A ban was recently enacted, then blocked by the judicial system. The ban was to keep Muslims from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the country to ‘prevent terrorism’.
So, I was wondering, if this ban went into effect, say, 10, 20, or 30 years ago, how many lives would it save? I have omitted random acts, and acts which were perpetrated by individuals born in the United States, or those born in countries that are allowed…
Let’s see:
2016 Ohio State University attack:Knife/Vehicle attack born in Somalia, 1 death, the perpetrator.
2016 Minnesota Mall Stabbing:Knife attacker born in Somalia, 1 death, the perpetrator.
2010 Portland car bomb plot. Attempted bomber born in Somalia, no deaths. No Change?
2006 UNC SUV Attack. Attacker was born in Iran. No deaths. No Change?
Already 10 years back, and a whopping 2 deaths may of been prevented. And of those TWO deaths, both were the perpetrator.
I looked and looked, every other attack was US born, or born in countries not banned.
Let look at another 10 years:
2001, 9/11 NONE, I REPEAT NONE of the hijackers came from banned countries.
2007, Nothing I could find.
Let’s go back ANOTHER 10 years.
1997-2007, None.
Another 10:
1987-1997, None.
So, looking back 30 YEARS, I found exactly 2 lives that MAY of been saved with this Muslim ban. Those two live are the perpetrators, by the way.
What a pack of empty promises. I was just thinking about how many times Trump has promised some amazing plan and delivered nothing.
So far, that baboon in an ill fitting suit has promised:
To ensure that he has no major conflicts of interest he has come up with some “great plan”. Turns out the plan is just a scam of handing over control of his company to his two sons. In addition, there was a cheap looking prop on the table next to him, filled with blank papers, when the announced these ‘plans’.
He has now promised a replacement to the Affordable Care Act, which will be “insurance for everyone”. It took 14 solid months of negotiations to come up with the ACA. Trump is pulling it out of his ass in a week. Let me detail his plan so far:
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Next topic, he promised a plan to defeat ISIS. He is no longer talking about ISIS is his plan.
Trump has promised a “huge” infrastructure plan. Something like $800 billion, if I remember correctly. Here is his plan so far:
This space intentionally left blank.
The next promise is to have Mexico pay for the wall. Turns out the plan is have the American Taxpayer pay for the wall and, what, ask pretty please for Mexico to pay for it? Even if we raise tariffs, it just means the American consumer is paying for it.
Finally, he promised to end gun violence in the major cities. Turns out his plan is to just make fun a respected civil rights leader and “tell that boy to go mind his own business.” More or less.
The point is, we are four DAYS away from the inauguration, and we still have tweeting, insulting, con artist with no plan. Every time he reveals a ‘plan’ it is nothing more than another empty promise or scam. Prove me wrong Trump. Show us ONE COMPLETE, WELL THOUGHT OUT PLAN for once in your life.
The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA has concluded something widely suspected but never flatly stated by the intelligence community: That Russia moved deliberately to help elect Donald Trump as president of the United States — not just to undermine the U.S. political process more generally.
The Post’s report cites officials who say they have identified individuals connected to the Russian government who gave WikiLeaks emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and top Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta. One official described the conclusion that this was intended to help Trump as “the consensus view.”
The report highlights and exacerbates the increasingly fraught situation in which congressional Republicans find themselves with regard to Russia and Trump. By acknowledging and digging into the increasing evidence that Russia helped — or at least attempted to help — tip the scales in Trump’s favor, they risk raising questions about whether Trump would have won without Russian intervention.
Trump, after all, won by a margin of about 80,000 votes cast across three states, winning each of the decisive states by less than 1 percentage point. So even a slight influence could have plausibly made the difference, though we’ll never be able to prove it one way or another.
In addition, any GOP effort to dig into the matter risks antagonizing the president-elect, who has said flatly that he doesn’t believe Russia interfered with the election, despite receiving intelligence briefings to the contrary. And he’s proved more than willing to go after fellow Republicans who run afoul of him.
On the other hand, if Republicans downplay the issue, they risk giving a pass to an antagonistic foreign power whom significant majorities of Americans and members of Congress don’t trust and who, if the evidence is accurate, wields significant power to wage successful cyberwarfare with the United States.
Already, House Democrats have begun pushing for something akin to the 9/11 Commission to look into allegations of Russian meddling. During the campaign, they pushed for hearings on the same issue.
Until this week, they’d been unable to get much buy-in from congressional Republicans. But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., voiced support Wednesday for a probe, and now Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., says he is working with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., on a wide-ranging Senate probe, as The Post’s Karoun Demirjian reported Thursday.
But even as these probes start to materialize, Trump is singing a far different tune. In his interview with Time magazine for his “Person of the Year” award, Trump suggested the interference could just as well have come from someone in New Jersey as from the Russian government.
“I don’t believe they interfered,” Trump said. “That became a laughing point — not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, ‘Oh, Russia interfered.'”
Trump added: “It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”
Trump also maintained over and over again on the campaign trail that he wanted a better relationship with Russia and praised Putin as a strong leader — while downplaying Russia’s favoritism for his campaign. And he did all of this at a time when Putin was very unpopular in the United States and even as the evidence was pointing in the direction of Russian meddling.
In other words, Trump has shown he’s committed to seeing the best in Russia, and it’s unlikely another report from the “dishonest media” citing anonymous sources is going to change his mind.
And Trump has every reason to continue to dig in. He doesn’t want to breathe any life into the storyline that his election owes to Russian interference. Trump, after all, is a winner, and the idea that someone else might have won it for him just won’t fly.
In a statement Friday night, Trump’s transition team, as expected, took a defiant tone about The Post’s report: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’ ”
But for congressional Republicans, the evidence is increasingly getting to the point where they simply can’t ignore it and some of them are feeling compelled to act — in a way that Trump isn’t likely to take kindly to.
Compounding the dilemma for these Republicans is the fact that many GOP and Trump voters are disinclined to believe Russia meddled in the election. A poll released Friday by Democratic pollster Democracy Corps showed 55 percent of Trump voters and Republicans who didn’t vote for Trump say it’s probably true that stories alleging Russian interference in the election are conspiracy theories pushed by Clinton.
Many Republicans are undoubtedly concerned about this. But as long as Trump is holding fast to the idea that this is all made up in an effort to undermine him, this whole thing could reinforce the long-standing chasm within the GOP, with him and his base pitted against establishment Republicans who will (again) be made to look like they’re trying to take down their outsider president-elect. And you can bet that’ll be how Trump pitches it.
It all presents a possibly inauspicious start for the GOP Congress in the Trump era: A potential Trump vs. congressional Republicans battle over the same election that surprisingly installed him as president.
With all the stupid going on with the election, I have had a few tech updates. First off, I picked up an iMac G3 450 DV, Ruby, for less than 10 dollars at a thrift store. Apparently, it was used in a kindergarten in Morton Grove. I always loved the look of the old iMacs, but never wanted to spend over $1,000 on a piece of electronics that goes out of date in 18 months.
Cleaned it up, replaced the 64mb of RAM with 1Gig, then replaced the 20G 5400 RPM hard drive with a 40G, 7200 RPM drive. With the bus speeds, I am not going to bother to try to fine a PATA/IDE solid state drive.
I also installed Mac OS 10.3 and Lubuntu 16.04 on there. Lubuntu runs just fine, and I can use the latest software on there. It now proudly inhabits my workshop and is a good music player, a way to take notes, and lightly surf the web for projects I am working on. If I really need power, I just SSH to my desktop machine upstairs and use the iMac as a graphical terminal. I was going to try to use the Mac OS (9.4 or 10.3) but they have been abandoned a long time ago, and I need a modern web browser.
In other Mac news, picked up the beautiful Logitech K750-mac solar powered keyboard. All of the Mac mappings work just fun under Linux. It is about the nicest keyboards I have ever used. Super thin and high quality and it charges with room lighting. I actually don’t mind the Mac layout, a much better use for the function keys, now they are volume control, program launchers, etc.
