Free Republic

Who, really, is in charge at the White House? It sure doesn’t look to be President Biden. The latest evidence came last week when chief of staff Ron Klain delivered a behind-the-scenes message to Democratic allies and staff, just hours after Biden’s disastrous news conference: The prez had failed to mention that his next Build Back Better bill would fund child and elder care, but Klain insisted it would. As Axios reported, “Klain’s private comments are yet another indication the White House has a core set of priorities it plans to fight for” … even if the president doesn’t know...

In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of attention on the build-up of China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). It has undergone a major modernization effort and is now the largest naval force in the world. Just last month, the PLAN launched its third aircraft carrier – the second to be entirely indigenously built. This will allow China to flex its muscles in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. Likewise, there has been great speculation regarding China’s efforts to develop a capable fifth-generation fighter aircraft and a medium- to long-range stealth bomber. In very short order, Beijing...

The media may think their clever reporting is hiding Biden’s decline from the world, but the world is well aware of it. Particularly in Australia. Sky News Australia host Andrew Bolt spoke with psychiatrist Tanveer Ahmed on his show and discussed Ahmed’s take on the cognitive condition of the leader of the free world. They weren’t the only ones who noticed this strange behavior from Biden and things are just getting worse. The New York Times published an article earlier this year on how “uncomfortable” Biden’s age is “for him, his team, and his party

The H-20 Stealth Bomber: An Ominous Sign of Chinese Airpower Projection? – As if it weren’t bad enough that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues to make strides with its 5th Generation Chengdu J-20 stealth fighter – and flaunts that J-20 via intimidation exercises against Taiwan — the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) is evidently also making strides in the arena of next-generation strategic stealth bombers. So then, what exactly do we know about China’s prospective H-20 bomber?

Because of the prohibitive cost of designing, developing, and fielding a strategic bomber force, only three countries field strategic bombers, able to hit continents thousands of miles away; China, Russia, and the United States. And the B-21 Raider stealth bomber is set to provide the U.S. Air Force with 100 bombers for at least the next 30 years. The B-21 Raider gets its name honoring the Doolittle Raiders, U.S. Army Air Force men during World War II. Just months after the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. suffering defeat after defeat in the Pacific theater, President Roosevelt ordered...

Pity the poor F-111, the veritable “redheaded stepchild” of the Western jet fighter-bomber world. “What’s in a name?” quoth young Ms. Capulet to young Mr. Montague in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, but in the case of this warplane, the choice of name seemed to create some bad juju from the get-go. Instead of a regal bird-of-prey moniker like “Eagle” or “Fighting Falcon,” the warbird was instead officially dubbed “Aardvark,” after one of the more ungainly-looking mammals out there; accordingly, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) nicknamed her “The Pig,” which shouldn’t automatically be viewed as an insult (“Pride-Integrity-Guts,” to quote...

How Many B-21 Raider Bombers Are Needed? At some point in the future, officials from the Department of the Air Force will likely be seated in a House subcommittee in our nation’s capital and asked a blunt question from United States lawmakers: How many B-21 Raider bombers do you actually need? Some U.S. Air Force officials are already pondering that query. Current plans call for the service to operate at least 100 long-range strategic bombers, but there have been calls for the Air Force to acquire upwards of 179 or more.

USS Jimmy Carter, A History – There are currently nine aircraft carriers named for former presidents of the United States, while a tenth is now under construction. However, President Jimmy Carter isn’t included in the list of former commanders-in-chief to be so honored – rather Carter has the distinction of being recognized for his service as a United States Navy submariner with a Seawolf-class nuclear-powered, fast attack submarine (SSN) named for him. Carter was the only submarine-qualified sailor to go on to become the nation’s chief executive. He was the nuclear engineer officer on the Pre-Commissioning Unit Seawolf (SSN 575)...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis likely gained an even easier glide path to reelection when Democrats nominated former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, the consummate chameleon who has managed to lose elections in the state as a GOP candidate, as an independent candidate, and as a Democrat candidate, though he does hold a U.S. House seat. Barring some unforeseeable political earthquake, the question for November is about how much DeSantis will win by and what that means for 2024.

The late, great Sean Connery offered several classic “one-liners” in his lengthy career, and among the best was in 1996’s The Rock, when as a former MI-6 operative, he states bluntly, “Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and f*ck the prom queen.” The YF-23 Story Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor can be seen as the winner in this case, and while it never had such relations with a prom queen, it has earned a reputation as the most capable air superiority fighter ever to fly. The “loser” was the Northrop-McDonnell Douglas YF-23, an experimental aircraft that competed in...

The F-15EX Eagle II Soaring High After Weapons System Evaluation – Earlier this month, the United States Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center Detachment 6 team members participated in two of the first developmental and operational test missile shots from the Boeing F-15EX. For the exercise, Engineers and analysts from the AFOTEC Detachment 6 F-15 division traveled to Eglin Air Force Base (AFB) and Tyndall AFB, both in Florida, to draw results from the AIM-120D and AIM-120C3 missile shots performed as part of the Weapons System Evaluation Program (WSEP) conducted by Eglin’s 53rd Wing. These missile shots highlighted how...

5 Best Guns of World War II: Literally tens of millions of firearms were produced during the Second World War. Some of the designs performed better than others, while a mere few stood out as masterpieces. Of those, five truly were the best of the best

“Anti-trans”. “Antisemitic”. “Racist”. All of these allegations are coming. All of them are false. Important voices across the US and around the world are being set up to be painted as bigots, portrayed as guilty of hate speech. Recent events tell me that the corporate oligarchy is about to launch a major smear campaign to defame these voices. It’s really their only last move: it is their swan song. Before the noise comes, know this: I stand for free speech on all topics in all forums. Period. Those who participate in hate speech show themselves by their speech. Silencing people...

The nation’s eyes are on the Texas town of Uvalde following an elementary school shooting that has left 21 people dead and 17 more injured. On Tuesday morning, a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde after shooting his grandmother and crashing a car near the school, authorities said. According to an official from the Texas Department of Safety, the shooter walked into the building and fired at “children, teachers, whoever was in his way.” He killed 19 children and two teachers. Previously we have reported a video from the shooter as he entered the backdoor of Uvalde elementary school:

Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Minority Leader, was labeled the “least popular politician in America” in December. An aggregate of polls from RealClearPolitics showed that just 24% of Americans see McConnell in a favorable light, while 59% view him unfavorably. It gave the Kentucky Senator a net negative approval rating of 35%.

Here Come the High Gas Prices: Rising Oil Prices Were the Natural Result of Biden’s War On Oil: Dan Eberhart, the CEO of drilling services firm Canary, recently suggested that the price of crude oil will likely reach more than $100 a barrel before the summer as the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine increases by the day. Oil prices have been rising steadily throughout the first year of the Biden administration, however, policies implemented by the president and his party in Congress have contributed to this dramatic rise.

Would Vice President Kamala Harris show the same commitment to the Constitutional as former Vice President Mike Pence? We might find out. Most of the media buzz around former Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to the Federalist Society revolved around him saying, “President Trump is wrong.” He added, “Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. And Kamala Harris will have no right to overturn the election when we beat them in 2024.”

"South Korean President Moon Jae-in has announced that the United States, China, and North Korea have reached an agreement “in principle” on declaring an end to the Korean War. With the war having ended with a 1953 armistice, the two Koreas remain in a technical state of war, even though full-scale hostilities haven’t resumed since then. Moon, who leaves office next May, has been keen to “institutionalize” progress in the area of inter-Korean peace since 2019. In 2007, when he served as chief of staff to former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, Moon saw firsthand the risks of inter-Korean rapprochement...

So, is China going to attack? Short answer: Only Xi knows. Absent that information, here are a few thoughts. A range of pressures, including an aging population, unresolved territorial disputes, and a slowing economy, is conspiring to challenge the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) legitimacy, which is premised on a post-Tiananmen promise of prosperity. These pressures may lead Xi to take action over Taiwan before Beijing’s economic and military advantages dwindle – the so-called “Davidson Window.” Then there is the “Pax Olympics” school that sees concern over global image forestalling Chinese aggression till after the 2022 Winter Olympics. There are ready...

In 1958, the Navy proposed overhauling the Iowa-class ships by removing all of the 16-inch guns and replacing them with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine missiles. The new “guided missile battleships” would also carry four Regulus II cruise missiles, each of which could flatten a city a thousand miles distant with a nuclear warhead more than 100 times as powerful as the bomb used on Hiroshima.