Bookworm Room

Tweet The Leftists in the media were orgasmic yesterday as they again anointed Barack Obama “the next Reagan.”  Ace explains why this is a dream, not a reality: Obama has always considered himself the Anti-Reagan — he would not only undo the Reagan coalition and the Reagan era, but do what Reagan did but for [...]

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Tweet My fellow Watcher’s Council member, Greg, who blogs at Rhymes with Right, has put together the ultimate smack-down for those (especially those journalists) who argue that the Second Amendment extends only to muskets and other weapons in use when Congress enacted the Bill of Rights: Carrying this irrefutable logic over to the First Amendment [...]

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Tweet Gawker, an internet gossip site, has now published a 446-page document identifying every licensed gun owner in New York City.  Judging by the comments left at Gawker’s site (which I will not dignify with a link), people are not happy.  And they have reason to be unhappy: Referring to the earlier piece in the [...]

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Tweet Today’s big story the new tax bill that Obama jetted off to Hawaii before signing, but that will soon (and inevitably) become the law of the land.  I don’t see any surprises.  I knew that we’d get hit hard and so we have. I gather that sequestration has now been averted, so that Obama [...]

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Tweet One of the books that saw me traverse from Left to Right was Myrna Blyth’s Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness — and Liberalism — to the Women of America, which exposed the profound Leftist tilt of decidedly non-political magazines. Until reading that, I’d never thought about the politics being [...]

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Tweet I’ve spent today being very productive in a non-blogging way, but there are still a few things I’d like to share with you. If you’re feeling in a giving mood, the National Review needs help in its fight against the lawsuit Michael Mann (yes, climate change Michael Mann) filed against National Review and Mark [...]

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Tweet The headline in the San Francisco Chronicle was simple:  “FBI: 4 Calif. men charged in alleged terror plot.” California men, huh?  Did they have names like Big Kahuna and look like this? “Yo, dude, I’m like going to, you know, like, attack the man. It’ll be, like, totally tubular.” No? Well maybe these California [...]

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Tweet My sister, who is only vaguely interested in politics, told me the other day that the Dems are lucky, because they’ve got such a deep pool of candidates for 2016 — and then proceeded to name Hillary and Cuomo.  She had no idea who Rubio, Jindal, West, Love, etc., were, and she knows who [...]

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Tweet Maybe I’m in denial, but I’m feeling less depressed than I felt last night and this morning.  Part of my more sanguine attitude is based upon a Taranto principle, which is that Obama now owns the events of the next four years: Obama has spent the past four years explaining away his failings by [...]

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Tweet My brain hasn’t yet synthesized all the fascinating data out there, including the wrenching stories of Sandy’s devastation.  For the time being, I’ll just pass interesting links on to you.  Please feel free to do the same. *** The former Commander of the United States Pacific Fleet has written a white-hot article excoriating Obama [...]

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Tweet Is the media to blame for the Aurora shootings? I would like to make the case that it is, not for any specific action that any specific media outlet has taken, but by its very nature. In 1970, Alvin Toffler published his seminal work, Future Shock, in which he predicted that one of the [...]

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Tweet When my friends make mistakes, I’m usually amused and rather pleased, not because I revel in their suffering, but because it shows our shared humanity.  When bad things happen to my friends, I feel genuine distress and wish devoutly for their situation to improve. The opposite is true, of course, when people or institutions [...]

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Tweet “Facts are stubborn things.” I love that quotation.  John Adams said it back in 1774 when he took on the unpopular job of defending the British troops charged with the killings in the event now known as the Boston Massacre.  Arguing off those same stubborn facts, Adams was able to get those troops acquitted. [...]

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Tweet The caste system to which I refer in my post title is not the shrieks and threats arising from the media’s trial, judgment, and conviction of George Zimmerman.  Instead, I’m talking about the way in which the media and establishment have different expectations depending whether Muslims are accused of killing non-Muslims, or non-Muslims are [...]

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Tweet Sequestered here on the Left Coast I hadn’t paid any attention to the Trayvon Martin murder.  Today, though, it forced itself into the forefront of my brain.  As the media spins the story, it’s a horrific case of a very wholesome, very young black man cruelly executed in a “safe,” “white” neighborhood by a [...]

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Tweet Over the weekend, I got a link to a story about Malia Obama heading off to Mexico for vacation with 12 friends and 25 Secret Service agents.  The story is newsworthy because it implicates taxpayer concerns:  Malia is going to a nation that the State Department warns is dangerous, and Americans are footing the [...]

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Tweet I always love it when Leftist idiocy highlights some sort of life lesson I just imparted to young people.  Today’s life lesson is that fairness should be a reasonably objective standard, rather than one that, as Bill Maher would have it, depends on whether you, personally, are benefiting from the standard imposed. Back in [...]

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Tweet Zombie has another superb photo essay, this one about the OWS protest of Shimon Peres’ San Francisco visit.  If you haven’t already checked it out, please do.  My favorite part is the bit with the San Francisco motorcycle cop.  You go, guy! Please remember when you read Zombie that Zombie is the new media.  [...]

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Tweet One of the weaknesses in my abilities as a blogger is that I have very little patience for television, especially the talking heads on MSM television.  To me, they’re all Max Headroom: My philosophy is that life is too short to spend time in Max Headroom’s company. My mistake, though, is in believing that [...]

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Tweet Growing up, I never could understand why Vietnam Vets were all insane, while the vets of my father’s generation — WWII and the Korean War — were not.  My parents, good people who subscribed to Time, Newsweek, and the San Francisco Chronicle — explained to me that it was undoubtedly because all the Vietnam [...]

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Tweet “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Several friends have forwarded a story to me:  Obama may have had a little campaign help back in 2008 from the Russians.  Right now, for the vast majority of Americans, the story is a [...]

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Tweet A video that examines the vast chasm between Obama’s rhetoric at AIPAC gatherings and his actions towards Israel: And because actions have consequences, I thought you’d find interesting the way in which Obama’s attitude towards Israel is reflected in the way the media covers that nation — not even in big ways, but in [...]

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Tweet I’m planning a trip this summer to Japan, a country about which I know nothing.  Actually that’s an overstatement.  I know some things:  it’s beautiful, historic, and clean (I love that part), and comes complete with great food and well-mannered people.  But that’s all I know. Toji Pagoda I don’t have this tabula rasa [...]

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Tweet A few days ago, writing with regard to the media’s decision to ignore the standing ovations Newt received during the last South Carolina debate, I asked “If the Press Ignores an Event, Does It Exist?“  The press, it turns out, wants to take that experiment in ignoring facts as far as it can go. [...]

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Tweet We can expect tomorrow night’s State of the Union address to be an action-packed hour (or so) of vitriol and self-pity.  Obama will cherry-pick a few numbers about the 1% and then whine about how he’s been trying really hard to destroy that same 1%, but that a vast array of insurmountable obstacles — [...]

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