HEROES

Face of Defense: Deputy Follows in Coworkers’ Footsteps

New Marine Pfc. Brett Lockhart Lockhart was a deputy sheriff at the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, in Titusville, Fla., where 15 of them are former Marines.

"I wanted to be able to fight both battles," Lockhart said. "I've already fought the local battle, but after 9-11, if anything else happens, I want to be there."

During his graduation from recruit training, Lockhart received a special visit from eight of his former coworkers, welcoming him to the brotherhood. Sgt. Frank T. Hickman, a deputy sheriff with the department said:

"Being a Marine is something that's always inside of you. It's good to see him join the family. We are all very proud of Brett down at the station, we want him to know he'll have a job waiting for him whenever he gets back."

[part of this country is at war. with the enemy, I mean.]

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=48825

Gates: Taliban’s Terrorism Reflects NATO’s Success in Afghanistan

Jan. 31, 2008 – NATO experienced military success in Afghanistan in 2007, and the Taliban is resorting to terrorist tactics because its conventional efforts have failed, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters today.

“My view is that militarily, NATO has had a very successful year in 2007,” Gates replied. “The Taliban is occupying no territory in Afghanistan on a continuing basis.”
--
“...we are seeing more suicide bombings, more use of (improvised explosive devices), and so on, because their conventional military efforts have failed,” he said. “The rise in violence and attacks like we saw in Kabul are manifestations of a group that has lost in regular military terms in 2007 and is turning to terrorism as a substitute for that.”

He said he decided after consulting with President Bush to send an additional 3,200 Marines into Afghanistan “because it did not appear that that requirement would be satisfied by anyone else, and I wanted to take advantage of the gains that we had achieved over the past year in the security situation.”

The secretary repeatedly has pressed NATO to commit more troops to the International Security Assistance Force mission in Afghanistan.

[guess we'll call that a 'mixed' report]

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Egypt turns back 3 000 Gazans

Cairo - Egyptian authorities have turned back around 3 000 Palestinians trying to reach Cairo and other cities after crossing into Sinai from Gaza following a border breach, a security source said on Monday. (Snip) Egyptian media reported on Monday that authorities had raided hotels and rented apartments in Cairo and other large cities in search of Palestinians who may have slipped past security.

[and the world outcry condemning Egypt for its mistreatment of Palestinians?]

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UN 'Peacekeepers' Vandalizing Ancient Art -- Where is MSM Reporting?

It is often claimed that without the UN things would be so much worse in troubled spots around the world. But, when we look at the pernicious effect the UN has where ever it goes, it's awfully hard to reconcile the claims with the hard truth.

We've seen the UN responsible for turning indigenous teens into prostitutes for UN workers in Cambodia, Africa, and Bosnia. [three: that's not an instance, it's a pattern]

Well, now we can add vandalism of sacred, ancient wall-art to the list. Today the Times online give us the story of UN peacekeepers defacing 6,000 year-old art in the Western Saharan rocks of Africa. UN vandals spray graffiti on Sahara’s prehistoric art

But, where is the media to report this outrage against human history and sacred religious relics and sites? About the same place they were when underplaying the reports of UN peacekeepers and employees forcing young women into prostitution the world over... absent from the scene.

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The Conservative Tide in Major Democracies

When things are going poorly for the Left, count on it to change the subject. After the surge refused to fail, the surge ceased to be news. Recall four years ago, when "all" the leaders of our major democratic friends were hostile to America, to our liberation of Iraq, and in particular to President Bush? Remember how Senator Kerry said that leaders of Europe privately wanted him to win the presidency? That news has ceased to become newsworthy.

Why? Because, like the surge, the sentiment in major democracies has turned as well.

In each of four major nations important to us, France, Germany, Canada, and Britain, the nations historically most important to America in both political and cultural connections, the alignment with America has improved - in some cases, dramatically improved - since the last elections in each nation...

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Cost of health initiative up $400m

Spending on the state's landmark health insurance initiative would rise by more than $400 million next year, representing one of the largest increases in the $28.2 billion state budget the governor proposed yesterday. State and federal taxpayers are expected to bear nearly all of the additional cost.

[now who could have seen that coming - and the years after?]

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FDA has major overseas backlog

[partly personal - but an example of government at work]

US FDA’s current staffing is at levels that would take “at least 27 years to inspect every foreign medical device plant that exports to the United States, 13 years to check every foreign drug plant and 1,900 years to examine every foreign food plant, according to government investigators,” the New York Times reports. “The situation is particularly dire in China, which has more drug and device plants than any other foreign nation but where FDA inspections are few.”

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New Peer-Reviewed Study Finds ‘Warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence’

Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (‘fingerprints’) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability.

Therefore, climate change is ‘unstoppable’ and cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]. The authors are Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia).

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Blowin' in the Wind

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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...
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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".

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Hypochondriasis Economicus

... Likewise, an economic hypochondriac is someone who obsesses about the "health of the economy" and who is prone to viewing the natural and inevitable fluctuations of the marketplace as a sign of impending recession, or worse. Today millions of Americans -- including the President, the Federal Reserve Board, and most members of the mainstream media -- appear to be in the grip of a full-blown hypochondriac attack over the economy. Why? Because for the past few weeks Wall Street traders have been selling stocks in anticipation of what they believe is a looming recession.

Are we in a recession now? No. A "recession" means two or more consecutive quarters of declining real gross domestic product. Far from being in a recession, through the third quarter of 2007, the United States has enjoyed 24 consecutive quarters of GDP growth. Furthermore, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January 2008 that unemployment was at 5.0 percent, which is low by any measure, and that real average weekly earnings were higher in December 2007 than in December 2006.

The economy, overall, is doing quite well. Despite what the media tells us about gasoline prices or the housing market or job layoffs among Fortune 500 companies, the economy is not in ‘crisis." There certainly is no rational, objective reason for Americans to be as concerned about the economy as they have become over the past few weeks.

[We've challenges; an expensive war on terror, a housing sector problem, and above all else an energy policy crisis whereby an absolute refusal to develop additional energy sources has increased the cost of everything else in our economy. I.e., Economy? It's energy, stupid. {You think it a coincident that the ~150B$ 'stimulus' package just happens to match the calculated 'energy shock' impact of oil price increases?} So let's stop burning our food and start developing our own, vast, oil reserves.]

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CNN Gives Unemployed Woman Pass for Buying a Flat-Screen Television

CNN’s January 30 “American Morning” mentioned retailers were cutting prices to get customers to purchase more, but no one during the broadcast had a problem with one unemployed woman buying one of those fancy televisions.

“Veronica McNeil has two kids,” said Cho. “She recently lost her job. Her husband’s an ironworker and the family is feeling the pinch.”

Cho pointed toward “rising gas and home heating oil prices and Americans losing their homes” for money being “tight.” Personal responsibility and wise financial decisions evidently don't factor into 'tightness'.

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CNN.com Highlights Negatives of GOP Candidates

It's quite interesting how CNN.com words the bios of the various presidential candidates. Interesting in that the Republican candidates have negative comments included, whereas the Democrats do not. Case in point: Here are the GOP candidate bios (my emphasis):

Hillary Clinton: The former first lady is now in her second term as the junior senator from New York.

Barack Obama: The former lawyer and state senator won a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois in 2004.

Mike Gravel: The former U.S. senator from Alaska now heads up a non-profit firm promoting civics and education.

vs.:

John McCain: The U.S. senator from Arizona ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000, but lost to George W. Bush.

Mitt Romney: The former Massachusetts governor made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. Senate in 1994.

Rudy Giuliani: The two-term mayor of New York City once ran for the U.S. Senate, but dropped out in 2000.

[no biase here, move along...]

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Unraveling the Unemployment Rate...

California
One of the excuses we hear for California’s budget problems is that they are caused by the national economic slowdown. It’s true that the national economy has a big impact on the state, but we’re seeing data that suggests that something went seriously wrong with California’s economy last year quite apart from our national difficulties.

Last year, California imposed a series of devastating new economic burdens, including the governor’s mandate to radically reduce carbon dioxide emissions (with profound impacts on sectors such as construction, manufacturing, agriculture and cargo transportation) and major increases in the minimum wage. Ironically, proponents claimed that these changes would greatly improve California’s job opportunities.

What we have seen over the past year is that California’s unemployment rate – that had been tracking very consistently with the national rate – broke radically upward from the national figures shortly after these laws took effect.

The Employment Development Department has just released California's December unemployment rate. While the national numbers ticked up by 3/10 of a point, California’s jumped another half point and is now running 1.1 points ahead of the national rate. A picture is worth a thousand words:


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Sleeper awakes with freight train on top

A man had a miraculous escape yesterday, sustaining only minor injuries when a freight train rolled over the top of him while he slept between the tracks. The Bendigo man, 20, whose name has not been released, was sleeping at a level crossing in Port Augusta, 300km northwest of Adelaide, when the train approached about 3.40am. (Snip) The train rolled over the man, still lying between the tracks, and stopped just ahead of him. It is believed the man hit his head on the train while trying to sit up. It is understood he may have been intoxicated.

[may?]

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