Free Republic

A Fourth Turning is a period in history when all the negative developments over a four-generation period reach a crescendo – a time when the sociopaths are the rulers and are putting the squeeze on the populace. In addition to an effort to institute totalitarian rule, symptoms include the breakdown of both morality and logic. Black is white; up is down. Confusion and chaos increase in both frequency and magnitude as the Fourth Turning advances. Those of a libertarian mindset tend to be especially sensitive to and cognizant of these symptoms as they unfold. Since a classic Fourth Turning takes...

How bad do things have to get before people start realizing that we are in the midst of a full-blown economic crisis? The “experts” on television are endlessly debating about whether or not we are going to have a “recession” this year, and meanwhile economic activity is imploding all around us. The number of homes being sold in this country each month has already fallen by a third. The number of job cuts in November was 417 percent higher than it was during the same month a year earlier, and at this point even Amazon is laying off thousands of...

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican weighing a 2024 White House bid, said Monday he believes former President Donald Trump is “at his lowest point ever,” as the House Jan. 6 committee wrapped up its investigation into what Hogan described as “one of the darkest days in American history.”In an interview with The Associated Press shortly before the committee released its recommendations, Hogan said he believes the former president should be held accountable, after he “inflamed kind of a riotous mob to go attack the seat of our democracy.” However, the outgoing, term-limited governor was not specific...

Leading German lawyer and member of the German Corona Investigative Committee, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich specialises globally on the prosecution of fraudulent corporations. He now leads a team of international lawyers in what will become the world’s largest global tort case—against all protagonists and accomplices in what is now being called, "The COVID Scandal." The team of more than 1,000 lawyers and over 10,000 medical experts has initiated legal proceedings against the CDC, WHO and the Davos Group for crimes against humanity. Dr. Fuellmich is currently preparing the largest class action lawsuit in history, a kind of “Nuremberg 2.0”. Transcript testimony...

The scientist who led the international MOSAiC expedition to the North Pole on Tuesday warned that the point could have already been reached at which irreversible global warming is triggered. During its expedition, the German research vessel “Polarstern” drifted through the Arctic on an ice floe for a year to also be able to research the winter at the North Pole, and the effects of climate change. “The disappearance of summer sea ice in the Arctic is one of the first landmines in this minefield, one of the tipping points that we set off first when we push warming too...

WASHINGTON — More than a month after Election Day, the biggest political story for many Americans is how close the presidential race was. President-elect Joe Biden won by more than 4 points, but polls and some observers were expecting a win in the 10-point range.Taking a longer view, however, the relative closeness of the race shouldn't have been a surprise. It was less an outlier than standard operating procedure. In fact, the United States is in its longest run of single-digit popular vote elections in a very long time.Biden's 4.4-point victory in November was the second-largest popular vote win by...

On July 31, 1976, the natural and man-made basins and reservoirs above Colorado’s Thompson Canyon reached a critical tipping point. Several unusual rain systems seemed to have snagged on the rugged Rocky Mountain peaks. It was as if the clouds were punctured by the craggy spears of rock and the rains gushed out relentlessly. Finally, somewhere up there, a tipping point was reached. A “tipping point” occurs when clusters of small events — like repeating cloudbursts — become weighty enough to cause sweeping destruction. So, somewhere in the Estes Park region a critical mass of rainfall had accumulated in a...

Greenland’s enormous ice sheet is melting at such an accelerated rate that it may have reached a “tipping point,” and could become a major factor in sea-level rise around the world within two decades, scientists said in a study published on Monday. The Arctic is warming at twice the average rate of the rest of the planet, and the new research adds to the evidence that the ice loss in Greenland, which lies mainly above the Arctic Circle, is speeding up as the warming increases. The authors found that ice loss in 2012 was nearly four times the rate in...

There is a limit to how much stress can be put on something before it is finally and irreversibly destroyed. It goes by several different names. Critical mass, tipping point, and system overload are but a few. In each case, the term refers to an event that finally breaks the camel's back (to use yet another term for the same thing). Society is not merely reaching its critical mass; it is reaching it so swiftly that predictably, there will be an abrupt and catastrophic breakdown of historic proportions, eclipsing even the fall of the Roman Empire. [snip] The backlash has...

It is no longer a question of how much government Americans want. The only question is how much government Americanscan afford. And the former Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the answer is becoming clear. “I talk about this in the book,” Ryan told Watchdog Radio Monday. “About very progressive policies. About the outcomes they produce, and how they bankrupt governments.” Ryan writes in his new book, “The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea”, that the federal government has expanded entitlement programs, Medicare, Social Security and now Obamacare, to the point where they cost far more...

The Bitcoin Tipping Point is coming and it will be the Big Bang of disruption in financial services, money and payments as we know them! I often think about the “tipping-point” in Bitcoin’s journey to mass adoption and regularly as myself several questions. When will it be noticeable and what will trigger it? Has it already begun or if not, how far away are we? How do you define or measure “mass adoption” of Bitcoin? A bitcoin meme of Morpheus and Neo posted online recently got me thinking again about how Bitcoin’s true exit most likely itself. Once a significant...

On his Wednesday radio program, conservative talker Mark Levin suggested he didn’t care much for the presidential debate analysis of either The Washington Post’s George Will or the Fox News Channel’s Charles Krauthammer. Levin, author of “Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America,” first took on Will, who called Tuesday’s town hall debate “immeasurably the best in American history” on ABC’s post-debate coverage. “Why? How can this be said to be “immeasurably the best?” Levin asked. “I don’t think more lies have been told in 90 minutes in history of debates. Why? The constant interrupting by the moderator? You know what it...

Following the death of U.S. ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, many pundits jumped to criticize Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for labeling the Obama administration’s response to the crisis “disgraceful.” On this weekend’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday,” Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume said that, although Romney’s remarks were ill-timed, the media’s reaction was the real problem. “I think what he said was correct but it was clumsy,” Hume said. “And it opened him up to charges that he made a terrible mistake. We had an almost ludicrous overreaction in a lot of the media...

A new study by 22 biologists and ecologists has found that environmental changes on our planet are reaching a point of no return that leads to mass extinctions and harms human welfare. The situation, said one scientist, “scares the hell out of me.” That would be James H. Brown, one of the authors of alarming paper published by Nature, talking to New York Times Green blogger Justin Gillis. Brown is not one of your everyday cranks predicting raptures and the end of days. He is a macroecologist at the University of New Mexico. And as The Atlantic's James Fallows, who...

As Congress’ debt-reduction “super-committee” meets in Washington it should focus not only on ways to curb spending or increase revenues, but on a question that is central to America’s economic well-being: How high can the debt get before it harms growth? When nations accumulate a certain level of debt, growth suffers. For the United States, that moment is now. Currently, total federal debt stands at $14.7 trillion, or around 98% of gross domestic product, a level not seen since the end of World War II. Debt financed by private investors, as opposed to that held by government, is about $10...

U.S. Will Default On Its Debt Interest-Rates / US Debt Apr 04, 2011 - 04:13 PM By: DailyWealth Dr. Steve Sjuggerud writes: "I am confident that this country will default on its debt," Bill Gross wrote this week. Bill Gross is not some anti-American crackpot... quite the contrary. He manages the world's biggest bond fund. As the founder and chief investment officer of PIMCO, he's responsible for over $1.2 trillion in assets – mostly in bonds. And last month, in his main bond fund, he got rid of all of his U.S. government bonds. "[I've] been selling Treasurys because they...

... The new information comes in the form of some date changes, and two significant alterations to the release language period. First, the date changes. The emotional tension level plateau is has grown. It had been previously forecast to start on the 8th, but now shows as beginning on November 5, 2010, at approximately 2:30 PM Pacific Coast Time (UTC + 8). Further, the plateau of building emotional tension now extends out further to the 14th of November instead of the 11th. This is the last building tension to accrue. Expect the level to stay maddeningly the same until the...

A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres. Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before. Now, the first study to model changes in the ice sheet...

BACKSTORY At a Little Rock restaurant, after Mr. Clinton was elected president, Emanuel ticked off a list of disloyal Democrats and other political enemies, stabs the table with his knife screaming, ''Dead!'' ''Dead!'' ''Dead!'' after each name. Seven months after moving into the West Wing as Obama's COS, Emanuel is emerging as perhaps the most influential White House COS in a generation. But with his prominence in almost everything important going on comes a high degree of risk. As the principal author of Mr. Obama’s do-everything-at-once strategy, he stands to become a figure of consequence in his own right if...

It's been all over the news - Rush Limbaugh packing up camp and abandoning his operations in New York City. It's been the subject of a Jon Stewart "The Daily Show" tirade [0] and even drew the attention of New York Gov. David Paterson [0]. Limbaugh appeared on Fox News Channel's April 8 "Your World with Neil Cavuto" [1] and explained why he was leaving and how he felt about those that were glad he was leaving. "Well, if they're glad I'm leaving, Neil, then I assume that the governor of New York, the unelected governor - has no interest...