10.31.17
From Wikipedia:
“On the night of October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, leaving 58 people dead and 546 injured. Between 10:05 and 10:15 p.m. PDT, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada, fired hundreds of rifle rounds from his suite on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay Hotel. About an hour after Paddock fired his last shot into the crowd, he was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive is unknown.
As last I heard the FBI has still not figured out the motive for this horrific mass murder. If they don’t know by now then they probably never will figure it out. There was too much planning by Paddock for this to have been any kind of act of passion or sudden insanity. Paddock was not indoctronated into any kind of cult or religion that would have caused this action. He was not affiliated with any hate groups. There is no indication that the violence was motivated by political or social beliefs. He was not troubled by any fininancial, health or personal issues that would cause him to act so monstrously. Yet there has to be some reason he committed this incredible act of horror. I realize that the FBI is only releasing information that cannot affect their investigation and I am sure they know more than they are making public. It is very possible that the FBI knows exactly why this tradgity happened and they are never going to release the information. If that is true the we can expect history to repeat itself.
I don’t believe that this incident was unavoidable. Not only by possibly having better security at the hotel and around the concert, but we need to find out why a man with no apparent reason to to do something like this would carefully plan and carry out such a hideous scheme. Somewhere…. sometime…. before this happened…. something in his mind found a way to justify this deadly assault on innocent people. What snapped? What thought process allowed this action to become acceptable to him? What causes a human being to plan a mass murder over the course of several months and then carry it out knowing it would end in horrific human carnage and the end of his own life? More security is not the real answer. More gun laws are not the real answer. The real answer lies in finding answers to the aforementioned questions and others like them. Let’s hope the FBI and whatever other government agencies are investigating this can come up with some useful answers.
10.6.17
There is a very small minority of people in this country, commonly known as Strict Creationists, that don’t believe the science of evolution. These beliefs are primarily based on a strict interpretation of the book of Genesis found in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions. For the most part they believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and that all life on this planet was originally created exactly as it exists today. Often Creationists can’t even accept the idea that evolution and intelligent design (aka: divine creation) are not mutually exclusive. They won’t even consider the possibility that life can evolve after creation, however you perceive that creation to have happened. The Strict Creationist belief is held by a very tiny minority of religious believers in America.
I have generally thought of Turkey as an advanced and forward thinking society. Despite the fact that they have a difficult time balancing human rights in the non-separation of church and state, as all Islamic countries do, the country has a fairly prosperous economy and the Turkish people seem to have the willingness to accept and blend both western and middle eastern cultures. Turkey was the first Muslim country to recognize Israel as a sovereign nation, they are a member of NATO, the Turkish people overthrew Mubarak in the Arab Spring of 2011 yet have maintained order in their country ever since.
However according to this June 23, 2017 CNN article Turkey to stop teaching evolution in high school, By Gul Tuysuz it seems that Turkey is establishing a policy of state sponsored ignorance.
To quote parts of the CNN article –
The subject has been cut from the curriculum under changes made to eliminate “controversial” topics, the head of the national board of education, Alpaslan Durmus, announced in a video address.
“If our students don’t have the background, the scientific knowledge, or information to comprehend the debate around controversial issues, we have left them out,” Durmus said.
The new curriculum will go into effect for the 2017- 2018 school year.
It was crafted to emphasize national values and highlight contributions made by Turkish and Muslim scholars, Durmus said.
History classes will look beyond “Eurocentrism” and music classes will focus on “all colors of Turkish music,” he said.
Really ? ? …. ” If our students don’t have the background, the scientific knowledge, or information to comprehend the debate around controversial issues,…”
Really ? ? That is one of the most ignorant things I have ever heard. He treats every high school student in the country like they are mental and moral incompetents not capable of understanding simple concepts. Natural Selection is a worldwide accepted science, not a debate about aliens or bigfoot. The Turkish education system seems determined to keep it’s next generation in the dark ages.
9.14.17
This morning Fox News showed Trump handing out food to hurricane victims in Naples, Florida. The talking heads stated that he paid for the food himself. Trump was shaking hands and giving everybody that stood in line a chance for a selfie with him. This is one of the most narcissistic, self serving displays I have ever seen by a president. I can only imagine how may tens of thousands of dollars it cost the American taxpayers to pay for the travel, security, and other costs it took so Trump could put on a show to try to enhance his public image. The victims of hurricane Irma would be far better off if he were to donate the money both he and the government spent on this excursion to the Red Cross while Trump stayed in Washington and actually tried to act like a President.
9.14.17
Rachel Maddow did a piece on Michael Flynn and his connections to Russia yesterday. It was quite detailed and showed that Flynn tried to hide a lot of information from congress and the public. It appears that he violated a whole laundry list of laws by not telling anybody about his extensive interaction with Russian firms and the Russian government. Both Flynn and his son are being investigated by the Fed’s. This of course just adds to the many convoluted relationships that the Trump administration has had to Russia. As for Flynn himself I really don’t care. He is yesterday’s news. It was obviously extremely stupid if Trump to ever appoint him as part of his administration, but then Trump has made a lot of questionable decisions along those lines.
I listen to Maddow fairly frequently because she does a good job of presenting the facts and information that support her opinions. I don’t always agree with her conclusions but that is to be expected. I could say the same thing about almost any political commentator, liberal or conservative. She generally supports her commentary with facts, but like all extremists she generally does not report on things that do not support her point of view. I am still waiting for the commentators at MSNBC and CNN to be as angry about the dirty dealings that were uncovered at the DNC as they are about the fact that it was Russians that uncovered them. I fear corruption from within our own political system far more than I fear what any foreign government can do.
9.13.17
I was watching Fox this morning and one of the talking heads stated that our government now believes that the nuclear bomb detonated by North Korea a couple weeks ago was actually the equivalent of 250 kilotones of TNT, not the original 120 kilotons estimate.
That is truly ominous and appalling.
I think of all the devastation hurricanes Irma and Harvey did to entire cities and almost the entire state of Florida. Yet it is horrifying that the damage and loss of life pales in comparison to the devastation that could result from North Korea and/or any terrorist group with a nuclear weapon. There are about 4 million people on Manhattan Island on a given working weekday. A thermonuclear bomb smuggled into this country and detonated in Manhattan would have no warning and could kill millions.
During the cold war we were dealing with adversaries that actually cared about their country, it’s citizens and their own lives. Russia and China and other nuclear capable countries wanted to avoid nuclear war as much as we did. The effect of Mutually Assured Destruction has been enough of a deterrent to keep reasonable leaders from nuclear war. However we are not dealing with the same mindset when it comes to North Kim Jong Un or the Ayatollahs of Iran or the religious leaders of ISIS. They have much more interest in themselves or their religious beliefs than they have in other human beings. To many of the leaders of radical Islam a world ending war is what God wants them to create and they are willing to die to do it. Kim Jong Un would have no problem seeing half the people on the Korean peninsula die if it could serve his egotistical goals or somehow enhance his stranglehold on the people of his nation.
The possibility of these barbaric animals having access to nuclear weapons should scare the Hell out of all civilized people.
9.9.17
President Trump extended Barack Obama’s executive order on DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals) for 6 months so congress can have time for meaningful legislation while those protected by DACA, aka: Dreamers, are allowed to stay in the U.S. This is a reasonable move. Executive orders are generally temporary, usually only effective until the next administration takes office. Legislation by congress on this makes more sense. I personally favor letting the Dreamers stay in the U.S. as long as they have been leading decent lives and abiding by the law. If they were raised and educated here and this is their home then I think that Dreamers are as much Americans as anyone who was born here. Yes I know that they were brought here illegally and granting citizenship to “childhood arrivals” presents some possible negative side effects, but they were brought here as children and if they have grown to become good people and want to be part of America then this is where they belong.
One problem I do see in granting citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants is that it effectively gives the same citizenship status to a child born in another country and brought into this country illegally as it does to a child born in America. If congress does not consider this law carefully this action could serve to encourage the illegal human trafficking of children in the future. Perhaps a common sense law allowing children that were raised in the U.S. up to this point to stay, but limit the rights to bring family members into America without full vetting through the legal immigration process. Congress also needs to develop an immigration process that works and stops the human trafficking of both children and adults while protecting the people of all countries from the many negative issues that spawn from illegal immigration and an uncontrolled border. There are a lot of humanity based problems that this issue presents, and there is no easy answer.
Read more on illegal immigration
9.8.17
Damages caused in the United States by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma will cost between $200 – $300 billion dollars and the hurricane season is only about half over. The intensity of these storms seems to be contributed to warmer ocean temperatures. Will this trend continue if our planet’s overall temperature continues to rise? It seems like it would. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot we can do about it.
Read my rant on Climate Change
9.4.17
Yesterday North Korea detonated it’s sixth nuclear bomb since 2006, and the blast was estimated to have the force of 120 kilotons (264.5 million pounds) of TNT per the New York Times. Their last detonation in 2016 was estimated at 17 kilotons. The Nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima was 15 kilotons, and the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was 20 kilotons. North Korea claims to have this bomb small enough to be placed on an ICBM. That may or may not be true, but what is a fact is that this maniac Kim Jong Un has possession of a nuclear weapon. If he doesn’t use it himself he can sell easily it to another country or terrorist group that would take great pleasure in detonating a nuclear device in the heart of Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles or New York or Chicago. He would obviously have no trouble delivering a nuclear bomb to Seoul. It is incredible not only that these horrific possibilities exist but they have a fairly high probability of happening. Think about it, if drug cartels can bring tons and tons of drugs into this country every year what is really stopping a nuclear bomb from being smuggled into the U.S. The fact that a nuclear bomb controlled by a mad man could hit parts of the U.S. by ICBM is terrifying, but at least we have some technology to try to shoot it down and we would know where it came from. The thought that a nuke could be smuggled into his country and detonated covertly is every bit as terrifying.
9.2.17
On August 28th North Korea shot a missile over Japan. Japan is approximately 550 miles from North Korea. According to the New York Times the missile flew 340 miles above the earth as it passed over Japan and fell into the Pacific ocean 1,700 miles from its launching point. The total time in the air was about 15 minutes. I find it a little surprising that the air speed of this missile was only a little over 100 miles per hour (1,700 miles / 15 minutes = ~113 mph)
This was obviously done as a threat to Japan, the U.S. and the rest of the civilized world,. Considering this was the second long range missile North Korea has launched in 2 months Kim Jong Un is plainly putting the rest of the planet on notice that North Korea has at least a few missiles with intercontinental range.
This situation seems to get more unstable on almost a daily basis.