Saturday, September 18, 2010
Open Letter to Senator Lisa Murkowski
Dear Senator Murkowski,
BOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Why do you think we have elections?
Last I looked, Senate seats aren't hereditary. The people have spoken--LISTEN TO THEM!!!
I hope you come in a distant third, with an embarrassingly low number of votes, like, maybe, you and your immediate family (with perhaps a couple of those voting for one of the other candidates).
Most sincerely,
ExRat
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BOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Why do you think we have elections?
Last I looked, Senate seats aren't hereditary. The people have spoken--LISTEN TO THEM!!!
I hope you come in a distant third, with an embarrassingly low number of votes, like, maybe, you and your immediate family (with perhaps a couple of those voting for one of the other candidates).
Most sincerely,
ExRat
Labels: Election, Murkowski, politicians, Republicans
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Basic Math
There are somewhere around 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide. It is unknown how many of them are radicalized. That fraction has been estimated by the Gallup organization to be seven percent. If only one percent of them are radical Islamists, that means there are 16 million people our there who want to destroy western civilization and replace it with a worldwide Caliphate. This number is roughly equivalent to the population of the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan area.
China's People's Liberation Army is the largest military force in the world, with approximately 3 million members. The armed forces of the United States (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard) comprise approximately 1.42 million members. That said, numbers don't mean much because the radical Islamists, however many there are, do not engage in conventional warfare. I'm only giving those statistics to provide comparisons so that readers can get their heads around the concept of 16 million people in some concrete way, and give some idea of how big organizations that most would describe as "mighty" are.
Now we have Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (of Ground Zero Mosque fame) saying on CNN that if said mosque is not built at the proposed site, national security could be at risk due to an explosion of anger in the Muslim world. That sounds like a veiled threat to me.
According to the CIA Factbook, the Muslim population of the United States in 2009 was approximately 1,843,ooo. Assuming the one percent is an accurate estimate of the fraction of Muslims that are radicalized and assuming further that the radicalized element is evenly distributed throughout the Muslim community (the latter assumption admittedly being pretty iffy), the number of radicalized Muslims in the United States would therefore be in the vicinity of 18,440 persons. By comparison, it is estimated that there are 8,000 to 10,000 members of the notorious MS13 gang in the United States (presumably including those incarcerated). If even ten percent of the estimated radicalized Islamists in the US are "sleepers" who are waiting for orders from elsewhere to commit acts of terrorism, that means there are approximately 2,000 individuals ready, willing and able to wreak vengeance on the US for any real or imagined slight of Islam, whether it takes the form of Koran burning or blocking the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque.
I hope the FBI and other law enforcement organizations are on their toes, as I fear they'll be busy in the near future.
(0) comments
China's People's Liberation Army is the largest military force in the world, with approximately 3 million members. The armed forces of the United States (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard) comprise approximately 1.42 million members. That said, numbers don't mean much because the radical Islamists, however many there are, do not engage in conventional warfare. I'm only giving those statistics to provide comparisons so that readers can get their heads around the concept of 16 million people in some concrete way, and give some idea of how big organizations that most would describe as "mighty" are.
Now we have Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf (of Ground Zero Mosque fame) saying on CNN that if said mosque is not built at the proposed site, national security could be at risk due to an explosion of anger in the Muslim world. That sounds like a veiled threat to me.
According to the CIA Factbook, the Muslim population of the United States in 2009 was approximately 1,843,ooo. Assuming the one percent is an accurate estimate of the fraction of Muslims that are radicalized and assuming further that the radicalized element is evenly distributed throughout the Muslim community (the latter assumption admittedly being pretty iffy), the number of radicalized Muslims in the United States would therefore be in the vicinity of 18,440 persons. By comparison, it is estimated that there are 8,000 to 10,000 members of the notorious MS13 gang in the United States (presumably including those incarcerated). If even ten percent of the estimated radicalized Islamists in the US are "sleepers" who are waiting for orders from elsewhere to commit acts of terrorism, that means there are approximately 2,000 individuals ready, willing and able to wreak vengeance on the US for any real or imagined slight of Islam, whether it takes the form of Koran burning or blocking the construction of the Ground Zero Mosque.
I hope the FBI and other law enforcement organizations are on their toes, as I fear they'll be busy in the near future.
Labels: Ground Zero, Islam, Law Enforcement, Radical Islamists, Terrorisim
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Koran Burning in Florida
I have a similar attitude towards this, ummm, prank that I do towards the Ground Zero Mosque. It is absolutely protected behavior under the First Amendment, but "just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
I don't think burning another religion's holy book is a very Christian thing to do, and it lowers those who do to the same status as the Taliban blowing up 1500-year-old Buddhas at Bamyan.
I think it was foolish to announce the plan to burn the Koran, because the whole affair now becomes a propaganda coup for the radical Islamist movement, irrespective of what actually happens. If the Rev. Mr. Jones goes ahead with his plan, perhaps millions of Muslims will come to believe that the United States is at war with greater Islam, and the bad guys will use it over and over to foment unrest in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention places like Egypt, Syria, Gaza and Indonesia. If he calls the affair off, the bad guys will use it as an example of how the decadent West lies down in the face of Islamist protestations and appears once again to be the weak horse.
(0) comments
I don't think burning another religion's holy book is a very Christian thing to do, and it lowers those who do to the same status as the Taliban blowing up 1500-year-old Buddhas at Bamyan.
I think it was foolish to announce the plan to burn the Koran, because the whole affair now becomes a propaganda coup for the radical Islamist movement, irrespective of what actually happens. If the Rev. Mr. Jones goes ahead with his plan, perhaps millions of Muslims will come to believe that the United States is at war with greater Islam, and the bad guys will use it over and over to foment unrest in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, not to mention places like Egypt, Syria, Gaza and Indonesia. If he calls the affair off, the bad guys will use it as an example of how the decadent West lies down in the face of Islamist protestations and appears once again to be the weak horse.
Labels: Islam, Koran, Muslims, religion
Thursday, September 02, 2010
Hmmm.....
I wonder how it is that after years and years of safe drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, there's the BP disaster, followed 5 months later by another explosion on a platform, which just happens to occur a few days after a federal judge 0. against the "no drilling" decree issued by the feds.
Are the inspectors not inspecting? Did the safety rules change? In any case, you'd think that every rig operation out there would be on their toes following the BP fiasco.
Coincidence? I don't know, probably. But if there's a third one within a year or so, you'll have a hard time convincing me that it is coincidental.
(0) comments
Are the inspectors not inspecting? Did the safety rules change? In any case, you'd think that every rig operation out there would be on their toes following the BP fiasco.
Coincidence? I don't know, probably. But if there's a third one within a year or so, you'll have a hard time convincing me that it is coincidental.
Labels: Energy, Gulf oil spill
