Free Republic

Plagued by delays in ship repairs and outdated design practices, the US Navy faces mounting challenges in maintaining readiness and keeping pace with China’s rapid shipbuilding advancements. This month, USNI News reported that the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that fewer than 40% of US Navy ships had completed repairs on time, despite the availability of shipyard space. The GAO ranked shipyard conditions second only to F-35 Lightning II air fighter sustainment costs as the most problematic readiness issue facing the US armed services.

The politically motivated and unprecedented overreaction to a virus with a 99.5% survival rate was launched in March of 2020, thus unleashing what can best be described as a once-in-a-century fiasco. Nineteen months later it is impossible to look at the United States and the world and not conclude that this country and much of the West is in the grip, not of a virus, but of delusional madness and malevolence. The governing elites have been so successful in propagandizing and fear-mongering the populace in many western nations, including the United States, that the virus has made far too many...

Why do negative ads work? Some people say the negative ads give them information upon which to base their decision at the voting table (those little four-legged stands we use in Marion County). A study from Stanford University says the information from negative ads generally is not accurate. Perhaps negative ads work in the same way as Big-Time Championship Wrestling (as it was called when I was young; whatever it is called now). No one doubts the efforts of the participants, and the world is made a much simpler place when painted in black-and-white (with slightly better resolution vis-a-vis the...

Team Obama is out and about mourning a “double-dip recession,” while Fed head Ben Bernanke is warning of a faltering economy. I have described the current economic environment as the front end of a recession. But Obama’s attack on millionaires and billionaires, his new war on bank profits, his linking arms with the anti-capitalist protesters in New York, and his big-government stimulus plan will surely not solve this crisis. ... Here’s the real silliness of all this. The Obama plan would permanently raise tax rates in order to pay for a temporary tax cut. In other words, taxes are going...

SAN DIEGO – The vast majority of people caught smuggling immigrants across the border near San Diego are never prosecuted for the offense, demoralizing the Border Patrol agents making the arrests, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press. “It is very difficult to keep agents' morale up when the laws they were told to uphold are being watered-down or not prosecuted,” the report says. The report offers a stark assessment of the situation at a Border Patrol station responsible for guarding 13 miles of mountainous border east of the city. Federal officials say it reflects a reality...

<p>FOR THE second year in a row...the population of Massachusetts has shrunk.</p> <p>It was one of only three states to end the year with fewer people than it had at the start -- New York and Rhode Island were the others -- and the only one to do so for the second year running.</p>

The first thing we have to realize is that media liberals tried to throw the election for the party of the ass again. Of course, this newsletter's readers were alerted[1] back in issue 321 (Another Election Reporting SNAFU Coming Up). In a nutshell, the failed Voter News Service was replaced by two groups headed by former CBS News reporters with their election results funneled to Associated Press to tabulate and disseminate to media outlets. So, we had the very-left (Bush Administration haters) AP essentially programming most news outlets on election results. AP will never be confused with fair and balanced...

"Rally 'round the flag, Kerry" John Kerry, Ralph Nader, Ted Kennedy political cartoon.  May 21, 2004... Nader Bombshell: "Kerry & I talked about Iraq" Ralph Nader is telling a different tale than Kerry regarding their 70-minute meeting on Wednesday. At issue is the subject of Iraq. In wide-spread news reports, Kerry’s aides are quoted as saying Iraq did not come up during the meeting. Nader disagrees. According to the Union Leader: Immediately after Wednesday's meeting, aides to Kerry said Iraq had not come up during the meeting, but Nader said Thursday he had raised it and recommended that Kerry...