Right Of The Star

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Daily Trek 123104 - A Year

And what a year it was! I am not going to do a look back on 2004, so many things happened it wouldn't be possible to hit all the highlights.

All I will do is wish you all the best for the year ahead and ask that if you haven't donated funds to help those affected by the deadly Tsunami please do so now, over 140,000 - ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND - people dead so far!

The stingy Americans have already donated over $200,000,000 ($200 million) in total contributions and will continue to do so because we are the most generous nation that has ever existed.

Happy New Year - may the blessings of the year ahead light all your lives.
DKK

Amazon's Red Cross Donations Here
- $7 million as of Midnight 12/31/2005

Update - the US Government has increased it's commitment tenfold to $350 Million. Stingy, Americans!
DKK

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Daily Trek 122904 - UN believable

The devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean is unbelievable. Wizbang has a rundown of posts here.

If you haven't given yet Amazon is collecting donations here - thanks Instapundit - almost a million dollars as of 1:44 12/29/04 (what, we're supposed to be stingy!)

Now we know what kind of mind set it takes to work in that sinkhole known as the United Nations! What kind of thought process does it take to honestly believe that charity is required and that the most generous nation in the world is stingy? That is screwed up!

unfortunately that is what the anti-American left around the world believe. Amazingly they forget this:

"In short," researchers Alexander Karp, Gary A. Tobin and Aryeh Weinberg write in the journal Philanthropy, "American philanthropy is extraordinary by any world standard and the reason is that America herself is exceptional." (4rww)

Or perhaps we should take a real look at how the bureaucratic system Mr. Egeland loves, Prestopundit has this post - so striking I am posting the entire thing.
IN ONE YEAR private citizens in Americans sent $35.8 billion overseas to help out non-Americans. The year used for those figures was 1998. The numbers today would be far higher.

Meanwhile, most foreign assistance from Norway -- the home of U.N. bureaucrat Jan Egeland -- comes not from private citizens, but from the government. An inefficient and wasteful government bureaucracy in fact:

The Norwegian Department of Foreign Aid is under heavy criticism from state auditors for gross misspending of aid money. Funds are wasted on pointless projects and expensive consultants, and there are few routines for retrospective self-evaluation and verification that the money has gone where it was supposed to go, that it actually did any good ..
More on Egeland here.

If you'd like to think or write intelligently about foreign aid, it's non-optional to have read some Peter Bauer, winner of the Friedman Prize.

Speaking of the American haters and their Pundidiots they are always harping that the President doesn't, "admit his mistakes," - don't we have to have reached the point where the an accurate determination can be made as to weather a mistake was actually made?

Just a thought - like I have said before I think the President has so much more info on the things these Pundidiots love to harp on that he can make these determinations.

Speaking of which, the "Bush Honeypot Doctrine" analysis is right on point - and is something the dem's and many Pundidiots just can't seem to understand! (Thanks 4rww)

Okay, the funniest writing I have seen anywhere in a long time is at the Hog on Ice blog - go here for his Gay Underpants post and see if you don't agree!

BTW, did you know that Blogger spellcheck suggests breastfeeding for Prestopundit?
DKK