Charles Gibson on World News Tonight led off a report called “Cancer Cutbacks” on February 15 as follows (link requires compatible player and sitting through an AARP commercial; capitalized word reflects Gibson’s spoken emphasis):

Funding for the National Cancer Institute has been cut two years in a row. And now the Bush Administration is seeking a THIRD cut. The budget comes down as research costs go up.

But if you look at the National Cancer Institute’s fiscal year 2008 budget request (found by yours truly in about two minutes; line item details are here), you’ll see the following:

Okay, Charles, where’s the THIRD cut? And if you would deceive us about the third cut, why should we believe there was a first or a second?

The Business & Media Institute has much more, including seemingly obvious points that not all cures for cancer are the result of government research (in fact, most aren’t), and that the high costs associated with risk-averse Food and Drug Administration regulation keep many potential cures from being developed or, once developed, from getting to market.

I didn’t realize that the Blogad placed at BizzyBlog last week about Valentine’s Day bouquets and accompanying trifles was so environmentally incorrect.

But there it is, in the UK Telegraph:

Valentine bouquets ‘are bad for the planet’
Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 10/02/2007

The Valentine’s Day bouquet — the gift that every woman in Britain will be waiting for next week — has become the latest bête noire among environmental campaigners.

Latest Government figures show that the flowers that make up the average bunch have flown 33,800 miles to reach Britain.

In the past three years, the amount of flowers imported from the Netherlands has fallen by 47 per cent to 94,000 tons, while those from Africa have risen 39 per cent to 17,000 tons.

Environmentalists warned that “flower miles” could have serious implications on climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes.

Andrew Sims, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation, said: “There are plenty of flowers that grow in Britain in the winter and don’t need to be hothoused.

Obviously, my advertiser was promoting shipments within the US, but the “point” was the same. And the “point” is dumber than a bunch of rocks. The “flower-mile” calculators act as if there’s a single plane dedicated to carrying each bouquet (no, actually each individual flower — Ed.) to its destination. How ignorant can you get? By their logic, a plane traveling 3,000 miles across the country with 1,000 overnight envelopes has traveled 3 million “letter-miles,” and all overnight letters should be banned to save the planet. Zheesh.

And the end of the UK Telegraph article gets back to a point I made a couple of days ago near the end of this post:

….. a spokesman for the Flowers and Plants Association ….. said the boom in Third World flowers would help poorer countries to build schools and boost the economy.

Lifting Third-World living standards is nowhere near as important as environmental purity over something that most likely isn’t even a problem.

Bill Sammons of the Washington Examiner reports (HT My Newz & Ideas):

If Hillary Rodham Clinton wins the presidency, some top Democrats would like to see her husband, former President Bill Clinton, appointed to serve out Hillary’s unexpired Senate term.

“As a senator, he’d be a knockout,” said Harold Ickes, who was once a top White House aide to Bill Clinton and now gives behind-the-scenes advice to Hillary. “He knows issues, he loves public policy and he’s a good politician.”

Ironically, if it DOESN’T happen, it may be because of affirmative-action political calculus:

Although (Harold) Ickes would love to see Bill Clinton in the Senate, he considers the scenario a long shot.

“I think there’d be a real call on [Spitzer] to appoint a black senator,” Ickes said. “I think there’d be a real call on him to appoint a Hispanic senator.”

New Yorkers who wish to have a Senator with an Empire State background were not available for comment.

From PC Magazine’s Lance Ulanoff:

Windows Vista Home Basic could be the most pointless edition of Windows that Microsoft has ever released. Let me be clear: I like Windows Vista. I applaud it, in fact. It’s the smartest, easiest-to-use Windows OS yet. Most of the Vista editions Microsoft is rolling out make good, clean sense—Business, Premium, even Ultimate, though that name does kind of box Microsoft in for future versions (could they ever top Ultimate?).

….. I‘m sorry, but this (Basic) simply perpetuates the myth that there’s such a thing as simple computing needs. The “surfing the Internet” part is my favorite. It’s as if Microsoft’s marketers haven’t been online since 2001. Surfing the Internet these days is about as far from basic as you can get. Web 2.0 has turned many key Web sites into virtual client applications. Yes, these are lighter than, say, true desktop apps, but nowhere near as light and simple as the rudimentary HTML-based pages we recall from the mid-1990s up until, say, 2002.

I have to reluctantly agree with Ulanoff. Even people who are intent on using their computers only for tasks like e-mail and “simple” web surfing are going to get sucked into needing to access advanced features by friends and relatives who send videos, Flash presentations, and the like, and by web sites including more of the same with each passing day. So, in that sense, it’s a disservice to a “basic” user to sell them a machine that will almost certainly lead to a compromised user experience — even if the user doesn’t expect it. This means that, in most cases, you should talk those you know who are considering buying Vista Basic, including yourself, out of it.

That would be the Washington POST.

____________________________

UPDATE: On the other hand, Ralph Peters, at the paper called the Post whose circulation is growing (columns like these partially explain why), does not mince words:

COWARDS GIVE UP ON GIS - & GIVE IN TO EVIL

PROVIDING aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime is treason. It’s not “just politics.” It’s treason.

And signaling our enemies that Congress wants them to win isn’t “supporting our troops.”

The “nonbinding resolution” telling the world that we intend to surrender to terrorism and abandon Iraq may be the most disgraceful congressional action since the Democratic Party united to defend slavery.

….. Soldiers honor their dead. It’s the least Congress could do to honor the living men and women in uniform.

You don’t support our troops by supporting our enemies.

In response to this near-endorsement of Brunner’s idea of drafting poll workers: Aren’t there millions of Baby Boomers (surely hundreds of thousands in Ohio) who are near retirement in just a few years (some sooner) who should be recruitable for poll-worker duty under the current terms and conditions?

Or are you assuming that most of them will move to Florida and other less taxpayer-hostile climates?

I don’t think there’s a really good reason, certainly NOT antitrust, to oppose the idea of a GM-Chrysler North America merger.

One of the underappreciated aspects of Detroit’s decline is how poorly run Chrysler has been for nearly a decade. Recall that Chrysler-North America underperformed during the last few years of the 1990s, which was probably the high-water mark for the auto industry as a whole (I attempted to find a link to verify that, but couldn’t; I do distinctly remember in the fall of 1998 or 1999 having a chat with a guy from Ford as we marvelled at the recently announced news that a Chrysler-North America could be losing money during the best car market ever).

This report is primarily about one soldier’s special personal interest (HT Weapons of Mass Discussion e-mail) in an Iraqi hospital’s construction — his son nearly died from leukemia, and he wants to prevent it from happening to Iraqi families. At the end, it also takes a big-picture look at accomplishments so far in one area of improving Iraqi health care:

BASRAH, Iraq, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The very mention of the disease brings shudders of horror from parents of children two to five years old, who account for most of the disease’s victims. ALL, as it is called, accounts for 80 percent of all childhood cancer and also attacks adults over 50.

Thirty years ago, the disease killed all but five percent of those who contracted it. For Navy Lt. Allen Willey, serving with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in Iraq, and his wife Shereen, the horror became a reality when their 3 1/2-year –old son, Christian, who had been exhibiting excessive bruising, and petechiae, tiny red spots from shattered blood vessels, on his chest, received the devastating diagnosis.

“You don’t live your life thinking about these diseases,” said Willey, the resident engineer for the Basrah Children’s Hospital project. “The impact never hits you until it happens to you. And then, at first, you don’t believe it.”

The nightmare began in December 2000, several days after Christmas. Shereen had taken Christian to the doctor because they noticed the spots on his chest. Because it didn’t appear as if the child had chicken pox or measles, and Christian didn’t appear to be sick, they decided to wait until after the holiday to treat what they believed to be a benign condition.

“They took a blood sample from him,” Willey said. “And the next thing I knew, I was riding in an ambulance to UCLA (University of California, Los Angles) Medical Center and my son had a platelet count of eight. A normal platelet count ranges from 150,000 to 450,000. He could have fallen off of his bicycle, bumped his head and started bleeding internally. He could have passed away in his sleep.”

The bone marrow manufactures platelets, which circulate in the blood, forming clots to stop excessive bleeding. Christian had virtually none.

The next few years tested the Willeys, and their then six-year-old daughter Ashley, as nothing else will. Through Christian’s chemotherapies, 24 spinal taps, countless CAT scans and hospitalizations, the Willeys’ priorities changed rapidly and dramatically.

“….. your personal goals really change when you are struck with this kind of tragedy. Now I donate money to the leukemia societies and support groups that helped us through this.”

Willey now finds himself in a position he likes to call fate. As resident engineer in charge of the Basrah Children’s Hospital, a pediatric oncology facility being built in that city, Willey can continue his battle against the disease that nearly killed his son.

Christian, now nine, has been in remission for four years. Today, the survival rate for the disease is 86 percent and rising.

“Basrah was chosen for a very specific reason for this hospital,” he said. “Here in Iraq, the incidence of childhood cancer, most of it ALL, is eight times higher than in the west, and in Basrah, that number is four times higher than in the rest of Iraq — 150 children out of 1,000 die before they reach five, mostly of ALL, and no one knows why. Diagnosed leukemia cases in Basrah have increased 70 percent since 1989.

“So this hospital project has become really personal for me. It was a fluke that I got this project,” Willey said. “When I left Washington State, where I was stationed with the Navy, I didn’t know what I would be doing, but I knew it would be in Basrah. And now, on this project, well, I can give it everything I know — 20 years of construction experience. Now I can give something back.”

The facility will accept referrals from clinics throughout Iraq for children who are diagnosed with diseases like ALL that are beyond a clinic’s ability to treat.

“It (the hospital) will have specialists who can treat the childhood cancers and other conditions, such as neurological problems,” he said. “The hospital will have childhood cancer specialty clinics, capable of radiological treatments, chemotherapies, fluoroscopy, CAT scans and MRIs.

There will be an intensive care unit that will treat and monitor children whose immune systems are exhausted by the treatments and are prone to infection because their bodies have lost the ability to stave off other diseases.”

Support functions will be an important part of the hospital’s services - support for parents and families who have been shattered by diagnoses, Willey added.

“Support becomes a way of life for the parents and the family,” he said. “In the States, there are groups of people who have had a child or a grandchild struck by this disease. One group ran a Toy Closet — a place where children could go to pick out a toy — usually two — when they would go have a procedure, such as a spinal tap. That procedure is particularly awful — they have to draw the fluid to run tests on it, but they prefer the child to be awake because of the risk of sticking the needle in the wrong spot.

“I can remember how awful it was — your child freaking out from the pain and your wife putting a headlock on the child so he can’t squirm away. But the children were rewarded with the toys for going through this — it was like a reward for them. And it was thanks to the support groups.”

Willey noted that these groups, along with the “Make A Wish” Foundation, an organization that grants critically ill children their fondest dream, are an important part of the treatment process and believes the hospital will generate that kind of spirit among the people of Basrah.

“You have no idea what you are in for. So when it first happens, you battle yourself,” he said. “You think ‘This is not happening. What is going on … what do we do?’ You may have other young children who are worried and concerned because their parents are gone and they have to stay in various places, being cared for by other people. So when you have counselors and people who know the information, it’s a relief. The doctors will talk to you about your child, but it is the support elements from chaplains and religious counseling to assistance from outside groups that ultimately comforts you.”

Willey added that having a critically ill child dwarfs all other problems a family might have. He noted that Iraq is going through civil unrest and having a hard time organizing itself.

“A lot of the good doctors have left,” he said. “And they don’t want to come back because it’s a crazy environment. Meanwhile, you have these families suffering through tragedy. Their children are passing away and they have no idea why. To create this hospital - well, it’s like another one of those confidence builders. You have people around the world coming together, bringing in funds and putting this project together, making it work. And I am so proud to be a part of it.”

The hospital project was originally identified through an investigation into the state of Iraqi health care by Project HOPE, an international non-profit health, education and humanitarian assistance organization. The project has been under construction for five years and has endured setbacks of funding and contractors. USACE continued the project after contractor Bechtel left the site and the Gulf Region Division South District assumed oversight of the project. In addition, construction management, USACE has the lead in coordinating the efforts of fellow partners in the project, the Iraqi Ministry of Health and Project HOPE. USACE estimates the construction is about 37 percent complete.

With three Jordanian contractors taking care of everything from equipment to design and construction, the site boasts from six to eight managers and a workforce that fluctuates between 400 and 550. The project should be up and running by February 2009.

Willey emphasized that what motivates him to make the project succeed is the empathy he feels for the parents who are enduring what he, his wife and son did.

“I want to share my knowledge,” he said. “Close the gaps. I know what this can mean to a family going through a tragedy. I’m going the extra mile and will make extra effort to close the gaps. We have a great construction team and they will continue to move forward after my tour here is finished.”

As of Jan. 31, 2007, USACE/GRD has:
– 4,350 planned projects - construction cost of $8.204 billion; with a program cost of $8.84 billion.
– 3,169 completed projects - construction cost of $4.154 billion; with a program cost of $4.39 billion.
– 894 ongoing projects - construction cost of $3.097 billion; with a program cost of $3.28 billion.
– 287 projects yet to be started.
Of those projects, 161 are Primary Healthcare Center projects - with 24 completed; and 30 hospital projects - with 26 completed. These projects increase Iraq’s capacity to treat about 3.25 million patients annually in hospitals and 630,000 outpatients annually at the PHCs, which is 14 percent of the patient population.

“We are committed to helping the Government of Iraq build the foundation necessary to take the lead in meeting the needs of its people,” said Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh, commander of the Gulf Region Division. “Ensuring that the citizens of Iraq have modern health-care facilities is a priority of the GoI, and therefore, a priority of the U.S. government.”