Just a thought.

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Stat...

American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448.

U.S. contractors: 3,846.

Afghan national military and police: 66,000.

Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.

Afghan civilians: 47,245.

Taliban and other opposition fighters: 51,191.

Aid workers: 444.

Journalists: 72.

OVERSIGHT BY CONGRESS:

Date Congress authorized U.S. forces to go after culprits in Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: Sept. 18, 2001.

Number of times U.S. lawmakers have voted to declare war in Afghanistan: 0.

Estimated amount of direct Afghanistan and Iraq war costs that the United States has debt-financed as of 2020: $2 trillion.

Estimated interest costs by 2050: Up to $6.5 trillion.

THE WARS END. THE COSTS DON’T:

The United States has committed to pay in health care, disability, burial and other costs for roughly 4 million Afghanistan and Iraq veterans: more than $2 trillion.

Go Figure. Just a thought.

Last week, Brian Downey, a Republican who serves as deputy mayor of Airmont, New York, was taken into custody for "purchasing a rifle suppression device over the internet."
Authorities later executed a search warrant on his home and found at least 13 illegal suppressors and 16 unregistered assault weapons, including a short-barrel rifle and sawed-off shotgun.

Law enforcement officers also found a small locked box, to which Downey claimed he did not have the combination.

After forcing the box open, it contained "numerous federal badges and credentials" bearing Downey's name from various agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

It was not immediately clear what Downey intended to use the bogus federal badges and unregistered firearms for.

NYS gun laws are very restrictive but give the illegal guns a bigger rule over legal.

Saturday, September 4, 2021

Offices...

In the last few weeks, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple have all said they will push their return into 2022. Now, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai, has published a blog post explaining why that company plans to do the same.

As offices continue to reopen, we hope to see more teams coming together where possible, whether it be for regular team meetings, brainstorming sessions around a whiteboard, or outdoor socials. For some locations, conditions are starting to improve, yet in many parts of the world, the pandemic continues to create uncertainty. Acknowledging that, we'll extend our global voluntary return-to-office policy through January 10, 2022 to give more Googlers flexibility and choice as they ramp back.

To simplify, it is hazardous to place people close in offices, buses, subways cart, but the politicians want to collect taxes. Just a thought.

Pot Smoker...

Amazon.com Inc. has a solution for a potentially crippling shortage of delivery drivers: Recruit pot smokers.

The company is advising its delivery partners — the mom-and-pops that operate the ubiquitous blue Amazon vans — to prominently advertise that they don’t screen applicants for marijuana use, according to correspondence reviewed by Bloomberg and interviews with four business owners.

Doing so can boost the number of job applicants by as much as 400%, Amazon says in one message, without explaining how it came up with the statistic. Conversely, the company says, screening for marijuana cuts the prospective worker pool by up to 30%.