Soldiers Sue Hometown Over Pay Cuts

Two military reservists from Kearney, New Jersey, Scott Paulson, and John Pedegrue decided to sue their hometown, where they work as firefighters, when the town cut their pay while they were overseas serving their country. In 2004 the town of Kearney drafted a resolution which states that after a reservist ships out they get 90 days full pay after which they get a pay cut for not being on the job. In the past between 1996-2003 this was not the case. The Mayor of the city, Alberto Santos, insists that it is an equity issue. He believes that it is unfair for reservists to recieve two full time salaries while they are serving overseas. The mayor further argues that the long deployments have put a strain on the city's finances and that this fact forced the change in city policy.

Future Of Coupon Clipping Is Online

Forget about getting out a pair of scissors and cutting your coupons out of the paper because the future of coupons involves clicking them instead of clipping them. Supermarket chains nationwide are trying to take much of the paper out of it and going electronic to save money and paper and the cost of printing and circulating coupons. You will now be able to load the value of your coupons electronically onto a plastic card from your home computer and then when you get to the supermarket checkout line simply swipe the card and get full credit for all the value of your coupons in just one quick movement. A scanning machine will have the amount of each coupon loaded into its memory and when you show up and swipe the full value will be deducted from your total bill. The nationwide chains believe that this new and improved way of going about things will help build customer loyalty because you will only be able to use certain coupons at certain predetermined stores in addition to saving them the cost of printing coupons the old fashioned way. They are also hoping to take advantage of the increasing number of individuals who are logging on and going online these days who are looking for bargains. There would also be no more losing coupons or the need to organize them in any kind of order or category before you head out to the store.

Air Power

Any Military strategist will tell you that in order to win on the ground you have got to have supremacy in the air. The most powerful countries in the world know this and dedicate a great portion of their annual Gross Domestic product to the development of newer and more advanced air weapons and then build as many of them as they can in order to gain an advantage at least on paper over any potential enemies they may face in the future. here now is a list of the top 5 nations in the world in terms of the number of aircraft they maintain in their air forces. Most coutries in the world have significantly fewer than 1000 planes in their arsenals but there are only 3 exceptions.

1. Russia -----3252
2. U.S. --------2658
3. China ------ 2643
4. India ------- 849
5. N. Korea --- 590

The Illusion Of Choice In The Presidential Election

Before you run out to cast your vote for the next president of The United States just keep in mind that the only choices that you get in terms of candidates are the choices that the corporate powers that be will allow you to have based on what it is they want. Have you ever noticed how every time any candidate comes up that threatens to make any real kinds of changes to the way things operate in Washington they always just disappear into the fog and we are always left with people who have been part of the system for decades and have been running things in Washington forever and have no real vested interest in changing anything but rather in the maintenance of the status quo. John McCain has been a senator for decades, Hillary Clinton has been around for decades, Barak Obama is new which is the biggest reason for his appeal with potential voters. He has no political history to tarnish his name yet. He is playing that to the hilt though. The notion that he is a new breath of fresh air and that he will go in there and change the way things go on in Washington. The truth is he wont because he cant. In order to run for president you need the sanction of the corporate elites who really run this country and in order for them to provide you with the money you need to run your campaign they have to be assured by you in private that at the end of the day you are not going to do anything that will seriously upset the way they go about doing things. After a candidate runs for office and succeeds he is so in debt to the people that payed for him to get there that he basicaaly is in a position where he cant say no to them about anything that they might want to do and thats how the systems ends up working against people like you and me. This country is a democracy in name only at this point. It is a democracy on paper and in reality rich people run it and they are not going to let go of power as long as they live i would guess. Even if barak Obama wins and becomes president you should not expect anything to change really because the people that really run things dont want anything to change. Big Oil, Big agriculture, big pharmaceuticals, big insurance, big real estate are the indiustries that really run things and at the end of the day they are only interested in having candidates that bend to their will about what they want done and the laws they want created to benefit them. They would never be interested in anyone like Ralph Nader, or Ron Paul or any kind of candidate who if he ever actually became president and had any real power would be going after them first. They always want a lap dog who will do their bidding and keep things going in the direction that they have been in this country. A direction that has been benefitting them first and the most. Barak Obama's posture as a candidate of change is just a pose to get you to give him his vote. If he wins he wont make any real changes he will be busy paying back the big wigs who got him there in the first place and those people are not everyday Americans.

Its Hard To Tell Football Players Apart Sometimes

Kind of an interesting thing happened the other day on The View. The two guests for a segment were 2 of the players from the champion New York Giants Football team, Michael Strahan and Amani Toomer. Whoopi Goldberg, who was actually at the parade that was given 2 days after the game was won in new york, kept on going on to Amani Toomer about how amazing the catch was that he made during the game that set up a score for the Giants and helped them win the game. One little problem was that Amani Toomer did not make that catch. That miracle catch was made by his teammate David Tyrie. The Giants gained about 30 yards on the play and it set up a situation just minutes later where Amani Toomer caught what turned out to be the winning touchdown when Eli Manning lobbed a throw into the corner of the end zone and Toomer just cradled it in his hands for the easy score. Surprisingly enough Toomer did not say anything to her about it and neither did fellow teammate Strahan when Whoopi was clearly getting it wrong, They just kinda went with the flow. It was kind of an interesting, awkward moment to watch.

Why Not An Obama/Clinton Ticket? I'll tell you why

There are some people out there who have been thinking that perhaps an Obama Clinton ticket would be just the ticket for the democrats this year to propel them to victory. It is not likely. First of all Hillary would not do it. She has been around for thirty years in politics and government and would not frankly lower herself to being in a junior position to someone like Barak Obama who has been around for about 5 minutes and is about 20 years her junior in age and has far less experience than she does. Consider it from Barak Obama's position he likely would not do it either. He has all these years ahead of him as both a senator and a perpetual presidential candidate if he does not make it this time around so accepting a position to be a vice presidential nominee is likely a step down for him already in his career. He has got his eye on the top job and he is going to spend at least the next two election cycles trying to get that top job if he cant get there this time around. It is a great idea however and it would really be something if it happened but the reality of the situation is that neither one of them at this point in their careers would take the step down it would require of them to fit into a vice presidential position. Obama and Clinton in politics are basically two alpha males and they are both looking to lead the pack. Neither is at all interested i would think in being the door mat for the other that being a vice presidential nominee would require of them. It is not in either of their natures.

Tanks A Lot

The frontline battle tank has long been a symbol of military might for well over a century around the world. All the worlds major powers possess them but some have more than others. Here now is a list of the top ten nations in the world in terms of the number of battle tanks that they have in their military as of the end of 2007.

1. Russia ----------22830
2. U.S. ------------- 7620
3. China ----------- 7580
4. Syria ------------ 4950
5. Turkey ---------- 4205
6. India ------------ 3978
7. Egypt ----------- 3885
8. Ukraine ---------3784
9. Israel ----------- 3657
10. N. Korea ------ 3500

P.S. While many of the battle tanks in the U.S. and Israeli arsenals are state of the art and technologically advanced this is not usually the case in the armies of the other nations listed. In some cases their tanks may be over 40 years old and not state of the art equipment. This would provide a decided disadvantage on a battle field. The Russians have decided to make up for this technological disadvantage by maintaining larger numbers of tanks in general.

Shooting Down A Satellite

The truth about why the U.S is going to try and shoot down that satellite that is failing and slowly falling out of earth orbit has almost nothing to do with what the government says its about. They say that they are worried about people on the ground. That's not it. That satellite was launched in 2006. It is a state of the art piece of technological equipment that the U.S government does not want any other country to get it hands on. It can land anywhere, there is no way to tell where it would come down. The fear is that it might fall someplace on the earth where we cant recover it like say Russia or some part of the pacific ocean where we cant get to it before other countries can and make it disappear and then take it home and take the thing apart piece by piece and discover how to make a state of the art satellite and end up building a similiar version of their own that they in turn use to spy on us. That is what the big fear is. The government is not worried that the satellite is going to come down and land on your house or mine, it does not worry about those kinds of things it worries about its military secrets remaining secret. The other reason is simply to just see if they can do it. The Bush administration believes in the viability of a misslie defense system that can one day shoot down incoming missiles that are fired at the U.S. from enemy countries and it just wants to see if it can do it is all. It wants to see if it is possible. It is called research and development. It's the same reason we went to the moon, to see if we can do it, and at the same time while we are at it try and show off a little about what we can do, that is if we can do it. We shall see.

P.S. ---The satellite in question was shot down successfully on the first try on February 20th 2007 with a missile that was launched from a U.S. cruiser in the Pacific ocean west of Hawaii at about 10 p.m.

The hypocracy of TV

Have you ever noticed how two faced all the morning television shows are on tv? I mean they are always talking about how you should save the environment and conserve and switch your light bulbs to flourescent lights and all that stuff and then they go into a commercial break and its almost nothing but car commercials? Usually big, giant American gas guzzling cars too. Cars that are so big that you could probably see them from space if you were flying in a space shuttle. So is it all just a pose? They just pay lip service to the idea of saving the environment and then dont really practice any of it in reality? It's very popular to be in favor of the environment but its a lot harder to practice saving it because that requires sacrifice and they just are not willing to make it. How about you promote only products that do not harm the environment and not accept advertising for products that are harmful? Well that would be quite a sacrifice now would it not? They always talk the talk but when it actually comes to doing it then you get all kinds of B.S. about why they cant or wont or both or neither and so on and so on. Im just saying that its kinda two faced for a show like The Today Show or Good Morning America to do some segment like why you should switch to using all rechargeable batteries in order to save the environment and then they cut to commercials about the new Ford mini van that just came out with some celebrity behind the wheel talking in a sexy voice about how you should buy this car and go pollute the planet everywhere you drive it. It's like they just pay lip service to the idea on one hand and then they take the money and run on the other.

The Islamic Quandry

When it comes to the western world Isalm seems to me to have a split personality. It is totally on their part a love/hate relationship and it is always torn between its feelings of admiration for the west and the massive inferiority complex that it carries around when it compares itself to the west.
Sooner or later it is going to have to decide which emotion is going to be the dominant one. There is no doubt in my mind that much of the venom that the Islamic world spits out towards the west is in fact a jealousy. They look out at the west and they see that they dont compare and it bothers them. They see a world that is dominated by the west in nearly every way and it fosters a jealous rage within them that manifests itself in the tension that is currently dominating the world scene. How long can they keep up the charade? How long is the western world going to have to put up with watching muslims on tv screaming in a mob at the western nations shouting phrases like "Death to America" and then when they go home they drive in their American invented cars, talk on their cell Phones, turn on their tv's that are all hooked up to satellite dishes on their roof tops after they have been protesting all day in their sneakers and then log on to their computers and surf the web so they can find one of thousands of anti western websites and then type in their hate with phrases like "The Great Satan" and "Down with the West?" My point being that they say they hate the west but they buy into every aspect of it. They go to McDonald's to eat just like you and i do. They all come over to the west to get educated and then go home to protest the west. I think all this hatred stems from some kind of collective inferiority complex that they grapple with. They look at the west and see all that they wish they could be. They see that the west is militarily superior, economically superior, politically superior, much more progressive culturally and socially and they get to feeling inferior and jealous about it and then you get the resentment that that evokes and the next thing you know you have a bunch of them on the street shouting with their "Death to America" routine over any political "slight" large or small. They are like Joe Pesci"s character in the movie "Goodfellas." The little wild guy with the inferiority complex who walks into the room with the most to prove who over reacts at the smallest provacation and who is never big enough to let it go. They spit their venom out at the west with such a passion that you can feel the envy that they have even fron 5000 miles away sometimes. The Arab world is like Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde when it comes to the west. They protest and protest violently against the west but underneath it you can sense that on a certain level they wish that they could be like the west in terms of its technological achievments, medical advances, and so forth. The Arab world when it comes to the west is like a 10 year old boy who has a 20 year old brother. It is not as capable as its older brother is, not as intelligent, not as sophisticated or developed and it does not like that so it decides to resent him, blame him for all his own problems and strike out at him. In the process they do themselves the most damage of all. Think about it, was the attack on 9-11 worth it in the long run? They killed nearly 3000 innocent Americans on that day. God knows how many Arabs, innocent and not innocent, have perished since then because of that day. In the final analysis Osama Bin Laden is going to be responsible for more deaths of more arab people than anyone in history because of his actions and the World Trade Center is going to have a bunch of new, modern buildings on it. Whatever damage he does or tries to do to the west from here on out is only going to be met with a much larger retaliation so what is he accomplishing in the end? His war against the west was an emotional reaction and not very well thought out intellectually. That's quite a surprise for a religious fanatic isint it?

Largest Armies In The World

Ever wonder who has the largest army in the world? It's not the U.S. The U.S. ranks high but it is not number one, not even close. Listed below are the top 20 countries in the world in terms of the size of their armies. The list is accurate as of the end of 2007. (Source - Intl. Institute of Stategic Studies)

1. China -------------- 2,255,000
2. U.S. ---------------- 1,506,800
3. India --------------- 1,316,000
4. N. Korea ------------1,106,000
5. Russia --------------1,027,000
6. S. Korea ------------- 687,000
7. Pakistan ------------- 619,000
8. Iran ------------------ 545,000
9. Turkey --------------- 514,900
10. Egypt --------------- 468,500
11. Vietnam -------------455,000
12. Burma ---------------375,000
13. Sryia ---------------- 307,600
14. Thailand -------------306,600
15. Indonesia ------------302,000
16. Taiwan -------------- 290,000
17. Brazil ---------------- 287,900
18. France ---------------254,900
19. Germany ------------ 245,700
20. Japan ----------------240,400

Soldier Sues Army To Stop 5th Call To Duty In 6 Years

An American Army soldier who has already served 4 tours of duty in both Iraq and Afganistan has had enough. Army Reservist Erik Botta is suing the army to stop his 5th call to duty in 6 years in order that he can pursue his long delayed education. Botta joined the military shortly after the attacks of 9-11 and says now that after 4 years of serving overseas that he wants to continue working for the Sikorsky aircraft corporation, where he is currently employed, as well as complete his education in electrical engineering. The problem is that he has one year left on his contract with the military and that is why he has been called up again. Botta says that he is willing to serve that final year but first would like the time that he needs to complete his studies in engineering. The government did not back off and so he sued.

MIlitary Industrial Complexes Around The World

It comes as no surprise to anyone that there are a good number of countries in the world who dedicate the bulk of their economic budgets to the endeavour of preparing for war. Nations around the world commit large amounts of financial resources in an attempt to achieve an elusive sense of national security. It is common knowledge that when it comes to this the United States is by far the leader of the pack but where do the other nations of the world stand in relation? Here now is a list of the top 20 countries around the world in terms of their annual defense budgets. The list is organized by naming the country and then the amount they dedicated to defense in U.S. dollars in 2007. (source - Intl. Institute of Strategic Studies)

1. United States -------582 billion
2. England -------------- 60 billion
3. France --------------- 49 billion
4. Japan ---------------- 41 billion
5. Germany ------------ 39 billion
6. China ---------------- 35 billion
7. Russia --------------- 32 billion
8. Saudi Arabia ---------25 billion
9. South Korea --------- 24 billion
10. India ---------------- 23 billion
11. Italy ----------------- 17 billion
12. Brazil ----------------16 billion
13. Taiwan -------------- 9 billion
14. Spain ---------------- 9 billion
15. Turkey -------------- 8 billion
16. Israel ---------------- 8 billion
17. Iran ------------------ 7 billion
18. Burma --------------- 6 billion
19. Poland --------------- 6 billion
20. Greece -------------- 5 billion

P.S. - U.S. figure is only the Pentagon's portion of the annual defense Budget. If you included all military related spending such as research and development and procurment the actual annual figure is closer to 1.3 trillion dollars.

An Affordable Deep Sea Shipping Stock

If you are interested in an affordable Maritime transport stock maybe Navios Maritime (NM) might be worth a look. They transport raw materials for agriculture, trading, exports, and also the industrial sector. The company owns 26 vessels in total and it is a new fleet of ships. Their vessels are on average only three years old and they are just under 2 million dead weight tons in total. The company did 226 million in sales in 2006.
In march of 2007 the stock was at about $8 a share. In may it went to $9. In june it went over $11.50. In July $13. In August of 07 it fell back to $11. By October it had recovered and was at $14 a share. By November $19. In December it dropped back to $15. In January it fell back to $9. Since this latest low the stock has again recovered and it closed on Valentines day at $12.53 having gained 63 cents on the day. It is up over 50% since last march despite the latest drop and since the market has been getting a little bit more back to normal lately it is likely to keep doing better but if there is one thing about the market that is certain it is that there are no guarantees. It should keep doing well though despite the occasional setback. It is likely that a year from now it will be higher than where it is now. How much higher is a guess but it should return a profit. It is a company that is growing so i would not be surprised if it was up around $20-$25 a share in one year but as i said there are no guarantees.

Wait Times At Hospitals Longer These Days Study Indicates

Along with the rising cost of health care these days another thing that is rising with it is the amount of time you will have to wait to be seen if you are ill. According to a recent study it is up over 150% since just 1997. it has gone up from about 8 minutes that year to amost 20 minutes by 2004. Researchers say that one of the big causes for this is the declining number of emergency rooms in the nation as more and more hospitals close down coupled with an overall increase in the population in general which results in more crowded emergency rooms and longer wait times. The study also indicated that african americans in urban environments on average have longer wait times than whites do in a suburban setting.

U.S Love Affair With Cell Phones Growing

In the United States it seems that we have become a country of people who like talking while we are on the run. Cell phone usage in the U.S. has skyrocketed in the last 12 years. We all have stories about being forced to listen to some dumb conversation that is going on with some cell phone user while we are stuck with them on a bus or restaurant and being bothered to death by it and wishing that they would just shut up. Listed below is a chart that indicates just how fast cell phone ownership has grown in the U.S. since 1995-2006. (source CTIA)

YEAR ------- U.S. USERS
1995 -------- 33,700,000
1996 -------- 44,043,000
1997 -------- 55,312,000
1998 -------- 69,209,000
1999 -------- 86,047,000
2000 ------- 109,478,000
2001 ------- 128,375,000
2002 ------- 140,767,000
2003 ------- 158,722,000
2004 ------- 182,140,000
2005 ------- 207,896,000
2006 ------- 233,041,000

Airline Safety In The U.S.A.

You have probably heard it before that flying on an airplane is the safest way to travel that mankind has ever devised and its true. It may scare the life out of some people to even consider it as a means of travel but if you go by the numbers not only is it the safest way to get from point A to point B it is the safest by an incredibly wide margin. Its really one of those situations in life where the people who worry about it are really worried about the wrong thing. It is true that some years have been safer than others but even in the worst years for aviation the number of deaths relative to the number of passengers per year are very low. Below is a list of the last 20 years of aviation history in the U.S. It lists the number of accidents each year from 1987-2006 in which fatalities occured and then the number of deaths total for that year. (source N.T.S.B)

YEAR -----------AIRLINE ACCIDENTS ---------DEATHS
1987 ---------------------5-------------------------232
1988 ---------------------3-------------------------285
1989 --------------------11-------------------------278
1990 ---------------------6--------------------------39
1991 ---------------------4--------------------------62
1992 ---------------------4--------------------------33
1993 ---------------------1---------------------------1
1994 ---------------------4-------------------------239
1995 ---------------------3-------------------------168
1996 ---------------------5-------------------------380
1997 ---------------------4---------------------------8
1998 ---------------------1---------------------------1
1999 ---------------------2--------------------------12
2000 ---------------------3--------------------------92
2001 ---------------------6-------------------------531
2002 ---------------------0---------------------------0
2003 ---------------------2--------------------------22
2004 ---------------------2--------------------------14
2005 ---------------------3--------------------------22
2006 ---------------------2--------------------------50

P.S. -- 2001 figures include attacks on World trade Center and Pentagon.

The Exploding Worldwide Web

We are all aware that in the last 15 years a communications revolution has taken place with the advent and the increasing popularity of the world wide web. In the beginning it was mostly an American phenomenon with over half of the users in the world residing in the United States but as time has gone by Americans now make up about 20% of the internet users in the world. Below is a list of the growth of the world wide web from 1994 - 2005 listing the number of American users year by year and then followed by the total number of users world wide and how much the numbers have grown.

U.S users
1994 - 13 million
1995 - 25 million
1996 - 45 million
1997 - 60 million
1998 - 85 million
1999 - 102 million
2000 - 124 million
2001 - 142 million
2002 - 159 million
2003 - 161 million
2004 - 185 million
2005 - 198 million

World users:
1994 - 22 million
1995 - 29 million
1996 - 70 million
1997 - 116 million
1998 - 172 million
1999 - 276 million
2000 - 390 million
2001 - 490 million
2002 - 619 million
2003 - 719 million
2004 - 852 million
2005 - 980 million

Top 25 All Time Best Selling Albums In The U.S.

The top 25 greatest albums of all time in terms of sales is a list that in the United States is dominated by classic rock bands but not exclusively. The names of the albums and the bands who made them will no doubt be familiar to all avid music fans but some of the names on the list might be a surprise. Listed below are the 25 greatest selling albums of all time in the U.S. as of the end of 2007 according to the R.I.A.A. (Recording industry association of America) They are listed by the album title followed by the artist and then the year they were released:

1. Greatest hits 1971-1975 --- Eagles --- 1976
2. Thriller --- Michael Jackson --- 1982
3. Led Zeppellin 4 --- Led Zeppellin --- 1971
4. The Wall --- Pink Floyd --- 1979
5. Back in Black --- AC/DC --- 1980
6. Greatest hits Vol 1 & 2 --- Billy Joel ---1985
7. Double Live --- Garth Brooks --- 1998
8. Come on Over --- Shania Twain ---1997
9. White Album --- Beatles --- 1968
10. Rumours --- Fleetwood Mac ---1977
11. Boston --- Boston --- 1976
12."The Bodyguard"-- Whitney Houston & Others - 1992
13. Beatles 1967-1970 --- Beatles--- 1973
14. No Fences --- Garth Brooks --- 1990
15. Hotel California --- Eagles --- 1976
16. Cracked Rear View --- Hootie & The Blowfish -- 1994
17. Greatest Hits --- Elton John --- 1974
18. Physical Graffiti --- Led Zeppellin -- 1975
19. Jagged Little Pill --- Alanis Morissette---1995
20. Beatles 1962-1966 --- Beatles --- 1973
21. Saturday Night Fever (soundtrack) -- Bee Gees & Others --1977
22. Appetite for Destruction --- Guns N' Roses ---1987
23. Dark side of the moon --- Pink Floyd --- 1973
24. Supernatural --- Santana --- 1999
25. Born in the U.S.A. --- Bruce Springsteen --- 1984

The Next President And The Supreme Court

When the next president of the United States is sworn in on January 20th 2009 he is going to possibly be in a position to spread his idealogical influence over the country for a generation or more because of the current makeup of the Supreme Court and the advanced ages of most of the current members. Out of the nine members of the court there are six of them who will be over the age of 70 come next inauguration day. it is actually possible that the next president may be in a position to replace all of them especially if he serves two terms.
Some people believe falsely that when a president leaves office that he is gone and all his policies go with him. It is not the case. The supreme court is the lingering legacy that they leave behind and it is in my opinion an important thing to consider in the next election. The appointees that George Bush has made are going to be with us for at least another 25-30 years barring any kind of unexpected health crisis. Justices like Roberts and Alito are going to be working all that time i figure to limit the rights of every American on subjects such as abortion as well as others so you see we are going to be living with the nonsense of the Bush years for longer than most people think. I Myself am not sure i want a republican president coming up in this cycle who will be in the position of actually turning the entire Supreme Court conservative. It's one of my other reasons im not so interested in a John McCain presidency this time around. A total right wing Supreme Court is something that should scare every American who desires any kind of civil liberty or personal freedom i feel. An all right wing Court would probably work overtime to limit those kinds of things which works counter to the constitutions guarantee of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in my estimation. This reality alone is reason enough to vote Democratic this time around regardless of who is the candidate whether he be black, female or whatever. A Supreme Court that is more liberal in its leanings is always more receptive to leaving individual citizens to run their own lives without interference from the heavy hand of government and this is always more desirable in a "free Country." Conservatives always like to legislate morality and it is not their place frankly to do that. They should make their case for that based on the power of their arguments and not try to impose their version of morality by law which is what they always tend to want to do and that is not freedom.

McCain Not As Moderate As Expected

Now that John McCain seems to be the one in terms of securing the republican nomination for president this election cycle it is not a bad time to take a closer look at where he stands in terms of positions. He is not the most popular conservative in the history of the republican party. There are many in the G.O.P. who dont like him at all. They feel he is too moderate some even feeling that he has a liberal bent on some issues and they are not comfortable with it. As far as his views on the war in Iraq go i dont think his position is in line with the majority of Americans who wish to just be free of the whole Iraq situation. He favors staying in Iraq for as long as it takes. He has in fact said that even if it takes 50 years we should remain there until the job gets done. The question is what job is there to do? What exactly can be done about Iraq? It is hard to stabilize a country where in which the enemies you are fighting want you out so badly that they are willing to engage in any kind of tactic to get you out and even the people who are "On your side" want you out too. The situation there is not viable really. You have a government in Iraq that cant even contain its pleasure every time it hears about another American being killed and runs off to the nearest mosque to go praise Allah for it. When these are your allies you have only one choice really and that is to just go home.
McCain does not favor universal health care. While he is one of those Sentors who has been around for about 100 years enjoying the significantly above average wages that being a sentor provides and the health benefits that are second to none really in this country all courtesy of the American tax payer he does not favor extending these kinds of benefits in any kind of even basic way to the average American who has been extending them to him and his colleagues forever. He thinks it should be a free market type situation and the government should not get involved.
He wants to make the Bush tax cuts for the super rich permanent. It has got to be the height of contempt when you have a situation where the country is at war un-nessessarily and it is costing a ton a week ( About 2 billion dollars a week to be more precise) and you have a bunch of rich people like the president and senator McCain running around advocating the the wealthiest members of the society such as they be even more exempt from taxation than they already are. Wealthy people in this country get taxed at about a rate of 17% while the middle class gets it to the tune of anywhere between 25-35% on average depending on their level of income and you have rich guys like this going around saying that it should be lower still for the wealthy while we borrow more money than ever from countries like China to finance the war and shoot the national debt up into the sky. This simply put is a bunch of crazy talk. Why cant rich people pay their fair share? What is the big objection that the wealthy have to this fair proposal? It's a simple case of they run things, they set up the rules to favor themselves and the rest of us carry more than our fair share of the weight and struggle to make ends meet. It's not fair, it's not right and i dont know if McCain is the answer therefore for the problems that this country is facing in these times.

The $50,000 Bed Is Here

I never thought that anything like this could ever come into being but here it is. There is actually a luxury bed on the market now that costs more than most cars. It is called the Starry Night Sleep Technology Bed and it offers the ultimate in a night of luxurious sleep in addition to being equipped with half the gadgets that exist in the known world for your convenience. Among the features are an I-Pod dock with a powerful surround sound system, a high definition projector, wi-fi capability for going on line from bed, and a built in media server. It also has dual temperature controls for you and your partner to adjust to your individual preferences. The temperature can be regulated from a low of 68 degrees to a high over 120. It even has an anti snoring feature for women to keep their husbands quiet at night. At $50,000 dollars however it is likely out of reach for the average American so stop dreaming and go back to your old matress.

Pharmaceutical Compnies Mislead Public About Meds

The pharmaceutical industry as a whole takes in billions annually from its anti depressant drugs that it advertises relentlessly and offers to the public annually at ever increasing costs. According to a review of data submitted to the F.D.A. it is believed that these companies have been engaged in an attempt to mislead the public about the overall efficacy of nearly a dozen anti depressant drugs through selectivly publishing only the studies that favorably review these drugs and down playing the studies that might indicate that the drugs do not have much of an effect or even negativly impact the patient. As a result the public does not recieve an accurate account of how effective these drugs may actually be. They are generally left with the impression that anti depressants are more effective than the research would actually indicate. Generally pharmaceutical companies fear negative publicity about their drugs because that unfavorable information would hurt sales of a new drug and badly effect their bottom lines so that kind of information is suppressed as much as possible in order to protect the economic investment already made in new drugs about to go to market.

First of New Presidential Coins Out This Year

If you are a coin collector than this might be an above average year for you in terms of your hobby. The U.S. Mint is set to release the first of its new presidential dollar coins this Valentines day. The first one issued will have the image of President James Monroe. A new coin will be issued every three months after that in succession. Other coins set to be released are John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, And Martin Van Buren.

Your New car Will Soon Be Getting Smarter

Pretty soon your car is going to get much more helpful to you in terms of being able to warn you about trouble on the road up ahead. More and more common to all automobiles are on board computers and technologies that can equip cars with G.P.S. capabilities to prevent you from getting lost and technologies like On-Star which can be used to call for help. Now there is a technology that can be placed within your car that can constantly monitor weather conditions on the road up ahead. It can also communicate with other cars wirelessly that are similiarly equipped and relay information about conditions on the roads many miles ahead of you. This information can help you plot the best and safest course to your destination and help you avoid excessive ice, flooding, and snow which might hinder your progress.

Coffee A Big Risk For Pregnant Women

According to a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and gynocology if you are a pregnant woman and you like to drink coffee in the morning you really should think about giving it up. The study indicates that having as little as two cups of coffee in the morning can double your risk of a miscarriage. Indications are that it is the caffeine in the coffee the poses the risk. caffeine is also found in some teas and most sodas so those should be avoided as well.