Bookworm Room

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

The effect of the Manafort verdict and Cohen plea bargain

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While Leftists and #NeverTrumpers bathe themselves in ritual blood from the Manafort verdict and Cohen plea, Americans just want government to support them.

Manafort CohenManafort is not either a nice or a morally decent man. Today, the jury found him guilty on eight charges of tax fraud (long before he worked on the Trump campaign), while the judge dismissed the other eleven charges on grounds of mistrial. Likewise, there’s no reason to believe that Trump’s former attorney, Cohen, was a man of either decency or honor. Manafort was someone Trump ended up with when no one in the establishment would touch him in the run-up to the election, but Cohen and Trump go back a ways. Like many in New York’s big-time construction industry, Trump had his fixer.

However, it’s worth pointing out that past presidents — most notably Democrats — haven’t had very savory connections either. Manafort is no better than his past partners in business, the Podesta brothers, but while the latter continue to fly comfortably under the Clinton-Democrat-Deep State radar, Manafort, because of his connections to Trump, became a marked man.

Indeed, when it comes to the Clinton’s, I’d need to have as many fingers as the Hindu goddess Kali to count off all of their unsavory and deeply criminal connections. Obama was no better: Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Louis Farrakhan, Palestinian terror supporters, his whole top-level IRS, Brennan, Hillary Clinton, etc. He had a rogues gallery surrounding him, all of whom again had the protective umbrella of the Clinton-Democrat-Media-Deep State complex. They weren’t less corrupt than anyone around Trump; they were just better insulated from their crimes.

But going back to Manafort and Cohen, while Trump and his supporters have pointed out that none of this has anything to do with collusion and that silencing a blackmail probably isn’t campaign fraud outside of Mueller-land, the Left and their fellow travelers amongst the #NeverTrumpers are in paroxysms of excitement, believing that (again) this is the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency. I thought I’d share some of their tweets with you. As you read the tweets from Leftists, please note that they haven’t yet seem to process that, if they get Trump out, then Pence is in. [Read more…]

Relaunching “What Business Thinks” — know where your money goes

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What Business Thinks is a mobile-friendly website that gives consumers an easy way to see whether businesses share their values before spending their money.

What Business ThinksIn a highly politicized era, businesses (and entertainers) no longer believe its enough to market their goods and services. Instead, they now market their values.

The problem with marketing values is that, while a majority of people may believe that Starbucks is a nice (albeit overpriced) place to hang out to meet with friends, write, or study, about half of America does not agree with Starbucks’ recently touted positions on guns, race, and homelessness. Likewise, while the NFL once sold football, it now sells racial issues along with the game, something that divides its once unified audience.

I happen to think businesses are better off selling their core product, whether it’s coffee, football, banking, or anything else. Still, whether they voluntarily promote their values or are forced into doing so, values marketing is a “thing” today.

That’s why, last year, I started a database collecting information about various political, social, environmental, ideological, etc., stances businesses are taking. That database now consolidates and organizes publicly available information on over 7,000 businesses.

Last year I also put together what amounted to a prototype of a site at which you could search businesses by name to find out what stands they’ve taken on issues. The information was presented in as non-partisan a fashion as I can manage. It was never intended to be a political site. Instead, it focused tightly on consumer information.

I was on the right track with my prototype, but the interface was terribly primitive. This year, I’ve done it right. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 8/20/2018 — the Leftist double standards edition

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Today’s tales of Lefty craziness have as a common denominator the double standards that infect every issue they touch, especially around Trump and Brennan.

Bookworm Beat logo Brennan double standards It’s only sexual assault when Trump muses about it hypothetically. I know you remember the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump said, with complete accuracy, that if you’re a famous person, women will willingly let you grab their genitals. Maybe he was speaking from personal experience; maybe he was reflecting Bill Clinton’s experience. We don’t know and we can’t know. What we do know is that, for making this completely accurate, albeit hypothetical, statement in the context of locker room talk, Trump was labeled a rapist and sexual assaulter.

At the time, alleged comedian Chelsea Handler, a stalwart Hillary supporter, had this to say: “Any man who still supports DONALD trump has no respect for women. Hillary is training by having a drunk ape throw apples at her head.” She even made a little incest joke: “My father has always respected women’s pussies. I for one, should know.” -Ivanka Trump”

In turns out — and I know you’ll be surprised to hear this — that the same Chelsea Handler believes that the standard is quite different when you’re a Leftist, in which case grabbing people by the genitals is just another type of handshake:

In defending Mr. Franken against numerous allegations of sexual misconduct, Ms. Handler admitted during an interview with Buzzfeed News that she’s grabbed people’s genitals “many times” in photographs before and didn’t think that should be considered sexual assault.

“I don’t want to diminish anyone’s legitimate claim of feeling like they’ve been assaulted, because that’s your feeling,” she said. “But I think there is a very big difference of a man putting his arm around you — he’s a comedian, I’ve touched people’s breasts and genitals I can’t imagine how many times in photos. That doesn’t excuse it, but that’s something, that’s not rape. That’s not sexual assault, and it’s not repeated behavior over and over again.”

Leftist think: “It’s always innocent when we do it.”

And then there’s this pictorial reminder of another example of hypocrisy about a Leftist who engages in sexual and physical assault:

If Leftists didn’t have double standards, they wouldn’t have any standards at all. [Read more…]

With Trump, Americans get a functional president, not a decorative one

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It’s another #NeverTrump attack on Trump’s rough-hewn style. Pfeh! Trump is the perfect American president: a heart-of-gold brawler who puts American first.

Illustrated edition Trump not a sexual predator Congress MuellerIn its endless competition with the Weekly Standard to be the outlet the drive-by media quotes most (and whose pundits get the most appearances on MSM outlets), National Review has published an article entitled Americans Want Their President to Have a Little Class. As the title suggests, the article bemoans the fact that Trump, despite being rich (although his opulence is nouveau riche rather than “classy” rich), actually gets down in the dirt to fight his political and media opponents (but I repeat myself).

Frankly, I don’t care about presidential class. Unlike the Queen, our president is not a figurehead. He’s a working executive.

Given the president’s intended functionality, I’m infinitely more interested in his accomplishments on behalf of the American people than I am in bemoaning his pugilistic style. And indeed, to the extent his pugilistic style is serving the American people by (a) exposing media figures for partisan hacks rather than honest reporters and (b) bypassing that same media to bring his message direct and uncensored to the American people, that pugilistic style is an important part of his serving the American people.

I’m also uninterested in all the mean-girls gossip our hysterical media likes. Was he mean to Omarosa and other employees? I don’t care. Does he like to eat two scoops of ice cream? I don’t care. Is he a diet soda freak? I don’t care, although he might care if it leads to kidney stones. Has he been an unfaithful husband? I don’t care. That’s between him and Melania, and it matters about as much as the unfaithfulness of Kennedy, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, etc. Clinton’s unfaithfulness mattered only because (a) he raped and assaulted women, (b) he lied under about his attacks, and (c) with his White House shenanigans, he exposed himself to serious blackmail. His relationship with Hillary was none of my business. [Read more…]

Chelsea Clinton reveals the neo-paganism behind abortion

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Chelsea Clinton’s recent remarks about the economic benefits flowing to society from abortion are pure, retrograde paganism. Is that really who we are?

Chelsea Clinton AbortionThe other day I did a post about the neo-paganism that seems to be sweeping the more savage parts of the world. I ended with a throwaway paragraph about Chelsea Clinton’s recent comments about abortion. Thinking about the matter, I believe what Chelsea said deserves more attention. Before I get to Chelsea, though, let me do a bit of background about past pro-abortion arguments.

For decades, since the lead-up to Roe v. Wade, the Left has always framed abortion as an intensely personal, necessary choice for women.Abortion, we are told, spares them from becoming the pariah status of unwed motherhood — although any negatives associated with unwed motherhood vanished decades ago. Then, still assuming the long-gone ignominy of unwed motherhood, abortion advocates assure us that, without abortion, all those soon-to-be-shunned unwed mothers would end up dead in back alleys with coat hangers protruding from their bodies.

We’re also told that abortion prevents women from becoming worn-out baby making machines. The image is of the faded 35-year-old with seven children clinging to her skirts as she stands barefoot, pregnant yet again and, of course, in the kitchen. This argument, which dates back to Margaret Sanger’s time, ignores birth control entirely. As it is, one can buy myriad over-the-counter forms of birth control (condoms, sponges, gels, and foams). There are also all sorts of prescription options, such as the Pill, IUDs, diaphragms, and hormone implants that last for years.

Barack Obama made the matter less pragmatic and more emotional when he explained that he didn’t want his young daughters “punished with a baby.” I know that he was focusing on teen pregnancy, but that’s an awfully broad statement to make. You certainly can view pregnancy and motherhood as punishment. Pregnancy is terribly hard on some bodies, labor hurts, and children mean that the mother’s needs (assuming she is not narcissistically focused on herself) always come second. Sleep? Forget about it. Peace and quiet? It is to laugh. Me time? In your dreams. Money? Well, maybe, but not for yourself. Career advancement? Infinitely more difficult.

To the extent Obama was talking specifically about teen pregnancy, he’s right that it creates a tough road to hoe should the young mom keep the baby. Many of these teens aren’t married, which means that poverty is a real threat. In addition, if they dreamed of a career and an education, without family help they’ll have to put those dreams on hold until the child is older. The solution, though, should be to change the culture by encouraging teens away from sex (and especially drunk sex), not by urging them to terminate their pregnancies. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 8/16/2018 — the Brennan edition and open thread

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Trump revoked John Brennan’s security clearance and Proggies went insane — and of course, they went stupid, too. All that and more in this Bookworm Beat.

Bookworm Beat logo Brennan editionApparently “honesty” and “integrity” have a different meaning inside the beltway. I was one of the millions who appreciated Admiral McRaven’s commencement speech at the University of Texas a few years ago, when he spoke about life lessons he’d picked up as a SEAL. Indeed, ever since then, I make my bed every morning. As he said, you’ll start your day with an accomplishment and, if it’s been a bad day, you come home to a nicely made bed. Those are two solid reasons to make a bed.

Just because I like McRaven’s homespun military wisdom, though, doesn’t mean I have to like his politics. Nor do I have to like the loopy Leftist logic that he reveals thanks to his politics. For example, in a much touted op-ed in the WaPo, McRaven actually called John Brennan “a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question….”

It just goes to show that, in both Dem world and D.C. world, “integrity,” “honesty,” and “character” have different meanings than they do in the real world. After all, in the real world, no one would say it shows honesty, integrity, or character to lie repeatedly to Congress, but that’s what Brennan did.

By the way, I’m not even talking about the most recent go-round of lies. I’m talking about the lies in 2014, when Brennan was still living in the wonders of Obama-world. Back then, the lies were wrapped around the illegal activity of the CIA spying on our own government:

As reports emerged Thursday that an internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general found that the CIA “improperly” spied on US Senate staffers when researching the CIA’s dark history of torture, it was hard to conclude anything but the obvious: John Brennan blatantly lied to the American public. Again.

“The facts will come out,” Brennan told NBC News in March after Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a blistering condemnation of the CIA on the Senate floor, accusing his agency of hacking into the computers used by her intelligence committee’s staffers. “Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate,” he said.

After the CIA inspector general’s report completely contradicted Brennan’s statements, it now appears Brennan was forced to privately apologize to intelligence committee chairs in a “tense” meeting earlier this week.

Brennan was so bad that, back in 2014, the same WaPo that now has McRaven leaping to Brennan’s defense because Trump yanked Brennan’s security clearance, had its own opinions editor (not a guest) demand that Obama fire Brennan:

An apology and an internal review board might suffice if this were Brennan or intelligence leaders’ first offense, but the track record is far from spotless. In 2011, Brennan claimed that dozens of U.S. drone strikes on overseas targets had not killed a single civilian. This remarkable success rate was not only disputed at the time by news reports — even supporters of the drone program called it “absurd” — but as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the New York Times both reported later, President Obama received reports from the very beginning of his presidency about drone strikes killing numerous civilians. As Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser at the time, Brennan would have received these reports as well, so either Brennan knew that his claim was a lie, or he is secretly deaf. Similarly, Brennan denied snooping on Senate computers six weeks after Feinstein first made the accusation to the CIA in private, which means either that he was lying, or he had ignored a serious charge against his agency for six weeks, then spouted off about it without any real knowledge — hardly the behavior expected of an agency director.

And last year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to Congress when he told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the Senate Intelligence Committee that the National Security Agency did not collect any kind of data on millions of Americans, a claim later disproved by documents leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Despite Clapper receiving criticism from both sides of the aisle, the damage to Clapper’s and the White House’s credibility on intelligence and civil liberties issues and, well, the fact that lying to Congress is a crime (though one that’s difficult to prosecute), Obama has not disciplined Clapper in any way.

Brennan is a bad apple and has always been a bad apple, going back to his communist days. Once upon a time, the Left understood this, but Leftists are so infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome that, as many have said, if Trump figured out a way to cure cancer, the Leftists would demand he stop hurting cancer.

Oh, and to the extent McRaven, in the WaPo piece, asked to have his security clearance pulled too, I think Trump should oblige him. First, security clearance is a privilege, not a right, and one that operates to benefit the U.S., not the security holder. Which leads me to the second point, which is that McRaven has shown that his years at the Pentagon have warped his values, common sense, and ability to understand the common meaning of words. That’s not a good man to possess to valuable a privilege. Anyway who can look at the hysterical, dishonest Brennan and think he’s a safe man to trust with a security clearance has proven himself too lacking in sense to have his own clearance.

Incidentally, the current crop of lies against Trump don’t stop with denying that Brennan lies. Just in case you read the defense of Brennan that he was the point man on the bin Laden raid, he wasn’t:

If the Left says something, the rule isn’t “trust but verify.” It’s “don’t trust; verify everything.”

I’ll give the last word on the subject to Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), who issued a scathing indictment against Brennan and supporting Trump’s decision:


[Read more…]

On the scariness of watching the Western world revert to paganism

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There’s a scary paganism to the unbridled blood lust that appears wherever Judeo-Christian ethical monotheism is in retreat.

PaganismEthical monotheism underpins Western civilization. It’s a gift from the Jews, transmitted to large parts of the world through Christians. It is the idea that there is a single God.

Unlike pagan gods, this God is not a larger than life human (complete with human foibles) nor is He an animist spirit endowed with the attributes of whatever earthly thing (whether animal, vegetable, or mineral) He happens to represent. In addition to being the creator of all things (see Genesis) and a covenanter with the Jewish people (something that has been a mixed blessing for them), He is also the absolute and only fount of the core moral values that have governed the Western world for two millennia.

The Judeo-Christian concept of absolute moral values flowing from a creator in whose image we are created, means that there is no moral relativism. There are nuances, as for example in the distinction between murder and self-defense, but the dictates of the Ten Commandments make it perfectly clear what is and is not core ethical behavior. Murder — the cold-blooded killing of another without extenuating circumstances — is wrong. Stealing, whether stealing someone’s life, liberty, or property, is wrong. Coveting, not in a way that makes one try harder to achieve some through ones own efforts, but in a way that makes one greedy, resentful, and dishonest, is not only wrong, it is soul-destroying.

The God of the Jews can be a harsh task master, obsessed as He is with justice and moral virtue. Christ tempered that harshness with a concept I’ve always called, for want of a better word, grace. The combination of the  two — moral justice and grace — led the way to the end of slavery, a condition existing since time immemorial; the end of child labor, a condition existing since time immemorial; the elevation of women to shared status with men, something that got a huge boost through the cult of Mary worship; and, most importantly, to the amazingly important idea of individual worth.

To the extent that we are all children of the Judeo-Christian God, shaped in His image, we have an unparalleled value. We are not merely cosmic dust. We are not the products of some Greek god’s ego. We are not meaningless animals. We are something exceptional and precious. Moreover, history has shown that, when we are given liberty, coupled with that ethical monotheism, we will thrive, creating societies that are safer, happier, and more prosperous than most in history.

Having said all that, I know that, more often than not, we humans, being fallible, have fallen far short of the purest Judeo-Christian dictates. Whether as nations or as individuals, we have enslaved, killed, robbed, cheated, and done all the things the Ten Commandments tell us not to do. But would we have been better had there been no Ten Commandments at all? Would the human condition have improved if we weren’t constantly, one generation after another, trying to learn and figure out how to optimize the rules of ethical monotheism? And most importantly, would the world be a better place if we hadn’t slowly, slowly, crept towards an understanding of individual worth? I think not.

All of the above is a predicate to a couple of news stories, a short history lesson, and a long-ago comment from my friend Danny Lemieux. [Read more…]

“That is not funny!” — Leftism, laughter, and tales from old Hollywood

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The humorlessness that makes “That is not funny” the tagline of today’s Progressives reminds me of laughter and communism in old Hollywood.

Humor That is not funny Helen Gahagan DouglasLate night television used to be funny. Both Johnny Carson and Jay Leno understood that it was their job to make tired Americans laugh at the end of a long work day. They further understood that this was best accomplished by poking gentle fun at everyone in the American public, across the political spectrum. Before he could to be a self-satisfied, obnoxious sexual harasser, even David Letterman also had a vague idea that he was getting paid to make people laugh.

The current crop of late night hosts, though, believe that their job is to politically indoctrinate their increasingly small audience. While they will occasionally stumble upon actual humor, most of the time they think it’s enough to insult Trump or his supporters (or, a decade ago, to insult Bush and his supporters). Their live audiences, made up of fellow travelers, reliably bray and clap whenever the host voices an insult, never mind that it’s invariably devoid of wit, insight, or any of the other hallmarks of humor.

Incidentally, humor, real humor, can be a potent way to insult a political opponent. Winston Churchill, of course, was a master of the art. When Harry S. Truman said of Churchill’s replacement, Clement Attlee, “He seems a modest sort of fellow,” Churchill’s response was swift, devastating, and funny: “He’s got a lot to be modest about.” Also once called Ramsay MacDonald “a sheep in sheep’s clothing.” And of course, when MP Bessie Braddock accused him of being drunk, he responded, “My dear, you are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be ugly.” Mean? Absolutely. But funny.

Today’s “comics,” though, tend to mire themselves in lines that are the intellectual equivalent of “You’re ugly and your mother dresses you funny.” (A line that I find amusing only when I apply it to my small dog after outfitting him in ridiculous pinafores on cold days. He, because dogs are wonderful, always forgives me for the insult.)

It’s not just late-night comics, of course. Reams of articles have been written, and videos made, about the fact that comics have given up on American college campuses. The hyper-triggered, self-righteous, victim-mindset, Leftist students simply can’t take a joke.

I was discussing the decided lack of humor from the Left with a friend, and he commented appropriately enough that Communists have never been known for their humor. It makes sense. First, communism is all about raw power and nothing threatens power more than laughter. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” makes that point perfectly, which explains why it’s been a part of the Western canon since 1837, when he first published it. [Read more…]

Useful information for those who want to keep the House Republican

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Capitol Building CongressMy local Republican Women’s Federated send me the following useful information, both for California and for other states:

Remember these valuable California Congressmen:

Big Impact both inside and outside of California: Donate to Heritage Action which is supporting 12 key Congressional candidates with donated money.

Republicans must fight for every one of these seats.

  • Dave Brat, Virginia 7th District, incumbent
  • Scott Perry, Pennsylvania 10th District , incumbent but this is a newly drawn district
  • Keith Rothfus, Pennsylvania 12th District, incumbent
  • Andy Barr, Kentucky 6th District, incumbent
  • Yvette Herrell, New Mexico 51st District
  • Rod Blum, Iowa
  • Mike Bishop, MI
  • Ann Wagner, MO
  • Mark Harris, NC
  • Ted Budd, NC
  • Jay Webber, LA
  • Steve Chabot, OH

Other resource for active citizens to find out information.

Complacency is never a virtue, but that’s especially true when, as now, the stakes are high.

Bookworm Beat 8/13/2018 — the holding out against Leftists edition

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This Bookworm Beat has it all: Leftist racism, Russian conspiracies, the Cold War, cops, Hercule Poirot, education insanity, crazed campus co-eds, and more.

Bookworm Beat logoThe Trump Tower set-up and other Russian collusion fantasies. You have to be a Leftist to claim that Trump’s son walking away from a meeting at Trump Tower with Russians without promising anyone is collusion, while the fact that federal law enforcement, the DNC, and Hillary’s campaign worked closely with myriad Russians close to Putin to destroy Trump is not collusion.

Lee Smith helps clarify for the confused.

And if you’re still confused, Thomas Lifson reminds us of the staggering double standard that saw the federal government and the media cover for DiFi’s grotesque carelessness with (and profiting from) the Chinese government, while those same institutions are endlessly trying to destroy Trump because . . . something, something Russians, something something:

The contrast with the treatment received by the Trump campaign when a Russian spy was merely suspected (on the basis of what appear to be ginned-up concerns over Carter Page, an FBI informant)  is so stark as to raise serious question as to the integrity of the FBI counterintelligence operation.  The NSA’s ability to monitor every form of electronic communications except ham radio [footnote omitted], was mobilized to spy on the presidential campaign of the opposition party to the Obama administration. No notification to the campaign was offered, unlike Feinstein’s treatment.

The entire incident is being presented to the public as no big deal. That is a classic example of the fake news of which President Trump so vocally complains.

Finally, VDH looks at the insane Russianism driving the Left, some of whom have become true believers, and many of whom are cynical operatives trying to protect either their power bases or their ideological hold over American institutions:

Robert Mueller was tasked with investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election. He was supposed to find proof that Trump campaign officials deliberately collaborated with Russian agents to subvert the election and thereby achieve through foreign subterfuge what they could not secure through votes.

Yet that mandate was jettisoned just weeks after Mueller began, apparently once his lawyers sensed what Peter Strzok (soon to be on his investigatory team) already knew when he had texted Lisa Page, “There’s no big there there” —an impression that both James Comey and James Clapper later shared when they confessed that they had no evidence of Russian collusion.

After a year and a half, Mueller so far has been reduced to indicting some Russians operatives for cyber crimes and a few former Trump officials on charges that have had nothing to do with collusion.

But out of the Mueller conundrum and congressional investigations arose damning information that Obama national-security officials illegally unmasked and leaked to the press the names of those surveilled. In addition, DOJ and FBI officials deliberately misled either gullible or partisan FISA court judges to obtain surveillance warrants on American citizens, on the basis of an unverified dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Discredited FBI officials lied to federal investigators. The former FBI director leaked confidential memos written on FBI time on FBI devices, and he probably worked with CIA Director John Brennan (who had previously lied twice under oath to the United States Congress) to monitor the Trump campaign, including but not limited to implanting government informants among Trump employees.

[snip]

In sum, Russian collusion is a 2016 election construct. The hysteria over it serves a palliative for hatred of a presidency that so far cannot be stopped before 2020. Had Hillary Clinton won the election as experts assured the nation she would, there would be no Mueller investigation, either of Trump or of wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton. Now-fired or reassigned FBI grandees like Andrew McCabe or Peter Strzok and DOJ officials such as Bruce Ohr would have thrived. If anything, embracing conflicts of interest and bias to successfully warp an election would be seen as a sacrifice to be rewarded, not culpability to be punished.

The Cold War reminds us that socialism is bad. A new poll came out showing that Democrats adore socialism, which they think is better for people than capitalism. This view, of course, means that they’re looking, not at National Socialism (aka Nazis), or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the Soviet Union), or the completely socialists Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka North Korea).

Instead, what it means is that they’re looking at that rosy view of Western Europe from the 1960s through the 1990s. Of course, they’re totally missing the fact that Europe, despite its claim that it was “socialist,” wasn’t socialist at all.

What supported Western Europe’s cradle-to-grave socialism was America. We paid for their military costs and accepted their outrageous tariffs, all to help them to recover from WWII and to prevent them from once again falling into an apocalyptic conflagration. Europe may have art and architecture, but the 20th century proved that it had little in the way of actual civilization.

Anyway, if you know a Leftist stupid enough to think socialism is the answer, this video might (maybe, perhaps, just possibly) help you educate that person (h/t Seraphic Secret):

Big Tech is so bad, even Noam Chomsky objects. This comes from the wonderful world of “even a stopped clock is right twice a day“:

Responding from his official MIT email address, Chomsky wrote, “What I’ve seen of what he does is outrageous, but unlike many civil libertarians here and especially in other countries, I don’t think that the right way to deal with
‘hate speech’ and crazed fabrications is to ban them; rather, to confront them, and to seek and confront the reasons why anyone pays a moment’s attention to them.”

Who knew that the arch-Leftist Chomsky was a fan of the marketplace of ideas and free speech? (And no, I did not miss the fact that he accused “civil libertarians” of advocating censorship. I have no idea what he’s talking about, since the essence of libertarianism is that we don’t bring the government’s heavy hand down on things.)

Leftists hate blacks who aren’t Leftists: [Read more…]

As their music shows, today’s young people live in a depressing world

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A look at the Outside Lands’ music line-up reminds us that young people, though rich in material things, live in an awfully depressing mental world.

Music Despair DepressionOne of my Little Bookworms attended Outside Lands today. For those unaware, it’s a giant three-day music festival held in Golden Gate Park. Today, 25 singers and bands performed, spread out over five or six stages.

My Little Bookworm wasn’t actually planning on attending, because (according to what the kids tell me) entry tickets are $150 per person, per day, which is a lot of money. Still, when a discount ticket came his way (someone couldn’t go and had to sell a full-price ticket cheap), Little Bookworm couldn’t resist the opportunity to spend time with friends at an “event.”

Because Little Bookworm didn’t attend as a music pilgrim, but rather on a lark, he wasn’t familiar with the music groups. That’s why, when we were in the car together, he played for me the top songs from each group/singer on today’s line-up. Here’s the list, headlined by (of all people) Janet Jackson. I’m pretty sure that the last time I saw a picture of Janet Jackson, she was in a burka. The time before that, she was flashing her boob on national TV. It’s hard to keep up with her. But again, here’s that list:

Janet Jackson
DJ Snake
Portugal. The Man
James Blake
Janelle Monáe
BØRNS
Chromeo
THE INTERNET
Gryffin
Tash Sultana
RAINBOW KITTEN SURPRISE
LP
Sabrina Claudio
Kelela
Claptone
Bahamas
Saba
AQUILO
Kailee Morgue
Hobo Johnson & the LoveMakers
Durand Jones & The Indications
Monophonics
Hot Flash Heat Wave
Dick Stusso
T Sisters
AJNA

What struck me listening to the music from these groups was how drab it was. Incidentally, that word — drab — is one I’ve chosen carefully. The dictionary defines it as “dull; cheerless; lacking in spirit, brightness, etc.” That strikes me as a perfect description of the music my son played for me.

Much of the music also lacks any lyrical qualities, which makes me wonder how closely it even fits under the definition of “music.” Here are some samples of the various musicians’ more popular songs. (Trigger warning: obscenities, ugly images, banality, whining, chronic low-grade depression, ennui, and anger): [Read more…]

Two different bestseller lists hint at a reddish wave in November

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Two bestseller lists — one local and one national — hint that there may be, if not a red wave, at least a reddish wave nationwide in November.

Stack of books bestseller listsMy local paper ran an article with bestsellers for Northern California and for the nation as a whole. As the article explains, the former list comes from “the American Booksellers Association from independent bookstore sales” while the latter list is from Publisher’s Weekly.

I don’t follow fiction much, so have nothing to offer about the two fiction bestseller lists. However, I found the non-fiction lists fascination. Here’s my breakdown, with political orientation referring either to the book’s strict political content or to the author’s manifest orientation, whether the book is an autobiography or a self-improvement manual: [Read more…]

Kanye is right — we truly need to make politics personal

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Kanye again makes sense. This time, he says quite correctly that Americans are individuals, so politics should be personal, not a matter of group think.

KanyeGroup-think, which denies people’s individuality and insists that they have no meaning separate from whatever group the politicians believe best serve the politicians’ goals, is the essence of Marxism. Stalin, who understood that Marxism always leads to the grave, summed up the ultimate type of group think: One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.

Yesterday, Kanye went on Jimmy Kimmel and called out this Marxist group think in his inimitable Kanye way, by saying that people are denying their basic individuality when they allow group identity to dictate their politic choices. Being true to yourself means refusing to allow group think to silence you:

Just as a musician, an African-American, a guy out in Hollywood, all these different things — everyone around me tried to pick my candidate for me. And then told me every time I said I liked Trump, I couldn’t say it out loud or my career would be over, I’d be kicked out of the black community. Because blacks, we’re supposed to have a monolithic thought. We can only like . . . can only be Democrats and all.

[snip]

What it represented to me is not about policies, because I’m not a politician like that. But it represented overcoming fear and doing what you felt, no matter what anyone said. And saying, “You can’t bully me. Liberals can’t bully me; news can’t bully me; the hip-hop community, they can’t bully me.” Because at that point if I’m afraid to be me, I’m not longer “Ye.” That’s what makes “Ye.”

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