Free Republic

RUFFSDALE -- If you drive anywhere in Pennsylvania, from the turnpike to the old U.S. routes to the dirt roads connecting small towns like Hooversville with “bigger” small towns like Somerset, you might conclude that Donald Trump is ahead in this state by double digits. Large signs, small signs, homemade signs, signs that wrap around barns, signs that go from one end of a fence to another, all dot the landscape with such frequency that, if you were playing the old-fashioned road-trip game of counting cows, you would hit 100 in just one small town like this one. In Ruffsdale,...

An August presidential poll out of Virginia shows the heightening of a long-existing trend: There is a big, big rural-urban split in the battleground state. The rural southwest area is heavily in favor of Donald Trump, the Washington Post/ABC News poll found, while the DC suburbs are by far Clinton country. Follow Dave Wasserman @Redistrict Trump leads Clinton by 26% in SWVA (vs. 22% Romney lead) but Clinton leads by 45% in inner NOVA (vs. 26% Obama '12): https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/trump-unpopularity-fuels-wide-lead-for-clinton-in-new-virginia-poll/2016/08/15/ea0e1540-6307-11e6-be4e-23fc4d4d12b4_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_vapoll-735a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory … 9:20 AM - 16 Aug 2016 Photo published for Trump unpopularity fuels wide lead for Clinton in new Virginia poll...

CABELL COUNTY, WV - UPDATE: 8:46 p.m. 8/15/16 Cabell County EMS tells 13 News there were 26 overdoses in a four hour period on Monday. Original The Director of Drug Control Policy Jim Johnson tells 13 news there were 10 heroin overdoses in Huntington on Monday. The 10 overdoses reported happened over a 90 minute period. Nobody died yet from the overdoses. Dispatchers report the overdoses happened at several locations in the city.

What is the cheapest way to get decent "cable" tv and Internet service in a very rural place, when you only need it a few times a year when there? Has a FReeper solved this problem already? The people going up there will be elderly and/or not at all techie. They just want to turn on a tv and see the regular typical cable channels and they want to surf the web in normal ways as well as use texting etc. The home might be used less than once a month, or even just a few times a year. It...

First, you want to pick a place that allows you to maintain a normal, mainstream life before life as we know it comes crashing down. A lot of us are of the mindset that something catastrophic is inevitable. I am becoming increasingly convinced that this is a sooner rather than a later probability, however it could conceivably still be years away. So in the meantime, you want to have reasonably convenient access to things like employment, education, cultural and extracurricular activities for your kids, modern medical facilities, shopping, and all the trappings of modern life. ... Another consideration is proximity...

As if the election results weren't enough proof that Donald Trump absolutely dominated Appalachia, this map offers a pretty good picture of just how widespread the presumptive GOP nominee's support is in the region:

If you ever want to know what liberal Hollywood really thinks, just watch a Shonda Rhimes show. In about every other episode she has characters going off on thinly veiled, self-righteous liberal monologues. Tonight, ABC’s Scandal had two separate characters rant about "white men" and "country people." For those who aren’t unfamiliar with Scandal, GOP presidential primary candidate Hollis Doyle (Gregg Henry) is a character intended to spoof Donald Trump. The similarities in this particular show are endless: The opposing campaigns despair that “no matter what he does America loves him,” an ex-wife claims he raped her, he’s asked to...

During his victory speech Tuesday night after the Indiana primary, Donald Trump emphasized a region that could be ground zero for support: Appalachia. “The miners in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, Ohio and all over, they’re going to start to work again,” Trump said. “We are not going to be like Hillary Clinton,” he said, taking aim at her ill-timed remarks last more for which she ultimately apologized. Once upon a time in coal country -- states stretching along the Appalachian Mountains and the Marcellus Shale, a formation rich in underground resources like natural gas and coal -- the Clinton...

White women have been dying prematurely at higher rates since the turn of this century, passing away in their 30s, 40s and 50s in a slow-motion crisis driven by decaying health in small-town America, according to an analysis of national health and mortality statistics by The Washington Post. Among African Americans, Hispanics and even the oldest white Americans, death rates have continued to fall. But for white women in what should be the prime of their lives, death rates have spiked upward. In one of the hardest-hit groups — rural white women in their late 40s — the death rate...

Now tallying 21 counties among their ranks, supporters of the movement to carve an independent “State of Jefferson” out of Northern California plan to introduce a bill this session seeking sovereignty. Organizers on Wednesday turned in declarations for 15 counties, including Sutter, Placer, Nevada and El Dorado, asking the state to grant them permission to separate. Six others petitions – which were either passed by the county boards of supervisors or reflect signature-gathering drives – have already been filed. Jefferson proponents contend that their rural areas lack adequate representation in state government, which has led to over-regulation and environmental policies...

As a resident of the upstate portion of New York (not the Big Apple) I have written frequently about the depressing, negative effects which liberal tax and spend policies combined with strangling regulatory burdens have had on the state, as well as the economic death spiral which has followed. Many of the complaints I hear from residents of the more rural, upstate region center on the unbalanced power held by New York City and the complete disconnect between the government and the more conservative, rural communities to the north and west. But even as a person studying and experiencing...

When asked about new firearms legislation at an event in Saskatoon, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said there are too many restrictions on gun ownership, which he added is important for the livelihoods of rural people, recreation and personal safety according to CTV. “My wife’s from a rural area and obviously gun ownership wasn’t just for the farm, but was for a certain level of security when you’re a ways away from immediate police assistance,” he said during a question-and-answer session with the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities.

Public opinion surveys show that a majority of adults — and a growing one — now supports same-sex marriage. But the rapid change in public opinion may obscure another fact: Large areas of the country remain overwhelmingly opposed to same-sex marriage, with little sign of change. Alabama is one of those places, and the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court this weekend encouraged probate judges there to defy a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The emerging national majority in favor of same-sex marriage is built on high levels of support in well-educated metropolitan areas,...

In a black and white photo snapped in the early 1940s, a young, central Ohio farm girl beams from beneath a straw hat. Around her neck is a small scarf; she wears a pair of overalls. The photo arrived with a simple but joyfully blunt note from the subject, now a 77-year-old farmer in rural Ohio: “Here’s me, butch Gael!”Only age 9 when it was taken, she already had a faint understanding that she was a lesbian. Aware of her differences, Gael buried a lack of love for frills in acceptable rural tomboyishness. For more than a decade she hid...

Representative Derek Kilmer (D-WA) called on Congressional leaders to reauthorize a program that provides key support to rural communities. Representatives Kilmer, Chris Stewart (R-UT), Jared Huffman (D-CA), and Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) led a letter urging the swift renewal of Secure Rural Schools (SRS) to help counties with national forests. Since national forest land cannot be taxed by counties or states, for more than 100 years the Forest Service has shared revenues from timber harvests on federal lands with the nearby communities. In the letter to House Speaker John Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi the members pointed out that SRS...

Anyone have one? Can you get a decent, reliable one without spending a fortune? Likes/Dislikes? Sliding or Opening? I may need one for our property, 1) To keep dogs out of our property. 2) To keep out free range goats and chickens in our property and an occasional dog (we have 3) that may get stupid and get out of the house without a leash. Don't need anything hardcore or fancy. Not trying to keep out bad guys. Also, how did you handle UPS/FedEx/US Mail Box deliveries?

In what may come as a surprise to residents of Colorado Springs and Pueblo, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn’t think those cities have roads. Bloomberg told Rolling Stone that he was “sorry” about the recalls of two state senators last year over the Democratic state legislature’s gun-control. “Colorado Springs is the second largest city in Colorado, Mr. Mayor,” said Herpin. “and not only do we have plenty of roads, but we are also home to the United States Air Force Academy, the U.S. Olympic Training Center and Committee Headquarters (which moved here from New York City), major...

Differences Between Rural and Urban America Are Underappreciated Factor in Political Split EL DORADO SPRINGS, Mo.—The owner of the nicest restaurant in town doesn't serve alcohol, worried that his pastor would be disappointed if he did. Public schools try to avoid scheduling events on Wednesday evenings, when churches hold Bible study. And Democrats here are a rare and lonely breed. Older, nearly 100% white and overwhelmingly Republican, El Dorado Springs is typical of what is now small-town America. Coffee costs 90 cents at the diner, with free refills. Two hours north and a world away in Kansas City, Starbucks charges...

Entrance to Frank's Gun Shop by Ashley Hardway In this highly unusual case, the action was all caught on video.  The gun shop owner, Frank Petro, knew the former officer, Jack O. Edmundson.  Family members said that Edmundson had been extorting Petro by impersonating a state lottery officer.  The scam was that Edmundson claimed that Petro's winnings were fraudulent, and that he would jail Petro unless Petro paid him the winnings.   Petro, as a highly regulated gun shop owner was particularly vulnerable.  Even an accusation might have resulted in the BATFE pulling his license and livelihood.   When Petro's...

Owsley County, Ky. – There are lots of diversions in the Big White Ghetto, the vast moribund matrix of Wonder Bread–hued Appalachian towns and villages stretching from northern Mississippi to southern New York, a slowly dissipating nebula of poverty and misery with its heart in eastern Kentucky, the last redoubt of the Scots-Irish working class that picked up where African slave labor left off, mining and cropping and sawing the raw materials for a modern American economy that would soon run out of profitable uses for the class of people who 500 years ago would have been known, without any...