Remembering 9/11, with a twist

On this day 15 years ago, the United States experienced the largest terror attack in our history. It is a day that we will long remember. My heart goes out to the families of the victims.

On this day, I would also like for us to remember that Osama bin Laden who orchestrated the attack was of the house of Saud. 16 of the 19 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. In response to our attack by Saudis, we attacked Iraq in what is now considered to be an enormous blunder of epic proportions.

We still treat Saudi Arabia as a friendly nation in that region. I don’t know why. We still talk about selling arms to Saudi Arabia. I don’t know why. We still buy oil from Saudi Arabia. I don’t know why.

Further, if we assume that every 3,000 lives lost prematurely is “one 9/11” then we have ten 9/11s on our highways every year. We have another ten 9/11s every year as a result of lax gun laws and a nationwide obsession with the damn things (should we consider the NRA a terrorist organization? perhaps). We have sixty-five 9/11s every year as a result of air pollution which we might have reduced tremendously if we took action on climate change (is ExxonMobil a terrorist organization? perhaps).

So, will we do anything for safer roads, stricter gun regulations, and strong regulation of pollution to actually prevent some or all of these 9/11s going forward?

I am not hopeful.

I grieve not only for the 3,000 victims 15 years ago, but also for the 3.9 million lives lost prematurely just from these causes and from many other causes as well since then. And, I grieve for the 260,000 we will lose in 2016.

Perhaps I should subtract out the highway deaths? We do, last I heard, have the safest roads in the world. Maybe we are already doing as much as we can about that. But, the other 230,000 every year can certainly be reduced by at least several 9/11s, if we were to pretend to care.

Be Terrified … of a drive to the mall (MoJo Article:Fear, Inc.)

OK. I must admit that I find the thought of going to a mall a little terrifying. However, this is not what the article is really talking about. Or is it?

Comparing some of the statistics in the article to the number of deaths by terrorism since 9/11/2001 is a little silly. Let’s include 9/11. And, still, look at how many of the following beat out the 3,000 deaths from that date. Actually, more accurate mathematically would be to average some number of years including 9/11. I wonder how the statistics would look if we totaled them for the last 25 years, for example. This would include both terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.

Tell Me Now That Carter Was A Bad President

Please read this article about Carter’s 1977 speech and tell me now that Carter was bad for the country and Reagan was good. Go ahead. Tell me now which of those two presidents had the right long term plan for this country. Tell me how much worse off we would have been had we continued with Carter’s energy plan. Tell me that this speech of Carter’s didn’t detail a large chunk of the events that have now come to pass as a result of not following his plan.

Condi Chose Torture Tactics

I’ll let this video speak for itself.

If you think this is unacceptable and that Condi should resign based on this, here’s a link to sign a petition demanding that Rice resign, if you think she should. I signed it, but then, I think everyone in the current administration should be forced out of office immediately as a way to restore our country’s once great image as well as a way to take back our nation.

I’m not trying to persuade anyone with this, just passing on information.

Israeli Electric Cars

Good news!! At least someone is thinking about global warming and actually taking some action. Israel is planning to aggressively replace gasoline burners with electric cars. And, they’re even openly making the obvious statement that the oil economy is funding terrorism, making it doubly important to Israel to get off the gasoline. Now, if only Israel’s greatest ally and world leader in carbon emissions would follow suit. Check out these two articles from that liberal rag, Business Week.

The Electric Car Acid Test

Israel: Cradle of the Electric Car