Bookworm Room

Tweet During the campaign, when I pointed out to liberals some of Obama’s more egregious Leftist statements, they pooh-poohed me:  “Don’t you know that all politicians campaign to the base, but govern from the center?”  I wonder what they think of the fact that Obama, having campaigned to the base, with bows to the center, [...]

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Tweet In the old days, when someone was a substance abuser, the entire onus for the abuse lay with that person.  At a certain point, however, someone figured out that, in many relationships, the abuser’s partner was part of the dance of drug or alcohol dependency.  A new term entered the pop culture vocabulary:  “codependent.” [...]

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Tweet I’m ambivalent about abortion.  I grew up pro-choice, and have always accepted that, in certain situations, pregnancy is simply too burdensome.  When I was young, I set a very low standard for what constituted “burdensome.”  As I’ve grown older and had children of my own, that standard has become very high. No matter my [...]

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Tweet I was speaking with one of the parents at martial arts today, a Frenchman who now lives with his family here in the United States.  I don’t recall how it happened, but the conversation got around to a coded talk about the Islamisization of Europe.  His opinion, surprisingly, was that it will happen in [...]

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Tweet Linda Chavez is a writer I often read but seldom (if ever) quote.  Today, though, I thought the opening paragraph in an article she wrote perfectly summarized everything one needs to know (and fear) about Obama: Hubris is the word that comes to mind as I listen to President Obama lay out his plan [...]

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Tweet As is appropriate after a disastrous election, there is a lot of soul searching going on on the conservative side, trying to figure out what went wrong so that we can do it right the next time.  I see this in phone calls from relatives, lunches with friends, gatherings with Marin’s cryptoconservatives, and the [...]

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Tweet I was in a deep funk today because I thought I’d lost the yellow pad on which I kept the running tally of all of my hours for February.  As it turned out, rather like Poe’s purloined letter, it was in front of me all the time — it simply didn’t look right.  I [...]

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Tweet This is it, the most recent Watcher’s reading stack.  My submission is weak, no doubt about it, a combination of post-vacation writing and the fact that I’m not good at describing train wrecks.  Before an election, I can make arguments, trying to urge a position.  Now, with Obama holding an unbeatable Democratic Congressional majority, [...]

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Tweet Full employment does not equal wealth.  In a totalitarian society, such as the former Soviet Union, one often finds 100% employment, but no wealth.  What matters isn’t the quantity of jobs, it’s the quality. Government prints money.  It does not create wealth.  People create wealth. Zimbabwe is a very frightening example of the speed [...]

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Tweet Yesterday I had the pleasure of being in the company of some interesting, well-informed conservatives (and are there any other kind?).  We’d gathered ostensibly as a book club to talk about Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (a book I found informative, but that had a conceit and [...]

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Tweet Our own Deanna is planning on going to the Chicago Tea Party and is looking for clever slogans for the sign she’s going to carry.  We’ve discussed before at this blog the fact that honest conservative thoughts don’t easily yield to bumper sticker sized sentences. The bottom line question is:  How does one pithily [...]

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Tweet I’m so irritated about all the chimp apologies, despite the fact that its clear that cartoons had nothing to do with race, but instead involved riffs off of other news of the day, that I just feel like putting up some chimp pictures here.  Let me assure you that, while I really dislike Obama [...]

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Tweet I see this as a running series, as more and more evidence crops proving to the 78% of American Jews who voted for Obama that he will, as conservatives warned, oversee Israel’s destruction.  Pre-election, I was assured by so many Jews that the Dems and Obama are friends of Israel, and it was irrelevant [...]

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Tweet I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenge for government in a world with higher expectations.  Cast your mind back to the years when the Founders signed off on the Declaration of Independence and created the Bill of Rights.  It was a very different world, with very different needs and expectations. Let’s start with [...]

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Tweet Who cares about the content?  You’ve got to love this CNN headline: Obama to lay out sober assessment, hopeful future The story’s content, as you’ve probably guessed, is that Obama has figured out that people elected Mr. Hopenchange, not Mr. Doom-and-Gloom.  So, he’s got to say that everything is awful, so that (a) it [...]

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Tweet I’ve been meaning to blog all day today but, as you can see by the time (10:57 P.S.T.), this has not been a peaceful day.  I’ve been running from pillar to post since 6:30 this morning, and am so tired my eyes are crossed. I have a lovely little window of time tomorrow morning, [...]

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Tweet One of the things that became very clear during this past election is that, while the Dems had an essentially meaningless political message (since “change” and “hope” don’t describe either ideology or policy), they were superb at getting that message to resonate amongst the electorate.  The RNC has now had the smart idea of [...]

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Tweet You remember when an LA Times opinion column told us that Obama was the “magic negro,” don’t you?  I think Obama took that idea way to seriously, because he’s now engaged in some magical thinking.  He assures us that, despite economic freefall, despite a trillion dollars in added debt, and despite the nationalization of [...]

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Tweet Yesterday’s news pointed out, yet again, that our data about global warming is wrong.  There’ve been a lot of such stories lately, as it turns out that many so-called scientists, accidentally or on purpose, have been grossly exaggerating our impact on the climate.  That got me thinking. There is no doubt that man has [...]

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Tweet UPDATE:  Pardon the white heat in the title of this post, but I cannot tell you how many times, during the days and months leading to the election, liberal Jews assured me, both in the media and in personal conversations, that Obama would never do anything to hurt Israel.  Nor can I tell you [...]

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Tweet The title of this post is the cri de coeur of a father whose son died in his arms.  We can all sympathize with how he feels — except that it gets a little more complicated when you read the story about how his son died.  You see his son, armed with a gun, [...]

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Tweet A friend sent me this amazing video, which is a few years old.  As my friend said, it’s a reminder that a gun is a tool, with its functionality dependent on the user:

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Tweet President Obama intends to blackmail states into becoming completely beholden to and dependent on the federal government: President Barack Obama singled out Texas on Friday as a state that could lose out under the newly enacted $797 billion economic stimulus package because Gov. Rick Perry hasn’t totally ruled out rejecting some funds. Speaking to [...]

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Tweet Aside from the wonderful comments you all left during my week on the ski slopes, I got dozens of fascinating emails with links I wanted to pass on to you, but couldn’t because of the limitations inherent in blogging on the iPhone.  First, though, I have to share with you something incredibly funny I [...]

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Tweet Between preparing for vacation and actually going on vacation, I’ve given the Watcher’s Council short shrift — which was a real disservice to all of you, because of the usual volume of excellent stuff emanating from that august body.  I’m including in this post the winners from last week (in which I participated) and [...]

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