Friday, March 7, 2008
‘Active First’ Grad Continues Family Tradition
Pvt. Raymond Loree has become the first Army National Guard soldier to graduate directly into the active Army’s ranks through a new program called “Active First,” in which recruits commit to service in the active-duty Army followed by service in the National Guard.
“It’s my time to serve my country,” Loree said by telephone from Fort Leonard Wood, where he was trained as a combat engineer. ... “I feel motivated,” Loree said. “It’s very motivating knowing that I can get up in the morning serving my country.” ... “Growing up as a kid, I looked up to my dad. I always wanted to serve our country. I get to keep the tradition going.”
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Superb Performance Reflects Force Quality, Personnel Chief Says
The United States has purposely “set high standards for the quality of that force and for the motivation of the young people that seek to join the American military,” Chu explained.
“And, I believe we see the payoff to those high standards in the performance of this force in the field, which has been truly remarkable,” Chu said. “It is a tribute, in my judgment, to this young generation of Americans and to some not-so-young Americans” serving worldwide in the U.S. military. "
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MoveOn, Edwards Unite to 'End' Iraq War
Liberal activist groups MoveOn.org, USAction, Americans United for Change, VoteVets, and the Service Employees International Union, along with former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards joined forces Monday to announce a $20-million public 'awareness' and lobbying campaign to promote a perceived link between the war in Iraq and a weakening U.S. economy.
[snip]
"This Iraq and recession campaign will focus on members of Congress and the Senate who stand in our way, and on Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is arguing for an Iraq policy that takes us in a dramatically different direction,"
[he' right on that point: it's called victory]
[snip]
But Brian Riedl, senior budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, told Cybercast News Service that if Mr. Edwards is in any way suggesting the war is responsible for the receding economy, he is mistaken.
"The idea that Iraq spending is causing our economic woes has no basis in any economic theory whatsoever," ..."It's not economically plausible that spending 1 percent of GDP in Iraq would cause a recession."
[damn facts]
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Hamas hails 'heroic' attack
Gaza City - The Palestinian Hamas movement hailed a deadly attack on a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem tonight as ''heroic,'' without claiming responsibility for the strike that killed eight people. ''This heroic attack in Jerusalem is a normal response to the crimes of the occupier...'' (Snip) Hundreds of Palestinians poured into the streets of Gaza City as news of the attack at a west Jerusalem yeshiva spread, firing automatic rifles into the air in celebration.
[the 'occupier' left Gaza in 2005]
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Thanks for your help, Germany
Germany has refused to deploy additional troops to Afghanistan to assist beleaguered Canadian and Dutch forces in the south. The flat refusal to help is a big blow to those desperately trying to get NATO countries who do not have troops in active combat zones to commit to the fight:
Make no mistake. This is the diplomatic crisis of the war in Afghanistan. NATO countries are terrified of the political firestorm that would erupt if they put their troops in harms way and they suffered casualties. The European left is looking for any excuse to get troops out of Afghanistan and nations like Germany, France, Belgium, refuse to change their rules of engagement and prohibit their troops to engage the Taliban.
Meanwhile, the Canucks and their 2500 troops along with a small contingent of Dutch soldiers try and hold off the Taliban at the point where inflitration over the Pakistani border is most common - in Kandahar province. This is while German troops sit at the Kabul airport in perfect safety.
If NATO won't fight in Afghanistan where so much is at stake, where will they fight?
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Colombian rebels find haven in Venezuela
El Cruce, Venezuela -- Leftist rebels fighting Colombia's U.S.-backed military have increasingly found refuge in Venezuela, where they get weapons, food, medical treatment and a smuggling route for the cocaine that keeps them afloat. Former rebels, local citizens and Colombian officials told The Associated Press that hundreds or even thousands of Colombian insurgents are in Venezuela at any given time. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who last month publicly recognized the rebels as "insurgent forces."
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1.9m on benefit 'should go back to work'
[UK]
Up to two thirds of people claiming incapacity benefit are not entitled to the state handout, the Government's new welfare adviser warns today. David Freud, an investment banker hired by James Purnell, the new Work and Pensions Secretary, said the disability tests used to award state aid were "ludicrous" and could be costing billions of pounds.
[but it supports the top goal of all government bureaucracies: grow and expand themselves.]
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A CLEAR CHOICE
Meaningful health care reform has to be national. But the answer is not to subject the whole country to ideas that don't work at the state level. What the country needs is a shift in priorities, from extending coverage to attacking costs.
Once that decision is made -- to make affordability, not scope of coverage, the first objective -- then there's a clear choice to make. Policymakers have just two options if they want to reduce the cost of something: They can stimulate competition or impose price controls.
Control is the norm in most of the world's health care. Competition is the insurgent model. It's getting a test in the Medicare prescription drug program, which actually has cost less than expected.
Congress created the current regulatory regime and could get rid of it, but the political climate would have to change first. Democrats will have to stop scoring cheap points by demonizing the insurance business. They'll have to recognize that insurers are part of the solution, not the problem, and that profit in health care is not a dirty word.
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Climate change: Science, not insult
Scientific methodology should be sacrosanct — it requires competing hypotheses to be tested over and over again to make sure we have the right conclusion. Sometimes, new data require the old to be thrown out in favour of the new.
[snip]
Here’s an example from the world of climatology. Several years ago, the work of Michael Mann inspired a profound belief that temperature trend lines were shaped like a hockey stick — flat for a long time, then a sharp increase in recent years due to carbon emissions. It took the careful work of two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, to show that Mann’s data and statistical methodology were flawed, disproving one of the bedrock arguments in carbon-induced global warming theory. The “hockey stick” is no longer touted.
[snip]
If anyone should be thrown into jail, it’s someone who believes people should be locked up if they challenge a scientific hypothesis. Instead, it should be left to the scientists to sort out what ideas hold up through empirical verification. This is the essence of good science, and we should make sure we don’t undermine its important process.
[one correction: Mann's infamous hockey stick, which had the minor 'flaw' of returning an upturn-curve even if random data was input - is still used pervasively to this day, and is in fact the underlying 'data' for several of Gore's slides in An Inconvenient Truth - coming to a public school near you...]
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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.
• 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.
• 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:
• 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. et tu?]
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Notable Quotable
Kris W. Kobach, Former Immigration Law Counsel to the U.S. Attorney General, Regarding a Real-Time, Working Solution to Illegal Immigration:
"On Jan. 1, Arizona became the first state to require all employers to confirm workers' legal status via the federal 'E-Verify' system.
"After just six weeks, Arizona's system is already working: Newspapers in the state report that illegals are self-deporting by the thousands. Apartment complexes in Phoenix and Tucson confirm that thousands of tenants have skipped town. Many are returning across the border to Mexico.
"This success is proof that attrition through enforcement works. The premise is straightforward: The way to solve our illegal-immigration problem is to ratchet up enforcement while making it more difficult for employers to hire illegals
[six weeks. it isn't rocket science]
Source
Foreclosure 'Crisis' Hype: 'American Dream Slipping Away'
hursday's CBS Evening News greeted reports of a 0.83 percent 4th quarter foreclosure rate with just under 6 percent of mortgages more than a month past due as proof “the American dream” is “slipping away” since “foreclosures are spreading like cancer.”
Those may indeed be unusually high levels, but the American dream is hardly “slipping away” when 99.17 percent are not in foreclosure and 94.18 percent are paying on time or nearly on time.
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Do you have a legal right to own a gun?
Guns, and questions about how much power the government has to keep people from owning them, are at the core of one of the most divisive topics in American politics. Nowhere is that divide more pronounced than in the gap between Americans' beliefs about their rights under the Second Amendment, and how courts have interpreted the law. Nearly three out of four Americans — 73% — believe the Second Amendment spells out an individual right to own a firearm...
[stop: one of the few issues where the American populace has a long standing super-majority of opinion - 3 out of 4 - and the piece starts by calling it 'one of the most divisive' topics in America'? It's only divisive to the small minority in the liberal media that routinely report it with this kind of slant. Typical 'professional' journalism.']
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California court: Home school parents must have teaching credential
California
California parents without teaching credentials can no longer home school their children, according to a recent state appellate court ruling.
"Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children," Justice H. Walter Croskey wrote in a Feb. 28 opinion for the 2nd District Court of Appeals.
Noncompliance could lead to criminal complaints against the parents, the judge said. An estimated 166,000 students in California are home schooled.
To earn a five-year preliminary teaching credential in California, a person must obtain a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university and complete multiple examinations.
[snip]
"I have sincerely held religious beliefs," he said. "Public schools conflict with that. I have to go with what my conscience requires me."
[yeah the net's afire with calls for the judges head, but that's not the problem. He mentions the lack of constitutional right because that's what's needed not to enforce the laws on the books, which our education 'system' has jury-rigged to require state {by which I mean government at any level} approval before you can teach your own children. That invariably leads to the state deciding what your children will, or won't, be taught (and hence, think). Consider that last point re: religious beliefs - and its implications for any of us that hold any views not embraced by our government. In this country citizen used to tell government what it was and wasn't allowed to do - it's rapidly becoming the other away around, even in matters as intensely personal of what we'll teach our children. The good news is it has the same solution...]
Governor: governor@governor.ca.gov and http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
CA State Legislature = http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html
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