Bookworm Room

Many, myself included, found it heartening that the Wikileaks cables showed that Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries, were talking tough to American diplomats when it came to Iran.  That proved, we said, that, no matter what the leaders said on the streets, behind the scenes they were sensibly aware of their common cause with [...]

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I spoke this weekend to a law enforcement agent who works in domestic counter terrorism.  He said what we all know:  one of the ways in which Islamic radicals recruit previously apathetic young men is through sex.  Not actual sex, but the manufactured sex of rock videos.  In other words, terrorist recruiters have figured out [...]

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I have friends who have taught in inner city schools.  Without exception, they have told me that, if a child’s parents are drug-addled, the school lunch may be the only meal the child gets.  There is a tremendous virtue to feeding starving children. Having said that, I found revealing a statement Michelle Obama made after [...]

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Blackfive links to Lieutenant General John Kelly’s tribute to the Marines, a tribute made more moving if one knows that Gen. Kelly’s son had died in combat a mere four days before his father gave that speech.  General Kelly’s speech culminates with a moving description of the last seconds in the lives of Corporal Jonathan [...]

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In Progressive cities, long-established businesses pull out because (a) they can’t afford the cost of doing business in a Progressive-run city and (b) the work force is substandard (which may go a long way to why the City’s voters consistently elect Progressives).

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I really shouldn’t pick on Tom Friedman.  If he was the average idiot holding forth in a bar or living room, I probably wouldn’t.  But this average idiot has a forum — the New York Times — that gives him license to spread his stupidity to a much wider audience than is made available to [...]

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Everyone is at risk in an Islamic country: Pakistani authorities have arrested a doctor on suspicion of violating the country’s contentious blasphemy law by throwing away a business card of a man who shared the name of Islam’s prophet, Muhammad, police said Sunday. The punishment for blasphemy, of course, is death. Read the whole thing [...]

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Everyone has been talking about Obama’s bizarre behavior in ceding his press conference to Bill Clinton and just walking away.  What I haven’t seen commented upon yet, but what I find incredibly funny, is the henpeckedness of it all.  Both of these men are reputed to have wives with more testicular fortitude than they have [...]

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A Congressional panel is advocating the removal of all restrictions between women and the front line.  Aside from the same problem that arises with gays at the front line — the possibility of sexual jealousy interfering with unit cohesion — there are a few biological realities that I see as problems:  (1) women pee sitting [...]

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Are the wheels coming off the bus, or are we witnessing the most brilliant, and dangerous, political theater in our life times? Here’s what it looked like a few days ago:  the President caved on maintaining the current tax rate, leaving Republicans triumphant.  In exchange, it seemed as if the Republicans were extending unemployment benefits, [...]

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It turns out that the young man who hung on the Union Jack flag in order to climb a cenotaph dedicated to the dead of WWI, a cenotaph that has inscribed on it in large letters “the glorious dead,” has apologized, claiming he knew not what he did. Hogwash. First of all, any halfway civilized [...]

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Life can be tough when you break the law.  The people who murdered Annie Mae Aquash discovered this fact when they were arrested and tried for murder 35 years after killing Aquash.  Sara Jane Olson, an SLA terrorist during the 1970s, discovered that when her quiet, suburban life in Minnesota was revealed and she spent [...]

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Eleanor Powell and friend:

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Oh, my!  Here I am, reading this week’s Watcher’s Council submissions (which you’ll find here), and I forgot to tell you what last week’s winners were.  It’s never too late, though, so here are last week’s winners: Council Winners *First place with 3 votes! – The Razor — America’s China Problem Second place with 2 [...]

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Zombie believes that the Berkeley City Council, with its unerring instinct for getting to the heart of the matter, and then going in the wrong direction, is on to something with its decision to laud Bradley Manning as a great American hero.  After all, while Assange gets the fame, it was Manning who got the [...]

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Although Congress is in lame duck mode, it’s still a Democrat-led Congress in both houses, so much so that Dems can, technically, pass anything they want without Republican votes.  That’s why I found these two headlines so funny, one of which places all blame on Republican shoulders, and one of which pretends that the Dems [...]

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I doubt many people living today even recognize the old saying that “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”  Nevertheless, they live daily with the reality of that saying:

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It’s a morning of incredibly good stuff, as I troll through my usual list of daily reading material.  I’m sharing it with you in real time as I read it myself. Start with J.R. Dunn’s look at the new world of warfare, one that takes place, not on battlefields but, instead, of computer servers — [...]

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I don’t see Harry Reid having the political umph to pass the DREAM Act, but I also never imagined back in 2007 that Barack Obama would be President, so what do I know? I do know that I have a problem with the DREAM Act, and that’s despite the fact that there are some very [...]

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Years ago, I predicted that Obama, when challenged, would either go ballistic or would fall apart at the seams.  I was almost right.  Rather than doing one or the other, Obama seems to have managed to do both (emphasis mine): Max’s shout [in Where the Wild Things Are], and the trick of looking his antagonists [...]

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Much, much, much better.  Way much better.  Truly, really, totally much better.  Better than what?  Better than this.

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Laer Pearce is one of the sharpest political observers out there.  He blogged for many years at Cheat-Seeking Missiles, and gathered a loyal following, myself included.  He put the blog on hold, though, to write a full length book about a subject near and dear to his heart — the insanity that is California.  I [...]

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I heard about Blake Gopnik’s attack on Norman Rockwell (as part of his defense of the “Ants on Jesus” video), and actually started writing a post on the subject.  Life caught up with me, though, and I abandoned the post and doubt I’ll return to it.  Fortunately, Anchoress has been thinking about the subject, and [...]

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Do you think this story is real or a hoax?  If real, it’s terribly disturbing.  If it’s a hoax, well, it’s also terribly disturbing that someone would do something like that.  Right now, Noisy Room is assuming it’s real but, because NR is committed to honest reporting, any useful information one way or another would [...]

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