Bookworm Room

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

No. 7 Bookworm Room Podcast: America has become a fantasy land

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America is a divided country in part because half of Americans live in a fantasy land, predicated on fear and gossip, and entirely unrelated to reality.

Jeffrey E;pstein America fantasy land

In today’s fantasy land, our beliefs about Jeffrey Epstein are the only things binding America today.

(This is a companion post to the No. 7 Bookworm Room Podcast, which is embedded at the bottom of this post, or which you can find at Libsyn or at “>Apple Podcasts. If you like the podcast, please spread the word.)

I finally realized why I’ve been having such a hard time blogging (and podcasting) for the past few days. It’s because there’s nothing going on. Despite the 24-hour news cycle, the non-stop screaming from the Left, and the insanity of social media, nothing of note has happened in the world. Nothing at all. Instead, we’re getting made up headlines intended to convince credulous people — by which I mean most of the people amongst whom I’ve lived for the past several decades — that the world is coming to an end.

And that’s not an exaggeration. These people really do believe that Trump is a colorful amalgam of Satan, Hitler, the KKK Grand Wizard, and some hysterical television evangelist who wants to kill gays. That there is no evidence to support any of those claims is entirely irrelevant. Let me walk you through some of the madness.

Exhibit A is a little video that comes up every time I open Twitter. It doesn’t matter that I don’t follow Kirsten Gillibrand. It doesn’t matter that this was posted over 22 hours ago. And it doesn’t matter that this is not news. It’s the top of my Twitter feed no matter what:

It also doesn’t matter that it was President Obama who separated families and put kids in cages.

The stunning thing about this bathetic crying child video is that the Left is advocating an entirely new standard here: If you commit a crime and have children, it’s wrong for you to be arrested or punished for your crime.

The unspoken caveat, of course, is that this applies only if you’re in this country illegally. If you’re a born and raised American, whether white, black, or Hispanic, and you commit a crime, the fact that you have children is irrelevant. You should have thought of that before you ran afoul of the law. But not if you’re in this country illegally, taking jobs from Americans, getting free education for your kids, and getting free healthcare, if only by showing up in the ER when you can’t pay. Then, children are your “get out of jail free” card.

Exhibit B is the outrage over a photograph of Donald and Melania Trump with a baby that survived the shooting in El Paso: [Read more…]

No. 5 Bookworm Room Podcast: Why the Second Amendment matters plus thoughtcrimes

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The Second Amendment is an unalienable right; plus, even assuming for the sake of argument that Trump has racist thoughts, his principles are not racist.

Second AmendmentFor those who want to listen to the podcast, you can find it embedded below, or at this link, or (at last) you can hear it at Apple/iTunes podcasts. If you think the podcasts worthy, please share the links with your friends.

In today’s podcast, I’m still chewing over the shootings this past weekend. I leave it to others to tackle the shooters’ motives (other than just being evil people) and the media’s haste to emphasize the allegedly conservative El Paso shooter (even though he seems terribly affected by the Leftist’s climate Armageddon rhetoric) while ignoring entirely the passions driving the Leftists shooter in Dayton. Instead, I want to discuss the Second Amendment and why it matters in the context of our relationship to the government. Long-time readers will recognize this discussion, but it may be new to others.

The right to bear arms is one of our premier constitutional rights.  Too many Americans take our Constitution for granted without considering its centrality, not to government, but to the individuals being governed.  Unlike the various federal statutes that impose laws on the people of this land, the Constitution imposes its restrictions on the federal government itself.  The predicate to these individual rights is the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Without this acknowledgement of our unalienable status and dignity, the explicitly listed Rights in the Bill of Rights are meaningless.  These unalienable rights – Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — are the abstract foundational concepts that justify a citizen’s more concrete “right” to have spheres of activity (or inactivity) upon which the government cannot impinge.

Which gets us to the Bill of Rights.  What exactly is it?  I mean, we all know what’s in it, but I don’t think most people stop and really think about how important it is to them, as individuals.

The Constitution is a contract between the People (acting through their state-elected representatives) and the government.  The main body of the Constitution, however, has nothing to do with the People, and everything to do with defining a functioning government.  Thus, while it seeks to make sure that the executive can’t overwhelm the legislature or that the courts can’t overwhelm the executive, there’s nothing in the Constitution about whether the government as a whole, or any of its individual parts, can overwhelm the citizens under its rule.

The Founders realized in the wake of the Constitution’s ratification that creating a government is not the same as protecting the People’s unalienable under that government.  If the government can “giveth” something and then “taketh it away” again, that something is not a right, it is, instead, a mere privilege. [Read more…]

The Inaugural Bookworm Room Podcast — plus the debates, Mueller, and obstruction

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Check out the first Bookworm Room Podcast — or read its contents here: Marianne Williamson’s Leftism, Mueller’s picture, and Trump’s non-obstruction.

Bookworm Room Podcast

My podcast illustration.

I finally did it — after literally mulling the matter over (not in the Joe Biden sense, but quite literally) for at least a decade, I finally decided to start a podcast. For years, I’ve said that my dream job is to talk about things that interest me. Here, at my blog, I’ve spent 15 years writing about things that interest me, but talking about them is different. It uses a different part of my brain.

I’ve been waiting a lifetime for someone to pay me to talk. I finally realized that, with podcasts, I can start talking and then see if someone pays me. And even if no one pays me, there’s nothing to stop me from talking.

It wasn’t just the fact that this idea has been in my head for so long that got me started. Instead, I decided that the universe was trying to speak to me.

Last week, I visited with my father’s oldest friend. My father and mother are long gone, but the friend is still around, and I’ve sort of inherited him. He’s 99 now and was fortunate enough to end up with a wonderful caregiver. She’s an L.A. hippie, earth mother type, with Tammy Faye Baker makeup and a heart as big as the world. Everyone Lyra* meets is as a friend and my honorary uncle (for that’s how we treated him when we were children) is in better condition than he’s been in years. At 99, though, my honorary uncle is losing his memory a bit. I therefore spoke with him about stories I remember my dad telling us.

About halfway through the lunch, Lyra suddenly announced, “You know, normally when someone talks as much as you do….”

I froze, blushed hard, and apologized. Lyra was having none of it.

“No, no. What I was going to say is that, usually when someone talks as much as you do, my eyes are just rolling into the back of my head and I tune them out. You’re so interesting, though, I could listen to you forever. You really need to do a YouTube.”

I decided that Lyra was the voice of the universe, nudging me — finally — to act on something I’ve long yearned to do. [Read more…]

Finally! I’m back in Tennessee — and Trump’s take on Baltimore

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The U.S. is a magnificent country, but I seem to have been meant for the Southeast — plus, a few words about Trump and the Baltimore kerfuffle.

Franklin Tennessee

The town square in Franklin, Tennessee.

We spent exactly one week traversing the U.S. by the northern route (California to Nevada to Utah to Colorado to Kansas to Missouri to Arkansas to Tennessee). Every bit of the way ranged from magnificent to impressive to beautiful. I met with old friends and made new friends. It was in all ways a delightful trip but I have to confess that I’m very happy to be back in Tennessee.

Tennessee suits my aesthetic sensibilities. I like everything about it, from the strongly defined clouds in the sky (as opposed to the Bay Area’s amorphous puffs), to the lush greenery, to the rolling and mountainous terrain, to the well-maintained roads. All those blue staters who sneer at Tennessee as flyover or redneck country have no idea what they’re missing — and thank goodness they don’t, because they’d ruin it if they descended on the Tennessee like locusts. As it is, blue staters escaping the horrors they’ve wreaked on California and New York are busy branching out trying to destroy red states such as Texas and Florida — and they’ve already turned Colorado into a blue political madhouse.

Along the road, I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts, so I am fairly current on what’s going on politically. I love it that President Trump is finally reaching out to black voters by pointing out the obvious: their “representatives” are representative only in skin color. Otherwise, they have failed blacks living in truly dire circumstances in Democrat and black-Democrat run enclaves.

Trump’s bravery in stating the obvious, despite the “racist!” shrieks of the self-styled elite reminded me of something I’ve quoted here before. It’s from former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, in his book The Case For Democracy: The Power Of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny And Terror (2004 hardback edition):

[Read more…]

Trump is not a racist; he’s pushing the Overton window to normal *UPDATED*

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By stating the obvious about America-hating immigrants, Trump pushed the Overton window towards a more normal understanding of immigration and gratitude.

Trump Racism Overton WindowTrump started today with a bang:

The reaction from the Progressive and Democrat cohort, encompassing politicians, presidential candidates, and the media, was predictable: RACIST!!! It did not matter that Trump said nothing about race. There was a dog whistle there and, naturally enough, race-obsessed Leftists heard it.

(Before I go on, a brief moment of ironic laughter here. When Occasional Cortex accused Nancy Pelosi of racism, Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo), a member of both the Black and Progressive Congressional caucuses opined, “What a weak argument. Because you can’t get your way and because you’re getting pushback you resort to using the race card? Unbelievable. Unbelievable to me.” Likewise, Maureen Dowd also piped up with “A.O.C. should consider the possibility that people who disagree with her do not disagree with her color.” Coming from people who’ve spent the last 11 years insisting that racism is the only reason anyone can disagree with their agenda, that’s pretty rich. And now back to my post….)

Equally predictably, when he was again called a racist, Trump was not cowed. Instead, he doubled-down: [Read more…]

Thoughts about the two Democrat debates

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The Democrat Debates were indeed boring, but they were also a wonderful insight into Democrat policies and candidate strengths and weaknesses.

Democrat DebatesI watched both of the Democrat debates. I’ve now had 43 hours to ruminate about Wednesday’s debate and 19 hours to ruminate about Thursday’s debate. That’s given me a little perspective. For what it’s worth, here’s what I think:

I. The debates as a whole.

When Obama ran in 2008 and again in 2012, he tried to underplay his radicalism. Both times, he played lip service to the center and then governed to the Left. A perfect example concerns how he handled LGBT issues, whether for open military service or getting married. He assured voters that neither would happen and then went and supported the more Leftward policies anyway. I’m not opining about the policies. I’m just pointing out that Obama lied.

What’s refreshing about the current crop of candidates is that they are not disguising their political beliefs and practical goals. Given that Trump is completely open about his traditional American political values and that the Democrats have stopped hiding their Leftism, this may be the most honest political campaign since the one in 1860.

Indeed, if the ultimate Democrat primary victory retains that honesty into the election campaign, rather than trying to rewrite the history of whatever he or she said during the primaries, we will not see the usual presidential campaign in which candidates circle the middle (a middle that moved increasingly Left beginning in the 1990s). Instead, there are some very stark differences here. Talk about American having a true “time for choosing.”

One of the major differences between every single Dem candidate on the one hand and Trump on the other hand, is the way in which they view America. Obama occasionally leaked out comments showing his dislike and disdain for both America and Americans, but he tried to dress his politics in the upbeat, and entirely meaningless, mantra of hope. Yeah, sure America was great he said, but he would make it so great it would be “fundamentally transformed,” apparently into a different kind of greatness entirely. But it was all great.

Trump, of course, is Mr. Optimistic. He has wonderful visions about a great America that will still be a recognizable America, although better than ever before. Most importantly, it won’t be socialist country. It will continue to be a free market, sovereign nation in which people benefit from small government, individual liberty, and true equality before the law. Our foreign friends will respect us and our foreign enemies will fear us (as they should). Indeed, some of our foreign enemies may well have abandoned their wicked ways to join the community of nations. Trump is optimistic and endlessly upbeat. [Read more…]

Benjamin Wittes and witless logic about Trump

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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…]

Ravelry, a fiber arts social network, silences Trump supporters as “white supremacists” *UPDATED*

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Ravelry, one of the biggest fiber art social media networks, identifies Trump supporters as “white supremacists” and asks its community to help police them.

Ravelry LGBTQ LogoIf you do any type of fiber crafts — knitting, quilting, crocheting, etc. — you’re familiar with Ravelry. It’s a very well-organized social network dedicated to allowing fiber crafters meet in cyberspace, whether to teach or learn, talk about projects, find patterns, etc.

Ravelry is also a marketplace allowing for individual crafters to sell instructions and patterns. Only recently, I bought two excellent PDF project instructions from a gal whom I later discovered, looking at my credit card statement, markets through Ravelry. The site also gets a small percentage of these PDF sales. It also makes money selling logo wear.

Ravelry is very popular. While it’s unlikely that all its members, or even most of its members, are active on the site at any given time, and many sign up never to return, as of February 2019, 8,000,000 people had signed up for Ravelry.

Unfortunately, Ravelry has decided to wade into politics and to do so in the most ugly way possible. In an announcement today to its membership, one with a Pride flag proudly displayed in the upper left hand corner, Ravelry said that from now on Trump supporters will be silenced.

Please note that the site is not silencing all political discussions on the ground that they are disruptive to a site dedicated to fiber hand crafts. No, no. It is only silencing Trump supporters because they are “white supremacists” — and it’s asking its other members to go full Stasi and police the site for any incipient Trumpista break-outs.

The following is the full text of the Ravelry announcement (bold-italicized emphasis mine): [Read more…]

On Iran, Trump makes some very smart moves

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When it comes to Iran, Trump is brilliantly locking the country in a box by breaking it financially, frightening its leadership, and courting its people.

Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the Crosshairs

How Trump sees Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei

Although I no longer post any content on my real-me Facebook page, I do check it out regularly. It helps me stay abreast of interesting things in my friends’ lives and it helps me see what’s going on with the Lefties amongst whom I grew up and a handful of NeverTrumpers I met along the way.

When it comes to Iran, my Facebook friends are very clear on what’s going on. According to the Lefties, Trump is either a complete moron who wants to get us involved in WWIII with Iran or he’s an evil, Hitler-esque genius who wants us to get involved in WWIII with Iran so that he can seize permanent power over America. Amusingly, the Lefties often advance both arguments simultaneously.

Meanwhile, according to the NeverTrumpers, who are as invested in Russiagate as the Lefties, Trump is Putin’s foot soldier. They contend that Trump-the-moron was too dumb to realize that sending rockets off in response to Iran’s shooting down a drone would start WWIII. Thankfully, he immediately ceased operations when his master — that would be Putin — told him to stop. But of course, we’re not really thankful, because the only thing worse than Trump-the-moron is Trump-the-Putin-sock-puppet. It’s a sad world when you’re a NeverTrumper.

I have a different take. The short version is this tweet: [Read more…]

Progressives collude to prevent investigation of attempted coup

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By resisting an investigation of the apparent attempted coup against Trump, Progressives reject a core Anglo-American doctrine that no one is above the law.

The “Trump-Russia collusion investigation” — 2+ years, $30+ million, and using all the investigative resources of government — is over.  Given the specificity and nature of the allegations in the Steele Dossier, given that Steele and his employer wanted the allegations publicized before the 2016 election, given the repeated leaks of classified material to the press over the past two years (central to the Pulitzer Prize won by the NYT and Wapo last year for reporting on Trump’s allegedly treasonous activities) and, finally, given the complete lack of evidence found to support the allegations, it would be reasonable to suspect, first, that this was all a con game from its inception to elect Hillary Clinton and second, after that failed, that it was an effort to destroy the Trump presidency and protect those who broke our laws by engaging in the con.

The former was an unlawful dirty trick involving a false allegation of criminality to the FBI.  The latter would be unprecedented in our nation’s history — nothing less than an attempted coup (one which is still ongoing in Crazy Nancy’s House), seemingly both to overturn the 2016 election and to protect those who had broken the law to protect Hillary Clinton.

Can anyone tell me a legitimate justification for why those reasonable suspicions should not be investigated?  The stakes could not be higher for this nation.

And yet, the MSM and progressive politicians are colluding in a full court “press” to ensure that no investigation takes place or, if it does, that the country is primed to ignore it as illegitimate.  Toward that effort, NBC’s Johnathan Allen has penned a ridiculous polemic today, based on a recent interview Trump gave, as well as Trump’s declassification order of earlier in the week.  This from the execrable Mr. Allen:

President Donald Trump found four former federal officials guilty of “treason” Thursday — and then commissioned his intelligence agencies to help the Department of Justice prove it.

[Read more…]

The Dems’ impeachment demands are Heaven-sent manna for Trump

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Trump’s impeachment battle with Pelosi — he wants it; she doesn’t — and his negotiations with Iran and China, highlight his strategic and tactical genius.

Impeachment Trump dealing with Nancy Pelosi Democrats

That’s Nancy Pelosi on the Left, over-confidently facing down Trump, whom she wrongly believes is a big goofball.

Of late, Trump has put me in mind of two very funny videos. But before I get to the videos, let me explain what I see going on right now between Trump and his opponents, both domestic and foreign. He is proving to be masterful at toying with his political enemies and with herding people into pens from which there is no easy escape or, perhaps, no escape at all.

The most obvious example today of Trump’s toying and his herding is the way in which he is baiting the Democrats to impeach him. Yes, I know it’s tacky when he talks about “Crazy Nancy Pelosi” or “Dumb as a Rock” Rex Tillerson, but we are living in tacky times, with a political party now devoting its entire energy and political capital to destroying a president. Dems have no other goals than to thwart Trump. Abnormal times seem to call for abnormal measures.

Here’s the way I see it: Being tacky is not an impeachable offense. Threatening to fire someone . . . and then listening to reason and not firing him is not an impeachable offense. Pushing back against an investigation by the same crew that’s trying to railroad you on false charges should not be an impeachable offense. Calling people mean nicknames is not an impeachable offense. In a constitutional republic, the executive officer refusing to produce his closest people for examination by the co-equal legislative branch is not an impeachable offense. Investigating law enforcement that either deliberately or with incredible stupidity launched a bogus investigation into a candidate’s/president’s affairs is not an impeachable offense.

While the base may have delusions of impeachability, ordinary people understand that saying “we hate you” does not establish the type of high crime or misdemeanor that justifies overthrowing the people’s choice. What the crazed base wants is profoundly un-democratic (that’s small “d” democratic). If we go down this route, we’ve given up on a true constitutional republic and become nothing more than a Western hemisphere banana republic.

Moreover, there is something very, very wrong in America when a Democrat-controlled House attempts to go all Lavrentiy Beria on a Republican president by digging into his bank records and taxes from the past decade. It is profoundly un-American when a government agency, instead of investigating an actual crime, instead tries to find a crime to pin upon a disfavored person. [Read more…]