Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the U.S. Army to its smallest force since before World War II, Pentagon officials told the New York Times. The plans, to be laid out in Hagel's first defense budget Monday, call for the entire fleet of Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft to be eliminated, the newspaper said, citing Pentagon officials ahead of Hagel's release of the spending plan. The twin-engine jet is the only Air Force aircraft designed solely for close air support of ground forces. It was developed in the 1970s to attack Soviet...

Al Gore has been known for his climate change warnings since the 2006 film “An Inconvenient Truth.” Former vice president Al Gore spoke about climate change Saturday during the Folk Alliance International conference at the Westin Crown Center hotel. But the former vice president, speaking Saturday in Kansas City, cited many more recent examples how heavy use of fossil fuels is contributing to extreme weather events and trends, in his view.

I’m seeing a lot of wrangling over the recent (15+ year) pause in global average warming…when did it start, is it a full pause, shouldn’t we be taking the longer view, etc. These are all interesting exercises, but they miss the most important point: the climate models that governments base policy decisions on have failed miserably. I’ve updated our comparison of 90 climate models versus observations for global average surface temperatures through 2013, and we still see that >95% of the models have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our...

TOKYO -- The world's leading economies will try to outfox tax dodgers by pooling information on offshore bank accounts. Later this month in Australia, finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of 20 are expected to agree on such an arrangement, which officials aim to have in place by the end of next year. The proposal would create a common set of rules for sharing information on bank accounts held by nonresidents in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. Financial institutions would input such data regularly into an online network accessible to tax authorities, which would gain...

The Summary Version is: IOWA Police execute a search warrant based on suspected credit card fraud – However, they smashed down the door in a “no-knock” raid replete with full battle armor. Then the police tried to destroy the CCTV system which was recording their behavior. When questioned about the ridiculously excessive “use of force” things get worse because the police justify the execution of the warrant, the extreme measures invoked, based around the principle the occupant was a legally registered gun owner and therefore represented a more significant risk to them. <—- Think about that. Personally I have come...

Already in the first half of February, Russia will begin the total pressure on Ukraine, the purpose of which - full control of Moscow over the country. This was stated by former adviser to Vladimir Putin, the famous economist, member of the Russian "Committee of Solidarity with the Maidan" Andrei Illarionov. According to him, the Kremlin under construction are three possible scenarios, one of which - the establishment of full control over the whole Ukraine. Therefore, according to Illarionov, already within the next week, Russia will begin a lot of pressure on Kiev. Now Moscow resumed trading and information war...

THE Federal Government will seek the full costs incurred during the recovery effort to save the MV Akademik Shokalskiy. Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt yesterday said costs, estimated at about $2.4 million, would be sought from the insurer of the operators of the vessel.

A day after he announced he was going to make a film taking on the NRA with Meryl Streep, Harvey Weinstein — the producer of several violent films — told CNN’s Piers Morgan in an interview to air tonight that he has had a change of heart about violent content in film. django-unchained-trailerAsked by Morgan about his hypocrisy of making these violent films, Weinstein said, “They have a point. You have to look in the mirror, too. I have to choose movies that aren’t violent or as violent as they used to be. I know for me personally, you know,...

At a pilot plant in Menlo Park, California, a technician pours white pellets into a steel tube and then taps it with a wrench to make sure they settle together. He closes the tube, and oxygen and methane—the main ingredient of natural gas—flow in. Seconds later, water and ethylene, the world’s largest commodity chemical, flow out. Another simple step converts the ethylene into gasoline. The white pellets are a catalyst developed by the Silicon Valley startup Siluria, which has raised $63.5 million in venture capital. If the catalysts work as well in a large, commercial scale plant as they do...

IBM (IBM.N) said it will invest more than $1 billion to establish a new business unit for Watson, as the tech giant hopes to get more revenue from the supercomputer system that beat humans on the television quiz show "Jeopardy".

This pretty much nails the cause of the situation, and blows expedition leader Chris Turney’s claim about being “surprised” about the situation literally out of the water. In my post Now that the ‘Ship of Fools’ is safe in Antarctica, tough questions need to be asked one of the questions I asked was: 9. Did the sightseeing excursion to Mawson’s Huts on December 19th and again on Dec 23rd (apparently to Mertz Glacier, though their blog and “tracker” are unclear on this point) cause delays that caused the ship to be trapped in rapidly changing weather which closed the sea...

Since the Guardian reporters shown above probably won’t do anything but complain about beds and lack of milkshakes (that video has now been “disappeared”) while writing glowing reports about the “adventure” of it all, it will be left to others to ask the tough questions. Now that they are on their way to Casey Station in Antarctica, Andrew Bolt starts off with these questions. I have a few of my own. Who paid for this expedition? How did the expedition team come to include Turney’s wife and two young children? How serious was this scientific endeavor? Was the choice of...

Today, while shopping at lunchtime for some last minute year end supplies, I got one of the strangest cell-phone calls ever. It was from my friend John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel and Chief meteorologist at KUSI-TV in San Diego. He was calling via cell phone from his car, and he was on his way into the TV station early. He started off by saying, “Anthony, we have a really strange situation here”. Then to my surprise, he relayed a conversation he had just had; a person on the Akademik Shokalskiy had reached out, because they didn’t have...

Early this morning, I received an e-mail message from one of many polar scientists whose important and costly field research in Antarctica has been seriously disrupted by the diversion of icebreakers to try to evacuate the journalists, tourists, crew and scientists on an unessential “expedition” aboard a chartered Russian ship.

With the MS Akademik Shokalskiy research vessel firmly embedded in ice and costs of the mammoth rescue effort mounting, the “scientific” Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) led by Professor Chris Turney has morphed into a debacle that has put dozens of lives and property at risk. In under-estimating the world’s harshest environment and through slipshod planning and short cuts taken in a bid to keep costs down, expedition organizers may have recklessly and negligently put the lives of the 74 passengers in jeopardy. The purpose of the AAE expedition was to take a science team of 36 women and men south...

Here is a video (at the link) of the climate scientists throwing a New Year's party while other risk their ships to drag them to safety.

CASSELTON, N.D. — A mile-long train carrying crude oil derailed just a mile before it would have cut through the heart of a small North Dakota town, shaking residents with a series of explosions that sent flame and black smoke skyward. No one was hurt, but officials were evacuating as many as 300 people as a precaution. Casselton Train Derailment

The Dallas Cowboys lost to the Philadelphia Eagles Sunday night 24-22. The Cowboys starting quarterback, Tony Romo, was recuperating at home following back surgery, and backup quarterback Kyle Orton was at the Dallas helm. The Cowboys had a chance to regain the lead on their final drive of the game when Orton threw an interception... Football fans, Dallas and otherwise, elevated Orton to instant Romo status:

The interest on 10 year bonds is approaching 3%. The last time it did that was during the expectations of the Fed tapering. Now that it has announced that it will begin tapering, the rate has steadily gone up. Interest rates have been falling since 1983, and this has driven a lot of debt buying, from the housing bubble to the federal government's uncontrolled spending. Consumers won if they bought a house, because when the interest rates dropped, it gave a boost to their equities. Governments would issue bonds, knowing that they could refinance them cheaper later. However, it hasn't...

<p>I really wanted to hunker down and ride it out. But the insufferable propaganda around the death of Nelson Mandela is too much to ignore. Rather than deconstruct all of these ridiculous liberal CNN-isms and talking points, let’s just cut it down to brass tacks and stick to historical facts.</p>