Free Republic

A bipartisan majority in the U.S. Congress recently took the noble and necessary action of devoting a fresh round of aid worth $61 billion to Ukraine. Now that the U.S. has stepped up militarily, the West needs to ramp up a line of effort that has been lacking in its Ukraine strategy: intensifying economic warfare. It’s a tactic that President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would have embraced — and one that will undermine the Russian military and the Vladimir Putin’s regime’s stability. Reagan came into office perceiving the Soviet Union’s economic weakness, and resolved early in...

Imagine if the tables had been turned on all the most divisive issues we've suffered from the last couple of years. Counterfactuals, like "conspiracy theories," are frowned upon by those who look guilty when they are posed. Here are three to chew on during the holidays: (1) What if it turns out that the gene therapies marketed as "vaccines" by pharmaceutical companies end up causing more harm than good? What if it becomes obvious that more children die from government-ordered injections than would have ever succumbed to the virus itself? What if the long-term effects of any of these experimental...

Counterfactuals, like "conspiracy theories," are frowned upon by those who look guilty when they are posed. Here are three to chew on during the holidays:...Some people despise "what if" hypotheticals. What if those people are the same ones who can't face the overwhelming evidence for their own hypocrisy?

Now a 1945 Contributing Editor, Dr. Robert Farley is a Senior Lecturer at the Patterson School at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Farley is the author of Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force (University Press of Kentucky, 2014), the Battleship Book (Wildside, 2016), and Patents for Power: Intellectual Property Law and the Diffusion of Military Technology (University of Chicago, 2020). What if the United States had never invaded Afghanistan? The question is not as absurd as it sounds. Popular support for military retribution against Al Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks was high, but this retribution did...

A former Navy Seal has revealed how he believes the evacuation of Afghanistan by US forces should have been conducted - in a video address pretending to be Commander-in-Chief. Jocko Willink assumed the role of President in a 3-minute 30-second video shared on his Instagram account, in which he accepts responsibility for the mistakes in dealing with Afghanistan. He also laid out clearly a plan to.... [video at link]

If the last month has taught us anything, today’s conspiracy theory could easily be tomorrow’s commonsense truth. The speed at which the Wuhan Lab theory as the source of the Covid virus went from “thoroughly debunked” to “Viable” and “Probable” in the media was extraordinary. Indeed, the media scorned the possible source of the most economically destructive virus in history – one that is credited with killing 3 million people – because they didn’t like the then-President of the United States! Despite the fact that the lab in Wuhan was one of the only places on earth where scientists were...

Marvel's experiment to expand its trademark alt-history 'What If?' stories from one-shots to limited series appears to be a success. Chip Zdarsky and Pasqual Ferry's Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow limited series has been given an extra issue, going from four to five issues in length. This comes 12 days after the Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow #1 went on sale - an issue which sold out, with a second printing scheduled for late May. The concept of Spider-Man: Spider's Shadow is pretty simple, but with massive storytelling implicates: what if Peter Parker wasn't able to resist the dark turn the Venom symbiote was...

Election attorney Lin Wood claimed this week that former President Donald Trump maintains a secret backchannel to the U.S. military that allows him to order nuclear strikes. Wood made the assertion during an event in Myrtle Beach, where he was campaigning to become the next South Carolina Republican Party chair. Video was later obtained by PatriotTakes. “He won the election,” Wood said of Trump. “Donald J. Trump is still the guy the military will call for the code if they need a first strike. Joe Biden is not the president of the United States.”

Mailed to another this morning in reply to a published URL link suggesting Trump initiate fraudulent election charges in D.C., the proper jurisdiction for such matters: "Our soon to be new state D.C, judicial courts are entirely corrupt - thank you "equal opportunity" and lowest common denominator standards so why waste the time hypothesizing about more election legal challenges in the least constitutional court system in America? I came to a scary realization last night, or at least a scary expectation. What if the past four years of Trump accomplishments and our expectations have all been in vain? What if...

What if our most lamentable actions, and our most glaring hypocrisies, were reflected back to us in a way impossible to un-see? Would we grow by that? Would we learn the error of our ways? Or is it possible to be so convinced of one's own virtue that his most loathsome trespasses become evidence of surpassing goodness in his mind — and in his tribe? This is the plight of the modern American progressive in maximum "RESIST" mode. (Mirror, mirror, on the wall — who's the most intolerant of all?) Ever since the abject defeat of the anointed one in...

The year since the 2016 election has been dizzying. But would it have been just as dizzying if Hillary Clinton had won? A year into the scariest experiment the American Experiment has ever experimented with, here’s a glimpse at the alternate timeline that we just barely missed out on. Nov. 8, 2016: Madam President! The first female president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, wins the popular vote by 3 million votes and ekes out a narrow electoral college victory by winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, just like the polls all said! On Etsy, a million “Madam President” onesies go...

Harvey's impact on Houston and Southeast Texas will be felt for years to come — but what would the weather system look like in other regions of the country?

With Trump asking the Supreme Court to uphold his travel ban, I know for certain that if the case is heard before Anthony Kennedy retires, the decision will be in his hands. Needless to say I am very doubtful that we I can count on Kennedy to uphold it. That made me think - how would the 21st century be different had Robert Bork been nominated to the Supreme Court instead of Kennedy? Its obvious that SSM never would have been legalized via the court, and Roe vs. Wade would've stood a good chance of being overturned. What other decisions...

(NEW YORK) - In New Hampshire in an election year, even young children aren't afraid to share their views with politicians - as Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina saw firsthand Friday night. "Do you think Donald Trump is taking away our rights by not letting Muslims in the country because there's some terrorist attacks?" Harrison Golden, an eight-year-old Fiorina supporter, who is Muslim, asked the businesswoman after a town hall event she held in southeastern New Hampshire. "I think Donald Trump says a lot of things that are crazy," Fiorina responded. Harrison's sister, Zahra, who is 10 years old,...

What if Trump wins the presidency with Cruz as VP and they make the VP sideline job of President of the Senate a REAL job? For example, what if they make Cruz the real boss of the senate and bump McConnell down a peg or two?

I wrote in my book, “unPlanned,” about a church that kicked me out when they found out that I worked for Planned Parenthood. I often get questioned about that, whether I still think they made the wrong decision. My answer is a resounding YES. I try not to go down the “what if” road very often. It isn’t fruitful and just makes you feel crummy. But, just for the sake of this article, let’s go there. What if I had been ministered to instead of shunned by that church? How could my life be different? Well, maybe I would have...

What Would Happen If a Lion Fought a Tiger? We've always been speculating about battles between superheroes. We know the outcome of octopus versus shark. At last we have an expert speculating on lion versus tiger. Which one would win? Since there's a good chance you've spent the weekend slowly tearing apart a ritualistically slaughtered bird, before going out and trampling your fellow citizens in arenas, you probably won't be too horrified by speculating on the outcome of animal fights. After all, the fights in question are, for the most part, in the past. Romans used to pit lions against...

Military Strategy: What are the optimal siege tactics for taking Magic Kingdom's Cinderella Castle? What if the Mouse House rises up as an evil totalitarianism government, enslaving the masses and dooming us all to a life of hand-stitching Pluto plushies? Something would have to be done. And one pack of folks has outlined the perfect plan of attack on Magic Kingdom's Cinderella Castle. The story originates at Quora.com as follows ... Cinderella Castle is the the worldwide-recognized icon of the Disney empire. Physical representations of it stand at the center of two Disney Parks: Walt Disney World in Florida, and...

It would cost $852 quadrillion dollars to build a real Death Star That's 852 with 15 zeros following it. I know, that figure is insane. You know what that means. It means Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader were rolling in the money like filthy rich rappers. I guess ruling the Galactic Empire isn't so terrible when you're ballin'. Finally putting some questions to rest, the smart folk over at Centives calculated how much iron it would take to build the planet-destroying space station and even figured out how long it would take to build. Here's the reality-check breakdown: • Based...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BLiSp_O5NY Wow. 5:05 dynamite video. Napolitano is leaving Fox, btw. Don't know if he's being "kicked off", but I guess he is leaving.