Free Republic

The chance encounter a mother hiking with her daughter had with Hillary Clinton the day after losing the election may not be what it has been made out to seem. Margot Gerster was out hiking with her daughter when she ran into Hillary and Bill Clinton in the upstate New York town of Chappaqua, where the Clintons have a home. She took a photo with the former first lady who beamed from ear to ear, appearing to have had the weight of the world lifted from her shoulders as she stood next to Gerster. Clinton was said to have been...

(CNN)For two years, the whereabouts of Geraldine "Gerry" Largay had confounded authorities in Maine. Largay, a 66-year-old experienced hiker from Brentwood, Tennessee, disappeared while trekking the Appalachian Trail in July 2013. Hundreds of people searched for her. There wasn't a single clue. On Wednesday, a single person, a surveyor, came across bones, clothing and gear just over a half mile from the trail.

AUGUSTA, Maine —Documents show an Appalachian Trail hiker whose remains were found last year in Maine survived at least 26 days after getting lost. During that time, her texts went undelivered because of poor cell reception. The Boston Globe reports Geraldine Largay kept a journal in which she acknowledged that she expected to die and that it might be years before her remains were found.

Geraldine Largay knew she was doomed. It had been two weeks since she left the Appalachian Trail to go to the bathroom and lost her way; two weeks since she had wandered deeper and deeper into the woods of northwest Maine in search of a cellphone signal to message for help; two weeks since she had pitched her tent underneath a copse of hemlock trees atop a ridge; two weeks since she was supposed to meet her husband, waiting for her in his SUV on Route 27. Largay’s food was running low. Her water, too. So the 66-year-old retired nurse...

A Boy Scout leader from Boonton suffered bites and scratches after being attacked by a bear while hiking at Splitrock Reservoir Sunday afternoon with three young scouts, authorities said. Christopher Petronino, 50, managed to fend off the black bear using a rock hammer after the animal pulled him into a small cave. Petronino and the scouts were later able to draw the bear out of the cave with food, Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Bob Considine said in a statement. The group had set out to hike on the trails that cover the 625-acre wilderness, and they came along the...

On the 7th anniversary of entering ZIRP, and for the first time since June 29th 2006, The Federal Reserve announced today that it will try and raise interest rates: *FED RAISES INTEREST RATES 0.25 POINT IN UNANIMOUS VOTE Of course, the flowery language and dots are as dovish as possible while maintaining some semblance of credibility with regard growth expectations as The Fed unleashes a tightening cycle for the first time in over 11 years.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is set to call for the largest property tax increase in modern Chicago history to raise enough money to make a major pension payment for police and firefighters next year, the mayor's City Council floor leader and a City Hall source told the Chicago Tribune late Wednesday.. The mayor also plans to push a new garbage collection tax, a new per-ride fee on taxis and ride-hailing services such as Uber and a new tax on electronic cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products. ....The property tax increase Emanuel is mulling would far exceed what the mayor himself said during...

I want to know what is best to use for a long hike, the I-Phone or the I-pad. I have NOT owned or used either. I want to be able to make and receive phone calls, access the internet, shoot video, edit video, and load video. I'd prefer the larger screen in the I-Pad Mini over the I-Phone, but I also need to be able to make and receive calls, and I'm not sure if the I-Pad Mini can receive calls. If you have experience with both, please let me know the advantages and disadvantages of each. I also...

From the top of a mountain in Maine, he swigged champagne and recounted the historic trek. By noon Sunday, 50 people had reached the summit of Mount Katahdin. They hiked a trail through the woods, up boulders, and across a windy ridge to camp out on jagged rocks overlooking the lake-dotted Baxter State Park in central Maine. They waited to see ultramarathoning history. They all had the same question. Where is Scott Jurek? At 2:03 p.m. ET, they got their answer. He was clutching a faded wooden sign, his cheek brushing the engraved letters that read, “KATAHDIN, Northern Terminus of...

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Saturday signed a law hiking the city’s minimum wage from $9 an hour to $15 by 2020, an increase that will affect hundreds of thousands of workers. Garcetti, speaking in English and Spanish, told a crowd of hundreds at the signing event that he wanted to lift the city’s lowest-paid workers out of poverty. "Too many Angelenos have been left behind even as we’ve put the recession in the rearview mirror," he told union representatives, immigration and activists at the ceremony. The Los Angeles City Council approved the wage hike in May with a...

MILWAUKEE (AP) - President Barack Obama renewed his push for Congress to raise the minimum wage Monday in a buoyant accounting of the economy's "revving" performance, delivered on behalf of Democrats opening their fall campaigns for the midterm congressional elections. "America deserves a raise," he told a union crowd in Milwaukee, vowing to keep a hard sell on Congress in much the way he once courted his wife. "I just wore her down," he cracked. Timing his push to Labor Day, the traditional start of the autumn campaign, Obama aggressively drew attention to recent economic gains, setting aside past caution...

The White House may have to scrap its plans to aggressively promote a 40 percent national minimum wage hike now that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the move would likely cost the U.S. 500,000 jobs by the second half of 2016. [Snip] The White House didn´t answer questions about whether that trade-off is acceptable to President Obama, but Senate Democrats have pushed hard for legislation that would implement his goal of driving the minimum wage far above its current $7.25 level. But it quickly scheduled an afternoon conference call for reporters with Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason...

2,184 Miles: From Georgia to Maine on Foot, ( 13:16 ) Cornerstone University Documentary 2013 Final. Join Zac Tolsma and his friends as they experience the Appalachian Trail.

Watch the 7 minute 17 second video Beauty Beneath the Dirt: Thru-Hiking 101. It's brief description : Everything you need to know about thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail in 7 minutes. For the story beneath the surface... check out: http://beautybeneaththedirt.com.

President Obama will propose a 1 percent pay raise for federal civilian employees in the administration’s fiscal 2014 budget proposal, the Washington Post has learned. At the same time, the House plans to vote soon on legislation that would extend the current freeze on basic pay rates through the end of calendar 2013. The freeze was originally set for two years and scheduled to expire at the end of last year, but it was extended until a temporary budget measure expires next month. When the measure expires, federal employees will receive a 0.5 percent raise for the remainder of 2013,...

The other ObamaCare middle class tax hike arrives in 2014By: John Hayward 12/12/2012 09:14 AM If you think it’s been horrifying to watch ObamaCare pop open like a jack-in-the-box filled with tax increases over the last couple of weeks, just wait until the huge new taxes on health insurance companies hit in 2014. A study commissioned by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) lays out the details: The [Affordable Care Act] imposes a new sales tax on health insurance that starts at $8 billion in 2014, increases to $14.3 billion in 2018, and will continue to increase each year. The Joint...

Power of the people? Hundreds voice opposition to rate hikeBy: Mike Conley Published: October 26, 2011 Hundreds of people packed the main courtroom at the McDowell County Courthouse to capacity Tuesday evening to show their strong opposition to Duke Energy’s request for another rate hike. Donna Edwards of Marion was one of those who testified to the N.C. Utilities Commission. “I don’t represent anybody except myself,” she said in her testimony. “We’re making choices in my house about whether or not to buy medications or pay the power bill. I am all for Duke Power making money. That is what...

Residents of the Binyamin region took an organized hike Friday in an area the IDF had declared a "closed military zone." The residents believe the military is trying to gradually limit Jewish freedom of movement in Judea and Samaria, and compare the IDF's policy to the British colonial "White Papers." The army declared the area surrounding the Alei Ayin outpost a closed military zone, after the outpost was forcefully torn down two months ago. Despite the ban – or because of it – the grassroots Binyamin Residents' Council organized Friday's hike through the area and promises to maintain presence there....

During the current debt ceiling debate, have the media told you what your personal share of the national debt would be after the ceiling is hiked?Yeah. I didn't think so.But when it was a midterm election year in which Democrats thrashed President George W. Bush and the GOP on overspending, it was a different story.On March 16, 2006, Barack Obama was in his second year as a freshman senator and denounced the Bush administration's request for a debt ceiling increase. The debt ceiling increase passed the Senate on a 52-48 vote.

Yes, indeed it is. While everyone and their grandmother is foaming at the mouth how both republicans and democrats hiked the debt ceiling for umpteen times over the past x years, the truth is that never before has the ratio of the proposed debt ceiling to the tax receipt ratio been as high as it is now. At nearly 6 times, this means that the top line (forget bottom line) cash inflows into the Treasury are 6 times lower than the current debt ceiling. And following the upcoming $2.5 trillion this number will surge to almost 8 times. So please...