Since one of my favorite shows "My Name in Earl" was a re-run last night, I was flipping the channels and came across a new Summer SITCOM Replacement. It was called "Rep Steve King (R-Iowa) on C-SPAN", or "A Freeper Goes to Washington". Had to be some of the funniest shit I had seen in a long time. If you missed it, I've pulled some excerpts for you.
Rep King actually had charts and statistics that he was pointing to that proved,
"Proved" I tell you, that you're "safer in Iraq than you are in DC, St Louis, Los Angeles, or Detroit". I swear to Gawd, by the time he was done, I was literally :rofl: my ass off. I can't wait to see the next installment where Rep King takes his family for a picnic on the beautiful banks of the Tigris River.
Don't miss this show. It's the best comedy I've seen since "The Honeymooners"!
Excerpts:
full speech avail at
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/speech/ia05_king/sp_20060503_stats.htmlif you can make it thru without :puke: you get a gold star.
"So I pulled those statistics together for a number of countries.
Of course, Iraq would be number one on that list. And the statistics are given on many web pages and easily available to all, Mr. Speaker, but the number of murder victims, deaths due to violent acts, murder victims per 100,000. So you take it down into that number per 100,000, it puts it in a balanced perspective, it is apples to apples, and it will give a person an idea of about what kind of a violent society we might be dealing with.
For Iraq, the victims of violence, and in that we include the bombing victims, of civilians and those that are victims also of murder in Iraq, it comes down to 27.51 deaths per 100,000 per year; 27.51 is the number. So if you are living in a city of exactly 100,000 people, statistically there would be 27.51 of them who would die a violent death in any given year. That is the statistical number. It makes me wonder, Mr. Speaker, if we aren't seeing almost all of the violence that goes on in Iraq on television because we are seeing those high levels of violence continually in front of our faces every day. I think it is sometimes intentional and strategic rather than news; 27.51 fatalities per 100,000 in Iraq.
Now, how does this compare across the rest of the world? Well, one might look at a country, say, like Venezuela, 31.61 violent deaths per 100,000. So Venezuela is slightly more dangerous to live in than Iraq is. And Jamaica, 32.40 violent deaths per 100,000 compared to the 27.51 in Iraq. Jamaica is slightly more dangerous to live in than Iraq. And then you have South Africa. It jumps all the way up to 49.60. Now, we are starting to see some numbers here that take us up to almost twice the rate, it is a little less than twice the rate of Iraq's fatality rate; 49.60 in South Africa per 100,000. But we do have some numbers that go over twice the rate. One of those would be Colombia. Iraq, 27.51 deaths per 100,000; Colombia, 61.78 violent deaths per 100,000, more than two times as many deaths there. It is more than twice as dangerous to be a civilian living supposedly in peace and harmony in Colombia than it is to be a civilian living in the middle of this chaos in Iraq that I hear is intolerable.
I will submit that we are being treated with a relentless drum beat of television violence in Iraq that, even though it is honestly represented in those significant instances, we don't have our television cameras lined up on the emergency rooms in the United States. We don't have them lined up here in the emergency rooms in Washington, D.C. or Detroit or Baltimore or New Orleans or Atlanta or St. Louis.
Mr. Speaker, speaking of those cities, I would point out that there is a way also to draw a measure, a measure that Americans will have a different feel for when I lay out the casualty rates for violent deaths in our cities in America. And it occurs to me when I look at these statistics that it is far more dangerous for my wife to live here in Washington, D.C. than it would be if she were living as an Iraqi civilian citizen in a random place in Iraq. Now, we know there are places with higher violent rates, but 27.51 deaths per 100,000 in Iraq per year.
I am going to go to Washington, D.C.; 45.9 deaths per 100,000, Mr. Speaker, compared to the 27.5 in Iraq per 100,000. Detroit, 41.8. It is getting a little safer in Detroit than it is in Washington, D.C., but still far more dangerous in Detroit than it is in Iraq to be a civilian. Baltimore, 37.7; Atlanta, 34.9; St. Louis, 31.4. We are getting down there closer to the fatality rate to live in St. Louis rather than living somewhere in Iraq at 27.51. So what city might be comparable, a city that we would be familiar with that would have a violent death rate that one would compare to the equivalent of being a civilian in Iraq? Well, Mr. Speaker, if there are people out there that are sitting in Oakland, California, tonight and they are thinking about how they are living safe in their living room, they are just slightly safer in their living rooms living in the community of Oakland, California, than they are living in a random community in Iraq. The Oakland fatality rate for a violent death is 26.1 compared to the 27.51 in Iraq. The one that I left off was New Orleans. Thinking in terms of 27.51 deaths per 100,000 violent deaths in Iraq; New Orleans before Katrina, 53.1, almost twice the violent deaths in New Orleans as there is in Iraq.
So that gives us a sense, I think, Mr. Speaker that this is a manageable violence rate. And although we abhor all violence and as much as we have struggled to bring a civil society and order there, there is still the insurgency. There are still the people who believe
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
