More statistics to sleep on

I hear that less than 25% of the American public knows approximately how many US soldiers have died in Iraq. The total as of today is 3,986. Two other US statistics of note: of men in prison and teenage girls:

The 4,000 death was predicted to fall a month from now, until a casual suicide bomber ambled up to a group of our soldiers. The death toll was five, though I find it beyond curious that Iraqi observers were insistent it had been six.

ONE PERCENT of all Americans is behind bars. The number represents 7% of all Black Americans, 11% of young black males, and 3% of Hispanic males. The work gulag capitalist enterprise system in China boasts the next highest incarceration rate, where the percentage of the Chinese population imprisoned is 0.1%.

One in four teenage American girls have an STD. That’s three million girls aged 14-19. 48% of all black girls, 20% of white girls. In 18% of the cases the STD is genital warts.

What kind of idiot do they take you for?

In the hands of Republicans, the filibuster seems to be a silver bullet. They used it today without firing a shot. The Democratic majority wanted to fashion some legislation, but lacked the 60 votes to stop a filibuster. As a result, no go. It now takes 60% of the Senate to pass a bill, where it used to take the Republicans only 51%. What’s going on here?

That’s a question the media won’t ask. Or answer. Someone must have polled the American public and discovered that the term filibuster is misunderstood, and can thus mean whatever the media needs it to be.

In the hands of Democrats, to filibuster is to impose partisan gridlock upon conservatives trying to help our blessed nation. How dare the Dems even threaten such divisive stubbornness?

As a Republican tool, the filibuster is a trump card, a fait accomplit. They needn’t even roll out the overnight cots for round the clock monopolizing of the microphone. Saying you’ll filibuster is threat enough to make the Dems back down.

Are civics no longer taught in high school? I remember a filibuster was a tool opponents of a bill could use to force a little reciprocity from the majority party sponsors. A filibuster meant holding the floor of the Senate hostage for as long as you and your colleagues could hold out. Hopefully provoking the sponsors of the bill to consider some concessions in the phrasing. To do a filibuster you had to be prepared for a marathon speaking session, a continuous tag team of allies holding forth on the debate until somebody dropped. It was politically risky to be seen shutting down DC just to keep your rivals from having their way. And so filibusters were always rare.

Back when the Republicans dominated Congress, filibusters were like hurricanes in Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire, they hardly happened. The media cautioned that the political fallout would be too great for the Democrats if they should try so vaingloriously to oppose the mandate of the electorate, self-evident by the nature of the GOP having the 51% majority.

What’s become of the media’s admonitions now? Where are their words of caution to the Republican minority? What even has become of their definition of filibuster? Now to filibuster is to fire a shot across the bow, to feign showing your fangs to make your opponents back down. You don’t have to do it, you don’t have to take the heat for doing it. If the “majority” doesn’t have the margin to stop it, it’s as good as done. And the Democrats dutifully follow the choreographed capitulations and the media dutifully doesn’t question the illogic.

If my naval analogy was appropriate, let me add that the shot across the bow was not delivered by a ship of inferior firepower, it always came from the superior ship as a warning that it had come within range and would decimate its target if the lesser rated craft did not immediately heave to.

Tel Aviv University Poll shows that 81% of Jewish population backs Jewish terrorism against Arabs fighting for freedom

Yes, the Jewish population of Israel is highly supportive of using terrorism against Arab leaders. In fact, 81% is the exact number found by a poll taken by the prestigious Tel Aviv University, and these 81% actually supported increasing the use of terrorism by Jewish military forces, not doing away with it or even just maintaining it at current levels!

Why does the Israeli Jewish community (as well as the US one) think that it is quite alright to do as they do? Simply because the US government is not only supporting Jewish terrorism itself, but is implementing and increasing their own use of terrorism and IDF style tortures throughout the Muslim World, too. The two groups feed off each other’s advocacy and use of criminality.

Poll: 81 percent of Israelis back increasing IDF targeted killings at Haaretz.com

Oh, and while there at Haaretz.com, be sure to click on the trailer of the Let’s Go To War and Pulverize Iran Before they Drive Jews Into The Sea film featured so promiently there. It’s pure ‘entertainment’, but will be taken as being news and important information by jingoistic meatheads around the US and Israel!

The obscene IMF and Afghanistan

How obscene is the IMF? How obscene is international capitalism? Pretty damn obscene and Afghanistan is just one case of why and how. The BBC has an absolutely idiotic report today called Afghanistan to Obtain Debt Relief.

What does this ‘debt relief’ consist of? Afghanistan will now have it’s payments on its $12 billion debt cut to 51% of what it is now! And this is called relief?????

Let’s see now? The US has fomented and funded war for 3 decades in this sad country and continues to do so. The US current specialty is in bombing Afghan villages from way up high and killing huge groups of civilians that might, or might not have, an armed man or two down below. A poppy is safer from NATO forces in Afghanistan than a civilian.

And the per capita income is far below that of $1,000 per person per year. Just how generous can the IMF be? Debt payments cut in half? Oh, whoopee! Bombs Away, IMF!

Mad Cow is here

Ground cow disease
A third U.S. cow has now been found to have Mad Cow Disease. The refrain remains the same. Have no fear, no part of this infected cow ever found its way into the food supply.
 
Great. But where did that cow come from? Specifically, where did that cow get its BSE? Does it grow on trees? Does it generate itself spontaneously?

No, it is hereditary. Or it is aquired through the ingestion of infected animal parts. In this case they are saying that the animal was old enough to have been fed infected animals before such rendered parts were banned. Maybe. First of all that is to admit that the feeding of rendered mammals to other herbivors was risky behavior, something they have resisted admitting, and second, there’s nothing to say that this third cow got BSE previous to the feed restriction.

What we do know is that the American system of testing only a sampling of livestock is still woefully inadequate compared to everywhere else in the world. When some American ranchers offered to do a more stringent testing themselves in order for their beef to qualify for the japanese market, the U.S. government forbid the ranchers to do it.

It’s as if FDA officials are very nervous that wider tests will find that Mad Cow Desease is prevalent in this country.

In Britain and in Europe, every single cow is tested for BSE. In the U.S. we test less than 1%. In fact, the FDA recently increased the scope of its tests twentyfold, still under 1% of all cattle slaughtered, and as a result discovered BSE in this third cow. Now they want to scale the tests back again because, well, better to let them explain it. Makes sense right? The FDA is not nervous for the American people obviously, they’re nervous for the meat industry.

Meanwhile, let’s find out what those FDA officials are feeding their children.