Ilhan Omar - A thread about her marriage and immigration history.

The BBQ Pit
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I see that our illustrious OP, of dubious provenance, who allegedly lurked for two years, is currently on record as having exactly one post for an average of 0.00 per day and has yet to return to this thread. The OP’s first and only post containing the sentiment that Ilhan Omar needs to investigated, prosecuted, and – dare I say it – implicitly subject to the following familiar Trumpian penalty: “lock her up!”. I would hazard a guess that if Hillary were thrown into the same cell without trial, that would be deemed to be a bonus and the pinnacle of jurisprudence at its finest.

This is the kind of excellence in informed political analysis that I come here for.

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I’d venture to guess that he already is.

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Guilt by guessing. Outstanding.

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Does he really have time for this? Considering that Barr is already investigating treacherous traitors like Robert Mueller for attempting a coup against the president, according to the Orange Peril himself? And the traitorous cadre of Democrats who read his report and told the public what it said? Surely the effort to track these traitors down and lock them up must be consuming most of Billy-Barr’s time? Not to mention that he must surely be investigating himself, too, for lying to Congress. He’s a busy guy.

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Which are you doubting, that her grandfather worked at a fairly high level in the Barre government or that the Barre government executed a genocide?

I’m happy to provide cites for both of those statements.

If her grandpa was the head of transportation for Stalin, would you think to yourself, “Well Stalin liked all the good people. Clearly there’s nothing objectionable in his past!”?

Here, for example, is a guy who worked as Commisar of Transportation for Stalin:

To be sure, guilt by association is not actual guilt.

But, notably, I am not saying that anyone is guilty of anything. Her grandfather could be a kindly person who had zilch to do with anything other than ship building under the Barre government, and only did so out of fear for his family if he didn’t do as told. Omar might have allowed her ex to stay in the home while saving money to leave, after she met someone else.

There is wide room for innocence on all parts. I am not claiming guilt.

But it does seem likely that the family is destroying information on this topic as it is identified and seems uninterested in fighting it in any other way - even though there would be both a financial and political boon to do so.

She is, fairly undoubtedly, racist against Jews.

And her grandfather did work for a genocidal government.

If that’s your basis for, “Clearly, this person and her family are liable to prove to be shining beacons of light for all Americans”, then you are taking on more risk than is necessary. There is no reason to do that.

By no means am I saying that she should be cast out, shunned, nor blamed for anything at all. There is no evidence sufficient to determine guilt of anything. Again, I simply advise against making her the face of the party. She’s a junior Representative. Let her be that.

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This is nuttier than a Payday kind of talk.

This is false.

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Can you provide a site that her grandfather worked at a fairly high level in the Barre government?

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http://www.citypages.com/news/ilhan-omars-improbable-journey-from-refugee-camp-to-minnesota-legislature/398441901

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That doesn’t support your calumny.

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Thanks!

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Then we disagree. If the House votes to tell you that you’re a racist - when it’s lead by Democrats - you’re probably a racist.

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You should stick to your conspiracy theories about Barr arresting Schiff for leaking and MBS giving Trump a chunk of Aramco. They don’t make any more sense, but they don’t appear to be racist.

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The house didn’t vote that she was racist.

Why does your argument so often rely on distorting the truth.

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I’ve read your source, and this is what they say about themselves:

“Whether it’s investigative reporting, mouth-watering food coverage or the annual Comix Issue, City Pages proudly serves the most discerning audience in America”

That’s what you’re basing your thoughts on? LOL

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What are you doing?

Seems you’re making some pretty big assumptions both about the family’s actions and motivations there.

OK, here I know exactly what you’re doing.
You’re pushing a disingenuous Republican narrative.
But you probably know that.

And you don’t need me to tell you what you’re doing there.

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Can you quote the part that supports your assertion?

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Is she, in any way, shape or form, guilty of any crimes committed by her grandfather?

If so, can we deport Trump to Germany where he can be tried for the crimes of HIS grandfather?

Hell, my grandfather was a member of the Nazi Youth, simply because it was a requirement of the time, before he emigrated to the USA in the 30’s. Am I therefore guilty of all of the crimes committed by the Nazi Regime? Perhaps we should burn Germany to the ground again because their grandparents and other ancestors were Nazis?
You throw this out as if it means something and we have to look into it. It doesn’t mean a goddamned thing and you know it. You’re just looking for bad things to pin on her so you can hate her.

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I don’t recall saying anything about Barr arresting Schiff, though I do know what you’re referencing even if you’re misstating my position. If you think that it’s more likely that an FBI agent or someone else leaked all of the details about the Trump Tower meeting, I’m perfectly happy to listen to your hypothesis and, if it seems more likely, then I’m perfectly happy to endorse it as being a better hypothesis. As it is, Schiff had access and motive. He is a prime suspect. But it is also possible that Team Trump released that information themselves, to start the process of gaslighting the general public. And, it’s possible that it was simply some random staffer in Pelosi’s office, acting out of order, or some member of the FBI. That the leaks stopped when the House shut down its investigation, as I have said, makes me most strongly suspect Schiff and his office, and nothing that I have seen Schiff do has impressed me in terms of his ability to keep calm and proceed forward in investigations critically. Cummings has been far more impressive on that front and that’s the sort that I would have advised Pelosi to put into the head of the investigatory committees. I have not said that he is guilty, I have said that he was a poor choice to lead the House Intelligence Committee. While some of that determination is based on my suspicions, there are 200 other people to choose from. There is no harm in being cautious and choosing one of the 200 of whom there is no reason to be suspicious.

And I have no idea whether Trump was given any of Aramco. It’s strange that he went from blaming the Saudis for 9/11 to Tweeting how much they needed to take Aramco public, in the US, but that’s not proof. If you have a more plausible hypothesis for how that transition occurred, you’re free to make it and, if it seems more likely, then I’m perfectly happy to endorse it as being a better hypothesis.

As it is, I have correctly predicted that Turkey would migrate to Russia; I correctly predicted the results of the Mueller Report; I am probably right that Trump was maneuvering to hook up his friends with jobs building the wall (though the evidence on that one is still pretty low-grade); and I wrongly predicted that Barr would turn out to be a good guy. Sometimes I am wrong. On the whole, I expect to be right about half the time and I am probably averaging about half the time.

At no point am I surprised or disbelieving of counter-evidence. Barr was bad and I was wrong. Fair enough, I’m fine to be wrong.

All evidence that is amenable to the brother theory on Omar can be explained away very easily, she was dumb during her college years, the husband was too poor to move out, Elmi likes to call the girls that weren’t his biological daughters but were the daughters of his wife “niece”, etc. I would not be astonished if that’s all that this is and I don’t discount the potential that, that’s all that this is. But, at the same time, that seems like a very easy and straightforward thing for Omar to explain, and yet the response was to delete photos rather than explain why the one dude calls her children “niece”. Why was that their chosen strategy?

Again, if you have a better hypothesis, you are free to propose and I genuinely will endorse your alternative if it fits the known information better. But it still won’t be truth. All options from complete innocence to complete guilt are always on the table until there’s sufficient evidence to explain all questions. The leading hypothesis is not fact simply because it’s the leading hypothesis. Just because you have decided that I endorse something as fact, doesn’t mean that I endorse something as fact, it just means that you don’t understand the idea that reality is a spectrum of possibilities that narrows with evidence. Pointing out the spectrum and the darker ends of it is not raising conspiracies, it’s pointing out that the spectrum of possibilities is wide enough to allow for some dark ends and that’s not something you want among your friends.

If there’s a 1 in 20 chance that Bob murdered his wife, well 95% of the time, he’s completely innocent. But don’t marry Bob. That’s completely unfair to him, 95% of the time. But getting murdered is a sufficiently bad outcome that it’s stupid to marry Bob.

In certain cases, caution and hesitancy is alright. It’s not being unreasonable or seeing demons behind every door, it’s just doing the math and saying, “It ain’t worth it.”

It may well be that there’s an 85% chance that Omar and everyone in her family is innocent of everything worse than jaywalking. I would be perfectly willing to sign on to that viewpoint. But, it’s really important at the moment for everyone of color in the Democratic party to prove more innocent and impeachable than ever before, since the 70s. That’s not reality, though. 15% of everyone is a crook*, skin color be as it may be, so if there’s any hint of anything shady, you really need to be a bit overly-cautious. A person about whom there are rumors is more likely to be guilty of those rumors than someone who does not have those rumors floating about them. Kevin Spacey had rumors floating around him, Matt Damon did not. Previous to 2017, it would be unreasonable to call Spacey guilty of anything, nor Damon innocent of anything. Today, it is still unreasonable to call Matt Damon innocent of anything, despite the lack of rumors. But, it is not surprising which of the two of them was taken out.

Again, if you read anything I say to imply guilt, that’s a problem of your reading and willingness to accept that a person can have an appropriate amount of skepticism about his own hypotheses. It may well be the case that for almost all people on Earth, if they say that something is possible that they mean to say, “This is what happened, yo, and y’all’s wrong if you believe otherwise.” If you ever read me to be acting in that way, then you are reading what I have written incorrectly. I am completely skeptical of all hypotheses, whether raised by me or others, and you would be stupid to buy into them any greater than the evidence supports. I certainly don’t.

  • Not a real statistic, though I do believe that I’ve seen a few things that imply that to be about the correct number, for some definitions of “crook”. I would need to do some googling to figure out a more reliable estimate.
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Sure:

Pro:

  • Somalia is all coastline. Being in charge of it should be a fairly big deal.

Con:

  • Lighthouses aren’t generally a big deal.
  • “Director” is often not the highest level in an organization. That might be Minister, Secretary, or something like that. Though it is generally still quite high up.

I’d suggest that it would be somewhere between 2-4 positions down from the top but it’s hard to say given the current state of information available on the Internet.