Vetting Afghan refugees.

 

Do we care about “vetting” the Afghan refugees?  We fear that Islamic terrorists will get into our country in the guise of refugees.  “Vetting” is comparison of the refugee with Afghan police records, Taliban membership lists, school attendance records, driver’s license records and the like.  Trouble is, all these records are all still in Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban.  Should the Taliban want to slip a few operatives into the United States, they will surely show a clean as a whistle record to any attempt by Americans to check them out. 

  If the State Dept had been really effective, they would have acquired the needed Afghan records during the 20 years we maintained friendly relations with the Afghan government[s].  You could fit all the records for the entire country onto a handful of smart drives that would fit in your pocket.  But I’ll bet the State Dept never bothered to collect the needed records.  I have little respect for our State Dept.

  As for me, I figure any Afghan willing to board a plane out of his/her country, with nothing but the clothes on his/her back, is probably alright, a good nick on our side.  And, I think ordinary police work on our part, developing informants, cracking down on drug running, keeping good records about crime in our new Afghan refugee communities, will be enough to pick up any Islamic terrorists before they can do much badness. 

In a New York minute

 Hurricane Ida made landfall in New Orleans, and did a lot of damage down there.  Then it meandered cross country, over land, all the way to New York City.  You would think after that much overland travel Ida would have weakened, a lot.  

  Well, the winds had died down but it still generated a lot of rain.  Giving New York and New Jersey some spectacular floods.  Killed something like 40 people.  

The TV is blaming it all on "global warming".  Right.  We get hurricanes, and sometimes the hurricanes do a lot of damage where they come ashore.  We have been getting hurricanes since forever.  I don't think Ida was all the bad by the time it got to New York.  Could it be that New York has been skimping on storm drains?  And blaming the damage on "global warming"?  

Booster Shots, need for

 Lotta talk about giving a third corona virus vaccine shot.  No evidence for or against the idea at least not on TV or the Wall St Journal.  The needed numbers should not be hard to find.  We need to know how many people developed covid AFTER having two shots of the Pfister or Moderna vaccines.  And "developed covid" means the patient actually got sick, and ran a fever.  Just testing positive for covid antibodies doesn't count.  Many of the tests have have false positive rates or 50% or worse, so I don't believe someone has covid just because a test came out positive.  I want to see the patient actually get sick. 

Any how, we the voters need that real data before we can make intelligent choices.

how come I never seem to find a book I might like to read?

 The Wall St Journal publishes a "review" section (book reviews) on Saturday.  Some how I never read a review that inspires any desire to read the whole book.  I like non-fiction, history, science fiction, fantasy, and a number of youn adult (YA) books.  WSJ never seems to review any of these catagories.

Texas Abortion Law

 Daughter is unhappy about the state of Texas abortion law, even though she does not live in Texas. It's a pretty drastic law, it effectively bans all abortions in Texas. The Supremes decided to let it stand.

Question for Texans. Half the electorate in Texas, or any other state for that matter, is women. Cannot this large homogenous group vote out all the legislators that voted in the Texas abortion law?

Biden speaking on Fox News this morning

 Biden claimed that 55 companies paid no taxes last year.  He didn't name even one of them, but he believes that big companies are skimping on their tax payments.  If you cannot name them, they don't exist.  He went on to claim that top bracket tax payers are not paying all that they should.   If true, Biden needs to sic the IRS on them with audits.  

There must be a lot of Afghans who like the Taliban

 The Taliban took over all of Afghanistan without a fight.  That must mean a lot of Afghans are OK with the Taliban.  Back when the Russians (tough customers) tried to take the place over, the Afghans fought and eventually, with some help from us and a lot of Stinger anti aircraft missiles they drove the Russians clean out of Afghanistan.  The fact that they didn't oppose the Taliban says to me that they, or at least a lot of Afghans, are just fine with the Taliban.  

The TV news isn't talking about that at all.