WASHINGTON, Nov. 6, 2008 – About 3,000 soldiers assigned to the 101st Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team will leave Iraq nearly two months earlier than planned, military officials said.
Improved security and decreased violence across the unit’s area of operations in northwestern Baghdad is enabling the early redeployment of the soldiers back to Fort Campbell, Ky., Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters today.
The unit is commencing pack-up operations, Whitman said, and its return window is around the Thanksgiving-Christmas holiday season.
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Friday, November 7, 2008
‘Screaming Eagles’ to Come Home Early
Thanksgiving is approaching...
[HT:LH!]
The holiday countdown is on, and we have thousands of soldiers registered with our Foster-A-Soldier and Group and Unit Support Programs who are still waiting to receive their first package. What better time to put a smile on a soldier’s face than right now?
We know your heart is with the troops. And we hate asking you to open up your wallets. But without your support, many soldiers will go without this holiday season. If you can’t send a package, you can still help by forwarding this newsletter. Do you belong to a group, church or organization that could pitch in and send a package? Would your company consider supporting a soldier for the holidays? Our Group Gift Department is standing by, ready to create a program just for you.
Want to know what a package means to our soldiers? Check out this thank you sent by Steve Henderson, pictured above, to his friends at Dunkin Donuts last Christmas.
Dear Angela Rae:
I wanted to thank you and all of the people at Dunkin Donuts very much for the Treats for Troops box. All of us in the office shared the goodies and they were great. All of the items were awesome and the Christmas tree was fantastic. We felt like it was Christmas and you know what, it was!!! Thanks for all of your support.
A Thank You from America in Every Package
Shopping is Easy
Treats for Troops makes it easy to put a smile on a soldier's face. Visit Gifts to Go for ready-to-send packages, or shop for individual items on Market Street. Visit Foster-A-Soldier to choose a soldier to sponsor by home state, branch of service, gender or area of deployment. Click on Shop Now if you know your soldier's address or TFT ID. No time to shop? Contact Group Gift and we'll shop for you.
How to Help Without Spending a Dime
The number of soldiers registering with Treats for Troops goes up every month. But with more people having to pinch pennies and cut corners to make ends meet, the number of soldiers being sponsored is way down. We could really use your help reaching out to individuals, groups and organizations who support the troops. So please pass this newsletter along, or copy this link and e-mail it: http://www.treatsfortroops.com. You can also click on the Forward to a Friend Link up in the Quick Links at the Top right.
[PLEASE PASS THIS ON...]
.
Pentagon spends $442m on 'multiple kill' space interceptors
The US Missile Defence Agency has assigned a further $442m for work on ''multiple kill vehicles'', designed to let a single American interceptor rocket destroy several orbital targets.
The multi-kill capability is seen as vital if the nascent US missile shield is ever to become a credible defence. Friday's contract award was to Raytheon, to work on their MKV-R concept.
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Russia successfully test-fires new Bulava missile
Moscow - The Russian Navy successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday, officials said. The Bulava missile was launched from the submerged Dmitry Donskoy nuclear submarine in the White Sea
The Bulava is designed to have a range of 6,200 miles and carry six individually targeted nuclear warheads. It is expected to equip new Borei-class nuclear submarines, the first of which, Yuri Dolgoruky, was to be commissioned later this year.
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Iran to get missile system from Russia
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Russia has agreed to sell an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, Iran's defense minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday, a report likely to irritate the United States. S-300 missiles are longer-ranging than the TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles which Russia, in a deal criticized by the West, earlier this year said it had delivered to the Islamic Republic under a $1 billion contract.
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Russia to Obama: Move to the Back of the Bus
Whether or not we should reach across party lines, we are still one country. We are like a dysfunctional family. While we may or may not always like each other our American family comprises the core of how we first see and know the world. As a family we should always bond tightly together when threatened from the outside. 
Yesterday Russian President Medvedev addressed POTUS Elect Obama. Medvedev did not congratulate, extend any offer of cooperation, or show any respect for President Elect Obama. Rather, Medvedev threatened direct attacks on European allies and further military action if President-elect Obama doesn't know Obama's place and act accordingly.
No one ... and I mean no one ... has the right to tell our President Elect to go to the back of the bus. Conservatives, moderates, and liberals alike, we should all be outraged.
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Putin may return to Kremlin in '09: report
[HT:BJ]
MOSCOW– Russian President Dmitry Medvedev could resign from his post in 2009 to pave the way for Vladimir Putin to return to the Kremlin, Vedomosti newspaper reported on Thursday, citing an unidentified source close to the Kremlin.Medvedev Wednesday proposed increasing the presidential term to six years from four years, a step the newspaper said was part of a plan drawn up by Vladislav Surkov, who serves as Medvedev's first deputy chief of staff.
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Chavez takes over biggest gold mine in Venezuela
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government will take over and nationalize La Cristinas, the biggest gold mine in the country owned by Canada's Crystallex, Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz said Wednesday. The move is part of leftist Chavez's socialist agenda that calls for nationalizing Venezuela's natural resources.
(Snip) ''This mine will be seized and managed by a state administration''
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[the 'prequel':]
The Glories of Socialism
October 13, 2008
Hugo Chavez has ruined the Venezuelan oil industry.
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U.N. Anti-Blasphemy Resolution Curtails Free Speech
Religious groups and free-speech advocates are banding together to fight a United Nations resolution they say is being used to spread Sharia law to the Western world and to intimidate anyone who criticizes Islam...
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China Sends Global Warming Ransom Note
China has now destroyed Western hopes for a new global warming agreement, just weeks before global talks in Poland aimed at writing a successor for the Kyoto Protocol— which expires in 2012. China has attached a ransom note to its Polish meeting RSVP: They might go along with a new warming pact if the rich countries agree to hand over 1 percent of their GDP—about $300 billion per year—to finance the required non-fossil, higher-cost energy systems the West wants the developing countries to use.
China, India, Brazil, and Mexico had already demanded—in July— that the developed countries cut their emissions by 80–95 percent by 2050. Very unlikely... [snip]
The EU has loudly boasted of trying to set an 80-percent cut in its emissions, but that now looks impossible. Italy, Poland, Hungary, and Greece are part of a “blocking force” saying says they can’t afford to give up coal and oil. Especially when the only alternative is imported Russian gas; Russia recently “invaded” Georgia, many think to stop Georgian efforts to build a gas pipeline that would have competed with Russia’s.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who helped create the Kyoto Protocol, now says that drastic cuts in CO2 emissions are “ill-advised climate policy.” She’s building 26 brown-coal power plants instead, and re-thinking the German promise to scuttle its nuclear power plants.
Don’t spend much of your “worry time” on a new climate treaty however. Global temperatures are doing their best to tell us that CO2 isn’t very important after all...
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A Really Bad Idea
... First, the plan will first destroy America's domestic energy producers, and once that bridge is burned, force the United States to rely on alternative energies that have not been developed.
History shows that centrally planned industries fail, and when there's an energy shortage, the private sector works best when it's left alone. The Obama plan would also destroy America's best competitive advantage -- its treasure trove of coal and the companies that produce it. Consider:
- America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with the world's largest demonstrated reserve base of 489 billion short tons.
- About 93 percent of it is used to produce electricity, and it provides about half of U.S. electricity needs.
- As the nation's economy expands, that need for coal is projected to grow about 20 percent by 2030.
- If that need can't be met, consumers will be hit with high prices brought on by shortages.
- Meanwhile, America's 80,000 miners and 1.6 million workers in coal-related and coal-dependent industries would suffer from taxes on new coal power plants.
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Capitalism and the Financial Crisis
Professor George Reisman has written a very insightful article on his blog titled "The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis." You can decide whether we have in an unregulated laissez-faire economy. [snip]
... the Departments of: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce, and Interior. In addition, there is the alphabet soup cluster of federal agencies such as: the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH, and NASA.
Here's my question to you: Can one be sane and at the same time hold that ours is an unregulated laissez-faire economy? Better yet, tell me what a businessman, or for that matter you, can do that does not involve some kind of government regulation. [snip]
The blame for our current financial mess rests with government, with the major player being the Federal Reserve Board keeping interest rates artificially low and the congressional and White House market interference in the name of more home ownership.
In the clamor for more regulation over our financial institutions, has anybody bothered to ask whether people in government know what they're doing?
[actually they tend to - the problem is that they've no incentive to do the right thing and often plenty of incentive to do the opposite. It's the nature of government that makes abysmal performance inevitable]
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Amendment to make English official language passes
JEFFERSON CITY - The Missouri Constitution will include an amendment making English the official language for all government proceedings. Voters on Tuesday approved Amendment 1, which would prohibit using any other language in all government meetings from local committees to the state Legislature.
[a good idea, differences in language is the single most divisive difference there is, and makes those who don't speak it inordinately susceptible to manipulation by special interest groups {yeah, like the rest of us have proven particularly resistant - but still}]
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Prop 8 losers don't understand Constitutional law...
California
The losers in the hotly contested issue of changing the historic definition of marriage to suddenly include all kinds of various definitions in California evidently do not understand the authority of Constitutional rule.
The Supreme Court of a State can not override specificity in the document that they themselves are organized by. (Snip) The Constitution is accountable to the will of the people, the Supreme Court is accountable to the Constitution...
[time will tell]
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New York Times Election Map Shows America As Nearly All Blue
Thursday's New York Times has a large map of the U.S. showing county-by-county election results as a sea of Democratic blue, with red areas limited to a few southern states, Arizona and Alaska. It looks like a Democratic landslide. The big blue map consumes the entire top half of the front page of the Times special election section of today’s paper.
But Barack Obama did not actually win states like Utah, Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, South Carolina, etc., that this map shows as mostly or totally blue. What the New York Times published this year is a map showing the shift in a county’s vote from 2004, not the results. So if a Republican county voted for Bush by 12 points in 2004, but only gave McCain a seven-point advantage this year, the Times paints it as blue, not red.
The Washington Post has a county-by-county results map that looks a lot like the map from 2004, although there is clearly a little more blue this year and the red is a little lighter.
There’s no disputing that Obama won on Tuesday, but the big blue map published by New York Times seems like a way to overstate the magnitude of the Democratic victory — maybe just to give liberals a nice blue souvenir to hang on their office cubicles, or maybe a subliminal way of pushing the idea of a huge mandate for liberal government.
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Media Bias Saved America?
Philadelphia Daily News senior writer Will Bunch first tried to argue that the media are not really biased, just accurate in pointing out the sleazy negativity of John McCain and the know-nothingness of Sarah Palin. But he ended by merely proclaiming that this so-called media bias "may just have saved America." Objectivity is for cowards:
But for eight years now, there’s been an out-of-control fire raging outside of the sacred sanctuary of the Temple of Objective Journalism – a fire that was built upon the USA Patriot Act and Guantanamo and rendition and torture and signing statements and 16 words in a State of the Union Address. Ultimately, saving the last fabric of democracy is more important than worrying about what commandments of journalism were stepped on while the blaze was finally extinguished.
[translation: it's ok in our case because we're right]
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The Oath of a Citizen
By Nancy Salvato Thursday, November 6, 2008
The United States of America has in one fell swoop rejected the status quo and elected the first black president. Now that the minorities in this country have seen one of their own elected to the highest office in the land, hopefully we can finally put the race issue to bed and discontinue the Balkanizing of America. Although we have our differences, these differences should not be what identify us. There should not be a hyphen in front of or behind the word American. Profiling should be left to those who investigate crime.
Although I chose to support McCain-Palin, I feel none of the angst that my Democratic brethren expressed at President Bush’s election. I am willing to accept America’s choice in the next leader of this free country.
There are two things I ask of this new administration. I ask that they respect the government that was put into place 220 years ago because it allows us the most freedom to pursue the most happiness without trampling on others’ freedom and pursuit of happiness. I ask that the change that can and should help more people realize their dreams while not occurring at someone else’s expense. Let’s begin the new era of change by teaching those who cannot fish, how, and not use the hard earned catch of some to feed others' drive and ambition. That has to come from within.
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