Bookworm Room

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

The DNC Server, the Russian Hoax, & the Murder of Seth Rich

by Leave a Comment

We still do not know whether the DNC, FBI and DOJ acted unlawfully to create an October surprise that would elect Hillary in 2016, nor do we know beyond reasonable doubt that Seth Rich’s murder was unrelated.

Two recent articles raise important issues regarding the Russia hoax.  At Real Clear Investigations, Aaron Mate has written “CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims.”  Mate points out that the FBI has never inspected the DNC server and that Mueller’s “evidence” that the server was hacked by Russians is speculative, not definitive.   At Yahoo News, Michael Isikoff has written “The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. A Yahoo News investigation.”  In it, Isikoff claims that Seth Rich’s murder was unrelated to the theft of DNC emails and that claims to the contrary are Russian disinformation.  What — and whom — to believe?

To put this in perspective, per the Mueller Report, we now know definitively that neither Donald Trump nor anyone in his campaign conspired with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.  We do not know whether the Russian narrative Mueller was tasked to investigate was an illegal hoax, though there is ample reason to suspect various illegalities at its heart.

The central part of the Russian narrative is the claim that Russian agents hacked the DNC server.  Amazingly, inexplicably and criminally, we do not, to this day, know if that is true because the FBI has never examined the server. An entity employed by the DNC, Crowdstrike, asserted that the emails were hacked in a phishing scheme.  Both Comey and Mueller assumed that to be true without any verification.

Further, the answer to whether the DNC was phished could definitively answer an open question about the murder of DNC employee Seth Rich.  If the DNC server was phished, than Julian Assange’s charge that Rich, not Russia, was the source of the DNC emails and that he may have been killed because of it, can be definitively disproven.  But that is a charge that the entire progressive left claims is verboten to even ask.  The FBI decided not to involve itself in the investigation of Rich’s murder — inexplicable given the potential relationship to the DNC server hack — and Mueller chose not to interview Julian Assange.

[Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 11/12/18 — the post-election counting edition and open thread

by Leave a Comment

It’s not losing seats that bothers me, it’s the fact that post-election counts and recounts invariably favor Democrats, which is banana republic stuff.

Mob Illustrated edition post-election countingPost-election recounts and miscounts and discounts and God alone knows what else. I’m not actually going to blog too much about post-election recounts, despite using them as part of my post title today. The topic is just too depressing. You can kid yourself as much as you want about living in a constitutionally guided democratic republic, but if 27 of the last post-election counts and recounts miraculously favored the Democrats, if Democrats are openly registering illegal aliens, if Democrats coincidentally win in regions with more voters than residents, if the dead are walking and voting, and if many “voters” were alive during the Spanish-American War, you don’t have a constitutionally guided democratic republic; you simply have a banana republic with nice cars and XBoxes.

Look at Arizona: Either there’s voter fraud going on there or Arizona citizens willingly elected a woman who loathes them. Blech! Having said that, Ron Coleman points out that it might not have been a Democrat win so much as a shameless and unnecessary Republican loss:

Can American Jews be more stupid? When I grew up, my parents were so proud of Jewish brains. Einstein? Jewish. Hedy Lamar? Not only a Jewish brain, but gorgeous. A disproportionate number of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences? Jewish. Kissinger? Even if you didn’t like him, he was one smart Jew. Israel? A whole nation that’s smart and Jewish.

I attended an academic high school and, while Asian students were quickly becoming dominant in the school, we still had enough smart Jews for a joke: “If Chinese New Year and Yom Kippur fell on the same day, they’d have to close the school.”

This year, though, as in years past, Jews voted disproportionately for Democrats — 75% is what I heard. If you ask these Jews about their unswerving loyalty to the Democrat party, they’d give two reasons. First, Republicans are evil and Democrats are the party of kindness, empathy, and the lack of all nasty -isms (racism, sexism, etc.). That last, of course, would lead to the second, core Jewish vote issue: Jews insist that Republicans are the party of antisemitism and Democrats are not.

To believe that, Jews have to be stupid. Really, really stupid.

The Republicans are the pro-Israel party. The Republican president’s most beloved child is Jewish, as are her children, and she’s married to one of his chief campaign advisors. One of his closet friends is Jewish and is now ambassador to Israel. Israelis who aren’t marinated in Leftism view him as one of the most pro-Israel politicians ever. Heck, Trump finally acted on past presidents’ promises and moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 10/5/2018 — the “Leftists don’t speak for this woman” edition

by Leave a Comment

The Kavanaugh hearings have served a useful purpose in that they revealed the Leftists’ vicious and unbridled lust for power to all Normal Americans.

Bookworm Beat Benghazi LeftistsI’m delighted that it looks as if the Republicans, with help from Manchin and no help from Murkowski, will be able to drag Kavanaugh across the finish line. However, while Kavanaugh’s place on the Supreme Court will enhance that Court’s reverence for the Constitution as written, not just as Leftists desire it, the fissures in America have deepened, which the articles and videos below highlight.

The only bright spot is that, while the fissures are deeper, those on the Leftist side may find themselves more marginalized as those people whom Kurt Schlichter calls “Normals” are increasingly disgusted by the self-styled elites excess and hostility to both Normals and constitutional norms. And with that, some things for you to enjoy:

A reminder why Normals recoiled from the unfounded charges against Kavanaugh. This video is from a Catholic Women’s organization, but I think it readily applies to all women who don’t hate men:

I know that, since the day my son was born, I realized that boys, in their own way, are just as vulnerable as girls. I also realized that today’s social norms are incredibly hostile to men, tearing them down instead of cultivating their manly virtues.

A PragerU video reminds us that feminism is also bad for women. Not only is today’s Third Wave man-hating feminism bad for boys, it’s bad for girls too:

I don’t think we can make enough of the point Klavan advances that Third Wave feminism, instead of cultivating women’s virtues as things that contribute profoundly to the good of society, insists that women must be weaker versions of men. This has resulted in women who drink more, sleep around more, and insist on getting in the way on the battlefield, all while downplaying the one thing that they’re uniquely suited to do: nurturing. It’s ironic really that I say this, because I hate nurturing. But I’m good at it. It’s hardwired, whether I like it or not.

I was actually primed for Klavan’s message because years ago I read an excellent book called Female chauvinist pigs: Women and the rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy, a very depressing book that first exposed me to a world in which young women try desperately, and in a soul-killing way, to compete with men when it comes to sexual excess and debauchery. Men used to think this was a good idea. Sex! Sex! More sex! However, when you look at the horribly damaged women this creates (see the Steve Crowder video, below, and what I have to say about it), men have to be having second thoughts. [Read more…]

[VIDEO] Scott Adams: fake news relies on our imperfect knowledge

by Leave a Comment

Scott Adams demonstrates in real time how the media distributes fake news by relying on our understandable inability to have perfect knowledge.

*****

What Business Thinks



Helpful Links to Understand the Trump-Russia Collusion Narrative

by 5 Comments

Recent commentary from Adam Schiff, Andrew McCarthy,  Lee Smith and others illuminates important issues swirling around the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

Trump-Russia CollusionRep. Adam Schiff, one of the four Congressional Democrats with the clearance to actually put eyes on all of the top secret documents made available to date by the FBI and others as part of the House Intelligence Committee investigation, made a jaw dropping admission in so many words while answering media questions.  He admits he has seen no evidence to date to establish any sort of criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia.  In other words, more than a year into this politically-driven investigation, there is no Trump-Russia Collusion.

So, if there is no evidence to support any of the allegations, when are we going to start investigating to determine whether this was a criminal enterprise involving Christopher Steele, CIA Director John Brennan, Fusion GPS, the DNC and others to throw the election to Clinton, destroy Trump’s presidency, and protect corrupt government officials?

Lee Smith, writing at The Federalist, looks in detail at how senior figures in the media, namely  New Yorker editor David Remnick, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, former New Republic editor Franklin Foer, and Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, coordinated with Fusion GPS and the DNC to create an echo chamber, driving the Trump Russia collusion narrative.  It is a sordid story that needs to come out as well.

On a related note is a Ted Talk given by Sheryl Attkinson, where she not only puts in perspective “fake news,” but identifies the source of the fake news controversy, much of which involves the Trump-Russia narrative, with a starring role from a Google owner. The progressive left has used the mantra of “fake news” to justify their creep into censoring conservative voices.  I’ve long believed that social media sites and the major search engines are so powerful that they need either to be subject to anti-trust litigation and / or they need to be required to adhere to the First Amendment as if they were a public institution. [Read more…]

[VIDEO] The mainstream media’s Leftist bias means it’s all fake news

by 17 Comments

Even if the MSM isn’t lying about the facts, it’s still purveying fake news because its Leftist values permeate everything from story placement to language.

Fake News Media BiasPragerU is back with another of its excellent videos, this time about fake news. In it, Andrew Klavan offers his three-point rule of thumb for identifying the fake news that constantly spills from the mainstream media.

He makes an important point about fake news, which is that it’s not always about fake facts, which only occur some of the time. Instead, the real issue is that all of the time, every single time, the overwhelmingly Progressive atmosphere in which the mainstream media exists leaves reporters unable to avoid serious confirmation bias. This confirmation bias leads them to impose values on the facts, and these values are invariably hostile to conservatives and supportive of Progressives, no matter how badly those Progressives behave.

I agree with everything Klavan says. However, after you’ve watched the video, I’ll add one more thing I think he missed:

What Klavan missed is that there is a type of fake news that the media consistently uses that goes beyond what he identified. Klavan identified two primary tactics: (1) assigning relative values to stories (e.g., front or back page status) and (2) using emotionally colored adjectives (e.g., calling Tea Partiers racists or Occupy people heroes). [Read more…]

Media damns itself with reports about Trump leaking classified information

by 3 Comments

Digging into the known facts about Trump’s alleged leak of classified information, shows media bias and hints that the Deep State is spying on Trump.

Trump classified information leakI always wait 24 hours before commenting on the Left’s latest bout of hysteria because, since Trump became president, those hysterical outbursts are invariably wrong. In the case of Trump’s alleged spillage of classified information to the Russians, everything reported has been wrong or is highly suspect in that it shows a concerted inside effort to destroy the presidency. Here’s my take on what happened:

President Trump, General McMaster, and Secretary of State Tillerson met in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The Oval Office is supposed to be a secured room, but that’s becoming doubtful.

During the meeting, which covered the two country’s shared concerns about ISIS and other Islamic radicals, Trump told the Russians that there was information on the ground that was favorable to us. Both McMaster and Tillerson, who were present at the meeting, strenuously contend that Trump did not relay any highly classified information.

However, even if Trump had chosen to report classified information, that would have been within his purview as the Chief Executive Officer in charge of America’s intelligence apparatus. That is, the President, not the intelligence agencies (and not a certain former Secretary of State), gets to decide what’s classified information and what’s not.

Within a short time of the meeting’s conclusion, and right in time for the Washington Post’s 5:00 afternoon deadline, people who were not present at the meeting got in touch with the WaPo. These unnamed people are allegedly former intelligence officers, which means that they worked for Obama and probably do not hold current security clearance, and current intelligence officers, who almost certainly were hired during the Obama era and whose status regarding classified material is unknown. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 12/21/16 — the “election that never ends” edition

by 2 Comments

Donald Trump Election 2017Yes, the Electoral College has spoken on the election, but the Progressives’ weeping, wailing, beating of breasts, and rending of garments continues unabated. That’s why you’ll find these articles pertinent, interesting, amusing and, sometimes, frightening.

Don’t attack people from whom you want something. Hillary wanted votes from Americans but she couldn’t help herself. Speaking to a sympathetic audience, she had to attack vast swaths of America’s citizens as a “basket of deplorables,” guilty of a variety of moral sins. She may have graduated from Yale Law but she apparently never learned there the first rule of making your case to a jury: “Don’t attack people from whom you want something.”

Hillary’s most ardent followers haven’t learned that lesson either. They’re so busy pointing at Comey (never mind that he got on the case because Hillary broke the law), Russians (never mind that the DNC and Podesta practically gave their information away), and anyone or anything else that attracts their angry, short attention span, that they’re missing the main lesson: You don’t win by hating voters.

Over at the San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez looked at the numbers after the election and decided that an entire section of the City is irredeemable — and darn if he isn’t calling them out on it:

[Read more…]

How to respond to Facebook’s plan to label “fake news”

by 6 Comments

Beat back Facebook on its "fake news" planFacebook just announced that it will start cracking down on what it calls “fake news.” We know what that means: It will block anything that does not toe the Democrat party line. To this end, it’s teaming with such hard-Left luminaries as Snopes, the Associated Press, and ABC to identify what constitutes “fake news”:

To combat fake news, Facebook has teamed up with a shortlist of media organizations, including Snopes and ABC News, that are part of an international fact-checking network led by Poynter, a nonprofit school for journalism in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Starting as a test with a small percentage of its users in the US, Facebook will make it easier to report news stories that are fake or misleading. Once third-party fact-checkers have confirmed that the story is fake, it will be labeled as such and demoted in the News Feed.

Technically speaking, Facebook is a private corporation and can do whatever the heck it wants. In reality, though, Facebook is a major news purveyor, much in the way the big broadcasters are (or used to be). It might be useful to have the FCC investigate whether it can block Facebook’s plan to censor political content it does not support.

Government action is always slow, though. What’s also slow is the lead-time needed for conservatives to build up another social media outlet through which they can disseminate information and news of interest to conservatives. In the meantime, I suggest that everyone start following the reverse “Oprah Rule.”

[Read more…]