Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Benjamin Wittes and witless logic about Trump

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The Benjamin Wittes “I believe” tweetstorm about Trump, intended to expose conservative “Doublethink,” instead exposed Leftist irrationality and ignorance.

Wittes Impeachment Trump Derangement SyndromeThe anti-Trump blogosphere, both Leftists and #NeverTrumpers, is excited about an endless series of tweets from Benjamin Wittes all intended, in a sarcastic way, to challenge Trump and his supporters. Before I go further, some background on Wittes: He is a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow who graduated from Oberlin and is currently co-director of Harvard Law School’s Brookings Project on Law and Security. In other words, he’s been marinated in Leftism since he hit college (and, given that he went to a non-Orthodox Jewish school in New York City, probably for his entire life).

Okay. Now back to those tweets. It’s apparent from reviewing the tweets that what Wittes is trying to do is show that conservatives have entered the Orwellian world of “doublethink”:

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

In fact, what Wittes has managed to do is show that Leftists are incapable of even “singlethink” — that is, the ability to look at two related pieces of information and recognize that they can easily and logically exist simultaneously in the same universe. For example, I can simultaneously believe that cows produce milk to feed their young and that humans consume and benefit from milk. As you can see, these two apparently disparate thoughts — cows milk is cow food but it’s also human food — manage to exist in the same universe without creating a logical black hole that destroys all rational thought.

With that in mind, how about we take a look at the Wittes tweet thread (which I’ve rendered in plain text):

I believe the president. I have always believed him.
‘I believe the president’: GOP stands by Trump on sexual assault allegation
Republicans are dismissing E. Jean Carroll’s accusation and still sticking with Trump.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/25/trump-accuse-gop-1382385

Yeah, I stand by President Trump too on this one. I’m not going to analyze it here, though, because Wittes raises the subject again, below, and that’s where I address more fully the sordid sexual allegations Lefties like to raise against Trump.

I believed him when he said he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States. And I believe him now when he says his travel ban has nothing to do with religious discrimination.

In other words, Wittes is saying it’s impossible simultaneously to believe that Trump wants to keep Muslims out of America while not discriminating against Muslims; i.e., it’s doublethink! Except that to anyone who pays attention to facts, there’s nothing “doublethinky” at all about the fact that there is a segment of Islam that is cheerfully dedicated to Western destruction.

As it is, Wittes seems to have sat out the last few decades, when extremist members of the Islamic faith: [Read more…]

I owe a lot of people a very big apology

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To all of you who filled out my Bookworm Room contact form and never heard from me — I am so sorry. I had a major hole in my thinking and entirely missed your messages.

Embarrassment ApologyOkay — I am so embarrassed about my stupidity. All I can do is apologize here. Here’s how I have grievously sinned against more of you than I can count:

I know that there’s a “contact Bookworm” tab on my blog. It was set up a long time ago, and I kind of forgot about it. If I thought about it, it was that it simply gave an email address to contact me. If I’d actually checked it out and seen the contact form, I would have assumed that the contacts automatically routed to my email.

Oh, boy, was I wrong! While I was updating my WordPress today, I started poking around at dashboard buttons I’ve always ignored. One of them was labeled “feedback,” which I’d always assumed, without bothering to verify, contained messages from WordPress that were of more interest to my webmaster than to me. It was only today, for the first time, that I clicked on that link and found, to my absolute horror, that all the messages from people who filled out my “contact” form were hiding behind that “feedback” link. Nothing got forwarded. It all just sat there.

I’m going to start now sending out apologies to every single person who filled out the form and who never heard back from me. This will take a long time because the “feedback” page doesn’t include any easy way to reply to people. I’ll have to block and copy each email address into my email account.

This post is my public apology. I am so very sorry I ignored you. There is no excuse for my failure to do so. I was thoughtless and lazy. [Read more…]

Project Veritas proves Google uses Orwellian content engineering *UPDATED*

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With the 2020 election in sight, Google is doing more than censoring content; it’s trying to change how people think to alter permanently how they vote.

Legislation is too slow — and potentially too dangerous, given the power it hands to government\ — to affect this problem in time to protect the election in 2020. Moreover, it’s never going to happen with Democrats in control of the House. However, I’ve proposed an alternative, which the Trump administration can do through the Attorney General’s office. I know other have proposed other remedies that can be effected more quickly. Something certainly needs to be done, not the least of which is sharing this video so it gets as many views as possible. (And I really like the irony of it being viewed as much as possible on Google’s YouTube.)

(By the way, as I am writing this, the Project Veritas site is down. Perhaps it got overwhelmed by the number of people trying to view it. Or perhaps something else happened….)

UPDATE: Daniel Greenfield, aka Sultan Knish, is thinking along the same lines I was thinking when it comes to stopping internet discrimination. However, because he’s multiple factors more intelligent than I am, his argument is much better and certainly deserves to be read.


This is not the first time Ravelry has banned conservatives

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In 2009, Ravelry first silenced, then banned conservatives. To prepare for 2020, it’s resurrecting the playbook, as are other social media sites.

Ravelry LGBTQ LogoYesterday, Ravelry, one of the largest fiber arts social media sites, with a member roster 8,000,000 strong, made the equivalent of a loud, rude farting sound in the conservative blogosphere. It did so by openly and boldly announcing that all references on the site that in any way support Trump will henceforth be banned because (and I quote): “Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy.”

Putting aside the idiocy of that statement, one completely belied by Trump’s statements, his policies, and his supporters’ identities, statements, and political goals, I want to focus on Ravelry’s impulse to censor. Shouting down people and then shutting them up is the perfect Leftist social media paradigm.

Today’s Ravelry story, which goes back to the 2008 election, is especially interesting given that today is the day that Project Veritas revealed Google’s plan to prevent Trump’s reelection. In 2008 and 2009, social media sites were beginning to crack down on conservative voices. Conservatives grumbled, but went away without making too much of a fuss. The same happened in 2012. No wonder then, that in 2016, the big social media outlets assumed that conservatives would continue to be cowed. They had no idea that Trump would be the man to release the anger pent-up in conservatives for eight long years of insults and silencing.

Project Veritas’s most recent exposes of the social media giants show that they intend to use their extraordinary power over speech and information to return America to a 2008 political world. We need to see where things started in order to understand how they ended up — and in order to prevent this type of technological takeover from happening again.

To go back to the very beginning, the internet was tailor-made for crafts. Although crafters usually work in the privacy of their own homes, they are in fact a congenial group. They enjoy sharing ideas and untangling knotty problems. There’s also real pleasure in showing off a finished project to an audience that truly appreciates the effort that went into it. Also, for those who do crafts and have marketable skills, whether it’s teaching or designing projects, the internet is a godsend for bringing together seller and buyer.

Before my children came along and changed my focus, I was active in some of the earliest internet knitting ListServ groups. This was back in the early 1990s. Those groups very quickly became social. Thus, we not only exchanged knitting information, we also told jokes, shared recipes and child-rearing tips, and (something I remember vividly) focused heavily on the uses and mis-uses of Peeps come Easter. Parenting took away my time to socialize on the internet and, eventually, any spare energy I might have had for knitting.

It’s only in the last few months that my life has settled into a rhythm that sees me knitting again. In the 22 years since I last put my knitting needles down, I’ve learned that the internet has become a superb knitting resource in ways I never could have imaged back in 1993 or 1994. Although I have a beautiful collection of knitting books, they sit quietly on the shelf when I try to figure out how to do a new technique or remember a long forgotten one. Instead of dragging down a book, within seconds at my computer I can summon up videos or information pages (or patterns, free or otherwise) that far exceed the contents of those now out-dated books. It’s both exhilarating and rather sad.

But some things remain the same and knitters (and other crafters) are as congenial as they used to be. This means that, just as those old ListServs saw us conversing about things other than knitting, people on the current sites also want to talk about things other than knitting. And that gets me to Ravelry’s first foray into censorship, back in 2009, shortly after Obama was inaugurated. Back then, two conservative knitting bloggers told their tales at length. I’ll see if I can provide a shorter version. [Read more…]

Is The Administrative State On Borrowed Time?

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Is the Supreme Court about to curtail the administrative state (and perhaps circumscribe judicial activism) by holding that Art. 1, Sec. 1 of the Constitution actually means what it says?

(c) 2006 Bonnie Jacobs

For the past near century — since FDR’s infamous court packing scheme — the administrative state (or bureaucratic state, call it what you will) has ever increasingly come to rule this country, working extra-Constitutional and fundamental changes to the fabric of society by promulgating regulations with the force of law that could never pass through Congress.  (For but three of countless possible examples, the HHS Obamacare birth-control mandate that was a direct attack on religion in America, the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide as a pollutant despite rejection by Congress, and the regulation of the internet under the rubric of net neutrality.)  It is the single greatest threat to America as a constitutional republic.

In a decision issued 20 June 2019, Gundy v. U.S., Justices Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito explicitly stated that they are prepared to enforce the plain words of the Constitution and limit as unconstitutional Congress’s delegation of legislative authority to administrative bodies as currently practiced.  Justice Kavanaugh, who did not take part in the Gundy decision but whose criticism of the administrative state is well documented, could well be the fifth vote.  Such a decision would fundamentally remake this nation and take us back to our constitutional roots.  It would be, in essence, a bloodless revolution.

[Read more…]

Ravelry, a fiber arts social network, silences Trump supporters as “white supremacists” *UPDATED*

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Ravelry, one of the biggest fiber art social media networks, identifies Trump supporters as “white supremacists” and asks its community to help police them.

Ravelry LGBTQ LogoIf you do any type of fiber crafts — knitting, quilting, crocheting, etc. — you’re familiar with Ravelry. It’s a very well-organized social network dedicated to allowing fiber crafters meet in cyberspace, whether to teach or learn, talk about projects, find patterns, etc.

Ravelry is also a marketplace allowing for individual crafters to sell instructions and patterns. Only recently, I bought two excellent PDF project instructions from a gal whom I later discovered, looking at my credit card statement, markets through Ravelry. The site also gets a small percentage of these PDF sales. It also makes money selling logo wear.

Ravelry is very popular. While it’s unlikely that all its members, or even most of its members, are active on the site at any given time, and many sign up never to return, as of February 2019, 8,000,000 people had signed up for Ravelry.

Unfortunately, Ravelry has decided to wade into politics and to do so in the most ugly way possible. In an announcement today to its membership, one with a Pride flag proudly displayed in the upper left hand corner, Ravelry said that from now on Trump supporters will be silenced.

Please note that the site is not silencing all political discussions on the ground that they are disruptive to a site dedicated to fiber hand crafts. No, no. It is only silencing Trump supporters because they are “white supremacists” — and it’s asking its other members to go full Stasi and police the site for any incipient Trumpista break-outs.

The following is the full text of the Ravelry announcement (bold-italicized emphasis mine): [Read more…]

On Iran, Trump makes some very smart moves

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When it comes to Iran, Trump is brilliantly locking the country in a box by breaking it financially, frightening its leadership, and courting its people.

Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the Crosshairs

How Trump sees Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei

Although I no longer post any content on my real-me Facebook page, I do check it out regularly. It helps me stay abreast of interesting things in my friends’ lives and it helps me see what’s going on with the Lefties amongst whom I grew up and a handful of NeverTrumpers I met along the way.

When it comes to Iran, my Facebook friends are very clear on what’s going on. According to the Lefties, Trump is either a complete moron who wants to get us involved in WWIII with Iran or he’s an evil, Hitler-esque genius who wants us to get involved in WWIII with Iran so that he can seize permanent power over America. Amusingly, the Lefties often advance both arguments simultaneously.

Meanwhile, according to the NeverTrumpers, who are as invested in Russiagate as the Lefties, Trump is Putin’s foot soldier. They contend that Trump-the-moron was too dumb to realize that sending rockets off in response to Iran’s shooting down a drone would start WWIII. Thankfully, he immediately ceased operations when his master — that would be Putin — told him to stop. But of course, we’re not really thankful, because the only thing worse than Trump-the-moron is Trump-the-Putin-sock-puppet. It’s a sad world when you’re a NeverTrumper.

I have a different take. The short version is this tweet: [Read more…]

The reason behind corporations for abortion

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Tom Cotton reminds us that too many corporations are brutally pro-abortion — a sickness that begins in America’s institutions of higher indoctrination.

Abortion Colleges UniversitiesI learned at Ace of Spades that Sen. Tom Cotton (R. Arkansas) delivered a powerful speech today about the way in which corporations are using their wealth and power to advance a hardcore Leftist agenda. I have just one point to make about that subject, and then I’ll embed the video of his speech, along with a transcript from his office.

A lot of people ask why corporations have become so Left wing. After all, shouldn’t they be avatars of capitalism? Whatever happened to the good old days of corporate leaders believing in capitalism and free market? Why are they all Lefties now?

The answer is simple: With almost no exceptions, modern corporate management, from the CEO down to the lowliest manager, graduated from America’s colleges and universities. In addition, depending on how white collar the corporation is, every other employee is also a college/university graduate. Here are just four off-the-top-of-my-head examples of insanity at three major American institutions.

  1. Yale: Students had mental breakdowns when they were told to enjoy Halloween without imposing PC virtue-signaling on their costumes.
  2. Oberlin: The college attacked and tried to destroy a 5th generation family bakery for having the temerity to apprehend a student shoplifter, who then, along with two student companions, assaulted a bakery employee.
  3. Harvard: Married law professors who were the first black faculty deans in college history got the boot from being faculty deans for daring to represent Harvey Weinstein. Apparently the mere fact that Weinstein had legal representation traumatized Harvard’s students beyond bearing.
  4. Harvard: Kyle Kashuv, a top high school student and, since the shooting at his high school, an effective advocate for the Second Amendment, got the boot from Harvard’s admissions office based upon stupid and offensive statements he made when he was 16 — statements for which he wholeheartedly apologized and that are completely at odds with his words and behavior since then. Meanwhile, David Hogg, a strident anti-gun nut who was a lousy student and makes dangerous and inflammatory statements against conservatives, is being welcomed at Harvard with open arms.

In addition to those four specific examples, over the last ten years or so, Americans have become familiar with the following campus plagues: [Read more…]

On this Juneteenth, looking at reparations America already paid

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As more Leftist voices join the reparations choir, I’d like to remind people that Americans paid a very precious form of reparations a long time ago.

On this Juneteenth, I’m not going to defend either slavery or Jim Crow, because the former, while still a worldwide norm, was a betrayal of the American Revolution and the latter is entirely indefensible. I will point out, though, that both were Democrat institutions enforced by Big Government — so maybe blacks would be better off without either Democrats or Big Government.

The purpose of this post, given the rising demands for reparation, is to point out that, unlike all other nations, America has already paid some of the most precious reparations ever, those paid with blood:

Civil War reparations

[Read more…]

About those fraying National Parks

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I don’t doubt that our National Parks are in need of repair, but some of them might find extra funds if they’d stop their climate change virtue signaling.

A watermill at Cades Cove

The Daily Caller reports that America’s National Parks are in a state of extreme disrepair:

The most iconic U.S. national parks need billions of dollars in maintenance to repair crumbling roads, dilapidated buildings, rundown campsites and leaky pipelines, according to experts and federal government figures.

Nearly $12 billion is needed to repair infrastructure, mostly crumbling roads, at 419 park units managed by the National Park Service (NPS). The maintenance backlog grew $313 million in 2018 alone, federal figures state.

“It’s a problem that cannot continue indefinitely,” John Garder, a senior director at the National Parks Conservation Association, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.

The Interior Department has been grappling with its growing deferred maintenance backlog for years even as millions of people visit national parks every year. Park advocates worry the growing need for repairs could not only ruin a visitor’s experience but also damage natural habitats.

I’m not going to argue with that assessment, for I’m perfectly ready to believe that the federal government, whether through bureaucratic mismanagement, corruption, or actual lack of funds (perhaps partly due to being spread too thin thanks to Obama-era land grabs) has fallen down on the job of maintaining America’s National Parks. I wonder, though, if one of the funding problems might be misplaced priorities because the parks are staffed and managed by people who have bought wholesale into the whole climate change ideology.

Item One for my off-the-cuff theory is a story that made the rounds just last week: Glacier National Park had signs telling people to enjoy the glaciers while they could because anthropogenic climate change meant that they’d vanish by 2020. As with all climate change doom-and-gloom predictions, the signs were wrong and needed to be changed: [Read more…]

[VIDEO] Paul Joseph Watson on extreme LGBTQ-ism

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The LGBTQ movement has morphed from acceptance to cultural decay aided by aggressive, successful efforts to impose a subculture on the dominant culture.

LGBTQ Leftist QueerBorg Child Abuse Desmond is AmazingI never considered myself a homophobe, because I was always willing to accept same-sex relationships, provided that the LGBTQ movement, as is the case with heterosexual identity, confines itself to relationship decisions. I have a huge problem, however, when sexual preferences become entangled with intersectionality and tries to force upon me the entire Leftist panoply of ideas, from open borders, to unlimited abortion, to “gender is an imaginary construct,” to anti-Israel sentiments and anti-Semitism, to Trump Derangement Syndrome, and everything else that today’s Democrat presidential candidates advance and that I find abhorrent. You won’t be surprised, then, to learn that I appreciate Paul Joseph Watson’s video about the LGBTQ movement (or, as I am calling it, the QueerBorg) and all of its attendant insanity:

Bottom line: If you want to be accorded the same treatment as others in society (a) stop acting is if you’re special and therefore more deserving; (b) stop forcing your entire political platform on me; and (c) start rejecting actions and ideologies that are so far out of the mainstream as to be perverse and dangerous (e.g., pedophilia, S&M, erasing your genitals, mutilating young children, etc.). [Read more…]

Perry Mason: intelligent television from a bygone era

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If you’re fed up with the inanity of fake news, the depressing facts in real news, and the stupidity of modern pop culture, may I recommend Perry Mason?

Raymond Burr William Hopper Barbara Hale Perry MasonI’ve always enjoyed knitting to classic television. I’ve knit my way through I Love Lucy, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, Carol Burnett, and a host of other shows that I classify as “mental comfort food.’ My latest knitting show is Perry Mason, which ran from 1957 through 1966.

I actually have very vague memories of watching Perry Mason with the family when I was still a very little girl. Raymond Burr frightened me, for he was a big man, with big eyebrows, and represented AUTHORITY. He was an uber-Daddy figure, seeming to me to be much more stern than my real Daddy, who was usually a jovial man who left most disciplining to my mother (who nevertheless would say things such as, “Wait until your father hears about this”). The result was that I didn’t come away with very good memories of Perry Mason, which I remembered as a scary show.

My distaste for Raymond Burr wasn’t helped when, in my 20s, I saw him in Rear Window. I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say that he fulfilled perfect his actorly responsibility to play an unappealing character.

Last week, though, when I picked up my knitting, I went hunting for some classic TV and found Perry Mason just sitting there, waiting to be watched. I sampled an episode, liked it, and kept going. I’ve now watched brilliant criminal defense attorney Perry Mason, Della Street (his insanely loyal, hardworking secretary), Paul Drake (his private investigator), Lieutenant Tragg (the primary police investigator), and Hamilton Burger (the District Attorney) through two hats, a scarf, and a pair of socks. Aside from my knitting accomplishments, which are a pleasure on their own, it’s been enjoyable catching up with this show.

To begin with, watching the show with adult eyes — not just adult eyes, but lawyer eyes — I can see that Perry Mason is anything but scary. Instead, as Raymond Burr plays him, he is the “perfect gentleman.” Mason is learned, brave, ethical, generous, kind and, of course, remarkably intelligent. The face that I once thought overwhelming I now see has an almost hound dog appeal to it. [Read more…]

Errands and phone calls open thread

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Open Thread bubble

It’s been a lovely day — I finally found a pair of New Balance walking shoes that fits (most stores don’t carry my size, which is strange because I can’t be the only size five in the world) and, icing on the cake, the shoes were 65% of regular price. I also got myself some lovely chocolate. And I just now hung up from a long phone call with one of my dearest friends.

But here it is, late at night and I am too tired to blog. I’ll be back tomorrow. Until then, please feel free to “talk amongst yourselves”!

America’s Fabian revolution: Prelude to a Second American Revolution

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We are in the 7th decade of a slo-mo socialist revolution in America, but there are signs it will be followed by a successful Second American Revolution.

Second American RevolutionOne of my favorite books is Daddy-Long-Legs, an epistolary novel that Jean Webster wrote in 1912. The letter writer is Judy Abbott, a young woman who was raised in an orphanage but who ends up at a college much like Vassar (Webster’s own alma mater) thanks to an anonymous benefactor. The benefactor has only one request for Judy in exchange for her four years at an elite women’s college: She must send him letters describing her college experience. It’s a sweet book and stands the test of time very well.

Jean Webster herself was a very Progressive woman in the Woodrow Wilson mode. Indeed, true to the whole Wilson/Margaret Sanger political and social ethos in which she lived, her sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs, another epistolary novel called Dear Enemy, Webster argues strongly in favor of eugenics. The book never mentions abortion, but it makes a vigorous case that “defectives” — alcoholics and people with family histories of insanity or just not being very bright — should not be allowed to breed. Poor Webster might have done better herself had she chosen not to breed, for she died in 1916 from childbirth fever.

But back to Daddy Long Legs…. At one point in the novel, Webster has her heroine announce that she is a revolutionary, but not the nasty violent kind. Instead, she is a nice revolutionary:

Dear Comrade,

Hooray! I’m a Fabian.

That’s a Socialist who’s willing to wait. We don’t want the social revolution to come to-morrow morning; it would be too upsetting. We want it to come very gradually in the distant future, when we shall all be prepared and able to sustain the shock. In the meantime we must be getting ready, by instituting industrial, educational and orphan asylum reforms.

Webster’s was a pithy and accurate definition of Fabian socialism.

Thinking about it, a Fabian revolution is precisely what we’ve seen taking place in America since the years after World War II. Other countries’ revolutions — or even America’s own 18th century revolution — have been violent, abrupt upheavals. Societal institutions resisted the revolutionary ideas until guns and blood effected a change.

In America, the middle class sought freedom from overweening government power and corruption. In France, the intellectual class sought to switch to itself the power that the monarch had long held. The same was true with the Russian revolution. In China, rather unusually, it was the workers and the students who overthrew, not just the corrupt government, but the intellectual class as well, a model Pol Pot followed in Cambodia. You can mentally page through other revolutions around the world and see that they’re bloody affairs.  [Read more…]

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