Bookworm Room

Ron Paul’s doing well in Iowa, so well that there are some who project a win for him there.  Interestingly, despite his frontrunner, or near frontrunner, status, the MSM is remarkably quiet.  Some think it’s because the MSM knows he can’t possibly win, so why bother.  Others wonder the MSM is lusting after a Republican [...]

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I came of age in the post-Vietnam era.  Let me amend that:  I came of age in San Francisco in the post-Vietnam era.  Although Fleet Week, which started in the City about 20+ years ago has done a lot to turn things around, San Francisco has not been a military friendly city, and most definitely [...]

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We all grew up being taught that FDR was the nation’s savior.  He wasn’t.  He was a Progressive who prolonged the depression by an extra seven or eight years, inflicting tremendous damage on the nation.  The fact that Newt finds FDR an effective leader is somewhat worrying.

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Obama is getting drunk with power.  He’s a scary drunk.

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It was inevitable, but that doesn’t make Christopher Hitchens’ death less sad for those of us who valued and enjoyed his intellectual honesty, brilliant writing, and all around caustic joie de vivre. Christopher Hitchens — Requiescat in pace.

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The usual truly excellent stuff is before me: Council Submissions The Colossus of Rhodey – Looks like U.D. still hasn’t fully learned its lesson The Political Commentator – The Captured U.S. RQ-170 drone in Iran! Why is Jimmy Carter smiling? The Noisy Room – A Square Deal in a Round Hole Simply Jews – History [...]

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A lot of people have had a good laugh over the fact that Time Magazine, romanticizing the OWS crowd and the Muslim Brotherhood, named “The Protester” as its person of the year.  A friend of mine, however, has noted something that a lot of people passed over, which is one of Times‘ runner-ups, Admiral McRaven, [...]

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All of us at this blog have shared thoughts and facts similar to those in Bill Whittle’s latest video.  It’s hard, though, to imagine anyone putting them together as well, as cogently, and with such elegant brevity, as Whittle himself:

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“Facts are stubborn things.”  — John Adams. “Ideologues are even more stubborn than facts.”  — Bookworm A few nights ago, Mr. Bookworm watched the movie Shattered Glass with the children.  It’s a fairly good retelling of the way in which Stephen Glass, a young feature writer at The New Republic, wrote a series of fraudulent [...]

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I’m a day late (per my usual habit of posting this list on Tuesdays), but I’ve still got the results from last week’s Watcher’s Council votes.  It is, as always, good, good stuff: Council Winners *First place with 3 votes! Joshuapundit–-Heart Of Darkness; Obama’s Campaign To Make Israel A Scapegoat And Fool America’s Jews Second [...]

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You’ve been to other sites that have words that are randomly highlighted.  When your cursor accidentally drags over those words, an ad pops up.  I’ve now joined those ranks. If the highlighted words are too irritating, I’ll stop.  Truthfully, though, much as I love blogging, I would also love to see a little revenue flow [...]

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I happen to think Dennis Prager is right — and I say this as someone who does not have a personal stake in the adultery issue.  I’ve known people who committed adultery because they were obnoxious jerks, and people who committed adultery because it was the only way to survive emotionally in a terrible marriage [...]

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Others have said it, but I like best the way Evelyn Gordon said it.  After confirming the historic accuracy of Newt’s claim (namely, that Arabs moved into the land at the end of the 19th century, rather than having lived there since time immemorial), Gordon goes on: One might ask why this should matter: Regardless [...]

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A friend sent me a link to a post at Whatever, a blog that John Scalzi runs.  Scalzi, who describes himself as a “pinko commie socialist,” is interested — truly, not snarkily, interested — in the views Republicans/conservatives/libertarians currently hold when looking at the Republican primary field.  Having the luxury of my own blog, I [...]

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Please, please, please tell me the Rabbi was writing with tongue fixed firmly in cheek: I’ve got a Tim Tebow problem. I want to root for the guy, but I’m afraid of what will happen if the hulky Denver Bronco quarterback continues to pull off what is fast becoming the Greatest Gridiron Story Ever Told. [...]

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I get Obama campaign emails because I signed up for them.  It’s always interesting to see what the opposition is doing.  That’s why I got to enjoy this “classy” email from Obama’s 2012 campaign: Friend – Everyone’s got that special conservative in their life. Maybe it’s your dad, who forwards you every chain email about [...]

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Bret Stephens, writing about his father’s dying.  (Not his death, but his dying.)

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We all met Navy One when he was just one of us — a guy who wrote delightful, interesting comments on my blog.  When Navy One decided to try his hand at blogging, he took that same charm and . . . well, the rest is history, as The Mellow Jihadi, launched just this spring, [...]

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Back in 2004, entirely coincidentally, I ended up at the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C., on the same morning that veterans of the Battle of the Bulge had gathered for a reunion. Some got there under their own steam. Many, though, were on walkers or in wheelchairs. They were so frail. And so many were [...]

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I am still working on my big post.  Life, however, keeps getting in the way.  I have hopes that I’ll get it done sometime tomorrow. My mom will be having a procedure tomorrow morning that should control her heart problem.  With luck, the secondary problems — confusion, depression, panic-attacks — will diminish if her heart [...]

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San Francisco used to be charming.  Now it’s just kind of creepy — or, at least, large parts of it are.  For example, the OWSers are creepy.  Even creepier is what happens when the OWSers come together with the nekkid Santas.  And I have to ask, as I always do:  Why is it always only [...]

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As I was up early, I listened to KSFO’s Brian Sussman show.  A man called in, identified himself as someone who works at the Port of Oakland, and described with some amusement the eight or so luxury buses that pulled up, disgorging a bunch of people in their 30s and 40s, completely with mass-produced signs, [...]

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My poor mother got hospital delirium last night.  The nurses called me at 5 a.m. in the hopes that hearing my voice would help orient her.  It didn’t.  “You’re not my daughter.  I don’t know who you are, but my daughter wouldn’t have put me in this awful place.”  Mom quizzed me about her mother’s [...]

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My Mom, thank goodness, is not dying or, more accurately given her advanced age, she’s not dying imminently.  The problem is that she thinks she’s dying.  She has a benign, but very unpleasant, heart condition.  Every time it acts up, and it acts up with increasing frequency as she ages, she panics.  The problems begin [...]

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I just have to pat myself on the back here, because I came up with a genius idea.  We bought our Christmas tree (er, pardon, Hanukkah bush) today.  Prices this year have been surprisingly low, so I ended up purchasing a 7′ tall tree for all of $40.00.  It’s a gorgeous tree. Getting a 7′ [...]

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