Free Republic

Democratic president candidate Michael Bloomberg drew mockery from both sides of the ideological spectrum after a viral clip of him showed the billionaire media tycoon belittling farming at a 2016 business school talk and contrasting it with the “gray matter” necessary to work in the modern information economy. Bloomberg’s 2016 comments during a sit-down discussion at Oxford’s Said Business School gained attention after a Twitter account with the handle, Pete Mentes, posted a one-minute snippet of the former New York City mayor — who has never farmed — claiming “I could teach anybody in this room” to be a farmer....

I don’t know why this little story made me smile so bigly. Maybe I’m world weary in general or, more likely, just tired of condescending elitists. In any event, how bad can things be when a class of middle school art students stage a Paint-Like-Bob-Ross flash mob? The class donned baby blue button down shirts and curly wigs and followed along with a soothing Bob Ross instructional video on how to paint happy little trees.  The schtick was the idea of their Madison Middle School art teacher Brady Sloane.Her pre-Advanced Placement eighth-grade students had been stressing about projects and...

Intelligent women should consider marrying less clever men if they want to start a family, according to researchers. There are simply not enough brainy men to go round – so women may need to widen their search, warned the author of a report that found a growing number of professional women were freezing their eggs because they couldn’t find ‘Mr Right’. ‘There are fewer educated men in the world for educated women to partner with,’ said Marcia Inhorn, professor of anthropology at Yale University. ‘So if women want to find a partner with whom they can have children, they need...

"Instead of open minds and lively debate, I found dogmatic progressive ideology and groupthink. One attendee told me that I, a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, am “no better than Roger Ailes” because my company aggregates both liberal and conservative commentaries and thereby is “pushing a right-wing agenda.” Someone else said: “Trump supporters are so stupid . . . they think the tax bill was a good deal because they got back—what, a few thousand a year?” I don’t claim to have the answers. I am, after all, a card-carrying member of the liberal elite. I went to high school...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has purchased a nearly $600,000 summer retreat on Vermont’s Champlain Islands, the Vermont newspaper Seven Days reported Monday. “We’ve traveled up to the islands many times over the years — almost always on day trips,” Jane Sanders, the former White House contender's wife, said in a statement. "The entire family is very excited about it.” “We’ve always been impressed with the North Hero community, eaten at the North Hero House and Shore Acres and have suggested them to friends who were looking for a beautiful place to stay or have dinner. St. Anne’s Shrine in Isle...

WASHINGTON – Errico Auricchio produced cheese with his family in Italy until he brought his trade to the United States more than 30 years ago. Now, the European Union is saying his cheese isn't authentic enough to carry a European name. As part of trade talks, the EU wants to ban the use of names like Parmesan, feta and Gorgonzola on cheese made in the United States. The argument is that the American-made cheeses are shadows of the original European varieties and cut into sales and identity of the European cheeses. Auricchio, president of Wisconsin-based BelGioioso Cheese Inc., says he...

On Tuesday, NBC News’ Shawna Thomas, observing First Lady Michelle Obama’s dress at a state dinner, tweeted out her worship for her idol: HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THE FIRST LADY'S DRESS. #BOWDOWN — Shawna Thomas (@ShawnaNBCNews) February 12, 2014 Thomas is NBC News’ White House producer; she moved into that role in July 2011. Before assuming that role, she was a reporter on the hill, covering the House of Representatives. NBC News Bureau Chief Antoine Sanfuentes celebrated her elevation, writing, “On a personal note, I know that her sharp editorial judgment, keen eye for nuance, and straightforward likeability will make...

Having grown up living in a trailer -- but having never, ever watched “Duck Dynasty” -- I feel uniquely qualified to say this: Enough with the trailer-trash TV shows. I don’t really care which side of the septic tank you stand on regarding the stuff that “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson spouted. Like a mountain lion stalking a deer (an example the show’s fans might like), he was just doing what came natural when he mouthed off about gays, blacks, God and the little woman. It’s not his fault. It’s America’s. We -- well, fine, not all “we’s” but enough...

Last weekend, at a dusty race car track in that part of New Jersey where lacrosse fields slowly give way to farmland before the landscape seems to stop altogether, Sarah Palin rallied a couple of thousand partisans on behalf of Steve Lonegan, a longshot, Tea Party-fueled candidate for the U.S. Senate. “I just told Todd,” she said to the crowd a moment after they stopped chanting her name. “‘Ooh,’ I said. ‘I can die and go to heaven now: I just shook Mark Levin’s hand.’” Levin had been out earlier, warming them up. He cuts a figure that is the...

Know what's worse than someone yelling on the train? Someone yelling on the train and making a complete ass of herself. Here is a self-identified "educated" woman yelling at a Metro-North train conductor who told her to pipe down. It's pretty incredible. According to the video's description, the woman was being loud and using profanity on the train. When the conductor told her to quiet down, she flew off the handle and started telling her, repeatedly, about how "educated" she is and how the conductor doesn't know "what schools I went to." (I'm betting she went to one of the...

You really have to feel sorry for our liberal friends. With each passing day, they are coming to resemble the old WASP elite they sneered at for a century. Good liberal journalists should visit only those inscribed in the Liberal Social Register. And the Netroots seem more and more like southern rednecks, the folks who howled their approval when George Wallace vowed, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" in 1963 in the last moments before the Civil Rights Acts and the end of Jim Crow. In the Juan Williams affair, they are telling us that liberal journalists have to take...

Since he can’t quite put his finger on what makes him “nervous” about Governor Palin. He may as well double-down upon what is actually cowardice, by just stealing left-wing talking points in an utterly lazy fashion. I know Governor Palin has given a hundred interviews since the 2008 Presidential election but hey, let’s talk about that Katie Couric hit-piece as though it wasn’t a highly edited, highly contentious “interview.” Give me a break. One one hand, this podcast was composed of some talking heads from the establishment giving some minimal ‘props‘ to the most active political force on the Conservative...

If there was ever any doubt that Sarah Palin is a fool, she has removed it. Once the governor of Alaska and a vice presidential candidate, Palin has left the confines of public office for the more sympathetic offices of Fox News. She has also been acting as something of a de facto leader of the Tea Party movement. Unfortunately, her new roles have not lent her the gravitas she was lacking as a politician. ... Palin has consistently shown herself to be thoughtless, uninformed, impulsive and opportunistic. If these are the qualities people look for in a leader, then...

We all know liberal condescension. "Why are Americans so anti-intellectual?" your liberal friend might ask. But Gerard Alexander has written about it -- in the Washington Post. "Why are liberals so condescending?" he asks. Why indeed? Your average liberal exhibits four kinds of condescension, according to Alexander. There's the notion that conservatives win elections and policy debates not because of the power of ideas, but "because they deploy brilliant and sinister campaign tactics." Obviously this leads into the second notion that "if conservative leaders are crass manipulators, then the rank-and-file Americans who support them must be manipulated at best, or...

From The Times November 17, 2009 Going Rogue: Sarah Palin's autobiography Giles Whittell in Washington Taken at face value — as it begs the reader to do — Sarah Palin’s non-fiction debut is a love story. She is in love with Alaska, America and her husband, Todd, she says. In the process, she cannot help revealing that she is also in love with the vortex of briefers, make-up artists and media attention that spun around her for three months as a vice-presidential candidate, even though some of the principal players set out to destroy her before the election had even...

On Thursday, the New York Times filed another piece cheering Barack Obama for making inroads in a traditionally Republican state - Ian Urbina's "Both Parties Set Sights on Virginia in November." Back on August 17, the state was North Carolina, and Obama's quest was greeted in the Times with an optimistic story headlined "Obama Backers Mobilize in Bid to Wrest State From Republican Grip." The Times hasn't followed up on North Carolina, perhaps because cumulative polling data show John McCain with a nine-point lead there (the August story quoted an average lead of four points in the polls).

Claiming to be an avid White Sox fan, presidential candidate Senator Obama belittled fans of the Chicago Cubs baseball team. “Cubs fans aren’t serious students of the game,” Obama charged. “They’re just there to have a few beers and pass the time. It’s probably just as well. Because it’s been 100 years since the Cubs won the Super Bowl.”

Obama-love could hurt what it cherishes By Chrystia Freeland Published: July 25 2008 19:32 | Last updated: July 25 2008 19:32 John McCain, it seems, has decided to re-run Hillary Clinton’s ultimately failed campaign against Barack Obama. John Heilemann, the New York magazine writer, spotted signs that the rightwing former prisoner of war was modelling himself on the left-of-centre ex-first lady a fortnight ago: both were served by feuding and leaking staffers, both were tempted into populist gambits such as supporting a summer petrol tax holiday and both were betting their record of experience could trump Mr Obama’s promise of...

My parents once told me that I enjoyed my first beer when I was about three or four years old. I would help myself (so the story goes) to my Dad’s fish-bowl-sized schooner, filled with beer from one of the local breweries that still operated in Chicago during the 1950s. I don’t remember any of this, unfortunately, but the tale’s become a family standard. I do remember my second taste of beer, this one from the “Land of Sky Blue Water.” I was a mere lad of thirteen. This beer drinker’s rite of passage took place at the grammar school...

GREENWICH, Conn. -- You know you're in a different kind of town when the signs against drunk driving show a line drawn through a Martini glass to which the artist thoughtfully added a stirrer. Greenwich, Conn., is one such town. Greenwich is home to billionaire hedge-fund managers, private-equity kings and corporate chieftains, as well as ordinary multi-multimillionaires. Interviewing people here requires leaving phone messages with au pairs and catching folks between board meetings. You'd think that Greenwich would be solid Bush-loving turf -- what with all those tax cuts for the rich. It is not. The voters are roughly 40...