Bookworm Room

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

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

by Leave a Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

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

by 1 Comment

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

by Leave a Comment

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…]

A few thoughts about the trade war with China *UPDATED*

by Leave a Comment

China has been slowly sucking America dry through unfair trade. Trump is right to demand that it treat us fairly and I think he’ll win this trade war.

China Trade War Trump XiWhen I graduated from high school, a family friend, recently widowed, sold me her deceased husband’s eight-year-old car for a price I could afford with the money I’d saved over the years from babysitting and summer jobs. I drove that car for the next eight years, during which time I commuted one to two hours a day to college and work, and then, after graduating, drove it halfway across the country and used it while I attended law school in Texas (and worked then too).

The car was an amazing lemon. I got stranded in all sorts of places, from storm ridden freeways to scary neighborhoods to high mountain passes. During my last year in Texas, the heater broke and was stuck permanently in “on” position . . . in Texas . . . during the summer.

When I got my first real job as a lawyer, with a lovely (and completely undeserved, considering my abilities) paycheck, my very first purchase was a new car. I got the very first Acura Integra that rolled off the assembly line. It didn’t have a radio or air conditioning, but neither did my old car. What it did have was splendid reliability. That car lasted me for years and I got rid of it only when I had my first child and traded it in for the ubiquitous mom minivan.

But back to that old car. The problem for me was that, whenever it broke down, I had just enough money to pay for fixing it. But because I kept paying to fix it, I was never able to stockpile enough money to buy a new car that wouldn’t break down. Over the eight years I owned that car, little bit by little bit, I paid my mechanics substantially more than I ultimately paid for my brand new Acura. To put it more graphically, when it came to that darn car, I was chronically hemorrhaging and was only able to blot up the latest blood flow without ever being able to end the bleeding altogether.

My relationship with my old car is a metaphor for America’s trade relationship with China for the past four decades. China has been bleeding us here and bleeding us there. Thus, over the decades, he’s been stealing our intellectual property, cheating on trade deals, using government subsidies to undercut our industries and (much worse) using slave labor to undercut our workers. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 5/7/19 — the Vanishing Conservatives on Social Media edition

by Leave a Comment

There are reasons for you to be very afraid of the social media crackdown on conservatives (even fringe ones), plus other scary stuff in today’s world.

Bookworm Beat Benghazi Leftists Social MediaDemocrats prepare for 2020 by silencing conservatives.  If I had to identify the scariest news today, it would be Twitter’s purge of conservatives, which follows closely on the heels of Facebook’s purge of conservatives. These social media outlets, which hold power unimagined at any past time, are using that power to silence non-Progressive dissent.

When it came to Facebook’s most recent purge, I won’t argue that Alex Jones is an unpleasant, possibly slightly demented character. Others, though, are merely vocal not-Leftists, such as Paul Joseph Watson, whose platform is Alex Jones’s InfoWars, or provocateurs, such as Milo Yiannopoulos. As a sop to “equality,” Facebook also finally shutdown arch anti-Semite (and Democrat friend) Louis Farrakhan, whom two major Leftist media outlets promptly identified as “right wing.”

Other than Farrakhan, both Twitter and Facebook do not appear to have gone after Left wingers. Most conspicuously, they continued to ignore Left wing “news” sites that, for two years, promoted the biggest hoax in American political history or blue-checked Lefties who revel in fantasies of murdering Trump or slapping around conservatives, including the innocent Covington School boys, whose only crime was to wear MAGA hats. These same social media behemoths have also left alone Hamas sites that advocate for Israel’s destruction and the genocide of her people; and unhinged Leftists sites that screech hysterically about toxic whites, masculinity, straight people, etc., all in the most vile and violent terms.

Moreover, currently both Facebook and Twitter seem comfortable providing a platform for Pennsylvania State Representative Brian Sims, who proudly posted video of himself verbally harassing an old lady praying outside a Planned Parenthood clinic and then went on to promise to pay anyone who would dox three pro-life teenage girls.

When called on his behavior, the out-and-proud Sims doubled down on the hateful rhetoric, all of which seems to have escaped Twitter’s eagle eye for “hate speech”: [Read more…]

The collusion and obstruction investigation indicts others, not Trump

by Leave a Comment

Officially, Mueller investigated Trump’s alleged collusion and obstruction. We now know that there was collusion and obstruction — but not by Trump.

Obstruction Collusion Brennan Comey Obama ClapperThe investigation into Trump’s campaign began with the ludicrous hearsay (in some cases, multiple levels of hearsay) allegations compiled by Michael Steele, paid for by the DNC, provided to the FBI before the 2016 election, and briefed to every major media outlet as part of an “October surprise” that failed to derail Trump.  It is worth quickly reviewing what those allegations were.  To summarize the charges in the original Buzzfeed “report”:

  1.  Trump was a Russian intelligence asset who had been working for Russian intelligence for at least seven years.
  2. Trump, who had no business interests in Russia, was being paid in Russian prostitutes for his services.
  3. Russian intelligence has a tape of Trump inviting prostitutes to his hotel room during the 2013 Miss Universe contest held in Moscow and so they could perform a “golden shower” on the bed.
  4. Trump was handling the payment of Russian assets in New York through a complicated money laundering scheme.
  5. Trump coordinated with Russian intelligence through Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and his private attorney, Michael Cohen.
  6. Carter Page’s business trip to Russia in 2016 was cover for a meeting with Russian intelligence.
  7. The Trump campaign coordinated with Russia for the release of DNC emails hacked by Russian intelligence.  Papadopoulos admitted to knowing this information in near real time, before it was made public by the DNC.
  8. Michael Cohen was subject to Russian influence through his Russian wife (she is not Russian, by the way).  Cohen traveled to Prague to coordinate with Russian intel on behalf of Trump once Russian involvement in the campaign became public knowledge.

All involved denied those allegations. Moreover, Mueller’s $30 million-plus, two year-plus investigation either affirmatively disproved them or was unable to find any facts that might prove them.  None are supported in the Mueller Report.  And indeed, Mueller makes only passing reference to the Steele Dossier.

Now recall that, once it became apparent that the Steele Dossier did not provide probable cause for anything, because all of its wild allegations were affirmatively false or incapable of proof, a story appeared in the NYT  on Dec. 30, 2017, based on a leak, that the investigation was warranted because Papadopoulos in fact knew of the theft of DNC emails before that theft was made public.

There’s only one problem with the NYT’s “bombshell of the moment”: Reviewing the FBI affidavit that supports charging Papadopoulos with the crime of lying to investigators, it is readily apparent that Papadopoulos had said nothing at all that tied the hacked DNC emails to Russia. As I wrote at the time, anyone paying attention to the Hillary email scandal suspected that Hillary’s emails had long before been hacked by foreign intelligence from her time as Secretary of State. [Read more…]

Trump is no better or worse than other recent presidents

by Leave a Comment

Hand-wringing about Trump’s personality and private life — when compared to most other recent Presidents — is akin to complaining that a leopard has spots.

One of the things I hear from those who hate Trump personally is that he is worse than any other president who’s ever occupied the White House. Perhaps because I’m a history major, I have to disagree with that. We’ve had a lot of truly reprehensible people in the White House plus a couple of truly reprehensible people trying to get into the White House.

Woodrow Wilson was a model of rectitude in his private life. He was also an ardent racist who segregated the federal civil service, showed the KKK-loving film Birth of a Nation in the White House because he thought it was accurate history, used the excuse of WWI to bring fascism to America, and refused to step down when incapacitated, so that his wife effectively became president of the United States. Bottom line: Awful man, awful president.

Franklin Roosevelt, despite his disabilities, was a fairly compulsive womanizer, a habit he kept up while in the White House. Many people also feel that his innate antisemitism helped enable the Holocaust.

Roosevelt’s bottom line: Awful man, effective president if you like the Leftward tilt he gave the country, and a good wartime leader.

Harry Truman was also a model of rectitude in his private life, but there’s no getting away from the fact that he came up politically through the completely corrupt Pendergast political machine that dominated Missouri. Maybe he kept his nose clean but the reality is that, when you play politics with the corrupt big boys….

Truman’s bottom line: Decent man, decent president. A rarity

John F. Kennedy was disgusting. He got into the White House because his father made a deal with the union bosses, whose last-minute get-out-the-vote effort (in a style only the union bosses know how to do), tipped the balance for him. In exchange, one of Kennedy’s first acts was an executive order unionizing federal employees. Even ardent Leftist Franklin Roosevelt didn’t do that, because he understood that the unions and the politicians would simply throw taxpayer money back and forth at each other, which is precisely what has happened since 1961. Without that dirty deal, it’s doubtful a Democrat would ever have won the White House again. After all, the biggest spenders in every election are always government unions and it’s always on behalf of Democrats.

Kennedy was also a gravely ill man (get it? gravely ill because he had Graves disease) and a drug addict, hopped up on steroids and amphetamines. There were also all the pain medications for his lifelong back problems, which were compounded by the back injury he sustained during the war.

Kennedy’s compulsive womanizing was sickening. We learned recently that deflowered a 19-year-old intern, passed her around to “service” his buddies at the White House, and when he thought she was pregnant, sent her to an abortionist even though that was illegal and Kennedy was a Catholic. We’ve also known for years that he potentially put himself under the control of the mafia thanks to his affair with Judith Exner.

His handling of the Bay of Pigs was a disaster.

Really — and ironically — the only thing that saved Kennedy’s presidency, or at least the reputation of his presidency, was his early demise. Let the Democrat myth-making begin. . . .

Kennedy’s bottom line: Awful man, with a presidency too short to grade. [Read more…]

It never rains, it pours open thread

by Leave a Comment

Paying work is calling, but I here’s an open thread about Deep State spying, Beto’s descent and Buttigieg’s ascent, and the creepy, ooky Joe Biden campaign.

Open Thread bubbleI had a lull in my paying legal work for some time, something that always leaves me worried. For almost thirty years, whenever a lull hits, I think, “This is it; this is the day I just take down the shingle.” And then the work comes in again.

But what always happens — of course — is that when the work finally comes in, either I get calls from all sorts of people at the same time or the work is on a tight deadline. In this case, both happened. Everything came at once and the deadlines for all are urgent. Ironically, because they’re all short turnaround tasks, my compensation will be minimal. Still, the deal with my kind of work is that I don’t say “no” to the little jobs, because I want them to think of me for the big jobs.

I should have all this wrapped up by Sunday or Monday but, the for the time being, blogging will be limited.

If you’re casting about for open thread ideas, may I suggest:

I paid attention to Dan Bongino while driving today, so I can tell you about the chronology: In mid-November 2016, right after the election, Mike Rogers bypassed his Obama superiors and had a secret meeting with Trump. That same day, Trump abruptly announced that his transition team was leaving Trump tower and heading for a different Trump property. We now know that one day later, Strzok and Page were texting each other to see if they could get a mole into the Trump administration to monitor “changes in demeanor.” Rogers was fired very shortly thereafter.

This dynamic duo’s texts are often opaque, but it’s reasonable to believe that this is what they meant: We know they had been listening in on Trump’s business, and may well had physical bugs in Trump tower or at least taps on the phone lines. Mike Rogers, working in the NSA, discovered what was going on (along with a host of other violations) and sneaked past his minders to tell Trump. Trump pulled up stakes to find a safe place for his communications. Strzok and Page, deprived of the Deep State’s ear into the Trump administration wanted a mole for two reasons: (1) to start listening again and (2) to find out whether Trump’s move from his office was a coincidence or if he really knew what was happening, which would be trouble for them. [Read more…]