Day of Independence

I am so proud and happy for all Iraqis, Kurdistanis, Assyrians, and others who took part in the "free" elections. I say "free" because there may be a high price. Nothing worth have is really free. I just wish everyone would realize this. I'm grateful you do. May God bless you.

Must See TV

Blackfive has confirmation that Spirit of America will be on the ground with Friends of Democracy in Iraq to cover the real news which will be on C-SPAN at 2-4 pm EST Sunday. Everyone who is interested in seeing history in the making should tune in. Tell your friends, neighbors, relatives, and strangers. Also, I expect Christians, Jews, and Muslims to be praying for a successful election so that Iraqis may live free, prosperous, and in peace. God bless you.

"Dirty Bomb" Threat

Counter-Terrorism has revealed a possible plot to release a "dirty" (nuclear) bomb in Boston, MA. I encourage you to read this. They say it is possible that there is actually a bomb, but they have some doubts. At this point in time, the FBI and the CIA are doing everything they can with what they have, which isn't much. Please, keep informed and stay out of Boston.

Oil for Food Conviction

Samir Vincent, on Tuesday, January 18, 2005, plead guilty in Federal Court to 4 counts of accepting a total $3-5 million from Saddam. He is an American Iraqi. One crook down, 1 million to go...

"Blog" Makes Dictionary

What's the newest word getting into the dictionary for the new year? Miriam Webster's editors announce it is "blog" -- defined as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer."

...struck a telling blow at anchor Dan Rather and his CBS TV "60 Minutes II" by quickly analyzing and questioning the proportionally spaced fonts used in the so-called National Guard records of George W. Bush

....The Georgian first challenged CBS in a posting on the FreeRepublic.com Web site. "I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old," he wrote barely four hours after Mr. Rather's Sept. 8 show unveiled its "scoop." Within minutes, other bloggers were using their Internet superhighway to further analyze the typefaces -- not known to have been used in 1972 typewriters

As the Wall Street Journal later noted editorially, "this is potentially a big cultural moment." It underscored that the widespread challenge to Mr. Rather -- to his "reporting" credibility -- "means that the liberal media establishment has ceased to set the U.S. political agenda." [read more]

We've made it! Maybe not all of us are as famous, but we are important just the same. I did not know too much about type set in 1972, but who's to know I won't be the one to break a story? Who's to know you won't break story? I do know who won't break a story...MSM. Why not? They do not report. They dig for dirt against people they do not like, they cover up for people they do like. Hey, they remind me of J. Edgar Hoover. Too bad they don't have his good sense to love his country. Have a great day.

ECON4U.org and your future

Many people today are afraid of economics because people tend to make it look harder than it actually is so they can look intelligent. Why not? They have to have some reason to exsist! I have copied this from Town Hall to introduce economics to you in a simple and worthwhile way. Please take advantage of this endevour. It will be worth your time.

First Jobs Equal Big Opportunity

President Bush is moving ahead with his revolutionary vision of an ownership society. The president’s plan offers all Americans unprecedented opportunities to tailor government programs, including Social Security and medical care, to best meet their needs.

To make the most of the ownership society, Americans need a deeper understanding of economics. The current state of economic literacy is alarming. One survey shows most Americans believe companies convert 46% of their revenues into profit (the correct answer is 8%). More than two thirds believe that “the economy is not doing better than it is” because top executives are paid too much.

Given these misconceptions, it’s no surprise that so many buy into the “us vs. them” attitude deftly cultivated by those who seek to erode confidence in America’s economic system.

The FirstJobs Institute’s mission is to give Americans basic economic knowledge they need in a 21st century economy and to tell people of the unprecedented opportunities this nation offers regardless of where their career begins.

The FirstJobs Institute's ECON4U program presents short questions and answers in venues that young people frequent, such as movie theaters, bowling centers, fast food restaurants, and on the internet at ECON4U.org. These easily digested facts cover quick, important lessons in personal finance, social spending, and business economics.

To personalize the opportunity to move beyond entry-level work, the FirstJobs Institute also profiles successful community leaders and executives by highlighting the stories of their first jobs, showing how each individual turned his or her ordinary beginnings into extraordinary success. By sharing their experiences, we can dispel the common myth that most of today’s leaders were born into positions of privilege. These short stories demonstrate specifically how success was built with tools available to nearly everyone.

President Bush’s plan offers young adults the chance to take charge of their own future. But Americans will need more than opportunity. They need the right information to help make the best choices for themselves and for their families. The FirstJobs Institute is committed to the nation’s economic education – the foundation of a successful ownership society.

Visit FirstJobs.org to take the ECON4U quiz, see current profiles of how today’s business leaders began their careers, and to contact project manager Erin Grant at grant@firstjobs.org to see how you or your company can participate and support this important mission.

The following was a paid message from the FirstJobs Institute.

Townhall.com
214 Massachusetts Ave NE
Washington, DC 20002
I will be visiting this site, even though I have taken 2 courses in Economics. It's never too late to learn, and there is always more to learn! I hope this helps someone. Have a great day.

Mark Steyn Rides Again, 1/4/05

Mark is a very talented voice on the blogosphere who just happens to also write for the news media. Now, hold on folks...he's one of the good guys! He had done it again with this column. I have only copied a small part of it, so I don't get in trouble and you can go to actual site. I have also included his site. Enjoy! Have a great day.

The same old tune,
Surprise, surprise: Asian tsunami tragedy inspires anti-American sniping.
By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist

"In the heyday of musical comedy, they used to have what they called "catalogue songs" - great long laundry lists of examples that all go to prove the same point - that "You're the Top" or "These Foolish Things Remind Me of You." That's the way it is with the world's opinion formers these days. Whatever happens anywhere on the planet all goes to prove the same central point - the iniquity of America.

Even so, you'd think an unprecedented tsunami in a region that's never been a U.S. sphere of influence would be hard to pin on the Great Satan. And, to be fair to the global rent-a-quote crowd, for an hour or two they were stunned into silence. But it wasn't long before they were back singing the same old song: Disaffected young Muslim men in Saudi Arabia, devastated coastal villages in Sri Lanka... These Foolish Things Remind Me of U-S-A. You really need Cole Porter:

You're The Pits
With your massive armies
You're The Pits
And you cause tsunamis.

Jan Egeland, that Norwegian bloke who's the U.N. humanitarian honcho, got the ball rolling with general remarks about the big countries' "stinginess." In particular, he thinks U.S. taxes are too low.

Got that? Those tightwad Yanks aren't doing enough.

But whoa, hang on. It turns out those pushy Yanks are doing way too much, at least according to Clare Short..."

Mark Steyn can be read here and you can read the entire article here. Hat tip to my friend Dan Foty.

American Stinginess is Saving Lives

By Mark Steyn (Filed: 01/04/2005)

A week ago, people kept asking me for my opinion of the tsunami, and, to be honest, I didn't have one. It didn't seem the kind of thing to have an "opinion" on, even for an opinion columnist - not like who should win the election or whether we should have toppled Saddam. It was obviously a catastrophe, and it was certain the death toll would keep rising, and other than that there didn't seem a lot to opine about.

I've never subscribed to Macmillan's tediously over-venerated bit of political wisdom about "events, dear boy, events". Most "events" - even acts of God - come, to one degree or another, politically predetermined: almost exactly a year before the tsunamis, there were two earthquakes - one measuring 6.5 in California, one of 6.3 in Iran. The Californian quake killed two people and did little physical damage. The Iranian one killed 40,000 and reduced an entire city to rubble - not just the glories of ancient Persia, but all the schools and hospitals from the 1970s and 1980s. The event in itself wasn't devastating; the conditions on the ground made it so.

That said, a sudden unprecedented surge by the Indian Ocean is as near to a pure "event" as one can get, and it seemed churlish to huff afterwards about why the governments of Somalia or the Maldives hadn't made a tsunami warning system one of their budgetary priorities.

But the waters recede and the familiar contours of the political landscape re-emerge - in this case, the need to fit everything to the Great Universal Theory of the age, that whatever happens, the real issue is the rottenness of America. Jan Egeland, the Norwegian bureaucrat who's the big humanitarian honcho at the UN, got the ball rolling with some remarks about the "stinginess" of certain wealthy nations. And Clare Short piled in, and then Polly Toynbee threw in her three-ha'porth, reminding us that " 'Charity begins at home' is the mean-minded dictum of the Right". But even Telegraph readers subscribe to the Great Universal Theory. On our Letters Page, Robert Eddison dismissed the "paltry $15 million from Washington" as "worse than stingy. The offer - since shamefacedly upped to $35 million - equates to what? Three oil tycoons' combined annual salary?"

Mr Eddison concluded with a stirring plea to the wicked Americans to mend their ways: "If Washington is to lay any claim to the moral, as distinct from the military, high ground, let it emulate Ireland and Norway's prompt and proportionate attempts to plug South-East Asia's gaping gap of need and help avert a further 80,000 deaths from infection and untreated wounds."

If America were to emulate Ireland and Norway, there'd be a lot more dead Indonesians and Sri Lankans. Mr Eddison may not have noticed, but the actual relief effort going on right now is being done by the Yanks: it's the USAF and a couple of diverted naval groups shuttling in food and medicine, with solid help from the Aussies, Singapore and a couple of others. The Irish can't fly in relief supplies, because they don't have any C-130s. All they can do is wait for the UN to swing by and pick up their cheque.

The Americans send the UN the occasional postal order, too. In fact, 40 per cent of Egeland's budget comes from Washington, which suggests the Europeans aren't being quite as "proportionate" as Mr Eddison thinks. But, when disaster strikes, what matters is not whether your cheque is "prompt", but whether you are. For all the money lavished on them, the UN is hard to rouse to action. Egeland's full-time round-the-clock 24/7 Big Humanitarians are conspicuous by their all but total absence on the ground. In fact, they're doing exactly what our reader accused Washington of doing - Colin Powell, wrote Mr Eddison, "is like a surgeon saying he must do a bandage count before he will be in a position to staunch the blood flow of a haemorrhaging patient". That's the sclerotic UN bureaucracy. They've flown in (or nearby, or overhead) a couple of experts to assess the situation and they've issued press releases boasting about the assessments. In Sri Lanka, Egeland's staff informs us, "UNFPA is carrying out reproductive health assessments".

Which, translated out of UN-speak, means the Sri Lankans can go screw themselves.

One of the heartening aspects of the situation is how easy it is to make a difference. By the weekend, the Australians had managed not just to restore the water supply in Aceh, but to improve it. Even before the tsunami, most residents of the city boiled their water. But 10 army engineers from Darwin have managed to crack open the main lines and hook them up to a mobile filtration unit. This is nothing to do with Egeland and his office or how big a cheque the Norwegians sent.

Indeed, the effectiveness of these efforts seems to be what Miss Short finds so objectionable. Washington's announcement that it would be co-ordinating its disaster relief with Australia,India and Japan smacked too much of another "coalition of the willing". "I think this initiative from America to set up four countries claiming to co-ordinate sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the UN," she told the BBC. "Only really the UN can do that job. It is the only body that has the moral authority."

I didn't catch the interview, but I'm assuming that the Oil-for-Fraud programme and the Child-Sex-for-Food programme notwithstanding, Miss Short managed to utter that last sentence with a straight face. But, if you're a homeless Sri Lankan, what matters is not who has the moral authority, but who has the water tankers and medical helicopters. President Bush didn'teven bother mentioning the UN in his statement. Kofi Annan, by contrast, has decided that the Aussie-American "coalition of the willing" is, in fact, a UN operation. "The core group will support the UN effort," he said. "That group will be in support of the efforts that the UN is leading."

So American personnel in American planes and American ships will deliver American food and American medicine and implement an American relief plan, but it's still a "UN-led effort". That seems to be enough for Kofi. His "moral authority" is intact, and Guardian columnists and Telegraph readers can still bash the Yanks for their stinginess. Everybody's happy.

I agree with Mark that there was not much to say or do. It was shocking. Then it became polital. Never in my life have I ever known of an act of God to be political, until now. I haven't written about this because I am trying to think of the people who are suffering and not the people I must suffer.

When I hear the words, "United Nations," I tune out. Maybe this is a bad thing, because I am trying to collect news, but I don't care anymore. I will not waste my precious time on nincompoops. They offend themselves.

The best thing we can do is to move them to Haiti and force them to live as the citizens of Haiti are forced to live, under the UN. Maybe then they would appreciate what it is like to actually suffer. Maybe then they would save Darfur, Sudan. Maybe then they would stop raping childen and women for food. Maybe, but I doubt it. You can move a thug, but you can't change them.

Mark has done a fabulous job capturing my thoughts. This article appeared in the Telegraph of London. It is dated 04/01/05. They use the day/month method in England.

He has written many articles that have been published. Please visit his blog (web log) as you surf the net. Hat tip to Daniel Foty.

Iraq: Environmental Concerns

Minister of Environment, Mrs. Mishkaat al-Momon, is quite concerned about Iraq's environmental future. She is concerned that the $7M (*1) will not be enough to assure the longevity of 400 different species of birds facing extinction, the garbage will be handled and stored in a way as to not harm the Iraqi people, and that treatment for oil tankers will be available to prevent contamination of the drinking water and sea water. This is just as important to the health and security of the Iraqi people and the wildlife in the ocean, in Minister Momen's opinion.

al Sabah has covered this story this week under the title, AL MOMEN JUSTIFIES DISMISSING ENVIRONMENT SENIOR UNDER SECRETARY & RESIGNING GENERAL INSPECTOR. (It may be important to know the complete, accurate title for future archive requests.)

She claims the reason for letting the Senior Secretary go is the same reason she accepted the resignation of the General Inspector: there just wasn't enough money. She believes that the environment of Iraq is as important as the national security in that a healthier environment can help produce a healthier nation. Have a great day, and Happy New Year!

*1. The Ministry of Environment receives a budget of $7 million dollars annually from the general assembly.