Heroes: Wounded in Iraq, National Guardsman Wants to Return

For an Arkansas Army National Guardsman, the war in Iraq came to an abrupt end in the alley of a Baghdad neighborhood on June 13, 2004. [snip] it was eight days before Pannell awoke at Walter Reed Army Medical Center here to find doctors had amputated his right leg below the knee and his left leg above the knee.

Two prosthetic legs and plenty of physical therapy have Pannell up and walking again, and despite all he’s been through, he wants to return to the country where his life was turned upside-down.

“I think it would be vitally important for those dudes to realize that once we get hurt, we don’t forget about them,” Pannell said. “That’s something a lot of people can’t understand, but it’s impossible. It’s impossible to forget your guys.”

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Big News from Baghdad

[there...]
If you’re looking for one measure of the impact of last year’s troop surge in Iraq, look at Gen. David Petraeus as he walks through a Baghdad neighborhood, with no body armor, and no helmet. It’s been one year since the beginning of what’s known here as Operation Fardh Al Qadnoon.

“A big part of the effort, over the last year, has been to determine who is reconcilable, who, literally, is willing to put down his rifle and talk, who is willing to shout, instead of shoot.” Petraeus said.

Petraeus now expresses cautious optimism. “I have to tell you that, having been here for a number of years, this is very encouraging, actually. I mean, this is, this is potentially a big moment.” he said.

[poor delusional idiot - didn't he hear the Speaker of the House just inform us that "there's been no progress" in Iraq? shell shocked I guess]

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Our Unilateral Disarmament - Lawyers Before Safety

[here...]
It's hard to think of an action that has put as many lives at risk as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D.-Calif.) declaration of unilateral disarmament in the War on Terror last week. By refusing to renew our ability to monitor terrorist communications overseas, Speaker Pelosi has put Americans at risk. She has blinded our counterterrorism capability and shut down America's most sophisticated defenses against the irreconcilable wing of Islam. As of midnight Feb. 16 the law governing America's defense has reverted to a state inadequate to stop terrorists. Why? Because the Democratic left believes lining the pockets of trial lawyers is more important than stopping terrorists.

As Robert Novak reported Monday, the trial lawyers -- the Democrats' most important source of political contributions -- have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking millions of dollars against phone companies for helping keep us safe by responding to the request of intelligence agencies to provide critical information about suspected terrorist communications without a warrant. The continued cooperation of the telecom companies in monitoring terrorist communications is crucial to America's defense, which is why the Senate bill contained the immunity provision...

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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. It's about the economy.

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?

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Our Balkans Error

Demonstrations and riots on Serbia's border with northern Kosovo — which Serbs consider to be their nation's heartland — have caused NATO forces in the area to seal off the border. Fearing violence, the EU has withdrawn 2,000 officials there. This leaves NATO facing a very ugly decision, and soon: Use force to prevent an escalation of the rioting and anger by Serbs, who feel betrayed by Europe and the U.S., or stand back and let it happen.

The removal of European Union officials from Kosovo, the newly independent former Serbian province, is bad news. Trouble is on the way, and once again the U.S. may be asked to clean up the mess. Supporting a Muslim separatist movement within Europe strikes us as a fool's errand, one that could lead to similar uprisings around the world from aggrieved minorities...

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Russia assures Serbia of its support on Kosovo

[to say nothing of these guys...]
Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian first deputy prime minister and the presumptive successor to President Vladimir Putin, committed the Kremlin on Monday to long-term support in backing Serbia against an independent Kosovo.

"We proceed from the understanding that Serbia is a single state with its jurisdiction spanning its entire territory, and we will stick to this principled stance in the future," he said, in remarks reported widely on news broadcasts in Russia. "Serbia," he added, faces "conditions of illegitimate actions to unilaterally recognize Kosovo."

The United States reacted quickly to Medvedev's statements and restated its own support for Kosovo. It made clear that, in Washington's view, Kosovo's break from Serbia was final.

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Pentagon Chief Says NATO's Very Survival is at Stake in Afghanistan Mission

Survival of the NATO alliance, a cornerstone of American security policy for six decades, is at stake in the debate over how the United States and Europe should share the burden of fighting Islamic extremism in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday.

"We must not -- we cannot -- become a two-tiered alliance of those willing to fight and those who are not," "Such a development, with all its implications for collective security, would effectively destroy the alliance,"

Washington has had innumerable disputes with its NATO allies in the 59 years since it was founded as a bulwark against the former Soviet Union. But today's debate over the importance of the mission in Afghanistan and how to accomplish it was portrayed by Gates as among the most difficult ever.

A central theme of Gates' speech was his assertion that al-Qaida extremists, either in Afghanistan or elsewhere, pose a greater threat to Europe than many Europeans realize.

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MORE PRIVATE HEALTH CARE IN CANADA URGED

The architect of Quebec's now-overburdened public health care system is proposing further privatization and user fees of up to $98 for people to see their family doctor. Former provincial Liberal health minister Claude Castonguay concluded that Quebec can no longer sustain the annual growth in health care costs. The province currently spends about $23.6 billion annually on health care, or about 40 per cent of its budget. Recommendations include:

> An additional tax based on income and the number of visits made to a doctor's office or hospital in a calendar year. Low-income families and children would be exempt.
> Encouraging private-sector involvement in the management of hospitals and medical clinics.
> Lifting a ban that prevents doctors from practicing both in the public system and privately.
> Raising the provincial sales tax by up to one percentage point.

"If nothing is done, at one point we will reach a crisis point ... this is why we say it is urgent to act," Castonguay said. "There's no miracle solution, there is no simple solution."

[au contraire; personal medical savings accounts, established when young, tax deferred and appreciating like 401k's, but immediately available for medical reasons, with unused funds eventually returned, even if only in part, to the contributors after retirement would work miracles. It would be our money that's being spent - and free market principles could finally be brought to bear]

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Global Warming? New Data Shows Ice Is Back

according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a Feb. 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades... If global warming gets any worse we'll all freeze to death.

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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.

Busting The Myth Across Industries

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.
[snip]
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 the minimum wage of $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).

[whenever we're told about jobs Americans won't do it's a lie; natives hold the majority of all (legal) 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 for employers who knowingly hire them, and let market forces re-level to natural levels? Yeah, radical]

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Police hunt little old lady

Police are hunting an armed robber who tried to hold up a Post Office - described as a little old lady in her 60s. The pensioner, believed to be aged between 65 and 70, entered the shop in Northenden, Manchester, armed with the blade and threatened the cashier demanding money. Staff activated the store's alarms and the woman shuffled off empty handed.

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/article.html?in_article_id=99830&in_page_id=2

....................................Last day on the job.