Heroes: Group ‘LEEPS’ to Help Afghan Police

Steve Newton started the Law Enforcement Equipment Program as a way to provide used gear for American armed forces units to use in training or equipping friendly foreign police forces. The program accepts donations of used equipment from U.S. law enforcement departments and helps get it overseas.

“We simply act as a go-between for the American law enforcement community and the military,” Newton said of the organization, more commonly known as “LEEP.”

[i.e., yet another example of individual US soldiers taking the initiative to help above and beyond their already humbling sacrifices]

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Iraq political 'surge' uplifts U.S. officials

Iraq's parliament in recent weeks has passed a package of laws on the budget, elections and sectarian reconciliation that have given cautious hope to U.S. officials and private analysts that the gains from President Bush's military surge are finally being matched by a political surge as well.

"The popular image is that things are completely deadlocked in Baghdad," he said. "That's not what we found at all."

Instead, he said, the delegation found Iraqi politicians cutting deals, making compromises and forming alliances based more on power and votes that on religious or ethnic bonds.

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Arabs to UN: Scold Israel for hitting Gaza back

The Arab League has demanded — and received — an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council following the Israeli counterattack on Gaza. They want the UNSC to issue a condemnation for Israel’s military action, which has killed over 70 Gazans, essentially blaming Israel for responding to the continuing volley of rocket attacks on Sderot and Ashkelon: The U.N. Security Council is meeting in emergency session at the request of the Palestinians and their Arab supporters who want the U.N.’s most powerful body to condemn the Israeli attack on Gaza and call for a cease-fire.

[Israel's only been responding - i.e., stop lobby rockets into their cities and viola: cease fire. That hasn't been proposed by the arab league.]

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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.
[snip]
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...

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Has Russia got a new Stalin?

...Russians who choose to cast their ballots will be participating in an election that is not really an election, in order to choose a president who, most likely, will not really be a president. Add to this the fact that Vladimir Putin is also only sort-of stepping down - he will instead return as prime minister - and you have a classic example of what the Kremlin once called "managed democracy"...

Just to be on the safe side, the Kremlin has also banned any of Putin's serious critics from standing. Three unelectable misfits have been allowed to mount token challenges.

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[A: 'yes' - but with a difference: Russia is now getting rich off its oil and gas sales because we refuse to compete with our own reserves. When Russia completes its gas pipelines to Europe, it will virtually enslave it - exactly why Reagan worked so hard to prevent it. Flashback: 2/11/2008:

Russia threatens gas cutoff
Russia's state-controlled gas supplier Gazprom on Monday gave neighbouring Ukraine a reprieve of a few hours in a debt dispute, but still said it would stop sending gas to the country of 47 million people if an agreement isn't reached. The conflict is being watched nervously in European Union countries that get Russian gas through pipelines crossing Ukraine, fearing a repeat of the supply disruptions that hit during January 2006 when Russia halted gas to Ukraine for several days amid a fierce argument over price hikes.

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PAYING PATIENTS TEST BRITISH HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Patients, doctors and officials across the health care system widely acknowledge that patients regularly must pay for some parts of their treatment despite a supposedly 'free' system :

> A 46-year-old woman with breast cancer who paid $250 for a second opinion when the health service refused to provide her with one.

> An elderly man who spent thousands of dollars on a new hearing aid instead of enduring a yearlong wait on the health service.

> A 29-year-old woman who, with her doctor's blessing, bought a three-month supply of Tarceva, a drug to treat pancreatic cancer, for more than $6,000 on the Internet because she could not get it through the NHS.

Officials say that allowing people to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones. But others say what is really unfair is a health service riddled with inequities.

[when it's government run, all aspect of political correctness bleed into it and it's a race to the bottom, including banning folks from buying treatment themselves]

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MEDICARE SPENDING TO SURGE

Driven by the aging of the baby-boom generation and rising costs of new drugs and medical technology, government spending on health care could nearly double by 2017:

> Health-care spending in the United States will hit $4.3 trillion by 2017, nearly double the 2007 amount; equating to nearly 20 percent of gross domestic product.

> In 2007, health-care spending accounted for 16.3 percent of GDP, but more of that cost is expected to shift to government agencies -- even as the federal government struggles to shrink huge deficits.

> Medicare spending alone is expected to grow to $844 billion in 2017, up from $427 billion in 2007.

[the costs of this sector are (and have been) out of control, because we've no cost pressure such as seen in every other industry where people spend their own money (vs. our employers - which is 'free' to too many). Government programs will only make the situation worse; we need tax deferred individual medical savings accounts - the longer we wait, the more harm will be done (one fifth of our GDP!?)]

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The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change

March 2 - March 4, 2008
Marriott New York Marquis Times Square Hotel
1535 Broadway
New York City, NY U.S.A.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change is the first major international conference to focus on issues and questions not answered by advocates of the theory of man-made global warming.

Hundreds of scientists, economists, and public policy experts from around the world will gather on March 2-4, 2008, at the Marriott New York Marquis Hotel on Manhattan’s Time Square, to call attention to widespread dissent in the scientific community to the alleged “consensus” that the modern warming is primarily man-made and is a crisis.

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When Illegal Immigration Trends Converge

Public School Growth Driven by Illegal Immigration
[snip]
From 1993-2003, a veritable wave of Hispanic students rolled into public schools, representing 64% of all new student enrollments. One particular sentence in the latest Pew Research Center population rings my alarm bell.

"Demographic change has major implications for government spending in key areas such as schools, health programs, community services, infrastructure and Social Security."

But that warning only lists implications for key areas of "government spending." What about the consequences related to unemployment, poverty, crime, housing, and public health? Big decisions in the lives of individuals and nations often bring unintended consequences - some good, some not. The full scope of negative consequences takes time to surface.

Future historians will ask,

"What were the nation's leaders thinking when they tacitly adopted an open borders policy that, in a relatively short period of time, dramatically altered the national demographics?"

Among answers offered will be these...

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Independent truckers see end of the road

Trucker Robert Griffith is on the road three weeks out of four, pulling oversize loads like crane booms, railroad ties and air conditioning ducts. One of his biggest worries: How he'll find the money to buy his daughter a prom dress. As the cost of diesel doubled over the last four years, his take-home pay has plummeted, from $50,000 to $11,000 last year. He's literally burning money; he spent $64,000 on diesel in the last eight months.

[it's our energy 'policy', stupid]

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What, Me Commie?

Those of us with any understanding of history have a profound disdain for what has become known as Che Chic -- the rampant popularity amongst the ignorant of the recently retired Fidel Castro's designated Revolutionary hit man, Che Guevara.

Shirts, hats, and flags bearing the likeness of the Central and South American Communist assassin have adorned the bodies, heads and campaign offices of some of the world's finest mindless.

So it was with joyous exhuberence that I came upon the current issue of Mad Magazine whilst strolling through the grocer's this afternoon. For the cover art alone (below), it was indeed an absolute must purchase.