Free Republic

The reality of inflation and the specter of a recession appear to be weighing heavily on middle-class households. Among those whose income falls in the $30,000-to-$100,000 range, 75% say their earnings are falling behind the cost of living, and 77% think the U.S. will be in a recession by the end of 2022, according to a recent survey from Primerica. There’s also been a general uptick in financial worries in the last six months, with 39% of those surveyed expecting to be worse off financially in a year, up from 32% in March and 28% in December 2021. In December...

Unless you are brainwashed, you regard the statements "men give birth" and "defund the police" as absurd. Why, then, do leftists (as opposed to liberals and conservatives) say these things and even believe them? I think there are two -- related -- explanations. One is that the Left seeks to tear down every normative institution. If men give birth, "man" and "woman" no longer mean anything. "Men give birth" means the end of the male-female distinction, the most basic distinction in the human race. Racial distinctions pale in comparison. So do national distinctions. Marxists support the obliteration of the male-female...

Trump is trying to claim that he never endorsed Kevin McCarthy for speaker even though he endorsed him two weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, Trump endorsed McCarthy and said he was “an outstanding Representative for the people of California, and a strong and fearless Leader of the House Republican Conference.” However, according to The Washington Examiner, Trump now claims that he never endorsed McCarthy for speaker, “Towards the end of a recent interview, Trump interjected to correct conservative talk show host Wayne Allyn Root after he said Trump endorsed McCarthy for speaker. “No, I haven’t,” Trump said. “No,...

In power or out, the Left produces division and discord not only as a tactic, but also as a product of its spiteful, envious, and hateful ideology. In our celebrity-crazed culture, too often a person’s capacity to garner attention exceeds his talent in his chosen field. This applies to politics, too. A politician’s well-manicured image obfuscates the policies he espouses, especially during a campaign. Consequently, if elected, the ramifications of a politician’s policies that were neglected, amidst the consultant-crafted images our campaigns have become, suddenly manifest themselves in the most unpleasant ways. In the 2020 presidential campaign between Joe Biden...

The realization is hitting home for many people that the crises now hitting the United States are not simply one-off events. The infant formula outage, rising fuel prices, supply chain collapse, authoritarian censorship and now a wave of mass shootings over the weekend — they all point to the systemic collapse of western society as a whole. We are watching the downfall of western civilization as we know it. The rule of law is dead. Elections are rigged. Free speech is disallowed and a criminally corrupt government now runs an actual Ministry of Truth “disinformation” board. “Science” is a total...

The United States and the European Union (EU) have been ineffective in their trade war against Russia and are currently working on their sixth package of sanctions. These sanctions have caused price hikes and food shortages, severely harming innocent people all around the world. As the West struggles to constrain Russia’s military mission in Ukraine, European gas importers have already surrendered to Russia. European gas importers have quietly violated the EU’s own sanctions and have begun buying gas in Rubles, capitulating to Russia’s new rules. As the West’s economic warfare scheme backfires, EU leaders are beginning to crack even further....

Pallets of baby formula are being sent to holding facilities at the border amid a shortage that has seen many parents unable to find it at their local stores, according to a GOP representative. [Below is the photo she posted of pallets of baby supplies at a border center. "They are sending pallets, pallets of baby formula to the border," Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., said in a video posted to Facebook Wednesday. "Meanwhile, in our own district at home, we cannot find baby formula."

If you’re a prepper living in the city, you need to have an emergency preparedness plan before SHTF so you can bug in or bug out as needed. If you’re not sure where to start, learn about the six principles of survival and prepare a bug-out bag. (h/t to SurvivalCache.com) Wilderness survival skills like fire starting, hunting, building a shelter and water purification techniques are all valuable skills, but you need to adapt if you want to survive in the city when SHTF. When planning for an urban disaster scenario, you should also focus on situational awareness, personal protection, planning...

Cardinal says Curia reform requires a change of attitude at the VaticanMUMBAI, India – A leading advisor of Pope Francis says the new reform of the Vatican bureaucracy will require an “attitude of service” from members of the Roman curia.Cardinal Oswald Gracias of Bombay is a member of the pontiff’s Council of Cardinals that advised him on the curia reform, which culminated with the document Predicate Evangelium, released on March 19.“The Reform of the Curia was the first major program the Holy Father started exactly one month after his papacy was inaugurated. On April 13, 2013, he appointed his Council...

WALL Street executive Edward Dowd alleges the Covid crisis was manufactured to solve governments’ out of control debt crises. His 20 years’ experience with high-profile financial crashes alerted him to a potential underlying fraud being used to wipe the books clean. Dowd watched the 1990s internet dotcom bubble burst and witnessed the 2008 global recession caused by fraudulent trading in the US property market, so has a nose for these things. And with governments still saddled with debt from both those disasters (the UK’s public debt is £2.1trillion, double pre-2008, while the US debt had tripled at $30trillion) something mighty...

The global economy is in disarray as the war in Ukraine unleashed a commodity shock with increasing risks of stagflation. Adding to the turmoil is an outbreak of COVID-19 in China that may unleash another supply chain crisis. News from China over the last day shows a new outbreak of the highly contagious omicron variant has infected more than 5,000 people, the most since the early days of the pandemic in early 2020. China’s zero-tolerance approach has shuttered factories and placed some 51 million people into some form of lockdown. As of Tuesday, omicron variant infections have been reported in...

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued sweeping new guidance yesterday for natural gas projects, including a first-ever climate change threshold, upending decades of precedent for how major energy infrastructure is approved. FERC updated a 23-year-old policy for assessing proposed natural gas pipelines, adding new considerations for landowners, environmental justice communities and other factors. In a separate but related decision, the commission also laid out a framework for evaluating projects’ greenhouse gas emissions. The commission’s three Democratic members approved both policies, while the two Republicans on the panel opposed them.

Barely a year into the Democrats’ experiment of installing the hapless Joe Biden as president, crises inevitably unfold. Nobody believes that Biden can put out the fires that are being lit around the world. Foreign leaders may perceive the next three years as an opportunity to get away with mischief that would never occur under the strong leadership of President Trump. “Politics abhors a vacuum” is the cliche that accurately describes how bad things happen when there is a void in leadership as there is now. In our large northern neighbor of Canada, a 21st-century version of martial law was...

The federal Department of Justice (DOJ) has dismissed cases for 31 ANTIFA thugs who were charged with crimes related to rioting in Portland, Ore.Four defendants who were charged with felony assault of a federal officer had those charges dropped. More than half of the charges were “dropped with prejudice,” meaning that those cases cannot under any circumstances be brought up again in court.Billy Williams, the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, claimed at the time there would be severe consequences against ANTIFA terrorists who committed wanton acts of destruction outside of the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse throughout the summer of...

It should be obvious to the casual observer that over the past two years, the entire planet has gone bat guano bonkers over Covid. Australia has reverted to its roots as a prison colony by herding people into covid quarantine camps. In August, 2021, New Zealand locked down its entire population of 5 million people based on a single covid case. Just last week, China’s “Covid-zero” policy caused the lockdown of the industrial city of Ningbo, home to the world’s third largest port, because of a handful of covid cases. Meanwhile, the vaccine-mandate-passport-mania continues unabated in too many countries to...

Criminal suspects released on multiple felony bonds in Texas' most populous county have killed 156 people since 2018, according to victim advocates, who have criticized bail reform efforts that have seen some people charged with violent crimes and released back onto the streets only to violently re-offend. In Harris County, home to Houston, the largest city in the state, there are 113 defendants charged with capital murder that been granted bond, Rania Mankarious, CEO of Crime Stoppers of Houston, told Fox News. The group has been tracking statistics in the midst of a change in bond policies.

As the holiday weekend draws to a close, it has been anything but merry for tens of thousands of stranded airline passengers who had their flight canceled due to a flare-up of the omicron variant that resulted in staffing shortages of pilots and crew for several major airline carriers. Data tracker FlightAware.com shows US flight cancellations exceeded 2,400 in just the past 48 hours.The situation has yet to ease on Sunday as total cancellations within, into, or out of the U.S. topped 754 flights as of 1300 ET. On Christmas day, U.S. cancellations topped nearly 1,000. Henry Harteveldt, president of...

t looks like a scene from the “Fast and the Furious” movies, but it’s real – drivers were recently seen on video pulling dangerous stunts right on the Eisenhower Expressway. How was this allowed to happen? CBS 2's Jermont Terry reports...

It’s not too harsh a judgment to say that this is a man who has risen to the top of American public life without a trace of accomplishment. When you’ve been in national politics for almost 50 years, you ought to have achieved something, if only by accident. But this journeyman politician, when he wasn’t getting almost all the big issues wrong, was largely a bystander. He is now a husk of a leader, a dangerously debilitated figure, who oscillates between displays of vacuous incoherence and weird, angry outbursts, like a confused old man at the wrong bus stop. Meanwhile,...

Last weekend in Chicago’s Loop, all hell broke loose as hundreds of teens rampaged across the downtown area near Millenium Park. A bus driver was assaulted, a young girl was shot, and 21 people were arrested. It’s becoming a distressingly familiar occurrence in Chicago. Mayor Lori Lightfoot blames the parents. “Do you know where your children are?” the clueless mayor asked. Last weekend’s “Wild in the Streets” moment was the result of social media influencers spreading the word on several platforms. But the “Flash Mob” wasn’t some harmless stunt. Two officers were injured in the melee, and the general sense...