The Bookworm Beat 5-19-15 — “the beat goes on” edition and open thread

Woman-writing-300x265Let me just dive right in….

The really horrible thing about Hillary Clinton

You know what the really horrible, disturbing thing is about Hillary Clinton?

  • It’s not the endless, seemingly compulsive lying;
  • it’s not the email destruction;
  • it’s not the increasing number of secret email accounts;
  • it’s not the incompetence that left four Americans dead in Benghazi and that was followed by blatant lies;
  • it’s not the fact that she claims to be a women’s champion even as she aggressively tried to destroy the women who truthfully identified her husband as a serial sexual predator;
  • it’s not the sense of entitlement that seems to be the only reason she wants to be in the White House;
  • it’s not her complete inability to connect as a candidate; and
  • it’s not the fact that the press constantly covers for her, going so far as to ask Republicans about Iraq, but saying nary a word to the woman who first voted for the war, and then worked hard to undermine the war effort (i.e., working to expose American troops to death, torture, and imprisonment).

Nope, what’s really disturbing about Hillary Clinton is this:

The problem isn’t Hillary. The problem is the voters.

No, conservatives are not racists

By the way, the problem isn’t that voters mindlessly and stupidly support the idea of Hillary without giving a single God-damn about the reality. It’s also that they’re completely locked into a delusional fugue state when it comes to conservatives, whom they consistently identify, without a shred of evidence, as racists, sexists, etc.

In fact, as a recent study shows, they’re not racists at all. Instead, completely consistent with Martin Luther King’s dream (and King, of course, was a Republican), conservatives judge their political candidates, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character (and their political values, of course):

Abstract Although the vast majority of minority candidates run under the Democratic label and minority voters are more supportive of the Democratic Party, in recent years a nontrivial number of minority candidates have won Republican Party nominations in high-profile elections (i.e., governor and US Senate). In this study, we assess the level of support that white conservative voters give to minority Republican candidates. We are interested in seeing whether these voters are less supportive of the Grand Old Party (GOP) standard-bearer when the candidate is not white, since the vast majority of Republican candidates and Republican identifiers are non-Hispanic whites. Our data come from the 2006, 2010, and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) surveys—election years with minority Republican nominees for governor and US Senate. Controlling for various factors, we consistently find that white conservatives are either more supportive of minority Republicans or just as likely to vote for a minority as they are a white Republican (a null result). Although we hesitate to dismiss the presence of racial prejudice in voting behavior, in the case of white conservatives our analyses suggest that the base of the GOP does not discriminate against minority nominees in high-profile contemporary general elections. At a minimum, the level of ideological polarization in American politics masks racially prejudiced voting behavior, and at a maximum, it renders it inoperable, because white conservatives view recent minority Republican nominees as at least as conservative as white GOP nominees and their level of support reflects this.

Speaking of the content of someone’s character

This story, about a high school football star who fulfilled his fourth grade promise to take a very special friend to the prom, shows someone with a fully-realized moral compass. It’s a surprisingly un-saccharine, straightforward story, helped in part by the very charming young lady’s solid common sense.

Green energy is dead

Stephen Moore relies upon actual data to explain that green energy is dead because (a) central planning is always a disaster and (b) fossil fuel is readily available and works much better. We all knew that, of course. I don’t know for how many decades I’ve been saying that the answer doesn’t lie in alternative energy but in using our ingenuity to make existing energy sources more efficient and less dirty.

Fighting back against the military’s victim mentality

I’m getting forgetful in my dotage, and I can’t remember whether I already linked to an open letter that a female airman published explaining, in great detail, why the military’s current politically correct policies make her feel like a victim and a whore. You need to read the whole thing, if you haven’t already, so this little snippet is just to whet your appetite:

You called me strong. You told me, and everyone else who was listening to you this morning that I had a right to dictate what they said. That I had a right to dictate what they looked at. That I had a right to dictate what they listened to. That somehow, in my shop, I was the only person who mattered. That they can’t listen to the radio because they might play the Beatles, or Sir Mix-A-Lot, and that I might be offended. That if someone plays a Katy Perry song, I might have flashbacks to a night where I made a bad decision. I might be hurt, and I’m fragile right? Of course I am, you made me that way.

You are the reason I room alone when I deploy. You are the reason that wives are terrified that their husbands are cheating on them when they leave, and I leave with them. When I walk into a room and people are laughing and having a good time, you are the reason they take one look at me and either stop talking or leave. They’re afraid. They’re afraid of me, and it’s because of you. They are afraid that with all of this “power” I have, I can destroy them. They will never respect me or the power and the authority I have as a person, or the power I have as an Airman, because I am nothing more than a victim. That I as a victim, somehow I control their fate. With one sentence, I can destroy the rest of their lives.

“He sexually assaulted me.”

I say enough. He didn’t assault me, you did; and I say enough is enough.

Self-loathing Jews

There’s nothing new about Jewish self-loathing, something that easily goes back to the Greek and Roman occupations of Biblical Israel. Heck, it was Karl Marx, a baptized Jew, who helped spawn the Nazis’ Leftist-derived genocidal killing spree that specifically targeted the Jews.

After WWII, though, the world didn’t have much patience with self-hating Jews. They were marginalized.

Today, however, as antisemitism becomes a toxic brew of Marxism and Islamism, self-hating Jews are finding several bully pulpits from which they can use their demented self-hatred to stir up genocidal rage amongst a new generation of sadistic, genocidal killers. In the Jerusalem Post, Isi Leibler says that it’s time for Jews to speak out against these home-grown haters, and return them to their marginal condition:

Most of us are thorougly exasperated with the obnoxious Jewish deviants who are demonizing Israel with their global campaigns, falsely defaming the IDF as monsters and war criminals. Such reprehensible elements were always the bane of the Jewish people. But today the Internet and the global media provide them with the opportunity to inflict infinitely greater damage than in the past, when their impact was more localized.

[snip]

Today, there are a small group of Jews and Israelis who maintain this demented tradition of self-loathing by defaming the entire Jewish nation by seeking to portray the Israel Defense Forces – undoubtedly the most moral army in the world – as craven war criminals.

The principal Jewish group currently promoting this blood libel is a small Israeli NGO, Breaking the Silence, which was established in 2004 with the clear objective of undermining Israel. Its strategy is to defame the IDF, dramatizing “evidence” of alleged war crimes. However their “eyewitness reports” are anonymous, unverifiable and devoid of context.

Many of the alleged “crimes” were subsequently exposed as comprising anti-Israeli chatter with no basis in reality.

[snip]

The demonization and delegitimization of Israel by Jews funded by anti-Israeli groups abroad is neither an academic exercise nor an exchange of views. It is an act of sabotage, endangering the state and as pernicious as sabotaging IDF weapons depots. It would not be tolerated in any other democratic country, particularly one surrounded by neighbors fanatically committed to its destruction.

It is indisputable that the objective of Breaking the Silence is not merely criticism of Israeli policies.

After all, self-criticism, sometimes even extending to masochism, is a central feature of Israel’s robust democratic ethos. However, Breaking the Silence, a small group of disgruntled delusionary Israeli leftists backed by massive overseas funding, is unashamedly demonizing Israel throughout the world and undermining its government. It sends out emissaries to vilify Israel among Jewish and non-Jewish groups, particularly at universities. It is shameful that, purporting to uphold freedom of expression and maintain dialogue, some Hillel bodies even provide platforms for their representatives to defame the IDF.

Read the rest here.

When will Kirsten Powers realize she’s a conservative, Part Eleventy Twelve

Kirsten Powers looks at the Left and doesn’t like what she sees. Indeed, she’s written a whole book on the subject. Her latest essay, which I assume is a reprise or summation of a chapter in her book, tackles the disgusting sexism the Left shows in its attacks on the women who work at Fox News:

Megyn Kelly, a former lawyer, is a serious and highly successful television journalist. When her contract was up for renewal in 2013, the New York Times reported that both CNN and NBC wanted to hire her away from Fox, a strange thing to desire if Fox News is not a “legitimate” news outlet.

But to the illiberal left, Megyn Kelly is not a reporter or a commentator or a woman to be respected for her achievements. She is a Fox “babe” to be characterized by her looks.

[snip]

Over at the feminist website Jezebel, where they are all about being “pro-woman,” one writer said she liked Kelly the way she did “Ursula from the Little Mermaid,” adding that she “sort of” loved her despite Kelly being “largely a horrible, terrible person with many horrible, stupid thoughts and opinions.” This was the same “feminist” site that had previously described the prime-time host and former corporate litigator as a “Fox Newsbot.”

Read more on this sordid sexism story here.

And one last story about good character to send you on your way

A man finds a treasure chest at an estate sale and does the right thing. (And as MacG, the friend who sent me the link, commented, “Why am I not surprised it was a Marine who did this?”)