Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Bookworm Beat 2/11/18 — the Olympics illustrated edition and open thread

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It’s been a while since my last illustrated edition, but with the Olympics in play for a few days, the memes are starting to emerge.

I no longer watch the Olympics. It was fun back in the days of Cold War tension and carefully curated, and quite entertaining, three-hour stories every evening (before we knew we were the victims of curated stories). Remember when the media used to root against the Soviets (and, before that, against the Nazis)? Nowadays, with a media engaged in a slobbering love affair with a high official from one of the worst countries in world history; with endless, banal, stupid talking heads; and with a parade of generic, high-performing athletes on 24 hours a day . . . well, it’s just not my thing.

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The Bookworm Beat 11/4/17 — Day of Rage edition

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As I’m still groggy from fighting migraines, Wolf Howling wrote this Bookworm Beat, a glorious potpourri showing that the good guys are mostly winning.

Wolf Howling Bookworm BeatToday was supposed to be a big day, with Antifa raging in the streets and less-violently inclined Leftists screaming at the heavens. When I search for stories about either of these Day of Rage protests, though, I find nothing. I guess it’s hard to get up on a cold Fall morning when you live in your parents’ basement or partied hard the night before in your college dorm.

I’m a little inert today too for an entirely different reason: I’ve been adjusting my daily anti-migraine medication. The adjustment seems to be working, because I haven’t had a migraine since I made the change, but the downside is that the increased dosage makes me sleepy and dims my mental energy. Both those problems will pass with time, but for now, even though I’m paying attention to the news, I can’t seem to rouse myself to write about it.

Fortunately for the Bookworm’s reputation as a purveyor of interesting content, my friend Wolf Howling send me an email chock full of interesting information. For your enjoyment and edification, therefore, I present to you the Wolf Howling edition of today’s Bookworm Beat:

Teen Vogue is caput. Conde Nast announced today that Teen Vogue is getting the axe.

The New York-based publisher, which has instilled a hiring freeze, will slash about 80 jobs, equal to a decrease of about 2.5 percent of its 3,000-person workforce. Budgets across departments are also expected to get a haircut, with the worst-performing divisions and magazines getting cuts of up to 20 percent. As part of that mandate, Condé is reducing the frequencies of most of its titles and will shutter Teen Vogue in print.

(Bookworm here: Wolf Howling is not the only one who remembered my utter disdain for Teen Vogue — which I expressed here, here, here, and here. I got emails from several other people and am grateful to all of them for keeping that wonderful news right in front of me.)

A man who had been arrested asked for a “lawyer [,] dog” Depending upon how you read it, the man either called the police officer “dog” (which is definitely better than calling him “pig”) or asked for an actual “lawyer dog.”  The Louisiana court held it was the latter and, dogs with law degrees being in short supply, concluded that the police  had no obligation to the man to hunt up that particular type of lawyer before questioning  him.  [Read more…]

Trump Kills The HHS Mandate: CNN Preaches To Christians; The NYT Preaches To Progs

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Whether it’s CNN telling Christians or the NYT telling progs, the message is the same: Christians have to get with the program; socialism trumps principles.

Christians Christianity CNNCNN is at the vanguard of a progressive jihad to drive Christian voters away from Trump.  CNN’s two openly gay (one married) hosts, Don Lemon and Anderson Cooper, are taking part in lecturing Christians that they have no business voting for or supporting Trump.  On Lemon’s panel, one panelist accused all Christians who support Trump as having “made a deal with the devil.”  On Cooper, Charlie Sykes called it “stunning” and “remarkable” that Christians would support Trump, apparently preferring that they would have simply wasted their vote.

As to Cooper and Lemon, I wonder if either of these two have ever opened a Bible, let alone spent more than a two minute block of time with a Christian?  If so, they might learn that average Christians see their religion and their freedom of conscience as under an existential assault not seen since the time of the birth of socialism in the French Revolution.  And none of that is coming from Trump or the right.

Most recently was Anthony Kennedy’s torrid, unconscionable. and blatantly unconstitutional act judicially amending  our Constitution to proclaim a constitutional right to gay marriage.  Before that was the Obama DOJ decision to unconscionably and unconstitutionally rewrite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, establishing new laws that create “gay rights”  and that allow for the prosecution of Christians in the public square who do not acquiesce. At the same time was the extra-constitutional act by HHS to establish as law that all Christians purchasing health insurance must not merely purchase, but also effectively underwrite birth control and abortifacients.  And then of course there is the prog effort, ongoing for well over a century, to act in loco parentis, beginning in kindergarten, to promote ethics and morality free normalization of sex, abortion and abnormal sex in America.

As to Sykes, what he is arguing for is Christians to act so dogmatically that they could not pull the lever for anyone other than one of the twelve disciples, thus handing political power to the Christian’s persecutors.  He wants to transfer his personal animus towards Trump onto Christians generally.  [Read more…]

America’s universities seed the Orwellian world that surrounds us

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America’s Leftist universities are the poisonous trees and America’s newsrooms are the toxic, hate-filled fruit they bear.

Universities Big Brother OrwellI routinely rant and rave about the fact that America’s colleges and university systems are Ground Zero for the thinking that is destroying America. Whether it’s Third-Wave man-hating feminism, anti-white racism, BDS antisemitism, open borders demands, or some other idea attacking America’s integrity and core values, these really evil ideas are incubated on campus so that graduates can later take them out into the world. You can think of the campus and its professors as poisonous plants, with the students functioning as bees. Once heavily coated with the plants’ toxic pollen, they graduate and disseminate that pollen in the wider world.

Today’s really perfect example of the sickness that lurks in academia is Elizabeth Harman, an Associate Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. I’m not going to tell you what’s in the video. You must watch it on your own to understand fully what’s going on in America’s educational institutions, from the Ivy League down. All you need to know to watch it is that actors James Franco and Eliot Michaelson ask Harman to explain her philosophical view of abortion:

Harman’s logic, which is based upon temporally based magical thinking, would fit well in a Kindergarten class, assuming a 5-year-old was bereft of all moral decency. [UPDATE: Talking with a friend, I finally distilled the essence of Harman’s argument: The moral worth of your life is entirely dependent on whether your mother wants to kill you.]

That she is an Associate Professor of Human values at a school that admits only 6.4% of its applicants and that costs almost $64,000 per year for tuition and room & board is the most scathing indictment imaginable of those Blue voters who believe themselves morally superior to Trump voters. To the extent that people like Harman aren’t on the fringe of the Democrat party but operate at its core is reason enough never again to let Democrats near the levers of power.

Now that you’ve watched Harman’s amazing performance, imagine more than a decade’s worth of students taking her class, and heading out into the world, many as journalists. With that in mind, you can readily understand why a college graduated at CNN (and we know it’s a college graduate because non-graduates are “dirty” Red staters who could never work in any self-respecting mainstream media newsroom) would write the following headline for a CNN’s Antifa article: [Read more…]

[VIDEO] Scott Adams demonstrates how the Russia collusion smear works

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Lacking evidence that Trump or his team were guilty of actual Russia collusion, they resort to smears. Scott Adams shows how this technique works.

Don Lemon Russia CollusionAlthough the election is over and Scott Adams is no longer making predictions, I still check his blog on a regular basis. He thinks entirely outside of the box, but not in a crazy, unrealistic way. Instead, his clever ideas open up new ways of thinking about things.

This video-podcast he did shows him taking on the Russia collusion meme that dominates progressive thought. His targets CNN’s Don Lemon, which is a lovely thing, because Lemon is at the head of the pack when it comes to the Russia collusion smear:

Also, here’s some food for thought from John Hinderaker about the whole Russia collusion meme: [Read more…]

Just a lot of little things — nice things — for a Sunday

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The demands on my time over the last few days, which have seen me taking care of family, helping out friends, and working on What Business Thinks, left me with no time for blogging. I’m still busy with all three things, so I thought I’d entertain you by compiling a some very amusing short videos.

We’ll start with a perfect satire: [Read more…]

What’s happening at the Watcher’s Council?

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WOW-Logo-1As always, the revamped Watcher’s Council, which is now WOW! Magazine, a collaborative magazine with posts from Watcher’s Council members and their friends, is worth checking out. If you were to go over there now, you’d find the following recent posts (and Lord alone knows how much time you could spend reviewing past posts from this informed and prolific crowd):

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[VIDEO] Please enjoy watching Daniel Hannan politely, but firmly, bitch slap the execrable Christine Amanpour

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Daniel Hannan Christine AmanpourChristine Amanpour is not a journalist. She’s a vicious, unprincipled, loud-mouthed, bullying partisan hack, who has no interest in investigating issues but, instead, simply wants to imprint her hard Left, anti-West narrative on everything she touches. That’s why it’s so delightful to see Daniel Hannan refuse to let her bulldoze him and then put her firmly in her place.

Amanpour, incidentally, is typical of the transnational self-styled “elite” who have sought to control the Western world for their own benefit for the past 20 or so decades. While they’ve enriched themselves, they’ve impoverished the middle class, and reduced the very poor to such an infantile, dependent level that they can no longer care for themselves. My dream is to see the middle and working classes throughout the Western world rise up and, through the democratic process (i.e., the ballot box), remove all power from the hands of Amanpour and her ilk. They are fatuous, yet horribly dangerous, people who need to be sidelined. In a just world, Amanpour would be cleaning the toilets at a gas station, not broadcasting her toxic (and often highly antisemitic, and therefore anti-Israel) effluvia to the world.

The Bookworm Beat 4-26-15 — the “writer’s block” edition and open thread

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Woman writingI know this is going to surprise those of you used to my usual output of posts, but I’m suffering from writer’s block. The last few weeks have been so chaotic, my opportunities to write so random and infrequent, and the news of the world so overwhelming that, now that I finally have time to sit down and write, I’m frozen. After sitting her for a while, I decided that the best thing to do would be to clear my spindle. I know some of the contents are outdated, but they may still be of interest, and getting through the backlog may help spark my dormant (I hope, rather than extinct) yen to write.

Obama fiddles with Iran while the Middle East burns and Israel is forced to go it alone

All eyes may be on Obama and his desperation to get a deal with Iran (despite the fact that, in a sane world, the smaller, weaker, poorer Iran would be desperate to get a deal with Obama), but the fact is that the entire Middle East is a flaming disaster thanks to Obama’s habit of alternately meddling in and abandoning Middle Eastern affairs.

Bret Stephens explains that, thanks to Obama’s policies, it is now impossible for Israel to walk back the way in which he’s abandoned and isolated it:

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Come on, Patrick Howley. Tell us what you REALLY think about Stephanie Cutter

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I haven’t seen CNN’s newly re-booted Crossfire, but Patrick Howley did.  Howley does not think highly of Stephanie Cutter, who lied her way through Obama’s campaign and still land on her feet as a well-paid talking (or squawking) head on the “Obama mania media”.  How much does Howley dislike Cutter?  This much:

A loathsome creature like Stephanie Cutter, the roots jutting out from her blonde dye job as black as the recesses of her soul, can push her way onto national television to sit next to a former Speaker of the House and two sitting U.S. senators. A charmless, dead-eyed, tacky sociopath with no sense of ethics, an empty shell spewing her flat-throated bile without the slightest trace of self-awareness, can beat all of us to the front of the Darwinian line.

A figure of hatred and dishonesty, a person devoid of any pleasantness or redeeming human value, a treadmill-stomping, Starbucks-chugging monument to modern self-absorption, someone incapable of appreciating good art, fine food, or the love or kindness of her fellow man, can shove and kick and lie her way ahead of the rest of us in this misbegotten society. This unmitigated monster can appear before us, talentless, grating, fraudulently tanned, thrusting in our faces the career trophies she earned simply because we didn’t care enough to stop her from getting them.

And that’s just the intro!  You really should read the whole thing.  It’s positively Shakespearean in its venom.  I can’t say I disagree with it.  I only wish Howley had gone on for a few more paragraphs to give us the full flavor.

The following video does not show the real Stephanie Cutter, but it could be:

Monday already? Well, there’s good stuff out there.

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William Kristol and Peter Wehner, even though using the polite language of statesmen, have delivered a scathing indictment against our absent commander in chief.  Considering that Obama is indeed the CIC, court-martial for dereliction of duty doesn’t seem unreasonable.  Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ll even get impeachment.

I know that, for many, the Constitution these days is just passé.  (I mean, if the leader of the House Dems can’t understand it, who can?)  David Rivkin and Andrew Grossman try to resuscitate that vital document in the context of the Left attack on the right to bear arms.

Roger Simon deftly ties together Dr. Benjamin Carson and the racism that still poisons the heart of the Democrat party.

Upon hearing the Pope Benedict is retiring, CNN has leaped into the fray with inchoate conspiracy theories and claims that the child abuse scandal is driving Benedict out.  I have absolutely no doubt, though, that the Pope spoke the truth when he said his health, mental and physical, is the reason he is retiring.  One of the things I’ve seen watching my Mom and her friends age is that, just as the first 18 or so years of a person’s life are a time of incredibly rapid change, so too are the years after 80 for most people (and Benedict is 85).  For my mother, her 80th birthday was like stepping off a cliff — within months, she went from vital elderly, to decrepit old. And it’s not just my Mom.  It’s the norm at her retirement home.  Just as the very young grow up at warp speed, the very old age at warp speed.  I think that Benedict is wise to arrange for an orderly transition and, even more important in these times, is making sure to have a say in the Papacy’s future direction.

Had it been an injured Israel, the Palestinians would have ripped him to shreds and bathed their hands in his blood.  Because it was an injured Palestinian, the Israeli Defense Force acted rapidly to save his life.

If Wolf Howling writes it, it’s good.  So when he turns his eye to the subject of the Obama administration’s war on children and family, with ammunition supplied by ObamaCare, you know it’s a post you’ll want to read.

Have you guys come across anything interesting?  This is an Open Thread.

CNN slanders Rush visually and verbally *UPDATED*

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You’ve already heard about the fact that, in order to block any chance of Rush having an ownership interest in an NFL team, liberal talking heads (including Al Sharpton) and the MSM attributed manifestly false quotations to Rush, in order to accuse him of being a grotesque racist.  However, before visiting PowerLine, I hadn’t seen the photograph CNN used of Rush.  It’s interesting that, not only did they use a false, slanderous quote, the CNN “newsies” also used an antiquated photo of Rush from a time before he slimmed and trimmed:

Rush Limbaugh CNN Hoax

He looks fabulous now (as you can see below), but they sold him to the public as someone who looks like a bloated plantation owner:

Rush Limbaugh

NFL Limbaugh Football

UPDATE: Contrary to CNN’s fondest dreams, Rush is not Jefferson Davis “Boss” Hogg:

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UPDATE II: I have it on very good authority that Bill O’Reilly used exactly the same mean-spirited picture of Rush. (I wouldn’t know since O’Reilly has never piqued my interest.) The Radio Patriot suggests that, in Bill’s case, it may be simple professional jealousy. If that’s the case, Bill should give it up. He’s not in Rush’s league, so there’s no competition.

Moral clarity . . . on CNN?!

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This moment of moral clarity wasn’t exactly what CNN interviewer, Fionnuala Sweeney, was seeking. She was trying to use the seminary slaughter as yet another talking point in the “Palestinians as pushed-to-the-limit victims of Israeli aggression” line of thinking. Unfortunately for her, and fortunately for CNN viewers, interviewee David Horovitz absolutely refused to put up with that kind of relativistic garbage. You can see the video here. The only depressing thing about this video is the underlying knowledge that Sweeney, who peddles this garbage, gets more air time overall than Horovitz, who had just that one minute to make a broad and important moral point.

Hat tip: American Thinker