Free Republic

For the first time ever, California posted a population decline in 2020, and the United States as a whole didn’t fare much better. Its growth has decelerated to 0.35% year-over-year, the slowest growth rate since the Great Depression.Population experts blame the slowing growth rate on three big trends: families across the country are aging and having fewer kids, legal immigration has declined, and economic hardships extending all the way back to the dot-com crash have shifted priorities away from marriage and families. While some contributing factors are down across the board, other social and economic factors have disproportionately impacted specific...

American, Delta and United all charge big fees for families to sit together. And in some cases, they knowingly separate kids from their parents on board – even 2-year-olds! Airlines can easily fix this, but they haven’t. Doing so would mean giving up millions of dollars in fees from parents who simply want to keep their kids safe. Sign our petition demanding airlines put safety over profits! Children should sit with their parents on a plane.

If one overall concept drives national security decisions in Washington, it is that technology in the form of highly complex, and thus massively expensive, weapons along the lines of the F-35 stealth fighter, the B-21 Raider long-range strike bomber, and Ford-class aircraft carriers are needed to accomplish our strategic goals. We saw this with the president’s $705.4 billion defense budget request that includes $2.8 billion for the new bomber and $11.4 billion for the troubled fighter. The advocates of these programs often justify the cost associated with them by saying that their mere existence holds our potential adversaries at bay....

Retired Col. Charles E. McGee, an original Tuskegee Airman, speaks with Senior Airman Alfredo Maldonado, right, and Airman 1st Class Quinton Coke, both personnelist with the 66th Force Support Squadron, during a visit to Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., in 2016. McGee served a total of 30 years in the U.S. Air Force, beginning with the U.S. Army Air Corps, and flew a total of 409 combat missions in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African-American military aviators in the U.S. Army Air Corps. (Air Force photograph by Mark...

What just happened? The US Department of Justice on Monday announced it has indicted four members of the Chinese military with hacking into the computer systems of credit monitoring firm Equifax in 2017 and stealing the personally identifiable information of nearly 150 million Americans. The government alleges that Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke and Liu Lei were members of the People’s Liberation Army Research Institute, a branch of the Chinese military, and conspired to hack into Equifax’s networks, maintain access to the computers and steal sensitive information. Specifically, the indictment claims the defendants exploited a vulnerability in the Apache...

LYNNWOOD, Wash. (Reuters) - Boeing Co suppliers are shedding jobs and capacity to cope with a halt in 737 MAX output, but while that staves off chaos, aerospace executives worry the industry might be unable to ramp factories quickly enough when the plane wins approval to fly again. Boeing, struggling to restore public confidence and recover from the biggest crisis since its founding in 1916, has halted production of the once fast-selling 737 MAX, which was grounded in March following two deadly crashes. As a result, industrial heavyweights like fuselage maker Spirit Aerosystems have already laid off workers. Now a...

Six women of color have left the Nevada campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., ahead of the state's caucuses, complaining about a toxic environment, Politico reported.And the senator has apologized for what they say they experienced in her organization. The staffers have left since November, with three saying they felt marginalized by the campaign, the news outlet reported. "During the time I was employed with Nevada for Warren, there was definitely something wrong with the culture," Megan Lewis, a field organizer who joined the campaign in May and departed in December, told Politico. "I filed a complaint with HR, but...

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York added $70.2 billion in temporary liquidity to financial markets. Tuesday’s intervention came in two parts. One was via overnight repurchase agreements, or repos, that totaled $41.7 billion. The other came in a $28.5 billion 13-day repo. The Fed took all securities offered in both operations. Central-bank repo interventions take in Treasury and mortgage securities from eligible banks in what is effectively a short-term loan of central-bank cash, collateralized by the securities. The Fed’s money-market operations are aimed at ensuring that the financial system has enough liquidity and that short-term borrowing rates are stable...

Full Title: The US Air Force (USAF) has started searching for a new airborne command, control and communications operations center to replace the Boeing E-4B, and the service is asking US defence manufacturers for input. The Survivable Airborne Operations Center Weapon System (SAOC WS) is to replace the legacy E-4B National Airborne Operations Center, a militarised version of the 1970s-era Boeing 747-200 commercial airliner, which is approaching the end of its service life, according to a USAF pre-solicitation notice posted online 4 December. The SAOC WS is a linchpin in the US Department of Defense’s National Military Command System. It...

Conservative activist Scott Presler mobilized 200 volunteers to remove 50 tons of trash from a homeless camp in Los Angeles, California on Saturday. Presler’s volunteers removed more than five tons of waste per hour over a nine-hour span – and did so without any assistance from the government. On Saturday morning, Presler posted Twitter videos of the ground of the homeless camp covered in waste, before cleanup efforts began around 9a.m., which he followed with videos showing his group’s progress – and the end result. It’s almost 9 a.m. & we’re removing waste from a homeless camp in Los Angeles....

The Commandant’s Planning Guidance (CPG) provides the 38th Commandant’s strategic direction for the Marine Corps and mirrors the function of the Secretary of Defense’s Defense Planning Guidance (DPG). It serves as the authoritative document for Service-level planning and provides a common direction to the Marine Corps Total Force. It also serves as a road map describing where the Marine Corps is going and why; what the Marine Corps force development priorities are and are not; and, in some instances, how and when prescribed actions will be implemented. This CPG serves as my Commandant’s Intent for the next four years. ......

A persistent fantasy among those of us in aviation—or vintage cars, or motorcycles, or boats—is to find the pristine, never-used object of our passion stored away in a barn somewhere, just awaiting discovery and sale at a cheap price. It does happen from time to time, although the pristine part is a stretch. Tom Reilly may own the mother of all barn finds in the Merlin engine he located for his XP82 Twin Mustang restoration that’s gathering admirers in droves here at AirVenture this week. When I was shooting this video on it, I could hardly believe the story. The...

Portland, Ore. ‘No hate! No fear!” chanted the left-wing crowd as they marched downtown Saturday. I walked to the front of the line to record the protesters with my new GoPro camera when I was suddenly slammed on the back of my head with something hard. Dazed and still hearing faint chants of “no hate,” I was then punched and kicked by perhaps a dozen masked people in black. At an Antifa event meant to resist “fascist violence,” I—a gay journalist of color—was beaten so badly that I was hospitalized for a brain hemorrhage. Since last year, I have been...

A medic testifying in the trial of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher – who is accused of killing an injured ISIS prisoner of war in Iraq – has shockingly testified Thursday that he is the one who killed the militant, not Gallagher. The medic told a court at Naval Base San Diego that he killed the fighter by asphyxiation. He also testified that Gallagher stabbed the fighter, but did not kill him. Gallagher, 40, has pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder and aggravated assault charges stemming from the alleged killing of a wounded ISIS fighter and alleged instances of firing sniper...

TOKYO (Reuters) - Search and rescue teams found wreckage from a crashed Japanese F-35 stealth fighter in the Pacific Ocean close to northern Japan, and are scouring the waters for the missing pilot, authorities said on Wednesday. The aircraft, less than a year old, was the first F-35 assembled in Japan and was aloft for only 28 minutes on Tuesday before contact was lost, a defense official said. The plane had logged a total of 280 hours in the air, he added. It was only the second F-35 to crash since the aircraft’s first flight in 2006 and could reignite...

Pakistan's civil aviation authority has confirmed the closure of its airspace, while its Indian counterpart has barred all flights from eight northern airports, amid clashes between the nations' forces in the disputed Kashmir region. India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation issued a NOTAM barring flights in and out of Amritsar, Jammu, Kangra, Kullu Manali, Kushok Bakula, Pathankot, Rimpochee, Shimla and Srinajar "due to operational reasons", shortly before 11:30 local time. IndiGo, Vistara and SpiceJet have confirmed suspensions of flights to the affected airports. In IndiGo's case, Chandigarh and Dehradun join Amritsar, Jammu and Srinajar among the airports from which flights...

India's foreign ministry has confirmed that one of its air force's Mikoyan MiG-21 fighters has been shot down amid escalating tensions with its neighbour, Pakistan. In a televised statement, a foreign ministry official said Pakistan had launched an incursion into Indian airspace "targeting military installations" in the disputed region of Kashmir on 27 February. "But due to our high state of readiness and alertness, Pakistan's attempts were foiled successfully. The Pakistan air force was detected and the Indian air force responded immediately." During the aerial engagement that followed, one aircraft from each side was shot down, the official says. "The...

By CW4 Michael W. Carr (Retired) – “Hey, you guys want to haul some ammo and gear out to San Clemente Island for us?” asked the SEAL officer. “Sure”, said the Army Warrant Officer, without really thinking about what his agreement might entail. For the Army Marine Warrant almost any reason to get his 174 ft. LCU underway on a mission was a good idea. Underway was always better than sitting tied to the dock. “Sweet”, the SEAL said. “Here’s what we need you to do,” and he began explaining the process of loading gear and ammo at the...

A new report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency highlights Beijing’s continued development of airpower capabilities. The unclassified report draws on public sources to discuss the full spectrum of Chinese military capabilities, from land forces to space and cyber capabilities. It also underlines the airpower developments that are of specific interest to Washington. “The People’s Liberation Army Air Force [PLAAF] is closing the gap with Western air forces across a broad spectrum of capabilities, such as aircraft performance, command and control, and electronic warfare,” it says. The PLAAF’s role has evolved from one of protecting China’s population centres and industrial...

Believe it or not, all these faces are fake. They have been synthesized by Nvidia’s new AI algorithm, a generative adversarial network capable of automagically creating humans, cats, and even cars. The technology works so well that we can expect synthetic image search engines soon — just like Google’s, but generating new fake images on the fly that look real. Yes, you know where that is going — and sure, it can be a lot of fun, but also scary. Check out the video. It truly defies belief: According to Nvidia, its GAN is built around a concept called “style...