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A member of the 9/11 commission has broken his silence about some of the unreleased findings:
A former Republican member of the 9/11 commission, breaking dramatically with the commission's leaders, said Wednesday he believes there was clear evidence that Saudi government employees were part of a support network for the 9/11 hijackers and that the Obama administration should move quickly to declassify a long-secret congressional report on Saudi ties to the 2001 terrorist attack.
The comments by John F Lehman, an investment banker in New York who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, signal the first serious public split among the 10 commissioners since they issued a 2004 final report that was largely read as an exoneration of Saudi Arabia, which was home to 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by devlux on Sunday May 15 2016, @05:55AM
You fail at basic reading comprehension.
My premise is that proportional to the rest of the world you are unlikely to meet an American in the first place. If you do, they are more likely to be TLA affiliated than if you met a random person inside the USA. I stand by that premise.
Let's see how this works out in reality.
There are 4 kinds of numbers you can use when talking about the likelyhood of your projection holding up to scrutiny.
These "types" of numbers are based on the rigor used to arrive at them.
black numbers (verified from cannonical authoritative sources), red numbers (unverified but reported by a reliable source) and blue numbers(estimate based on a solid metric)
You assume a change of probability of 10x vs the base rate and offer nothing supporting that assumption.
This is what we call a brown number, meaning you pulled it out of your ass. I can prove this statement because you quickly followed with a baseless accusation to attack me as though you thought someone might care. This is called an ad hominem and because ad hominems are a form of "shit talking", it stands to reason your bowels are overloaded so badly that you are defecating through your mouth and onto your keyboard.
Now here is a healthy dose of reality to help you loosen your pipes.
According to the people tasked with cutting paychecks...
https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/ [opm.gov]
There are about 4.185 M people employed by Uncle Sam world wide. Over 1/4th of these are uniformed military officers.
Ergo, if you happen via random chance to run into an American who is employed by the govt, you are way more likely to run into DOD (US Military).
US Department of State, diaspora rates show that most Americans living abroad are employed either directly or indirectly by the US Govt or a contractor operating on behalf of the US Govt. The amount of diaspora is less than 6M, which is a grand total of less than 2% of the US population and is more than the entire population employed by the Govt worldwide.
The largest single concentrations are in Canada and Mexico, estimated to be a combined total of around 2M people.
This is strong evidence that a large percentage of the american diaspora are "accidental americans" also known less elegantly as anchor babies, these people aren't likely to self identify as American (if you lived abroad you would understand why, it's like painting a target on your back and putting up a sign saying money piñata).
With that in mind, you can safely reduce the numbers in Canada and Mexico down closer to the numbers for other countries which appears to be about 50k per country.
So that leaves ~2.2M Americans living abroad or ~1.1% of the population. You have to ask yourself then how many of this 1.1% work for the US Govt vs people who just immigrate because they're fed up with the USA.
You'll find that this will fall out along income lines. The reason being, is that unless you have a job or a solid trust fund / retirement, most countries are happy to have you visit but won't allow you to stay terribly long. Furthermore most countries are really damned protective of local jobs and make their local companies actually prove that no one in the country was qualified for the position and available for work. Unlike the USA, this process tends to be a one that the government places strict limits on and goes to great lengths to verify the veracity of.
People who exit for economic protective reasons are not going to maintain US citizenship unless they want to be doubly taxed on their income. Those people become expats and no longer count as Americans. This leaves people employed abroad, down mostly to the US Govt. The only employer of any size actually employing US citizens in a foreign country, hence my statement about TLAs.
The other mistake you made is that you assert that most Americans you meet are ex-pats and this is false by definition of the word.
To expatriate yourself means to renounce your citizenship, otherwise you are dual citizen at best and thus remain subject to double taxation.
Sure you'll meet plenty of older retired folks, especially where I live.
However most of them are former govt employees, including military and law enforcement.
I recommend you learn some basic logic and how to do science before trying to take on topics you don't understand in the future.
Be careful though, you might learn something.
Like how to think for yourself :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2016, @11:05AM
My premise is that proportional to the rest of the world you are unlikely to meet an American in the first place. If you do, they are more likely to be TLA affiliated than if you met a random person inside the USA. I stand by that premise.
lol So what? Your premise is nothing more than a red herring. But you keep right on standing by it! If you can't think about the topic at least you can think for yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 15 2016, @08:54PM
> I stand by that premise.
I love it when blowhards say they stand by what they said. Well no fucking duh! You wrote it. Are you in the habit of just saying bullshit you don't believe?
It certainly doesn't make it any more correct, if anything it makes it even more doubtful because facts don't need your moral support.