News by the Numbers: August 2008

• 0 - The number of Democrats who joined Rep. Roy Blunt, the House Republican whip, to co-sponsor a resolution demanding that the Defense Department better enable U.S. military personnel overseas to vote in the November elections, effectively killing the proposal in the Democratic-controlled House.
• 0.01 percent - of ANWR's 19 million acres was projected to produce about 10 billion barrels of oil. From all domestic sources combined, we currently produce about 1.8 billion barrels of oil per year, according to Anne Coulter.
• 10-to-1 - the margin of coverage given to Barack Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe compared to John McCain’s very similar trip last March.
• 20-to-1 - the margin of donations between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain, according to Investor's Business Daily.
• 5% - of American taxpayers now pay 60% of all federal taxes.
• 24% - of oil was imported by the U.S. in 1970. Today 70% is imported thanks to the ongoing Democrat blockade against American energy independence.
• 40% - the increased risk of developing mental disorders in teenagers who smoke Marijuana, according to a study by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
• 49-to-45% - the lead given John McCain over Barack Obama among likely voters, according to a July 27 Gallup/USAToday poll
• 50% - of the 9/11 hijackers were registered to vote. Fraudulent votes by non-citizens, including illegal aliens, could swing this year's local and national elections, according to a new report titled "The Threat of Non-Citizen Voting" by Hans von Spakovsky, a visiting scholar at the Heritage Foundation.
• 55% - of registered voters said Barack Obama would a “riskier” choice for president, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
• 57% of Virginians voted to constitutionally protect the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman but Barack Obama wants to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act and has publicly opposed state marriage amendments.
• 83% - of U.S. voters say it is more important for immigrants to speak English as their primary language than it is for Americans to learn other languages, according to a Scott Rasumssen poll.
• 1 - 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant would reliably generate more electricity than 2,800 1.5-megawatt intermittent wind turbines on 175,000 acres.
• 3 times - the amount which oil companies have made in profits over the past 25 years has been paid in taxes by this scapegoated industry, according to economist John Lott.
• 5 - states do not require that driver's license applicants be able to show they are in the United States legally. Maryland is one of these states, according to the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA).
• 19 times - bigger than Enron but the ‘All-Obama-All-the-Time’ Networks didn't see the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac financial crisis coming.
• 197 - the number of days Americans now work to pay their share of the cost of government, with 84 of those days due to federal spending alone, according to Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW).
• 890 - Senate bills passed this session but Queen Pelosi, and her decidedly un-democratic Democrats controlling the Senate, allowed debate only on 50.
• $32,000 - annual income means you will pay higher taxes if Barack Obama has his way. He has already voted for congressional budgets that would effectively raise your taxes.
• 8,000 people are thought to remain in slavery after being captured during Sudan's north-south conflict. Democrats are expected to apologize after they return from summer vacation.
• 550,000 - more foreign workers will be allowed into the country to take American jobs if Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) gets his way. Menendez has put a "hold" on the vote to re-authorize the E-Verify system (the easy-to-use government database businesses use to make sure they do not hire illegal aliens) in order to strong-arm the opposition.
• 140 million - women are estimated to have undergone forced genital mutilation. The practice is predominant in the Islamic culture.
• $1 billion - of the $10 billion in annual Medicare payments the government makes for medical equipment are later deemed improper, according to the Government Accountability Office.
• $7 billion - annually is spent by the government on ethanol subsidies
• $8 billion+ - annually is spent by the government supplying 30 million school children with “free” lunches and another $2.5 billion on “free” breakfasts, according to Michael Medved.
• 90 billion - barrels of oil and nearly a third of the world's undiscovered natural gas remain untapped under an area north of the Arctic Circle, government scientists estimate.
• $1.5 trillion - the amount OPEC will clear in net export profits this year.
• $18 trillion - the entire worth of the U.S. Fortune 500, according to Robert Zubrin, author of the best-selling "Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil.”