Free Republic

1) Make it easier for individuals and families to buy their own policies and even to pool their own resources in ways that makes sense to them. The Knights of Columbus started as a life insurance association; we could have many more associations like that based on faith or geography or interest where people could pool their recourses in a way that makes sense to them. This has to be made easier. Groups must be able to sell insurance across state lines. 2) Give people incentives to spend their money wisely. The way it works right now, the employer provides...

IF only the laws of the uni verse didn't make it impossi ble to conjure something out of nothing. In a magical world free of such encumbrances, Democrats would be spared the bother of hiding the inevitable costs of ObamaCare. The latest gambit of Democrats in both the Senate and House is to take roughly $250 billion out of health-care reform -- for Medicare payments to doctors -- and spend it in a separate bill. This instantly makes ObamaCare appear cheaper, although its impact on the federal budget will be precisely the same. This isn't even competent three-card monte. It's...

Health care legislation back behind closed doorsSenate leaders start trying to merge bills by The Associated Press Wednesday October 14, 2009 WASHINGTON (AP) - Health care talks slip back behind closed doors Wednesday as Senate leaders start trying to merge two very different bills into a new version that can get the 60 votes needed to guarantee its passage. All eyes are on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who has said he wants to complete the wedding quickly and get historic health care overhaul legislation onto the floor the week after next. Both bills were written by Democrats,...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

Sole Control - Sen. Harry Reid will write the bill himself taking pieces of the Baucus vapor bill and the Kennedy "Do it for Ted" bill. This merger will happen with a few chosen people behind tightly closed doors. There will be no hearing, no testimony, no public input.

Senate Finance Committee Democrats, led by Max Baucus (D-MO), have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health care overhaul bill, America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes claiming that it was a GOP delaying tactic. Republicans argued that transparency is an Obama administration goal and said their constituents are demanding that they read bills before voting... Unhealthy Stealth Tactics of New ObamaCare Bill

Julius Genachowski, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, plans to propose a new so-called net neutrality rule Monday that could prevent telecommunications, cable and wireless companies from blocking Internet applications, according to sources at the agency. Genachowski will discuss the rules Monday during a keynote speech at The Brookings Institute. He isn't expected to drill into many details, but the proposal will specifically be for an additional guideline on how operators like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast can control what goes on their networks. That additional guideline would prevent the operators from discriminating, or act as gatekeepers, of Web content and...

The state is getting a $17 million federal grant to provide government health insurance to low-income working parents.

SCREW THE OBAMA STEALTH CARE PLAN 1. action to avoid detection: the action of doing something slowly, quietly, and covertly, in order to avoid detection 2. furtiveness: secretive, dishonest, or cunning behavior or actions Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. When the paint on VA Clinic walls and VA Hospitals is falling off, and rats roam the halls, THAT'S FAILURE! When MediCare pays out more than it takes in, that's FAILURE! When Social Security is broke... that's FAILURE! Listen to 0bama. He thinks the more control he has over our lives, the...

What is wrong with the following sentence? Congress wrote the Kennedy-Dodd health care bill while meeting in Washington on the backs of envelopes. Hint: there are at least two correct answers. I have written many posts about the Kennedy-Dodd health care bill. There is only one problem. I learned Saturday, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal, that what we all thought was the Kennedy-Dodd bill, isn’t the Kennedy-Dodd bill. It seems that after the bill was released to the public in June, on July 15, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, under the “leadership” of Sen. Dodd (D....

Stealthy Sukhois Posted by Bill Sweetman at 8/25/2009 5:00 AM CDT Talking about stealth in relation to the Sukhoi Su-27 and its extended family, including the new Su-35S, tends to cause people to fall over in fits of mirth. Like Chandler's Moose Malloy, the basic airplane looks about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. But just about six years ago, in late 2003, Defense IQ managed to persuade a team from the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Electromagnetics (ITAE), part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to present at a conference on stealth in London....

One video is worth a thousand words (or, as in this column, about 730). The video in question, put together by a group called Verum Serum, shows public statements by three advocates of single-payer (government monopoly) health insurance explaining that a health care bill with a "government option" would move America toward a single-payer government health care system. You may not have heard of the first two, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and professor Jacob Hacker. But you have heard of the third, President Barack Obama. Schakowsky is a left-wing Democrat from the north side of Chicago and adjacent suburbs and, as...

Defense: As the failure of engagement with Iran grows more apparent, the administration that has talked very softly may be getting the mother of all sticks ready. Guess we need high-tech Cold War weapons after all.Western intelligence sources have told London's Times that Iran has perfected the means to develop and detonate a nuclear bomb and is merely awaiting word from its supreme leader to produce its first one. Should the order be given, it would take just six months to enrich enough uranium and another six months to assemble the warhead. Time's up. Recently, and perhaps not coincidentally, Defense...

Northrop Grumman has moved the U.S. Air Force a critical step closer to being able to drop a from the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. 30,000 pound penetrator weapon On April 28, an Air Force team, a Northrop Grumman-led aircraft contractor team and a Boeing-led weapon contractor team verified that the equipment required to integrate the new Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) on the B-2 -- the hardware that holds the MOP inside the weapons bay, the weapon itself, and the hardware used by the aircrew to command and release the weapon -- will fit together properly inside the aircraft. Northrop Grumman...

The ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee says the battle to fund more than 187 F-22 stealth fighters is not over, even though pro-Raptor forces suffered a stinging defeat in the Senate this week. Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon of California told HUMAN EVENTS the next F-22 war zone is a House-Senate committee conference on defense spending. There, as ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, McKeon will fight to preserve final bill language to provide for 12 more jets, as the House approved...Gen. John Corley, who heads Air Force Air Combat Command in Langley, Va., sent a...

Defense Spending: The TARP bailout may hit $24 trillion, but the Senate says the F-22 is too expensive to build and maintain. So why are the Japanese so desperate to buy this "unnecessary" Cold War weapon?By a vote of 58-40, the Senate on Tuesday voted to remove $1.75 billion set aside in a defense bill to build seven more F-22 Raptors, adding to the 187 stealth technology fighters already in the pipeline. After some hope the production lines would be kept open, the Senate succumbed to arguments by the administration and others that the fighter was too expensive, too hard...

May 12, 2009 -- A U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber flies over the western Pacific Ocean during a refueling mission. The B-2 Spirit is assigned to the 13th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron, deployed to Andersen AFB in "Tip of the Spear" Guam, USA, as part of the Continuous Bomber Presence in the Western Pacific. Via: http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-200905.htmThe Photographer  Senior Airman Christopher Bush, United States Air Force

B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber

Meet the "wonder weapon" that could have won the war for Hitler. Called the Horten 229, the radical "flying wing" fighter-bomber looked and acted a lot like the U.S. Air Force's current B-2 — right down to the "stealth" radar-evading characteristics. Fortunately for the world, the Ho 229 wasn't put into mass production before Nazi Germany surrendered in May 1945. But American researchers boxed up and shipped home the prototypes and partially-built planes that existed — and now the same company that builds the B-2 has rebuilt one.

Ex-F-22 engineer to sue Lockheed for stealth design By Stephen Trimble A stealth expert on the F-117 and B-2 programmes intends to file suit against Lockheed Martin later this week for concealing alleged deficiencies with the stealth coatings for the F-22. The pending lawsuit accuses Lockheed of knowingly providing defective coatings used to reduce the aircraft's radar and visual signatures, and covering up the problem by adding 272kg (600lbs) worth of extra layers. The lawsuit comes after the Department of Justice declined an opportunity under the Fair Claims Act to take up the case under seal. Now, Darrol Olsen, who...

ON TV Hitler's Stealth Fighter airs Sunday, June 28, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel. Preview Hitler's Stealth Fighter >> July 25, 2009--At a Northrop Grumman facility in California, top stealth-plane experts admire their handiwork in late 2008—a full-size, though flightless, replica of a Horten 2-29, aka Hitler's stealth fighter, created for a documentary airing June 28 on the National Geographic Channel. (Read the full story.) The team tested the re-created Nazi jet against World War II-style radar. With its radar-resistant design and 600-mile-an-hour (970-kilometer-an-hour) speed, the team concluded, the Ho 2-29 would have allowed British antiaircraft...

Surprising to most, the U.S. military's space-age B-2 Spirit was not the world's first stealth bomber. That honor belongs to the Horton 2-29, an experimental jet created by Nazi Germany at the tail end of World War II. However, because it was never in wide use during the conflict, the 2-29's stealth capabilities were never given much of a test. That is, until now.Researchers hired by National Geographic studied the last remaining 2-29 in existence -- locked away in a U.S. government hangar -- and built a replica. They then tested the plane's resistance to the kinds of radar active...

This Sunday, June 28, National Geographic TV airs Hitler's Stealth Fighter. Set your TiVos or just kick the rest of the family off the TV, because this one should be good. Back when stealth was very, very secret, a few people quietly advised me to take a look at the Horten Ho229, one of WW2 Germany's most advanced designs - a jet-powered flying wing made of wood. In a German book, a British documentary producer had found something even more interesting: the Horten brothers, Walter and Reimar, had planned to use a primitive radar absorbent structure (RAS) in the leading...

Defense: By a narrow margin, a House subcommittee has voted to keep open the F-22 Raptor production line. The future of American air dominance and the fate of the world's most capable fighter hang in the balance.On May 30, with North Korea huffing and puffing about nuclear war, the first of 12 high-tech U.S. F-22 Raptor fighter jets landed at Kadena Air Base on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa. It was just days after North Korea unnerved the region by detonating a nuclear device. There were reasons the F-22 was deployed to Japan. The stealthy, radar-evading fighter jet is...

Singapore Navy Launches Its First Swedish Archer-Class Submarine 12:49 GMT, June 18, 2009 RSS Archer is one of two ex-Swedish Navy Vaastergotland-class submarines acquired by Singapore in 2005 and comprehensively upgraded, to include air-independent propulsion. (Singapore MoD photo) Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Defence Teo Chee Hean officiated at the launch ceremony of the Republic of Singapore Navy's (RSN) first Archer-class submarine, RSS Archer, at the Kockums Shipyard in Karlskrona, Sweden, on 16 Jun 2009. The submarine was launched by Mrs Teo Chee Hean. Sweden's State Secretary for Defence, Håkan Jevrell, State Secretary for Trade and former Commander of...

Want to join the Air Force? Look at the picture above. How about now? Still no? Well damn, the Air Force is gonna be pissed -- this was supposed to be a powerful recruitment tool. The Challenger Vapor features radar-absorbing stealth-black paint, not unlike what is used to mask stealth bombers. The Vapor is set to run almost silently, thanks to "stealth exhaust" - whatever that means. Reminds us of when KITT used to go "Silent Mode" on Knight Rider. You need biometric verification to enter the cockpit via gull wing doors. The driver can view night/thermal vision projections on...

The Photographer  Master Sgt. Kevin J. Gruenwald, 99th ABW, Nellis AFB, United States Air Force Photos (these are just the medium-size versions!) selected from http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-200905.htm

S. Korea Seeks to Build Semi-Stealth Fighter By Jung Sung-ki Staff Reporter The South Korean Air Force is looking to deploying indigenous KF-X ``semi-stealth'' strike fighters after 2018 to replace its existing KF-16 fleet, a military source said Tuesday. The Air Force Studies and Analyses Wing, in charge of force improvement plans, held a close-door meeting in March and made an interim decision on operational requirements for the KF-X fighter, the source told The Korea Times on condition of anonymity. Basic requirements call for a F-18E/F Super Hornet-class aircraft equipped with 4.5-generation semi-stealth functions, a domestically-built active electronically scanned array...

President Obama is insisting on arcane procedural language tucked away in the budget resolution conference report that will dramatically expand the federal government's control over your personal health care decisions and our nation's health care system, all without a single hearing or a public debate. That's right, without debate. The White House hopes to include its proposed wholesale transformation of the nation's health care delivery system in the budget reconciliation process, enabling Democrats to enact a sweeping government takeover with just 51 Senate votes instead of the usual 60 votes required to authorize new programs.

Stealthy F-15 Could Enliven St. Louis Facility Mar 20, 2009 By Amy Butler Boeing hopes to extend the life of its F-15 production line with the unveiling of a new variant to incorporate stealthy coatings and structures. Company officials say the new F-15SE "Silent Eagle" - designed under a secret project called "Monty" - could garner up to 190 sales abroad, especially to nations already operating F-15s. The target market is South Korea, Singapore, Japan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. With Silent Eagle, Boeing is "slipping into the silent cloak of stealth," says Dan Korte, vice president and general manager of...

Anybody want some top-secret seagoing vessels? The Navy has a pair it doesn't need anymore. It has been trying to give them away since 2006, and they're headed for the scrap yard if somebody doesn't speak up soon. One is called Sea Shadow. It's big, black and looks like a cross between a Stealth fighter and a Batmobile. It was made to escape detection on the open sea. The other is known as the Hughes (as in Howard Hughes) Mining Barge. It looks like a floating field house, with an arching roof and a door that is 76 feet wide...

Remember Barack Obama’s pledge to make this the Most Transparent Administration Evah? Josh Gerstein at Politico notices a few items that seem to have slipped by the national media, thanks to a lack of openness on the part of Obama’s communications team. Obama issued three executive orders and a handful of regulations without ever announcing them: In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire. Despite the...

  The future is here: This water-based Imperial Star Destroyer is really the spectacular Swedish Visby-Class corvette, the first operational stealth ship in the world, powered with silent waterjets and made with non-magnetic composite materials.According to the experts, the corvettes are "electronically undetectable at more than 8 miles in rough seas and at more than 13.5 miles in calm seas". Their creation was an answer to the incursion of foreign submarines in Swedish waters in the mid-eighties.The corvettes are designed to travel at more than 35 knots in between the many beautiful islands that populate Sweden's shallow coast, thanks to waterjets-made...

OP-ED: On Inauguration Day, after it got the United Nations to pass a gag rule on insulting religions, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) told our new president in a New York Times ad that Muslims "have compelling strategic and moral reasons to cooperate and peacefully coexist with the United States in particular, and with the West in general." Many Muslims here and elsewhere want that partnership; but some, jihadists in the name of Islam, disagree violently. In its address to our new president, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (which has permanent status at the United Nations) made...

This is great news, but I still wonder what took the FBI so long. "FBI Cuts Off CAIR Over Hamas Questions," by Mary Jacoby for IPT News, January 29 (thanks to Jeffrey Imm): The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has cut off contacts with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) amid mounting concern about the Muslim advocacy group's roots in a Hamas-support network, the Investigative Project on Terrorism has learned. The decision to end contacts with CAIR was made quietly last summer as federal prosecutors prepared for a second trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF),...

The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota said it will file suit today against a publicly funded charter school, alleging that it is promoting the Muslim religion and that its directors are using a holding company to illegally funnel taxpayer dollars to a Muslim organization. The suit was to be filed this afternoon in U.S. District Court against Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, known as TIZA, and the Minnesota Department of Education, which the ACLU says is at fault for failing to uncover and stop the alleged transgressions. The suit names the department and Alice Seagren, the state education commissioner, as...

Tests of Russia's new fighter must start in 2009 - deputy PM 14:53 | 21/ 01/ 2009 AKHTUBINSK, January 21 (RIA Novosti) - The testing of Russia's fifth-generation fighter must begin in 2009 and the aircraft should be commissioned with the Russian Air Force in 2015, a deputy prime minister said on Wednesday. "I insist that the testing start as early as 2009, and the fifth-generation fighter must enter service with the Russian Air Force in 2015," Sergei Ivanov said at a meeting of the Military-Industrial Commission. Earlier plans set 2010 for the first tests of the new fighter. Ivanov...

As the clock ticks down to Barack Obama's inauguration, the US president-elect has kept silent on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its latest deadly turn in the Gaza Strip. Obama transition officials have ventured little more than saying their boss is "monitoring" the situation in Gaza, where at least 460 people have been killed in eight days of air raids before a ground offensive began Saturday. In the same period, Gaza militant rockets have killed four Israelis and wounded several dozen people. "The president-elect is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza," his national security spokeswoman Brooke Anderson...

<p>Election '08: Before friendly audiences, Barack Obama speaks passionately about something called "economic justice." He uses the term obliquely, though, speaking in code — socialist code.</p> <p>During his NAACP speech earlier this month, Sen. Obama repeated the term at least four times. "I've been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served," he said at the group's 99th annual convention in Cincinnati.</p>

At least in this case study from Absurd Britannia, the backtracking began almost immediately. "Mother told to take down her Christmas lights... in case they offend her non-Christian neighbours," from the Daily Mail, December 16 (thanks to James): A woman has spoken of how she was told to remove her Christmas lights by a housing association worker - in case they offended her non-Christian neighbours. Dorothy Glenn decorates her home in South Shields with hundreds of festive lights every year, including a giant tree and a 4ft Santa Claus. But she was left stunned this year when a South Tyneside...

In "Uncle Shariah" in the Washington Times, December 16, Frank Gaffney details why AIG's nationalization is so worrisome: The insurance giant AIG has lately become the poster child for corporate risk-taking, mismanagement and greed. Its unimaginably large losses, rooted in insurance it extended to financial companies engaged in subprime mortgage-backed transactions, have destroyed both AIG's corporate reputation and balance sheet. Indeed, but for the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson - who during his days running Goldman Sachs had extensive ties to AIG - deemed the insurance firm "too large to fail," the company would surely have gone under by...

Since CNN devoted so much time to covering the Hajj, a number of prominent Muslims -- including known terrorists and jihadists -- have opined that "We are defeating these people [American "evangelicals"] through their homes in their lands." "Terrorists gush over CNN coverage," by Aaron Klein for WorldNetDaily, December 12 (thanks to Doc Washburn): JERUSALEM – CNN's extensive coverage this week of the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca is a defeat for evangelical Christians and proves it is only a question of time before Islam will be "shining all over the world," according to Muslim terrorists in Gaza speaking to...

Iran says it has designed a radar-evading aircraft capable of taking out high-value targets without being detected by hostile radar systems. Chief Air Force commander Brigadier General Hassan Shah-Safi announced on Monday that the aircraft was designed by Iranian aerospace experts and that military researchers are now working on building a small prototype. "The design of the aircraft has been completed and the preliminary models of these aircrafts are being constructed," the commander told Iranian state radio.

Obama got where he is by playing it cool, Saul Alinsky-style (look him up on wikipedia) . Never showed his true thoughts on anything and always wore a tie. Speak moderately and don't frighten the squares. Will he suddenly go openly commie or will he keep up what has worked so far, moving slowly? A few judges here, a few redistrictings there, over there a slowly asphyxiated industry or two. Just little enough to not rouse the slumbering masses until it's too late for them to get his hands off the levers of power. I'm afraid that it'll be like...

WASHINGTON – Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse. In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September. Freddie Mac's payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing...

Pterodactyls may have gone extinct millions of years ago, but a newly designed spy plane could bring the flying reptiles to life, albeit replacing blood and guts with carbon fiber and batteries. "The next generation of airborne drones won't just be small and silent," the design team announced recently. "They'll alter their wing shapes using morphing techniques to squeeze through confined spaces, dive between buildings, zoom under overpasses, land on apartment balconies, or sail along the coastline."

Military technology: Advances in camouflage, concealment and deception are revolutionising an age-old art of warfare AS A special-forces agent in the French Navy, Michel Malalo has clandestinely entered several African countries by sea to extract endangered French nationals. Almost all the enemy fighters he encountered carried the AK-47, a widely used assault rifle renowned for its rugged reliability. But the AK-47 has a serious drawback: glint, which gave Mr Malalo an advantage in firefights. Made with steel, the AK-47 reflects light. “It’s flashy—and from afar,” says Mr Malalo, who took advantage of glint giveaways when shooting at the enemy. Mr...

The Air Force says the first crash of a B-2 stealth bomber was caused by moisture in the sensors that forced bad readings. The moisture in 3 of the 24 sensors threw off the preflight data calibrations, which caused the flight control computer to force the aircraft to pitch-up 30 degrees on takeoff. That resulted in a stall and subsequent crash on Feb. 23. The "Spirit of Kansas," plunged to the ground at Andersen Air Force Base on the island of Guam. It was en route to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where the 21-plane fleet is based. The...

The Air Force and Lockheed Martin are giving a secret retirement send-off to the world's first radar-evading fighter.They were born shrouded in mystery in a windowless building in Burbank. They flew combat missions over Serbia and Iraq virtually invisible to enemy radar. And today, the black, bat-like F-117A Night Hawks will fly quietly into the night as stealthily as they came. The last four of the world's first stealth fighters will make their final flights from Palmdale to a secret desert base in Nevada, where they will be locked up indefinitely in a secure concrete hangar. But unlike the passing...