Bookworm Room

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

Bookworm Beat 10/22/18 — the Honduran invasion edition and open thread

by Leave a Comment

This Bookworm Beat is about more than the slo-mo Honduran invasion, but that figures largely here, hence the post’s title.

Bookworm Beat Honduran InvasionA round-up of ideas and information about the Honduran invasion. When thousands of military age men threaten to storm your border, there’s only one proper description: “an invasion.” All that other stuff — economic migrants, refugees, huddled masses — is euphemism intended to obscure the reality that inherently dangerous people [i.e., military age men and men from terrorist-supporting and non-Latin American countries] are announcing loudly and clearly that will ignore American sovereignty and invade our country.

I don’t doubt that women and children are sprinkled throughout this horde to make good television when Trump (God willing) stops them at the American border but, again, that’s not the bulk of the group. Instead, those women and children will find that, just as the Palestinians like to place children front and center for maximum propaganda impact when Israel finally fights back against deadly provocation, so too are these women and children unwitting tools in the Leftist war to destroy American sovereignty.

As it happens, we don’t need to guess what this invasion will look like. First, we saw a trial run with the children’s invasion on Obama’s watch, an invasion that came complete with diseases, MS-13 and other criminals, and a new cohort of anchors for chain migration. We’ve also seen the adult version play out in Europe over the past three years and it has, at best, strained Europe’s economy and, at worst, led to sexual assaults on women and children, increased property crimes, murders, racially-based violence, and terrorism.

Immigration should be based upon the capacity and desire of the receiving country, rather than the demands of those unfortunate enough to be residents of countries distinguished by corruption, theocratic dictatorships (that the immigrants want to bring with them), and economic failing. If these military-aged young men want to improve life, let them turn back home to Honduras and take a stand against crime and corruption there, rather than bringing those society-destroying vices here.

One of the things that may have struck you is that those young man are moving at a bizarrely rapid clip. Could it be that they’re not marching at all but are getting a little help? Why, yes it could:

However many trucks are working the convoy now, they’re going to need more — while Mexico made some ineffectual efforts to stop the original invasion at its own borders, that failure has emboldened others to join:

New estimates cited by El Universal, a Mexican newspaper, say the caravan now has 14,000 people, many of them already in Mexico while others still wait. {Emphasis mine.)

Another thing that someone found noteworthy is the clothes these “spontaneous” refugees are wearing:

And then there’s the flag under which they’ve chosen to march, as well as the flag they’ve chosen to burn:

(As always, the Daily Mail has a great gallery of photos, showing the marching mob’s testosterone, child pawns, and violent impulses.)

Again, this is not a “migrant movement.” It is a full-fledged, planned invasion of a sovereign nation.

Moreover, as Don Surber notes, an invasion of this size, complete with transportation and publicists, is bigger than George Soros funding it by his lonesome (although I’d be very surprised if he were not involved):

Caravan adults will work for under-the-table wages that are off the books. This allows them to collect welfare. Their employers don’t have to pay the 7.65% employer match to payroll taxes or provide health insurance.

Illegal aliens can live in America working for less than minimum wage if it is off the books. That is because they still collect welfare and get Medicaid in addition to their untaxed pay.

They do better than legal citizens who make minimum wage.

The Chamber of Commerce does not want to stop this because it provides cheap labor.

Mexico does not want to stop this because so many illegals send lots of money home.

This is why other nations, nominally allies, allow the caravan to head north.

[snip]

This is a well-financed caravan aimed at using women and children to hide the real intent of this movement. Corporate interests are with cheap labor. Conservatives only fool themselves if they think George Soros is alone in this venture.

Wolf Howling contends (and I agree) that those Americans funding this enterprise need to be found, arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for extended periods of time.

By the way, if any Leftist says to you “but Posse Comitatus,” ignore him or her because that person is ignorant. The Posse Comitatus Act exists to prevent a president from using the military against Americans. It cannot possibly be extended to prevent using the American military to protect Americans from an external invading force.

I’ll wrap up with Trump’s tweets on the invasion:

I hope Trump means it about cutting off funds to the countries allowing this to happen (something Roger L. Simon thinks, as I do, will benefit these same countries by forcing them to address their internal failings) — and I hope he has the balls and the spine to do what it takes to block this invasion at the border. [Read more…]

I think there’ll be an October surprise in the next week . . . for a very funny reason

by Leave a Comment

My personal history, which sees major stories drop whenever I’m away from my computer, means I think my upcoming trip will trigger an October surprise.

Surprise explosionWithout fail — and this has held true for the fourteen years I’ve been writing Bookworm Room — whenever I can’t blog, something big happens. Whether I’m doing trial prep, caring for a sick child, experiencing a power outage, or am otherwise away from my computer, big news breaks. Always. It’s as predictable as the sun rising in the east.

I’ll be leaving in a couple of days for a week-long trip, during which time I’ll have minimal internet access. (Don’t worry, though, because Wolf Howling will keep this site lively.) Because I’ll be mostly incommunicado, if the past is a predictor of the future, an October surprise, whatever it may be, is coming down the pike.

I’ve been amusing myself trying to imagine what the surprises might happen. One of my theories is that James O’Keefe, of Project Veritas, will drop a really big video about the Deep State. The last few videos were amusing, but they were about fairly small fry Leftists abusing the taxpayer’s dime while working for the government. I think O’Keefe has something big he’s still holding on to.

I’ve also been hoping for the last year and a half that Sessions will start indicting people. I’ve been clinging for months to the theory that the feud between Sessions and Trump is theater, intended to create distance between the two when the indictments drop. Yeah, yeah, I know this is just a gossamer-fine fantasy, but I still like it, so I’m still hoping it’s an October surprise.

Lastly, I wonder if an Inspector General will have something interesting to say in the next ten days. The two Inspector Generals I know of have been very, very quiet. Too quiet, if you know what I mean….

And that’s kind of where my imagination runs out on the conservative side of the aisle. On the Leftist side of the aisle, I expect Mueller to announce all sorts of horrible things about people close to Trump, or at least closer to Trump than the other people Mueller’s caught in his web. Because I think the Russia collusion is a sham that was cooked up within the FBI, DOJ, CIA, and State Department (not to mention the White House), whatever Mueller’s cooked up won’t be fundamentally serious, but it will keep the media happy in the days before the election.

Your ideas, please?

Bookworm Beat 9/18/2018 — the Kavanaugh fraud edition and open thread

by Leave a Comment

Leftist responses to Ford’s accusations against Kavanaugh indicate pretty strongly that they know they’re fraudulent, plus much more on current topics.

KavanaughOn the Kavanaugh accusations, the Left’s line is “don’t ask so we won’t have to tell.” Actually, that’s not quite what Clown News Network reporter Chris Cillizza said. When reminded that Republicans would like to investigate the huge holes and inconsistencies in Christine Ford’s narrative, this is what he said:

Remember, in the Left’s America, the standard is the due process rights do not extend to Republicans. This is because they know that, in the face of fraudulent accusations, due process would expose the fraud. The only way to prevail on stale, uncorroborated, vague accusations is to use a new standard, one that applies only to conservatives, never Leftists:

Ford has nothing to gain? Really? Except for the fact that, as a hard Left person, she may effectively knock out a conservative Supreme Court nominee. Or even if he gets appointed, she will have tainted him in the eyes of half of America, not to mention his own children’s eyes.

And she has everything to lose? Really? When we know she’ll be endless feted on the Left, with invitations to A-List Leftie parties, huge book deals, etc.? I mean, look at the traction a sleazy porn star gained from smearing Trump.

And women never lie? Really?

Apparently a simulacrum of due process is passé for our media solons when they can profit off smears against conservatives.

Debra Katz, Ford’s lawyer, adds a new wrinkle to how due process plays out in Leftist America (emphasis added):

During the interview, Katz revealed that there was another girl present at the party, which allegedly took place in 1982 while Kavanaugh was attending Georgetown Prep. Ford previously told the Washington Post that there were four boys at the party but never indicated if there were other girls beside herself.

“While we have you, perhaps you can help us fill in the blanks on some of her story. She says that she was at a party in probably 1982 in Montgomery County, Maryland. She says that there were four guys there, these are high school students, as was she. There were four guys there. Were there any girls there that day?” anchor Alisyn Camerota asked.

“Yes, there was another girl at this party, yes,” Katz said.

Camerota asked if Ford has tried to talk to any of the other partygoers to see if they will corroborate her story, but Katz declined to place the burden of proof on her client.

“That’s not her job to do that. If this is going to be investigated, it should be done by investigators,” Katz asserted.

Having put out a vague, uncorroborated, confusing narrative, Ford’s job here is done. It’s up to Kavanaugh to prove a negative attached to a gossamer allegation that can be rejiggered to fit any time line and location in the early 1980s.

But in the race to the bottom, Ana Marie Cox may still beat out both Katz and Dowd:

We need to judge Brett Kavanaugh, not just by what he may or may not have done, but how he treats a woman’s pain. And that is something I’m going to be paying attention to on Monday. How does he respond to what’s happening. Whether or not he agrees that this happened with her, does he take her pain seriously? Do the people interrogating her pain take her pain seriously? Now, I’ll give you a spoiler alert, I don’t think Brett Kavanaugh takes women’s pain very seriously, and I know that because of the decisions he’s made as a judge.

Ben Shapiro has the correct take on that outrageous statement:

This is a morally abhorrent statement. So if a woman falsely accuses a man of rape, we don’t judge him based on whether he actually raped her – we judge him based on whether he feels the pain of a person falsely accusing him of rape. The real question of the Duke lacrosse case, by this standard, wasn’t whether a stripper was actually raped – the question is whether the members of the Duke lacrosse team were sensitive to her feelings while she was falsely accusing them of rape.

That would be an insane statement enough. But Cox goes even further: she already knows that Kavanaugh won’t meet her standard of sympathy because he hasn’t decided cases how she likes on key “feminist” issues, presumably like abortion. Now, never mind that Kavanaugh hasn’t actually signaled that he’d be willing to overturn Roe v. Wade. Think about the underlying contention: we can tell whether you are a bad person by your level of sympathy for a rape accuser whom you believe is lying about you, and we can judge your level of sympathy by looking at your political decisions. The logic is simple: if you’re a person who disagrees with Ana Marie Cox, you can be slandered as a rapist, and any attempt to rebut such accusations will amount to a lack of sympathy.

And do remember that, despite all the shrieks of outrage from the left about a hazy 35(ish) year old uncorroborated story with holes large enough to drive a freight train through, the Left has been utterly silent about recent, credible, corroborated claims against DNC apparatchik (and AG candidate in Minnesota) Keith Ellison:

Moreover, not only haven’t they believed the woman, they’ve set out to destroy her. [Read more…]

Sunlight is the best disinfectant: Trump’s order declassifying documents

by Leave a Comment

Trump’s order declassifying documents related to the “Russia Collusion” narrative is the best way to destroy Deep State bullies and reveal government rot.

Illustrated edition Trump not a sexual predator Congress Mueller declassifying documentsI am delighted that Donald Trump issued a sweeping order declassifying a huge bolus of documents related to the Russia probe:

The documents ordered declassified are a handful of pages of the June 2017 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to continue surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page, which originally began in 2016. Trump also ordered all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all surveillance applications of Page be declassified and released.

Trump also ordered that all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Page surveillance applications be released.

Trump also ordered the declassification of all FBI reports of interviews DOJ official Bruce Ohr prepared in connection with the Russia investigation. Ohr had a close relationship with former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier connection Trump to Russia. Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, the same opposition research firm that Bruce Ohr’s wife, Nellie Ohr, was contracted by.

Trump also directed the Justice Department and FBI “to publicly release all text messages relating to the Russia investigation, without redaction,” of Comey and Ohr, as well as former FBI Deputy Director Andre McCabe.

The text messages of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were also ordered to be released without redaction. Strzok and Page were both part of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, as well as the Russia investigation.

Sadly, the DOJ and FBI can still drag their feet on this (which I guess explains why he issued the order now. making it a September surprise, and not closer to the election): [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 9/7/2018 — the “won’t that boring Obama ever shut up” edition

by Leave a Comment

This Bookworm Beat has as its starting points Obama’s self-aggrandizing, offensive speech. Then it gets to the fun and interesting stuff for you to enjoy.

Bookworm Beat Obama Brennan double standards insane leftistsObama as a sleeping aid. I visited my father’s best friend today. The two met in 1935. My father passed away more than twenty years ago, but his friend is still going strong at 98.

He’s a dear man, except when he gets on politics. Then, his inner communist emerges, loud and shrill. He listened to Obama’s speech this morning but when I asked him about it as a conversational gambit, he couldn’t tell me what he had heard. Having looked at the speech myself, I’m not surprised at his failure to discuss the speech. This inability wasn’t due to advanced age. As always, aside from self-aggrandizement and insults, Obama has little to say.

So let’s move on to more interesting stuff, including more riffs about Obama’s many failures:

The Trump economy is still going strong. The economy is booming as it has few times before in American history. In his forgettable speech, Obama tried to own it.

It’s true that Obama presided over a decent stock market, but that was because investors were too afraid to do anything with their money in his hyper-regulatory environment but plant it in the stock market. They didn’t invent things, grow businesses, or hire people. To the extent people had jobs, they were dead-end, low-paying, part-time affairs. And so the economy staggered on for eight long years, without a single serious upward blip.

And then Trump got elected and, magically, the economy started roaring. It roared with even more vigor when Trump got the tax man off the back of businesses (i.e., employers) by bringing America’s corporate tax rate in line with the corporate tax rate in most of Europe. (Yup, all those semi-socialist nations so beloved of the Left had corporate tax rates lower than America’s.)

Based upon the soaring economy, I’m going to venture a prediction. I doubt that many minorities will be able to make themselves pull the lever for Republican candidates. However, I suspect that they’ll passively-aggressively do so by failing to turn out for Democrats. After all, the Democrats did not improve their living standards; at least one Republican has.

The true story behind Obama’s Iran deal made me want to cry. Wait! That’s wrong. It didn’t make me want to cry. It actually made Wendy Sherman, the chief American negotiator cry — right in front of the Iranian team. Apparently staying in a super luxury hotel for several days and eating only five star cuisine, weakened her so much that, in the face of their meanie demands, she broke down.

Matthew Continetti has the story and I urge you to read it. Then you can decide whether you want to laugh or cry. All I know is that, having read it, I thanked God once again for President Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump garners praise for his Iraq policy. Obama incontinently left Iraq, giving birth to ISIS and creating an opening for Iran. According to one man at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, while Trump cannot undo the sum of damage Obama inflicted on that beleaguered nation, he’s making really smart decisions:

[T]he real reason why the US is staying put in Iraq is to prevent it from becoming an Iranian client state, as Lebanon has become and as Syria might soon become. The investment of 2,000 troops, most of whom serve as advisors and trainers of the Federal Army of Iraq, is worth its price in gold in achieving this objective compared to the 100,000 American troops who were on the ground before the massive withdrawal in 2010.

[snip]

This underlying quest for independence from Iranian tutelage justifies President Trump’s wager that 2,000 troops might be worth maintaining to prevent the new fall of Baghdad. The least it could do is stave off the Iranians sufficiently for Iraq’s government and citizens to decide for themselves what the nature of their relationship with Iran will be.

The whole analysis makes for fascinating reading. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 9/1/2018: the “things we see on Saturdays” edition

by Leave a Comment

This is a hodge-podge about debased funerals, corrupt investigations, stupid Leftists, Hollywood hate, and other stuff to amuse and dismay the reader.

Bookworm BeatRegarding the obsequies for McCain, it’s clear that the Wellstone funeral was a warm-up. I’d like to think that ordinary Americans, rather than being moved politically by demagoguery over a dead body (demagoguery that same dead person, when alive, planned for), won’t be impressed but will be disgusted. And that’s all I have to say on the subject.

McCain’s seat is not a hereditary asset. Rumor has it that the Arizona governor is contemplating giving McCain’s seat to his daughter, the execrable Meghan, or to his meaningless (but nicely wealthy) cipher of a wife, Cindy.

This is an appalling idea. These Senate seats belong to the American people. They are not family sinecures or heirlooms. Whatever drives Governor Ducey’s decision-making about filling that seat, it better be for the good of Arizona and the Republicans who elected McCain, and not for the good of the McCain political dynasty.

Aretha Franklin’s funeral turns into a circus. Aretha Franklin was a woman of tremendous talent who, so far as I know, always comported herself with dignity during a long life in the public eye. I wonder what she would have made of her funeral.

In the seats of honor were an antisemitic, anti-White, anti-Christian, homophobic madman and all-around hater (Farrakhan), an illiterate race hustler and antisemite (Sharpton), a somewhat literate race hustler and antisemite (Jackson), and a credibly accused rapist and serial sexual assaulter (Bill Clinton) who compulsively ogled an under-dressed entertainer in an obvious and unseemly fashion.

Bill was not alone when it came to sexually compulsive behavior. Bishop Charles Ellis III one of the pastors at the funeral seemingly spent a minute groping singer Ariana Grande (the same woman Bill ogled).

The viewing of the body revealed a raddled old harridan who claimed she had what it took to govern our nation but who is, in fact, so physically compromised she can no longer climb stairs on her own.

Giving a eulogy was a Georgetown sociology professor, Michael Eric Dyson, whose oozing Trump Derangement Syndrome suddenly gushed out in a burst of ghetto language attacking the sitting president. His verbal diarrhea was based upon that fact that Trump stated (accurately) that Franklin, whom he paid for her singing services at his hotels, “worked” for him. In Donald’s world (the real world), where talent is rewarded with well-remunerated employment, that was high praise indeed. Dyson, however, saw things in a different way: [Read more…]

[VIDEO] Thousands of people in Indiana line up for a Trump rally

by Leave a Comment

This is simply incredible:

Dan Bongino explains the post-Manafort and Cohen stakes

by Leave a Comment

Yesterday’s news had nothing to do with collusion. It was about Leftists attacking constitutional elections. Dan Bongino explains with facts and passion.

Dan BonginoDan Bongino was on fire today. If you haven’t yet listened to his podcast, I recommend you do. He begins by explaining what yesterday’s Manafort verdict and Cohen plea bargain mean, which is interesting. Where it really catches fire, though, is about 18 minutes or so into the podcast when he explains what the stakes are.

Bongino’s key point is that this is the time to fight. That Trump has an unsavory past is something we’ve always known about him. What we’re discovering, though, is that the Democrats and the Deep State (which usually, but not always, overlap), will do anything to overturn an election with which they disagree. This is much bigger than Trump. People who throw up their hands in either despair or disgust, while saying, “Well! Trump’s a sleaze so I’m not going to support Republicans in November” are turning themselves into dangerous quislings.

With Trump, Americans get a functional president, not a decorative one

by Leave a Comment

It’s another #NeverTrump attack on Trump’s rough-hewn style. Pfeh! Trump is the perfect American president: a heart-of-gold brawler who puts American first.

Illustrated edition Trump not a sexual predator Congress MuellerIn its endless competition with the Weekly Standard to be the outlet the drive-by media quotes most (and whose pundits get the most appearances on MSM outlets), National Review has published an article entitled Americans Want Their President to Have a Little Class. As the title suggests, the article bemoans the fact that Trump, despite being rich (although his opulence is nouveau riche rather than “classy” rich), actually gets down in the dirt to fight his political and media opponents (but I repeat myself).

Frankly, I don’t care about presidential class. Unlike the Queen, our president is not a figurehead. He’s a working executive.

Given the president’s intended functionality, I’m infinitely more interested in his accomplishments on behalf of the American people than I am in bemoaning his pugilistic style. And indeed, to the extent his pugilistic style is serving the American people by (a) exposing media figures for partisan hacks rather than honest reporters and (b) bypassing that same media to bring his message direct and uncensored to the American people, that pugilistic style is an important part of his serving the American people.

I’m also uninterested in all the mean-girls gossip our hysterical media likes. Was he mean to Omarosa and other employees? I don’t care. Does he like to eat two scoops of ice cream? I don’t care. Is he a diet soda freak? I don’t care, although he might care if it leads to kidney stones. Has he been an unfaithful husband? I don’t care. That’s between him and Melania, and it matters about as much as the unfaithfulness of Kennedy, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, etc. Clinton’s unfaithfulness mattered only because (a) he raped and assaulted women, (b) he lied under about his attacks, and (c) with his White House shenanigans, he exposed himself to serious blackmail. His relationship with Hillary was none of my business. [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 8/16/2018 — the Brennan edition and open thread

by Leave a Comment

Trump revoked John Brennan’s security clearance and Proggies went insane — and of course, they went stupid, too. All that and more in this Bookworm Beat.

Bookworm Beat logo Brennan editionApparently “honesty” and “integrity” have a different meaning inside the beltway. I was one of the millions who appreciated Admiral McRaven’s commencement speech at the University of Texas a few years ago, when he spoke about life lessons he’d picked up as a SEAL. Indeed, ever since then, I make my bed every morning. As he said, you’ll start your day with an accomplishment and, if it’s been a bad day, you come home to a nicely made bed. Those are two solid reasons to make a bed.

Just because I like McRaven’s homespun military wisdom, though, doesn’t mean I have to like his politics. Nor do I have to like the loopy Leftist logic that he reveals thanks to his politics. For example, in a much touted op-ed in the WaPo, McRaven actually called John Brennan “a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question….”

It just goes to show that, in both Dem world and D.C. world, “integrity,” “honesty,” and “character” have different meanings than they do in the real world. After all, in the real world, no one would say it shows honesty, integrity, or character to lie repeatedly to Congress, but that’s what Brennan did.

By the way, I’m not even talking about the most recent go-round of lies. I’m talking about the lies in 2014, when Brennan was still living in the wonders of Obama-world. Back then, the lies were wrapped around the illegal activity of the CIA spying on our own government:

As reports emerged Thursday that an internal investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general found that the CIA “improperly” spied on US Senate staffers when researching the CIA’s dark history of torture, it was hard to conclude anything but the obvious: John Brennan blatantly lied to the American public. Again.

“The facts will come out,” Brennan told NBC News in March after Senator Dianne Feinstein issued a blistering condemnation of the CIA on the Senate floor, accusing his agency of hacking into the computers used by her intelligence committee’s staffers. “Let me assure you the CIA was in no way spying on [the committee] or the Senate,” he said.

After the CIA inspector general’s report completely contradicted Brennan’s statements, it now appears Brennan was forced to privately apologize to intelligence committee chairs in a “tense” meeting earlier this week.

Brennan was so bad that, back in 2014, the same WaPo that now has McRaven leaping to Brennan’s defense because Trump yanked Brennan’s security clearance, had its own opinions editor (not a guest) demand that Obama fire Brennan:

An apology and an internal review board might suffice if this were Brennan or intelligence leaders’ first offense, but the track record is far from spotless. In 2011, Brennan claimed that dozens of U.S. drone strikes on overseas targets had not killed a single civilian. This remarkable success rate was not only disputed at the time by news reports — even supporters of the drone program called it “absurd” — but as the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the New York Times both reported later, President Obama received reports from the very beginning of his presidency about drone strikes killing numerous civilians. As Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser at the time, Brennan would have received these reports as well, so either Brennan knew that his claim was a lie, or he is secretly deaf. Similarly, Brennan denied snooping on Senate computers six weeks after Feinstein first made the accusation to the CIA in private, which means either that he was lying, or he had ignored a serious charge against his agency for six weeks, then spouted off about it without any real knowledge — hardly the behavior expected of an agency director.

And last year, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied under oath to Congress when he told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and the Senate Intelligence Committee that the National Security Agency did not collect any kind of data on millions of Americans, a claim later disproved by documents leaked by former NSA employee Edward Snowden. Despite Clapper receiving criticism from both sides of the aisle, the damage to Clapper’s and the White House’s credibility on intelligence and civil liberties issues and, well, the fact that lying to Congress is a crime (though one that’s difficult to prosecute), Obama has not disciplined Clapper in any way.

Brennan is a bad apple and has always been a bad apple, going back to his communist days. Once upon a time, the Left understood this, but Leftists are so infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome that, as many have said, if Trump figured out a way to cure cancer, the Leftists would demand he stop hurting cancer.

Oh, and to the extent McRaven, in the WaPo piece, asked to have his security clearance pulled too, I think Trump should oblige him. First, security clearance is a privilege, not a right, and one that operates to benefit the U.S., not the security holder. Which leads me to the second point, which is that McRaven has shown that his years at the Pentagon have warped his values, common sense, and ability to understand the common meaning of words. That’s not a good man to possess to valuable a privilege. Anyway who can look at the hysterical, dishonest Brennan and think he’s a safe man to trust with a security clearance has proven himself too lacking in sense to have his own clearance.

Incidentally, the current crop of lies against Trump don’t stop with denying that Brennan lies. Just in case you read the defense of Brennan that he was the point man on the bin Laden raid, he wasn’t:

If the Left says something, the rule isn’t “trust but verify.” It’s “don’t trust; verify everything.”

I’ll give the last word on the subject to Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), who issued a scathing indictment against Brennan and supporting Trump’s decision:


[Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 8/13/2018 — the holding out against Leftists edition

by Leave a Comment

This Bookworm Beat has it all: Leftist racism, Russian conspiracies, the Cold War, cops, Hercule Poirot, education insanity, crazed campus co-eds, and more.

Bookworm Beat logoThe Trump Tower set-up and other Russian collusion fantasies. You have to be a Leftist to claim that Trump’s son walking away from a meeting at Trump Tower with Russians without promising anyone is collusion, while the fact that federal law enforcement, the DNC, and Hillary’s campaign worked closely with myriad Russians close to Putin to destroy Trump is not collusion.

Lee Smith helps clarify for the confused.

And if you’re still confused, Thomas Lifson reminds us of the staggering double standard that saw the federal government and the media cover for DiFi’s grotesque carelessness with (and profiting from) the Chinese government, while those same institutions are endlessly trying to destroy Trump because . . . something, something Russians, something something:

The contrast with the treatment received by the Trump campaign when a Russian spy was merely suspected (on the basis of what appear to be ginned-up concerns over Carter Page, an FBI informant)  is so stark as to raise serious question as to the integrity of the FBI counterintelligence operation.  The NSA’s ability to monitor every form of electronic communications except ham radio [footnote omitted], was mobilized to spy on the presidential campaign of the opposition party to the Obama administration. No notification to the campaign was offered, unlike Feinstein’s treatment.

The entire incident is being presented to the public as no big deal. That is a classic example of the fake news of which President Trump so vocally complains.

Finally, VDH looks at the insane Russianism driving the Left, some of whom have become true believers, and many of whom are cynical operatives trying to protect either their power bases or their ideological hold over American institutions:

Robert Mueller was tasked with investigating Russian collusion in the 2016 election. He was supposed to find proof that Trump campaign officials deliberately collaborated with Russian agents to subvert the election and thereby achieve through foreign subterfuge what they could not secure through votes.

Yet that mandate was jettisoned just weeks after Mueller began, apparently once his lawyers sensed what Peter Strzok (soon to be on his investigatory team) already knew when he had texted Lisa Page, “There’s no big there there” —an impression that both James Comey and James Clapper later shared when they confessed that they had no evidence of Russian collusion.

After a year and a half, Mueller so far has been reduced to indicting some Russians operatives for cyber crimes and a few former Trump officials on charges that have had nothing to do with collusion.

But out of the Mueller conundrum and congressional investigations arose damning information that Obama national-security officials illegally unmasked and leaked to the press the names of those surveilled. In addition, DOJ and FBI officials deliberately misled either gullible or partisan FISA court judges to obtain surveillance warrants on American citizens, on the basis of an unverified dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Discredited FBI officials lied to federal investigators. The former FBI director leaked confidential memos written on FBI time on FBI devices, and he probably worked with CIA Director John Brennan (who had previously lied twice under oath to the United States Congress) to monitor the Trump campaign, including but not limited to implanting government informants among Trump employees.

[snip]

In sum, Russian collusion is a 2016 election construct. The hysteria over it serves a palliative for hatred of a presidency that so far cannot be stopped before 2020. Had Hillary Clinton won the election as experts assured the nation she would, there would be no Mueller investigation, either of Trump or of wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton. Now-fired or reassigned FBI grandees like Andrew McCabe or Peter Strzok and DOJ officials such as Bruce Ohr would have thrived. If anything, embracing conflicts of interest and bias to successfully warp an election would be seen as a sacrifice to be rewarded, not culpability to be punished.

The Cold War reminds us that socialism is bad. A new poll came out showing that Democrats adore socialism, which they think is better for people than capitalism. This view, of course, means that they’re looking, not at National Socialism (aka Nazis), or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (aka the Soviet Union), or the completely socialists Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (aka North Korea).

Instead, what it means is that they’re looking at that rosy view of Western Europe from the 1960s through the 1990s. Of course, they’re totally missing the fact that Europe, despite its claim that it was “socialist,” wasn’t socialist at all.

What supported Western Europe’s cradle-to-grave socialism was America. We paid for their military costs and accepted their outrageous tariffs, all to help them to recover from WWII and to prevent them from once again falling into an apocalyptic conflagration. Europe may have art and architecture, but the 20th century proved that it had little in the way of actual civilization.

Anyway, if you know a Leftist stupid enough to think socialism is the answer, this video might (maybe, perhaps, just possibly) help you educate that person (h/t Seraphic Secret):

Big Tech is so bad, even Noam Chomsky objects. This comes from the wonderful world of “even a stopped clock is right twice a day“:

Responding from his official MIT email address, Chomsky wrote, “What I’ve seen of what he does is outrageous, but unlike many civil libertarians here and especially in other countries, I don’t think that the right way to deal with
‘hate speech’ and crazed fabrications is to ban them; rather, to confront them, and to seek and confront the reasons why anyone pays a moment’s attention to them.”

Who knew that the arch-Leftist Chomsky was a fan of the marketplace of ideas and free speech? (And no, I did not miss the fact that he accused “civil libertarians” of advocating censorship. I have no idea what he’s talking about, since the essence of libertarianism is that we don’t bring the government’s heavy hand down on things.)

Leftists hate blacks who aren’t Leftists: [Read more…]

Bookworm Beat 7/31/2018 — a “world is going crazy” wrap-up

by Leave a Comment

The world is indeed going crazy — but mixed in with the Left’s bad stuff, this Bookworm Beat also has things that are both interesting and good.

Bookworm Beat Woman WritingWe need to take federal funds out of America’s colleges and universities. Exhibit A for this proposal is a long, long, utterly fascinating article that Milo Yiannopoolos has written about the war that the hard-Left, identity-politics driven, social justice warriors are waging within the confines of medieval studies. While medieval studies may sound arcane, the reality is that the article describes in microcosm the vicious, Marxist battles taking place in every college and university — all of which are taxpayer-funded.

This Leftist academic coup needs to stop, which is another reason to vote Republican in the fall. I doubt a Republican Congress will stop the funds, but they’ll still be better than Democrats, who are open in their demands that all colleges be free and that this Marxist crap get full taxpayer funding.

A spirit stronger than the Holocaust. Anyone who survived the Holocaust has an amazing story. Menachem Z. Rosensaft’s father has a more amazing story than most.

I’ve often said that those of us whose parents experienced WWII first hand are the last of the WWII generation. When we go, there is no one left to remember, whether first hand or second hand.

Brennan’s CIA and the attack on Trump. A friend insisted that I read Michael Isikoff’s and David Corn’s Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump. If those names are familiar to you, it’s because they were part of publicizing the Steele dossier so that the FBI, in making its FISA application, could claim two sources to justify the application to spy on Carter Page, not just one. David Corn is also a long-time writer associated with Mother Jones and The Nation, so that gives you an idea of his political orientation. Isikoff is the man who sat on the blue dress story lest it embarrass Bill Clinton.

I’ve only read the book’s introduction and the first chapter so far, but I’m finding it hard to keep a straight face as I go. It’s an amalgam of gossip, innuendo, insults, and meaningless anecdotes, all aimed at creating an aura of “badness” around Trump. What makes the book especially ludicrous is that, since its publication, we’ve learned more about the FISA application, we’ve had all sorts of admissions that Obama knew what was going on and did nothing lest it harm Hillary’s candidacy, we’ve seen Trump use his carrot and stick approach to many leaders he finds hostile to America’s well-being, and we’ve seen him make life more difficult for Putin than any other past leader, especially Obama.

Oh, and we’ve learned that Brennan is a corrupt Swamp creature, who was quite possibly one of the architects of an attempted coup against an American president. [Read more…]

Will there be “shy” Trump supporters voting this coming November?

by Leave a Comment

I have three reasons for thinking that conservatives will turn out at the polls and support Trump’s agenda this Fall, despite that alleged “Blue Wave.”

Donald TrumpThe doom and gloomers, including the relentless NeverTrumpers, are saying that there’s a good chance that the Democrats will retake the House, because who doesn’t want to see Nancy Pelosi with the Speaker’s gavel in hand once again. We also have to deal with the reality that, while growing numbers of Americans recognize that the media is deranged, hysterical, and dishonest, news coverage that tilts 90% against Trump (trumpeting conspiracy theories while burying actual, pro-Trump news), will have a subliminal effect on voters.

Because I’m often a doom and gloomer, you’d think that I’d be wringing my hands now and crying out “Woe is me; woe is America.” For once, though, I’m a bit optimistic. I suspect that with Trump, even more than with Dubya, we’re in a world in which the “shy Tory factor” is very pronounced. Here are three reasons why I think that:

Reason #1: I was listening to a Dan Bongino podcast (which I highly recommend), and he told a story about his certainty that Trump would win in November 2016. According to Bongino, he figured out what was going on when he was running for a House seat in Florida (which he lost, something that was bad for Florida, but probably good for everyone else because, as I said, I highly recommend his podcast).

As Bongino explains it, when you’re canvasing, your campaign manager will give you a list of likely voters so that you can target them with door-to-door visits. It would be nice, of course, if the candidate could knock on every door, but knocking on the doors of people who are disinterested or die-hard members of the opposing party is just a waste of time.

So, how does a campaign manager figure out who a “likely voter” is? It’s a person who voted in past elections. Past votes, after all, are reasonable predictors for future votes.

What Bongino noticed, though, was that as he went from the house of one “likely Republican voter” to another, he was bypassing myriad houses that had “Trump for President” signs in front of them. Finally, curiosity got the best of him, and he knocked on a few doors, introduced himself, and asked about those Trump signs.

Bongino discovered that these signs festooned the homes of people who were not likely voters because they’d never voted before. For that reason, they weren’t showing up in the polls and they weren’t showing up in campaign algorithms. Nevertheless, they were so excited by Trump’s candidacy that they finally decided it was time to vote.

I suspect that Bongino’s 2016 experience continues to hold in 2018: There are lots of invisible Trump supporters, which leads me to Reasons #2 and #3 for my out-of-character optimism. [Read more…]