Free Republic

HARTFORD, CT (WFSB) - Connecticut lawmakers were working at the State Capitol on Friday in the final days of the session. Democrats said they were finding it harder to get bills passed, now that Republicans have more seats and carry more weight. "They said they wanted to lead. They told the voters in the state of Connecticut give us more seats and we will be at the table,” House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz said. “And you know what we have heard, we will offer no votes."

Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Friday regarding President Trump’s executive order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which will investigate voter fraud and offer recommendations. Engelbrecht said of voter fraud in America, “We are, in my opinion, on the verge of a systemic crisis for a lot of reasons. The first is, we are not evaluating the people that we are allowing to register to vote. We are not doing any sort of reconciliation for identity, residency, citizenship. … We don’t know that these people are...

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem on Monday said there had been an apparent change of attitude towards Syria by the US administration following the Russian plan for “de-escalation” zones. “It seems the United States, where (President Donald) Trump has said the Syrian crisis has dragged on too long, might have come to the conclusion that there must be an understanding with Russia on a solution.” Asked about US backing for Kurdish groups fighting Islamic State in northeast Syria, Moualem said that what Syrian Kurds were doing against the jihadist group was “legitimate” at this stage and fell within the framework...

<p>Some American disasters come as bolts from the blue — the stock-market crash of October 1929, Pearl Harbor, the designated hitter, 9/11. Others are predictable because they arise from arithmetic that is neither hidden nor arcane. Now comes the tsunami of pension problems that will wash over many cities and states.</p>

Debt is not just an American or Chinese problem. The EU is equally mortified with debt and the problem is not just in Greece. As per the Maastricht Treaty, the countries EU states cannot have debt more than 60% of their GDPs. Currently, the situation is nowhere close to this ideal as 21 countries have passed this limit and 5 have more debt than their GDP. The situation is serious with Greece, where the debt is 177 percent of the GDP. While the world is focusing on Greece’s extreme debt crisis, Italy and Portugal easily miss the spotlight despite having...

It seems we have something more to be thankful for the day after Thanksgiving! On November 25th, 2016 after ruling over the poor people of Cuba for 57 years, Fidel Castro, AKA El Jaffe, El Commandant and the butcher died and entered eternity Godless and Christless as he lived and reigned. Born in the hamlet of Biran in 1926 to a hardworking Spanish farmer Angel Castro y Argiz, Castro was the illegitimate offspring by Angel and a cook, Lina Ruz Gonzales. Angel served as a soldier in the Spanish American war in Cuba and at wars end returned where he...

Triumph Forsaken The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 by Mark Moyar Cambridge, 542 pp., $32 In the late summer of 1963, President John Kennedy dispatched two observers to South Vietnam. Their mission was to provide the president an assessment of the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of the Republic of Vietnam. The first, Major General Victor Krulak, USMC, the special assistant for counterinsurgency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited some ten locations in all four Corps areas of Vietnam. Based on extensive interviews with U.S. advisers to the South Vietnamese army, Krulak concluded that the war was going well....

The number of New Yorkers applying for emergency grants to stay in their homes is skyrocketing — as the number of people staying in homeless shelters reached an all-time high last weekend, records show. There were 82,306 applications for one-time emergency grants to prevent evictions in fiscal 2016, up 26 percent from 65,138 requests the previous year, according to the Mayor’s Management Report. The city’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. Without the aid — which comes from city funds and was approved in roughly two-thirds of the cases — even more families would likely have entered...

FROM AN EMAIL RECEIVED TONIGHT: A very interesting speculation and frightening theory about the upcoming election and the next four years of U.S. government. At first I thought it a bit farfetched. But as I thought about it, maybe it could happen! The theory as explained: "I believe that Hillary Clinton will win the election in November," . "Then, sometime between November and January, Hillary will be indicted. The IRS is now investigating the Clinton Foundation and the whole e-mail thing isn't over yet." "Once under indictment she won't be able to assume the Office of the President in January....

Miss Japan (Miss World Pageant i2016 in Tokyo) More than forty per cent of young singletons in Japan are virgins, according to a new study that highlights concerns about the country's demographic challenges. Japan already suffers from the world's oldest population and a shrinking birthrate, with the government struggling to incentivise marriage and parenthood. Now a survey of unmarried people aged 18 to 34 found that around 42 per cent of men and 44.2 per cent of single women had never had sex. The study is carried out by Japan's National Institute of Population and Social Security every five...

Hospitals are to cancel thousands of operations and appointments in a desperate bid to stop the NHS "buckling" this winter, under Government plans. Health officials are drawing up contingency measures to attempt to safeguard emergency care by diverting senior doctors from operating theatres into wards and Accident & Emergency departments as winter sets in. The national plan, detailed in evidence to the Commons health select committee, comes amid concern that the NHS is already in the grip of the worst bed-blocking crisis on record. Last night, Britain’s most senior A&E doctor said hospitals were under such strain that a bad...

In March, after years of emergency management, the city of Pontiac got its finances in order, and management was returned from a state-appointed emergency manager to the elected mayor and city council. Total spending by the city was cut from $55.2 million in 2008 to $28.2 million in 2015, according to the city’s historical finance information. Over an eight-year period, Pontiac’s annual general government expenditures were reduced from $6.2 million to $3.1 million. Spending dubbed “unclassified expenditures” was slashed from $1.3 million in 2008 down to zero, while “other functions” were cut from $13.2 million down to $2.3 million. Public...

In the two days since the Soros Open Society Foundation hack by the DCLeaks collective, several notable revelations have emerged among the data dump of over 2,500 documents exposing the internal strategy of the organization, which expose some of Soros' tactics to influence and benefit from Europe's refugee crisis, the opportunistic funding and influence of media organizations, providing cash for assorted "pro-democracy" groups including the infamous La Raza, Soros' funding of various "social justice" organizations while paying to track unfavorable media coverage including that of Pamela Geller. One particular leaked memo, profiled earlier by the Daily Caller, argues that Europe’s...

Thousands of Catholic pilgrims thronged to the French shrine of Lourdes on Monday for Assumption celebrations held under tight security after the murder of a priest, the latest victim in a series of jihadist attacks. The gathering at the sanctuary in the foothills of the Pyrenees is the first major Catholic event in France since priest Jacques Hamel was killed by two jihadists who stormed his church during mass on July 26 and slit his throat. Groups from across Europe, the Middle East and Asia traveled to Lourdes for the occasion, one of the biggest in the Christian calendar. "We've...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/698305/Deutsche-Bank-financial-crisis-EU-Angela-Merkel 'We should nationalise German banks' Warning Deutsche Bank teetering on edge of CRISIS A TOP economist has warned that Germany's biggest bank is teetering on the edge of crisis and they only way to protect it against future shocks is to nationalise it. By SIMON OSBORNE 20:03, Tue, Aug 9, 2016 | UPDATED: 21:00, Tue, Aug 9, 2016 Germany central bank, the Deutsche Bank, would be hit hard in a new financial crisis Martin Hellwig said stress tests carried out by the European Central Bank revealed the Deutsche Bank would be left in a precarious position in the event of...

Evolutionary Crisis and the Third Way by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * Evidence for Creation Modern evolutionary theory has never been without its problems and controversies—even among secular scientists. Famed evolutionist Douglas Futuyma recently stated: Ever since the Evolutionary Synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, some biologists have expressed doubt that the Synthetic Theory [the prevailing modern version of evolution, also called neo-Darwinism], based principally on mutation, genetic variation, and natural selection, adequately accounts for macroevolution, or evolution above the species level.1 In fact, two of the most prominent and vocal skeptics were actually the leading neo-Darwinist evolutionists of their...

Angelo Mozilo can finally get on with his life. This month the Justice Department told Mr. Mozilo, the former chief executive of Countrywide Financial, once the nation’s largest subprime mortgage lender, that he was no longer under investigation in connection with civil mortgage fraud. The government’s criminal inquiry into Mr. Mozilo’s role in the financial crisis was dropped previously, so he is now in the clear. At least that’s the view from Washington. On Main Street, where the pain of Countrywide’s reckless lending and abusive foreclosure practices still throbs, it’s safe to say that Mr. Mozilo is still identified as...

The organization is making lobbying for gun control a top priority. The AMA, the country's largest doctor group, also vowed to lobby Congress to overturn a decades-old ban on gun violence research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "With approximately 30,000 men, women and children dying each year at the barrel of a gun in elementary schools, movie theaters, workplaces, houses of worship and on live television, the United States faces a public health crisis of gun violence," AMA president Dr. Steven Stack said in a statement. "Even as America faces a crisis unrivaled in any other developed...

Venezuela's economic chaos, critics say is the consequence of failed socialist policies for the last 17 years, especially price and currency controls. Venezuelan security forces fired teargas at protesters chanting "We want food!" near Caracas' presidential palace on Thursday, the latest street violence in the crisis-hit OPEC nation. Hundreds of angry Venezuelans heading towards Miraflores palace in downtown Caracas were met by National Guard troops and police who blocked a major road. President Nicolas Maduro, under intense pressure over a worsening economic crisis in the South American nation of 30 million, had been scheduled to address a rally of indigenous...

Venezuela is running out of just about everything. Food, medicine, electricity, toilet paper, condoms -- you name it. ( Full title ). And over the weekend at least two large international airlines -- Lufthansa and LATAM -- said they will suspend service to Venezuela in the coming months due to the economic crisis. The widespread scarcities and fleeing businesses reflect a country in crisis. "There's a shortage of everything at some level," says Ricardo Cusanno, vice president of Venezuela's Chamber of Commerce. Cusanno says 85% of companies in Venezuela have halted production to some extent. Venezuela's economy is spiraling into...