Statistics

Mark Twain was quoted as saying, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." The following are some statistics (actual facts) of interest as compiled for 2005 up to October 14.

World Hunger - 6,907,406 human beings have died so far this year from hunger.

Food For Thought - 7,559,888,149 pounds of food have been wasted so far this year in the US.

Do the math, and you'll find that we could have given 1,095 lbs. of the wasted food to each of the almost seven million who died from hunger. I wonder how many lives would have been saved.

War In Iraq-Afghanistan - 68,552,250,856 dollars have been spent so far this year on Emergency Supplemental Appropriations in the US.

NASA Budget - 11,911,557,017 dollars spent so far this year.

Federal Budget Cuts -26,790,736 dollars have been cut in grants to children’s hospitals so far this year.

Our leaders have no problem spending $80 billion for the war and NASA while at the same time cutting almost $27 million that would have gone to help fund some programs at children's hospitals. I hope you see some logic to this thinking, because I don't.

US Oil Consumption - 201,971,682,648 gallons of oil used this year in America

Drink From The Sink - 291,548,443,366 glasses of tap water have been consumed so far this year in the US.

Bottled Water Trade Off - 7,765,437,188 plastic water bottles have ended up as either garbage or litter so far this year in the US.

After analyzing the last three statistics, I now see why it's necessary to spend billions on a war. Our gluttonous oil consumption habits have made it necessary for this country to try to take over an oil producing country.

I wonder if there's a long range plan to have NASA shuttle our wasted plastics and assorted garbage to another planet. Maybe they can experiment dumping the excess plastic on a planet that is closer to the sun to see what happens to tons of melted plastic. Use George Bush's theory, that it's better to kill them over there than to kill people here, plus you'll be freeing up valuable land that's currently being used to store our refuse and waste. Just think, we could have all our wasted plastics be shuttled to Mercury, all our wasted batteries to Mars, maybe our broken or outdated TV screens and computer monitors to Saturn. If we're going to continue to spend exorbitantly on the space program, we should be maximizing the space on board the shuttle to get a better return on our investment. Isn't that the good old American way?