Economic Program Builds on Concerned Citizens’ Success

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18, 2008 – The concerned local citizens groups in Iraq have made a huge impact in areas that were once al Qaeda fiefdoms, and the program is expanding to include the economic aspects of the counterinsurgency fight, Army Col. Wayne W. Grigsby Jr. said today during a phone interview from Iraq.
[snip]
The Iraqi Civilian Conservation Force is based on the U.S. version formed in the early 1930’s to put unemployed young men to work during the Great Depression. The Iraqi version will pave roads, conduct neighborhood sanitation and work on other infrastructure improvements.

In addition, the program aims to provide scholarships to concerned local citizens to attend vocational schools. The program provides training and loans for people to start businesses. The program is also beginning in other parts of Iraq.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48717

War? What War?

A pertinent question for 2008 might be: How many 9/11's does it take to wake a sleeping giant and keep him alert at the helm?

More than one, it would seem.

How quickly America has been lulled back to sleep. With a heap of help from our watchful media.

For more than four years, every news outlet in the Country was stirring its anti-American pot and blasting news of the carnage from Iraq 24/7. They were counting the bodies and inflating the count. They were giving more coverage to the paltry numbers of paid anti-war protesters than they were to our military heroes and their families. We heard about the horrors of the Iraq War day in and day out.
[snip]
But suddenly, we are winning the war that was lost, and you could hear a pin drop in the abandoned echo chamber of war coverage. And just as predictably, the 2008 Presidential election, according to our media elites, isn't about the war at all. Now it's about the economy.
[snip]
Take a look at the little Iranian with the messiah complex, who is exploring nuclear "energy." Give a peek at the situation in Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal. Then look over the border to Afghanistan, where the Taliban is gaining again in strength.

And before you vote, ask yourself just one question: If we aren't safe in our homes and workplaces from another catastrophe like 9/11, will the price of your bread really matter?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/01/war_what_war.html

Seeking Psychological Victory in the War on Terror

In Iraq, as military and security conditions continue to improve, American war politics enters one of its stranger moments in our history. Certainly it is historically odd for war reporting to diminish almost to the point of public invisibility -- just as our troops are starting to gain the upper hand. But we are fighting this war with the journalists we have, not the ones we want.
[snip]
Bin Laden said it best. His people will follow the strong horse. If, after years of stumbling and bumbling, the enduring strength and eventual wisdom of the American people can enter into the belly of the Islamist world, overturn tyrants, empower the Muslim people with peaceable and prosperous ways and intimidate two Islamist nuclear aspirants to renounce their pretensions, we will show ourselves to be the strong horse. Thereby we will hasten the day when the terrorist pretensions will fall on deaf Muslim ears and the threat of Islamist terrorism will begin to recede.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/we_sacrificed_4000_to_vindicat.html

Canada expected to back out of UN racism conference

UNITED NATIONS -- Canada is poised to become the first country to significantly distance itself from a major anti-racism conference the United Nations is planning for next year. Insiders say the government feels the new conference is shaping up to be like the anti-West and anti-Israel free-for-all that critics said the initial gathering quickly turned into.

"At the moment, much of the planning for the conference suggests it will focus little on denouncing racism wherever it occurs, and a lot on advancing some countries' agendas against Israel and the West," said one insider familiar with the new policy. "The government feels that taking a stand against the gathering will do more in the long run for combating racism than joining in."

Arab- and Muslim-led verbal attacks on Israel at the 2001 conference were so dominant the United States and Israel walked out in protest. Canada, then under a Liberal administration, stayed, but its senior delegate told the assembly it did so "only ... to ... decry the attempts ... to de-legitimize the State of Israel and to dishonor the history and suffering of the Jewish people."

The UN gave planning oversight to its Human Rights Council, which since its launch less than two years ago has targeted Israel in 14 of its 15 resolutions charging human rights violations. States sitting on the Council then placed Iran, which has called for Israel's destruction, on an executive planning committee. Libya is the chair.

"Make no mistake, Durban II is on track to be even worse than Durban I," said Anne Bayefsky, a Canadian academic who edits the New York-based monitoring Web site EyeontheUN.org. "Canada, if it drops out, would be exhibiting moral clarity and courage after making the mistake at Durban I of staying despite serious reservations."

Canada was among 41 countries that last month opposed allocating US$6.8-million in UN funding to help pay for preparatory meetings for Durban II. The measure carried in the 192-member General Assembly.

"No one can stop Durban II because countries that are classified as less than democratic hold a majority in the General Assembly, and they are for it,"

said Ms. Bayefsky.

["because countries that are classified as less than democratic hold a majority in the general assembly" - where they exercise what they don't grant others, to our perpetual detriment. The organization has morphed into a gaming mechanism for despots - which we finance - it needs go (or we from it)]

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=256095

RAF scrambled as Russia tests nuclear-capable missiles

January 22, 2008 RAF scrambled as Russia tests nuclear-capable missiles (RAF/MoD Crown Copyright/PA Wire) A Russian Bear-H bomber Tony Halpin in Moscow RAF fighters scrambled to track Russian long-range bombers joining a naval task force today as Moscow practised strike tactics off the coast of France and Spain and test-launched nuclear-capable missiles. The fleet of Russian warships, supported by fighter jets and the bombers, engaged in Russia’s biggest naval exercises since the end of the Cold War.

[end? Test launching nuclear-capable missles (and how can observers know they're duds?) off the coast of europe?]

http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3234607.ece

Real ID and Reality

The REAL ID laws were a top a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission after investigators found that the hijackers had obtained 17 driver’s licenses and 13 state-issued identification cards in the process of carrying out terrorist actions. “Terrorists take advantage of the system being blind,” said Janice Kephart, President of 9/11 Security Solutions.

“This is going to make three groups of people unhappy: terrorists, illegal workers, con men and criminals,”

said Stewart A. Baker, the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the DHS. The new laws are making others unhappy as well. Because the REAL ID Act does not institute a national identification card, it is left to the states to enforce the new standards. This leaves a large financial burden on state governments.

[i.e., the government blew it again. I used to warn of and rail against a national I.D. Then the world changed, and now we need one. Regrettable, unavoidable, let's grow up and get it done - at the federal level where it belongs (otherwise our security control is only as strong as that of the weakest state)]

http://www.campusreportonline.net/main/articles.php?id=2070

Blowin' in the Wind

If you thought the 2008 presidential race was shattering all records for windy rhetoric, it's nothing compared to the political eco-rhetoric being spun to US taxpayers -- to get them to cough up billions of dollars to fuel a renewable wind power industry boom sensible investors won't touch with a turbine's rotor...
[snip]
In a recent US report about Silicon Valley clean energy investments, Vinod Khosia, founder of Khosia Ventures (representing dozens of US clean energy companies) says, "I worry about over-investing from firms that don't understand the energy markets." He's not alone. In an astute article in Energy Pulse (June 2007) Consulting Engineer Brian Leyland warned that the entire alternative energy renewables investments boom may turn into just another "dotcom bubble".

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=012308A

CNN: Media Deserve 'Shame' for 'Complicity' w/ Dems Ignoring Immigration

On Tuesday's Lou Dobbs Tonight, which was repeated on Sunday, CNN host Dobbs chided the media for not including illegal immigration in exit polls of Democratic voters simply because Democratic candidates have avoided discussing the issue. Dobbs:

"Would it surprise you if I were to tell you right here in front of God and everybody I had to convince CNN a couple of years ago to include illegal immigration in a poll because we didn't even in this organization believe it was an important issue, some of us didn't?"

He even got Schneider to agree with his contention that the media's "complicity with that motive" of the Democratic candidates in ignoring the issue should "bring a sense of shame to these [media] organizations."

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2008/01/21/cnn-media-deserves-shame-complicity-dems-ignoring-immigration

Guns in the cockpit

"Do airline pilots still need to be armed?" The answer is, "Absolutely — now more than ever."

Consider this: Arming pilots is not a new idea. In fact, airline pilots flew armed in large numbers from the dawn of commercial aviation to 1987 with no record of incident. When the federal government disarmed pilots in 1987, many pilots predicted cockpit takeover attempts — including the late Captain Victor Saracini, who, in horrible irony, was the captain of United flight 175 on September 11, 2001 when his Boeing 767 was hijacked and crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. It was the disarming of pilots in 1987 that inevitably led to the September 11 cockpit takeovers.

http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080103/EDITORIAL/583177106/1013

Media Stimulate Recession by Twisting Fed Chairman's Words

On the day after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sat before Congress and said the Fed is “not forecasting a recession,” CBS’s Bianca Solorzano reported on the “Early Show” that “Bernanke confirmed recession fears.”

Anthony Mason reported on the “CBS Evening News” that night that Bernanke “was telling Congress the economy needs a rescue package, and the sooner the better.”

On NBC’s “Nightly News,” reporter Erin Burnett summarized Bernanke’s testimony: “Guess what? It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

But Bernanke didn't say that.

What the Fed chairman did say was that “recent indications suggest … that the economy has softened somewhat and that the growth prospects for 2008 are certainly below that of last year,” adding later that “again, we’re not forecasting recession but rather at this point slow growth.” [as low as 1.7% according to CBO testimony yesterday]

Instead of explaining the nuances of Bernanke’s talk, reporters went for a simplistic – and unfortunately, misleading – characterization, selectively quoting from Bernanke’s testimony before Congress to suggest he predicted a recession and called for an immediate “stimulus package.”

[more, recommended > http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080123110534.aspx ]

NYT Won't ID Tax Cuts as Chief Irish Economic Success Factor

In an article (HT Jim Taranto at Best of the Web) describing Ireland's emergence as an European Union powerhouse ("Entrepreneurship Takes Off in Ireland"), reporter James Flanigan of the New York Times simply could not bring himself to specifically identify the main reasons for the country's success (bolds are mine):

“The change came in the 1990s,” said James Murphy, founder and managing director of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products for muscle aches, hair loss and other maladies. “Taxes and interest rates came down, and all of a sudden we believed in ourselves.”

So tax rates "changed," eh? And we're told that "taxes and interest rates came down," as if by some external supernatural force.

The reason taxes "came down," of course, is that they were proactively C-U-T, cut (the word "cut" does not appear even once in the article).

The Times's C-word allergy is all the more maddening because, like so many other Old Media outlets, it doesn't hesitate to describe reductions in projected spending increases in government programs as "cuts," even though, virtually without exception, year-over-year dollars spent continue to increase. You would think that employing the three-letter C-word when a cut actually does occur -- even a dreaded tax cut -- wouldn't be that difficult. But it clearly is.

[subtle, but pervasive - and how an ideology goes about controlling the language of a debate.]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110011111

How Núñez rose to power so fast

California

Núñez, 41, is the mastermind behind Prop. 93, and he enlisted his top political consultant, Gale Kauffmann, to lead the campaign for the measure. He would be able to serve six more years in the Assembly if the measure passes, rather than being termed out at the end of this year.

Núñez got his big break among the labor circles when Contreras hired him as political director of the labor federation. He kept that post until 2000, when he took a job as lobbyist for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Núñez arrived at the Capitol in 2003 and became speaker the following year. The first two years of his leadership were marked by political battles against Schwarzenegger. The speaker struck deals with the governor on bills that increased the minimum wage and, more importantly [?], made California the U.S. leader in efforts to curb greenhouse gases. "I put the power of the speakership behind it," Núñez said of the emissions bill. "Otherwise it wouldn't have moved."

"The bottom line: It was all about Prop. 93 and (Núñez's) ambition to continue to be speaker and his terror that Big Four gambling tribes would put money against (the measure) if he didn't do their bidding," said Jack Gribbon, California political director of UNITE Here, a labor union that opposes the gambling deals. "It was one of the coldest political calculations that I have seen in my life."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/22/MN9UU0M5L.DTL

3 Dogs Live The Sweet Life On $800,000 Inheritance

Hagerstown, Md. -- They're not as loaded as Leona Helmsley's pooch, but three dogs in western Maryland still have more money than they know what to do with. The dogs -- a beagle named Buckshot and Labrador mixes named Katie and Obu-Jet -- inherited $400,000 and a house in Hagerstown when their owner, Ken Kemper, died last year. The trio is worth about $800,000 altogether. (Snip) On Friday nights, Grady treats them to a spaghetti dinner, complete with meatballs and garlic bread.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=5344789&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.7.1