Bookworm Room

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

Benjamin Wittes and witless logic about Trump

by Leave a Comment

The Benjamin Wittes “I believe” tweetstorm about Trump, intended to expose conservative “Doublethink,” instead exposed Leftist irrationality and ignorance.

Wittes Impeachment Trump Derangement SyndromeThe anti-Trump blogosphere, both Leftists and #NeverTrumpers, is excited about an endless series of tweets from Benjamin Wittes all intended, in a sarcastic way, to challenge Trump and his supporters. Before I go further, some background on Wittes: He is a Brookings Institution Senior Fellow who graduated from Oberlin and is currently co-director of Harvard Law School’s Brookings Project on Law and Security. In other words, he’s been marinated in Leftism since he hit college (and, given that he went to a non-Orthodox Jewish school in New York City, probably for his entire life).

Okay. Now back to those tweets. It’s apparent from reviewing the tweets that what Wittes is trying to do is show that conservatives have entered the Orwellian world of “doublethink”:

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

In fact, what Wittes has managed to do is show that Leftists are incapable of even “singlethink” — that is, the ability to look at two related pieces of information and recognize that they can easily and logically exist simultaneously in the same universe. For example, I can simultaneously believe that cows produce milk to feed their young and that humans consume and benefit from milk. As you can see, these two apparently disparate thoughts — cows milk is cow food but it’s also human food — manage to exist in the same universe without creating a logical black hole that destroys all rational thought.

With that in mind, how about we take a look at the Wittes tweet thread (which I’ve rendered in plain text):

I believe the president. I have always believed him.
‘I believe the president’: GOP stands by Trump on sexual assault allegation
Republicans are dismissing E. Jean Carroll’s accusation and still sticking with Trump.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/25/trump-accuse-gop-1382385

Yeah, I stand by President Trump too on this one. I’m not going to analyze it here, though, because Wittes raises the subject again, below, and that’s where I address more fully the sordid sexual allegations Lefties like to raise against Trump.

I believed him when he said he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States. And I believe him now when he says his travel ban has nothing to do with religious discrimination.

In other words, Wittes is saying it’s impossible simultaneously to believe that Trump wants to keep Muslims out of America while not discriminating against Muslims; i.e., it’s doublethink! Except that to anyone who pays attention to facts, there’s nothing “doublethinky” at all about the fact that there is a segment of Islam that is cheerfully dedicated to Western destruction.

As it is, Wittes seems to have sat out the last few decades, when extremist members of the Islamic faith: [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 1/13/19 — immigration, Russiagate, and sexuality

by Leave a Comment

I’d meant to cover more topics, but between illegal immigration, Russiagate, and pedophilia, I’ve think I’ve written enough.

Immigration Kavanaugh Disgusting Democrats

On the immorality of housing illegal aliens at the border.

I don’t know why, but it took forever for me to get a sharp focus on what’s wrong with the Leftist arguments claiming it’s immoral to house illegal immigrants, especially children, in large, not-cozy facilities. I know, of course, the purpose behind this housing, such as the requirement (already applicable under Obama) that children being held for longer times must be separated from adults (aka potential pedophiles).

Somehow, though, it was this video that highlighted for me just how stupid the Leftist argument is:

What jumped out at me was all that high falutin’ stuff about “immorality” which Coons then immediately paired with “children in cages.” That juxtaposition triggered . . . deep thoughts.

The imagery about “children in cages” is deliberately intended to make us think of what the Nazis did all over Europe, the Japanese did all over Asia, and all totalitarian governments have done at all times and in all places. In all those cases, the government is the aggressor. To further its nefarious purposes, whether to occupy territory, pacify perceived enemies, or exterminate entire peoples, it hunts people down (especially children) and imprisons them in cages. This is indeed immoral.

Here, however, our government is not the aggressor. It is entirely passive. It is the illegal aliens who are storming our borders. The government is simply doing the best it can to deal with the onslaught – including putting children in areas that, while lacking in charm, theoretically protect them from predators. Moreover, these predators are not US government agents. Instead, they are the people with whom they are traveling, many of whom are not their parents but are criminals taking advantage of our laxness in handling “families” with “their” children. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 1/28/18 — the brilliant Trump Jay-Z beatdown edition

by 17 Comments

From Trump’s epic response to Jay-Z, to Dennis Prager’s surprise admission, to Daniel Greenfield’s Leftist exposé, and more — there’s lots of brilliance here.

Jay-Z foolishly engages TrumpTrump’s genius approach to Jay-Z’s “superbug” attack. I am getting wise to the ways of Trump. That’s why I know that the war into which he’s entered with Jay-Z is one of his more brilliant moments. I’m sure, without looking, that some “higher minded” #NeverTrumpers are horrified that, after Jay-Z insulted him, Trump decided to go on the attack. I, on the other hand, am delighted. Let me go back to the beginning to explain why.

First, you might want to know who Jay-Z is. He’s a rapper, he’s black, he’s married to super star Beyoncé, and he’s sold more than 100 million records. He’s big. Really, really big. His demographic, as a rapper, is young people, especially black young people. Jay-Z’s real name is Shawn Corey Carter, so his twitter handle is Mr. Carter (@S_C). He has 3.34 million followers, at least some of whom are not bots.

Jay-Z was a guest on Van Jones’s new CNN show. Van Jones is a self-admitted black communist who got a gig in the Obama administration. When that ended, he found his natural home at CNN. When Van Jones contended that Trump called “every African country” a “shithole” (something Trump and others at the meeting strongly contest), and then asked his guest Jay-Z to comment, Jay-Z had this to say:

You don’t take the trash out, you keep spraying whatever over it to make it acceptable. As those things grow, you create a superbug. And then now we have Donald Trump, the superbug.

George W. Bush would have ignored that insult in dignified silence. Trump is smarter than George W. Bush. He sent out this tweet:

The only thing that would have made that tweet better is if Trump had included Jay-Z’s twitter  name it to ensure that the tweet hit Jay-Z’s feed. But maybe that would have been too obvious.

As it is, though, one can make a reasonable guess that some part of Jay-Z’s 3.3 million Twitter followers are being exposed for the first time to data that the MSM hoped would never enter their worlds. Moreover, the media, because it’s as incapable of resisting Trump’s tasty treats as a mouse is incapable of resisting cheese in a snap trap, is now headlining black unemployment:

CNN headlines black unemplolyment

Dig down into that article, and you will discover that, despite the headline, CNN is scared to touch Trump’s data point . . . because it cannot. There’s no mention in the article of actual employment rates.

The reality, however, is that anyone with a smidgen of curiosity, especially those aching to prove Trump wrong, will search up “black unemployment,” and come with data like this:

Unemployment among black workers is at its lowest since at least the early 1970s, when the government began tracking the data.

The black unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in December was the lowest since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started tracking it in 1972, a year in which the rate ranged from 11.2 percent to 9.4 percent. In the 45 years the data has been tracked, the unemployment rate for black or African-American workers aged 16 years and older has never fallen below 7 percent.

Trump is rapidly proving himself to be the smartest president in my lifetime, perhaps in the last 100 years, perhaps ever. Thanks to Van Jones (communist) and Jay-Z (shallow thinker), with one tweet Trump brought to an otherwise misinformed public accurate data about something that’s very important. Bravo, Mr. President! Bravo! [Read more…]

If an Obama scandal is revealed but the media ignores it….

by 17 Comments

If the House releases the Nunes memo proving an Obama scandal, but the media refuses to cover it, will Americans believe that no scandal ever happened?

Obama scandal tree falling makes no soundUnlike many of my readers, who seem to live in more conservative communities and have like-minded friends, I’ve spent my entire life in Democrat enclaves. Whether I meet the gals for coffee, walk the dogs with a friend, or open my Facebook feed, I am inundated with Progressive-think — everything from Trump-Hitler (an amped-up of version of Bush-Hitler), to “we must open our border to third world immigrants” (or, as some wit called them “Turd world” immigrants), to the fact that we are in imminent danger of freezing, drowning, boiling, dehydrating, etc. to death because of anthropogenic climate change.

Because of my social circles, I’m also aware that I inhabit a very different factual universe than my friends do. In my view, the government shutdown occurred because Democrats, a Senate minority, refused to give Republicans, the majority, the votes needed to pass a budget unless Republicans gave amnesty to over 3 million illegal aliens (or, as we can more accurately call them, future Democrat voters). In other words, Democrats are putting illegal aliens’ interests ahead of American interests.

It’s an entirely different story on the other side of the aisle, though. According to my Progressive friends, the shutdown came about because Republicans stubbornly refused to provide healthcare for poor children. As always, even when talking about abortion, the Democrats doing it for the children.

Two different universes.

Which gets me to the Nunes memo. The memo, which is highly classified, purportedly contains Rep. Devin Nunes’ conclusions, based upon viewing other classified material, that the Obama administration, the Hillary campaign, and the DNC, were up to their eyeballs in highly illegal surveillance activity directed against Donald Trump, all in an effort to destroy his candidacy and place Hillary in the White House. If true, the Obama scandal instantly turns Watergate into Nothing-gate, and reveals an attack on America’s representative democracy the likes of which we’ve never seen before. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 4/18/17 — a potpourri of interesting, random stuff

by 8 Comments

Here’s a down-and-dirty Bookworm Beat that’s still replete with things to entertain and inform.

Bookworm Beat logoI’d meant to blog more today, as well as to clean my office, but I had a sick dog and that took both my time and my attention. All is well with the dog — it’s a long term problem and we’re doing maintenance care.

And now for some quick links:

Gadzooks! It’s Gorsuch: Last week, when Neil Gorsuch was confirmed, Myron Magnet wrote a much-read article about the revolution his ascension to the Supreme Court represents:

Suppose, now that Gorsuch has been confirmed and sworn in, it understood and intended to overturn the administrative state’s usurpation of the Constitution. Suppose, moreover, that it understood the promiscuous lawlessness with which the justices have been making laws out of thin air for half a century and more—claiming some vague basis in the Bill of Rights or the Fourteenth Amendment—and resolved to end that abuse, exercising only judgment, not will. Suppose President Trump got to appoint one more justice in the Gorsuch and Scalia mold, creating an irresistible majority that upheld Madison’s original Constitution instead of Wilson’s “living” one.

Magnet’s dream may well be in the process of being realized. How do I know? Because of the manic, fevered emanations from the Left after Gorsuch’s first official appearance on the bench, all stating that Gorsuch is a mentally-disabled moron wrongfully occupying Merrick Garland’s seat. They’re terrified:

After his startlingly humiliating performance during his first day on the bench yesterday, it’s possible his earlier reticence to answer the Senators’ questions was because he didn’t understand them. As it turns out, Gorsuch is a simpleton with almost childlike understanding of the law – and the existing Justices on both sides of the spectrum already seem to have concluded he’s an idiot.

In fact, Gorsuch was pointing out that the answer lies in actually reading the statutory language — and he was embarrassing those attorneys who were trying to make things complicated in hopes of getting a ruling that allows agencies to make their own laws. (I’ve lost my link for this, but I’ll fill it in as soon as I find it.)

If Dennis Prager is happy, I’m happy. Everything Dennis Prager says about the political and moral clarity of the last two weeks . . . I agree:

2. The terrible presidency of Barack Obama is beginning to be acknowledged.

Following President Trump’s order to attack Syria about 63 hours after the Syrian regime seemingly used chemical weapons, even many in the mainstream media couldn’t help but contrast his prompt response with Obama’s nonresponse to Assad’s use of chemical weapons in 2013. And almost every report further noted that Obama failed to do anything after having promised that he would regard the use of chemical weapons by Assad as crossing a “red line.”

Likewise, Obama’s do-nothing policies vis-a-vis North Korea are being contrasted with Trump’s warnings to leader Kim Jung Un about further testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pressure on China’s leaders to rein in the North Korean regime.

These contrasts are important for a number of reasons, not the least of which being there is now hope that Obama’s star will dim as time goes on.

This will come as somewhat of a surprise to those on the left, but many of us who are not on the left believe that Obama did more damage to America than any previous president — economically, militarily and socially.

[Read more…]