More Violent Death in D.C. then Iraq

This a very interesting article in that it matches the civilian death rate in Iraqi cities to those here in the states. Also it is amazing to learn just how off center the media is when reporting the news from that country.

The spin that is applied to the numbers from Iraq makes everything look like the Democratic agenda wants it to. The news has to be bad - the news has to show America in the worst possible light.

The terrorists love the American media. They are a team.

(From Gateway Pundit)

So, How Bad Are Things in Iraq Really?

We all know that despite news reports of massacre and carnage, the civilian death toll in Iraq has gone down considerably since the war to remove Saddam Hussein began back in March 2003.Here are more figures on how the Iraq War stacks up historically:

The recorded Iraqi civilian fatalities (including insurgents, military, morgue counts, police, etc.) were down 16% (16% maximum) in 2005... 38% (48% maximum) less than 2003 (via Leftist anti-war site Iraq Body Count).

If you take out the numbers from that horrible day in August 2005 when nearly one thousand panicked Iraqis were trampled or drowned near a Muslim shrine, the year shows striking progress compared to 2003 and 2004 with fatalities one third less than in 2004.Ann Althouse (via Glenn Reynolds) reported this comparison of Iraqi Civilian War casualties with other conflicts in recent history: Click on picture to enlarge.This shows how Iraq War Casualties compares to other American Wars:(2,471 Iraq War Fatalities as of 5/31/2006) John Hinderaker at Powerline adds this:

A total of 2,471 servicemembers have died in Iraq from 2003 to the present, a period of a little over three years. That total is almost exactly one third of the number of military personnel who died on active duty from 1980 to 1982, a comparable time period when no wars were being fought.

Until very recently, our armed forces lost servicemen at a greater rate than we have experienced in Iraq, due solely to accidental death. Do you recall that during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s there was any suggestion, from anyone, that our military policies were somehow disastrous due to fatalities among our servicemen--fatalities that nearly always exceeded those we are now experiencing in Iraq? No, neither do I. And, please don't bring up Russian military casualties:

In 2004, Russia lost conservatively 1,100 military men and women- no war. In 2004, the US lost 848 military men and women- Iraq War. Here's more perspective on how the War in Iraq stacks up compared to other US Wars:Iraq is no Vietnam, or Civil War or War of 1812! Historically, this war has been a remarkable success.To further put things in perspective, Newsmax reported yesterday that...Iraq Is Less Violent than Washington, D.C.

Despite media coverage purporting to show that escalating violence in Iraq has the country spiraling out of control, civilian death statistics complied by Rep. Steve King, R-IA, indicate that Iraq actually has a lower civilian violent death rate than Washington, D.C.Appearing with Westwood One radio host Monica Crowley on
Saturday, King said that the incessantly negative coverage of the Iraq war prompted him to research the actual death numbers."I began to ask myself the question, if you were a civilian in Iraq, how could you tolerate that level of violence," he said. "What really is the level of violence?"Using Pentagon statistics cross-checked with independent research, King said he came up with an annualized Iraqi civilian death rate of 27.51 per 100,000.

While that number sounds high - astonishingly, the Iowa Republican discovered that it's significantly lower than a number of major American cities, including the nation's capital."It's 45 violent deaths per 100,000 in Washington, D.C.," King told Crowley. Other American cities with higher violent civilian death rates than Iraq include:Detroit - 41.8 per 100,000Baltimore - 37.7 per 100,000Something to think about when you read the next "Iraq the quagmire" headline!

Hat Tip SugieroUpdate: (5:00 PM) Rep. King's numbers appear to be low. The broader point still holds. I stand corrected.
posted by Gateway Pundit at 5/31/2006 05:52:00 AM
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Star Bright is Gone - A Good Friend

Star Bright shine for us tonight - You were our friend and constant companion. You stood your watch while the world passed by. You were always there ready to be a friend for everyone.

Now you are gone. We won't forget the good times - there were no bad times with you. We will be looking for you in the window when the sun comes up in the morning.

We mourn your passing - you will be sorely missed - rest easy good kitty.

William Jefferson - Democrat - Crook

As usual, the Marxist left try to spin there way out of having to face the fact that William Jefferson, Democrat, Louisiana is a crook.

His nick name is "Dollar Bill" - What a hoot - but it's no wonder seeing how the whole state of Louisiana has been run by Democrats for the past sixty years.

Hey! What about the other star pupil from that area, "School Bus" Nagan? Now there's a prize. What a pair to draw to. Along with governor Blanko, it's a total waste land and sump hole of graft for tax payers.

A real culture of corruption - make no mistake.

( from the American Thinker)

The leftists can't get their story straight

Representative William Jefferson is obviously an embarrassment to the Democrats. Just when their culture of corruption complaint against the GOP was showing signs of promise, along comes videotape of him accepting $100k in bribes. So profound is the shock that a split has emerged over how to handle the matter.

In one corner, the New York Times, which made excuses for him based on the good old poverty made him do it defense. Not that Dollar Bill Jefferson has been poor for a very long time. He grew up poor and black in Louisiana, and in the world of the New York Times that fact grants a perpetual indulgence, or at least constitutes a mitigating factor. Never mind the millions of people who growup poor and never accept a bribe or abuse the public trust.

In the other corner, the hard left magazine, The Nation, edited by wealthy heiress Katrina vanden Heuvel, who was once interviewed by Chris Matthews and could not provide the name of her representative in Congress (hint: it wasn't Jefferson, vanden Heuvel lives in Manhattan).

Our friends at Sweetness & Light have discovered The Nation ludicrously claiming William Jefferson has the profile of a Republican, or, as S&L puts it, he is a Republican at heart. S&L cites such authorities as the ACLU and and the American Conservative Union to the contrary (both groups have rated Jefferson distinctly non-conservative).

But in the world of the Nation, such matters count for little. Bad = Republican. Period.
We can hardly wait for the New York Times to become appraised of the verdict by the Nation. It will have to withdraw its story sympathetically portraying Jeffersons childhood and adopt a sneering attitude toward his background, as is standard operating procedure for conservatives.

Thomas Lifson 5 30 06

Eye Problem and Solution

It all started with this allergy that I have on my face - I rub and scratch so much that I ground off the hair by eyes and that's when the problem started.

One day I got carried away and scratched too hard and hit my eye with my toe nail. It hurt for a few minutes but then it went away so it didn't give it another thought.

About a week later, I found that I had to squint to use that right eye, and it didn't go un-noticed by my friends that I live with.

They thought I had a weed seed or something like that in it that was causing me to squint, or that I scratched it on a blade of grass when we go running in the field behind the house, but no, it had to be much worse than that. It was infected and cut pretty deep.

After several home remedies like eye wash and saline solution, my friends decided to take me to see the doctor when their best efforts failed and I continued to rub my face in the gravel drive way. Not a good thing.

Of course the local doc got right to the point and sent us to a eye specialist in Milwaukee. They performed some kind of magic on me and sent me home. It wasn't a big deal as it was day surgery so my friends dropped me off in the morning and then picked me up in the afternoon. The instructions were I had to wear this hood for a month so I wouldn't damage the eye again or make a bad thing worse.

Of course, this all cost money, and I don't have a penny to my name. I have rely on charity from my friends so I have to watch my step. I know it was expensive as one of my friends said on the way home from the doctors he could have gotten a new dog for what is cost and thrown this old one away. Now I'm not a genius or anything, but it doesn't take rocket science to figure out I have to lay low for awhile and do what I'm told.

So like most all things in this life, when a problem has a solution you have to comply to the rules of the solution or suffer the consequences. I guess I didn't mind it so much after I got used to it. it was colorful and it provided some comfort as a semi-privacy shield from my annoying relatives, and I didn't wind up at the docs again getting the 'good by juice'.

(really, I think he was just kidding about getting the new one) heh

I'm A Democrat - Stealing is Okay for Us

The culture of corruption that makes up the liberal Democrats and their cohorts has run true to form with this seedy character. Just look what it did for John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.

As we have seen in the past, when the Democrats what to divert attention from them selves, they start to shout and point in all direction, proclaiming others have run amuck shaming us all by their misdeeds. Senate Democrats at their best.

They have a lot of help in this as the media is on board to apply the smoke so the Democrats can slip out the back door leaving the innocent to take the rap.

This scheme is called the Democratic agenda for running the country.

(This article is from the American Thinker)

Making Excuses for A Democrat
( Or it' okay to steal if you're a Democrat)

The New York Times continues to astonish us with its relentless spin and condescension toward blacks and others it regards as victims. Today’s example falls into the category “candidate for the world’s smallest violin” created by James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal’s online “Best of the Web” column.

Representative William Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, has reportedly been photographed accepting $100,000 of cash, $90,000 of which was discovered in his freezer. Does the Times thunder in outrage over this betrayal? Not a bit. It offers excuses, in this article by Christopher Drew and Robert Pear. Some excerpts:

Representative William J. Jefferson has always liked to talk about growing up in an impoverished farm community, picking cotton for $3 a day and hitting the books hard enough to win his ticket out — a scholarship to Harvard Law School. [....]
...a remarkable ascent from the deepest poverty and a quest for the comforts his family never had. [....]

Mr. Jefferson was raised, along with eight brothers and sisters, on a small farm in northeast Louisiana, where, he said earlier this year, “our whole life revolved around that cotton field.” His father left school after second grade, and his mother attended only through eighth grade. [....]

After he graduated from Southern University in Baton Rouge in 1969, Mr. Jefferson has said, he won his mother’s blessing to go to Harvard Law School — she had never heard of it — only by explaining that it had been John F. Kennedy’s college

When the modest backgrounds of GOP leaders like Tom Delay or Dennis Hastert are mentioned at all, usually it is in a sneering fashion. Dick Cheney worked as a youth on electrical power lines, a demanding and hazzardous task. Does the Times ever mention this?

Presumably, Rep. Jefferson enjoyed a scholarship to Harvard Law School, since his family would have been unable to help him with tuition. If so, his turn toward avarice and greed would be all the more worthy of condemnation.

The notion that poor people are somehow exempt from the same ethical strictures as the rest of us is poisonous condescension, robbing hte poor of their human dignity as moral actors. At its root, it regards poor people as permanently inferior.

Ed Lasky 5 29 06

Palestinians Help Hamas Dig the Hole

You have to wonder how things could and have gotten so far out of hand between the Israelis and the Palestinians- why have the Palestinians been living in refugee camps longer than any other peoples in history? The blame falls almost always on American and Israel. There never seems to be any fingers pointing at Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and, of course, the king pin of butchery and mass murder, Yessar Arafat.

The American left seems comfortable in having the United States as the wiping boy for the rest of the world when it comes to terrorists. Even our main stream church's are taking a stand against Israel, and again, no mention of the thousands of Israeli murdered by suicide bombings.
I am puzzled by their ability to profess on the one hand that we are all sons and daughters of God, but then on the other hand, say that God has taken a dislike to his own people. Do these elite members of the main stream religions really speak of God Himself? I think not.

I believe what is really happening is the church and the Marxist left in America have no stomach or moral necessity to deal with difficult decisions, and the easiest way out for them is to wash their hands of the whole mess, join with other self-servicing packs of moraless thugs, and declare the enemy of the world to be America and Israel. I's so easy and the members seem to be growing daily.

Of course this is nothing new, you have heard it all before in the newspaper, on television and on the floor of the United States Senate. The theme is always the same: there is no hope - we must surrender to the common sense of the old world thinkers - lets talk about it for a while, maybe it will all go away.

The following is from the American Thinker


Fatah members seeks asylum (in Spain) from Hamas

One group of terror supporters is seeking asylum from other terror groups in a Western European nation. You gotta like that!! Luke Baker of Reuters reports:

Staring idly across the hills of the northern West Bank, toward the plains of Israel, Mohammed Zaghal and his friends have no doubt about where they would rather be: Spain.

Having earned almost nothing for the past six years and with little prospect of getting jobs in Zabouba, a village near Jenin where unemployment tops 60 percent, they are desperate to follow friends who have fled to Europe.
Since the Islamic group Hamas won Palestinian elections in January‚a move that drew the wrath of Israel, Europe and the United States and led to an economic blockade‚the number seeking to escape has risen sharply, locals say.

Everyone in town, everyone in Jenin, just wants to get out,‚ says Zaghal, 24, who used to work in Israel until a Palestinian uprising began and Israel built a barrier through the West Bank, penning him into Zabouba. ‚In Europe we can move freely, there are jobs, there is money that we can send back to our families,‚ he said. ‚Here I have no hope, I sit at home and get bored all day.

Looking at Jenin and its surrounding villages, it is easy to see why young men want to leave. Many buildings are merely rubble, the result of days of fighting when Israeli forces reoccupied the town in 2002.

Ed Lasky 5 26 06

Bush the Hard Nose

This is really a good article about why Bush's poll numbers are so low, if even they really are. It does points out some serious flaws in his managing style and his lack of political backbone.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5527

Minuteman Corps. Will stand their Ground

The United States Senate has decided to act as though the people that put them in office have ceased to exist. They have become some kind of royalty, strutting their stuff before cameras and making decisions about immigration and other things that do not represent the majority of the American people.

And it's not just the nutjob Democrats, there are several Republicans mixed in there as well, like Senator McCain. They are called RINO's - Republicans in name only. They will say and do anything to get elected, just like the Democrats.

Would you believe anything that McCain says in the future after you saw him and Ted Kennedy shaking hands and congratulating each other on a job well done after getting the new immigration bill passed in the senate yesterday?

If there ever was a time for a third party, it is now. I consider myself a Republican, but I also consider myself a conservative. What we need now is for the conservatives to form a new party and let the centralist Republicans and centralist Democrats join forces to try and govern form the center - it won't work.

How can you be an effective legislator when your feet don't touch the ground when you make a career out of sitting on the fence.

You have to stand for something. You have to believe in a course of action and then act on it. It isn't possible to wait for a consensus of opinion from all parties involved and then make a decision. This is what McCain and Clinton are trying to do now. They are not believable. You know that when they get elected, it will be business as usual. It's called and agenda of 'smoke and mirrors'.

Breaking from NewsMax.com
Chris Simcox, president of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, issued the following statement on the passage today of an illegal alien amnesty bill by the U.S. Senate:

"The vote to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens by the United States Senate today, should it pass into law, would ensure that the status quo is maintained: the borders would remain wide open and the attractive nuisance of endless welfare and social programs at the expense of the American taxpayer would remain. Those climbing over the backs of those waiting patiently to abide by our laws; and instead breaking the law, illegally entering this country, and committing document fraud; those not paying taxes; and those hiring illegally would be granted full amnesty. American citizens would, of course, still be subject to prosecution for document fraud and tax evasion.

This sends the message that if you play by the rules, you suffer; if you enter the United States illegally, you are not subject to the rule of law.

"The American people do not trust the government to grant amnesty now and secure the borders later. We already went down that road in 1986, and the borders remain wide open still today.

"Their constituents are watching, and these Senators will pay the price come election time. We are now focusing our attention on the House of Representatives where we do not expect amnesty to pass. The House is more respectful of their voters, as they stand for re-election every two years. The arrogance and cavalier disregard of the will of the American people by this Senate will not be forgotten-there will be an accounting. The American people are still sovereign in this country, not a gaggle of politicians pandering to their special interest donors.

"The existing border crisis is a dereliction of duty by those entrusted with this nation's security, sovereignty and prosperity. The U.S. Senate just left America vulnerable to a tsunami of migrants at the border, to terrorist infiltration and to an unprecedented crime wave by drug smugglers, thieves, rapists, human traffickers and murderers who cross our frontier at will-and whose bravado and aggression will now increase with the Senate's message of our apparent national weakness.

"But the Minutemen will remain on patrol, at our posts-and continue to build border fencing and barriers on private land with private donations until the U.S. government performs its most basic constitutional duty to these United States, and safeguards the people and protects the territorial integrity of America."

Drug Addiction and Old Ideas

Drug addiction? Of course it's what everyone has always believed. If you took the drug once you were hooked and to kick the habit was like dying over and over again. But not so -

Wow, what an eye opener - I must admit that I held all of those views about heroin addition - it is interesting that addiction is more a matter of moral weakness than a chemical dependency.

It seems the more one is predisposed to become dependent, that is, those that seek alternative and radical life styles, raging wildly with flailing arms spewing unintelligible psychotic fantasies about how right they are about how wrong everyone else is, the more likely that person will seek out a substitute for their lack of independent thought, i.e. liberal Democrats - heh

In any event, a great article - but I won't print it here -

More Bad News for the ACLU

If you ever thought the ACLU was anything but a neo-communist organization, you don't have to wonder anymore.

Over the years they started to lean further and further to the left of center until they leave no doubt as to their true intentions when considering your civil liberties - the ACLU has the right to decide who has rights and who doesn't or shouldn't.

If you are a conservative, you have no right to civil liberties.

A.C.L.U. Reveals True Colors

The ultimate liberal hypocrisy was revealed today by the announcement that the A.C.L.U., purported defender of free speech rights, construes them as applicable only to those in agreement with its own dogmatic liberal views much reminiscent of the speech-stifling students who demonstrated this principle so publicly in the recent commencements at Columbia University, The New School, and Boston College, where attempts were made to prevent Sen. John McCain and Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice from presenting their views. As reported in this morning New York Times:

The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization policies and internal administration.Anthony D. Romero, head of the American Civil Liberties Union:

Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement, the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals. [....]

Given the organization longtime commitment to defending free speech, some former board members were shocked by the proposals. Nat Hentoff, a writer and former A.C.L.U. board member, was incredulous. [....]
"For the national board to consider promulgating a gag order on its members I cant think of anything more contrary to the reason the A.C.L.U. exists", Mr. Hentoff added.

The only surprise here is that the Times reported the news in an objective manner to which its readers are unaccustomed for topics of this nature, particularly after this weeks hysterical speechifying at New Paltz by publisher Pinch Sulzberger in which he revealed the 60s illogical which drives his thinking and undoubtedly effects the work of staffers who, humanly enough, understand the advantages of pleasing the boss.

Richard N. Weltz 5 24 06