Free Republic

Obama has done it. He has brought America down. It only took him just over four years. The Republicans could have stopped him. They didn’t. How did the nihilistic left succeed in destroying America? Simple. They learned just a little of the capitalism they hate, and they drove your nation into outright bankruptcy. And here is what the GOP has to say about it: just about nothing. The once-mighty United States is now the most indebted nation on Earth. In round numbers, here are just some of the vital statistics as the patient dies: National debt: $17 trillion, or $50,000...

Looking for a bug out bag checklist to make sure your bug out bag isn’t lacking anything critical? Instead of another long written post about bug out bags, we thought we’d put one out there in pictorial form. Hope this gives you a few ideas on items you haven’t checked off your bug out bag checklist quite yet. We know one bug out bag isn’t right for every occasion, but this is how we are packing our bags for a TEOTWAWKI scenario.

National Security: The administration moves an advanced missile defense system to Guam because it knows a single low-yield nuke detonated at high altitude could send America back in time a hundred years. The announcement Wednesday by the Defense Department that it would soon deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System (THAAD), a missile defense system inherited from the Bush administration, to Guam underscores the seriousness of the threat from North Korea, whose actions, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel rightly said, "present a real and clear danger." This move comes after the Obama administration reversed its previous scuttling of Bush administration...

Here's his explanation: When you print money, the money does not flow evenly into the economic system. It stays essentially in the financial service industry and among people that have access to these funds, mostly well-to-do people. It does not go to the worker. I just mentioned that it doesn't flow evenly into the system. Now from time to time it will lift the NASDAQ like between 1997 and March 2000. Then it lifted home prices in the U.S. until 2007. Then it lifted the commodity prices in 2008 until July 2008 when the global economy was already in recession....

Everyone is talking about the new Pope Francis, former Father Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and there’s indeed lots of reasons to be excited about it. This is a man that just a few days ago, would take a bus and then walk into some of the worst shanty towns in South America, on his own. Even cops have to organize so as to enter by the dozens in these places, even hundreds when trying to arrest someone hiding there. He would visit them, baptize children there, help organize soup kitchens and spend time with some of the poorest, most needy people...

“A Failure of Civility” A Book Review by Matt Bracken First, let me apologize for the poor writing quality of this review. Normally, I write an essay and spend days and days polishing it. Not this time. I’m currently in between my “pretty” essays, but this review is just pure business, like a claw hammer you picked up at Home Depot to bang nails. Pretty has nothing to do with it, so let’s get on with the job. Second, let me apologize to the other very kind authors who have sent me their books to review over the past months....

The White House and President Obama’s supporters insist that he’s making his first trip to Israel next month to assure the Jewish state that if push comes to shove with Iran, he’ll have Israel’s back. But North Korea’s nuclear test Tuesday morning could indicate that it’s already too late for that. If North Korea has the bomb, then for all practical purposes Iran does, too. If that’s so, then Obama’s policy of prevention has failed, and containment—a policy that the president has repeatedly said is not an option—is in fact all Washington has. If this sounds hyperbolic, consider the history...

Rifles Your needs: Hunting, varmint control, “just in case” Why: While some people may use or need a rifle for home defense, all the rifle owners I know use their rifles for either target shooting or hunting and varmint control. They use a different kind of gun for personal or home defense. However, for the sake of argument let’s say that the proverbial excrement has hit the rotating airfoil and that you, despite the fact that you get your meat from the grocery store and don’t run into coyotes at the bus stop, could be called upon to defend all...

In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town in the South as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots greater than those experienced in Los Angeles in 1965 (Watts), multiple cities in 1968 (MLK assassination), and Los Angeles again in 1992 (Rodney King). New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance. In fact, the proximate spark of the next...

Introduction The following is just my opinion. It is nothing more than my opinion. I have nothing to substantiate or prove any aspect of my opinion. My opinion is simply the logical conclusion of a law-abiding sixty-year old Christian grandfather who has both an engineering degree and an M.B.A. degree and who has seen both good times and hard times during his life. The Current Situation: At the present time every nation in the entire world is facing serious financial and social stress. If only a few nations were involved then it might be possible to contain the upcoming meltdown...

Bugging Out vs. Hunkering Down M.D. Creekmore January 19th, 2013 The Survivalist Blog This article has been contributed by M.D. Creekmore of The Survivalist Blog. The very idea of leaving the security of your home to “bug out” to the woods has never sat well with me – In nearly every instance it’s better to hunker down or “bug in” than to bug out. I mean, why leave the safety and familiar surroundings of your home, for the open and unforgiving wilderness. For many people this is their first line of preparation against disaster, unfortunately, most will end up joining...

Doomsday Phobia: China Goes Nuts For End Of The World After Screening Of Apocalyptic Movie '2012' BY IBTimes Staff Reporter | December 13 2012 10:06 AM While many have written off the possibility of the end of the world this Dec. 21, 2012, some have made extreme moves in fear of doomsday and have even developed a phobia for the event. People in China have been acting out in panic for the end of the world after a screening of doomsday film "2012." According to the Asia Times, a screening of the 3D film "2012" in China last month has...

Most preppers should be familiar with the ‘rule of three’ – this means having one main method of an important function and a backup for it and a backup of the backup. It doesn’t necessarily entail 3 versions of the same thing but distinctly different ways of accomplishing a priority task. In the case of personal security arrangements, the main or level 1 version would be firearms within easy reach within a structure. These would be the primary weapons used for hunting and defence. And while it’s been said that the time to hide weapons is the time to bring...

Government Issues Statement Debunking End of the World: “Just Rumors” Mac Slavo December 4th, 2012 With the purported 2012 Mayan Apocalypse calculated to take place on December 21st rapidly approaching, thousands of letters have poured into government agencies like NASA from citizens concerned about the end of the world. Doomsday fears surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar, a possible collision with a mystery “Planet X” theorized by some researchers, and pole shift popularized in the Hollywood movie 2012, have forced the government to issue a rebuttal debunking the claims at their USA.gov web site: Scary Rumors about the World...

Freedom Outpost has previously reported on the fact that gun sales represent at least one booming sector of the American economy since the re-election of Barak Obama. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to interpret that piece of data in terms of sociology: What must people be thinking? That’s a legitimate question, and it’s easy to think of an answer. Horror icon, Stephen King, has a theory that the same sort of “weather vane” indication of the public mood can be discerned from the popularity, or lack thereof, of current scary movies. In his nonfiction book about creating horror fiction, Danse...

The Day The World Ended [Micro-Documentary] Mac Slavo November 21st, 2012 From the creator of the widely popular The Day the Dollar Died: The First 12 Hours of a US Dollar Collapse, comes a simulation of what the world may look like in the very near future. WATCH: THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (PART 1 of 2): CONTINUE: Watch The Day the World Ended [Part 2 of 2]

On a clear morning in May, Ron Douglas left his home in exurban Denver, eased into his Toyota pickup truck and drove to a business meeting at a Starbucks. Douglas, a bearded bear of a man, ordered a venti double-chocolate-chip Frappuccino — “the girliest drink ever,” he called it — and then sat down to discuss the future of the growing survivalist industry. The fact that Douglas not only told me where he lives but also invited me to visit him would be considered a huge mistake by many in the prepping world. Revealing your location runs the risk of...

The Ebola virus can spread through the air from pigs to macaques, a new study suggests. Transmission of the virus — which causes an often fatal hemorrhagic fever in people and primates — was thought to require direct contact with body fluids from an infected animal or person. But in the new study, published online November 15 in Scientific Reports, piglets infected with Ebola passed the virus to macaques housed in the same room even though the animals never touched. “The evidence that the virus got from a pig to a monkey through a respiratory route is good,” says Glenn...

Building a comprehensive food stockpile is a daunting task, to say the least. For that reason, I recommend you begin stocking your home grocery store with basic foods that will enable you to survive during a relatively short-term (two weeks to three months) emergency and then gradually expand your inventory to enable you to survive a long-term emergency (one year or longer) that includes a full array of food and non-food items necessary and tailored to your family’s needs and likes. When considering what to store, keep in mind young children, babies, elderly family members and your pets. Keep special...

For those of you who’ve been living under a mainstream media rock the past ten years, then the following sentences are simply the chorus to a song by the famous rock band R.E.M. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. But to those of us with an apocalyptic bent, the chorus to that song takes the form of an acronym. TEOTWAWKI. And we refer to the acronym on a daily basis, because we...

I recently had a chance to sit down with my friend, survival expert Wallace Streete, to speak about what a crisis would be like. Streete has traveled the world many times over and has had an awful lot of “unpleasant experiences,” to say the least. He has been everywhere from the Congo to North Korea to not so wild and crazy places like Iowa. Well, maybe they are wild and crazy, but not in a survival type of way. Streete warned me that what could potentially happen to America is something that none of us is truly ready for. I...

So, to help clarify a more fundamental approach to choosing a survival retreat, here is a list of priorities that cannot be overlooked: Property Placement You may be searching for a homestead property or a more discreet retreat area for only the most violent disasters. In either case, property placement should be your number one concern. Where is your subject property located? What are the strengths and weaknesses, economically, socially, and legally, in the state you are considering. What is the disposition of the government and law enforcement in the county your retreat resides in? What kind of environment are...

In some way, we all prepare for the diversity and changes life is sure to throw at us. But, some put a lot more thought and effort into it than others. They call themselves “preppers” and there are many living among us. When disaster strikes, they’re ready for the worst-case scenarios. In part one of Preparing for Disaster; we introduced you to Justin Teet. Teet lives in a heavily populated suburb of Mobile and is ready to “bug out” if disaster strikes. He has stockpiled provisions for his family, but with a panicked population, he feels the best place for...

Extremist green campaigning group WWF - endorsed by no less a body than the European Space Agency - has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world's wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race's energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now. Most astonishingly of all, the green hardliners demand that the enormous numbers of wind farms, tidal barriers and solar powerplants required under their plans should somehow be built while at the same time severely rationing supplies of concrete, steel, copper and glass. The WWF presents...

Jorge Villa was an exporter with an engineering degree from the University of Miami when Hurricane Andrew struck Kendall in 1992. As the storm arrived, he took his pregnant wife and the rest of his family to a warehouse space across from the Tamiami airport. It was a clear, breezy evening. He bolted the roll-down door, and the family laid out sleeping bags. By 1 a.m., he could hear the ventilation fans being ripped off the roof. By 2 a.m., it sounded like a freight train was running over the building. The rooms filled with water. His wife felt like...

Are you single and a survivalist? The dating scene is changing. The end of the world as we know it is fast approaching, according to avid doomsday preppers. Kwink.com has developed a unique dating website for survivalist and doomsday prepper singles. With the explosion of information and interest surrounding the looming apocalypse, the fear of an economic implosion, nuclear threats, earthquakes, the Yellowstone super volcanic eruption, solar flares, and a possible viral pandemic, it's not surprising that interest in survival and doomsday preparation is growing at an amazing rate. The National Geographic Channel has a new, reality TV series “Doomsday...

Most Americans do not know this, but a single EMP attack could potentially wipe out most of the electronics in the United States and instantly send this nation back to the 1800s. If a nuclear bomb was exploded high enough in the atmosphere over the middle part of the country, the electromagnetic pulse would fry electronic devices from coast to coast. The damage would be millions of times worse than 9/11. Just imagine a world where nobody has power, most cars will not start, the Internet has been fried, the financial system is offline indefinitely, nobody can make any phone...

“In this epic adventure thriller, a family struggles to reunite in a post-apocalyptic American landscape: a world of empty cities, local militias and heroic freedom fighters, where every single piece of technology — computers, planes, cars, phones, even lights — has mysteriously blacked out … forever.”

3.0 M - SOUTH DAKOTA Preliminary Earthquake Report Magnitude 3.0 M Date-Time 16 Jan 2012 13:41:10 UTC16 Jan 2012 06:41:10 near epicenter16 Jan 2012 07:41:10 standard time in your timezone Location 43.446N 103.051W Depth 5 km Distances 22 km (14 miles) ESE (104 degrees) of Buffalo Gap, SD 30 km (18 miles) SSE (154 degrees) of Fairburn, SD 33 km (20 miles) NNE (27 degrees) of Oelrichs, SD 362 km (225 miles) NNE (27 degrees) of Fort Collins, CO 443 km (275 miles) NNE (20 degrees) of Denver, CO Location Uncertainty Horizontal: 13.5 km; Vertical Parameters Nph = 9; Dmin...

There are years that are remembered for changing the course of human history:1492. 1776. 1945. Then there are years that were predicted to change the course of history. 1844, when Judgment Day didn't materialize. 1910, when Halley's Comet didn't wipe out humanity. And remember Y2K? But rarely does a year arrive with such a mixture of anticipation and dread as 2012. We speak not of the presidential campaign but of the Maya calendar, and the projection that it — or, more accurately, a cycle within it — will end on Dec. 21, 2012. That date has kicked up a swirl...

A friend of mine watches the History Channel, because that's true information. Apparently she's seen a program twice about how global warming is causing the ice to melt and the additional weight of the water is increasing the likelihood of earthquakes. Danger, Will Robinson, danger!!!

The countdown to the apocalypse is on. We're one year away from Dec. 21, 2012, the date that the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar allegedly marked as the end of an era that would reset the date to zero and signal the end of humanity. But will it? There have been many end of times predictions over the years. Christian radio host Harold Camping faced widespread ridicule when his predictions that the world would end twice this year - on May 21, and then on Oct. 21 - failed to materialize. But in the flurry of doomsday predictions - there...

In his own inimitable style, Davidowitz explains why the consumer is in "terrible shape" and why "it's going to get worse," citing the following: Crushing Debt Load: Consumer debt is 117% of disposable income. Help Not Wanted: Even November's "strong" report included more people dropping out of the labor pool (315,000) vs. those who found work (278,000), according to the Labor Department's household survey. Reverse Wealth Effect: Household net worth fell 4% in the third quarter, a drop of $2.4 trillion, according to the Fed. That's the biggest drop since 2008 and would be hard to overcome even if wages...

(CNN) -- A Louisiana lawmaker wants the National Guard to patrol the streets of New Orleans after a toddler who was four days shy of her second birthday was shot and killed in a drive-by. "She was out here as a innocent bystander. She's dead now," said Rufus Ruck, the child's cousin. Keira Holmes Gordon was gunned down in a double shooting at the B. W. Cooper Housing development on Sunday. She was one of two people hit when gunmen from two separate cars opened fire on a man who was standing nearby. According to police, the man ran into...

That our republic is sinking like the Titanic with only twenty minutes left until midnight is the stark theme of an astonishing new book by citizen historian Joseph J. Breitfeller. Drawing a trenchant comparison with the ineptitude of leadership that allowed the magnificent ship Titanic to sink after the bridge ignored five iceberg warnings, the author says America is fast heading to a similar fate. The Four Horsemen of America’s Apocalypse are the four progressive Democrat Presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, and now the worst, Barack Hussein Obama says Breitfeller whose book belongs in the stocking...

I'd planned to do this one soon, and today seems as good a time as any, with POLITICAL blog aggravation being what it is. So with that, I'm gonna take a little break, and write about a life & death decision. We live in a nation today where NOBODY is safe anymore. Even Mountain Home is no longer the little "Mayberry" it was when I first came here 39 years ago, and while I have owned, collected and hunted ever since my Marine Corps days, it has only been over the past 5 years or so that I have "packed...

The United States was still a young nation when three major earthquakes rocked the central Mississippi River valley in the winter of 1811-1812. Chimneys fell, the earth heaved and church bells rang hundreds of miles away, set off by the powerful vibrations from what is now called the New Madrid Seismic Zone. As farmland rolled and shuddered, the shock waves spread as far as New York and the Carolinas. Now on the 200th anniversary of those devastating quakes, some seismologists are warning that the region should be on guard because of the risk that another "Big One" could strike the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Europe's financial crisis poses a threat to U.S. banks and the economy but it is up to the continent's leaders -- not the Federal Reserve -- to find a resolution, a top official at the central bank said on Friday. New York Federal Reserve Bank President William Dudley defended the Fed's decision to lower the cost of dollar funds for overseas banks stressed by Europe's debt crisis as an important step to safeguard the U.S. economy, but he told lawmakers no further intervention was planned. "I don't anticipate, even if the crisis in Europe were to worsen,...

we run a business in one of the sates mentioned below. last month we got socked with a huge retro charge from the Feds on unemployment insurance. Paycor, who runs our payroll, sent the below. Apparantly when the Obama administration extended UC benefits last time, the states couldnt pay, and the feds "loaned" them the money. Now that the states can't pay it back, the Feds, by fiat, just take it from business that actually still has employees. Unexpectedly, without warning, without any process. From the payroll company; There are 22 states that have outstanding loans from the federal government...

The Chinese hard landing is on its way. Please consider China's epic hangover begins by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. China's credit bubble has finally popped. The property market is swinging wildly from boom to bust, the cautionary exhibit of a BRIC's dream that is at last coming down to earth with a thud. "Investors are massively underestimating the risk of a hard-landing in China, and indeed other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China)... a 'Bloody Ridiculous Investment Concept' in my view," said Albert Edwards at Societe Generale. "The BRICs are falling like bricks and the crises are home-blown, caused by their own boom-bust...

An avalanche of apples that pelted road users in Coventry is just the latest in a series of bizarre examples of things falling from the sky. Residents, officials and scientists were left baffled in June 2009 by an apparent downfall of dead tadpoles in central Japan's Ishikawa prefecture. Clouds of the creatures appeared to have fallen from the sky in a series of episodes in a number of cities in the region. One 55-year-old man who heard a strange sound in a car park in the city of Nanao found more than 100 dead tadpoles covering the windscreens of cars...

'Ask Osama bin Laden ... whether I engage in appeasement." Barack Obama, Dec. 8, 2011 Fair enough. Barack Obama didn't appease Osama bin Laden. He killed him. And for ordering the raid and taking the risk, Obama deserves credit for his decisiveness and political courage. However, the bin Laden case was no policy test. No serious person of either party ever suggested negotiation or concession. Obama showed decisiveness, but forgoing a nonoption says nothing about the soundness of one's foreign policy. That comes into play when there are choices to be made. And here the story is different. Take Obama's...

U.S. Congressman David Cicilline (D-RI) is asking unemployed Rhode Islanders to share their stories so that his colleagues will understand the importance of passing an emergency extension to benefits set to expire for more than 2 million Americans on Dec. 31. The Congressman has launched a new Tell Your Story feature on his website in hopes to convince the House and Senate to pass the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2011 (H.R. 3346) which would continue the program through the end of 2012. More the 9,800 state residents currently depend on the aid and according to Director of the...

Gov. Jerry Brown on Tuesday ordered $1 billion in midyear cuts to California's budget that will result in pain for students who rely on school buses to get to class, mothers who depend on child care subsidies to keep working and support programs for the developmentally disabled. Brown, a Democrat, said that the state's revenues will fall about $2.2 billion below the $88.4 billion he and state lawmakers had hoped for when they passed the budget last summer. The announcement was not surprising and could have been worse. The state's legislative analyst had predicted revenues would fall $3.7 billion below...

Mid-East Prophecy Update - December 11th 2011 Pastor JD's latest. Part 2 of 2. Topic: The rise of Islam, and the role of Islam, as it relates to the future of Islam which suggests, at best, that Islam plays a most prominent role, and at worst, Islam plays a dominant role in the Anti-Christ's one world religion.

Seven decades after Pearl Harbor and one decade after 9/11 we Americans dare not remain willfully oblivious to the threat of the Black Swan. Our grand American experiment is more vulnerable now that it was in 1941 and it is certainly more precariously balanced than it was in 2011. These conundrums are what Donald Rumsfeld might describe as the "known unknowns" but by definition a Black Swan event is as surprising as it is earth shattering. So all of these threats which beset us are by definition not Black Swan events. They are known risks. There are many more risks...

Why does Obama claim that economists say more money for Unemployment and an extension of the Payroll Tax Holiday will create jobs? It hasn't yet done so. Why will the next year be any different??

(podcast ... a must listen) Was the collapse of MF Global an accident or the calculated move of a political insider? Ann passionately lays the whole scheme bare, explaining the massive implications this has for our legal and financial systems, not to mention how investors should prepare in the face of massive corruption.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Weekly jobless claims have jumped back over the 400,000 mark. Why is anybody surprised? "Claims for unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose last week, climbing past the psychologically important 400,000 mark as the jobs market showed signs of more weakness. Weekly applications for unemployment benefits rose 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 402,000," and this is gonna end up being 410 or 412 thousand by the time they revise this next week. " Applications had been below 400,000 for three straight weeks." Can you imagine...? This is on CNBC, but it's actually AP, but "the psychologically important 400,000"? Stop and...

FXstreet.com (Barcelona) - S&P rating agency has just downgraded 37 global banks. Goldman, BofA, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, BNY Mellon are amongst the cuts based on a new methodology. Japanese and UK banks cut or outlook lowered as well.