Free Republic

The impending economic collapse is hidden from most. People only see a rising stock market, not the negative underlying factors that will cause the whole system to crash. The weakening of the U.S. dollar is just getting started, warned veteran market forecaster Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. “We have just begun a major, long-term bear market in the dollar,” he said, which should cause a spike in oil prices. He thinks oil will reach $80-$100 a barrel in 2018. The commodity currently trades at roughly $63 a barrel. Shiff focuses on oil as just one example of the...

John O'Connor of the AP has just broken the news that the unpaid bills of the Great State of Illinois have reached the awe-inspiring sum of $16.5 billion. Illinois is chasing a moving target as it tries to dig out of the nation's worst budget crisis, and a review obtained by The Associated Press shows $7.5 billion worth of unpaid bills – as much as half the total – hadn't been sent to the official who writes the checks by the end of June. Although many of those IOUs have since been paid, a similar amount in unprocessed bills has replaced...

I recently had the opportunity to read "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin, a prodigious tome dealing with the circumstances surrounding the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. I was taken aback by some of its provocative assertions. America joined World War I largely to help a few bankers profit off the war (despite a long-standing Monroe doctrine that prohibited our involvement in European affairs) The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was supported by international financial interests in order to destabilize Russia and steal the wealth of the Russian people; and So-called "foreign aid" is merely a...

POLL: Why is the once thriving nation of Venezuela on the brink of total collapse? THE UNITED STATES HAS WAGED AN "ECONOMIC WAR" AGAINST VENEZUELA SOCIALISM HAS DESTROYED THE VENEZUELAN ECONOMY I'M NOT SURE

Fact-checking' website Snopes is asking its users for help in a GoFundMe saying an 'outside vendor' is 'holding it hostage'   But the site which claims to be 'transparent' and to tell people the facts they need to know hasn't told those donating everything that is going onIn fact it is at the center of a bitter legal battle with its CEO being accused of fraud, lies, conspiracy and putting prostitutes and his honeymoon on expensesDavid Mikkelson set up company which owns Snopes.com in 2003 with then wife Barbara but she sold her 50 per cent stake during bitter divorceOwners of...

Author, art professor, feminist, and cultural commentator Camille Paglia speaks on the current transgender mania, the wisdom of early medical & surgical intervention (calling it "child abuse"), and how the explosion of gender identities is a recurring sign of cultural collapse throughout the history of civilization.

Advertisers are turning to gay couples and ethnic minorities to sell their products Advertisers are so worried about being accused of racism or homophobia they are shying away from using images of white people and straight couples. Marketing departments are even putting diversity above relevance to their target audience to avoid accusations of bigotry, a survey of 500 companies has found. A third of advertisers questioned said they had used fewer white models and heterosexual couples over the past year. More than a third of these said they were taking this approach to “prevent perceived discrimination”. The findings are likely...

AL-RAQQA– Considering IS’ state and its attacks’ tactics within al-Raqqa city, it comes to light the extent to which its collapse is imminent, still, the situation should not be underestimated since victory cannot be achieved so easily.Syrian Democratic Forces have declared on June 6 the commencement of the al-Raqqa liberation from IS gangs, SDF broke into the city from the eastern and western sides after fierce clashes with IS gangs.The forces managed till now to liberate 8 neighborhoods from IS gangs which are :al-Sabahiya, al-Romaniyah, al-Qadisiyah, Huteen, Yarmouk western al-Raqqa and al-Mushlab, al-Sinaa, and al-Batani eastern of the city, and...

The German court system has been brought “to the limits” due to the massive number of asylum cases waiting to be challenged, the Association of German Administrative Law Judges warned Thursday. Robert Seegmüller, the organization’s chair, said the courts have piled up a huge backlog, with 250,000 asylum decisions waiting to be challenged in court. “The situation is dramatic for administrative courts,” Seegmüller told German news outlet Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND), according to The Local. “We are now completely stretched to our limits.” Seegmüller warned that a collapse of the court system is inevitable unless authorities invest more resources and hire...

I predicted the Trump POTUS victory from the day Trump announced his candidacy. I predicted that the industrial "blue collar" union folks would go massively for Trump, they did, I said Trump would get over three hundred electoral votes, he did. I now predict the Democrat Party will lose between 8-10 Senate seats and, 12-20 House seats in the upcoming 2018 Mid-Term elections. The Senate losses could even be larger. If the attempts to repeal Obamacare fail and Senate Democrats do not support the Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare, the Democrat Party will lose Senate seats in Florida, Virginia, West...

Four insurance carriers are seeking average rate increases ranging from 9 percent to 150 percent for individual health plans sold in Maryland for 2018. The proposed rate increases average at 38.5 percent and would bring monthly premium prices for a mid-level plan for a 40-year-old Baltimore resident to between $359.25 and $714.95. The proposed rates are subject to review and approval by the Maryland Insurance Administration. The requests come on the same day House Republicans in Congress passed a bill repealing parts of the Affordable Care Act and replacing them with new provisions. Individual plans are for people who aren't...

The federal government once again hit the debt ceiling. The ceiling limits the amount of money the federal government can borrow — a number that was set at $20.1 trillion. Although the issue should have been dealt with in 2015, then-Speaker John Boehner capitulated to President Obama and postponed the debt limit until March 16, 2017. Since then, the federal debt has grown by $1,414,397,000,000 — more than one trillion in less than two years. President Trump promised during his campaign to bring back American prosperity and make Washington work for everyone — not just for the small group of...

Observers expect targeted killings of Islamic State members to continue throughout the eastern province as ISIS' power wanes and locals seek to enact revenge for atrocities carried out by the group and its associates, opposition outlet Alsouria writes Information from the areas under Islamic State (ISIS) control in the Deir-ez-Zor province has confirmed reports of a wave of assassinations targeting members of the group. Activists on social media said the number of executions carried out by ISIS in the city of Abu Kamal east of Deir-ez-Zor and in other cities and towns inside the province had increased, amid accusations of...

It’s been at least two weeks since a massive fire caused a section of I-85 to collapse, throwing metro Atlanta traffic into gridlock and leaving many wondering who exactly was to blame. » The latest: Man charged with I-85 bridge fire pleads not guilty, to be released on bond Here’s what we know so far: Who’s at fault? Basil Eleby, 39, was charged with starting the fire. On Tuesday, April 18, Eleby pleaded not guilty to arson and criminal trespass charges and is expected to be released on a $10,000 signature bond. According to AJC’s Rhonda Cook, Fulton County Superior...

Venezuela is no stranger to protests, but the recent uprisings have rocked the country and stirred questions about the nation’s future.This past week, the “mother of all protests” has seen upward of 2 million Venezuelans take to the streets demanding an end to the notoriously corrupt Maduro regime.Beginning on what would be the 207th anniversary of the country’s independence from Spain, frustrated Venezuelans have taken to the streets demanding change. So far, three Venezuelans have been killed in the marches, hundreds have been injured, and 500 have been arrested.In the span of just over 20 years, President Nicolás Maduro, his...

New York state budget talks collapsed Wednesday night after members of the Senate left the Capitol, with lawmakers from both parties blaming Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo for scuttling negotiations over the spending plan, now several days late. Members of the Senate and Assembly insist they were close to an agreement and hoped to pass a budget this week after blowing past a Saturday deadline. Those hopes eroded Wednesday night after the Democratic governor summoned reporters to his office to say that while he would continue to negotiate, there was no final agreement. Less than an hour later the Senate walked...

In Part One of this article I analyzed the similarities of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy to Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning, trying to assess how Donald Trump’s ascension to power fits into the theories put forth by those authors. In Part Two of this article I compared and contrasted Donald Trump’s rise to power to the rise of The Mule in Asimov’s masterpiece. Unusually gifted individuals come along once in a lifetime to disrupt the plans of the existing social order. Despite the forlorn hope Donald Trump or some other savior can reverse our course, decades of missteps, dreadful decisions,...

Csting his ObamaCare replacement bill as the only chance to save America from a complete health-care collapse, Speaker Paul Ryan Sunday countered his conservative critics who say the bill fails to make good on Republicans' promise to repeal ObamaCare. "Understand the speaker’s plan doesn’t repeal ObamaCare," a member of the House Republicans' Freedom Caucus, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), said Sunday. "Even Charles Krauthammer said that, called it ObamaCare Lite, as you said earlier. It doesn’t bring down premiums and it doesn’t unite Republicans. So, why not do what we all voted for just 15 months ago, clean repeal, and then...

March 2, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- Ridding the world of 6 billion people to bring the population down to 1 billion would have an “overall pro-life effect,” a pro-abortion population control advocate told the press two days before delivering his speech at a Vatican-run conference on saving the natural world. “A world population of around a billion would have an overall pro-life effect,” The Guardian indirectly quoted Sanford biologist Paul Ehrlich as saying. “This could be supported for many millennia and sustain many more human lives in the long term compared with our current uncontrolled growth and prospect of sudden collapse,”...

Following the capture of 8 villages earlier in the day, the US-backed ‘Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) swept through another five ISIS-held villages in a huge offensive that now has Kurdish forward units stationed at the northern bank of the Euphrates River in a region some 40 kilometers east of the provincial capital of Raqqa. Syrian Democratic Forces have officially reached the northern bank of the Euphrates River EAST of Raqqa… New batch of villages liberated pic.twitter.com/81MTH9WOi0— Chris Tomson (@TheDaneChris) February 21, 2017 Effectively, the SDF were able to impose full control over the villages of Al Kajla, Judayat Khabur, Hamad...