Free Republic

It’s safe to say each of the CNN Town Halls this week painted the remaining Republican presidential candidates in a positive light and that’s a good thing for those of us who see the number one priority as the need to defeat Hillary Clinton (or Bernie Sanders) in November. Instead of #NeverTrump, we were reminded that #NeverHillary is a much more important objective than the need to settle scores, even if there’s good reason to carry grudges in the first place. Ted CruzAnd while it’s somewhat likely the Republican candidates’ favorability ratings could get a boost courtesy of CNN’s idea...

Social media posts, along with Cruz’s campaign website, reveal that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) supporters in the Colorado Republican Party were responsible for crushing an effort to give Colorado the ability to vote in a state primary. In May of 2015, four Colorado Senate Republicans killed an initiative “to create a presidential primary in 2016,” reported the Denver Post. “Under the bill, Colorado would have held a presidential primary in March that ran parallel with the state’s complicated caucus system… when it came before the Senate Appropriations Committee, four Republicans voted to kill the bill with three Democrats supporting it.”...

The first accomplishment of California’s pioneering $15 minimum wage law is killing the revival of America’s clothing industry. American Apparel, which provided 10 percent of all apparel manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles, has terminated 500 employees in the last two weeks. Chief Executive Paula Schneider also told the Los Angeles Times that “manufacturing of more complicated pieces, such as jeans, could soon be outsourced to a third-party company.” The company did not tie the announcement directly to California Governor Jerry Brown signing of the nation’s first statewide $15 minimum wage on April 4. But the layoffs started shortly almost immediately...

Yahoo goes on sale Monday. At least some of you reading this are thinking, "Yahoo? Are they still around?" Yes, this company founded in 1994, is ancient by Internet standards, but, according to the measurement company comScore, Yahoo sites are the third-most trafficked on the Internet. Among its properties are Yahoo Finance, News, Search, Mail, Tumblr and Flickr. Why is Yahoo on sale? Despite having a billion monthly unique visitors — as the company claimed in its 2014 report — Yahoo just hasn't been able to make its investors happy.

A trial of ‘grooming traps’ is aiming to eradicate one of the biggest threats to Australian wildlife – feral felines. Robotic killers that detect feral cats, spray their fur with poison and rely on them to essentially lick themselves to death have been deployed in the Australian desert for the first time. Australian night parrot legend lives on but bird remains as elusive as ever Read more Feral cats are one of the biggest threats to many of Australia’s endangered species, killing millions of animals every day throughout the country – and controlling them has proved difficult. It took John...

Back in 2011, we wrote about a fascinating new way to heat-treat regular, cheap steel to endow it with an almost miraculous blend of characteristics. Radically cheaper, quicker and less energy-intensive to produce, Flash Bainite is stronger than titanium by weight, and ductile enough to be pressed into shape while cold without thinning or cracking. It's now being tested by three of the world's five largest car manufacturers, who are finding they can produce thinner structural car components that are between 30-50 percent lighter and cheaper than the steel they've been using, while maintaining the same performance is crash tests....

Farmers in the Gaza Belt continue to work as usual - a few dozen meters from the border fence - despite ongoing threats from Hamas. While Palestinian media has reported heavy engineering tools along the Gaza side of the border, and both MKs and the media have stated Hamas is rebuilding its terror tunnels, the farmers remain unfazed. "We don't feel pressure," Elad Katzir, irrigation coordinator for Kibbutz Nir Oz, told Walla! News Monday. "We are used to it and working up until the last meter." "Today is my 40th birthday," he continued. "It's been 40 years that I've worked...

If California is the land of reinvention, the small desert city of Adelanto fits the bill. Roughly a two-hour drive east from Los Angeles, Adelanto was founded in 1915 by an inventor who wanted to sell land to World War I veterans. His dream never materialized and the region was taken over by orchard farms, then poultry ranches. The nearby George Air Force Base opened and eventually closed in the early 1990s. The city more recently made a solar play, but the energy market fizzled. City unemployment hovers at 14 percent, well above the national unemployment rate of under 5...

Jim Quinn is back! - and in better form than ever!! The Quinn in the Morning Show airs from 6:00am to 9:00 am, Monday thru Friday. To listen online, go to www.warroom.com and sign up for a monthly fee. Or you can listen on the radio locally in the upstate NY area on 1040 WYSL Rochester, NY or 1480 WCNS in Latrobe, Pa. If you sign up online, be sure to choose the auto-renew option in order to have full access to archived shows and podcasts.

Donald Trump won North Carolina’s Republican primary last month, but many of the state’s GOP convention delegates elected so far prefer the second-place candidate: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. That could spell trouble for Trump if he doesn’t arrive at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July with the 1,237 delegates required to win on the first ballot. For the first round of voting, North Carolina’s delegate count must proportionately match the state’s March 15 primary results: 29 votes for Trump, 27 for Cruz, nine for John Kasich, six for Marco Rubio and one for Ben Carson. Any delegate who...

An ebullient Hillary Clinton danced to latin music with New York officials while campaigning in New York City's heavily Dominican Washington Heights neighborhood on Sunday. After joining Rep. Charlie Rangel, who represents the area in Congress, at a block party, Clinton busted a few moves on stage with State Sen. Adriano Espaillat and State Assemblyman Keith Wright, CNN reported.

In his 1944 opus “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” the philosopher Johnny Mercer provided some bracing imperatives that, rightly understood, explain why I am supporting Ted Cruz for the presidency of the United States. “You've got to accentuate the positive,” Mercer argued. Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative Don't mess with Mister In-Between. Quite right. These imperatives, while not quite categorical, are sufficiently compelling to command our attention. Ted Cruz is the only candidate who accentuates the positive, who latches on to the affirmative. 1. Executive power. Even many ardent supporters of President Obama have been taken aback by his...

The Marines are facing their greatest fight; the battle to implement the lunatic gender neutral policies ordered by the Secretary of Defense and his willing executioner, Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus. There is no doubt that Ray Mabus is going down in history as the worst Secretary of Navy in the long annals of the Marine Corps. Mabus is a disaster for the Marine Corps; a ready-made, machine fabricated, glow in the dark nightmare. Ray Mabus is a politically correct cluster; one each, olive drab. Ray Mabus is a leftist Visigoth, a man who’s breaking the premier fighting force...

Actor Danny DeVito on Sunday called Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders "our Obi Wan," referencing the Jedi master from "Star Wars.""I just hugged the man who shook the hand of the Pope," DeVito said during a campaign rally for Sanders on Sunday when introducing the Vermont senator. (Sanders met the pope over the weekend, after speaking at a conference at the Vatican.) "We are going to go out and vote and put this man on Pennsylvania Avenue. ... Ladies and gentlemen, we are here for a hometown boy," Devito said to an audience of more than 28,000 in Brooklyn's Prospect...

In what may be one of the biggest stories we have covered this year, a new company, Carbon3D has just emerged out of stealth mode, unveiling an entirely new breakthrough 3D printing process, which is anywhere between 25 and 100 times faster than what’s available on the market today.The privately-held Redwood City, California-based company, Carbon3D, was founded in 2013, and since then has been secretly perfecting a new 3D printing technology which promises to change the industry forever. The technology that the company calls Continuous Liquid Interface Productiongo technology (CLIP) works by harnessing the power of light and oxygen to...

Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple reports that The New York Times is getting very serious about diversity goals in recruiting, hiring, and promoting. Chief Executive Mark Thompson raised eyebrows at a gathering of managers on the business and news sides of the newspaper. According to three Wemple sources, “Supervisors who fail to meet upper management’s requirements in recruiting and hiring minority candidates or who fail to seek out minority candidates for promotions face some stern consequences: They’ll be either encouraged to leave or be fired.” …

Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) is the most viable of the three remaining Republican presidential candidates, according to many members of the Cornell Republicans. The group has been running semesterly straw polls of candidate preferences among its members since last spring, said Austin McLaughlin ’18, Secretary of the Cornell Republicans. When the club began taking the straw polls, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) were the main contenders for the Republican nomination. While Santorum was the most popular initially, Rubio was the favorite...

Most anywhere Nicole Malliotakis goes, she gets the question—in the Staten Island senior center, on the streets of Brooklyn, at her parents’ kitchen table. Why aren’t you supporting Donald Trump? Earlier this year, Ms. Malliotakis, a 35-year-old New York assemblywoman, was her state’s leading backer of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. She openly criticized Mr. Trump’s rhetoric against women and Muslims and his past donations to Democrats. In tweets she added: “#NEVERTRUMP.”

DO NOT VOTE ON THIS THREAD. This is the nightly DISCUSSION thread for the ongoing 2016 Free Republic Caucus. Per caucus rules, no comments are allowed on the caucus thread itself - hence this open chat thread. If you'd like to vote in the caucus, please look in the sidebar for the link, or check downthread here. Thanks, and let 'er rip! Windy Free Republic Caucus 2016 04/17

Welcome to the Free Republic CaucusPlease read the rules, and participate according to the guidelines provided.  Thank you. REMEMBER:  To find the Caucus thread for the day, Search "Caucus" The New York (95) Primary takes place tomorrow. Only vote on this thread on: 04/18/2016  another thread will pop up moments before: 04/19/2016Wait to vote until 12:00 midnight EST, and don't vote after 12:00 midnight EST at the at the end of the day.  Look for the new thread. Votes outside the 24 hour period, will not be counted.  Give it three minutes or so on each end, so you are sure...

Businessman and Republican activist Carl Paladino in a radio interview Monday said Donald Trump “absolutely” should launch an independent bid for president if he is denied the Republican nomination at the July convention in Cleveland. “Absolutely,” Paladino said in an interview with WCNY’s The Capitol Pressroom. “If cheated, you fight back. That would be the end of the Republican Party, by the way.” Paladino, a Buffalo real-estate developer and prominent Trump supporter in New York, was the GOP nominee for governor in 2010. In the interview, Paladino blasted what so far has been a whisper campaign to potentially nominate House...

The first Air France flight between Paris and Tehran for eight years landed in the Islamic republic’s capital on Sunday, bearing a government minister and a business delegation. The airline’s route had been suspended since 2008 because of international sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear program. However, sanctions have been lifted under an accord with world powers that has now been in force for three months. […] Frederic Gagey, the airline’s chief executive, spoke of its “great pride in returning to Iran”. However, resumption of the service caused controversy in France after unions said the airline sent an internal...

I cannot think of a better song to restart the Acoustic Guitar pings. Although the acoustic guitar part is picked rather than done fingerstyle, this song has really special meaning to me at this time.

How much natural gas does the United States have, and how long will it last? The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that as of January 1, 2013 there were about 2,276 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of technically recoverable resources of dry natural gas in the United States. At the rate of U.S. dry natural gas consumption in 2013 of about 27 Tcf per year, the United States has enough natural gas to last about 84 years. The actual number of years will depend on the amount of natural gas consumed each year, natural gas imports and exports, and additions to...

After I published the previous post suggesting the Benghazi massacre demonstrated Hillary Clinton’s incompetence I received an email asking about the possibility that Clinton or someone intended for Ambassador Chris Stevens or another American to be murdered. I’m still inclined to believe the best explanation is incompetence, but I recognize the incident could have involved premeditated murder.

The notorious Guantanamo Bay came one step closer yesterday to shutting its doors after nine Yemeni prisoners were transferred to Saudi Arabia. The US-controlled prison camp on Cuban soil now has 80 detainees, with 26 expected to be released in the summer. The prisoners were unable to be sent back to their native Yemen due to a bloody civil war in the country. A Pentagon spokesperson said: "The United States is grateful to the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its humanitarian gesture and willingness to support ongoing US efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility."

NOTE: PayPal pulls out of N Carlina but over anti-LGBT bill, but continues to have HQ in Singpore. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A FOUR-YEAR battle ended yesterday, when Singapore's highest court upheld the constitutionality of Section 377(a) of the country's penal code, which renders any man convicted of committing "or abet[ting] the commission of...any act of gross indecency" with another man liable to two years in prison. Tan Eng Hong first challenged the law in September 2010, after he was charged under 377(a) for having oral sex with another man in a public-toilet stall. Two years later a second challenge was raised by...

The most famous, and most popular, after dinner drink in Northeastern Italy is grappa. We introduce it in many ways to our guests on our walking tours and private cycling adventures – served as a digestivo, to aid in the digestion of a wonderful meal, or added to espresso as a caffe corretto, an ammazzacaffe, where a few ounces of grappa are served after you finish your espresso, or a resentin (little rinser), where you rinse out your espresso cup with a few drops of grappa. However you choose to enjoy it, you will find a vast variety of grappa...

Here's something you don't see every day: a defender being lauded for letting a ball drop in. Tigers second baseman Ian Kinsler proved to be the exception during Sunday's game against the Astros. After Anibal Sanchez walked Colby Rasmus to begin the inning, Kinsler elected to let Tyler White's pop-up fall in. Why? So Kinsler could go to second base and retire Rasmus. For those wondering why the infield fly rule wasn't applied, here's the answer: there was only a baserunner on first. The only way it would've been called an infield fly was if there were runners on first...

Did you watch CNN’s Democratic debate Thursday night? I actually did, and get this. I was entertained. Thoroughly entertained. I had a feeling it would be a bit more exciting, especially since Bernie Sanders has been out there questioning Hillionaire’s qualifications. At one point, Dana Bash grilled Hillary on releasing the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches, and it was glorious. “Secretary Clinton, if I may, Senator Sanders keeping bringing up the speeches that you gave to Goldman Sachs. So I’d like to ask you, so you’ve said that you don’t want to release the transcripts, until everybody does it,...

Australian soldiers killed in the Vietnam War and buried in Malaysia and Singapore will be brought home in June with a full military ceremony, it was announced Sunday. Thirty-five soldiers who died in the conflict lie in Malaysia's Terendak Cemetery, which sits inside a large, operational military base, and one other in Kranji War Cemetery in Singapore. In May last year, then prime minister Tony Abbott offered repatriation to the families and more than 30 of them have accepted the offer. "The homecoming of their family member will be a very moving and emotional time, and their right to privacy,...

Hillary Clinton claimed surprising ignorance of a bill she should be intimately acquainted with as a former secretary of state and New York senator. ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos brought up the legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, which would allow 9/11 victims to sue state sponsors of terror for the attack that took nearly 3,000 lives in 2001. "Your senior senator here in New York, Chuck Schumer has sponsored a bill backed by the 9/11 families that would give them the right to sue state sponsors of terror in federal court," he said Sunday on "This Week." "Now,...

SNIP After a brief skirmish with Detroit’s Justin Abdelkader, Boyle started flapping his arms like a chicken when his Red Wing adversary seemed unwilling to engage in an old fashioned exchange of fisticuffs. In Abdelkader’s defense, the Red Wing was playing with an injured hand, which appear to be covered with tape. NHL rules prohibit players with tape-covered hands from engaging in fights. Had Abdelkader dropped the gloves with Boyle, he would’ve been subject to a one-game suspension. SNIP

The story of the history of the United States is one of innovations and infrastructure working in tandem to forge new trade channels and routes. Some were abhorrent, like the triangle trade, which involved slaves and agricultural materials. The Erie Canal linked the farms of the Midwestern U.S. with the consumers of the Eastern Seaboard and Europe. The invention of electronics and personal computers created heavily traveled trade routes linking factories in Asia to ports on the West Coast of the United States. And now it’s fracking’s turn. Fracking has fundamentally altered America’s economic trajectory by liberating vast resources of...

Social media posts, along with Cruz’s campaign website, reveal that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)97% supporters in the Colorado Republican Party were responsible for crushing an effort to give Colorado the ability to vote in a state primary. In May of 2015, four Colorado Senate Republicans killed an initiative “to create a presidential primary in 2016,” reported the Denver Post. “Under the bill, Colorado would have held a presidential primary in March that ran parallel with the state’s complicated caucus system… when it came before the Senate Appropriations Committee, four Republicans voted to kill the bill with three Democrats supporting it.”...

No article, just Twitter link

April 18, 2016 Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter Reading 1 Acts 11:1-18 The Apostles and the brothers who were in Judeaheard that the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalemthe circumcised believers confronted him, saying,‘You entered the house of uncircumcised people and ate with them.” Peter began and explained it to them step by step, saying,“I was at prayer in the city of Joppawhen in a trance I had a vision,something resembling a large sheet coming down,lowered from the sky by its four corners, and it came to me....

Los Angeles was once the epicenter of apparel manufacturing, attracting buyers from across the world to its clothing factories, sample rooms and design studios. But over the years, cheap overseas labor lured many apparel makers to outsource to foreign competitors in far-flung places such as China and Vietnam. Now, Los Angeles firms are facing another big hurdle — California's minimum wage hitting $15 an hour by 2022 — which could spur more garment makers to exit the state. Last week American Apparel, the biggest clothing maker in Los Angeles, said it might outsource the making of some garments to another...

Whenever Ted Cruz appears on television, I cringe as unpleasant memories of distant relatives cross my mind, reminding me of things best forgotten. And what is best forgotten is simply the Hispanic political tradition of severity. Think Francisco Franco. Think Fidel Castro. Think Ted Cruz? Yes, Ted Cruz is a would-be autocrat. My paternal grandmother, a Galician matron who despised sexism in all its forms, called it “la maldición gallega,” or “the Galician curse.” By that she meant the dreadful and familiar anti-democratic tendency in the political lives of the Hispanic world where dictators, strongmen, caudillos, and caciques have ruled...

"The dialogue and the narrative of this campaign isn't focusing on the real issue," Trump convention manager Paul Manafort said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. "The real issue is there's not going to be a second ballot." "There are many paths to [a delegate majority] for Donald Trump, between now and middle of June," Manafort said. "We are working all of those paths." . . . "The states that we just finished — this was the time when Cruz was supposed to be ahead," Manafort said. "With Cruz, he wins the reddest of red states, where you get voterless primaries,...

Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was cleaning up one political mess in Florida when he walked himself into another, launching an error-filled attack on the state’s GOP chairman and revealing his camp’s internal goal for delegate accumulation. Appearing on Fox News Sunday in a segment titled “Can the Trump campaign move past distractions,” Lewandowski was asked about a prosecutor’s decision last week to not bring the Trump aide to court on a battery charge stemming from a run-in with a reporter in the state. But in response, Lewandowski pivoted to criticize the state’s Republican party and its process for...

With Donald Trump poised to win the New York Republican presidential primary Tuesday, another New York businessman-turned-politician is saying he won't forget the congressional Republicans who did not back Trump's candidacy."They’re cowards," Carl Paladino said of New York's GOP lawmakers who have not declared their support for the front-runner. "I don’t care if they don’t want to get on board now. It’s too late," Paladino, a former New York GOP gubernatorial candidate, said in an interview Friday in Buffalo. "They don’t want to get on board? Fine. And I’ll let everybody know on election day that they weren’t on board.”Paladino said that would amount to spreading the word...

More than six in 10 Republican voters believe that, if no GOP presidential candidate wins a majority of delegates before the convention, the one with the most votes should be the party's nominee, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. That's compared with 33 percent of Republicans who say the nominee instead should be the candidate whom convention delegates think would be the party's best standard-bearer.

John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, is one of the most powerful people in the American political establishment today. He's also the one most likely to talk about UFOs, or as advocates prefer to say these days, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.”(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Podesta's credentials as both a political insider and a UFO advocate are sterling. He was White House chief of staff at the end of President Bill Clinton’s second term and, more recently, a counselor to President Barack Obama. Since 2002, Podesta has openly advocated for the public release of documents concerning UAPs and Area 51. Since...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans' skepticism about what they read on social media. Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public's view of other institutions. In this presidential campaign year, Democrats were more likely to trust the news media than Republicans or independents. But trust today also goes beyond the traditional journalistic principles of accuracy, balance and fairness. Faced with ever-increasing sources of...

NEW YORK CITY, New York — Billionaire and 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump told Breitbart News that GOP establishment consultant Karl Rove is so “dishonorable” that the Wall Street Journal should stop him from writing future columns for the publication. “This guy is such a dishonorable guy,” Trump said in his latest exclusive phone interview last week with Breitbart News. “He shouldn’t be allowed to write for the Wall Street Journal.” Rove, earlier that day, had published a piece in the Wall Street Journal, titled: “Vanity Will Be The Donald’s Undoing.” Throughout it, Rove quotes from various interviews that...

"What I'd like to say is, just relax," Kasich said on CNN. "If you don't like what somebody's doing, pray for them, and if you feel as though somebody is doing something wrong against you, can you just for a second get over it? You know?" Kasich's comments were a reply to a question about his harsh reaction to Mississippi's new law that allows companies not to serve gay couples. Last week, Kasich asked "What the hell are we doing in this country?" in reaction to that law.

A survey has found that tens of thousands of voters, including Demi Moore and other celebrities, have mistakenly registered as members of a conservative minor political party in California in a mix-up over its name, a newspaper reported Sunday. The Los Angeles Times (http://bit.ly/23G88sX ) said that a telephone survey of 500 members of the American Independent Party found nearly 3 of 4 people did not realize they had enrolled in a political party that opposes abortion rights and same sex marriage and calls for building a fence along the U.S. border. The newspaper said voters were confused by the...

Fields insisted that, contrary to claims by Trump and Aronberg’s office, she never touched the candidate, who moved his right arm away from her in order to retrieve a pen from his jacket pocket in order to sign autographs as he made his way out of the golf club ballroom. She also pointed out that Aronberg’s office, far from conducting the thorough investigation that was promised, didn’t even interview the main witness to the grabbing incident, Washington Post reporter Ben Terris. “I think the prosecutor’s decision…the way they handled this entire situation…was very unprofessional,” Fields said. Fields insisted that, contrary...

It’s not often that a Republican presidential primary in New York matters. This year it does. It’s a time for choosing, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan. The choice is between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, though John Kasich is on the ballot too. The real race to the nomination has been Trump v. Cruz for at least several weeks and it is likely to remain that way. Faced with that choice, it’s easy. Legal Insurrection started in October 2008 in anticipation of the Obama presidency. We were part of the Tea Party movement (though aligned with no specific group) since the...