Iraqi Government Assumes Control of Country’s 7th Division

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The Iraqi government has assumed command of a major unit from the country’s army, a sign of continued improvement in Iraq’s armed force. The 7th Iraqi Army Division is responsible for security along the western Euphrates River Valley, with three brigades operating across the region.
[snip]
The 7th Division is the newest Iraqi army division and the last of 10 to transfer to command and control by Iraqi Ground Forces Command. The 1st Division, responsible for security in the greater Fallujah area and one of Iraq's most seasoned units, transitioned to the command’s control in February.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48027

Troop Surge, Iraqis’ Anger Puts al Qaeda ‘On the Run’

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 7, 2007 – A combination of unceasing pressure by U.S. and Iraqi security forces and citizens’ anger at al Qaeda in Iraq’s brutal tactics have put the terror group “on the run,” a senior U.S. military officer said today. “The targeting of (al Qaeda in Iraq) leadership and their networks has contributed to the downward trend in violence we are seeing across Iraq,” the admiral said.
<>
Iraqi security forces are gaining in numbers and effectiveness and are increasingly taking the lead during anti-insurgent operations, Smith said. Iraqi commandos recently captured an entire group of terrorists during a raid west of Ramadi, he said. “The precision operation captured all four primary targets in this cell and four other suspects.”
<>
More than 67,000 concerned Iraqi citizen-volunteers also are contributing in the fight against the terrorists, Smith said. As a result, al Qaeda operatives in Iraq are “on the run,” Smith observed. The insurgents realize they have dwindling maneuvering room, he said, and “the Iraqi people are just not going to put up” with them.

(Video) http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48074

Democrats Set for Next Effort To Block Surge

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Democrats in Congress will begin on Wednesday the next phase in the battle for Iraq by unveiling the latest challenge to the military's contention that the surge in Iraq has brought some success. On September 5, the House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing to discuss a report from the Government Accountability Office that contends Iraqi security services have not improved and key political benchmarks have not been met.

[as opposed to the plethora of political benchmarks achieved by our legislature...]

http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=61665&v=3886558811

Suppressing the Good News from Iraq

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Last month, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, who have in the past been critical of the President’s handling of the mission in Iraq, wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times in which they stated, “Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms."

The reaction to the O’Hanlon and Pollack piece from liberal bloggers was fierce. It is healthy to question opposing opinions, but many on the left did not seem interested in giving the claims of O’Hanlon and Pollack any serious consideration whatsoever.

A fellow blogger at Wizbang said of the reaction, “Forgetting for a moment the value of the assessment by the two authors, the value of the piece as a way of outing defeatist liberals remains unrivaled. The [extreme among] liberals in this country are so deranged that good news in Iraq is now considered bad news. Rather than being pleased that we might be making progress and hopeful for American success, the liberals in this country are actively -and near openly- hoping for defeat. But don't question their patriotism. They support the troops.”
[snip]
If the report contains any reference to progress or any glimmer of hope for the mission in Iraq, expect it to be attacked viciously by those on the anti-war Left. Good news in Iraq is bad news for those opposed to the war and there will be an all-out effort to deny or diminish any news that does not support their demands for immediate withdrawal and no consideration will be made to the consequences of ignoring the latest reports from the region. Can I question their patriotism yet?

http://townhall.com/columnists/LorieByrd/2007/08/31/suppressing_the_good_news_from_iraq

Somali Islamists vow to fight peacekeepers

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Islamist gunmen patrolled Kismayo, a key southern port, on Monday, vowing to impose strict sharia law just hours after they seized the town in a new threat to Somalia's weak government. Hundreds of turbaned, heavily armed fighters on "battlewagons" -- machine-gun mounted pick-ups -- took up positions in and around Kismayo as the country's powerful Islamist movement hailed the overnight takeover, witnesses said.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=284861&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/

"Redacted" stuns Venice

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A new film about the real-life rape and killing of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by U.S. soldiers who also murdered her family stunned the Venice festival, with shocking images that left some viewers in tears. "Redacted", by U.S. director Brian De Palma, is one of at least eight American films on the war in Iraq due for release in the next few months.

[yet if you draw a cartoon misrepresenting Mohamed or Islam in any way the world is outraged]

http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSL3190384420070831?feedType=RSS&feedName=entertainmentNews&rpc=22&sp=true

Chinese see [US] military dependence on computers as weakness

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Beijing - Diplomatic tension this week over reported Chinese computer attacks on German government networks comes as security experts warn that China is expanding its capacity to wage cyberwar as part of its rapid military buildup. U.S. and other foreign military analysts say that Chinese defense planners have identified the heavy dependence on computers of most modern military forces as a potential weakness that could be exploited in a conflict.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/08/29/news/cyber.php

Royal Air Force Jets Shadow Russian Bombers Near British Air Space

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London - Two Royal Air Force jets shadowed a Russian military plane that approached British air space, Britain's Ministry of Defense said Tuesday. The incident occurred Friday, the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin placed strategic bombers back on long-range patrol for the first time since the Soviet breakup. Britain's defense ministry issued two photographs on its Web site showing one of the two RAF Typhoon F2s flying near the Russian Bear-H military aircraft over the North Atlantic Ocean.

[Lord, they're still flying Bears]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293958,00.html

Chávez tries mind control

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Venezuela's Hugo Chávez is nearing the end of his campaign to stifle independent media -- not due to a change of heart, but because through the years he has been singularly successful at cutting off dissenting voices in Venezuela. If he succeeds in his latest ploy, another will fall silent in the coming days. Chávez intends to pull the plug on the country's oldest and most popular station, Radio Caracas TV (RCTV), a source of radio programming for 76 years and television for 53.

http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/118062.html

North Korea wants bank accounts unfrozen

South Korea - North Korea said Wednesday it would return to nuclear disarmament talks in an effort to get access to frozen overseas bank accounts, a vital source of hard currency for the isolated communist nation.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061101/ap_on_re_as/koreas_nuclear_32

DITHERING DIPLOMATS

SENIOR officials of the U.N. Security Council's five permanent members plus Germany met last Friday in London to discuss Iran's nuclear-weapons program. Once again, they failed to agree on meaningful sanctions against Iran, leaving the mullahs free to pursue their deadly policy.
[snip]
This pattern of failed diplomacy has gone on for over four years, starting with the efforts of Britain, France and Germany ("the EU-3") to talk Iran out of its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the EU-3's fascination with negotiations lost sight of the ultimate objective - preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons - and became an end in itself.

For the EU-3, the process became more important than the substance, especially the unstated but obvious EU-3 agenda of dealing with a proliferation threat their way, rather than the 'American way'.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11062007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/dithering_diplomats_959824.htm?page=0

Editorial: Ditch government planners

- Centralized government planning is almost always a disaster, says Cato Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole, who warns of the dangers of letting government bureaucrats take more and more control over Americans’ lives.

A generation ago, we laughed at the hilariously predictable failures of the Soviet Union’s five-year plans. Now we’re allowing our own public planners, two-thirds of whom work for state and local governments, to design our communities, manage our land and natural resources, design our transportation and energy grids, run our health care system and oversee much else.

Big mistake.

http://www.examiner.com/a-1029199~Ditch_government_planners.html

Nunez: $2-a-pack cigarette tax to pay for health care

CALIFORNIA

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, also conceded a major point to Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by endorsing a mandate that all Californians have health insurance. The Democratic leader of the state Assembly announced a final effort Monday to pass a health care overhaul before the end of the year, proposing a $2-a-pack tax on cigarettes to help expand coverage to all 6.8 million uninsured Californians.
[Q: so when cigarette revenue drops as it eventually will, where will the money then come from?]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/11/06/BAPKT6U00.DTL&type=politics

ABC Fails to Wonder Why Canadian Mom Forced to U.S. to Give Birth

On Wednesday's Good Morning America, co-host Chris Cuomo completely glossed over the health care implications of a Canadian mother forced to give birth in the United States, not her own nation, to identical quadruplets. According to Cuomo, Karen Jepp and her husband, the new parents of four girls, had to be flown 300 miles from Calgary to Montana on August 16 because "every neo-natal unit in their country was too crowded to handle four preemie births." Apparently, it didn't occur to Cuomo to wonder why.

http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2007/cyb20070823.asp#6

Economy Grows at Fastest Pace in a Year

The economy grew at its strongest pace in more than a year during the spring as solid improvements in international trade and business investment helped offset weakness in housing.The gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic health, expanded at an annual rate of 4 percent in the April-June quarter, significantly higher than the 3.4 percent rate the government had initially estimated a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070830/D8RBBNS80.html

Nets Lead w/ 'Awful' Economic News, Not So Excited About Job Gains

When the Labor Department reported a net loss of 4,000 jobs for August, the September 7 ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts highlighted the bad news as evidence of an impending recession, but on Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a strong gain of 166,000 jobs during October, double expectations, ABC and CBS gave it a few seconds while NBC ignored the good news entirely. What all three did lede with was how bad a day it was on Wall Street and painting it as a harbinger of impending economic doom. NBC anchor Brian Williams piled on the bad news as he insisted he took “no pleasure” in highlighting it. With “DANGER SIGNS” on screen, Williams announced: “Good evening. The following sounds pretty awful -- and we take no pleasure in reporting it -- but today Wall Street fell, the U.S. dollar fell, GM is in bad shape and the housing market continues to be in big trouble.”...
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-baker/2007/11/08/nets-lead-w-awful-economic-news-not-so-excited-about-job-gains

CA Paper: Want a New Gas Tax? Call it a 'Fee' to Fool Voters

CALIFORNIA
The Contra Costa Times has given us an interesting new angle to fool the voters into voting for a new gasoline tax in an article titled, "Calling gas tax a 'fee' may help at ballot." The CCTimes is advising politicians to call the tax hike a "fee" instead of a tax to fool the voters into accepting it at the ballot box.

Throughout this piece is the obvious assumption that the county governments in and around San Francisco are "cash-starved" and that these taxes are needed because it is important that the governments "look for new funding" for roads and to "curb global warming."

Not a hint that these governments have wasted the money they are already confiscating from the citizens, nor any investigation why some of the highest taxes in the country have not been able to satisfy the needs there. Instead of an investigation into government mismanagement and waste, the CCTimes is trying to find sneakier ways to steal the taxpayer's income by "semantics" and wordplay.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2007/11/08/ca-paper-want-new-gas-tax-call-it-fee-fool-voters

Farmworker Farce

The shortage simply doesn’t exist.

Time and again we hear from the agribusiness lobbyists about the pressing need for a continuous flow of foreign peasants to pick vegetables. The most sweeping claim was from lobbyist Sharon Hughes: “We are either going to have our food produced by foreign workers here in the United States, or the farming process will move to foreign countries.”
[snip]
Since only two percent of Americans still work in agriculture, many of the rest of us fall for this baloney. The research in this area, however, paints a very different picture. In a new paper, published by the Center for Immigration Studies, agricultural economist Philip Martin of the University of California, Davis, finds “little evidence” to support claims of a labor shortage on America’s farms.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjEwM2RmZTBmZDU2MzI1YTEyOTRkZjk4MWE2NDE0NjE=

Pricing oil in dollars

Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, neither of whom has ever demonstrated much economic sophistication, contended at the recent OPEC Summit that the weak dollar is at the root of high oil prices.
[snip]
While it is true that when the dollar declines relative to the euro and other currencies oil prices in dollars rise faster than in those other currencies, prices are determined by supply and demand. A move to price oil in terms of a market basket of other currencies or in euros would not in itself affect the price of oil.
[snip]
The recent decline in the value of the dollar seems to have unnerved some Americans and emboldened less economically sophisticated enemies, but it is a boon for American exporters, and underlies our continuing economic strength.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/11/pricing_oil_in_dollars.html

UN Discusses Global Warming in Spain as Snow Pummels Switzerland

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) traveled to Germany to discuss global warming with Chancellor Angela Merkel and was hysterically greeted with a late-season snowstorm that rocked Europe?
Well, as the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met in Valencia, Spain, last week to contemplate the supposedly catastrophic warming of the planet, Switzerland to the east received the most snow for this early in the season since 1952.

According to the report, Switzerland has not received such a strong start to its winter ski season since 1952, with the amount of snow being swept to the southern areas by the wind cited as a particularly interesting feature of the weather.

You really can't make this stuff up.

http://www.fasttrackski.co.uk/ski-news/switzerland/swiss-snow-makes-50-year-record-200711151407.php

School suspends boy for sketching gun

Chandler school officials have suspended a 13-year-old boy for sketching a picture that resembled a gun, saying it posed a threat to classmates. But parents of the Payne Junior High School student said the drawing was a harmless doodle of a fake laser, and school officials overreacted.

"I just can't believe that there wasn't another way to resolve this," said Paula Mosteller, the boy's mother. "He's so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime."

But Payne Junior High administrators thought the sketch was enough of a threat and gave the boy a five-day suspension, later reduced to three days.

Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the sketch was "absolutely considered a threat," and threatening words or pictures are punishable.


[They're irreparable, we need universal school vouchers.]


http://www.azcentral.com/community/gilbert/articles/0822gunsketch22-on.html

Bush Fortunes Improving? Blame 'Absence of Bad News'

In Monday’s Washington Post, reporter Peter Baker’s front-page political analysis on President Bush’s improving fortunes carries a strong whiff of Hate to Admit It:
In many ways, the shifting political fortunes may owe as much to the absence of bad news as to any particular good news. No one lately has been indicted, botched a hurricane relief effort or shot someone in a hunting accident. Instead, pictures from Iraq show people returning to the streets as often as they show a new suicide bombing.


That’s just wrong. The Big Kahuna of bad news has always been Iraq, which has always cast a dark cloud over other news. Left out of Baker’s analysis: how much the media spin has affected most of these stories (leave out Iraq for the moment).

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2007/11/19/bush-fortunes-improving-blame-absence-bad-news

Home Depot employee looking for job after stopping alleged thief

Dustin Chester is job hunting this week, after The Home Depot fired him and the general manager for thwarting a thief from running away with a pocket full of stolen cash. Last week, the 24-year-old department manager confronted a man who was standing by a soda machine in front of the Murfreesboro store off Old Fort Parkway holding a crowbar and a wad of cash.

[society cannot survive if the citizenry is turned into hapless sheep]

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070829/NEWS01/70829023

Sarkozy's PATCO?

[Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization]
As the transportation strike enters its second week, it's impressive to see President Nicolas Sarkozy stand firm as Ronald Reagan did in 1981. But he might need a little more resolve than was required of Reagan. Sarkozy vowed to make France globally competitive when he won the presidency this year. He was fully open about his plans if elected and explicitly said he would end featherbedding in public-sector unions, from bloated pensions for little work to permanent security regardless of performance.
[Reminder: while US private-sector labor unions continue to shrink (~18% I believe), public-sector {that would be government} unions continue to mushroom, now surpassing 60% - it looks like we'll need look to {give me a second... ok... ready...} FRANCE... for leadership in this regard. marvelous]
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=280367612364273

California budget stand-off ends

CALIFORNIA

Sacramento, California - The California state legislature has passed Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's 145-billion-dollar spending plan after one of the longest budget stalemates in recent state history. The Senate passed the budget late Tuesday with a vote of 27 to 12 after two of 14 holdout Republican senators agreed to end their opposition to the proposal.

The budget raises spending for schools, reduces aid to the elderly and disabled, increases student fees at state universities and cuts 1 billion dollars in transportation work to transfer the money to reduce the multibillion-dollar deficit the state has been carrying for years. Schwarzenegger said he welcomed the vote and would press on with other initiatives.:

'We now will move forward together on the issues we've been elected to address such as health care, a comprehensive water plan and redistricting reform,' he said in a statement.

[a one billion dollar cut to transportation work? does that me we should expect a reduction in the 48-cents a gallon tax supposedly collected for 'transportation' projects? with regard to the 'health care issue', I prefer Tom McClintock's take:

A Long Trip to the Hospital…

With the state budget adopted and California now on a collision course with another Gray-Davis sized fiscal crisis, what’s next on the Left’s agenda? Government health care, of course, modeled on Canada’s socialist system. Soon every Californian can expect their local hospital to operate with the same courteous, competent, efficient service for which our government is renowned.

http://www.carepublic.com/blog.html?blog_id=171&frompage=latestblog&domain=tom_mcclintock

UK chooses 'most ludicrous laws'
A little-known law which prohibits people dying while in the Houses of Parliament has been voted the UK's most ludicrous piece of legislation. The most absurd international law was judged to be in the US state of Ohio, where it is illegal to get fish drunk. (Snip) the list included legislation against naming a pig Napoleon in France, driving while wearing a blindfold in Alabama and unmarried women parachuting on a Sunday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7081038.stm