Oil Companies v. Muslims

I love when Republicans are angry about something that they essentially do to others.  I think this is called hypocrisy.  So hard to tell nowadays what with hypocrisy being standard to engage in debate in this country.

Now, Republicans want Democrats to stop Demonizing the oil industry. Article Here


Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas), the top House Republican on the Joint Economic Committee and a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he hoped a Republican majority in the House would end the scapegoating of the industry.



Yes, we should stop scapegoating the Oil Industry.  But we should definitely keep scapegoating Muslims.

Here's a really sad poll from a conservative radio station that asks whether Muslims should be forced to register themselves.

Pic from mediamatters.org

Now I'm a comic book geek so I'm really familiar with registration acts.  There was the Mutant Registration act that was the cause of much anger among mutants who felt it made them second class citizens.  Then, of course, Marvel had the Civil War story line that was about, yep, Superhero Registration.  Of course, these fictional accounts have their basis in Apartheid in Africa, where the ruling whites enacted a series of laws to subjugate the indigenous African population, including, you guessed it, the Population Registration Act.

Now, as even Media Matters points out, you can't put too much weight on a non-scientific poll like this, but still 63% of respondents answered "yes".  America would like to embrace apartheid.

But allow me to continue to compare the oil companies with Muslims.  Let's see, one group has caused a tremendous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, killed 11 people and injured 17 others, several more people lost their livelihoods.

American Muslims haven't done anything this heinous.  Heck Muslims in general, which account for 23% of the global population, haven't done that much damage to the US. 

"But what about 9-11?", you ask.  Now, don't think I'm not being insensitive or making a flip comment about 9-11.  I'm not.  I just want us to be realistic about who attacked us. 

If you count up how many people belong to Al-Qaeda (estimated between several hundred and several thousand - I'll generously say 2,000 - cnn) and divide them by the number of Muslims (1.57 billion) in the world you get .00000127 or 1.27x10^-6 (.0001%) Muslims who actively waged war against America.  That's assuming the higher end, though lets say they're 5000 strong then it's 3.18x10^-6 or .0003%. Still a ridiculously small percentage.

Compared to about 200 oil companies, of which BP belongs to the International Oil Companies of which there are only 6, and of those Exxon has also caused a major oil spill that hurt America.  So either you use 2 out of 200, which is 1% or you use 2 out of 6 which is 1 out of 3.  Either way, oil companies are attacking America in greater numbers than Muslims.  But Muslims don't have $93 million to spend on advertising.

So if you ask me which I would fear more, a mosque next door, or an oil pipeline.  I'm gonna go with the oil pipeline.