Sacrificing Our Pawns

Let us not forget...





Troops in Iraq - Total 173,685, including 162,000 from the US, 5,500 from the UK, 1,200 from South Korea and 4,985 from all other nations

3,742 US Soldiers Killed, 27,767 Seriously Wounded (total excludes psychological injuries)

30% of US troops develop serious mental health problems within 3 to 4 months of returning home

Statistics from September, 2007

I was watching the intense grilling of General Petraeus. Meaty jowled politicians rattled off rhetorical jab after rhetorical jab at the other party, poorly disguising the blows as inquisition.

I couldn't seem to get out of my head the image of 19 year olds, fighting for their lives and our freedom, in a hot and hostile desert. Kids dying, in a region that for the most part resents their presence, while these stuffed suits sit back in D.C. using them as statistical leverage one way or the other to fuel their own agenda.

I don't even pretend to take a side, left or right, elephant or a$$. But good grief if these soldiers - heroes - are going to be "over seas" then let's quit positioning for the next election and give them the tools and numbers they need to finish the job. If not then bring them home. These aren't ceramic pawns in some twisted game of Battle Chess, they are people - Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers, Sons and Daughters.

Just A Little Bit Longer

Pharmaceutical companies must be striving to burn.
A good friend of mine that I work with told me a story the
other day that really got to me. Her father has been struggling with lung cancer for years. He has been on an experimental drug that has been working. The cost was over 1600 dollars every 3 months - out of pocket.

Now the maker of the drug has decided that it will not cooperate with the man's insurance company. The insurance company won't compromise at all. He is left with cancer, held at bay by this drug that he is not allowed to take anymore unless he pays for it all without the help of insurance. Basically he was good enough to be a guinea pig, but is not good enough to have their medicine after he helped prove that it works.

What really gets me is that they told him that he could qualify for free medicine if he didn't have a house, a checking account or a vehicle. WTF! If he'd been a bum all his life instead of providing for his family and being responsible he'd be good enough for some charity?



Icing on the cake: My friend told me she picked up some literature to help her father decide what to do next. In it they found a quote from one of the drug company's officials speaking on how they could charge so much for pills that cost them nothing to make... "People will pay anything to live just a Little bit longer."

My friends this is how the rich get rich and then richer. But you can't take it with you - what goes around comes around and when it does...

this company can reap it!

Drug Companies Get Healthy, but at Whose Expense?

The Truth About Drug Companies

Breaking Our Backs

Society here in the United States is broken. The gap between social classes continues to extend as the price of everything we need to survive rises and many people are perilously close to paying more to get to work than they are actually being paid.

Just look at these headlines (click them to read the stories): Big Oil's biggest quarter ever: $51.5B in all, Jobless rate climbs as 51,000 jobs vanish, U.S. Recession Is on Verge of Making History. Everyday we digest such troubling news while millions of Americans face agonizing decisions like whether to buy gas or food - paying bills is out of the question for many.


Yet government officials still give us the same line: "I think we have avoided a recession," White House Budget Director Jim Nussle said in an interview on CNBC. What is that statement based on? Probably the fact that people like Nussle can still drive wherever they please, eat whatever they please and buy whatever they please due to their inflated salaries and earmarks.

The US government is a corrupt, self-serving entity whose only service to its people is to manipulate them into believing they have just enough freedom to keep them profitable.

Don't tell me that the price of gas should have gone up years ago, don't tell me that this inflation is supply and demand, don't tell me we are not in a recession and please don't tell me that you are doing everything you can until minimum wage is raised to match; so that the common man benefits from the justified inflation of his services.



A government who asks its people to sacrifice while it profits flirts dangerously with revolution. Those elected now would do well to remember that this nation was born in the hearts of those who would not live under tyranny.

The technology to create automobiles, that do not operate with fossil fuels, has existed for three decades. We've put men on the moon, we've split the atom, we've cloned animals... Yet we can't build an electric car? Why? Here's the deal - we can't because our government does not want us to. It wouldn't be profitable.