Should Washington D.C., Resident's Move To Iraq?

What the heck is the Cantankerous one talking about now? Well I think that you might find the following statistics to be interesting.

Over the past 22 months there have been 2,112 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq.

Considering that during that same time period there have been an average of 160,000 troops on the ground, the firearm death rate works out to be 60 per 100,000 soldiers.

Meanwhile back in Washington DC, the firearm death rate was 81 per 100,000 residents for the same time period.

The bottom-line is that you are about 25% more likely to be shot and killed in Washington than you would be in Iraq!

Interesting when you consider that Washington has some of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S.

John McCain's McLying Game

Oh John, John, John ... you little maverick you! Big talk about wanting to be the new sheriff in town who has come to clean-up wild, wild Washington! Well giddy-up pardner!

It seems as though Sheriff John McCain, with his ten gallon hat and eleven gallon head, is not much different than the rest of those bad boys in Washington.

McCain started his campaign expressing his hope that the presidential campaign would not become sleazy. Well "holy talking out of the both sides of your mouth Batman." In fact, McCain's lies have traveled the full spectrum from annoying to the sleazy. Even the New York Times editorial board are calling John McCain a liar!

Let's check out some of the things which Sheriff McCain has said;

• 38 million American's heard Obama say in his speech at the Democratic National Convention that he was open to off-shore oil-drilling and the building of new nuclear-power plants. Then McCain in his own acceptance speech said that Obama was opposed to both of these potential options. Perhaps not a lie and just a senior moment.
• McCain is big on talking about supporting and protecting American workers. Yet Sheriff McCain supported the foreign buyout of an American company in Wilmington, Ohio which led to the loss of thousands of jobs.
• McCain says that Obama favors a government-run health-care system ... another lie! In fact Obama wants a market-based system subsidized by the government whereby there would be increased government regulation of the drug and insurance industries.
• McCain really turned sleazy when he ran a television ad claiming that Obama favored "comprehensive" sex education for kindergartners. In fact Obama favored a bill that would have warned kindergartners about sexual predators and improper touching. A big difference wouldn't you say?
• Obama, in talking about McCain's effort to remarket his economic policies, said that it was like putting "lipstick on a pig" McCain then accussed Obama of referring to Sara Palin. My personal opinion is that if the lipstick fits ..........couldn't resist that cheap shot.
• McCain is accussing the "elite media" for spreading rumors about Palin's personal life. In fact Palin rumors are originating in the blogosphere and the tabloid press.
• McCain has been contrasting his ALLEGED FOREIGN POLICY EXPERTISE and toughness with Obama's inexperience and alleged weakness. McCain wants to "win" the Iraq war and face down the Iranians. Then a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The Iraqis said that they favored Obama's withdrawal plan, and surprise of surprises, Bush and the Boys started talking to the Iranians. So what does McCain do? He questions Obama's patriotism. saying that Obama would rather lose a war than lose the presidential election. HuH???
• When the financial crisis blew-up in America's face this week, Sheriff McCain in all of his sartotial splendor and righteous indignation promised, that when he went to Washington as president, he would clean-up all of the gypsies, tramps and thieves on Wall Street through stringent government over-sight and increased regulations. The trouble is that over the years Sheriff McCain has been one of the biggest proponents of deregulating Wall Street. In fact, John McCain was an effective gog in the wheel which set the financial deregulation table in the first place so that the Wall Street psychopaths in their Armani suits could dine like kings ... only this week they are dining-out on the taxpayers tab!

These are but a few examples. John McCain's campaign has been a never ending series of demeaning ads and a daily dose of widely documented and exposed McLies! This from a man who claimed that this was the type of election campaign which he did not want to run in the first place.

In my opinion, John McCain has raised serious questions about whether he has the character needed to lead America out of its current difficulties and challenges.

When a military "hero" is prepared to lie and to wallow in the mud in order to become president, he is not the principled maverick which he claims to be, but rather just another part of the sorry, self-serving Washington crowd which he claims not to be a part of. And that is probably the biggest McLie of all!

The Federal Reserve is neither Federal nor a Reserve! It is one of the Greatest Scams of Alltime!

Episode 3: I Don't Believe that it Happened!

It took 9 days for the 7 men to hammer out all of the important details of what would eventually become the Federal Reserve.

For a number of years after the meeting all 7 denied that the meeting ever took place. It was only after the Fed was firmly established that they began openly talking about it.

For those who are still of the opinion that Jekyll Island never happened, several books have been written by some of the participants detailing what they had accomplished. Visit your local library and check them out.

Frank Vanderlip, one of the "unmagnificent 7", wrote an article which appeared in the February 9, 1935 edition of the Saturday Evening Post. Here is a brief excerpt.

" I do not feel it is an exaggeration to speak of our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what eventually became the Federal Reserve System. We were told to leave our last names behind us. We were told further that we should avoid dining together on the night of our departure. We were instructed to come one at a time and as unobtrusively as possible to the railroad terminal on the New Jersey littoral of the Hudson where Senator Aldrich's private car would be in readiness attached to the rear-end of a train to the south. Once aboard the private car we began to observe the taboo that had been fixed on last names. We addressed one another as Ben, Paul, and Abe. Davison and I adopted even deeper disguises abandoning our first names. On the theory that we were always right, he became Wilbur and I became Orville after those two aviation pioneers the Wright brothers. The servants and train crew may have known the identities of one or two of us, but they did not know all and it was the names of all printed together that would've made our mysterious journey significant in Washington, Wall Street, even in London. Discovery we knew simply must not happen."

"If it were to be exposed publicly that our particular group had gotten together and written a banking bill, that bill would have no chance whatever of passage by Congress."

Next - Episode 4: What exactly is the Federal Reserve?

I Would Love to have a Hummer Franchise in Iraq!

Check this out!

The "Keepers of the Public Trough" in Washington pay ITT $33 million to overhaul 150 Humvee's a month.

That works out to approximately $18,333.00 per vehicle. Not too shabby.

Packin' my tools and diagnostic equipment and headin' to Bagdad. I can do the job for less, and hell, I'll even give Frequent Flyer Bonus Points. Maybe they can use the points to start sending the boys home.

Wake-up America!! What is Wrong with this Picture?

Over 3 million Americans have lost manufacturing jobs since George W. Bush became President.

Corporations are using H1B visas to train foreigners in the U.S., then send them home to train others so more American jobs can be outsourced.

CISCO Systems will have 20% of its talent in India within 5 years.

Accenture will have more employees in India than in the U.S. by the end of this year.

IBM reduced its American workforce by 31,000 while increasing its Indian staff by 52,000.

CitiGroup, which already has 22,000 employees in India, plans to eliminate 26,000 jobs in the U.S. and increase its Asian workforce by another 10,000 where the paycheques are a lot less.

Free trade proponent Professor Alan Binder now acknowledges that 30-40 million American jobs could be at risk from free trade, mostly from outsourcing.

A substantial amount of lower-skilled jobs have already gone to Communist China, which is using this great increase in wealth to substantially grow its military, weapons production, the military utilization of space and cyber-war. Bless all of those bottom-line, shareholder-sucking corporate psychopaths in suits and the dunces of doom in Washington.

China is currently sitting on $1.33 trillion of foreign reserves, and if it decided to liquidate those and switch to the Euro as its reserve currency, the dollar would crash hard, sending the U.S., at the very least, into a very deep recession if not a full-blown depression

In a September 17, 2007 Associated Press article, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said that "it is possible that the Euro could replace the dollar as the reserve currency of choice."

When our so-called world political and coroporate leaders are stopped from screwing-up our planet and putting our lives in harms way, by the billions of citizens throughout this world having finally and collectively developed "the stones" to draw a line in the sand to say that "enough is enough", it is then that I will accept Darwin's theory of evolution.

Attack on Iran could be Imminent!

The French weekly Le Canard Enchaine has reported details of an alleged Israeli-U.S. plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

According to the report, Russian President Putin has told Tehran that "they're going to bomb you!"

Apparently the attack against Iran's nuclear facilities is planned for October 15, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In a joint U.S. - Israeli operation, Israel would strike the first targets while the U.S. would hit with a second wave of strikes.

This report does appear to tie-in with my blogs; "Why have Russian Nuclear Engineers and Experts suddenly left Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Plant?" and "There's Kind of a Hush all over the Middle East" where I put forth the London Telegraph's suggestion that the Israeli strike into Syria in September was in part to test the new Russian-made air defense system because Washington was extremely interested in seeing a live-fire demonstration.

Saudi foreign minister, Prince Said al-Faisal has also told reporters in New York that an attack on Iran might be imminent.

It must be noted that the French newspaper article was based on unnamed sources.