Two simple words

The US Army's Third Armored Cavalry returned to Fort Carson, Colorado in March, but it has been a homecoming almost ignored in the MSM. However, on Friday, the 3rd ACR, got some print in the Rocky Mountain News.

Seems that the soldiers were quite instrumental in securing the city of Tal Afar in Iraq. The mayor of Tal Afar had previously sent a letter of appreciation to the regiment. On Friday, Mayor Najim Al Jibouri of Tal Afar addressed a welcoming ceremony at Ft. Carson. He spoke to the crowd, through a translator, and reiterated the appreciation he expressed in his letter.

An Iraqi mayor stood before troops lined up on the lawn at Fort Carson on Friday
morning and said only two words in English. But those two words brought the
crowd to its feet.

"Thank you."

Once again, the good news never seems to get reported. Amazing how those two little words can mean so much.

Another hat tip to Power Line.

Great ideas

Peggy over at What If? has a great post where she tells how the former prime minister of Estonia was the winner of the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.

Before entering politics, Laar was a historian. “I had read only one book on economics — Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose. I was so ignorant at the time that I thought that what Friedman wrote about the benefits of privatization, the flat tax and the abolition of all customs rights, was the result of economic reforms that had been put into practice in the West. It seemed common sense to me and, as I thought it had already been done everywhere, I simply introduced it in Estonia, despite warnings from Estonian economists that it could not be done. They said it was as impossible as walking on water. We did it: we just walked on the water because we did not know that it was impossible.”

I wish that some American politicians would forget about the discredited theories of the past and start walking on water here at home.

Another Canary Trap?

Could the USAToday story about the massive NSA data-mining of phone records be another Canary Trap? Or just a partisan shot at the NSA as General Michael Hayden is before the Senate for confirmation as the new head of the CIA.

Kevin Aylward over at Wizbang thinks that the Mary Mapes school of neutral journalism is back in business:

First, she's donated the maximum amount legally allowed ($2,000) to Dick Gephardt's campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination in the 2004 election cycle.

Second, she's on TV crowing about the her confidential, unnamed sources.

And finally, the USAToday is pushing the "they didn't object" angle as a confirmation of their story. We all remember how well that worked out for CBS's John Roberts. Here's how the editors at USAToday phrased it, "On the night before the story was published, the newspaper described the story in detail to BellSouth, and the company did not challenge the newspaper's account."

Was it another Canary Trap instead? That would be my bet, but we won't know unless it comes to light in a trial.

The Newt on the border

I don't agree with Newt Gingrich on everything, but he has a pretty thought provoking article at National Review Online. He writes:

First, it is essential to understand how big and how serious this problem is.

Second, it is equally essential to understand how big the changes will have to be to really solve the problem.

Third, it is important to follow a logical set of sequential, sustainable solutions that build a momentum that over time will result in a rational and orderly immigration policy acceptable to a majority of the American people.

Getting there is a matter of national survival both in immediate and in the long-term.

He posits that there needs to be a new honesty about the issue - I for one am proud that someone is taking a principled stand without a finger to the wind.

Another hat tip to Wizbang.

Why did greed get a bad name?

I'm never quite certain how John Stossel got, or keeps, a job on network television. He presents strong messages on self-reliance, market economies and governmental waste and deception. It's almost like he's the token "right-winger" - a sop to "diversity". Never mind why he's there, just be glad that he is.

Stossel has a great column at Real Clear Politics on how greed makes things happen. Part of that article:

If pursuing profit is greed, economist Walter Williams told me, then greed is good, because it drives us to do many good things. "Those areas where people are motivated the most by greed are the areas that we're the most satisfied with: supermarkets, computers, FedEx." By contrast, areas "where people say we're motivated by 'caring'" -- public education, public housing etc. -- "are the areas of disaster in our country. . . . How much would get done," Williams wondered, "if it all depended on human love and kindness?"

Read the whole thing, and pass along the link to anyone who believes that caring is the highest virtue.

Hat tip to the folks at Wizbang for the reference.

Spray away

Two simple facts. 1) DDT works in controling malaria. 2) DDT has been demonized by junk psuedo-science.

Now for the result of combining Fact 1 + Fact 2: People are unnecessarily dying.

For stories on this tragedy, read these posts on Powerline and the New York Sun.

Steyn nails it

The wonderful Mark Steyn nails John Kerry for using Thomas Jefferson as a validation for dissent. But even more so, Steyn succinctly sums up what the philosophy of the Democratic party has become:

But the high holiness of dissent for its own sake is now the core belief of the Democratic Party: It's not what you're for, it's what you're against. Their current denunciations of Big Oil have a crudely effective opportunism but say to them "OK, what's your energy policy?" and see what answers you get: More domestic oil? Ooh, no, we can't disturb the pristine ANWR breeding ground of the world's largest mosquito herd. More nuclear power, like the French? Ooh, no, might be another Three Mile Island. Er, OK, you're the mass transit guys; how about we go back to wood-fired steam trains? Ooh, no, we're opposed to logging, in case it causes global warming, or cooling, or both.

Dissent for its own sake is like the Democrats' energy policy: We're opposed to any kind of energy; we prefer to be mired in enervated passivity. If the right is full of armchair generals, the left is full of armchair generalities: Nothing can be done, any course is futile, everything's a quagmire. All we can say for certain is that saying so for certain is the highest form of patriotism.

Read the whole article HERE. Hat tip to Peg over at What If? for pointing this out to me.