HEROES: Sergeant’s Art Funds Surgeries for Needy Children

Where most just see trash, Air Force Tech. Sgt. Robert Sommers, of 376th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron here, sees possibility.

On any given day, the squadron’s noncommissioned officer in charge of operations management can be found sorting through leftover wood scraps and paints in his shop to create paintings and donate the proceeds to help pay for heart surgeries for children whose parents are unable to pay for the surgeries themselves.

“Possibilities are endless; everybody has a talent and can use it to help others who are less fortunate,” Sommers said. “This is what I am trying to do.”

Two local doctors perform these surgeries free of charge. But an oxygenator -- a disposable piece of equipment that serves as the lung during cardiac surgery and is designed to expose the blood to oxygen and remove carbon dioxide -- is needed for each operation, and each costs $560.

During his five-month tour, Sommers’ donated proceeds have paid for three oxygenators.

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U.S. Commander in Iraq Cites Progress Made in Narhwan

Much progress in the security, local governance and economic realms has been achieved in the Iraqi city of Narhwan over the past four months, a senior U.S. commander posted there said today.

“We’ve seen significant gains at the local level in governance" ... “The local population has embraced our presence, and we believe the extremists have been severely disrupted as a result,”

Thirty-nine economic projects for Narhwan and its vicinity hev been identified, for which about $1.5 million in coalition-provided funding has been spent. The Iraqi government, he added, has provided about $2.9 million for Narhwan projects.

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Japan Deploys Fighter Jets After Russian Bomber Violates Airspace

Tokyo - A Russian air force bomber briefly violated Japanese airspace over an uninhabited island just south of Tokyo on Saturday, the Foreign Ministry said. The three-minute flyby over Sofugan in the Izu island chain by a Tupolev 95 ended following warnings by Japanese air force fighter jets, said Foreign Ministry official Kotaro Otsuki. (Snip) Japan's navy scrambled 22 fighter jets, including F-15s, and two airborne warning and control aircraft known as AWACs...

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Not Even Pretending to be Fair: NYT On Gaza

...Consider, for example, the January 28 article, "Israel Vows Not to Block Supplies to Gaza." By presenting this decision as a negative rather than a positive (Israel will let supplies flow; Israel wants to avoid any humanitarian crisis in Gaza, etc) it seems as if the newspaper is grudgingly admitting that Israel is doing something good but trying to minimize it. Then comes a spin slanted against Israel:

"Israel would no longer disrupt the supply of food, medicine and necessary energy into the Gaza Strip and intended to prevent a 'humanitarian disaster' there."

The obvious and intended implication here is that Israel has been blocking three things, thus threatening to unleash a humanitarian disaster. In fact, Israel has never blocked food and medicine, and while it has reduced energy supplies slightly--to a level reducing the Gaza electricity by no more than 20 percent--it has not blocked "necessary" energy but only made a marginal reduction.

Thus, in a masterfully crafted but factually inaccurate sentence, both newspapers accuse Israel of something it has never done and imply that it has committed inhuman crimes. (Or to put it another way, Congratulations, you have stopped beating your wife.)

Oh, we're just getting started as Mr. Erlanger is a master of bias. Dig this sentence...

[and on and on... some paper of 'record']

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Reality Check on the Costs of Unhealthy Living

Dutch researchers simulated lifetime costs, starting at age 20, for smokers, the obese, and a "healthy living" cohort that maintained a healthy weight and didn't smoke:

> Healthy living 20 year olds could expect to live to about age 84, compared with age 77 for the smokers and 80 for the obese.

> Those additional years can be expensive: For healthy 20 year olds, the remaining lifetime health care costs over $400,000 [in the Dutch system], nearly a third more than their 'unhealthy' brethren.

Perversely, reducing obesity and the burden of disease it causes may wind up costing the nation more, not less - and in American scale. Hillary Clinton, for example, notes that "had the prevalence of obesity remained the same today as it was in 1987, we would spend 10 percent less per person -- approximately $200 billion -- on health care today."

Change that equation to 30% more, and we're talking 600 billion dollars. Living healthier is a noble goal - but when conducting our cost-benefit analysis, let's start by using fact-based math.

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THE WAGES OF HILLARYCARE

Hillary Clinton's "individual mandate" for health care, is being exposed for its inevitable government coercion. Under HillaryCare II, everyone would be required to buy health insurance, along with more insurance regulation, a government insurance option for everyone and tax hikes. HillaryCare II isn't about "choice,

"but would require financial penalties for people to comply, including garnishing wages. To put it more accurately, the individual mandate is really a government mandate that requires brute force plus huge subsidies to get anywhere near its goal of universal coverage."

Consider: Mitt Romney's mandate program in Massachusetts is already expected to reach $1.35 billion in annual costs by 2011, up from $158 million today. And that's with only half of the previously uninsured currently enrolled.

Most experts calculate that a national mandate with subsidies like Clinton's would enroll about half to two-thirds of the uninsured - but such guesswork is pointless without the basic enforcement assumptions, which Clinton refuses to provide.

The political lesson that Clinton learned in 1994 wasn't about compromise or market forces. It was that a government health-care takeover can only be achieved gradually and by stealth. Her individual mandate is an attempt to force everyone to buy into a highly regulated and price-controlled system where government redistributes income and dictates coverage.

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Canadian Scientists Fear Global Cooling

Kenneth Tapping, a researcher at Canada's National Research Council, wants to look for evidence of increased sunspot activity:

"The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century."

A "solar hibernation" in the 17th Century "corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715.

"Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe."

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Illegal Immigration and Low Wage Labor

In recent years, ripening crops regularly are accompanied by stories suggesting we need illegal immigrant labor to bring in the harvest. [snip] Visions of crops rotting in the fields make for vivid journalism. But in September, 2007 a Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report for Congress entitled "Farm Labor Shortages and Immigration Policy," found little cause to worry about crops ripening and spoiling, stating that,

"Trends in the agricultural labor market do not suggest the existence of a nationwide shortage of domestically available farm workers..."

A 2007 study written by Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) entitled "Farm Labor shortages: How Real? What Response" further substantiated the conclusions of the CRS Report.

A March 2006 CIS study of the top 22 occupations in 2005 indicated that in no occupational category did immigrant employees outnumber native employees. In other words, native-born U.S. workers are already doing all jobs - and in majority numbers - where high concentrations of illegal immigrant are also employed.

Here's one example of that wage-leveraging impact from the Federation of American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

"In Los Angeles, unionized black janitors had been earning $12 an hour, with benefits. But with the advent of subcontractors who compose roaming crews of Mexican and El Salvadoran laborers, the pay dropped to $3.35 per hour. "

The myth only approaches truth if amended to read: Illegal immigrants accept jobs that American workers won't do for poverty level wages and no benefits (including healthcare).

[remember: whenever we're told about jobs Americans won't do it's a lie; Americans hold the majority of all jobs - and that despite the above referenced wage-suppression. What say we exclude illegals {as you'd think the name would require} with prohibitive consequences employers who knowingly hire them, and let market forces re-level to natural levels?]

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ABC Highlights Absence of Gun Control Discussion

In light of recent high-profile shootings, Friday's World News with Charles Gibson featured a report that lamented the absence of public calls for additional gun control. Gibson introduced the piece:

"Well, there are 230 million guns in America. There are more guns than there are adults. In the past incidents, like the one in Kirkwood, would rekindle debate over gun control. But as ABC's Pierre Thomas reports, gun control advocates are now mostly silent."

(Transcript follows)

For ABC, this was only the latest example of such reports favoring more gun laws. In April 2007, after the Virginia Tech shootings, reports on Good Morning America and World News similarly lamented the absence of new gun control initiatives, and on World News, also anchored by Gibson, correspondent Brian Ross portrayed Virginia's "lax" gun laws as being at fault. In July 2007, World News Sunday suggested that opposition to gun control by rural areas in Pennsylvania was to blame for Philadephia's murder rate. Also in July, World News with Gibson incorrectly implied that a murder suspect in New York City bought his gun from a gun store in Virginia, ignoring the fact that the gun's original owner had purchased it legally, and contended that criminals often go to shops for their weapons.

[Polling shows three-quarters of Americans believe the Constitution guarantees the right to own guns.]

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CREATIVE CAPITALISM

Bill Gates seems to believe that the solution to poverty is to persuade for-profit companies to meet the poor's needs by boosting the "recognition" of corporate philanthropy. But the dossier of historical evidence to suggest this would work is quite thin, says William R. Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Consider:

The recognition motive has proven to be awfully weak compared to the profit motive, otherwise we would have had a lot more than the $5.1 billion of annual American corporate philanthropy to the Third World (as of 2005, which has the most recent reliable figures). That was four one-hundredths of 1 percent of the $12.4 trillion of U.S. production for the free market.

On the other hand profit-motivated capitalism has done wonders for poor workers:

The globalization of capitalism from 1950 to the present has increased annual average income in the world to $7,000 from $2,000. Contrary to popular legend, poor countries grew at about the same rate as the rich ones; this growth gave us the greatest mass exit from poverty in world history.

The parts of the world that are still poor are suffering from too little capitalism, says Easterly:

Foreign direct investment in Africa today, although rising, amounts to only 1 percent of global flows. That's because the environment for private business in Africa is still hostile; there are some industry and country success stories in Africa, but not enough.

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Bill Clinton Gets More Coverage Than Any Republican Candidate

HT:ML

That's the finding of the The Project for Excellence in Journalism [PEJ], a part of the Pew Research Center, which has never been accused of right-wing tendencies.

The PEJ systematically studies coverage of a variety of issues, including candidates, and issues a weekly report. For the most recent week studied, January 21 through 27, Bill Clinton was the third-most prominent newsmaker in the race for President, beating out all Republicans. Finishing fourth, after Bill, Hillary and Obama, John McCain was, predictably, the most-covered GOP candidate.

See the full story here. Details on the media outlets studied here.

[so please do explain to me the seemingly gross disparity in the below graph between Obama/H.Clinton coverage vs. everyone else...]



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