Allen's Weblog

“Circumstantial evidence is occasionally very convincing, as when you find a trout in the milk.” David Thoreau

The Khashoggi murder gives not just the Saudi’s a bad name, we get a black eye also. Until the King steps in, preferably removing the Crown Prince from his position. Obviously, we have no power to cause this, but we are not alone in pressuring the Saudi’s.

The Saudi government, as bad as they are, wants good relations with its neighbors. It is not interested in being a piranha nation, but it made a serious mistake in killing a Washington Post writer. Khashoggi Is not an American citizen, he is a Saudi citizen, but you can’t just kill a Washington Post writer with impunity.

At about the same time, a Bulgarian TV reporter was raped and killed, but few could identify the name Viktoria Marinova, because she wasn’t a Washington Post reporter. She was the third journalist killed in Europe this year, but we don’t know about them because they didn’t write for WaPo.

Nevertheless, the Khashoggi murder was a state sanctioned murder in a foreign country, using an Embassy. Russia was thoroughly sanctioned for their attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain, and this actual murder cannot be overlooked.

I know that the president says this is guilty until proven innocent, but it is also contemporaneous, and with strong circumstantial evidence.

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Tucker Carlson’s book, A Ship Of Fools, is #1on the New Your Times Best and Seller List, and deserves the ranking. I bought the audible.com audio book with Tucker doing his own narration, and found, again, that the problem with audio books is the inability to underline and annotate. Nevertheless, I do recall one phrase that stuck in my mind…talking about the fact that liberals, even liberal Blacks, live in almost exclusively White neighborhoods (even Maxine Walters), Tucker calls a neighborhood, “White enough to burn your retinas.”

As a writer, I love a well-turned phrase.

It is a great book, and I enjoy it immensely, enjoy because I take it in 30 minute intervals interspersed with Kindle book reading. It is wonderful to have an enjoyable relief from NFL football, and TV in general.

Buy Tucker’s book, in whatever form you find most enjoyable. It must have galled the NYTimes to make Tucker’s book #1, but they have been criticized over the years for ignoring other Conservatives, so perhaps they are atoning for past sins.

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A report on the British House of Commons is that it’s members are indeed common, or as the WaPo calls that British lower chamber ambience, a “frat-house-from-hell atmosphere,”

(I can’t speak from recent experience, but in the days of Senator Stromboli’s Thurmond, that atmosphere permeated the US Congress as well. I witnessed it first hand.)

The British, ever the ones to turn a phrase, refer to the Members of the House as being “handsy” with the female staff, of bullying, and making inappropriate and unwanted propositions.

Bingo! Our Congress as well, as demonstrated by the use of taxpayer funds to settle lawsuits, and not telling the taxpayers for whom the suits were settled! That is outrageous, and hopefully someone, likely Judicial Watch has filed a Freedom of Information request!

But back to the British House of Commons, the report, issued by “Dame Laura Cox, a retired High Court judge, uncovered a culture ‘cascading from the top down, of deference, subservience, acquiescence and silence,”’ so reports WaPo.

Dame Laura Cox would have a lifetime sinecure, were she to look at American politics.

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Whether you call a group of people with insensate rage a protest or a mob is in the eyes of the beholder. We have nothing to measure intensity, but if the object of the rage feels fear, then it has no place in American politics.

I don’t think Sarah Sanders felt fear when she left the Virginia restaurant, but Mrs. Ted Cruz may well have and certainly the drivers in Portland did when attacked by Antifa. A liberal friend in Portland assures me that the Antifa activity is not so bad, but then there is video. My lying eyes tell me that Antifa found a home in Portland.

Any activity that requires you to cover your face is problematic. I suspect that cameras can include software to identify people just by their eyes and forehead, and if the algorithms don’t exist, they soon will. It is highly likely that the Portland police know the identity of every Antifa member to a certainty.

Antifa is a Mob, regardless of how a Mob is defined. A group of women beating on the doors of the Supreme Court may not engender fear, but they are a Mob because of their intensity. The various Women Marches were not a Mob because they threatened no one and had little intensity, therefore those were protests.

The Left does not like the term “Mob,” thinking themselves above that, but in many cases they are a Mob.

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Like most of you, I get a ton of charity requests, and I check them out on Charity Navigator. Today, I got a strange request, asking that I give a goat to a family overseas. I like the idea, and probably will, but the flyer gave me the opportunity to give a heifer, a goat or a school of fish…even bees.

Smart. Having been involved in founding, or managing more than a handful of charitable organizations, I know that even people who won’t donate to a charity, WILL donate if you can identify where their money will go. They will buy a computer, or a desk for an organization.

Charity Navigator gives heifer.org three stars out of four, not terrific but acceptable. You can give a goat or a sheep or a pig for $120, or you can give shares for $10 apiece. You can give a trio of rabbits for $60, or a flock of chickens for $20.

For larger gifts, there is a pair of breeding cattle for $1,000, send a girl to school for $275, a village changing kit for $7,500 or offer a woman serious money making skills for $25,000. You can give honey bees, alpaca, village stoves, clean water…

I like it. You may also. heifer.com

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The space launch of the Soyuz second stage fortunately saved the Astronauts, but the US is well positioned to take back our own Space Station launches.

The competition between SpaceX and Boeing is fizzling, as SpaceX is far ahead even with mass subsidy by the Feds, but SpaceX has a lot of competitors. You might think SpaceX is the lone space launch system available, but Elon Musk is just a better PR space developer.

Certainly, SpaceX is ahead of its competitors today and in the short run, because SpaceX first developed the reusable first stage, but others are following quickly. Bezos’ Blue Origin is developing quickly, Arian and NASA are building large rockets to compete with the the SpaceX Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), and the Chinese are building a small system to compete with the existing SpaceX Falcon Heavy on cost

Right now, SpaceX has at least six serious competitors. It may not seem that way if you watch the news because the news does not do in depth reporting. Most of the SpaceX competitors are aiming for 2020, but SpaceX is not sitting still waiting for them. SpaceX intends for their BFR Rocket to supersede and replace its Falcon and Falcon Heavy.

The Russian failure has caused Russia to suspend flights to the Space Station and institute a criminal investigation for sabotage. SpaceX should launch Astronauts into Space late this year, and should send Astronauts to the Space Station next year. The Russian failure does not give any extra impetus because all Space competitors are working day and night already simply trying to get ahead of their competitors.

The Soyuz is a wholly reliable space system, with multiple capabilities to save Astronauts in case of failures. This failure occurred more than two minutes after a normal liftoff. The Astronauts experienced high than normal G-forces but the crew capsule landed normally on parachutes.

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I am old enough to remember the last overtly liberal Court, the Warren Court.

If there ever was a Justice who didn’t deserve to occupy a hallowed seat on the Supreme Court, it was Chief Justice Earl Warren who promoted and executed the internment of Japanese citizens of the US!

I also recall billboards across this land calling for the impeachment of Earl Warren, which of course never happened just as impeachment of Justice Kavanaugh will never happen. Absent something like lying to a Federal Court like Bill Clinton, impeachment threats are used to generate donations by private organizations.

I was one of those young conservatives who railed against the Warren Court and its liberal overzealous (my opinion) decisions, but FDR knew what he was getting with Earl Warren, the Governor Of California prior to his appointment, and he rode that horse hard as did his liberal successors. The frustration we conservatives felt for many years, liberals will feel now. Nothing is forever.

I don’t really expect a real effort to impeach Kavanaugh. If you can’t impeach the man who designed and executed the internment of thousands of American citizens, and the permanent seizure of all their possessions, who can you impeach?

The Court is not yet a full Conservative Court, but one more appointment will make it so. Liberals are lining up to escort Justice Ginsburg across the street.

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