Free Republic

With Mika Brzezinski leading the charge, Morning Joe heaped praise on Kevin McCarthy today for his strong statement to a Russian reporter during his visit to Israel bashing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and in support of aid to Ukraine. In part, McCarthy said "I do not support what your country has done to Ukraine. I do not support your killing of the children either. And I think for one standpoint, you should pull out." Mika acknowledged that she has been a "frequent critic" of McCarthy, but called his statement "amazing," and even, without irony, clapped [see screencap] in a show...

"The Biden administration has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity during the war in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris said in her speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. "Driving the news: The Biden administration has already accused Russia of committing war crimes in Ukraine. But it's the first time the U.S. has formally concluded that Russian forces are committing crimes against humanity. Secretary of State Tony Blinken said the U.S. reserves such "determinations for the most egregious crimes." "The U.S. determination comes just days before the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine..."

Neocon and rabid anti-Trumper Bill Kristol took to Twitter on Monday to suggest Democrats recruit left-wing pop star John Legend to replace President Joe Biden in 2024, calling the “So High” singer “our version of [Ukraine President Volodymyr] Zelensky.” “I’ve been saying for a while that we need as our next president our version of the admirable Volodymyr Zelensky,” Kristol wrote. “Today I got another ‘personal message’ — i.e., mass e-mail — from @johnlegend on behalf of Democrats.” “Which leads me to ask: When Biden steps aside — John Legend in 2024?”

Bill Kristol @BillKristol Proud to be an Old Republican: Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Dole, George W. Bush, McCain, Romney. 2:19 PM · Feb 5, 2020·Twitter for iPhone 1.2K Retweets 10.7K

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, said the governing philosophy of Republicans such as former President Ronald Reagan, who signed across-the-board tax rate cuts to grow the economy, should not be repeated in the future. "What we've seen is that the rising tide rose, right? GDP went up. Growth went up. Productivity went up -- big numbers went up and most of our boats didn't budge. For 90 percent of Americans, you start the clock right around the time I'm born. Income didn't move at all -- so lower to middle income, really,...

Today, the Stalinists in Russia are enjoying their greatest heyday since 1953. And the West doesn't understand nor want to admit it. The Kremlin’s strategy toward the West has been in place for some time and is based on a vision of Russia as a great power in the Stalinist style for namely under him, the country experienced the peak of "great power" status..." Stalin, who in their estimation, ‘saved Western civilization from Nazism/fascism.” The only difference is that Stalin strove to Sovietize Western countries while Putin and company seek the fundamental weakening of the West, Western institutions, and the...

If you were curious about what Jeffrey Lord might do now that he’s no longer with CNN, well… we may have your answer. The pro-Trump commentator was fired from the network earlier this month after sending out a “Sieg Heil” tweet. According to The Daily Beast, Lord might be about to find a new home at Breitbart, under the newly reinstated leadership of Steve Bannon.

The neofascist reaction, the force behind Trump, has come about because of the extreme disembeddedness of the economy from social relations. The neoliberal economy has become pure abstraction; as has the market, as has the state, there is no reality to any of these things the way we have classically understood them. Americans, like people everywhere rising up against neoliberal globalization (in Britain, for example, this takes the form of Brexit, or exit from the European Union), want a return of social relations, or embeddedness, to the economy.

Nowadays Ann has had to metamorphose from provocateur to the punditry equivalent of "your mama" jokes with a side of bullying. For that's what happens to you when you start uttering complete nonsensical tripe like the following and call it a "hot take": "It doesn't matter how liberal Donald Trump is as long as he's right on immigration." Ladies, let me holler at you first. Does the guy who promises to be faithful to you, if you overlook everything else about him that sets your warning bells off, ever keep that promise? Of course not. As the father of two...

Neoliberals and Quasi-Cons: When it comes to foreign policy, Ron Paul and his supporters are not conservatives. This is important to understand when one realizes that Paul's views are, self-described, "non-interventionist." The fact that he has been allowed to get away with pretending to conservatism on this score is merely reflective of journalists who, for whatever reason, are simply unfamiliar with American history. Ironically, it is precisely because the Paul campaign has not been thoroughly covered that no one pays attention to the historical paternity of what the candidate is saying.

The Great Recession has done wonders for the Republican Party. Two years after being tossed out of power at every level, it's about to waltz right back in, kicking aside the corpses of Democrats foolish enough to go along with the designs of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. This is good news for most conservatives. It's slightly worse news for a smaller group of conservatives—namely, the ones who spent the end of the '00s explaining why a Republican comeback like this was not really possible. Take, for example, Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, whose 2005 Weekly Standard cover story, "The...

PRESS MAN: Pundit (Declined) ANDREW FERGUSONPeter Beinart is one of those journalists, common in Washington, who is less interesting for what he says than for who he is, or who he wants to be thought to be. He’s an exemplar, and when, this May, he published an essay in the New York Review of Books announcing that “morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral,” he deserved the considerable notice that the article brought him. As a piece of reasoned argument, or even as an anguished moral plea, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” was a mess: a goulash...

Energy Analyst Robert Bryce Explains Why Trying to Make All Our Own Power is a Foolish IdeaIn his forthcoming book Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence” (PublicAffairs) Robert Bryce, managing editor of Energy Tribune and author of Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego and the Death of Enron, grapples with what he detects as a growing belief, both among policy elites and the public, in “energy independence.”That’s the notion that America should disengage from world energy markets and seek self-sufficiency in energy production. To Bryce, this is not only impossible, but dangerous to even attempt. As he writes in...

December 7, 1946 HONOLULU (Routers) Five years after the sinking of the battleships in Pearl Harbor, many still question the official government story of what happened on that fateful day, and who was responsible. Some believe that the Roosevelt administration did it themselves, deliberately, making it look like Japanese religious fanatics were responsible, in order to drag the country into a war that they could get by no other means, to benefit arms merchants and the Jews. The controversy has been renewed by a recently released film documentary, titled "Loose Ships." It makes a compelling case against the Shinto extremist...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) --  Al Gore harshly criticized President Bush's push for war against Iraq, saying Monday that it weakens America's effort to combat terrorism and forever could damage the nation's standing in the world.</p> <p>"After Sept. 11, we had enormous sympathy, goodwill and support around the world," Gore said. "We've squandered that, and in one year we've replaced that with fear, anxiety and uncertainty, not at what the terrorists are going to do but at what we are going to do."</p>

Al Gore. State election officials ultimately declared George W. Bush the winner by a margin of 537 votes, but during and after the election dispute, questions remained about the uncounted ballots of 175,010 voters, ballots that had been rejected by error-prone tabulating machines employed in many Florida counties. Confusion and conflict, much of it generated by partisan intrigue, prevented these ballots from being counted during the election controversy. However, in 2001 every uncounted ballot was carefully examined in a scientific study by the University of Chicago, which concluded that when all the votes were counted, more votes had been cast...