Free Republic

Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentine President Cristina Kirchner claimed Wednesday that the Falkland Islands serve as a nuclear base for the NATO alliance in the South Atlantic. Argentina, which calls the archipelago the Malvinas, claims the British overseas possession as its own, and fought a brief but bloody war for it in 1982. The islands, she said, "constitute a NATO military nuclear base in the South Atlantic -- this is the truth that they can't continue to hide." She alleged the archipelago is "among the most militarized areas in the world," saying some 1,500 soldiers and 2,000 civilian military personnel...

France's socialist prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault resigned yesterday. Joined by his entire government following meltdown in local elections .. Resignation is huge blow to France's social President Francois Hollande. Last night, Hollande admitted mistakes and said priority was to cut taxes ... last night socialist President Francois Hollande – whose rule has become synonymous with a 75 per cent top rate of income tax – admitted to mistakes and said his priority was now to cut taxes. The government’s resignation is a huge blow to the president, who was elected to a five-year term in 2012 but whose first two...

French public debt decreased in 2013, but is still higher than expected. Total debt continues to climb and fails to meet the Maastricht criteria. EurActiv France reports. Despite austerity measures, France’s public deficit did not meet its government targets for 2013. The French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) published figures showing that it currently stands at 4.3% of GDP. The French government expected this percentage to be 4.1%, whilst the European Commission predicted 4.2%. However timid, the reduction of public deficit from its previous level of 4.9%, in 2013, is still a significant improvement. …

France's ruling Socialist Party suffered humiliating losses on a day dubbed "Black Sunday" in a local vote marked by breakthrough successes for the far-right National Front and the historic election of a first female mayor of Paris. On a day dubbed "Black Sunday" by one Socialist lawmaker, the National Front (FN) won control of at least fourteen towns, according to the interior ministry and was on track to claim 1,200 municipal council seats nationwide, its best ever showing at the grassroots level of French politics. It was also a night to savour for France's main opposition, the centre-right Union for...

Saving The Planet: It used to be said that socialism was the opium of the liberal intelligentsia. But now the drug of choice for the elite is environmentalism. The dirty little secret of the modern green movement is that it's become a luxury good for the uber-rich who espouse policies — from carbon taxes to renewable energy standards to closing down coal plants — that impose high costs on poor people who can least afford to pay the green tab.

<p>A shocking DHS document, leaked on March 24, 2014 by InfoWars, reveals who Barack Obama’s real enemy is: the military, veterans, the National Guard, and those who eschew Obama’s brand of democratic socialism. The 160-page document describes a drill going on this very minute, dubbed “Capstone Exercise 2014: Scenario Ground Truth,” whereby a fictitious anti-government group—whose stated ideology happens to match exactly that of the Tea Party—wages a cyber attack against the U.S. government after martial law has been declared in the wake of a massive earthquake and tsunami. Conspiring with this group—named Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny—are elements of the military, veterans, and the National Guard.</p>

Recycling her tried-and-true American dream story, Michelle Obama gave Chinese schoolchildren the same stump speech she delivers everywhere she goes, from Ireland to Chicago. The FLOTUS has used her hard-knock life tale to justify more vacations for herself than her husband has golf balls.

Checking out Rembrandts and checking in with European allies, President Obama seems blind to the rubble around him. The U.S. leadership vacuum has left NATO as ravaged as a post-World War II battlefield. In May 1945, a sizable force of Allied bombers flew photographers over European cities to document the destruction of what was then, and remains, the worst war in history. Their images of urban craters and flattened buildings are permanent reminders of the evils of totalitarianism. One can't help wondering, if Barack Obama had been on board, whether he would have looked down and remarked on the day's...

....Diving into the thorny issue of climate change, Hillary Clinton said young people understand the significant threat of global warming and that she hoped there would be a mass movement that demands political change. She said the generation of college students and young people are much more committed to doing something to address climate change and it wasn't "just some ancillary issue" but will determine the quality of life for countries around the globe.

Appointments: America is a country of 320 million people, most of them holding to traditional values. Yet President Obama keeps mining the fringes for his hires. Does he have any friends who aren't crackpots? Seriously. The president keeps saying he champions the middle class and its values. But his choices of people to help him run the country are the most extreme in U.S. history, and his second-term nominations are more radical than the first.

**SNIP** Reed's message to liberals--especially those who invest their hopes in the Democratic Party--is stark. Since the 1980s, he writes, liberals, activists and social movement organizations (the combination of which Reed labels "the left") have been on the defensive. Instead of determining how to advance a broadly popular and egalitarian vision, this left has narrowed its "social vision" and its time horizon, keying actions to the next election cycle. "Each election now becomes a moment of life-or-death urgency that precludes dissent or even reflection," Reed writes. "For liberals, there is only one option in an election year, and that is...

Most Americans who are dissatisfied with President Barack Obama's leadership are thinking about the poor economy and the misbegotten health care law. That disillusionment is justified -- if not tardy. But the foreign policy failures of this administration are likely to be far more consequential, lasting and possibly catastrophic. What we are seeing is the collapse of American influence in the world. Permitting people like Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Hagel and John Kerry to deal with the brutal realities of world politics is like putting Richard Simmons into the ring with Muhammad Ali.

Unite Here, which represents more than 300,000 workers in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse and gaming industries, was the nation’s very first labor union to back Barack Obama’s quest for the White House. It also was one of the foremost supporters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the signature achievement — if it can be described as such — of Mr. Obama’s presidency. So a new report by Unite Here, “The Irony of Obamacare: Making Inequality Worse,” cannot be dismissed by the White House, by Democrats on Capitol Hill, or by the left-leaning punditocracy, as a politically...

A local official in Virginia has subpoenaed the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the SPLC Task Force on Hate in the Public Sphere for the criteria it uses to designate other organizations as “hate groups.” The subpoenas were filed February 28th in Loudoun County Circuit Court. They request "all written criteria, guidelines, bylaws or rules used by Southern Poverty Law Center to designate organizations or groups as 'hate groups' from the inception of the Southern Poverty Law Center to the present date."

As we have seen for the last six to seven years, the liberal media have wholly bought in to being propagandists for the Obama administration. Not only have they given glowing support of Obama whenever they can, they conveniently leave out, when they can get away with it, any news items that would put Obama in a negative light or contradict the false image of him that the media has helped create. President Obama is the first president ever put in power by the media. In 2008, while many of us were warning of the consequences of an Obama presidency,...

Don’t know whether Malia and Sasha Obama are learning at their private school, but through their parents, are they learning that life is one never-ending holiday with the bill footed by the public purse? In today’s high tech society, the phone keeps the business of the day running for many. For Barack Obama, it’s key to his Artful Dodger, never-take-accountability-for-anything, I-didn’t-know until I saw-it-on-the-news-like-you-did, style. Don’t let he tragedies of life on earth interfere with the never-ending lavish holidays of America’s so-called ‘First Family’. Daddy O, who’s got a pen and a phone will undoubtedly pass along appropriate words of...

ThinkProgress writer Igor Volsky seems genuinely excited that fewer than 15 out of 92 federal anti-poverty programs are somewhat effective. The results came out of a report commissioned by Representative Paul Ryan to evaluate the effectiveness of government programs put in place to combat the problem. The War on Poverty, 50 Years Later evaluates the at least 92 federal programs the government has created and finds that, “Despite trillions of dollars in spending, poverty is widespread.”

Progressive movement’s century of steady destruction of the U.S. dollar, income taxation, massive liberal intrusion into the lives of all Americans from birth to death

This is a link to a posting that appeared on my Facebook Page this morning from a Republican Affiliated / Libertarian affiliated group that was organized to support the Gateway Pacific Coal terminal. I don't know how to post a picture, but it is the GIF on the page that is of interest. It is a picture of the socialist fist over a housing development. The group, Save Whatcom uses variations of a green fist, rather than the red fist, but it is still a fist. http://whatcomteaparty.org/attention-local-land-owners-and-well-owners-part-two/

<p>People line up to buy food at a supermarket in San Cristobal, about 410 miles (660 km) southwest of Caracas, Feb. 27, 2014. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Pope Francis called Wednesday for an end to violence in Venezuela that has killed at least 13 people and urged politicians to take the lead in calming the nation's worst unrest in a decade.</p>