Originally Posted by ratbastid

This is off topic; not being in Texas and not watching Beck, I have little to say about this.

However:



I hope that was a typo. Around 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, not 30,000.

To put that in perspective, around 1840 people died due to Hurricane Katrina, around 230,000 in the Christmas 2004 tsunamis. We don't have a death toll in Haiti yet, but it's been estimated that 100,000 were dead within 60 seconds after the earthquake started.

Meanwhile, smoking kills around 430,000 americans a year, and something like 45,000 a year die in car accidents. Wouldn't it be something if we spent even 0.1% of the defense budget on car safety and helping people quit smoking? I wonder why Congre$$ ha$n't thought of doing $omething about that!