Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
Because this is pinned to the top, to see my latest posts, just scroll down.
For those of you who like following my Twitter feed but don’t like Twitter, I’ll leave this pinned to the top of my blog. (For complicated reasons, I can’t put it in the sidebar.)
[Read more…]
I’m so sorry, but it looks as if I won’t get the chance to blog at all today. Between work and family, blogging kept drifting down the to-do list until it ended up on today’s can’t-do list.
Interesting things are out there, though, so if you’d like an open thread, here it is. You all know how much I learn from you.
My contribution is my favorite Christmas song (along with my gratitude for a country that let’s me enjoy the music without either forcing me to practice a faith that is not mine or barring me from my full civil rights for having a different faith):
There are substantive jokes in this Bookworm Beat, but the masses of silly stuff go first, before the 2nd Amendment, Stupid Leftists, immigration, etc.
Trump turned the debate over funding a Southern border wall into a brilliant reality show, with Pelosi and Schumer as his hapless foils . . . and much more.
Funny day today, with a lot of people who are important to me needing me. That’s not to say that they are needy people. It’s just that, I found myself spending several hours on the phone with people who were looking to me for specific things, practical or emotional, that they felt only I could provide.
Overall, it was flattering, and I neither regret nor resent the time spent, but it was also a bit tiring and definitely time-consuming. I’ll try to pack as much as I can into this Bookworm Beat, but no promises.
The Trump border reality show. The consensus from conservatives and savvy Leftists seems to be that, when Trump insisted on televising his meeting with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer regarding border wall funding, he was the winner and undisputed champion. My friend Thomas Lifson (one of the smartest people I know) started his post about Trump’s three traps thusly:
President Trump clearly shocked House speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer yesterday with his televising of the Oval Office sit-down over his demand for $5 billion in funding for border security, including funding of critical mileage for his border wall. Knowing well that Pelosi had already vowed publicly that “transparency and openness” would characterize the Democrat-run House starting next month, her plaintive request to speak in private scored points for Trump and revealed her hypocrisy before any substance at all was considered.
John Nolte was also impressed by Trump’s dominance:
The point is that the very first thing Schumer said during this meeting, the key message he wanted to send, is that Trump is weak on the border and lying about it.
Think about that
No seriously, think about that.
I’ll wait.
As the 17-minute made-for-TV spectacle progressed, Trump boldly pledged to shut down part of the government — the part we can all live without that should be closed permanently anyway — if he does not receive adequate border security funding. Meaning, he would not sign on to continue funding the government.
All of this was a calculated set up on Trump’s part, and a successful one.
Pelosi had no idea she was being set up, which is why, like a prim schoolmarm always caught off guard, she chose to lecture Trump about the legislative process.
Schumer, though, is nobody’s stupe, and knew exactly what Trump was up to.
This is what Trump knows… Between now and Election Day 2020, there will be an organized effort to separate Trump from his base, and the best way to do that is to make Trump look weak on border security, and the best way to do that is for leftists to continue to organize and fund illegal immigration, especially through these caravans.
Trump can see the future and he knows it is going to be plagued with an orchestrated and well-funded campaign to create border chaos, to make him look feckless.
But what he did yesterday was flip the script.
Katie Pavlich was another who was impressed: [Read more…]
Tweets between Dean Cain and Princeton Professor Kevin Kruse about debating controversial ideas exemplified academia’s intellectual vacuity and arrogance.
My years at Berkeley left me with tremendous disdain for academics — and keep in mind that this disdain set in almost 40 years ago, before the current insanity of identity politics and hard Leftism. Cal was Left, but it was just a warm-up act for what was to come.
I won’t deny that, while at Cal, I had a few good teachers, and I am grateful for them. Most, though, were tenured hacks who considered the students who funded their paychecks an unpleasant evil interrupting their pleasant lives. And I do mean pleasant. Even as they preached Marxism from the classroom pulpit, they lived in elegant hillside homes complete with Japanese gardeners and Hispanic housekeepers. Additionally, every seven years they got a year-long paid vacation, again courtesy of the taxpayers and students they thought so contemptible.
That little polemic is by way of stating the inherent bias with which I read a Twitter back and forth between Dean Cain and a Princeton professor. Cain is not just a courageously open conservative in Hollywood, he’s also a Princeton grad, which, at one time, had a certain cachet. It’s questionable whether that cachet still exists, which gets me to that Twitter conversation Cain had with an unusually arrogant Princeton prof.
It all started with a tweet from Dinesh D’Souza, the man the hard Left prosecutor in the New York’s federal court system went after for a small-dollar campaign donation violation that had never been the subject of a full-bore criminal prosecution:
#FakeHistorian @KevinMKruse talks big on @Twitter, but when challenged to defend his facts in public debate, he goes into hiding.
📀 https://t.co/ZzXeyNW1z7 pic.twitter.com/GOjs8ZfDtj
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) December 7, 2018
In the video, D’Souza says that his leading critic is Princeton historian Kevin Kruse, and that he’d be more than willing to debate him. D’Souza explains that he offered to debate Kruse at Princeton and that Kruse refused the offer, because debate is “not the proper format” for addressing the issues.
Dean Cain thought a debate was a good idea:
As a Princeton Alum, I’d love to see this debate. @DineshDSouza @KevinMKruse https://t.co/xJrjlRAIuX
— Dean Cain (@RealDeanCain) December 8, 2018
Kevin Kruse thought it was a bad idea, and responded by personally attacking Cain and D’Souza, as well as raising all sorts of arguments we associate with the climate change debate, most notable of which are the fact that D’Souza’s scholarship is the equivalent of “Holocaust denial” and that “the facts are settled.” But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me begin at the begin with Kruse’s tweet in response to Cain’s delight in the thought of a good debate: [Read more…]
Nothing says Christmas like Leftists going crazy over a Christmas song, plus a whole lot more in superb political and social posters.
Laura Loomer’s plight — banned from social media giant Twitter for accurately stating Muslim beliefs — made me think about a creative approach to lawfare.
I think we can take it as a given at this blog that social media giants are staffed almost entirely by Progressives and that these Progressives believe it is their mission to silence conservative thought. Indeed, after Trump’s election, it was only because slightly cooler heads prevailed that Google didn’t go full Soviet by silencing all political opposition on the world’s most used search engine. Considering the unheard of power the social media giants have, clipping their wings is a matter of grave public concern.
Some conservatives are arguing that the government needs to step in to control social media’s excesses. This is insane. Sure, it would be nice if a conservative administration could stop the ideological censorship that has become normative at social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter but (and these are seriously important BUTs) (a) even a conservative administrative, as we’ve seen, is staffed almost entirely by Leftists; (b) in 2 to 6 years we will probably have another of America’s famous political swings, this time in favor of a Leftist administration, which would out-Twitter and out-Facebook the media giants in censorship; and (c) no matter the administration, we should never let government control speech, ever.
So what can be done about the fact that the institutions that have a lock on most communication in America are trying to silence conservative voices? Well, I had a funny idea and I’m thinking out loud about it here. I repeat: I’m thinking out loud, not making an oracular pronouncement. Let’s see if I can articulate this in a logical way.
Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc., are making judgment calls about content. That is, none are functioning as a neutral forum for free speech, like a telephone company that does not police conversations or like a virtual town square. Sadly, the college graduates who staff these institutions learned during their four years at the mercy of Marxist professors and administrators that open forums and town squares are good only when speech is vigorously policed to align precisely with politically correct, social justice warrior approved values.
Significantly, for the social justice warriors who control social media, when they disapprove of conservative ideas, that disapproval does not take the form of the old-fashioned American statement that “I disagree with you, so let’s have a free market exchange of ideas.” Instead, because college left these social media employees with a Manichean world view, one in which progressive thought is good and conservative thought is evil, disapproval absolutely means, “Your ideas are evil and therefore you are evil.” I mean, take a look at Twitter’s speech code for “hateful conduct”: [Read more…]
We remember Pearl Harbor, not just because it was an infamous attack on a peaceful nation, but because it marked the start of America’s world dominance.
Today, we “remember Pearl Harbor,” the day on which the Japanese launched an unprovoked attack again the United States, killing 2,335 Americans serving in the military and wounding another 1,143, as well as killing 68 civilians and wounding 35 others. If you have ever been to the Pearl Harbor memorial, you know what a solemn and painful place it is. When I was there in 1988, the U.S.S. Arizona was still leaking oil, with one drop after another rising slowly to the surface, where each drop created a shiny, dark patch on the water. That oil was a surprisingly vital connection to a long-past tragedy.
Pearl Harbor is memorable not only because of the savagery of the attack and the devastating damage inflicted on America’s seagoing forces, but also because it marked the start of American world dominance. Although it took American might to help end WWI, after the war Europe and America returned to their respective corners.
The two continents, the old and the new, spent the next two decades indulging in various degrees of self-destruction, with America first enjoying the 1920s and then struggling with their aftereffects, and Europe watching passively as Germany bounced from bankruptcy and destruction, to revolution after revolution, to the Tacitus-like peace that Hitler and his fascists imposed on that unstable nation. They also sat things out when an increasingly belligerent Japan smashed through China, where the Japanese committed truly unspeakable atrocities against Chinese civilians.
So it was that, when Germany’s malevolent fascism burst out across Europe, America was more than willing to sit that war out. Americans hadn’t forgotten that their one-year involvement in WWI she killed almost 117,000 men. Americans therefore had no desire to pull Europe’s coals out of the fire again. Even the spectacle of Hitler’s demonic antisemitism and his drive to enslave the Slavic nations (which, ironically, long ago had given their name to the English word “slavery”), didn’t change America’s decision to sit tight. While her emotional commitment and, thanks in large part to Churchill’s persuasive powers, her money might have been on England’s side, Americans were not willing to shed their blood again for the foolish old world. [Read more…]
This Bookworm Beat quickly looks at silly queers, the fake #MeToo movement, the party of non-science, bad Islam, dead England, the Iran Deal, and more.
Honestly, I don’t know where the day went. Here it is, after 8 in the evening, and although I’ve been busy all day, I can’t quite put my finger on what I did. The one thing I didn’t do, though, was blog. However, I’ve tagged a lot of things I’d like to share with you. This will be a quick rundown:
Queers for Palestine are idiots. Islam is not a religion friendly to the LGBTQ+ crowd:
Hello LGBT….meet Islam. pic.twitter.com/AJrXaNVFTZ
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) December 6, 2018
The only place in the Middle East that is friendly to the LGBTQ+ crowd is Israel. Unfortunately, intersectional nonsense means that way too many LGTBQ+ people are this stupid:
They are, in a word, useful idiots.
The #MeToo movement was to cull the herd. Dems leaped all over the #MeToo movement, but it’s obvious that they didn’t mean it. Sure, they got rid of a few problematic people (culling the herd), but mostly they still follow the line from the 1990s, which is Dem men get a pass if they support abortion. There are two stories today proving that point: [Read more…]
Taking a hard look at the American Left’s fascism (its silencing speech, antisemitism, and moral depravity), with room for some fun and uplifting news too.
The Flynn sentencing memo shows collusion. No, I haven’t gone crazy. Instead, I agree with Joel Pollak, who says the memo highlights that the real collusion, which took place between the media, the Deep State, and the Obama administration:
In fact, the most explosive piece of information in the sentencing document is not about collusion with Russians, but about the collusion between the media, the intelligence services, and the outgoing members of the Obama administration.
The document begins its recitation of Flynn’s offenses by citing information that had appeared in the Washington Post from a leaked, classified surveillance transcript in which Flynn’s name had been “unmasked”:
Days prior to the FBI’s interview of the defendant, the Washington Post had published a story alleging that he had spoken with Russia’s ambassador to the United States on December 29, 2016, the day the United States announced sanctions and other measures against Russia in response to that government’s actions intended to interfere with the 2016 election (collectively, “sanctions”). See David Ignatius, Why did Obama Dawdle on Russia’s hacking?, WASH. POST (Jan. 12, 2017).
That information, the document suggests, led the FBI to interview Flynn on Jan. 24, 2017 — the conversation in which he did not (according to Comey) lie to them, but which landed him in trouble.
The government had the surveillance transcripts, and it knew what Flynn had told the Russian ambassador. But the Post‘s intervention was crucial in setting the trap in which to ensnare Flynn and turn him into a government witness.
Mueller’s sentencing document does not mention the fact that the information published in the Post was illegally leaked to the press by the intelligence services. And the reason that happened was that the outgoing Obama administration changed the rules on the sharing of classified surveillance among government agencies, weakening privacy protections, probably intending that such information be more difficult to keep secret, and easier to leak.
Moreover, someone in the Obama administration — we do not yet know who, though it had to be someone senior — “unmasked” Flynn’s name to make sure he was exposed.
So while we do not yet know Mueller’s next moves, what the Flynn sentencing document reinforces is the that the Russia collusion investigation was tainted from the start by a crime committed against Flynn himself — with the collusion of the media, the deep state, and Obama’s loyalists.
Read the whole thing here.
Meanwhile, Benjamin Weingarten reminds us, again, that while Inspector Bob “Javert” Mueller took Flynn down for unintentionally lying about something he’d forgotten, which the FBI knew because of illegally unmasking, people guilty of massive, intentional perjury go completely free. After detailing how Clapper blatantly lied to Congress with no repercussions, as compared to the full-bore attack against Flynn, Weingarten discusses D.C. perjury: [Read more…]
When I was trying to figure out the common threat for this illustrated edition, I saw that it was that most of these posters involve Leftists being naughty.
Even as Paris burns, America’s media and other Democrat establishments demand that America institute the socialist policies that are destroying Europe.
Paris burns — and the people call for Trump. The mainstream media truly believes in global leadership. Trump’s desire to be America’s, rather than following in his predecessor’s footsteps as a Left wing world leader, is seen as Exhibit A in indictment alleging that Trump is evil, racist, Hitler-esque, etc.
Those national leaders that the media exalts are the ones who put the world ahead of their nations. They demand a world without borders, no matter the profound damage roving immigrants from nightmare countries inflict on their own citizens. In this regard, it’s important to understand that most of these countries did not become nightmares because an evil strong man, along the lines of Hitler, Maduro, or Erdogan is destroying the civilized people in his nation. Instead, these are nightmare nations because of national values that the roving immigrants, like locusts, bring with them to their new locations.
The exalted global leaders are also the ones who have bought completely into the whole Climate Change mantra. This holds that mankind in the last few years has become more powerful than the earth, the sun, and the whole universe combined. Certainly, humans have shown that they have the power to alter and damage their local environment. There is no reliable evidence, though, that they can change the earth’s climate.
As I’ve taken to arguing, if humans really are warming the planet, we should be incredibly grateful. Because I’m not a Leftist, my knowledge of history goes back millennia, rather than years or (sometimes) merely weeks or even days. That’s why I know that humans thrive when the earth warms and they die when it cools. When it warms, there’s more arable land and more rain, which equals more food. If CO2 is increasing, that’s great too, because the food we eat needs it.
However, when the earth cools, whether because of (probably sun-controlled) climate change or because of dirty volcanoes that block out the sun, people die. Keep that last point in mind when you hear from those “scientists” who want to block the sun’s rays: [Read more…]
I met President George H. W. Bush for only a minute a long, long time ago, but I still remember his diplomatic polish when I slightly blindsided him.
When I was in law school, my Constitutional Law professor was Philip Bobbitt, LBJ’s nephew. He was, if I remember correctly, a very good teacher. He was also — as you can imagine — politically well-connected.
So it was that, when then-Vice President George H. W. Bush came to town to give a speech, Professor Bobbitt announced to the class that, if any of us were willing to do a little bit of work, such as helping people to their seats, we could attend the talk for free. Free? Count me in.
I remember absolutely nothing about Vice President Bush’s talk. I was a Democrat then and, while I had nothing of the hostility towards Republicans that today’s Democrats display, I wasn’t a fan. I was also very non-political at the time. My Democrat political leanings were knee-jerk, not informed, so anything substantive he had to say almost certainly shot over my head. [Read more…]
Another Bookworm Beat looking at the daily news, including the daily propaganda from former news outlets, all of which is endlessly fascinating
It’s not Trump’s foibles, but the media’s failures, that account for his low numbers. NeverTrumpers, looking at the chasm between Trump’s out-sized positive accomplishments in areas that matter to conservatives and to ordinary Americans, are inclined to blame Trump’s out-sized personality for his poor ratings. I disagree. The problem is definitely the media. In the old days, media outlets led with news: the economy did this, this happened overseas, the president struck this trade deal, etc. It was solid stuff of the type that’s boring to children and adolescents, but that kept the American public generally informed about their country’s health.
In the Trump era, the news is “mean girl” stuff aimed straight at children and adolescents. Whether on TV or in the print/online media, front page news has almost nothing to do with old-fashioned reporting and everything to do with breathlessly maligning Trump for saying this or that. His grammar, his clothes, his stumbles, his past . . . all are reported with breathless enthusiasm, as if any of that matters to the heartbeat of a nation that once stood astride the world like a colossus.
Because ordinary people — the ones who scan the front page and aren’t wedded to information the way we political junkies are — hear only the mean-girl bitch gossip, and are entirely unaware of the actual news, they’re incapable of judging Trump on his accomplishments as president. All that they can do is judge him by the carefully calibrated, low, extremely vicious standards of adolescent gossip.
The Founders venerated a free media, one that they envisioned having outlets representing all sorts of political views, because they thought this freedom and intellectual variety informed the citizenry and stood as a bulwark against government tyranny. They could never have imagined a monolithic, one-party media machine that turned its back on actual reporting and confined itself entirely to savage personal attacks on a political figure. [Read more…]
Green Book
By The Closet Conservative
GO SEE THIS MOVIE! That’s about the best and most brief review I can give The Green Book. In the genre of historical dramas, where good overcomes bad, this feel-good movie for the holiday season will put a smile on your face and give you hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel for what modern day pop culture refers to as “race relations”.
One could argue from both the Right and Left, that this movie shows one of two things: How much progress the Civil Rights movement has made for blacks, OR, a pessimist might argue that not only is there a long way to go, but that there has been regress in the advancement of blacks place in modern society. I always look through the lens of life with the glass as half full, so I see the good and hope in the movie, rather than the bleak view of “See how racist the south is, and it’s even worse today with our current President”. (Sorry race baiters, it’s not worse…this movie only goes to demonstrate what one could NOT get away with today…)
The short description of this movie is as such: It’s 1962. Our protagonist, Tony Lip, played by Viggo Mortenson, is a 1st generation Italian American, blue collar worker in New York who is not so much a racist as he is an ignorant-narrow minded man of his time and culture. Although he is working on the up and up, there are clearly opportunities for him to join the world of organized crime. Yet, he wants to keep his nose clean, and due to his tough nature, is hired by a wealthy black musician, Doctor Don Shirley, played by Mahershala Ali to be his driver. I’ll spare the details as to why and how this happens, for it is much of the charm and heart of the movie that is revealed little by little as the movie develops.
The movie is a throwback to times when one ethnic group could slander the other ethnic group, and not be hung out to dry by the modern day social warriors. Tony, the Italian driver at one time or another in the movie offends with racial slurs, or stereotypes just about every minority. Yet, it’s done so fairly, evenly, matter of factly, that it’s hard to be offended, for he is equally offensive to all. At the same time, while he’s offending those minorities he has no trouble in interacting with them and befriending them. The movie is as funny, as it is warm when these interactions take place. Both Dr. Shirley and Tony learn and teach lessons to each other along the way. Each begins the movie, surely looking down on the other, yet during their 6-week road trip together their pre conceived perceptions slowly melt away.
The further Tony drives Dr. Shirley into the south, the more challenging it becomes in their dealings with the public, Jim Crow laws, and police. You kind of know were the story will go, but there are enough pleasant surprises along the way, and the end is schmaltzy enough that it’s hard not to come away smiling.
Take a racist relative to see his movie… take a race bating liberal to this movie… take a close minded friend to this movie…. Take a Black Lives Matter member to see this movie… it’s hard to imagine any of them not walking away with a warm fuzzy feeling about humanity.