Free Republic

Though noting that his determination to take action is on the tardy side, congressional Republicans said they’re ready to work with the White House on helping Syrian civilians in the fight versus Bashar al-Assad. “Nearly two years ago, President Obama called for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad to go. A year later, the president laid down a clear red line, threatening serious consequences if Assad used or transferred chemical weapons. For months we’ve seen reports of such use, and today the White House finally confirmed it. It’s increasingly clear the president does not have a coherent plan

A specter has been haunting the Western Hemisphere since mid-summer 2012, the specter of China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) routinely patrolling the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. At first sight, it might seem that Beijing is truly laying the groundwork for its foothold in the Atlantic Rim. Not least, Chinese government signed a free-trade agreement with Iceland in April and PLAN vessels recently made a month-long trip in the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Atlantic. Even so, China's strategic projection in the Atlantic is still far from becoming reality. The whole psychodrama unfolded at the end of June 2012, when...

President Obama and I were college classmate at Columbia University, class of ’83. I know all too well how mindlessly liberal the students and faculty of that institution can be, and Barack Obama is certainly no exception. My time at Columbia made it crystal clear: liberals always believe they are morally superior. While they publicly state that their mission is to save the world from prejudice, patriotism, racism, greed, and inequality, they are, in fact, hostile and resentful towards anyone who has achieved self-made success through American values. It is in this cesspool of intolerance that Obama and his Marxist...

Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few Eurozone “troika” officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. New Zealand has a similar directive, discussed in my last article here, indicating...

On the eve of a Senate vote to confirm Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, a 2009 report co-authored by Hagel has surfaced titled “A Last Chance For A Two-State Israel-Palestine Agreement.” It called for Israel to make “the hard compromises and painful concessions for peace” without asking anything comparable from the Palestinian side. Indeed, the report warned against “the Jewish-American and Christian Zionist groups that feel comfortable amplifying the positions of Israeli politicians hostile to hard compromise and painful concession.” One of Hagel’s principal co-signatories on the report was Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had advised Obama on foreign policy during...

RALEIGH — Efforts are under way to make North Carolina the first state since Alaska in 1980 to eliminate taxes on total personal income. Competing proposals also would launch a pro-growth tax reform renaissance that would scrap corporate income taxes that discourage capital investment and savings. The John Locke Foundation introduced a plan Wednesday including those elements, along with a repeal of estate taxes and the retail sales tax at the state level. Researchers at the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C-based tax research group, are among those lauding the JLF plan. “The whole point is economic growth. It’s not...

A new front is opening in the Senate confirmation fight over former Sen. Chuck Hagel as senators from states with nuclear bases are questioning the defense secretary nominee’s role in the Global Zero commission that advocates eliminating all nuclear weapons and making unilateral strategic arms cuts. Six senators with home-state nuclear bases or membership on the Senate Armed Services Committee said they are either opposing Hagel’s nomination or questioning his judgment for backing the international anti-nuclear movement. Hagel is among some 300 international and national public figures supporting the group’s stated goal of seeking “the elimination of all nuclear weapons.”...

Hypocrite celebrities and their anti gun agenda.

[. . .] Nationwide, at least 23,000 schools — about one-third of all public schools — already had armed security on staff as of the most recent data, for the 2009-10 school year, and a number of states and districts that do not use them have begun discussing the idea in recent days. . . Plus the NRA plan was much more comprehensive than just armed guards.

White House Dossier has just obtained President Obama’s plan to roll back the crushing long term costs of entitlements, reduce unemployment, and spur the economy back to normal growth. Given the importance of this information, we decided to share the plan with you immediately. Here it is:

WASHINGTON - The White House said on Friday a new Israeli settlement expansion plan was "counterproductive" and could make it harder to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. "We reiterate our longstanding opposition to settlements and east Jerusalem construction and announcements," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.

Twenty seven years ago today, Grover Norquist taught the Pubs to play It's been going in and out of verve Voodoo guaranteed to top the curve. Let me re-introduce to you A fact we've known for all these years, Grover Norquist's Lonely Tax Cut Plan. It's Grover Norquist's Lonely Tax Cut Plan, We hope you will enjoy the show, It's Grover Norquist's Lonely Tax Cut Plan, Stand back and let the incomes grow. Grover Norquist's Lonely, Grover Norquist's Lonely, Grover Norquist's Lonely, Tax Cut Plan, It's wonderful to peak there, It's sure to pay the bills. You're such a broadened...

The American Academy of Pediatrics is encouraging doctors to issue teenagers prescriptions for the emergency contraception pill Plan B before they begin having sex. According to their new report, the drug is far more effective if used within 24 hours of conception and it could easily take that long for a teen to obtain a script for the drug. The teen birth rate in the U.S. is currently about 34.3 births per every 1,000 women and while the AAP recommends pre-emptive contraception prescriptions, they acknowledge it's a short-term fix: "That's tragic, really. We really can do better. By providing more...

This post is written in anger and frustration. Angry that we continue to follow the Republican Party’s elite ignorance. A party that continues to pull defeat from the jaws of victory characterized by pompous fools who fulfill the sterotype built by the left. Frustrated that the reality of politics is this: There will be no third party capable of competing with the coalition constructed by the dems. As a result, true conservatives MUST take steps to irradicate the ignorance of the Republican Party while still adhering to the core values of our forefathers (beliefs that I discovered are considered extreme...

Election 2012: Anyone wondering why President Obama waited to reveal his second-term agenda should read his "plan." It's nothing but a stage prop full of recycled policies, failed ideas and stuff he ignored in his first term. Even crediting Obama with putting forth a new plan is being too generous. All he really did was scrape together the handful of proposals he'd put up on his campaign website and add some nice photos and pretty graphics. But since he's waving around his 20-page, seven-point (two more than Romney's!) plan at every campaign stop and acting like it's a credible strategy...

Pres. Obama campaigning in Tampa Bay can't find his plan for a second term (October 25, 2012).

Under pressure from Mitt Romney, President Obama has finally released his own policy vision for a second term. And yes, it’s the same old, same old. Some are calling it a second first term. There isn’t a single true economic-growth incentive in this scant plan. There’s no serious spending, deficit, and debt reduction, and no attempt to solve the Social Security and health-entitlement problems, which are moving us toward bankruptcy. Nothing. Nada. But before getting into the details of this little plan, my basic conclusion is this: Mr. Obama wants to slash defense spending, raise all other spending, and hike...

Barack Obama has released a ridiculous little 20-page pamphlet — 20 pages with lots of pictures — detailing his agenda for a second term. He calls it the “New Economic Patriotism,” and if that name seems to you redolent of early-20th-century totalitarians, that may be because it is not the first N.E.P.: Lenin’s was the Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika. Mitt Romney published an economic-policy book, too. No pictures. Apparently, Obama’s second term is to be a more or less precise repeat of his first term. In fact, the sixth item on his seven-point list merely touts Obamacare, which, if memory serves,...

After failing to deliver a line by line economic plan, the Obama campaign stepped up to the plate this week and delivered a glossy memo with 27 points on how he would use a second term in office. It's called The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan For Jobs & Middle-Class Security and millions of copies have been printed and shipped off to swing states. The plan is broken up into seven different parts, focusing on topics that include manufacturing, energy, small businesses, education, taxes and the deficit, healthcare, and Medicare and Social Security. While a lot of crucial details are...

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like thisÂ… The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing The fifth would pay $1 The sixth would pay $3 The seventh would pay $7 The eighth would pay $12 The ninth would pay $18 The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59 So, thatÂ’s what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the...

President Barack Obama wants to “rebuild the economy from the middle class out,” U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a group of the president's supporters on Friday. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has a much different vision, she added. “I think the Romney-Ryan candidates believe very strongly that it's a 'you're-on-your-own-ship society,” she said. “They want to go back to the policies that almost crashed this economy.”Sebelius, who was speaking in a “personal capacity” on Friday, according to the campaign, visited the city to meet with volunteers at the local Obama for America campaign office. She gave...

China building new Type 052D guided missile destroyer By J. Michael Cole / Staff reporter The Chinese Navy appears to be developing a brand new type of guided-missile destroyer (DDG) and could be producing several hulls simultaneously, a development that could further tip the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait. Images have emerged on Chinese military Web sites in recent weeks that seem to confirm the long-rumored development of the Type 052D destroyer, which some analysts are comparing to Aegis-equipped destroyers in the US Navy. More recently, two hulls were pictured at China State Shipbuilding Corp’s Jiangnan Changxing shipyard...

Greetings FReepers. I am trying to get some bullet points for the libs in my life in order to convert their votes from the illegal Muslim occupier to RR this time around. I would like to find some bullet points and talking points in general around Ryan (specifically) and Romney (in general). Anything official that they have proposed in a great start. Thanks in advance!

August 15, 2012 The Mainstream Media Gets it Right..... Paul Ryan Medicare Controversy: What Does It Mean For You? (VIDEO) http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/paul-ryan-medicare-controversy-17006384

Forget all the demagoguery out there on the Left and check this out... "No changes go into effect until 2028." "Nobody over the age of 55 will be affected by this plan" "Individuals will have the ability to look at a list of coverage plans -which also includes the traditional Medicare option- and they can decide for themselves what best fits their needs" "It empowers the individual, but also forces the businesses to compete for customers... when you have competition,  price goes down/quality goes up." "Medicare right now is failing, it's going to be falling apart- something needs to be done,...

Here is a look at some of the key provisions of Ryan's plan: -- Medicare: Ryan proposed leaving the current structure of Medicare in place for people now 55 and older, while substituting a different program for younger Americans. Instead of a government-run program that pays directly for the medical services that Medicare recipients get, the Ryan plan would give people a subsidy they would use to pay their health insurance premiums. -- Balanced budget: The long-term reductions in Medicare spending help get the Ryan plan on paper to a balanced budget around 2040 -- Savings: Much of the 10-year...

President Obama explained to a group of supporters in Ohio this afternoon that more government investments in infrastructure would help the economy grow again. Pointing out that if government continued to invest in roads and bridges, it would put more money in people’s pockets to spend. “That’s how we grow our economy.” Obama said, “If we’re investing in roads and bridges, putting some hard hats back to work, getting our steel workers back to work, they got some more money to spend, maybe they buy a new computer, maybe they decide to take a little vacation.”

Hi Folks: When this came in to my inbox this evening and I gave it a quick once over, it was obvious that he has put on paper, the very things I've been preaching about for some time now. I did find that he's left out a couple of major issues, which i've added in blue at the end. Regards, Allan To Americans everywhere.... I was sitting at my keyboard halfway through my writing a letter to you about how Barack Obama was fulfilling his pledge to "Transform America" by "Changing the fundamentals of America", so that our government would...

During an event Obama admits that Obama's economic plan is to help Americans buy a "Thingamajig" (June 1, 2012).

China readies new missile corvette LATEST TYPE:Defense analysts believe that the new missile boats will be perfectly suited to meet the challenges that China is facing in its South China Sea disputes A new type of Chinese missile corvette, the principal role for which might be to project power in the South China Sea, could be launched “within days,” military watchers said on the weekend. Talk of a Type 056 class first emerged in late 2010. So far, little technical information has been released about the corvettes, which are believed to lie in the 1,400-to-1,700-tonne category. Two shipyards, Hudong Shipyard...

The Chinese Navy Is Betting Big On Its New Submarine Hunting Drones Tackling the long-time nuisance of American submarines off its coastal waters China is deploying drones to its Navy ships. While not a new development on its own, there are reports of increased drone deployment to the PLA's ships, and a heightened attack against U.S. drone contractors. UPI reports Chinese hackers have ramped up their barrage of infected emails to glean as much information about the Pentagon's UAV strategy and development as they can. It's no secret that the Chinese military is in the habit of copying foreign hardware,...

In the middle of the battle for this year's Republican nomination, a curiously irrelevant diversion has appeared. Suddenly, we're told, a "Hillary 2016" bandwagon has sprung up out of nowhere. Senator Gillibrand proposed the idea, Nancy Pelosi endorsed it, Bill Clinton has coyly denied it (but given it his blessing), and a Google search discloses over 300 hits about it. In Hollywood, they say that if a starlet gets on a magazine cover, she's lucky, if she gets on two, she's good, but if she gets on half a dozen, all at once, she's got a good agent. Those 300...

As many of you know, I have been tracking the growth and modernization of the Chinese Navy (PLAN) for a number of years. Particularly their acquisition and refit of the former Russian Varyag which they launched last August. I also have a hobby for building 1/350 scale model military vessels and recently decided to build modern carrier strike groups (including the carrier and all of their escorts) for each major power. Trumpeter, a well known mode company announced the release of the new Chinese Carrier in January and I was able to get one directly from Hong Kong before they...

China usually holds its military hand very close to the vest--that, or things “mysteriously” leak that it doesn’t (does) want the world to know about--so we’re left to wonder why the People’s Republic has decided to publish this in the journal Advanced Materials Research. Nonetheless, it’s pretty interesting. Chinese navy researchers have plans for a new submarine hunting scheme that uses ship-launched UAVs running genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms narrow down a range of possibilities to an optimal solution much the way evolution does (at least in a simplified sense)--by weeding out the weaker offspring and mating the best with the...

THE RISING SEA DRAGON IN ASIA - 2012 UPDATE (Click on any of the following images for a larger picture) 2011 has seen significant increases in major combatant shipbuilding by the PLAN across the board. From the PLA Navy's first carrier being launched and in trials, to continued testing and production of J-15 Fighters for that carrier's airwing, to the increased tempo of serial production for the PLAN's Type 071 LPD, the Yuzhao Class (with a second and third unit launched and a fourth being built), to increased serial production of the PLAN's premier stealthy, area-wide anti-air/multipurpose destroyer, the...

America, Conservatives and Republicans. We must support Newt Gingrich. He is a man of many accomplishments who gave us Welfare Reform, A Balanced Budget, and Reduced Taxes. Further, he brought us a Republican Majority when we were lost in the desert and the GOP establishment said it couldn't be done. Newt is the only candidate who thinks of big ideas, studies the challenges in achieving very difficult goals and then through, his leadership, explains how we are going to do it and then marshals them into eventuality. Newt helped us achieve the above through his plan known as the Contract...

China Takes Aim at U.S. Naval Might . The USS Gerald R. Ford was supposed to help secure another half century of American naval supremacy. The hulking aircraft carrier taking shape in a dry dock in Newport News, Va., is designed to carry a crew of 4,660 and a formidable arsenal of aircraft and weapons. But an unforeseen problem cropped up between blueprint and expected delivery in 2015: China is building a new class of ballistic missiles designed to arc through the stratosphere and explode onto the deck of a U.S. carrier, killing sailors and crippling its flight deck. Since...

Your Move, Beijing: Big Year Ahead for Chinese Navy At a meeting in Beijing in December, Chinese president Hu Jintao had a powerful message for officials from the People's Liberation Army Navy. "Prepare for war," Hu said, using a Mandarin term -- junshi douzheng -- that means "conflict in general." Amplified and misrepresented by the foreign media, Hu's words echoed across Asia and the Pacific Ocean, alarming observers in Japan, India and other nations and eliciting a cool response from the U.S. Navy. "Nobody's looking for a scrap here," Adm. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told AFP. "Certainly we wouldn't...

China's first aircraft carrier starts second trial (AFP) – 6 hours ago BEIJING — China's first aircraft carrier began its second sea trial on Tuesday after undergoing refurbishments and testing, the government said, as tensions over maritime territorial disputes in the region ran high. The 300-metre (990-foot) ship, a refitted former Soviet carrier called the Varyag, underwent five days of trials in August that sparked international concern about China's widening naval reach. "China's aircraft carrier platform, after successfully completing its first sea trial in August, returned to the shipyard as planned for further refitting and testing," the defence ministry said...

Bold tax reform is front and center this campaign season. First Herman Cain made waves and poll headway with his 9-9-9 tax plan, which involves national 9-percent taxes on personal and corporate income and a 9-percent national sales tax. Now Rick Perry has followed suit with a 20-percent flat-tax plan, and Newt Gingrich has gone 5 better, with a 15-percent flat proposal. And these ideas certainly haven't fallen flat: tax reform is immensely popular among the Republican base. Yet there has been criticism, too — at least of Cain's plan, the only one around long enough to be criticized. Many...

The new Chinese aircraft carrier, which conducted its first sea trials in August, has emerged from dry dock and is apparently at sea once again for more trials. While in dry dock her hull was scraped and painted, her deck received a new non-skid coat, and she may have had arresting wires installed, though that last is not confirmed. The former Russian carrier, Varyag, purchased from Ukraine and towed to China in 2003, has spent over 7 years being refit and refurbished and is now undergoing sea trials. THE NEW CHINESE CARRIER OUT OF DRY DOCK AND DEPARTING THE TRANSFORMATION...

After Herman Cain began making a big splash with his 9-9-9 plan, boldness seemed to be the recipe for this cycle’s presidential election. Ron Paul delivered his own bold plan this week to reform the federal budget and “Restore America,� as Paul titled his new plan. In my column for The Fiscal Times, I take a look at Paul’s blueprint and find some provocative and intriguing concepts — but very little explanation, and even less common sense.Paul proposes to immediately zero out funding for five Cabinet-level agencies: Energy, Education, HUD, Interior, and Commerce. Conservatives have long wanted to eliminate the...

On September 12, the pioneering Rep. Thaddeus McCotter introduced trailblazing legislation providing workers the freedom to choose personal savings and investment accounts to finance half of their future Social Security benefits. This legislation would completely solve the future Social Security financing problem, without cutting benefits or raising taxes, as officially scored by the Chief Actuary of Social Security. Indeed, because standard, long-term market investment returns are so much higher than what Social Security even promises, workers with personal accounts will enjoy higher rather than lower benefits. Moreover, the legislation would result in the greatest reduction in government spending in world...

Obama Plan: Teacher Jobs One Year OnlyAfter a year, there’s no federal funding for the added jobs By Don Carrington Oct. 3rd, 2011 RALEIGH — President Barack Obama stood before thousands of screaming supporters at North Carolina State University Sept. 14, urging Congress to pass the American Jobs Act, his $450 billion plan to create jobs and stimulate the economy. “Pass this jobs bill, and there will be funding to save the jobs of up to 13,000 North Carolina teachers, cops, and firefighters,” he said. But he didn’t say that his bill would fund the jobs only for one year....

Yesterday, I wrote that Rick Perry needs to stop worrying so much about his competitors in the Republican primary fight and start laying out his own plans for a Perry presidency in order to claim the mantle of a front-runner. Jill Lawrence at the Daily Beast decided to take a look at Perry’s website to see what kind of argument that might be, and discovered why Perry might be a little too focused on attacking Romney: In public at least, Rick Perry is among those writing off his stumbling debate performances as a verbal problem—as in, he’s not a slick,...

It’s a sound proposal, but you might not know that listening to some of the arguments against it. They may sound plausible, but they don’t stand up to scrutiny. WE NEED A HOUSING PLAN, NOT MORE FISCAL STIMULUS The premise of this argument is probably true: recent evidence suggests that high debt is holding back consumer demand. Recent research shows that government spending on infrastructure or other investments raises demand even in an economy beset by over-indebted consumers. THE COST PER JOB IS TOO HIGH Martin Feldstein, the Harvard economist...each job produced by the plan would cost about $200,000. This...

The projection of 1.9 million new jobs, a 1 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate and a 2 percentage point increase in the gross domestic product under Obama's plan came from Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. "I assumed that it would be paid for," Zandi said. "I didn't know when I did that simulation how the president proposed to pay for it." Zandi said his job-creation figure only applies to 2012. "Beginning in 2013, and certainly into 2014, the plan is a drag on the economy because the stimulus starts fading away," he said. "So by 2015,...

"We didn’t need a rating agency to tell us that we need a balanced, long-term approach to deficit reduction. That was true last week. That was true last year. That was true the day I took office." --Barack Obama, Aug. 8, 2011. Barack Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009. That was 972 days ago this morning, almost to the hour when he finally offered his newest full-blown deficit reduction plan. (Snip) If it's Monday, the campaigning president must be issuing a new plan for something (before another $35,800 per ticket fundraiser in New York City). Last week it was his...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's not just millionaires who'd pay more under President Barack Obama's latest plan to combat the deficit. Air travelers, federal workers, military retirees, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries and people taking out new mortgages are among those who would pay more than $130 billion in government revenues raised through new or increased fees. Airline passengers would see their federal security fees double from $5 to $10 for a nonstop round-trip flight and triple to $15 by 2017, raising $25 billion over the coming decade. Federal workers would face an additional 1.2 percentage point deduction from their paychecks to contribute...

Friday morning the Schuykill Expressway was jammed again due to an overturned car at Belmont Avenue. My first thought was how anyone could turn their car over at the usual 25 mph speeds on the Schuykill Expressway. My second thought was that I was damned to having to take the route from 69th Street in Upper Darby down Chestnut Street (aka The 30 Blocks of Squalor) to work. I was still steamed by Obama’s $450 billion “JOBS” plan. His new plan was touted as an infrastructure plan when it is nothing but a “screw future generations” plan. Do these politicians...