 to 2017.....A CNN/SSRS poll released this week revealed the rising popularity of Mrs. Trump. Fifty-seven percent of Americans viewed her favorably in the new poll – a ten percent jump from a January poll, according to Politico. Mrs....

Sarah Palin was the headliner last night at a MAGA Coalition event held at the Trump International in Washington D.C. She had lots and lots to say! She was brought to the stage by social media sensations Diamond and Silk, "A true patriot. We call her sassy and classy." Palin thanked the duo, saying "You are my sisters", quipping that "I figure, if Kanye and Trump may be brothers" … leaving the comparison for the audience to decipher, then paid tribute to Kanye West’s independent thinking. "I did read recently that Senator McCain", Palin began to say, but was immediately...

Glennon: Statewide property tax proposed by Chicago Fed By Mark Glennon - An audible gasp went out in the breakout room I was in at last month's pension eventcosponsored by The Civic Federation and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. That was when a speaker from the Chicago Fed proposed levying, across the state and in addition to current property taxes, a special property assessment they estimate would be about 1% of actual property value each year for 30 years. Evidently, that wasn't reality-shock enough. This week the Chicago Fed published that proposal formally. It's linked here. It surely ranks...

Your genitals determine your biological SEX -- which is male or female. What determines gender [masculine, feminine, neutral] is culture. So in some cultures, a skirt is feminine while in others it is masculine.#YouMightBeALiberal if the Divine was fallible in making you, but you are infallible in what you think you should be. Sex is biological and gender is cultural. There is no such thing, for example, as "neutral sex" -- even if you get your male junk cut off. Then you are an emasculated male. The Left tries to make them interchangeable to so they can blur the...

Jordan Peterson and Matt Dillahunty discuss religion & science.

"...Author Ryan Holiday discusses his book, Conspiracy, with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. This is a crazy episode about a crazy book about a crazy set of events--the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against the website Gawker, a lawsuit that was secretly funded by Peter Thiel. Holiday explains how this happened and the lessons for all of us related to conspiracies, patience, strategy, and revenge. Along the way, Holiday discusses his techniques for reading and lessons for how to grab someone's attention when looking for a job or opportunity..." 1:17:50 total. Audio; embedded player or download mp3

Replay of the April 28, 2018 Monthly Q & A from Jordan Peterson.

Long ago I made the mistake of wading unprepared into The Federalist Papers. In 1970 your humble blogger was a high school sophomore who bit off more than he could chew. I found Publius’ prose thick and rambling with incomprehensible sentences the length of paragraphs. Little did I know then that the style of the primary writer, Alexander Hamilton, is among the toughest for modern readers to comprehend. Unfortunately, Glenn Beck’s The Original Argument was forty-one years into the future. Had it been around in 1970, I would have devoured it.1 So, I tossed the Papers aside and didn’t revisit...

"I wrote in some detail and with some depth about motivation for the mass slaughter of innocents in my new book. Because of what happened all-too-recently and brutally in Parkland -- because of what keeps happening -- I thought I would read the relevant chapter (Rule 6: Put your house in perfect order before you criticize the world) and release it on YouTube. I regard the mass shootings as symptomatic of the nihilism and psychological confusion that so deeply characterizes our society at the current time."

"What is political extremism? Professor of psychology Jordan Peterson points out that America knows what right-wing radicalism looks like: The doctrine of racial superiority is where conservatives have drawn the line. "What’s interesting is that on the conservative side of the spectrum we’ve figured out how to box-in the radicals and say, 'No, you’re outside the domain of acceptable opinion,'" says Peterson. But where's that line for the Left? There is no universal marker of what extreme liberalism looks like, which is devastating to the ideology itself but also to political discourse as a whole....

In light of the data issues that have been publicized as of late, I am seriously looking to dump Gmail, Fakebook, et. al., would like some suggestions for other email services that I would have less concern about my data being taken. I already use DuckDuckGo, so that part is good.

Dr. Peterson's deepest ideas on the suffering of life, how to overcome it by adopting responsibility and finding ultimate meaning in life....

Author and philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb offers a definitive solution for how to gain from disorder and chaos, while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. Taleb argues that many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What he calls the antifragile is actually beyond the robust, because it benefits from shocks, uncertainty, and stressors, just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension. The antifragile needs disorder in order to survive and flourish

We are now faced with a fascist movement in the U.S., linked to the Democratic Party, that is filled with hate for anyone who disagrees with it, and whose goal is to destroy all dissenters.

The concept of what would become the Hubble Space Telescope was first envisioned after World War II, when astronomer Lyman Spitzer and a handful of scientists began a fifty year struggle to build the first space telescope capable of seeing beyond Earth's atmospheric veil. Robert Zimmerman, author of "The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It," takes us behind the scenes, explaining how some of Hubble's advocates sacrificed careers and family, and how others devoted their lives to the telescope only to have their hopes and reputations shattered when its...

If Wayne LaPierre is the Executive Vice-President of the NRA, who is the President? Why doesn't the President of the NRA make statements?

When Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel Was Accused of Corruption, He Responded: 'Lions Don't Care About the Opinions of Sheep' Israel reportedly hired his political supporters to do outreach for the police. Robby Soave|Feb. 23, 2018 2:16 pm Scott IsraelMichael Laughlin/ZUMA Press/NewscomBroward County Sheriff Scott Israel—the man whose agency failed to prevent the Parkland massacre despite having received a tip last November that Nikolas Cruz was plotting a mass shooting—has been accused of public corruption. Two years ago, the Sun Sentinel reported that Israel was rewarding top political supporters by giving them and their family members cushy jobs doing public...

'Electric-ish' BMW X5 is a fine ride that could save you some premium fuel By Jim Bray February 23, 2018 BMW's first SUV - though they refer to it as an SAV - has been given the plug-in hybrid treatment and the result is a large utility (er, Activity, in BMW-speak) vehicle that might even save you some gas money. The X5 xDrive40e is the first plug-in hybrid production model from BMW's core lineup. Starting at an estimated MSRP of $74,950 CAD, before options, it's a darn fine vehicle and equipped well even at that trim level (it's a premium...

If you have one of those wi-fi video doorbells your home is more secure than Marjory Stoneman High School in Parkland, Florida was when the evil creature called Nikolas Cruz entered to began his murder spree . With all the “we must do something” hand-wringing we have seen before, the simple truth is that such a simple bit of modern technology might have prevented or mitigated this tragedy. Again, there were warning signs, enough red flags to have a parade in Moscow. Many did see things and say things as the mantra goes, but the FBI, which was notified of...

"Heroes are not to be criticized..." The official Soviet narrative of the Second World War used the concept of heroism to imbue war commemoration with an obligation towards the State. Such a concept was designed to make subsequent generations feel inferior to their predecessors and obliged to give of their best. Today, the victory serves as the strongest connection between Soviet and modern Russian patriotism. The paper argues that the memory of the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) as treated in museums in St Petersburg today is an appropriation by present-day Russian propaganda of the Soviet narrative. Soviet memorial sites are...