Free Republic

Joe Coulombe envisioned a new generation of young grocery shoppers emerging in the 1960s, one that wanted healthy, tasty, high-quality food they couldn’t find in most supermarkets and couldn’t afford to buy in the few high-end gourmet outlets. So he found a new way to bring everything from a then-exotic snack food called granola to the California-produced wines that for flavor compared with anything from France. And he made shopping for them almost as much fun as sailing the high seas when he created Trader Joe’s, a quirky little grocery store filled with nautical themes and staffed not by managers...

I have been working on a knowledge base of topics related to prepping and SHTF situations. It is geared towards making people more self sufficient with topics ranging from unarmed self defense to small space gardening to how to sew your own clothes. I'm one of those types of people who believe that we are going to go out with a whimper, not a bang, so there is a lot of content on how to do your own repairs, build your own stuff and live a more frugal lifestyle. In order to get access you need to send me a...

Don't watch this or read further if you're panicking about Coronavirus. This is a youtube blogger, that breaks down a lot of the news and the numbers on worldometers. Highlights: He and others are being censured. Goes through Worldometers but has good insights on things that don't look right. Thailand - showed a graph yesterday that looks like Thailand has a problem with "viral pneumonia". Washington State - already talking about triage-ing care and won't be testing all cases. Implies resources aren't available. UK only has 28 beds for most severe respiratory distress patients. Only 15 are available. (ECMO's available)....

Washington Governor Jay Inslee (D) declared a state of emergency on Saturday following the announcement of the first coronavirus-related death in his state and the nation. The governor directed all state agencies to use all resources necessary. He also authorized the use of National Guard troops. “This will allow us to get the resources we need,” the governor said in a written statement. “This is a time to take common-sense, proactive measures to ensure the health and safety of those who live in Washington state. Our state agency directors have been actively preparing since the nation’s first case appeared in...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Farmers, Sanctity of Life, Health Care, and the Media Religion Forum threads labeled “Prayer” are closed to debate of any kind. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; Whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Galatians 6:8

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) says a man who prosecutors allege sexually assaulted a 3-year-old girl in the stall of a Chicago McDonald’s restroom should have been turned over to the agency last year. Christopher Puente, 34, is charged with one count of predatory criminal sexual assault. Cook County prosecutors said he confessed to detectives that he’d placed the child on his lap while he was in a restroom stall, pulled off her pants, and covered her mouth when she started calling out “daddy daddy.” -snip The father took both children to the restroom, taking his son into a stall...

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds are engaged and expecting a baby in early summer, according to multiple reports Saturday. Johnson, 55, and Symonds, 31, became the first unmarried couple to occupy Downing Street when they moved in last July. Symonds is also the youngest partner of a prime minister in 174 years, according to BBC News. In a post on her private Instagram account, Symonds gushed: “Many of you already know but for my friends that still don’t, we got engaged at the end of last year… and we’ve got a baby hatching early summer....

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating. David Beede of Shallow Point Fishing Charters is getting death threats.The internet was aflame this week with comments criticizing a Tampa charter boat captain after drone video surfaced showing him scrape a manatee’s back with a fishing pole while taking clients to fish near Weedon Island. The internet onslaught has been so bad, David Beede said, he’s now getting death threats. Beede told the Tampa Bay Times he thought he was helping the manatee. The video, he said, doesn’t show the whole story. “I thought I was helping,” Beede told the...

It was shortly after the new year when Jim Holton, owner of Mountain Town Station, sent word of an unusual critter roaming around the grounds of his restaurants at 506 W. Broadway just west of downtown Mt. Pleasant. He reported seeing a white squirrel. A quick search of the grounds by Morning Sun staff turned up lots of snow and not much else during a chilly hour-long search. It became a mild winter obsession. Reports were made of the animal on different parts of the ground: near the garbage receptacles in the back, behind Water Works Salon, 502 W. Broadway,...

Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg twice compared Social Security to a Ponzi scheme when he was in office, CNN reports, which is a far cry from his current stance as a Democratic presidential candidate. Nowadays, Bloomberg has vowed to to strengthen entitlement programs, but he used to see them as a major hurdle in the effort to shrink the United States' deficit. During appearances on his old radio program "Live from City Hall," which were reviewed by CNN's KFile, Bloomberg made the Ponzi scheme comparison once in 2006 and again in 2009. The latter instance was...

SNIP Stunning aerial images of Earth show a drastic decrease in pollution levels over northern China in the past month, as entire towns the size of New York City have been shut down amid the deadly outbreak. The images, produced by NASA and the European Space Agency, compare air quality between Jan. 1 and Jan. 20 with pollution levels between Feb. 10 and 25 — and the difference in nitrogen dioxide concentration is stunning. SNIP

“Two Men You’re Related to” (Romans 5:12-19) You know those ancestry tests you can take? You know, the ones where you spit into a little tube, and you send it off, and then they let you know what your ancestry is. And they’ll even give you lists of names of people you’re related to, including people maybe you didn’t know you were related to. Well, today I’m going to tell you about two people you definitely are related to, and--guess what--you don’t even have to spit into a tube. And so our theme this morning: “Two Men You’re Related to.”...

March 01 2020 First Sunday of Lent Reading 1 Gn 2:7-9; 3:1-7 The LORD God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and so man became a living being.Then the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made various trees grow that were delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of...

The $100 million Ark Encounter biblical theme park with a life-sized Noah's Ark replica, and its sister institution, the Creation Museum, have finished No. 1 and No. 2 respectively in USA Today's 10 Best Readers’ Choice Awards for 2020.The Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum received the most readers’ votes from a list of the top religious museums in the nation as selected by a panel of top travel experts.“Both attractions have made Northern Kentucky the leading faith-based destination in America,” the two winners said in a statement Friday.“We are so grateful to USA Today for considering our internationally recognized...

SNIP 'Fight the virus not the people:' Demonstrators march against racism in San Francisco's Chinatown Hundreds of people gathered in San Francisco's Chinatown on Saturday to march against xenophobia caused by fears of the coronavirus outbreak. Demonstrators carried signs that read "Chinatown open for business" and "United we stand together." California Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, tweeted a photo of the gathering, calling coronavirus a "serious public threat" and "not an invitation to racial stereotyping." "Fight the virus not the people," he tweeted. SNIP

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and the United States are already in talks to craft a new and more equitable Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and are looking at similar pacts involving Japan and Australia as templates. “We are now in the process of trying to find ways and means to be able to see how we can either come out with something similar perhaps,” Ambassador to the United States Jose Manuel Romualdez said at a forum hosted by the think tank Stratbase ADR Institute in Makati City. Romualdez said the talks were looking to resolve sovereignty issues in the 1999...

As the coronavirus outbreak hastens its global spread, the United States has reiterated its support for Taiwan participating in the World Health Organization (WHO). Taiwan for years has been barred from obtaining observer-status at the WHO because of the Chinese regime’s objections. Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, the self-ruled island has further protested its exclusion from the U.N.’s health agency, saying this was hampering global efforts to contain the disease. “This COVID-19 outbreak only further underlines the unacceptability of Taiwan being excluded from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Health Assembly because the People’s Republic of...

Newsdump Alert: French Premier Edouard Philippe invokes French constitution to speed passage of President Emmanuel Macron's "pension reform".... Newsdump Alert: Democrat Presidential candidate Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard warns against US involvement in Turkish-Al Qaeda war against Russia in Syria.... At a UN Security Council emergency meeting Friday night the US Representative Kelly Craft called for the grounding Russian aircraft being used to bomb the forces of the Turkish-Terrorist alliance in Syria saying... "we call on the Russian Federation to immediately ground its warplanes"....... (Warning: This Content May Offend Some Readers) Well another wild weekend here of "happening" after "happening" and "The...

A 78-year-old Perth man has died from the coronavirus, becoming the first person in Australia to die from the disease. A Perth man has become the first person in Australia to die from the coronavirus. Western Australia’s Chief Health Officer Dr Andrew Robertson on Sunday confirmed the 78-year-old man, who has not been named, died at Perth’s Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in the early hours of the morning. The man and his wife contracted COVID-19 onboard the Diamond Princess cruise ship. His wife is stable and remains in hospital.

I explore three surahs that illustrate the self-contradictory nature of the Koran, and demonstrate how Tawhid and the ostensible immortality of the Koran are mutually exclusive.