Free Republic

U.S.—The last vestiges of COVID restrictions are being removed after a judge overruled the mask mandate for U.S. flights. As cries of joy were heard around the nation, a bloodcurdling scream was reportedly heard echoing through the halls of the NIH in Maryland. "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" cried Dr. Anthony Fauci. "You FOOLS! The mandates! The very source of my power! What have you done? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" Several witnesses say Fauci began writhing and hissing as he began to disintegrate before the eyes of several staff members who watched in unmasked horror. "Avert your eyes, team, look away!" said one staffer...

Kazimierz Woycicki, a specialist on Eastern Europe at the University of Warsaw, says that there are six possible scenarios for Russia’s future. From Moscow’s perspective, four are disastrous; and two are more hopeful although apparently in the Polish scholar’s view less likely. The four negative scenarios, he suggests, include “the territorial disintegration of the Russian Federation,” “the gradual but peaceful falling apart of Russia,” “the Balkanization of Russia,” and “the fall of Russia under the influence of China” (k-politika.ru/mrachnye-prognozy-v-polshe-raspisali-shest-scenariev-budushhego-rossii). The two more positive ones at least from the perspective of the Russian leadership at the present time, Woycicki argues, are...

Only fools believe the rules of warfare, welfare, and the way we deal with our borders do not apply to America. We are different, but not that different, and we are observing the same decline, decay, and disintegration that the Roman Empire experienced. In fact, the comparison is eerie. Rome was founded in 753 B.C. with Romulus as the first king ruling over erratic and violent citizens characterized by Livy as “a rabble of vagrants, mostly runaways and refugees, unrestrained by the power of the throne.” Rome’s early days are shrouded in mystery and myth and mistakes involving the “god”...

Every passing day bring it share of utterly nonsensical news out of the rump-Ukraine aka "Banderastan". Today is not exception, see for yourself this headlines from the BBC's website: Ukraine reinstates conscription as crisis deepens Sure enough, for the zombified TV watchers this might sound like something meaningful. But is it? Let's recall where the current Ukrainian military comes form by remembering what the Ukraine's military was at the moment this Soviet Republic became independent. I have long destroyed my old archives and I simply did not want to scout the Internet for hours to find out what the Ukraine...

Most readers are aware of the concepts of compounding interest & compounding growth rates; concepts fundamental to analysis of portfolio formation, economic growth & capital building. . . . But that is only an illustration of a dynamic concept--the long term effect of a compounding trend, feeding upon itself--which is our subject. This is not about thrift, frugality, providence & positive investment. It is about the absolute antithesis of provident behavior; the consistent, even accelerating, trends that are dismantling the social infra-structure, which once enabled thrift, frugality, providence & constructive behavior, to build an ever better & more satisfying life...

Despite a thousand years of history, the nation-states of Europe contain within them ethnic groups and nationalities who yearn for their own country. In some cases, the national and ethnic character of these minorities have been deliberately stifled. There has also been organized movements that have sprung up to fight for the national aspirations of the minorities. Next year, votes for independence will occur in Scotland and Spain's rich Catalonia region. Some analysts believe that success in either case may lead to other minorities to seek their own path to independence. From Reuters: __________________________ Some suspect the two campaigns will...

The intellectually bankrupt center-left finally has owned up to its disintegration six weeks before the election. Even the ultra left-wing Haaretz lamented Monday, “Game Over. The center-left bloc is a fragmented mess, while the right-wing bloc has never looked so hale and hearty.” It published a Dialog poll that apparently was a knock-out punch for the left but revealed no surprises for readers of Arutz Sheva, which has reported ever since the demise of the Olmert government that the Israeli public is moving away from the “center left” and towards the nationalist and religious camps. If elections were held today,...

In Federalist 2, John Jay looks out at a nation of a common blood, faith, language, history, customs and culture. "Providence," he writes, "has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion ... very similar in their manners and customs ..." Are we still that "one united people" today? Or has America become what Klemens von Metternich called Italy: "a mere geographical expression"? In "Suicide of a Superpower," out this week, I argue that the America we grew up in...

Matt Taibbi's latest article for Rolling Stone is all about how Obama ran as a progressive, but quickly sold out to Wall Street, bringing back all the old deregulation-happy "Rubinites" from the Clinton administration. Like a lot of Taibbi's stuff, there were some reaches in logic in rhetoric. Tim Fernholz of the liberal publication The American Prospect slammed the piece, saying it was filled with inaccuracies, calling it a "nightmare of a story." We're not interested in in adjudicating the Fernholz vs. Taibbi battle. Felix Salmon can handle that. But what Taibbi has done -- and this is truly impressive...

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media. "There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more...

America’s Economic Disintegration—How and Why? One of the main factors in our economic demise has been the perversion of the American Dream of home ownership from a privilege to an undeniable right. Does it make sense to loan people money who cannot repay it… with no money down… or simply because of race, etc.? President Clinton used the power of the Federal government and the “Community Reinvestment Act” to pressure banks to make unsound, risky loans. The tool used to do this was the Boston Federal Reserve Board. They initiated a study in 1992 that allegedly found subtle discrimination in...

New satellite images reveal that a massive ice chunk recently broken away from one of Greenland's glaciers, which researchers say will continue to disintegrate within the next year. Scientists at Ohio State University monitoring daily NASA satellite images of Greenland's glaciers discovered that an 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) piece of the Petermann Glacier broke away between July 10 and 24. The chunk was about half the size of Manhattan. They announced their finding today. Glaciers are large, slow-moving rivers of ice, formed at the poles and in alpine regions by layers of compacted snow. The Petermann Glacier is one of the approximately...

BEIJING — North Korea on Saturday stood by its demand for aid in exchange for shutting down a plutonium-producing reactor, insisting that it would not act until Washington offers concessions.

Let's see if I can kick this off. During the promo at the beginning of the show, where he was standing by live in West Virginia, and throughout the interview itself, Kerry tried hard to keep this huge "what me worry?" smile plastered on his face. He coupled it with numerous condescending head shakes that seemed to imply "these poor benighted fools who so miserably misunderstand the greatness that is John Kerry."

ELCA Disintegrating Under Pressure The ELCA does not need to wait until 2005. It is already beginning to disintegrate. In many ELCA synods, some pastors already live openly in same sex relationships. Seminarians are under fire for holding to universally held Christian doctrines. Congregations are being torn apart because pastors wish to pursue a false teaching but lay people desire to remain faithful to Jesus. ELCA membership statistics slide lower and lower every year as the ELCA leadership continues its death march obsession with sexual abandon. Apparently, many ELCA bishops lack the integrity to even wait until 2005 before they...