Free Republic

When a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last year, Pete Buttigieg drew criticism for not showing up right away. In responding to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge — a far different crisis, this time at the center of his portfolio — he’s not making that mistake again. On the day the bridge collapsed, Buttigieg had planned a trip to Wyoming and Montana — what would have amounted to his 47th and 48th states visited as Transportation secretary — to tour infrastructure projects. But before leaving from Dulles International Airport on Tuesday, his work cell phone buzzed...

Tuesday on FNC’s “Hannity,” host Sean Hannity’s monologue focused on President Joe Biden’s reaction to the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore. Hannity criticized Biden for making the tragedy about him in his remarks regarding the incident. Partial transcript as follows: But we start with Joe Biden himself. Now, before the president and vice president departed on separate planes for an event in North Carolina — well, Joe did try to offer some brief remarks on the tragic bridge collapse that took place in Baltimore. Here is the sad and pathetic part, as per usual, Biden made it all...

Can a Civil Engineer weigh in on this?

The tragedy in Baltimore with the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge is fresh. Brave people are currently searching the dangerous tangled wreckage for any possible survivors and the dead. But where the news media this morning is also talking about the impacts on shipping on the East Coast of the USA and the impacts on traffic on the East Coast it is a valid topic of discussion to consider the next steps. 1. Reopening the Port of Baltimore will be a priority. The NTSB will predictably conduct a speedy investigation and conclude the primary cause of the collapse...

The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland which crosses the Patapsco River has reportedly Collapsed within the last few minutes after being Struck by a Large Container Ship

Almost unnoticed amid the drama and crisis that hit Latin America every week, in the last days of February the Cuban government asked the United Nations for aid to address a growing food shortage. The unprecedented cry for help from a communist regime that has always prided itself on its social welfare model captures Cuba’s dire economic straits. Hurt by tightened U.S. restrictions, decaying domestic production, a weak post-COVID-19 tourism industry and indifference from its allies, the island is living through its worst economic days since the collapse of the Soviet Union more than three decades ago. A string of...

W5 takes an in-depth look into who Russia's oligarchs are, and whether sanctioning them would stop President Vladimir Putin's invasion in Ukraine. ...... Follow along using the transcript.

Johannesburg and the large township of Soweto nearby have been forced to endure several days without water as electricity problems have knocked out pumping stations and a late summer heat wave has strained reservoirs. Residents have been forced to rely on bottled water as local utilities have turned down water pressure, or turned off water completely. And outside Johannesburg’s wealthier, leafy suburbs, spare water has been in short supply. South Africa’s Daily Maverick reported: On Sunday, 17 March, Johannesburg Water said the system remained under “severe strain”, and the bulk supplier, Rand Water, warned that its system faced imminent collapse....

Claim: Biden claimed that the U.S. economy was on the brink of disaster when he took office. “I inherited an economy that was on the brink. Now our economy is the envy of the world!” Biden said. Verdict: False. President Biden inherited an economy that was strongly rebounding from the pandemic. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the economy grew at an annual rate of 4.3 percent. In the prior quarter, it had grown at an annual rate of 33.1 percent, as the economy whipsawed from lockdown to reopening. As Biden took office, in the first quarter of 2021, the...

There have been murmurs for at least the last ten years about the potential for civil war in the United States. Polls have shown that roughly half the country believes that future conflict is likely. The intrusion of unchecked government power into every crevice of our private lives has transformed politics into a high-stakes cage match in which furious citizens fight to survive. Because government exerts so much control over citizens, winning control of government has become an existential imperative. Such zero-sum thinking has fractured society and pitted Americans against one another. However, something fundamental has been shifting beneath our...

As Congress dithers about funding aid to Ukraine, Ukrainian military capabilities decline. This decline is gradual. Previously committed weapons, munitions, and supplies will keep some equipment flowing for months or even years. However, the effects of declining aid will be increasingly apparent on the battlefield. Ukraine is no longer able to conduct a counteroffensive. By February or March, it will have difficulty conducting local counterattacks, and by early summer, it will struggle to fend off Russian attacks. At some point, the front will collapse, and Russia will impose a harsh peace. Q1: Why is military aid needed? A1: Militaries in...

This will shock you, I know. Well, probably not, unless you are an advocate of the whole “sanctuary” phenomenon, which is based on the idea that kindness alone will suffice to ensure that opening the doors to every Tom, Dick, and Harry will turn out well for everybody. Denver's major public hospital is hemorrhaging money as migrants flood the city.https://t.co/Q1uWGSWpG6https://t.co/Q1uWGSWpG6— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) January 18, 2024Denver isn’t exactly flooded by illegal immigrants by today’s standards. Only 36,000 have come through the city in the past couple of years, out of the 8-12 million Biden has been letting flood through...

Do You Dare Even Look? — Forecast 2024“I’ve also lost patience with the Sharia of the political left taking over the entire system.” — David Collum Historians of the future, flash-frying peccary testicles and mesquite pods over their campfires, will wonder at how the archetypal Shining City on a Hill of America’s storied yesteryear got transformed into the roach motel that our country has become on the threshold of 2024 CE. Will they be as stupidly bewildered as, in our time, the faculty at Harvard, the editors of The New York Times, or the directorate of the CDC? Or will...

DeSantis’ campaign and super PAC have spent more than $160 million to boost him, and he spent the better part of 2023 on the road. “If I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” he told the Christian Broadcasting Network last week. “It sucked out a lot of oxygen.” “He tried to ‘out-Trump’ Trump among Trump supporters instead of going for the ‘maybe Trump/move on from Trump’ voters, and it was a fatal strategic choice,” Cullen said. Polling shows that his numbers were strongest before he actively began campaigning for president...

Jeff Roe, longtime Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) consultant and chief architect of his flailing political operation, resigned Saturday from the super PAC charged with realizing the governor’s increasingly quixotic presidential aspirations. Roe announced his departure hours after a damning Washington Post report on the collapse of Never Back Down (NBD), the super PAC Roe conceptualized to send DeSantis to the White House and usher in a new era of super PAC-driven presidential campaigns. The Post report comes after five senior officials, pre-dating Roe’s departure, left NBD since late November and three others with Roe’s firm were fired. The Post writes...

The world is heading quite rapidly toward tyranny. We are in a revolutionary period that will dramatically change civilization. Few people understand the gravity of our situation. Here are some of the reasons why the majority of people seem oblivious to the danger. These psychological shortcomings explain why we are sleepwalking into tyranny. The Normalcy Bias “is a cognitive bias that occurs in times of crisis, leading us to disregard any signs or warnings that we are in danger. Normalcy bias is a defense mechanism that lulls us into thinking life will just continue as it always has.” The evidence...

The Late Hour of Our RepublicI am compelled by the late hour of our republic to recognize how far we have come and how far we have slipped. After centuries of rising from a mere rabble of farmers and shopkeepers, homemakers and nurses to one of the most powerful and wealthy nations on earth, it took next to no time to fall amongst the casualties of broken empires. The end of the United States has already been accomplished, it’s just a matter now of how it unfolds. Those in the Executive branch of government have already committed the ultimate treason,...

What we’re seeing in the Democrat cities is a total breakdown of civilization. That’s not an exaggeration. You don't have a civilization when normal people can’t walk down the street without having to dodge junkies, piles of human waste, and knife-wielding maniacs. You have chaos. But chaos is OK with the inhabitants of the Democrat big cities. I know that because they keep electing people who allow their cities to be chaotic. I’m supposed to be outraged and upset by this, but my caring bandwidth is limited. I can only care about so much, and what I cannot do is...

"Putin resigned from the KGB after the Soviet Union existed no more but he had a very good network that helped and that helped him come to power" Former KGB sleeper agent Jack Barsky discusses the formative weakest moment that set Putin on the path to create a 'greater Russia'.

Michael Pento discussed the current state of the bond market and warned of the potential collapse of the US dollar due to the erosion of faith in the world’s reserve currency. He advised investors to sell long duration bond exposure and invest in short term US government debt. Pento also discussed the inflation and GDP acceleration, as well as China and Japan’s selling of US treasuries. He warned of the massive issuance and supply of US debt and questioned who will buy it, as the Federal Reserve is no longer buying and is instead selling their balance sheet, adding to...