Bookworm Room

Tweet There is a quality to real leaders called a “command presence”. You know the type: they walk into a room and by their force of presence, command of the facts, unshaken confidence and leadership qualities, they capture the narrative and control the agenda. That command presence is a necessary mark of a good leader. [...]

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Tweet Our own Bizcor had the opportunity to attend a Tea Party Express rally on Labor Day.  Here are his impressions: On Labor Day I attended a Tea Party Rally for the very first time and I really only went because Sarah Palin was going to speak. I am an unabashed admirer. As far as [...]

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Tweet Is it just me, or does the bus tour make Obama look like a Palin wannabe?  Also, do you think the visuals are going to be good when (if my predictions are accurate), he’s met by no crowds or small, angry crowds, as opposed to Sarah’s huge, enthusiastic crowds? Whoever came up with this [...]

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Tweet This is it, the ultimate video.  Every American should watch it.  It pretty much sums up everything.  Occasional word soup from someone in the hot seat all the time is okay, but the appalling ignorance is pretty unforgivable. Don’t believe me?  Watch it yourself: UPDATE:  Welcome, I Own The World readers.  The great thing [...]

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Tweet The Anchoress quite correctly identifies Palin’s bus trip as game-playing.  Palin, having been harassed unmercifully by the MSM since she burst upon the national political scene, is finally having her nyah-nyah-nyah moment.  She’s turned the tables and is now harassing the MSM, which is very satisfying.  The Anchoress suspects that Palin’s nose thumbing will [...]

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Tweet Mr. Bookworm loathes Sarah Palin:  “She’s not one of us.”  I don’t know what he means.  She’s a married mom with children.  She went to college.  She and her husband work.  They pay taxes.  She doesn’t drink (or not to excess), smoke, or do drugs (so far as we know).  She’s well-groomed.  She has [...]

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Tweet I don’t have problems with calling things by their true names.  So, I don’t think Palin erred in using the correct phrase — blood libel — to describe the heinous rhetorical attacks leveled against her. Barry Rubin does an excellent job explaining precisely why her word choice was so accurate. Jews have suffered inordinately [...]

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Tweet A couple of days ago, I posted a YouTube video made up entirely of tweets from Palin haters.  It was a classic “unclear on the concept” thing, as the tweeters, in response to their perception that Palin’s “hate speech” caused the Tucson shooting, tried to top each other with vivid and obscene fantasies about [...]

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Tweet Ivory Tower used to be a compliment.  Now, just as ivory has degraded in social standing (the whole death of elephants thing), so too has the Ivory Tower’s star fallen (the whole death of logic, common sense, morality and actual education thing).  This morning, I posted about UC Berkeley’s buffoonish Chancellor (paid by taxpayers, [...]

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Tweet Is there a cause and effect between hate speech and violence?  These tweeters are certain there is, and they believe that Palin should be tortured, given loathsome diseases and killed for having the temerity to engage in (unidentified) hate speech: Hat tip:  The Jawa Report

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Tweet If you haven’t already seen it, here’s a link to the video of Sarah Palin’s response to the shootings — the actual bullets aimed at real bodies in Tucson, and the rhetorical bullets aimed at political bodies in Tucson’s wake. The beginning, with it’s platitudes about “the process of healing” (and when did mourning [...]

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Tweet “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” – President Barack Hussein Obama I posted this as a comment to Book’s previous post, but have now posted it independently as a challenge to all of us Bookworm salon aficionados. Here’s the premise: virtually all the political violence that has happened in [...]

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Tweet Israel has no greater friend than Sarah Palin.  She has shown repeatedly that she has a deep and abiding respect for the Jewish state, and that she understands the existential stresses under which it survives.  Benyamin Korn gets this and, despite incredible derision from Jewish Democrats, has begun working to build a Jewish coalition [...]

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Tweet I have a bunch of open tabs on my monitor, so I’m just going to jumble all of the stuff here, in one post: On Obama, the UN, and the World: I noted yesterday that Obama seems to have a huge problem with the more democratic nations in the world, and a corresponding affinity [...]

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Tweet Last week, I recommended that you read Carl Cannon’s Sarah “Barracuda” Palin and the Piranhas of the Press.  Cannon, who holds no brief for Palin, nevertheless thinks that the press’s behavior once she was on the national scene demonstrates that the American media is in freefall. Cannon begins by pointing out that, after offering [...]

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Tweet You all know by now that Palin is abruptly quitting her job as Alaska’s governor.  Speculation is rife as to her motives.  Many see her as planning for her next political office.  I don’t believe that.  Nobody’s going to want a quitter in the White House.  There’s got to be something more going on [...]

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Tweet I was sitting near two women and overheard part of their conversation.  After a lengthy back and forth praising Oprah, this gem came out:  “Sarah Palin is stupid but she communicates really well to Americans because most Americans are stupid.”

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Tweet At HotAir, you can read this long, detailed and thoughtful post examining Obama’s positions on myriad issues.  As you read the post, think about what I was trying to say yesterday:  figure out what beliefs you hold, and then match them to the candidate.  We’ve been so personality driven this election, that it’s been [...]

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Tweet The other day, I asked you to respond to the poll because we individualists (my new, Century-appropriate name for conservatives) didn’t want it to be one-sided (as in limited only to liberal, or statist, PBS viewers).  It turns out that the PBS viewers are also worried about the outcome.  That’s why I got this [...]

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Tweet From James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today: The McCain campaign has released Todd and Sarah Palin’s 2006 and 2007 tax returns, the Associated Press notes in a brief dispatch, which ends as follows: The McCain-Palin campaign had said the tax returns would be released Monday, but it suddenly put them out Friday afternoon–a [...]

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Tweet I did something kind of special today:  I went to a big fundraiser and heard Sarah Palin speak before a relatively small audience (1,200 of her closest friends in Northern California).  There are definitely perks to being a political volunteer. I had a wonderful time, too.  I got to check people in, and everybody [...]

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Tweet I’ve watched almost all of the debate, but it’s bedtime now, and I’ll have to save the rest for later.  Three comments: 1.  The first, the most obvious, and the most pressing question:  How many botoxes did they kill to create that abnormally smooth, completely motionless forehead Biden was sporting?  That was creepy. 2.  [...]

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Tweet I haven’t watched the debate yet.  I’ve been doing volunteer work (yes, we selfish conservatives sometimes give generously of our time), getting food, preparing dinner, and wrapping up a brief that needs to be filed tomorrow.  What I thought I’d do, therefore, is reprint here a prediction I made about the debate in an [...]

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Tweet Since the moment Palin burst onto the scene, the media has engaged in the most sustained attack I’ve ever seen on a single political candidate.  Outright lies, partial lies, rumors, half-truths, full truths — it doesn’t matter.  There’s just a giant information dump onto the public radar, with the hope that most people will [...]

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Tweet In 1992, I watched the three way Vice-Presidential debate, pitting Al Gore, Dan Quayle and last-minute Perot pick Admiral James B. Stockdale.  I saw 90 minutes during which Admiral Stockdale opened with two philosophical questions (“Who am I?  Why am I here?”) that made him look befuddled, not thoughtful, and then I watched him [...]

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