Free Republic

An Israeli warship firing missiles destroying an unidentified aerial target... Joe Biden given the lead in a head-to-head contest with President Trump...In a multi-candidate field Trump and Biden at 38 percent each... A week ahead of a trial in New York brought by Democrat prosecutors, President Donald Trump... A wanted terrorism suspect from Tajikistan arrested in Rome... Hamas reported rejecting a Gaza ceasefire deal from US CIA Director William Burns... Canada unveiling a new defense strategy today...But in the end defense spending will top off at 1.76 percent of GDP short of the 2 percent expectation... Israel says it struck...

As The Federal Reserves attempts to combat inflation, the withdrawal of monetary stimulus is creating problems in the housing market. For one, as mortgage rates have risen, newly listed homes declined -21% YoY in December. And yes, the 2022 vintage is the worst in 6 years as The Fed counterattacks inflation. And mortgage rates rose to over 7% before calming down to around 6.50%.

George Stigler, the Nobel Laureate economist from University of Chicago, penned an excellent paper on regulatory capture. Regulatory capture occurs because groups or individuals with high-stakes interests in the outcome of policy or regulatory decisions can be expected to focus their resources and energies to gain the policy outcomes they prefer, while members of the public, each with only a tiny individual stake in the outcome, will ignore it altogether. Which leads us to who were the biggest contributors to the midterm elections. This list didn’t include the now infamous Sam Bankman-Fried and George Soros. big Deomcrat donors. This is...

The start of a new week and the US Treasury 10-year yield is up 10 basis points, always a noteworthy change. And with it, the 30-year mortgage rate should climb. Meanwhile, the political elite party in Washington DC as the US National Debt hit $31.4 TRILLION and unfunded liabilities (the amount that the political elites promised Americans) hit $173 TRILLION for a grand total of … $204 TRILLION. Since Biden/Pelosi/Schumer are in a lame duck session with Republicans taking the House in January, let’s see if Republicans can halt the insanity in Washington DC. Be that as it may, Fed...

MARK KELLY IS NO MODERATE. HE VOTED 94.4% WITH BIDEN’S AGENDABelow is link to the vote of Arizona Democrat Senator Mark Kelly to confirm radical Chris Magnus, Biden’s pick to lead the Customs and Border Protections (CBP). Also below: news reports about Chris Magnus. Chris Magnus is an open-border and sanctuary-city advocate, border-crisis denier, BLM supporter, and controversial former police chief.

WARNOCK VOTED AGAIN FOR BIDEN’S AGENDABelow is link to the vote of Georgia Democrat Senator Raphael Warnock to confirm radical Chris Magnus, Biden’s pick to lead the Customs and Border Protections (CBP). Also below: news reports about Chris Magnus. Chris Magnus is an open-border and sanctuary-city advocate, border-crisis denier, BLM supporter, and controversial former police chief.

TWO REASONS WHY WE HAVE A BORDER CRISIS: CHRIS MAGNUS & THE DEMOCRATSChris Magnus, before becoming Biden’s Customs and Border Protections (CBP) chief, was well known for being: an open border and sanctuary cities advocate, border crisis denier, BLM supporter, and controversial former police chief. – That sounded fantastic to Joe Biden, so in April 2022, he nominated Magnus to lead the CBP, the agency in charge of protecting our borders!– ALL Democrat Senators* and one RINO also thought it was a great idea and voted to confirm Chris Magnus.WHO IS CHRIS MAGNUS, BIDEN’S CBP CHIEF? – Magnus participated in...

Democrats filed hundreds of lawsuits before the 2020 election across 45 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico - COVID was used as a pretext by Democrats to change election laws in 2020 to benefit Democrats... - LIST: Covid-19 Election Cases Brought by Democrats In Pennsylvannia (PA)... - Legislatures write voting laws, not courts...What happened in Pennsylvania in 2019 and 2020?Items explained: - Quick Overview... - Act 77... - In 2019: Pennsylvania’s Constitution was violated... - In 2020: Democrats Disenfranchised Voters and the Democrat-dominated Pennsylvania Supreme Court behaved like the legal department of the state’s Democratic Party... - Summer, Fall 2020: How...

Does Trump win 2024? A series of Emerson College polls conducted between August 15 and 29 appear to show former President Donald Trump with a commanding lead over President Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch. The news bodes well for the Republicans in November’s mid-terms, assuming that former President Donald Trump’s legal challenges and wrangling with the FBI don’t turn off voters in the coming months. Trump holds substantial leads in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia – giving the former president a shot at winning back a total of 36 electoral college votes should he hold all states he won last...

Rolling out a new student loan forgiveness program surely was a better thing for President Joe Biden to be talking about than the anniversary of the Kabul airport bombing that same week, but it hasn’t gone as swimmingly as the White House might have hoped. One of former President Barack Obama’s top economists was scathing in his assessment of the plan, as Jason Furman blasted it as “reckless” and “[p]ouring roughly half trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning. Economists are still debating its inflationary impact a week later.

The FBI’s probe of Project Veritas should have all Americans concerned over the application of the first amendment: Transporting stolen property across state lines is indeed a federal crime, so in that sense, the FBI’s investigation into the stolen diary of President Joe Biden’s daughter is entirely appropriate. Two Floridians pleaded guilty last week to stealing the diary with the apparent intent to sell it to Project Veritas, a conservative undercover journalism outlet. For its part, Project Veritas contends it believed Ashley Biden’s diary was legally obtained when it took possession. The outlet reportedly compensated the Floridians with $20,000. However,...

Analysis: Taiwan is Relying on World War II Era Submarines – It is hard to put an expiration date on military hardware, and some platforms remain in service decades after first entering service. The United States Air Force continues to operate around 48 B-52 Stratofortress bombers that date back to the 1950s and early 1960s, while the United States Navy returned its four Iowa-class battleships to service in the 1980s, only to retire them nearly a decade later. In late 2020, the United States Navy also marked the 50th anniversary of the USS Blue Ridge (LCC-19), one of two amphibious...

Will the Su-75 “Checkmate” Reach Serial Production? – Earlier this month, it was reported that Russia’s highly-touted Su-75 “Checkmate” won’t make its maiden flight until at least some time in 2024 at the very earliest. However, the United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) – a division of the state-owned military-tech conglomerate Rostec – also announced that it would build four prototypes of the lightweight single-engine fighter in the coming months, with a goal to launch Checkmate serial production just three years later. “We use advanced super-computer technologies in the Checkmate project, which enables us to cut substantially the timeframe of building the...

Is A Trump-DeSantis Ticket Possible At This Point: Popular Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has been rumored to be considering a 2024 presidential run for some time now, but with the genuine possibility of a third Trump campaign lingering, it’s unclear whether DeSantis is taking the idea seriously? DeSantis is second only to Trump when it comes to smear campaigns from Democrats and the press, making the two men seem like a perfect coupling for some. With the January 6 investigation still ongoing and the recent FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, however, the Florida governor has a lot to think about over...

Does it really have the radar signature of a bumble bee? The U.S. Air Force thinks so. I am talking, of course, about the F-22, a $108 billion program that at the time of its development was the most advanced fighter in the world. The F-22, though, is expensive to fly and maintain. It sets the Air Force back $68,000 per hour of flight – more than the F-15E Strike Eagle and the F-16C Fighting Falcon. Why did the U.S. military insist on buying it despite the cost? The main reasons are its stealthiness; its supercruise, or ability to fly...

The Russian defense industry has some struggles ahead. Despite claims of self-sufficiency, it turns out that Russian industry needs Western components and Western support. One of the most autarkic industries in one of the world’s most autarkic economies is suffering from supply shortages because of sanctions. Does this mean that autarky in the defense sphere becomes impossible? If so, what does that mean for the pursuit of security for modern states? Theoretically, states should carefully guard the chains that supply their defense industrial bases with goods, as a loss of access to global markets (or even to specific suppliers) could...

In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of attention on the build-up of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). It has undergone a major modernization effort and is now the largest naval force in the world. Just last month, the PLAN launched its third aircraft carrier – the second to be entirely indigenously built. This will allow China to flex its muscles in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. Likewise, there has been great speculation regarding China’s efforts to develop a capable fifth-generation fighter aircraft and a medium- to long-range stealth bomber. In very short order, Beijing...

The H-20 Stealth Bomber: An Ominous Sign of Chinese Airpower Projection? – As if it weren’t bad enough that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to make strides with its 5th Generation Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter – and flaunts that J-20 via intimidation exercises against Taiwan — the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is evidently also making strides in the arena of next-generation strategic stealth bombers. So then, what exactly do we know about China’s prospective H-20 bomber?

Because of the prohibitive cost of designing, developing, and fielding a strategic bomber force, only three countries field strategic bombers, able to hit continents thousands of miles away; China, Russia, and the United States. And the B-21 Raider stealth bomber is set to provide the U.S. Air Force with 100 bombers for at least the next 30 years. The B-21 Raider gets its name honoring the Doolittle Raiders, U.S. Army Air Force men during World War II. Just months after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. suffering defeat after defeat in the Pacific theater, President Roosevelt ordered...

Pity the poor F-111, the veritable “redheaded stepchild” of the Western jet fighter-bomber world. “What’s in a name?” quoth young Ms. Capulet to young Mr. Montague in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but in the case of this warplane, the choice of name seemed to create some bad juju from the get-go. Instead of a regal bird-of-prey moniker like “Eagle” or “Fighting Falcon,” the warbird was instead officially dubbed “Aardvark,” after one of the more ungainly-looking mammals out there; accordingly, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) nicknamed her “The Pig,” which shouldn’t automatically be viewed as an insult (“Pride-Integrity-Guts,” to quote...