Bookworm Room

Tweet In my latest newsletter (which you can view here and subscribe to here) I asked whether Republicans will be the only unhappy people over the next four years.  My starting point is that Republicans are deeply depressed right now, while Progressives are gloatingly triumphant.  Their man won.  Their agenda is the one he’ll enact. [...]

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Tweet The following is the entire text of Frédéric Bastiat’s magnificent Parable of the Broken Window, which is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it in 1850. As you read it, please note carefully the highlighted language: Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless [...]

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Tweet One of my high school friends is black, pro-union, devoutly Christian and (to my surprise, given her San Francisco upbringing) apparently pro-Second Amendment.  She passed this along from one of her Facebook friends (who is a big numbers conservative Christian Facebooker): San Antonio Theater Shooting On Sunday December 17, 2012, 2 days after the [...]

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Tweet I am really becoming a fan of Kevin Williamson, over at National Review.  Today, he goes beyond Progressives’ superficial characteristics (wealth reallocation, gun fear, etc.), and digs deep into their values and their psyches.  It’s fascinating reading on its own terms.  It’s also extremely useful because, as Williamson himself says, you have to understand [...]

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Tweet I’ve had the same ten tabs open in Firefox this entire day.  I feel like a madman, trying to create order out of the chaos in my mind.  I’m convinced that there’s a thread tying together these articles, but I can’t figure out precisely what that thread is.  Maybe it’s just that each is [...]

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Tweet Progressives and narcissists share an unpleasant trait:  If you make a mistake, it proves that you and your ideas are inferior; if they make a mistake, it’s just a mistake.  Your mistake is irremediable, because it’s intrinsic to who you are; their mistake is just one of those things, and can be either forcibly [...]

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Tweet Paul Scott challenged us to look at what Eric Garland, a Progressive blogger, has to say and to take it seriously as a way to win the White House.  Paul is right — we cannot make a convincing argument unless we know what our opponent in the argument believes.  Insulting Paul doesn’t make us [...]

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Tweet My Facebook friends are besides themselves with delight about Obama’s victory.  I get that.  What I don’t appreciate is the “kick ‘em while they’re down” attitude that these enlightened people show.  Herewith, the latest offerings from the sore winners on Facebook. Progressives conflate truly stupid statements about human biology (that would be Todd Akin) [...]

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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 The other day, Joe Biden used a figure of speech: Ryan has written a book called The Young Guns with two other fellows, members of the house . . . no, these are the Republican leaders in the house. You had . . . . You had . . . Unfortunately, these bullets are [...]

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Tweet I continue to be fascinated with the things that my Progressive friends post on Facebook.  I feel like a cultural archaeologist.  Here’s today’s offering: For once, my commentary can be summed up in a single sentence: We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. — Barack Obama, September 12, 2012  

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Tweet One of my old high school classmates, who is gay and Progressive, posted a heartfelt plea today that all of his Facebook friends do whatever is necessary to keep the “evil” Romney out of office.  Evil?  That’s an awfully strong word.  Hitler was evil.  Mao was evil.  Stalin was evil.  Pol Pot was evil.  [...]

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Tweet John Hinderaker caught a very funny statement from Jen Psaki, who is one of the president’s official spokesmen. She was responding to a reporter’s question regarding the fact that PBS asked the Democrats to take down an add using Big Bird (emphasis mine): We have received that request [from PBS]. We’re reviewing it. I [...]

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Tweet A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the fact that “the most brilliant president ever” doesn’t know the difference between an endorser and an endorsee.  As you may recall, an Abraham Lincoln impersonator showed up at Obama’s campaign event, leading Obama to say “‘My homeboy from Illinois,’ Obama said, ‘and an outstanding Republican [...]

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Tweet The SF Chron had an article about the mountains of rubbish that revelers left in San Francisco’s Dolores Park on July 4.  I can tell you with absolute certain that the Dolores Park partiers were liberals or, as they would call themselves, Progressives.  That City and, more specifically, that neighborhood, tell you everything you [...]

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Tweet I haven’t yet finished Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, which is unusual for me, given that I’ve had it since Friday. It’s the kind of book one gobbles up — but that assumes time to gobble. Since I bought the book and Jonah signed it [...]

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Tweet My husband and I are current watching The Ides of March.  That I am staying awake during a movie that stars the bovine George Clooney, the insipid Ryan Gosling, the obscenity-spouting Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and the “I don’t get why he’s famous” Paul Giamatti and that, forty minutes into the movie, still has no [...]

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Tweet From Drudge: Harbinger or anomaly? I say the former. It’s not just that the voter tide is turning. It’s that the Obama-ites, who once looked invincible, now have the stench of failure and incompetence settling in around them. That becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Tweet Best of the Web posts a 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times in which Obama defines sin, not along traditional Christian or Muslim lines, but along self-referential lines: Falsani: Do you believe in sin? Obama: Yes. Falsani: What is sin? Obama: Being out of alignment with my values. The President, when [...]

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Tweet The Kochs received an interesting phone call from Jesse Lava, someone who affiliated with Brave New Foundation, a Progressive organization that is peculiarly obsessed with the Koch brothers.  Jesse ostensibly called to ask for some information from the Kochs to include in a “documentary” that Brave New Foundation is putting together.  After having made [...]

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Tweet In 1965, the United States Supreme Court decided Griswold v. Connecticut, the first case to enunciate a “right to privacy” under the U.S.  Constitution.  Before Griswold, notion of a right to privacy had only existed as a common law doctrine, applicable to ones fellow citizens.  This was the first time, however, that the United [...]

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Tweet The Washington Free Beacon is a new online paper with an interesting premise:  unlike MSM papers, which treat liberalism as the norm, and conservativism as a headline grabbing abnormality, this publication gives the big scare headlines to the Left.  In other words, it’s not just that it reports the stories, but that it reports [...]

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Tweet There’s nothing like a Progressive who’s not worrying about reelection.  If you thought Barney Frank’s moobs were repellent, wait until you get a look inside Lynn Woolsey’s brain.  The 10-term House Democrat from Marin County is retiring this year, so she finally feels that she can speak freely.  It’s not pretty. For example, we [...]

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Tweet Many, many have written on this, but I like Keith Koffler’s summation the best, as I think he does a remarkably good getting to the core point about the latest twist in Fast and Furious.  He also manages to highlight why I like Rush:  Rush is not afraid to identify and accurately predict the [...]

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Tweet Item:  At the Occupy Wall Street protest, one of the 99% is spotted leaving his mark on a New York City police car: Item:  During the height of the Bush-era anti-war riots, one of the protesters was photographed as he proudly left his own personal offering to a smoldering American flag: Item:  The Atlantic’s [...]

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