Free Republic

Twitter users mocked The Lincoln Project congratulating President Biden for shooting down the Chinese spy balloon and lowering inflation in what many saw as a tone-deaf tweet on Saturday. Although this balloon was spotted in Montana on Wednesday, the U.S. waited until Saturday when the balloon had passed over the Atlantic Ocean to shoot it down. Many political figures criticized this hesitation, but the anti-Trump organization celebrated the move and bragged about the president’s accomplishments on Twitter. “Balloon down, just like inflation. Joe did that,” The Lincoln Project tweeted along with a video of Biden saying “We’re going to take...

Talking heads on cable TV are up in arms about the Chinese spy balloon that was floating across the continental U.S., before it was shot down Saturday afternoon. Conservative commentators have insisted President Joe Biden should’ve ordered the balloon be shot down earlier and that a foreign balloon flying over U.S. territory never would’ve happened under President Donald Trump. But it did happen under Trump, according to several new reports. The Chinese government claims the balloon, which was first spotted by civilians on Wednesday over Billings, Montana, was actually just a weather balloon that was blown off course. But the...

You just can’t make this up! After allowing a China spy balloon to float across Alaska and the continental United States for the last 10 days, the US military finally shot the balloon down after its work was accomplished. Now the US military is concerned they may not reach the balloon wreckage before China can. The balloon was shot down 6 miles off the coast of Carolina. They can’t be serious, except that they are. The US military will not have a proper salvage vessel at the scene for several days. These clowns are making a mockery of the United...

WORLD — In a surprise statement to the world from the White House Situation Room, President Biden has announced America's unconditional surrender to the Chinese Spy Balloon. "Listen, folks, it's over," said Biden as a single tear ran down his face. "We're outgunned here. There's no hope that we can match the awesome power of this giant balloon." Biden's voice was drowned out by the dozens of weeping journalists gathered outside the room. "I urge you all to hug your loved ones and embrace your children, for the end is near. God help us all," Biden finally said before signing...

Central European countries like Croatia, Hungary, and also recently Austria too are beginning to emerge as voices of reason in the West after their de facto New Cold War bloc’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine over the past year failed to defeat that Great Power. They rightly realize how counterproductive this NATO-led campaign has been for their collective interests, ergo why they’re urging restraint and even an outright reversal of policy at this point in time. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic is unexpectedly giving Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a run for his money when it comes to being the...

President Joe Biden's latest addition to a prestigious board of intelligence advisers is a liberal climate scientist who said she experienced an "acute mental health crisis" and "could not get out of bed" following the 2016 election of former president Donald Trump. Biden on Thursday tapped Brown University climate scientist Kim Cobb to serve on the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, the White House announced in a press release. While past presidents have used the board to probe high-profile national security threats and intelligence failures, it's unclear whether Cobb will be able to stomach such sensitive and unsettling information. That's because...

House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said he believes First Son Hunter Biden was "in proximity" to the classified documents found in President Biden's garage. Comer told reporters on Tuesday that he believes Biden's son was around the classified documents found next to the president's Corvette in his Wilmington, Delaware garage. The Kentucky Republican noted that in "the beginning, the story was at the National Archive triggered the raid on Mar-a-Lago and that the administration has "come back and implied that it wasn't the National Archives that it was actually the Department of Justice." Comer said House Republicans "want...

A four-star US Air Force general has warned of a conflict with China as early as 2025--most likely over Taiwan--and urged his commanders to push their units to achieve maximum operational battle readiness this year. In an internal memorandum that first emerged on social media on Friday, and was later confirmed as genuine by the Pentagon, the head of the Air Force Mobility Command, General Mike Minihan, said the main goal should be to deter "and if required, defeat" China. "I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me we will fight in 2025," Minihan said. Laying out his reasoning,...

A new study released this week by the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has concluded that America's defense industry is "not adequately prepared" for "a protracted conventional war" with an enemy with a large military like China.The findings were the result of a war games simulation which also relied heavily on observations and statistics being gained from the Ukraine-Russia war, and Washington's ongoing military support role to Kiev.Information from the Ukraine war led CSIS to find that the US would rapidly deplete its munitions, particularly long-range, precision-guided ones - in merely less than a week of a...

With its population declining, China’s period of rapid growth is likely over. How it copes is critical for the world. ...The country’s economy expanded by only 3 percent in 2022. Growth is projected to remain slow in the early quarters of 2023 before rebounding strongly in the second half of the year, according to a survey of 37 economists conducted by Nikkei in December. The average GDP growth figure put forth by the group was 4.7 percent, with the vast majority of predictions falling between 4.0 and 5.9 percent. Yet even the most optimistic recovery scenario for China does not...

WASHINGTON ― The U.S. defense-industrial base is not ready for a battle over Taiwan, as it would run out of key long-range, precision-guided munitions in less than one week, according to a new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.U.S. military aid to Ukraine has helped prevent a Russian victory against the neighboring nation, but that assistance has depleted Pentagon stockpiles and shown that the American defense industry cannot surge for a major war, the think tank found.“As the war in Ukraine illustrates, a war between major powers is likely to be a protracted, industrial-style conflict that needs...

By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities, up from 54 percent in 2020, according to a new report by the Institute for Economics & Peace. This increase is being driven by both population growth and a continued shift towards urbanization, particularly to so called ‘megacities’ - metropolises that have a population of 10 million or more.As Statista's Anna Fleck details below, urbanization takes place because of both push and pull factors. The IEA describes how in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital of Kinshasa, factors pushing people away from rural areas include issues of violence...

The pandemic is spreading like wildfire again across China. Since December, an estimated 900 million people in China have been infected, according to Peking University. The number could reach as high as 80 to 90 percent of the population, according to prominent Chinese infectious disease experts. Ever since the first wave of the virus in Wuhan in 2019, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has done everything in its power to cover up the true extent of the outbreak and its death toll. In reality, the spread of the virus in China continued over the past three years, resulting in an...

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin told Ford to take its plan to build a massive, 2,500-job EV battery plant in the state and shove it, all because Ford’s partner in the project is a Chinese battery manufacturer—the largest such manufacturer in the world.

Globalists, such as Tom Friedman, Klaus Schwab and Barack Obama, along with a lot of greenie billionaires, have expressed admiration for China and its development as a world power for years. Now, China is returning the compliment. According to PJMedia's Catherine Salgado: Chinese Communist Party (CCP) state propaganda outlet Global Times praised the “Davos Spirit” in a tweet, claiming, “China’s ideals and achievements also made the Davos Spirit more dazzling.” The tweet further said that China is excited to find “more like-minded friends at the WEF.” Editorial: The #Davos Spirit with openness and cooperation as core is also resonating with...

The green energy group behind a study cited in Consumer Product Safety commissioner Richard Trumka Jr.'s call to ban gas stoves has partnered with the Chinese government to implement an "economy-wide transformation" away from oil and gas. Colorado-based nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, which published the December study that attributes 13 percent of U.S. childhood asthma cases to gas-stove use, is hardly staffed by an objective group of scientists. The organization is demanding "systemic change and economy-wide transformation" to address a climate crisis it says we must go to great lengths to avoid. In 2013, for example, the Rocky Mountain Institute...

While turning a blind eye to the starving Afghan population, on Jan. 4, a Taliban senior leader professed the group has an "obligation" to protect Chinese nationals looking to invest in the country’s mineral and oil wealth. The comment comes on the heels of a December attack that targeted Chinese investors who frequent Kabul’s Longan Hotel. The Islamic State – Khorasan Province, ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for the assault. On Jan. 5, the Taliban announced it had killed eight ISIS-K members, including those responsible for the hotel attack. The following day, China’s Xinjiang Central Asia Petroleum and Gas signed a significant...

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said Thursday she voted against a measure this week creating a bipartisan select committee on the security, economic, and technological challenges posed to the U.S. by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) because it will “embolden anti-Asian rhetoric and hate.” “I voted ‘no’ because, again, it’s a — it’s a — another sham effort here, it’s really clear that this is just a committee that would further embolden anti-Asian rhetoric and hate and put lives at risk,” Pressley told CNN. […] Pressley, a leftist member of the so-called “squad,” was one of 65 Democrats to vote against...

Hospitals in China recorded roughly 60,000 Covid-related deaths since the government scrapped most of its zero-tolerance pandemic controls in early December, Chinese health authorities said in the first major accounting of the toll exacted by the Omicron wave currently spreading across the country. China had been criticized by public health experts and epidemiologists—including some at the World Health Organization—for publishing data that routinely showed deaths in the single digits in recent weeks—figures they said grossly underestimated the impact the virus had on the Chinese population. On Saturday, China’s National Health Commission said the country’s medical institutions registered 59,938 Covid-related deaths...

FBI agents raided a Manhattan building in the fall of 2022 that was allegedly being used as a secret Chinese police station and was staffed with 'illegal cops' who solved crimes. The raid occurred at the headquarters of the American Changle Association, a non-profit that helps Chinese nationals who live in New York. The group's former chairman was Lu Jianshun, who in 2021 donated $4,000 to Eric Adams' mayoral campaign, reports The New York Times. The police station was located on the third floor of the organization's building. The police unit is linked to a unit code named 110 Overseas,...