Global capitalism saves the children

Rich Lowry gives us sone common sense debunking of the Left.

But he does let one little leftist dogma go by:

Better practices to protect against disease and to enhance nutrition — more vaccinations and mosquito nets, more breast-feeding and vitamin A drops — played a role, but the most important factor in this global good-news story is economic growth. (bold emphasis mine)

It has been a dogma of the Left that evil corporations like Nestle and others tried to stir 3rd world women away from breast feeding. Never mind that at the time baby formula first came to the 3rd world, the adult mothers frequently were themselves malnourished and as a result they couldn't lactate! "Better to at least have the babies properly nourished" was the reasoning of a good many aid agencies, and baby formula was greatly appreciated.

Are mothers in those countries now better nourished so that they can breast feed? All the better. But are we too assume that these 3rd world women are too stupid to think for themselves in their feeding decisions? Now THAT is a kind of arrogant paternalism that used to be associated with colonialism!

Bjorn Lomborg debunks the hysteria.

Nothing like a scientist who actually looks at the data.

Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and our own USA (Via Alaska) are making territorial claims on the "offshore" Arctic Ocean, because the region is a source of fossil fuel which can be used for energy. What does this have to do with global warming? Well, it takes around 800,000 years to convert decayed plant, animal and fish matter to crude oil. This process required being under water for eons. It is obvious that the North Pole had a different climate at one time. The idea that humans can control the climate changes which have occurred throughout the earth history is simply a faith-based religion. The planet has been around a lot longer than human beings and the climate changed constantly before humans and will change constantly with humans. We cannot stop this. The North Pole says it all.

Al Qaeda -- In Iraq!!!

The New York Times just can't help itself:

And General Petraeus, unruffled in the face of the Congressional grilling, was more than willing to push back. When Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York, suggested the war was not integral to the anti-terror effort since members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, sometimes called Al Qaeda in Iraq, the homegrown Sunni
Arab extremist group that American intelligence agencies have concluded is foreign-led, is not part of the Qaeda network behind the Sept. 11 attacks, the general offered a quick retort.

“There is no question that Al Qaeda-Iraq is part of the greater Al Qaeda movement,” General Petraeus said.

“Isn’t it true, General, that Al Qaeda in Iraq formed in 2005, two years after we first got there?” pressed Mr. Ackerman.

“Congressman, I’m not saying when it started,” the military commander said. “I’m saying merely that Al Qaeda-Iraq clearly is part of the overall greater Al Qaeda network.”

So the "foreign led" outfit that Zarqawi built is "not connected" to Al-Quaeda?

They just don't give up with the semantics, do they????

The Truth About Cuban "Health Care"

Brush up on your Spanish. This YouTube site (and related ones) tell it like it is.

Meanwhile, John Stossel bitch-slaps Michael Moore.

Can't Stossel, or anyone else, bayonet that Soviet slob?

09/11/01: Six years later....

Michelle Malkin reminds us:

Every American, however, has a role to play in protecting our homeland — not just from Muslim terrorists, but from their financiers, their public relations machine, their sharia-pimping activists, the anti-war goons, the civil liberties absolutists, and the academic apologists for our enemies.

Earlier this year, jihadist enablers attempted to intimidate citizen whistleblowers who said something about the suspicious behavior of six imams on a US Airways flight in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The legal battle to protect ordinary Americans from such lawsuits gave rise to the John Doe movement. Pro bono lawyers and GOP members of Congress stepped up to provide protection. And Americans across the country expressed solidarity with the airline passengers targeted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its ilk.

The Left greeted the John Doe movement with mockery and derision, preferring instead to suck its collective thumb, wield the grievance card and play the blame game. But it's the John Does of the country, not the race-hustling litigators and speech-stiflers, who will help prevent the next terrorist attack. They are John Does like Brian Morgenstern, the young Circuit City employee who contacted authorities after viewing a jihadist training video by the Fort Dix Six Plotters.

"It was a difficult decision at first," Morgenstern told Fox News. "I went home, and I talked with my family about it. And we all came to the general conclusion that it was the right thing to do." No regrets. No apologies. And no "if onlys."

Not everyone is willing to do the right thing. When the FBI recently asked for the public's help in identifying two men acting suspiciously on Pacific Northwest ferries, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper refused to run the photos — and instead held a reader haiku contest mocking the terrorism concerns.

Random Thoughts By Thomas Sowell

Too good not to repeat:

I can't get as fiercely involved as some other people do in controversies about the origins of human life on earth. I wasn't there.

Barack Obama is the newest face on the political scene, expressing some of the oldest notions. Virtually everything he says is vintage 1960s rhetoric, as if he has learned nothing from the many disasters that 1960s notions have led to in the decades since then.

People who lament the small percentages of women in some high-end jobs seem unaware that top jobs often involve 70 or 80 hours of work per week. A mother may work that many hours at home taking care of a family, without adding the same number of hours at the office.

A recent study showed the median income of major corporate CEOs to be about $8 million a year. That's less than a third of what Alex Rodriguez earns and less than one-thirtieth of what Oprah Winfrey makes. But no one is denouncing them for "greed."

It is amazing how many people who want us to get out of Iraq want us to go into Darfur. As if Saddam Hussein was behaving better than the Sudan's current regime.

A joke says that a poll was taken in California, asking if people thought illegal immigration was a serious problem. The results showed that 29 percent said, "Yes, there is a serious problem." But 71 percent said, "No es una problema seriosa."

People who refuse to face the reality of hard choices are forever coming up with some clever "third way"— often leading to worse disasters than either of the hard choices.

Sometimes it looks as if the Democrats are out to win at all costs, while the Republicans are out to compromise at all costs.

Although I am ready to defend what I have said, many people expect me to defend what others have attributed to me.

Wise people created civilization over the centuries and clever people are dismantling it today. You can see it happening just by channel surfing on TV or hear it in rap music or read it in the pompous nonsense of academics and judges.

Many on the political left are so entranced by the beauty of their vision that they cannot see the ugly reality they are creating in the real world.

With all the old movie favorites being shown again and again on television, it is remarkable that the old movie classic "Alfie" is seldom shown. Could it be fear that the scene where cold-blooded Alfie breaks down and cries at the sight of an aborted baby is something that would unleash the furies of the feminazis?

It is amazing how many people see no problem with having pay levels determined according to what third parties would like to see, instead of according to supply and demand.

One of the great non sequiturs of the left is that, if the free market doesn't work perfectly, then it doesn't work at all— and the government should step in.

We all believe that people are innocent until proven guilty. Some on the left believe that they are innocent even after being proven guilty.

Chutzpah department: When disbarred former D.A. Michael Nifong mailed his Bar card back to his state Bar Association, he included a note decrying "the fundamental unfairness" with which the Bar had treated him. This from a man who was ready to ruin three lives and polarize a community, in order to win an election.

Thomas Sowell: No "Health Care"? GOOD!

Thomas Sowell points out facts and debunks myths about the 1950's, before "Great Society" Federal Government involvement in health care:

(1) Out of pocket isn't that punitive, and in fact forces wiser decisions:

 "During the first 30 years of my life, I had no health insurance. Neither did a lot of other people, back in those days.

During those 30 years, I had a broken arm, a broken jaw, a badly injured shoulder, and miscellaneous other medical problems. To say that my income was below average during those years would be a euphemism.

How did I manage? The same way everybody else managed: I went to doctors and I paid them directly, instead of paying indirectly through taxes.

This was all before politicians gave us the idea that the things we could not afford individually we could somehow afford collectively through the magic of government.

When my jaw was broken, I was treated in an emergency room and was given a bill for $50 — which was like a king's ransom to me at the time, 1949. But I paid it off in installments over a period of months.

Like most young people, I was lucky enough not to have any heavy-duty medical expenses that would have required major operations or a long hospital stay.

(2) Government health care, like Social Security and Medicare, will mean the young subsidizing the old:

That is still true for most young people today, which is why many people in their twenties do not choose to pay for medical insurance, even when they can afford it.

They know that, in an emergency, they can always go to an emergency room. And today the idea that you ought to pay for that out of your own pocket is considered almost quaint in some quarters.

It is not uncommon — especially in California, with its large illegal immigrant population — for hospitals to have to shut down because so few people pay for the emergency room care they receive.

There are, of course, people with huge medical bills that they cannot possibly pay. Believe it or not, that also happened back before the modern welfare state.

Some hospitals — whether public or private — could absorb such costs, with the help of donors. There were people with polio living in iron lungs, which is why rich and poor alike gave money to the March of Dimes.

(3) "Not being able to afford health care" does not mean not being able to have a new Iphone because you paid your out of pocket medical bills instead:

But that is very different from hospitals being stiffed every day by emergency room users whose only emergency is that they want to keep their money to spend on fun, instead of on doctors.

(4) The biggest of the big lies in the "health care" hype is that a lack of insurance means a lack of medical care.

(5) The second biggest lie is that health care and medical care are the same thing.

Doctors cannot stop you from ruining your health in a hundred different ways, so statistics on everything from infant mortality to AIDS are not proof of a need for government to take over medical treatment.

(6) Few people show the slightest interest in what has actually happened in countries with government-controlled medical care.

We are apparently supposed to follow those countries' example without asking about the months that people in those countries spend on waiting lists for medical treatments that Americans get just by picking up a phone and making an appointment.

It is amazing how many people seem uninterested in such things as why so many doctors in Britain are from Third World countries with lower medical standards — or why people from Canada come to the United States for medical treatment that they could get cheaper at home.

(7) Government price controls on pharmaceutical drugs are more of the same illusion of something for nothing.

People who are urging us to follow other countries that control the prices of medications seem uninterested in the fact that those countries depend on the United States to create new drugs, after they destroyed incentives to do so in their own countries.

Since it takes more than a decade to create a new drug, a politician can be elected president by hyping price controls on drugs, spend eight years in the White House, and be living in retirement before people start to notice that we no longer get the kinds of new medications that successively conquered deadly diseases in the past.