Bookworm Room

As I suspected, the answer to my thought a couple days ago established that we have very few liberal readers left here in the Bookwormroom (So glad you still drop by, Helen, insults and all).  No wonder we have so few really good disagreements anymore. So, is this problem unique to the Bookwormroom or has [...]

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I can’t resist fisking Helen Thomas’ post-election ruminations.  The woman is a dummy, and yet she’s had enormous access to the halls of power for decades, and has always been a thorn in the Republicans’ collective flesh.  And, of course, as her widely published post, below, demonstrates, the old media still gives her enormous access [...]

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A Mormon in Oakland who is seeking re-appointment to a city-run board is being turned away because he supported Prop. 8.  There’s no indication that he is homophobic.  Like me, he favors civil unions for gays, which would extend to them the full panoply of legal rights available under the law.  (I also favor civil [...]

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What little we’ve seen of Scott Brown so far we like.  Joshuapundit adds two more things to the equation:  he’s no RINO and he’s a friend of Israel. Also, if you go here, you get a great video about the Brown win, plus a comprehensive round-up of posts about the election’s impact (and, since praise [...]

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My book club just read and discussed William F. Buckley’s Stained Glass: A Blackford Oakes Novel, which Buckley wrote in 1978, two years before the Reagan revolution.  The book is sort of a spy novel, but it’s more a rumination on a particular type of political conundrum:  When it comes to international politics, should American [...]

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Thinking about it, Scott Brown’s election as the Senator for Massachusetts may be more significant than any election in my lifetime, including the Reagan Revolution and the 1994 Congressional takeover.  I know this sounds silly.  In 1980, the political shift involved a President, not a mere Senator; in 1994, it was an entire Congress, not [...]

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Coakley just conceded, with 75% of precincts reporting.  I will blog tomorrow regarding this staggering sea change in American politics (and, yes, it is more significant than 1994 and 2008).

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I keep compulsively flipping between Drudge, which is updating about every ten minutes with numbers, and Hot Air, which is giving trends.  The numbers are great, the trends are disturbing.  The tension between the two is killing me.  I can’t even imagine how Brown feels (and I don’t care how Coakley feels).  I would characterize [...]

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The race in Massachusetts is ridiculously exciting, but we cannot let it overshadow the fact that Haiti has gone from appalling to apocalyptic.  The Anchoress has details and urges all of us to continue doing what we can to help those poor people.

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Hoagy’s original of Heart and Soul: Cleftone’s doo-wop cover of Hoagy’s song: Huey Lewis’ Heart and Soul: T’pau’s Heart and Soul:

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Sure hope the election today isn’t close, because you just know they’ll keep recounting the votes until the democrat wins.

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One of the reasons I started souring on liberalism a long time ago, was its insistence that manifestly crazy people couldn’t have their civil rights infringed by institutionalizing them.  (And yes, I know de-institutionalization started out from both the political left and the political right, but by the 70s, the Left, especially the ACLU, owned [...]

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This is a portmanteau post, filled with interesting things I read today, some of which come in neatly matched sets. Opening today’s San Francisco Moronicle, the first thing I saw was that an illegal teen’s arrest is causing a stir in San Francisco’s halls of power.  You see, San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and [...]

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Back when I was more active here in the Bookwormroom, we had a number of liberal readers, most of whom were here more to insult than to discuss, but some of whom made valuable contributions to the discussions here.  I wonder whether liberals/progressives/folks who see themselves as politically lef-of-center still visit here or are right-of-center [...]

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From Fox New’s Sunday Roundtable, this is Charles Krauthammer’s take on the profoundly corrupt process behind the health care bill, and the way this process reflects on Obama: It is a bribe, and that’s why it is so unpopular. Look, it’s not just a question of it depriving the Treasury of revenue. It’s question of [...]

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I remember the floods and slides of 2005.  Significant parts of Marin were inundated with water.  One of my friends, an elderly lady, was homeless for almost a year (living in various friends’ houses) while her house was being repaired.  Harold Lezzeni’s house was under repair for four years, but it wasn’t a dilatory insurance [...]

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. . . as he’s heckled (h/t Sadie): I don’t think that’s ever happened to him before. What must also have bewildered him was the skimpy turnout, a stark contrast to Scott Brown’s rally today.

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The Dems have launched a new attack against Brown, in order to cause voters to react in Pavlovian revulsion when they hear his name:  They’re now contending that (a) Brown thinks Sarah Palin is a decent human being and (b) Brown indicated skepticism about the fact that Barack Obama’s mother was married to his father, [...]

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I’ve never heard of Ray Stevens, but I loved this video, which a local conservative friend sent me:

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A little over the top (especially music-wise), but still worth watching, if only as a reminder the a small pebble can divert a flood: Hat tip:  Lulu

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When I switched from cable to satellite TV a few years ago I was very pleased, except for one problem.  The sound volume varied dramatically from channel to channel.  Thus, I was (and am) constantly adjusting the volume when I switch channels.  At the same time, I use a nifty piece of software on the [...]

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It’s only because it’s just a wee bit more over the top than the real things that you can tell it’s satire: Big hat tip to The New Editor UPDATE:  The above video represents fake Democrats (read:  “Republican satirists”) in action.  Nothing, of course, can compare to the real deal, who are so over-the-top that [...]

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Vanderleun, who blogs at the wonderful American Digest, put me on to a liberal Massachusetts blog that tells its readers to suck it up and vote for Coakley: Let’s get this out of the way.  You might not want to vote for Martha Coakley.  You might think she deserves what’s she’s getting after an absentee, [...]

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As I’ve mentioned before, almost without exception, my “real me” facebook friends are liberal.  This is true both for the friends I trace back to my school years and for the ones who are part of my daily life today. Occasionally, I like to tweak my facebook friends a little, not with “in your face” [...]

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