Bookworm Room

I’ve been corresponding with a group of conservatives who are very strongly divided between Romney and Gingrich.  I’m pleased to say that, while the debate is substantively heated, it also never veers away from common decency and civility.  My latest contribution to the email string, right after mention of a brokered convention, was as follows: [...]

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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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For conservatives and libertarians, the movie icons might be High Noon or True Grit.  For Liberals, the defining anthem is John Lennon’s “Imagine“. Why is there such a fundamental gulf between ourselves and Liberals, to the point where we find ourselves simply talking past each other? Can this gulf ever be bridged? I came across [...]

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I attended a family gathering not long ago, liberally populated with Liberal in-laws,  in which the mood was decidedly sour. Discussions revolved around the poor job market, employment uncertainty and health insurance. In conversations, a lot of resentment was directed at corporations, CEOs and their “disgusting and greedy” profits, salaries, benefits and bonuses. I understand [...]

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Democrats are the friends of big business, Conservatives are the friends of small business. Democrat government inevitably ratchets its way to corruptocracy. If you don’t agree with this, can we at least agree that Democrats favor highly regulated economies and societies and conservatives don’t? Let me explain with two examples. 1) The Wall Street Journal [...]

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We are a family of tea drinkers.  As dedicated tea drinkers, we like good tea, which usually means loose leaf tea.  Loose leaf tea, in turn, means special tea makers.  Our favorite is the Adagio Ingenuitea Teapot, which makes one perfect cup of tea at a time.  The only downside of the Ingenuitea maker is [...]

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Vanderleun, who blogs at the wonderful American Digest, put me on to a liberal Massachusetts blog that tells its readers to suck it up and vote for Coakley: Let’s get this out of the way.  You might not want to vote for Martha Coakley.  You might think she deserves what’s she’s getting after an absentee, [...]

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It wasn’t a huge turn-out, but it was an imaginative, committed, informed turn-out — and that, in the long run, will matter a great deal.  Check out The City Square for photographs of yesterday’s “Sick-In” in San Francisco protesting PelosiCare.

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In the wake of the 2008 election, Republicans and conservatives were paralyzed.  They’d been trounced, not so much by sweeper percentages (that is, the elections were all just over the slightly 50% mark), but by huge numbers of elections in which Democrats edged out Republicans by those few percentage marks.  If there are 100 races, [...]

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There is a lot of talk about whether, looking ahead to the 2010 elections, we’re looking at 1980, or 1994, or 1932 or some other American political year that I can’t even think of right now.  I actually think we’re looking at a different year altogether:  1989.  As you may recall, 1989 was a big [...]

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Zhombre forwarded this email to me.  I think it’s right on the money: If a conservative doesn’t like guns, he doesn`t buy one. If a liberal doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn`t eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products [...]

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The nature of conservatism is to be . . . well, conservative.  We don’t throw paint on people.  We don’t burn figures in effigy.  We don’t bite off fingers.  We put our heads down and do our jobs.  So when two million conservatives (and independents) take the time, the energy and the money to converge [...]

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Five People in a Kitchen By Danny Lemieux Part I: We need focus! We were just five concerned Americans meeting in a middle class Chicagoland suburb on a cold spring day. Our point for this meeting was not to gripe. It was to see if we could identify constructive solutions to the Democrat Left’s hold [...]

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One of my ongoing themes here is the fact that I keep my conservatism very, very low key.  Most situations in my life don’t involve politics, but when politics come up, I’m quite careful.  I have no wish to be savaged.  Jim Miller, who lives in and writes about an equally liberal environment — the [...]

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The gal who started the Marin conservative gatherings that I’ve had the pleasure of attending sent out a broadcast email reminding all conservatives, especially those trapped in blue communities, that it’s not enough to sit at home, read the blogs and complain.  We have to work towards a change in 2010.  If we wait to [...]

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The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article today touting the demise of the GOP in California: With their registrations sinking and their political clout withering, California Republicans have come out of the November election in danger of slipping into political irrelevance across much of the state. [snip] Since 2004, Republican registration has dropped by more [...]

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Ymarsakar brought to my attention a post I wrote over three years ago.  I’m reprinting a slightly edited version here, not just because I think it describes well the Arab psyche that drives so much of current international politics (and fears) today, but also because I think it does a good job of describing the [...]

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Conservatives are regrouping and trying to come up with approaches to remarket themselves to Americans.  Quin Hillyer thinks it’s too late.  He may well be right, but I’m not taking a defeatist attitude.  The problem is that, once we give up, he’ll definitely be right. As it is, we have an election in two years, [...]

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I’m getting emails from committed conservatives who are unhappy right now, feeling that the air has gone out of the election balloon.  I’m looking at things a different way. The ACORN registration fraud has inflated the numbers of registered Democrats.  Given that some people registered as Dems 72 times, there is no way that ACORN [...]

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During this political campaign, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Sashi McEntee, who is running as the San Francisco/North Bay Republican candidate for the California State Senate.  You only need a few minutes in Sashi’s company to realize that she is intelligent, energetic, blessedly pragmatic, and extremely nice.  Her politics are practical and, if voters [...]

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Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is now accusing Republicans of speaking “code” to make racist remarks about Obama: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accused Republicans on Tuesday of injecting race into the presidential campaign, arguing that they are using “code language” to convince Midwesterners that Democrat Barack Obama is different from them.”Have any of you noticed that [...]

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I periodically check out Yahoo’s most popular news to see what AP articles are getting the most play according to the Yahoo picks (which, except for including Ann Coulter, skew liberal).  It’s fascinating to see the AP headlines, each of which is snarky, dismissive or critical of Palin in some way, even the “positive” ones: [...]

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Thanks to ex cathedra, I’ve learned that the guy in that fun video in my post yesterday has prepared a tighter video statement of his conservative beliefs: In commenting on the video, USMaleSF notes that he agrees with the conservative principles, but not the Republican party affiliation.  I understand that attitude.  Conservatism is a belief [...]

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It was Aristotle who first stated that man is a social animal.  He was right.  Humans define themselves by their allegiance to their family, their community and their country.  The ancient desert rule condemning a thief to lose his hand (an idea that Mohammed co-opted), was not intended simply to cause physical pain and suffering.  [...]

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Andrew Breitbart has written an upfront, in your face demand that Hollywood open the door to the last remaining closet in that company town: conservatism.  In it, he points out that Hollywood finds everything forgiveable except for a failure to conform to the prevailing Progressive political orthodoxy: But in this land of superficiality and augmented [...]

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