edwards block

I, Edward, defender of forests, eater of soy products, and catcher-releaser of bathtub spiders, have brutalized to the point of death one small, defenseless mouse.

I was coming home from school, about to put the key in the front door of my abode-of-the-week, when a small mouse ran past my foot. Before any thoughts could be presented to my frontal cortex, some long suppressed instinct, perhaps, leapt from the depths of my evolutionary filing cabinet and gave it a quick kick. It flew up and smacked against the wall, fell to the ground, and lay on its back, legs twitching in the air, clearly badly injured. About then my liberal concern reappeared, and in a moment of clarity I knew what the proper course of action was.

I stepped on it, ending its misery, and kicked it into the garden. Then I went into the house and had lunch.

Oh well, better that quick death than a long, slow death on one of those hellishly torturous sticky pads.

Speaking of senseless violence and callous disregard for life, I see in the news that the United States Senate this morning voted 97-0 to provide George W. Bush with another $50 billion with which to prosecute his war on terror, bringing the total official cost of this project to $350 billion. That’s $350,000,000,000.00!

However, it is not just the unimaginable sum of money that astounds me, but that the senate vote was unanimous. Every single Democratic senator – and there are some 44 of them – voted in favour of the bill, except one, who did not vote. If this is an example of the official opposition to George Bush, America is in worse shape than I thought.

A few facts:

• Budget projections from the White House show that, by 2010, the annual military budget will have risen to $485 billion (Apparently the war on terror is expected to last a while.)
• Total military budget (estimated using White House projections) for George W. Bush’s presidency: $3.19 trillion ($12,000.00 or so per American).
• Total US budget expense for 2005: $ 2.48 trillion
• Total US budget revenue for 2005: $ 1.49 trillion
• Total 2005 Deficit: -$ 987 billion
• Total US Federal debt (to Oct08/05) $7,983,343,398,770.02 (That’s almost $8 trillion)
• Biggest US defense contractor: Lockheed Martin
• Estimated annual revenue that defense contractor Lockheed Martin receives from the federal treasury: $23.7 billion
• Corporation that Bush, as Governor of Texas, reportedly tried to give a contract to run the Texas welfare system before he had to relent in the face of public protests and an unfavorable regulatory ruling by the Clinton administration: Lockheed Martin
• Corporation whose VP was apparently a finance chair of the 2000 Bush for President campaign: Lockheed Martin
• Estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed in the war on terror to date: 26,323
• Cost to kill each Iraqi: $13.3 million
• Barrels of Iraqi oil imported to the US every day: 615,000
• Barrels of Canadian oil imported to the US every day: 1,624,000
• Estimated cost to kill all Canadians, should we become a threat to the US oil supply: $398 trillion