Winning in Afghanistan

Another top NATO general is going on the record about our success in Afghanistan, though you are unlikely to hear about such things from the mainstream media that prefer a narrative of failure.

Last week I reported that comments from Army Gen. Dan McNeill, the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan went nearly unreported in the US media. The General claimed that the rise in violence in Afghanistan was not an indication of Taliban resurgence but of increasing NATO aggressiveness.

This week, Gen. Michel Gauthier, who is commander of all Canadian forces overseas, spoke out, saying that where his forces are concentrated, in the populated areas in and around Kandahar, there is no question that they are winning.
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Such biased media reporting is not only hurting US national security, it is hurting the innocents in Afghanistan. It is time for President Bush to come out of hiding and take the case directly to the American people. The President must lead by letting his senior military officials speak to the people directly to dispel this "losing in Afghanistan" media myth.

General Petraeus did a phenomenal job of convincing Americans that the real situation in Iraq was not being told by the media. We need another Petraeus moment to build lagging support for Afghanistan.

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Senate Passes Bill to Expand U.S. Spying Powers

[actually, it allows the continuation of international surveillance {it's a NYT piece...}]

WASHINGTON — After more than a year of heated political wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers after giving legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

The Senate rejected a series of amendments that would have restricted the government’s surveillance powers and eliminated immunity for the phone carriers, and it voted in convincing fashion — 69 to 29 — to end debate and bring the issue to a final vote. That vote on the overall billwas an almost identical 68 to 29.

[the House passed it without protection for the telecoms - it now has until this Friday to accept the Senate's version or the surveillance ends. BTW: which presidential candidate was among the 29 who voted against the bill? {hint: at least he didn't vote 'present' this time}]

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German court OKs surveillance on Church of Scientology

Berlin - A German administrative court has upheld a lower court ruling allowing the country’s intelligence services to monitor activities of the Church of Scientology. The North Rhine-Westphalia Higher Administrative Court in Muenster says there is sufficient information to permit intelligence agencies to keep the organization under observation. The court ruled there are concrete indications that the church and its members maintain ambitions against Germany’s democratic order.

[and mosques? any anti-democracy ambitions there?]

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RAF surveillance planes hear Taliban fighters talking in Brummie and Yorkshire accents

The Taliban are thought to be recruiting an increasing number of fighters from Britain after RAF experts overheard secret transmissions from the Afghan frontline spoken in broad Midlands and Yorkshire accents. Specialists in top secret surveillance planes listened in on radio traffic broadcast by the Taliban in Helmand province and heard fighters talking in thick regional accents. The discovery indicates that a growing number of British-born Muslim are turning their backs on the West and moving to Afghanistan to be trained as fighters...

[almost seems as if everyone is 'surveilling' everyone]

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Islamization of Europe and The European Union

Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch recently suggested a number of things Europeans can do to halt Islamization. The proposals were good, but I think we should focus on the most important obstacle: the European Union. I've suggested in the past that the EU is the principal motor behind the Islamization of Europe, and that the entire organization needs to be dismantled as soon as possible, otherwise nothing substantial can ever be done about the Muslim invasion.

The EU's Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini states that Europe must relax its immigration controls and open the door to an extra 20 million "Africans and Asians" during the next two decades. Most of these "Africans and Asians" come from the predominantly Muslim countries of North Africa and the Greater Middle East. The EU thus decided to flood Europe with tens of millions of Muslims at the same time as peaceful Europeans demonstrating against the Islamization of Europe were brutally harassed by the police in the EU capital of Brussels. Frattini has also banned the use of the phrase Islamic terrorism...

[part and parcle of why Mark Steyn wrote the book "American Alone"]

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Venezuela moves accounts over Exxon

Caracas - Venezuela has moved oil revenue into Swiss banks to avoid a possible seizure of funds by Exxon Mobil in a legal battle that pits leftist anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez against America's biggest company. The Texas energy giant won court rulings that froze assets belonging to Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA in a hardball maneuver meant to ensure the OPEC nation pays compensation for stealing a multibillion-dollar oil project last year.

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MANDATE UPDATE

Since the early 1990s, CAHI has tracked state health-insurance mandate legislation in all 50 states and estimated the impact of those mandated benefits on the cost of a policy. A health-insurance "mandate" is a legislative requirement that an insurance company or health plan cover (or offer coverage for) common -- but sometimes not so common -- health- care providers, benefits and patient populations.

Although there were only a handful of state mandates in the 1960s, CAHI's just released "Health Insurance Mandates in the States, 2008" has identified 1,961 nationwide -- up from 1,901 a year ago. For almost every health-care product or service, there are at least two groups that want insurance to cover it: those who sell the products and services so they can get more business, and those who use the products and services to lower their out-of-pocket costs.

Both of these highly motivated groups push state legislators -- and increasingly members of Congress -- to require insurance to cover the care. As a result, government interference in and control of the health-care system is steadily increasing -- and so is the cost of health insurance...

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OUR ENERGY DEFICIT

The renewed jump in the price of oil underscores the corner we've painted ourselves into. By refusing to drill in either the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) or offshore, the United States can expect less energy, higher prices, growing vulnerability and a shrunken economy, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

> As recently as 1973, imports made up 36 percent of our total oil use; today, imports are two-thirds of our 21-million-barrel-a-day oil habit, and climbing fast.
> As Mitt Romney noted last week, we're sending nearly $400 billion overseas each year to buy oil.

This has made us uniquely vulnerable, to say the least, to the inherent political instability of the Mideast, Russia, Africa and Latin America -- and to the OPEC oil cartel's anti-Western schemes. But what can we do? Plenty. Start with getting more energy:

> We have at least 40 billion barrels of crude and 250 trillion cubic feet of gas offshore, in ANWR and on federal lands -- enough to replace nearly a quarter of our imports for several decades.
> Another 1.2 trillion barrels of oil lie in shale deposits across the Midwest.

However:

> Congress has put more than 50 percent of the oil and 27 percent of the gas in the United States out of bounds.
> Just 19 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf can be developed.
> The National Petroleum Council estimates that we'll need $4 trillion in investments over the next 25 years just to keep pace with a forecast 30 percent jump in energy demand.

"Onshore and offshore public lands could hold enough oil to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years -- and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years."

And apart from demonizing oil companies, Congress does nothing. This is madness.

[and they won't unless we insist they do]

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THE NEXT FED CHALLENGE

Back in the 1970s, Washington policymakers were obsessed with increasing aggregate demand, but they forgot about aggregate supply. Today's short-term-stimulus rebate package is a throwback to that era. Keynesian central planning has damaged the Federal Reserve Bank's credibility. It has weakened the dollar. Entrepreneurs and investors can't possibly plan ahead when interest rates bob up and down like yo-yos. We should say goodbye to Fed tinkering hello to permanent enhancements to the economy's incentive structure, such as:

> Lowering tax rates on corporations
> Lowering the corporate capital-gains tax rate.
> Abolishing the individual capital-gains tax, dividend tax and the estate tax.
> Eliminating the multiple-taxation of savings and investment.

At some point, the entire corporate tax structure should be thrown out, along with all the murky K-Street tax-earmark loopholes that litter the Internal Revenue Code. Without strong tax-reform measures to expand the production of goods and services, further Fed money injections are only demand-side "solutions" that will surely inflate prices and depreciate the currency.

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Bush Pushes Senate to OK 180 Nominees

WASHINGTON -- President Bush vented frustration anew Saturday over the Senate's failure to vote on more than 180 of his nominations, including more than two dozen to the federal bench.

"Some have been waiting for more than a year," said Bush, who invited many of the nominees to the White House for an event on Thursday. "As a result, careers have been put on hold, families have been placed in limbo and our government has been deprived of the service of these fine nominees."

Bush cited Senate delays in voting on 28 of his federal judicial nominees.

"Three of my nominees for the Court of Appeals have waited nearly 600 days," he said. "These delays are irresponsible, they undermine the cause of justice, and I call on the United States Senate to give these nominees the up-or-down vote they deserve."

[i.e., it's not a matter of the Senate finding fault with Bush's nominations - if that were true they'd vote against them. They're not allowing a vote - just stonewalling, to the detriment of the country given our horrendous legal backlog]

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BMI’s Gainor Criticizes Media for Coverage of ‘Flash, Not Substance’

In an appearance on the Fox Business Network February 8, Business & Media Institute Vice President Dan Gainor criticized the media's refusal to fully report the costs associated with campaign promises being made by presidential candidates.

"You would actually think the media had talked about how much it's going to cost," Gainor said of the hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending promised by the candidates. "And in fact it's quite the opposite."

Aside from some coverage of Sen. Hillary Clinton's massive universal health care coverage proposal, much of her $217 billion in promises has gone unreported. The same goes for Sen. Barack Obama, who leads all candidates with $287 billion in new proposals, according to estimates from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

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The Ghosts of 2004...

California

The Sacramento Bee reports today that Prop. 58, the measure sponsored by Gov. Schwarzenegger in 2004 as the so-called “California Balanced Budget Act” isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Schwarzenegger made a dizzying array of promises to skeptical voters in order to win passage of the measure. He said,

“California faces unprecedented budget deficits. Overspending has led to serious shortfalls which threatens the state’s ability to pay its bills and access financial markets. This proposition is a safeguard against this EVER HAPPENING AGAIN. Proposition 58 will prevent the Legislature from ENACTING BUDGETS THAT SPEND MORE MONEY THAN WE HAVE.”

As I told the Senate when it placed Prop. 58 on the ballot in December of 2003, the so-called “safeguards” were nothing more than an artful window-dressing of existing law – with one critical exception:

“Since statehood, the constitution has prevented one generation from passing on its day-to-day expenses to the next. This measure temporarily removes that provision so that you can do what no generation before you has ever dared to do: steal from the future.”

Four years later those warnings have borne out. While Proposition 58 is now being proven in practice to be a toothless watchdog, the Governor has just ordered another $3.3 billion of borrowing to finance his deficit spending – borrowing that Prop. 58 made possible with the promise it would only be used to retire Davis’ deficit and prevent it from “ever happening again.”

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"We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."

-- Ronald Reagan
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