Free Republic

After the failure of Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive, Kiev finds itself at a major crossroads with no easy options. The demand late last year by the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for the mobilization of an additional 500,000 troops over the next few months signals both resolve and desperation. If adopted and implemented, the new approach to mobilization will also add significant strain for already stretched Ukrainian state institutions and society. As publicly confirmed by senior Ukrainian officials, large numbers of volunteers for frontline service simply no longer exist. So the government proposes coercive measures to ensure continuing enlistment. These range from...

This damn Trump economy just refuses to cooperate with all the “experts.” – This Black Friday was, at least according to all the “experts” quoted by cable news operations an the nation’s other corrupt media outlets, supposed to be a down year. According to their joint narrative with the Democrat Party, the Trump Economy was supposed to be lurching along into a new recession, one that would arrive just in time to impact President Trump’s chances for re-election in 2020. Given that 2/3rds of U.S. Gross Domestic Product – GDP – is derived from consumer spending, this media/Democrat/”experts” narrative meant...

Victor Davis Hanson, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, spoke with host Rebecca Mansour and Red Pilled America co-founder Patrick Courrielche on Monday’s edition of Sirius XM’s Breitbart News Tonight and described Democrats’ push for “reparations” as a racial political strategy born from fear that President Trump is “making inroads” with black voters. Reparations poll “about 25 percent support,” said Hanson. “It doesn’t even poll a majority of support among African Americans, so it’s not so much a serious issue as a campaign issue. It’s sort of like the Green New...

The great engine of American capitalism is once again firing on all cylinders, as shown by the 4.1 percent annualized growth of America’s gross domestic product (GDP) in the second quarter of this year. Most Americans (with the exception of Democrats in Congress) are celebrating the good economic news. There is quiet rejoicing in many European and Asian capitals as well, since their mostly sluggish economies will now be drawn along in America’s powerful wake. But there is one capital where the American economic renaissance is definitely not welcome news. Consternation reigns in China, where President Xi Jinping is nervously...

The big difference in President Donald Trump's re-election campaign in 2020 could be the level of support he receives from the black community. And, the man most despised by the black community could become the most pro-black president of the modern era. A Rasmussen poll released last week indicates growing support for Trump among blacks. A big part of that is economics. For the first time ever, black unemployment has fallen below six percent. That means record numbers of black men, women, and youth are employed. Trump has created opportunities where for decades, the Democrats have offered only unfulfilled promises....

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives will promise to all but eliminate unemployment in Germany by the year 2025 when they announce their 2017 election campaign platform on Monday. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), will present their platform for the Sept. 24 election on Monday with other already known policies such as income tax cuts worth €15 billion per year and promises to build flats. “A major point is that we’d like to achieve full employment,” Horst Seehofer, CSU chairman and state premier in Bavaria, said on Sunday on his way into a...

Ahead of the new parliamentary term, French Ministers made predictions on how France will have evolved by 2025. The country will have no unemployment, little debt, housing for everyone and an industry that will be the envy of the world, they hope. … (Finance minister Pierre) Moscovici’s assessment is massively positive, even if it is tempered by the prediction that France’s position among the world’s top economic powers (it’s currently in 5th place) will drop to 8th or 9th place “if the huge growth of the emerging economies continues apace”. But France will nevertheless be in a much stronger position...

While the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) takes a summer break before the autumn election campaign, chancellor candidate for the Social Democrats (SPD), Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has unveiled a plan to create full employment in the next 11 years. The ambitious idea centres around turning Germany into what Steinmeier called the "Silicon Valley of environmentally-sensitive industrial production," according to Der Spiegel magazine at the weekend. “We show how with clever policies Germany can create a total of four million jobs in the next decade,” he said. Steinmeier’s 67-page "Plan for Germany" sets out how half of these jobs which will be generated...

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) - Officials from the Federal Reserve on Saturday warned of dangers from a rising tide of trade disputes and the harmful impact on what one otherwise termed a "resilient" United States economy. Three regional Fed presidents steered clear of current economic or monetary policy topics at a panel discussion on the southern U.S. economy at the Southern Governors' Association conference. The presidents of the St. Louis, Dallas and Atlanta Feds, respectively, mostly focused on the dangers of protectionism and the need for an educated and flexible work force to cope with rising foreign competition. The governors convened...

California continues to employ far more technology workers, pay higher wages and attract more venture capital than any other state. But the overall U.S. tech sector is also growing at a surprisingly brisk clip - for now. That's the conclusion of a highly anticipated annual report by AeA, formerly the American Electronics Association, the country's largest technology trade association. Researchers relied on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, mostly from 2006. According to the 2007 "Cyberstates" report, to be published Tuesday, the U.S. tech industry employed 5.8 million people last year - up 2.6 percent from 2005. The...

The latest jobless rate -- 4.7 percent -- is at a five-year low. Yet, despite this and other good economic news, the Left is frantic to repeal the Bush administration's tax cuts. In fact, even if every single economic indicator were better than at any time in American history, the Left would still want to repeal the tax cuts. The reason is that the essence of the Left is ever bigger government for the purpose of controlling ever more of the economic and social life of society. That America is so much more economically efficient than the major socialist countries...