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Sunday, October 28, 2018

What a Few Days!

On Friday and Saturday, I was off helping a family member move.  They turned out to be quite momentous days.

First, the guy who allegedly sent all those "suspicious packages" was arrested in Florida.  After all the speculation, he turned out to be a wacko with a criminal record that goes on for page after page after page.  According to various news reports, his grip on reality is not great.  He claimed to have achieved all sorts of things, but none of those claims were true when checked.  He also is said to be a Nazi sympathizer according to a statement made by his last employer.  That employer is a lesbian in Florida who had the guy delivering pizzas.  She say that he used to tell her that because she was a lesbian she should be put on an island with other lesbians and burned.  That's bizarre, but to me it is even more bizarre why she continued to employ him after he said that.  The guy is also a big fan of President Trump although he seems so divorced from reality that I wonder if he really likes the actual Trump or the hate-filled caricature created by the Democrats in order to attack Trump.  And we still don't know for sure if the guy wanted the bombs to detonate or not. 

Let's just leave the bomber with the thought that we're all thankful that the FBI caught him so quickly.

Second, we had the massacre in the synagogue in Pittsburgh yesterday.  This attack killed many innocent people.  It was carried out by an actual Nazi who wanted to kill Jews.  (Where do all these Nazis come from?)  The police responded quickly and bravely.  After a vicious fire fight, they caught him.  There are no words that can explain how senseless hate can cause such events.  We can only pray for the victims and their families and ask that such events never happen again.

The response to Pittsburgh has been predictable.  President Trump has strongly condemned the attack.  Even though the shooter hated Trump and claimed on his social media posts that Trump was "controlled by Jews," the first reaction by the Democrats and the media was to blame the President for the attack.  It makes me wonder if there is anything bad that could happen which the Democrats and the media wouldn't blame on the President.  I would have said the weather, but as we know, they blamed Trump for the hurricanes because he withdrew the USA from the Paris climate accords. 

The truly sad thing is that unlike the "suspicious package" bomber, the Pittsburgh killings resulted in real harm.  People are dead.  A community is scarred.  And there's the media/Dems trying to turn it all into a political event.  Can't they just once wait long enough for the dead to be buried before they make the whole thing into a political circus?

Third, there's been a flurry of activity in the Middle East.  Hamas launched over 30 rockets into Israel from Gaza.  The Israelis shot down 11 and the others fell into unpopulated areas.  This was a major escalation of the rocket attacks from Gaza.  In response, the Israeli Air Force hit a large number of Hamas targets in Gaza.  The situation on the border there is moving closer and closer to actual war.  Meanwhile, the Israeli prime minister flew to Oman to meet with that country's ruler.  It's another sign that the Sunni Arab nations are much more concerned about Iran than the Hamas terrorists in Gaza.  Despite the tensions on the Gaza border, the leader of a major Arab nation actually met with the leader of Israel.

Fourth, the stock market is continuing to gyrate.  One day way up, and the next day way down.  Overall, it has been more down than up.  On Friday, we had a down day.  Even so, the underlying economic data continues to be quite good.  In 2008 when the recession was starting, there were many other signs that it was coming besides the stock market.  It's different now, though.  We may see a resumption of the rise after a correction.  All this movement makes for some nervous investors nevertheless.

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