Free Republic

Letter: Contrails or something more sinister? Jan 31, 2013 EDITOR, Have you looked up recently and seen white trails crisscross the sky and dismissed it as a harmless trail from a jet? Look again. We used to enjoy many clear blue skies, but nowadays we frequently have overcast skies as a result of spraying. As most of you, I went to work every day and didn’t really take notice of what was going on up in the sky overhead. But when I did take notice, what I saw were contrails from jets that disappeared quickly, and then there were the...

Arguably the most successful act of revolutionary terror was the June 1914 assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Believing his mission to murder the heir to the Austrian throne had failed, Gavrilo Princip suddenly found himself standing a few feet away from the royal car. He fired twice, mortally wounding the archduke and his wife. Tactically, that act of terror eliminated the reformist Ferdinand, who meant to address the grievances of his Slav subjects by granting them greater autonomy and equality with Austrians and Hungarians inside the empire. Strategically, the assassination succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its...

Barack Obama and George W. Bush seem to have come away from their study of the Great Depression with similar conclusions: To wit: After the Crash of 1929, the Federal Reserve did not move fast enough to save the banks and inject cash into the economy. Second, the New Deal, far from being wastrel deficit spending, was not bold enough. So it was that America wallowed in depression for a decade until the unbridled spending and mammoth deficits of World War II pulled us out. Bush and Obama seem determined not to make the same mistake. We are all Keynesians...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s,

"GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!" So may have read the headline Friday, had not President Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker's yard. What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy. The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having gone...

“GOP to Detroit: Drop Dead!” So may have read the headline Friday, had not President George Bush stepped in to save GM, Ford and Chrysler, which Senate Republicans had just voted to send to the knacker’s yard. What are Republicans thinking of, pulling the plug, at Christmas, on GM, risking swift death for the greatest manufacturing company in American history, a strategic asset and pillar of the U.S. economy. The $14 billion loan to the Big Three that Republican senators filibustered to death is just 2 percent of the $700 billion the Senate voted to bail out Wall Street. Having...

George Bush, Protectionist by Patrick J. Buchanan (more by this author) Posted 12/26/2008 ET "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system," President Bush told CNN, defending his offer of $17 billion in loans to the Big Three "to make sure the economy doesn't collapse." Thus did Bush concede that protectionism, if a critical U.S. industry is in peril, must trump free-trade ideology. For in offering the bailout to GM, Ford and Chrysler, Bush, by omission, excluded BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan and Hyundai -- though all operate auto plants here in the United States and all are...

he moment Israel began its war of defense against the missiles being fired at her citizens from Hamas launching pads in Gaza, the United Nations, the communist and dictatorship countries, the Europeans and the Arab/ Muslim states began their predictable condemnation of Israel. Though not as severe as those just mentioned, Pat Buchanan embarked on a journalistic blitz with the similar goal of stopping Israel from defeating its terrorist attackers and asking the upcoming Obama administration to declare it will not support Israel. Buchanan ("Bush, Obama, and the Gaza Blitz", 12/30/08, HUMAN EVENTS) questions “the wisdom of so savage a...

Unwilling to control its fighters, who fired scores of missiles into Israel at the end of their six-month ceasefire, Hamas gave Israel the provocation it needed to deliver a savage blow to the Palestinian enclave in Gaza. Saturday was the bloodiest day in the history of the Palestinian people since being driven from their homes in the War of 1948. One thousand were killed or wounded, as the Israeli Air Force conducted over a hundred strikes -- on graduation ceremonies for Hamas fighters, police stations and storage sites for rockets. About Israel's right and duty to defend its border towns,...

(...) By traditional free-trade theory, a nation should import what it does not produce from the nations that produce it most cheaply. But in 1946, Japan produced almost no steel, no TVs and no cars. Instead of buying them from America, Tokyo subsidized its own steel, TV and auto industries for decades, and protected their market. Now, as Sony did to Philco and Dumont, Toyota, Honda and Nissan are taking down Ford, GM and Chrysler. Were the Japanese foolish to subsidize their industries and protect their market? Were we wise to let our TV industry be taken down, and watch...

Here is video of conservative pundit Pat Buchanan on MSNBC yesterday making comments about Israel that are just amazing. Buchanan likens Israel's Ground Offensive in Gaza to the Nazi "blitzkrieg," actually using the word in describing it. He also went a step further and says that Gaza is an "Israeli concentration camp," where "cruelty" by Israel is taking place. Let's step back for a moment. I have always liked Pat Buchanan's analysis when he is talking about inside the Beltway political matters. He is a very good analyst on those things. But he has real blinders when it comes to...

I like Pat Buchanan. I do. He's wise, funny and charming. But every once in a while . . . Like tonight. If Buchanan wants to criticize Israel's conduct of the current war, and its treatment of the Palestinians, so be it. But in doing so, is it really necessary to employ terms associated with the Nazis? Appearing on "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Buchanan accused Israel of carrying out a "blitzkrieg" against Gaza and turning it into a "concentration camp." View video here.