Bookworm Room

My family is going to a reception tonight at which we’ll get to meet the Blue Angel fliers.  (Although this is not an event affiliated with the Navy League, I learned about it through friends in the Navy League, so the NL still gets the nod.)  As the reception has drawn near, I’ve learned something [...]

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Conspiracy thinking is an interesting thing.  We know that conspiracies really can and do exist.  We know that even paranoid people have enemies.  But how do we know whether any given theory points to a legitimate plan, goal or movement, or simply reflects our own fears and biases?  Two conspiracy theories have been in the [...]

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I just love Jennifer Rubin in the morning.  Let me just cherry-pick some paragraphs from her morning writing. On Obama’s governing style: James Capretta notices two developments in the health-care debate. First, the president is telling us to shut up again. (”President Obama said today that the debate on health care has gone on long [...]

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Yup.  Yahoo felt compelled to help Obama out by fact-checking a Saturday Night Life sketch that noted Obama’s inability to carry through any legislative agenda. First, here’s the SNL sketch: I just have to fisk the Yahoo story, because it’s insanely stupid: This weekend “Saturday Night Live” opened with Fred Armisen as President Obama, delivering [...]

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It was like a battle scene in an old Hollywood movie, when Americans still knew in their arts that American soldiers are ordinary Americans — good people — only braver and more honorable: Fighting raged at two remote U.S. outpostsnear the Pakistan border this weekend, that left eight U.S. soldiers dead and 24 wounded. The [...]

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Paul Krugman is shocked! shocked! (albeit not surprised) that Republicans are exhibiting a certain amount of Schadenfreude when it comes to the rebuff the IOC delivered to Barack Obama: So what did we learn from this moment? For one thing, we learned that the modern conservative movement, which dominates the modern Republican Party, has the [...]

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I can’t trace the exact quotation down, but Dennis Prager often says something to the effect that compassion towards society’s malfeasors is often tantamount to punishment for the innocent.  This story, which is the follow-up to a terrible accident I blogged about five months ago, perfectly illustrates that point.

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I found this news snippet interesting, beyond the fact that Obama, the missing and passive Commander in Chief, is at odds with his general (emphasis mine): According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week. The next day he [...]

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It’s a 20 second video clip, but you see a moment of life in 1930s Germany [or Holland, if it's a late enough movie clip] — and Anne Frank, high in a window above, looking down on the bride and groom:

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Just back from an early morning meeting, and feeling an energy I haven’t felt in days.  I have paying work to do, but I also feel like blogging, which I haven’t felt in a while.  This, therefore, is an open thread while I process news and other data. The only thing irritating me right now [...]

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ElBaradei says nuclear Israel number one threat to Mideast/ Chutzpah has been redefined, once again. Mohamed should consider a name change to el Parodei.

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Abercrombie & Fitch used to be a rather stodgy store that sold high quality sportswear — for those who viewed “sports” as hunting and fishing.  It now sells trendy clothes, propped up by tawdry advertising.  It seems as if the venerably Burberry’s (conservative raincoats, for those not old enough to remember) has gone the same [...]

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If only I could draw, I try to draw this type of political cartoon.

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I’m not sure why Canada, except for maybe the large Muslim population, the porous border, and the country’s politically correct inertia: Iran is attempting to acquire clandestine shipments via Canada for its nuclear program, a senior customs official said Thursday. Canadian customs officers have seized everything from centrifuge parts to programmable logic controllers being shipped [...]

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Zhombre forwarded this email to me.  I think it’s right on the money: If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn`t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn`t eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products [...]

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Okay, I admit it.  I was a completely failure as a blogger today.  On the other hand, my hair looks great, my mom is happy, my sister has worked her way through her latest (real) crisis, and I’m going out with my husband tonight — so, at a personal level, it’s been a pretty decent [...]

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On September 28, 2009, I wrote this: I think the world has sized Obama up and concluded that he’s weak, very weak.  The Olympics are a good example of this.  One theory has it that Chicago is in, and that the price for that is Obama’s appearance before the Olympic Committee.  In other words, Obama [...]

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Tasks this morning, so blogging must wait.  Also, I’m still struggling with a “big idea” that seems to have blocked my capacity to make many observations about the current scene.  I went to a scintillating book group meeting last night, though, and am hopeful that it will help break the mental damn. So, open thread [...]

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All of us have long known that poverty in America isn’t like poverty anywhere else in the world.  There really isn’t anything here comparable to the poverty in Haiti, or Calcutta, or large swathes of Africa.  Even poor people have televisions and phones.  And it’s apparent that a surprising number of people who are living [...]

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I’ve been thinking a lot about responses to my post regarding the gal who is running for town council, the one who donated to Obama, and who nevertheless seems to be a fiscal conservative.  I asked how she can live with the cognitive dissonance.  Several of you pointed out, in one form or another, that [...]

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(Not usually my type of music, but it’s great for working out.)

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