Free Republic

How did a giant, gaping hole tear through the massive Oroville Dam’s main concrete spillway last week, setting in motion the chain of events that could have led to one of America’s deadliest dam failures? Dam experts around the country are focusing on a leading suspect: Tiny bubbles.The prospect is simple, yet terrifying and has been the culprit in a number of near disasters at dams across the globe since engineers discovered it about 50 years ago. In a process called “cavitation,” ...

Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com The Purpose of Decadence and the Pleasures of Coercion I guess you’ve noticed by now that the center didn’t hold. Instead of a secure platform for political premises like tradition, precedent, rationality, and cultural norms, you see a fiery maw of sheer emotion between the camps of the so-called Left and the so-called Right. I say so-called because the campus Left and the Trump Right have escaped the categorical corrals they formerly occupied. And they may have left their customary official parties stranded and dying too. It may be fatuous to say whether that...

There’s a predictable checklist for meltdowns in socialist countries, and it’s playing out with tragic regularity in Venezuela. Nationalize agriculture? Check. Start government-enforced rationing when the food supply dries up? Check. Seal the border when people try to flee to buy food elsewhere? Check. The next step, and usually one of the last before total collapse, is runaway inflation. That’s what we’re starting to see in Venezuela. Rapid inflation, called hyperinflation by economists when it gets really bad, is one of the deadliest poisons for any economy. The spiral is usually triggered when a government prints too much money to...

January 22, 2017The Left is not just in disarray--it is in complete collapse because the working class has awakened to the Left's betrayal and abandonment of the working class in favor of building personal wealth and power. The source of the angry angst rippling through the Democratic Party's progressive camp is not President Trump--it's the complete collapse of the Left globally. To understand this collapse, we turn (once again) to Marx's profound understanding of the state and capitalism. We turn not to the cultural Marxism that is passingly familiar to Americans, but to Marx's core economic analysis, which as Sartre...

Obamacare, the left’s grand attempt to create a national government-run health care system, has failed. They promised lower health insurance premiums, but delivered higher ones. They promised more choice and competition, but delivered less. They promised continuity and better access to care, but delivered disruption and dislocation. Despite promises that people could keep their plans and doctors, thousands of Americans were forced into more expensive insurance with higher deductibles and plans that didn’t include their doctors. After spending billions in tax dollars, Obamacare managed to increase the number of people with health insurance by much less than predicted—with over 80...

Four years after Michigan’s right-to-work law was passed, the state’s largest teachers union appears to be taking a different response to the fact that school employees no longer have to pay union dues or fees. The Michigan Education Association has significantly cut back the amount it spends on collection agencies sent after school employees who didn’t pay dues. It has also created a new high-paying position — a director of membership engagement — according to documents filed with the federal government. Attempts to engage school employees who can no longer be legally compelled to pay dues would make sense considering...

James QuinnJanuary 3, 2017 In Part One of this article I discussed the failure of our brains to think rationally due to our biases and the relentless propaganda flogged by our Deep State ruling class. Viewing the future through the looking glass of the Fourth Turning keeps you focused on the three catalysts which will drive all events in 2017 and beyond. I’ve addressed my 2017 Debt forecast in Part One. Now I will make some guesses about what might happen in 2017 related to Civic Decay and Global Disorder. “Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on...

In my forthcoming book The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites’ Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis, I make a very simple point: In 1998 we were hours away from collapse and did everything wrong following that. In 2008, we were hours away from collapse and did the same thing. Each crisis is bigger than the one before. The stock market today is not very far from where it was in November 2014. The stock market has had big ups and downs. There was a big crash in August 2015, followed by a big crash in January 2016. Followed...

Michael Snyder December 22nd, 2016 Now that the shoe is on the other foot, many liberals all over America have suddenly become extremely interested in prepping. Fearing that a Trump presidency could rapidly evolve into a “Trumpocalypse”, a significant number of leftists are now stockpiling food, guns and emergency supplies. In fact, even though many had expected a sharp drop in gun sales following Trump’s victory, what actually happened is that fear of what is coming under Trump pushed background checks for gun sales to an all-time record high on Black Friday. The election of Donald Trump has awakened the...

Welcome to Trump Nation: On the Collapse of the Democratic Party Duane, I have known you for decades, man. You are a very intelligent, astute, personable and political guy. History will show that your party nominated and the country elected the wrong guy for the last eight years. If you had been president, your party would be in a hell of a lot better shape than it is now. Because the Democratic party is in tatters. And potentially facing eight long years as a marginalized, leaderless and fractionalized party. From the presidency, down ballot to the Congress and then further...

Tyler DurdenNovember 6, 2016 "Under a Trump victory, all bets are off," warns former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, David Stockman. "I like [Trump] because he's against the establishment, but he has no economic program. Yes, he's a disruptor, but has nothing to disrupt with," Stockman told CNBC, "if elected, it will be partisan warfare and a total disaster." Stockman's message is clear, as CNBC notes, sell everything... "The markets are hideously inflated... If you don't sell before the election, certainly do it afterwards. Government is going to be totally paralyzed regardless of...

The whole idea behind the scam known as Obamacare — from its Stalinist passage along a strict party line vote, to its ludicrous state “exchanges,” to its predictably parlous financial condition, to its misuse of a politicized IRS to act as its enforcer, to its destruction of the reputation of a pusillanimous and cowardly chief justice John Roberts — was to wreck the American private-insurance industry so dramatically that a demoralized and anxious public would demand socialized medicine, aka a “single-payer” system. That day is now here. […]The departing president, the woman who seeks to replace him and nearly one-third...

History is full of mysterious disappearances — of people, of places and even of entire civilizations. In many cases, time has not told us what happened to the populations that have vanished en masse, all over the world. Archeologists unearth ruins and uncover clues as to the demise of ancient cultures, but the fates of many inexplicably evaporated peoples remain question marks. Here are four mysteriously vanished civilizations that keep scientists scratching their heads.

German officials could be about to find themselves in an uncomfortable position: Being called on to show they're ready to rescue a bank in a part of the world where such operations are considered taboo. Deutsche Bank came under intensified market fire Thursday, the latest salvo being a Bloomberg report that a small number of hedge funds are trimming their sails at the German bank. In a broad perspective, the move would represent a minor dent in Deutsche's derivatives clearing business. Barry Bausano, chairman of Deutsche's hedge fund business, told CNBC on Thursday that while there have been some outflows,...

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, author of the best-seller “The Book of Mysteries.” Jonathan Cahn’s latest best-seller is called “The Book of Mysteries.” Cahn says, “The Book of Mysteries is literally opening up hundreds of the mysteries of God. Everything from the mysteries of the end times, mysteries behind history, mysteries of Heaven and mysteries of finding your own destiny, as well. The reason I was led to do this book is I believe we are going to have very challenging times ahead, especially for believers, very challenging times. God wants people to be...

The Hillary Clinton campaign on Wednesday released what it called a “comprehensive update” on the candidate’s medical information, describing the illness that took her off the trail this week as a mild and non-contagious bacterial pneumonia.

Hillary Clinton proved once again this weekend that she just can’t tell the truth. Even about the simplest things. She almost collapsed on the sidewalk in New York City and her team assured us she was just a little overheated. Turns out, she was diagnosed with pneumonia two days before. It also looks like her team didn’t take her to the emergency room in order to keep the medical details under wraps. Even allies of the Clinton campaign are stunned at the level of secrecy about her health. Here is the great Matt Vespa with more. From Townhall: Once again...

It was previously reported that something metal fell out of Hillary's pants leg...well, upon further review, it was some type of medical device that once remove from Hillary's body allowed her to go limp as demonstrate when she fell over into the limo/ambulance.

Within moments of the episode itself, the campaign went into a vaguely familiar lockdown mode. When word did emerge from the campaign, the official account was that Clinton felt overheated at a 9/11 remembrance event and was feeling "much better" -- a story that seemed incomplete, based on video evidence that quickly surfaced. Hours later came word that as that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday and placed on antibiotics. This came after days when coughing fits bad enough to stop her from continuing at public events had been blamed on allergies. All of this may have been...

The Statesman will not allow additional comments on Hillary's collapse story. See here: Click here.