Heroes: Airman Drives 120 Convoys in Afghanistan

“I have learned so much about a lot of things, especially my job and the Afghan people,” she said. “I had the mentality they were all al Qaeda and Taliban until I talked to them. After spending time with the Afghans, I learned they don’t like the Taliban, either. Everything has gotten better since my arrival in March 2007. … Even the roads have improved.”

When she’s outside the wire, Velez is somewhat of a celebrity with the Afghan children. “They get excited because they see a female airman. They want to touch my hair and earrings,” she said. “The Afghans want to learn and have a lot of questions. They want to work and take care of their families like people in the United States do.”

This is Velez’s third deployment in three years, but she said she has no regrets.

“My job satisfaction comes from constantly thinking about all the people’s lives I have in my hands”

READ MORE

Active-Duty Recruiting Marks Eighth Straight Successful Month

All four services met or exceeded their active-duty recruiting goals for January, defense officials announced today. The January recruiting numbers represented the eighth consecutive month of across-the-board active-duty recruiting successes among the services.

The Army recruited 8,693 active-duty soldiers, 101 percent of its goal, in January.

The Army National Guard bested its January recruiting goal by 3 percent, signing on 5,688 soldiers,

The Marine Corps topped its January active-duty recruitment goal by 11 percent,

The Navy met its January goals for both active-duty and Navy Reserve recruits.

The Air Force exceeded its active-duty recruiting goal for January by 3 percent,

READ MORE

Deputy Secretary Urges Prompt Funding for Current, Future Challenges

Noting the “complex security environment we are in today,” [Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon] England cited the “variety of very prominent challenges” facing the country. He pointed to the threats posed by terrorism, extremism, jihadism and ethnic, tribal and sectarian conflict. But other challenges and potential challenges loom, as well: proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed and failing states, and emerging powers with yet-unclear intentions. [that would be China and Russia - the 'unclear' part is pure diplomacy]

“Each of these threats … poses unique challenges and demands on the Department of Defense,” ... “Even while we are committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, we do have to be concerned about the other security challenges to our nation, so we look at this in a much broader context.”

England urged the senators to approve the defense and wartime supplemental funding requests quickly to avoid a repeat of the situation that occurred this year. The fiscal 2008 defense budget did not pass into law until late January, though the fiscal year began Oct. 1.

“It will be extraordinarily difficult to manage the department and to maintain our security both for our people in combat and for our citizens if we are also, at that time, in a budget turmoil like we were last year,”

he said.

“We have these magnificent men and women who come forward to protect and defend our nation, and therefore it is incumbent on us, frankly, to provide them the funding they need,”

['urge the senators'... sounds like a good idea to me]

senator@feinstein.senate.gov
senator@boxer.senate.gov

READ MORE

FBI raids house in Chinese spy case

A Defense Department analyst and a former engineer for Boeing Co. were charged Monday in separate spy cases for allegedly handing over military secrets to the Chinese government, the Justice Department said. (Snip) The arrests mark China's latest attempts to gain top secret information about U.S. military systems and sales, said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein. He described China as "particularly adept, and particularly determined and methodical in their espionage efforts."

READ MORE

Venezuela Suspends Oil Sales to Exxon Mobil

Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela's state oil company said Tuesday that it has stopped selling crude to Exxon Mobil Corp. and has suspended commercial relations with the U.S.-based oil company. State-run Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, said in a statement that it ''has paralyzed sales of crude to Exxon Mobil.'' It said the decision was made ''as an act of reciprocity'' for the company's ''judicial-economic harassment.''

[how dare they take us to court for having stolen their property. Unfriendly nations are lining up to blackmail us with their oil - we need to develop our own reserves, now.]

READ MORE

HOW TO PAY FOR HEALTH CARE

The health care industry looks like a big plate of spaghetti. Many insurance carriers and medical service providers have internal back-office technology systems, but few connect with anyone else. Much communication between parties is cumbersome and manual. Creating a Health Care Clearing Corp. (HCCC) modeled on the successful experience of the financial services industry could be a significant step in cutting health care costs, says Stuart Z. Goldstein, a financial services executive in New York with a background in health care issues. How would the HCCC work?

> It would operate more like the hub of a wheel with spokes electronically linking medical service providers and insurance companies to a central point where data can be processed and exchanged.

> It would eliminate the need for medical service providers and insurance companies to manage separate procedures and processes to submit claims.

> Standardizing data exchange and recordkeeping would speed payment of claims.

Health care insurance carriers incur huge costs today by distributing millions of individual checks to cover their obligations to hospitals and physician groups. In contrast, firms in the securities industry pay for all their stock trading once a day, using the Federal Reserve's Fed wire system for electronic funds transfers.

In the coming presidential campaign, health care will be among the three issues (next to the economy and global leadership) deciding the election. Regardless of political party or persuasion, the answer to the rising tide of health-care costs lies not within the stars, but in forcing greater efficiency out of the current system.

READ MORE

GREENHOUSE AFFECT

Trendy climate-change policies like ethanol and other biofuels are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels, according to two studies published in Science, a peer-reviewed journal. The first study, by ecologists at Princeton University and the Woods Hole Research Center, break new ground by exposing a kind of mega-accounting error:

> About 2.7 times more carbon is stored in terrestrial soils and plant material than in the atmosphere, and this carbon is released when these areas are cleared. Compounding problems is the loss of "carbon sinks" that absorb atmospheric CO2 in the bargain.

> When the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline.

> In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol "pays back" the carbon released by land-use change.

[167 years - I believe we're all supposed to be drowned by then]

READ MORE

THE $3 TRILLION COP-OUT

The $3.1 trillion budget ... reminds us of the huge gap between uplifting political rhetoric and the grim realities of governing. Budgets are not just numbers. They express political choices. What should government do and who should pay? The reigning philosophy, practiced by both parties and largely approved by the public, is to evade choices /snip/

> Since 1961, the federal government has run deficits in all but five years; only the surplus of 1969 stemmed from deliberate policy: a 10 percent income surtax reluctantly passed by Congress in 1968.

> The others (1998-2001) mostly reflected good fortune: the end of the Cold War, resulting in a 40 percent drop in defense spending as a share of the economy, and an unexpected surge in taxes from the economic boom.

> Neither was a policy act of the Clinton administration or the then-Republican Congress.

The most telling figures in his budget involve his proposal to eliminate or dramatically reduce 151 programs, for a savings of $18 billion. That's six-tenths of 1 percent of federal spending. What's telling, though, is that Congress will probably reject even many of these proposal...

READ MORE

Obama Defends Driver's Licenses for Illegals

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told ABC's David Muir Saturday that his support for driver's licenses for illegal immigrants will not block his path to the White House because he and G.O.P. frontrunner John McCain share substantial overlap on immigration. "I think they will pounce on any issue that has to do with immigration," said Obama, referring to Republicans, "but my position has been very similar to John McCain's,

[too true. literally]

READ MORE

DON'T WRITE VOUCHERS OFF

Vouchers are more successful than ever. A recent referendum loss in Utah should be weighed against the many victories vouchers have achieved across the nation. Consider:

> Since 2000, vouchers have had their greatest period of legislative success; of the 21 school choice programs that exist, 12 were enacted in the past eight years, and the fastest growth has been in the past three years.

> Moreover, 10 existing programs have been expanded in the same three years; vouchers have never been more successful in state legislatures than right now.

As to the quality argument, most high quality research finds that private schools produce better academic achievement. Ten studies of voucher programs found that students using vouchers to attend private schools outperformed their public school peers on standardized tests. The results in eight of the studies reached a high degree of statistical certainty, says Enlow.

READ MORE

Joy Behar: McCain 'Very Conservative in All His Policies'

[alright screw the rule re: campaigns - enough is enough]

Is ABC "View" co-host Joy Behar so far out of the political mainstream that she has a skewed sense of what entails a "liberal" and a "conservative?" The same woman who called Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "very moderate" on the February 7 show, John McCain has "been very conservative in all his policies." Apparently anyone who does not march lockstep with NARAL is an arch-conservative, as Behar explained that McCain is "so conservative because he’s against choice."

[yeah, that and wanting to close Gitmo]

[oh, and favoring affirmative action and voting against every paycheck protection bill he's ever seen (union dues toward political campaigns)]

[oops, almost forgot voting against the Bush tax cuts twice - and forget the 'no reduction in spending' reason explanation he gives now, then he played the class warfare card, saying it was a tax cut 'for the wealthy' {if you're reading this on a computer, that would be you}]

[oh yeah, on the personal liberties front he's a rabid smoker-persecutionist {yes I made that up} and supported the clipper chip and {encryption} key-escrow bills as well as internet filtering]

[now that I think of it, on taxes he's supported raising social security taxes while repeatedly opposing attempts to abolish the death tax, and on business he's perpetually depicted big pharma as evil while supporting government spending on embryonic stem cell research big pharma's evidently to dumb to see the value in investing in itself]

[and all this before considering 'McCain-Feingold', the biggest attack on free speech in the nation's history, 'McCain-Kennedy', the insulting amnesty immigration bill he continues to say wasn't wrong, and his co-sponsorship of a bill (name escapes right now) that would dramatically raise taxes on 'all forms of carbon based energy' (oil., gas, coal - i.e., all our energy) in the name of 'combating global warming' because "Alaska is melting" {those are quote marks}]

[other than that I'm sure he's a real conservative guy - but what do I know, I'm just a non-declared independent]

READ MORE

[hey, what's with the Apple laptop on the table? that's stereotyping and I resent it - "I've been profiled!"]