Free Republic

Yesterday, I was at my brother's home and while waiting for him, I pickued up his Thursday edition of the Washington Compost (please - keep the comments of why he has that newspaper to yourself).

Communities with high concentrations of electric cars are affluent, college-educated and at least 75% white and Asian — revealing the enormous task that California faces electrifying the entire fleet.

Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book explained how leaders and groups need each other for power: “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.” President Biden has breathed new confidence into allied unity and resolve—and has in turn been strengthened by our international allies. Overcoming the self-destructive America First isolationism of our recent past, Biden has rebuilt trust through collective action. Most recently, America’s continued triumphs in international energy diplomacy—ranging from reining in OPEC+ to the successful rollout of the Russian oil price caps to helping the EU work through its...

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has postponed a planned visit to Minsk following the death of his Belarusian counterpart Vladimir Makei, according to Russian media reports quoting the foreign ministry. Belarus's state news agency Belta reported on Saturday that the long-standing foreign minister and associate of authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko had died suddenly. The cause of death wasn't given and Makei wasn't known to suffer from any chronic illness. Makei, 64, was due to meet Lavrov on Monday. Last week he attended a conference of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) -- a military alliance of several post soviet states...

Republicans succeeded in one of their top goals this year: They brought more of their party’s voters to the polls than did Democrats. But in the course of energizing their core voters, Republicans in many states lost voters in the political center—both independents and many Republicans who are uneasy with elements of the party’s focus under Mr. Trump. Undercutting the GOP advantage was that independents favored Democrats by 4 points nationally, the survey found, and by a far more substantial 18 points in Pennsylvania, 28 points in Georgia and more than 30 points in Arizona.

Vladimir Putin has been accused of using 'deeply irresponsible' nuclear rhetoric Though Chief of the Defence Staff Tony Radakin said 'it is a sign of weakness' Russian president Vladimir Putin has been criticised for 'deeply irresponsible' nuclear rhetoric, as fears grow that he may make a show of force using a nuke over the Black Sea. Last month Putin said he was ready to use nuclear weapons if necessary to defend Russia's 'territorial integrity' and yesterday Russia said seized Ukrainian lands are under its nuclear protection. The threatening statements are believed to have increased in frequency due to Putin having...

The United States has determined that Russia is suffering "severe manpower shortages" in its six-month-old war with Ukraine and has become more desperate in its efforts to find new troops to send to the front lines, according to a new American intelligence finding disclosed Wednesday. Russia is looking to address the shortage of troops in part by compelling soldiers wounded earlier in the war to return to combat, recruiting personnel from private security companies and even recruiting from prisons, according to a U.S. official who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss the downgraded intelligence finding....

More than six months of war in Ukraine have led to huge losses of manpower and military equipment of the terrorist state of Russia. By the end of this year, the Russian Federation will run out of shells for artillery and armored vehicles, there are also very few guided missiles, and the state of military aviation does not allow for a full-scale air campaign. According to the Insider, due to Western sanctions, Russia cannot continue full-fledged industrial production of weapons and replenish supplies that are rapidly being depleted. It is noted that the Arsenal left in the Russian Federation since...

A hail of shrapnel from kamikaze drones ripped through the tent where off-duty Ukrainian border guards were sleeping near a crossing with Belarus, three hours north of Ukraine’s capital. Viktor Derevyanko woke to scalding pain, his body burning. Blood spilled from his hand as he tried to wipe his face. A piece of metal had traveled through his arm and stomach and into the muscle around his heart. “I couldn’t get my bearings,” said Derevyanko, the deputy head of the unit. “Only on the third explosion did I manage to fall out of bed and try to find at least...

From these 2 intercepted phone calls you’ll find out a few important things about the state of the Russian army on the frontline and also about Russian commanders and how they treat their soldiers.

A moment of crisis strikes the title character of George Leef’s new novel, The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale (Bombardier Books, 2022). How will Jen handle it? Does she suppress the feeling and practice what George Orwell called Doublethink: “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them?” Or does her mind reject the contradiction and actively seek out the truth? In his story, Leef offers what his subtitle calls “A Political Fable For Our Time.” Jen is a progressive political journalist for the Washington Post, highly skilled at crafting what real-life practitioners...

Vladimir Putin set to vanish for cancer surgery, mystery Russian Telegram account says Vladimir Putin has secretly nominated Nikolai Patrushev, a former KGB counterintelligence officer who once headed the FSB, to take “control” of Russia while he is incapacitated. Vladimir Putin may soon vanish for a period as he is due to undergo surgery linked to cancer, according to a new claim. He has allegedly secretly nominated his hardline security council security secretary Nikolai Patrushev - a former KGB counterintelligence officer - to take “control” of Russia while he is incapacitated. Shadowy Patrushev, 70, is seen as a key architect...

VLADIMIR PUTIN's war effort was dealt one of its biggest blows to date yesterday when a surprise Ukrainian ambush attack killed dozens of Russian reinforcement troops and reportedly forced one of the Kremlin's top military commanders to flee the country. The devastating attack is a huge blow to the Kremlin after President Putin had personally sent General Gerasimov to rescue the stalled war ahead of the May 9 Victory Day parade. General Gerasimov, who is the chief of staff of the Russian army, had been sent to the region to take personal control of the all-out assault on the Donbas...

New York (Knewz) — Vladimir Putin’s cancer surgery will force him to hand over power in the Ukraine war “for days,” a “Kremlin insider” told the Daily Mail. Putin will reportedly put hardline Security Council head and ex-FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev in power while he is dealing with surgery. Patrushev, 70, has played a big role in the Ukraine war thus far and convinced Putin that Kyiv is overrun by neo-Nazis, the Daily Mail reports. A year and a half ago, General SVR reported that Putin is suffering from abdominal cancer and Parkinson’s. The Daily Mail reports that Putin has...

Ukraine’s military successes against Russia have transformed calculations in Washington and other Western capitals, leading to a sharp increase in military help for Kyiv as a war that started with Western efforts at damage control has become one that offers a strategic opportunity to constrain Russia’s expansionist ambitions. The U.S. and its allies are now shipping large volumes of heavy weaponry to Ukraine, including more advanced Western systems to supplement the light weapons and Soviet-era arms that were funneled into Ukraine since before the invasion started. Those shipments are aimed at supporting Kyiv in the next decisive phase of the...

In the two months since Russia invaded Ukraine, the silence — and even acquiescence — of the Russian elite has started to fray. Even as opinion polls report overwhelming public support for the military campaign, amid pervasive state propaganda and new laws outlawing criticism of the war, cracks are starting to show. The dividing lines among factions of the Russian economic elite are becoming more marked, and some of the tycoons — especially those who made their fortunes before President Vladimir Putin came to power — have begun, tentatively, to speak. For many, the most immediate focus has been their...

From Donald Trump and his top surrogates to the right-wing media and its engine rooms of outrage in the blogosphere, Hillary Clinton's opponents are ramping up efforts to sow doubt over the candidate's health. The campaign -- which goes back years -- has escalated to shouting over the summer, as Trump spiraled in the polls while mostly failing to connect with voters outside his base demographic. Now, as the race enters a crucial phase, there has been a growing push to fundamentally undermine Clinton's candidacy. Much in the way "birthers" (Trump was among the most prominent) sought similar ends by...

There is fear and then there is the type of fear that makes a person psychotic. The footsteps the Left hears coming for them, the ones they know belong to Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump, have now frightened them into a panic that is not likely to subside anytime soon - if ever. A Wednesday night, New York Times op-ed written by a man with the extremely Runyonesque name of Charles Blow shows he has had such an extreme panic attack that it has caused him to fall into the gutter in front of the paper’s main office and start...

Donald Trump complains relentlessly that the media doesn't treat him fairly. Reporters, he says, are "the most dishonest people." That's a compelling argument, especially for his supporters. Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz, in a column last week about news coverage of Trump, insisted that for the mainstream press to line up "against one candidate in a presidential election can't be justified." Ordinarily, that's a no-brainer statement for any self-respecting journalist. These are not ordinary times. Kurtz, who plied his trade for the Washington Post and CNN before moving over to Rupert Murdoch's conservative news channel, pointed out that journalists'...

"A message from Devan Cierra Ebert, who other attendees confirmed to be the mother at the Ashburn rally, was shared on Facebook. In her statement, she said, “Mr. Trump NEVER kicked me or my child out of the Briar Woods High School, Trump rally.” “The media has severely blown this out of proportion and made it out to be something that it wasn’t and is clearly using this as political gain for the Democratic Party. I hope this message sheds light to what really happened,” she said. No one from the press spoke with the mother before running their stories,...