Free Republic

With six weeks to go, the fight for control of the Senate is down to five states, four of them currently held by Democrats. Republicans must win only two of those contests to guarantee the 51 seats they need to control the Senate for the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency. And they need to win only one of the Democratic states if they hold the only GOP seat at serious risk. While things could still change — and national polls continue to show an environment that may produce a substantial GOP wave in the House and Senate —...

The College Football Czar: Week 4 Week three in review: Sixth-ranked Georgia was upset by South Carolina 38-35, but don’t count the Dogs out of national championship contention just yet. Aside from an early October trip to Missouri, there’s not that much standing in their way between now and their grudge match against Auburn on Nov. 15th. Heisman-winning Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston has already been nominated for the Lardhead of the Year Award, but if there were also a Banana-Brain of the Year and a Nougat-Noggin of the Year, he could easily challenge for the Triple Crown. Coach Jimbo...

The College Football Czar: Week 3 Week two in review: The Delta House defense has won, as the NCAA has ended the Penn State bowl ban after two seasons. So it’s official, then. A four-year postseason ban is too severe a punishment for knowingly allowing a child-rapist to operate on campus for a decade after his acts are made known to campus police. A good argument can be made that because all parties involved in the scandal have departed, it makes no sense to continue to punish those who are there today. In hindsight, the program really should have been...

The College Football Czar: Week 2 Week one in review: The College Football Czar started the season with a record of 18-8, and a winning percentage of .692 – which isn’t great, considering that the dearth of competitive games over Labor Day weekend provided him a couple gimmes. We have a new nominee for the Lardhead of the Year Award, and a pretty formidable one at that. USC cornerback Josh Shaw suffered high ankle sprains to both legs in an off-the-field incident, the details of which he’d rather not disclose. So, naturally, he made up a story that portrayed himself...

The College Football Czar: Week 1 If you're reading the College Football Czar’s week one picks, that must mean that yet another long summer of terrible TV is about to come to a merciful end. So – if you’ve been keeping a football around the house to talk to, with a face drawn on it like Wilson from Cast Away ... If you’ve gone to an empty football stadium during the offseason, sat there for hours, and told yourself that the reason there was no scoring was that Boston College was playing ... If a genie recently granted you whatever...

It seems that with recent trends in economics, demographics, and morality in this country, there's great reason for much pessimism for the future. In any case, I'm curious to hear your predictions for 20 years from now. The state of USA? The world stage? Technology? Anything else you think it will be like in that year.

The College Football Czar: 2014 Season Preview a sports publication from The Shinbone by Daniel Clark Welcome to the 2014 season preview issue of The College Football Czar, a seasonal sports publication by the author and editor of The Shinbone. In the coming months, you will find weekly analyses of upcoming college football action posted at this site. To find out more, please see the Ground Rules. This issue contains the Czar's rankings for all 128 teams in Division I-A football, as well as conference preview capsules, potential upsets to watch for, bowl projections, and a guide to help you...

Rong-Gong Lin II June 2, 2014, 7:42 PM No, it's not your imagination: The Los Angeles area is feeling more earthquakes this year.. After a relatively quiet period of seismic activity in the Los Angeles area, the last five months have been marked by five earthquakes larger than 4.0. That hasn't occurred since 1994, the year of the destructive Northridge earthquake that produced 53 such temblors. Over the next two decades, there were some years that passed without a single quake 4.0 or greater. Earthquake experts said 2014 is clearly a year of increased seismic activity, but they said it's...

The next 9/11 is coming. It is no longer a matter of if, but only when and where. We can thank the Obama regime for the next 9/11. Why is the regime to blame? It is a series of policies the regime has engaged in that guarantee the next 9/11 will come. The next 9/11 will not be an attack by a weapon of mass destruction. The Jihadists don’t need to go to the trouble of obtaining a WMD. Sheryl Attkinson, the former CBS reporter laid out the story on May 24 that will lead to the next 9/11. In...

Over the last 44 years Earth Day has often been hijacked by political opportunists and faux scientists, but it is great fun to look back and see just how wrong the original Earth Day environmental experts were about the science and the future:

The question wasn’t “what do people think is caused by global warming”, but “what was predicted by scientists and activists 25 years ago that would be a result of global warming.” Big difference. OK. Hang on to your hat! The original post was asking for a list of failed climate predictions, so here are 107: FAILED CLIMATE PREDICTIONS (and some related stupid sayings) 1. “Due to global warming, the coming winters in the local regions will become milder.” Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research, University of Potsdam, February 8, 2006 **** 2. “Milder winters, drier summers: Climate study...

The morning I met Elaine Rich, she was sitting at the kitchen table of her small town home in suburban Maryland trying to estimate refugee flows in Syria.It wasn't the only question she was considering; there were others:Will North Korea launch a new multistage missile before May 10, 2014?Will Russian armed forces enter Kharkiv, Ukraine, by May 10? Rich's answers to these questions would eventually be evaluated by the intelligence community, but she didn't feel much pressure because this wasn't her full-time gig."I'm just a pharmacist," she said. "Nobody cares about me, nobody knows my name, I don't have a...

Since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled during the weekend in Snohomish County have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, warning of “the potential for a large catastrophic failure.”

Please post "Just for Fun" "Predictions" for this year.

In 2013, Bashar al-Assad was ousted from Syria, unemployment remained at 8 percent, and the Washington Redskins won the Super Bowl. That's obviously not what happened this year. But being wrong never stops a whole slew of psychics and pundits from making bold new predictions for the next year. For now, however, we're going to take a look at the predictions made at the end of last year and beginning of this year for what would happen in 2013. Some were on the mark, and others were way off. What People Got Right The National Rifle Association predicted in mid-January...

Predicting the weather -- especially a decade or more in advance -- is unbelievably challenging. What's the track record of those most worried about global warming? Decades ago, what did prominent scientists think the environment would be like in 2010? 1. Within a few years "children just aren't going to know what snow is." Snowfall will be "a very rare and exciting event." 2. "[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…[By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide...

Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov. Painted in 1887 As I said in my last article in the previous year, I live in two worlds.  I am an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church through Anglicanism.  I am fully orthodox as a Catholic and fully submit to the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.  At the same time however, I was once an Evangelical Protestant, and I come from a family that his been Protestant for literally 500 years.  I cannot deny my roots or pretend they don't exist.  If I lived in a Catholic country, or in...

Each December I gaze into my crystal ball and predict what I believe will be the top 10 stories of the coming year. I almost never get these right but they’re fun to speculate about nevertheless. A year from now we’ll take a look back and see how well I did. You can see the predictions I made 12 months ago for 2013 here and here. 10. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1 will be the top grossing movie of the year. Other than the conclusion to The Hobbit, The Hunger Games is the most bankable brand coming out with...

<p>It's time to see how well I did with my predictions for 2013 and to offer a set of 2014 forecasts.</p> <p>I got 10 predictions for this year right. President Obama's job approval rating did drop—from 53% at year's start to 40% this week. There was a new administration scandal, the most significant being the IRS targeting of conservative groups. And ObamaCare's implementation was indeed "ragged and ugly" and "a continuing political advantage to Republicans" as forecast.</p>

Post your predictions for 2014. Anything from Sports, Oscars to the 2014 House/Senate elections, SCOTUS rulings, Texas governors race, to the Super Bowl, etc.