Bookworm Room

For reasons best known to herself, Hillary will probably say yes to State, even thought she’ll be the third, not the first, woman to fill that position, and even though no Secretary of State has ever used that post as a springboard to the White House.  Nutroots will be furious because of her support for [...]

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We weren’t looking for it, but Mr. Bookworm accidentally stumbled across Hillary’s speech on TV.  I listened to a little and then, put off by her frenetic delivery, read the rest.  I have just a few of comments, since I don’t think it merits more than a few. Hillary is not an inspired speaker, although [...]

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In Marin,  9 out of 10 bumperstickers one sees are liberal in context.  Make that 9.9 out of 10. There’s the “Endless This War” sticker; and the still popular “Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot” sticker; and the saccharine, unrealistic and facile “Coexist,” with the symbols of various religions used in lieu [...]

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Christopher Hitchens has written a post-mortem on the alleged sexism characterizing Hillary Clinton’s abortive race to the top. Aside from scathingly examining both Hillary’s and the media’s myriad failings, he has this wonderful point to make about the double-edged sword her gender became in the race: Going as far as it dared on the point, [...]

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Remember a year and a half ago when the MSM, directly and indirectly, assured us that Hillary’s candidacy was inevitable?

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I’ve been hearing a lot about trophy wives lately, since I recently learned that, in one of the very affluent communities near me, the nouveau riche, desperate as always to assert their status on the social hierarchy, have begun wife swapping.  Apparently it just wasn’t good enough any more to boast about your car and [...]

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Obama has a pattern when a person or institution proves problematic: First, loyally, he tries to defend the troublemaker. Second, when his poll numbers show that the defense is futile, he ruthlessly jettisons the troublemaker, whether it’s Samantha Power, Jeremiah Wright or Trinity Church. But what about this troublemaker (assuming, for the moment, that the [...]

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There’s talk of Obama giving Hillary the green light to socialize American medicine if she’ll walk away from the primaries.  Melanie Phillips gives us a good example of why the renewed specter of socialized medicine should worry us: To the Labour Party, the National Health Service is the talismanic proof of its own moral superiority. [...]

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There is a belief that the “mutually assured destruction” deterrence that worked during the Cold War will work in Iran. Hillary certainly believes it, which is why she promised that, if Iran hits Israel with a nuclear bomb during her presidency, she will hit Iran with a nuclear bomb. She believes that threat is sufficient [...]

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In response to an earlier post I did about Obama’s habit of lying about easily verifiable events, beliefs and associations in his past, echeccone made the statement, one we’ve often heard, that “every politician lies.” There’s a kind of sweeping truth to that statement, but its very broadness hides the fact that not all lies [...]

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I don’t drink.  I don’t like the stuff, and have never forced myself to learn to enjoy it.  However, I often find myself in a situation that requires me to buy wine, whether for a potluck or because it’s the perfect hostess gift.  Over the years, I’ve developed a surprisingly effective technique, since I’m often [...]

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The most un-rev Jeremiah Wright elaborated today on his various statements during an appearance at the National Press Club. What he had to say was most enlightening since, when he wasn’t prevaricating or deflecting a point with self-deprecating humor, he sounded pretty ugly. Here are a few things that caught my attention: MODERATOR: What is [...]

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Marin is about as liberal a community as one can possibly find.  That means that the analyst for the local political newspaper is a liberal too.  Right now, he’s a very depressed liberal, since he’s absolutely certain that the Democrats are imploding, leading to the inevitability of a McCain victory: Arizona Sen. McCain will be [...]

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You all know Aesop’s class tale of the race between the tortoise and the hare: At the starting gate, the hare picks up so much speed that it soon vanishes completely, while the tortoise plods on behind. Within sight of the finish line, however, when the hare looks backwards and realizes that the tortoise isn’t [...]

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On the liberal side of the American political world, one of the lingering horrors of the McCarthy era is “guilt by association.” Certainly that was the lesson I, a young liberal, took away from teachings about that era. As I learned it, it wasn’t that the HUAC hearings were aimed at discovering genuine Communist infiltration [...]

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Our local public radio station was replaying the most recent Hillbama debate, and so I listened to a piece of it that had slipped under my radar the first time. It’s actually quite funny, despite the scary implications of what Hillary is saying she’ll do regarding Iraq if she’s elected President. Here’s what she said, [...]

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In the old days — pre-internet — politicians were able to get away with a lot of lies.  This wasn’t because they lied better than they do now.  It was because it was more difficult to suss out the truth and, even if one was successful in doing so, it was very challenging, if the [...]

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The MSM is going after McCain, but the fact is that, the more they dribble out details about the man, the more I admire what I learn.  Regardless of his sometimes flawed political instincts (that campaign financing thing, again), he is a very good human being, and an honorable one too.  We know the same [...]

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At American Thinker, James Edmund Pennington definitively explodes the myth that Obama is a “post-racial” candidate. In other words, Geraldine Ferraro had it absolutely right when she said, without any of Pennington’s careful analysis, that Obama ascended as quickly as he did solely because of his race. And as Pennington points out, that ascension must [...]

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Here’s one of John McCain’s most recent ads, one that claims its sole purpose is to honor his old high school teacher. Over at Hot Air, they damn it with very faint praise indeed: Not a terrible ad but also not the best use of money by a guy who’s staring down the barrel of [...]

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No comment: Hillary Clinton’s boasts that she gained major foreign policy experience as First Lady have been undermined after 11,046 pages of her White House schedules provided scant evidence to back up her claims. The documents were made public by the US national archives after pressure from her rival Barack Obama and freedom-of-information groups. Many [...]

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What do you do when the person who matches you in the external identity calculus — say, she’s a woman and you’re a woman — proves not to be the women’s champion you hoped? Even worse, what do you do when the person who is the champion you hoped, doesn’t match you in external identity [...]

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I was still an oldlib, not a neocon, when the Clintons finished their White House tenure. I was also uninterested in politics so, like the vast majority of Americans, considered myself informed because I glanced at the headlines. I therefore managed to ignore complete the details and import of Bill Clinton’s sua sponte decision to [...]

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When Hillary cried the first time, it apparently humanized her for some.  When she cried the second time, she began to look a little weak and self-centered.  And now that she’s cried the third time (this time, wisely, for someone other than herself) it seems to me she’s feeding into the worst old-fashioned stereotypes of [...]

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I do wonder if my ability to accept McCain is fairly easy because I’m a pragmatist, a neocon or a simplistic thinker. The first is the argument I make: McCain’s not perfect, but he’s better than the Democratic candidates. The second argument is that, because I’m a neophyte conservative, I’m more easily able to back [...]

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