Free Republic

Perhaps the greatest incompetence on the U.S. political scene is the military which spent $9 trillion in the Afghanistan war on terror over a period of 20 years and failed miserably to train the Afghan military to defend its territory. To date, no military officers in charge of this colossal failure have been fired or demoted, while many private contractors and the military industrial complex laughed all the way to the bank, making exorbitant profits off of the Afghanistan campaign while it lasted.Next is an excerpt from americanthinker.com by Olivia Murray of 3/9/23.Now, House Republicans are poking around. Three days...

train derailed in Clark County, Ohio, Saturday evening, Fox News Digital has confirmed. According to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, emergency personnel and hazmat crews responded to the train derailment on State Route 41 and Gateway Boulevard near the Clark County Fairgrounds at about 5 p.m. It is not known if the train was carrying any freight at the time of the derailment. The Clark County Sheriff's Office confirmed the train was not a passenger train.

Data from the Illinois State Board of Education documents a dysfunctional public school system. There are 53 schools where not a single student is able to do math at the level expected for his or her grade. There are 622 schools where only one tenth of the students can read at grade level. There are 930 schools where only a tenth of the students can do math at grade level. Many of these schools' performances are rated "commendable" by the State Board of Education. Ninety-seven percent of the state's public school teachers are rated as "excellent" or "proficient." However, fewer...

Sometime in the late 70s or early 80s, I had the opportunity to work in Senegal for several months. My very first experience in-country was that the rental vehicle wouldn’t start. While the friendly and talkative mechanic repaired the jeep, he inquired if this was my first trip to Africa. “No,” I replied. “Ahhh!” he said, “then I don’t have to explain the meaning of ‘TIA’ to you.” But I’d never heard that term or what it meant. When I asked, he explained, saying, “This is Africa; nothing works!” Indeed, in my travels, it was much the same in Latin...

Review of our fine and most competent presidents talking points. No chance in Disneyland that he has cognitive issues, outside of smelling kids hair. Behold, the leader of the USS Banana Republic. It doesn't stand for much of value any longer, sadly. Up the Irons Ladies and Gents, the time is drawing nigh. 10 years maybe at best.

They have the same name. They were born on the same day in South Korea. And they were both assigned the same Social Security number after they emigrated to the United States. This bureaucratic bungle has bedeviled Jieun Kim, of Los Angeles, and Jieun Kim, who lives just outside Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, for almost as long as they’ve been in this country. Over the past five years, the 31-year-old women have had their banking and savings accounts shut down. They have had their credit cards blocked. They have been suspected of engaging in identity theft. And, they say, the...

Chinese state media continued having a field day with the Ohio train disaster on Tuesday and Wednesday, crowing that the calamity has become a viral sensation on Chinese social media because it exposes the corruption, incompetence, and hypocrisy of the U.S. government. “Many netizens, when criticizing the U.S. for not properly handling the disaster, also questioned if the U.S. government is trying to deliberately withhold information, and hype a balloon incident involving China to divert domestic media attention,” the state-run Global Times said on Tuesday, hammering Beijing’s favorite new talking point about how President Joe Biden’s administration targeted China’s harmless...

They may also have criminal records.. The Metropolitan Police in London is recruiting officers who are illiterate, can barely write English, and may have a criminal record in order to meet diversity quotas, it has been revealed. Yes, really. A 2014 promise to have 40% of the force be represented by ethnic minorities by 2023 has fallen well short, with just 17% of officers being from ‘diverse’ backgrounds. Matt Parr, the head of the organization responsible for inspecting British police forces, told the Telegraph that London, “which will likely be a minority white city in the next decade or so,...

The inspector general found that NIH and EcoHealth Alliance failed to comply with federal standards when it came to the Wuhan lab.The National Institutes of Health (NIH) did not give proper oversight to EcoHealth Alliance even after it awarded the organization millions of dollars to study bat coronaviruses, a new 72-page report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General found.More than a year and a half after the OIG announced an investigation into the NIH’s funding of the Wuhan lab suspected of playing a role in the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, the inspector general officially...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — After tidal surges and high winds from the remnants of a rare typhoon caused extensive damage to homes along Alaska’s western coast in September, the U.S. government stepped in to help residents — largely Alaska Natives — repair property damage. Residents who opened Federal Emergency Management Agency paperwork expecting to find instructions on how to file for aid in Alaska Native languages like Yup’ik or Inupiaq instead were reading bizarre phrases. “Tomorrow he will go hunting very early, and will (bring) nothing,” read one passage. The translator randomly added the word “Alaska” in the middle of...

After it trained upwards of 50,000 poll watchers, poll workers, and other roles for ongoing citizen engagement in the election process over the year leading up to the 2022 midterms, the Election Integrity Network sent out a survey to its on-the-ground volunteers following Election Day to gauge how things went.The responses from election workers in key battleground districts and states around the country showed a mostly calm election cycle compared to 2020, with one massive and overwhelming exception. In Maricopa County, Arizona, election workers were appalled and aghast at how things had been run there.“As soon as we sent the...

In little over a week, Russia lost its second fighter jet, Su-30, to an uncanny crash when it was carrying out a massive aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities and battling in the Kherson region. On October 23, an apartment building in Irkutsk, Siberia, was struck by a Russian Sukhoi Su-30SM Flanker multi-role fighter, killing both crew members and starting a massive fire on the ground. Su-30 is a two-seat, twin-engine, highly agile fighter aircraft produced by Sukhoi Aviation Corporation of Russia. The Su-30s are manufactured at the neighboring Irkutsk Aviation Plant, where the jet is reported to have just taken...

There are always people who say that the Russian army is fighting offensively, why not carry out a large in-depth assault with tanks and quickly encircle and cut off the enemy? The Russian tank forces were supposed to form up an iron barrel array on the front and gradually smash into the Ukrainian lines with fire. The Russian tank forces were supposed to form up an iron barrel array on the front and gradually smash into the Ukrainian lines with fire. Can the Russian General Staff fight a war? Now to talk about the large-scale in-depth assault and encirclement of...

The 34-year-old attorney who had “never run for junior class president, let alone mayor” now holds the keys to the state’s most populous city. He brings with him a progressive agenda and much of the leftover to-do list of his father’s administration. He sees his victory – collecting 93% of the vote in Jackson’s 6 June election – as proof that even in a deep red Republican state, and even in the age of Trump, the city’s residents are ready to move in a new progressive direction. “The citizens of Jackson have demonstrated overwhelmingly a readiness to be a progressive...

Part of Arizona’s temporary border wall toppled over earlier this week — and state officials believe it was deliberate. Two shipping containers placed along the US-Mexico frontier fell onto their side sometime Sunday evening. Gov. Doug Ducey’s office was made aware of the incident by Border Patrol around midnight and the containers were put back into place at around 6:30 a.m. Monday. Initially, reports indicated that the containers, which measure 60 feet high and 22 feet long, fell over due to high winds. “There still seems to be some unfounded speculation that wind knocked these things over,” Ducey communications director...

Shoigu, after a "pause", announced sabotage at an ammunition depot in the Crimea The Ministry of defense of the Russian Federation said that the cause of the explosions on the morning of August 16 in the occupied Crimea was sabotage. This version was announced by the invaders only a few hours after the explosion. A new explanation of the "clap" was published by the press service of the Ministry of defense of the Russian Federation. The ministry claims that as a result of the explosions, damage was caused to power lines, power plants, residential buildings and a number of other...

Putin has no questions about the money allocated for the army, also for the reason that in exchange for the stolen, Defense Ministry officials are ready to carry out any, the most “dirty”, order of the head of the Russian Federation. Sergei Shoigu and his entourage profit from the money allocated for the Russian army / Screenshot Sergei Shoigu and his entourage profit from the money allocated for the Russian army / Screenshot High-ranking officials with real estate abroad and fabulous incomes that are not declared – this is what the new investigation of Alexei Navalny’s team is all about....

Nearly five months into its senseless war against Ukraine, Russia has concocted a wild new explanation for why the Kremlin’s plans for a quick takeover fell apart so spectacularly—because Ukrainian troops were turned into superhuman killing machines during “secret experiments” in American-run biolabs, of course. Never mind the myriad reports of Russian troops refusing to fight by the thousands, sabotaging their own shoddy equipment and even deliberately wounding themselves to abandon the war, Russian lawmakers claim the real setback for Moscow was “drugged up” Ukrainian soldiers. That claim was made Monday by two Russian lawmakers heading up a commission to...

Just two months in, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is the most monumental failure at the podium in recorded history: “It’s been a rocky first month for White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. Her answers have baffled reporters, and even made some of her White House colleagues wince.” Imagine how bad her performance really has been to induce neoliberal Politico into writing such an unflattering intro paragraph. That’s like a Hindu priest beating a sacred cow. Ordinarily, while covering a sacrosanct immigrant lesbian Person of Color© in such a position, Politico would fawn. Just how historically awful has Jean-Pierre...

Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, called the police response to the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas “an abject failure. All the excuses they gave for never attempting to save the victims were false. The claim that they couldn’t get into the room because they needed a key was false. The door was never locked. Even if it had been the police on the scene had a ‘hooligan’ crowbar that could have been used to force a locked door open. The claim that it...