The Bookworm Beat 8-10-15 — the “is school starting yet?” edition and open thread
I’m having my own personal dog days of summer: the exchange student arrives today, school starts next week, the older child heads out into the world next month, and the dogs . . . well, the dogs just keep being their wonderful selves.
In the meantime, even as my life moves busily into the future, I have a Groundhog Day sensation when I read the headlines: Obama is still pushing the worst, most anti-American, anti-Semitic deal in American history; ISIS is still killing and enslaving; illegals are still pouring into the country in order to create a permanent Democrat voting bloc; Donald Trump is still a buffoon and the media is still shilling for him, because he’s their dream Republican candidate; and the Obama administration is still intent upon destroying the economy, this time through the rootin’, tootin’, and pollutin’ (and, of course, lyin’) EPA.
I don’t need to write a new post today. I can write the same one I wrote last week, last month, last year, and before 2012. Still, I’ll give it a try:
Ted, Ted, he’s my man!
I’ve said from the beginning that I’m a Ted Cruz kind of gal. This quiz agrees with me, although I’m dubious about Marco Rubio’s second place showing, since I’m really not a fan of his, nor of Santorum:
I usually find quizzes imprecise, and this quiz was no different. Years ago, when I took one of those “what kind of person are you” quizzes that are handed out at career centers, the gal who administered the quiz said she’d never seen a result like mine. I explained that the questions were impossible to answer, because they were so broadly worded there was no reasonable single answer. I found the same to be true with this quiz. The quiz does give one the opportunity to write an answer, but the problem isn’t the answers, it’s the questions.
Still, if you’re curious, you can give the quiz a try yourself here.
And a word about Trump
I met with a conservative friend this weekend and she said (and I think most of us will agree) that, while she knows Trump is in this for Trump, she greatly admires his disdain for political correctness and his refusal to bow down whenever one group of another calls for him to apologize for something he’s said. I know what she means — he’s winning this on style (a refusal to be browbeaten by the censorious, whether Leftists or Fox news faces) rather than on substance (his scattershot views that run the gamut from intelligent to offensive to weird to RINO to Democrat to ….).
An armed citizenry….
I liked this picture from Seraphic Secret. Israel, of course, has an incredibly low crime rate compared to other First World countries. Guns are just tools; it’s the citizens’ morality that matters.
The Planned Parenthood videos
Writing at The Daily Beast, Ruben Navarette pens an excellent column about Planned Parenthoods’ euphemistically-draped body harvesting, and says that he found the Planned Parenthood videos so revolting he’s not sure he’s pro-choice anymore:
David Daleiden, head of The Center for Medical Progress, issued an unsurprisingly stronger statement: “Planned Parenthood’s system-wide conspiracy to evade the law and make money off of aborted fetal tissue is now undeniable. Anyone who watches these videos knows that Planned Parenthood is engaged in barbaric practices and human rights abuses that must end.”
I agree with that assessment, and I’m pro-choice. At least I thought I was until recently. These days, each time, I express concern, outrage, disgust, or horror over another video—which should come with warnings that they may produce nightmares—some supporter of the organization responds by attacking me and insisting that I was never really pro-choice to begin with.
That last paragraph interests me, because I suspect Navarette may indeed have started out pro-choice, but over the years has been struggling with it. The videos didn’t suddenly turn him around from totally pro-choice to pro-life. Instead, I’m betting that they were the last stepping stone in his journey across the Rubicon, giving him both reason and cover for a change that’s been a long time in the making.
On the same subject, Mary Eberstadt says that the same people who changed their views when animal rights groups started posting graphic videos of abattoirs should be changing their views about abortion based upon the same type of graphic videos. Funnily enough (cynically enough?), I don’t see that happening. Animals are cute and fuzzy. Humans are greedy CO2 producers and despoilers in all other ways of Mother Gaia. The hardcore crowd that weeps for a dead cow celebrates a dead human. All dead babies — animal or human — are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Let me make a full frontal Nazi comparison here: The Nazis adored Aryan children but were unmoved by the death of Jews and other “undesirables.” In the same way, the hardcore Left loves its animals (provided that they’re not producing too much CO2), but views its fellow man as a parasite. As for me, I’m just waiting for the day these Gaia fanatics look their beliefs squarely in the face, realize that they’re also part of the problem, and get in line first at the gas chambers to set an example for others.
Obama, the racial healer — NOT
You already know what I’m thinking when I saw the Gallup poll showing that race relations under Obama are the worst they’ve been in more than a decade. Our “racial healer” was peddling snake oil.
Obama’s power grab through the EPA
Obama is bypassing the legislature — and, therefore, the Constitution — completely with his new EPA regs, which will totally overturn the American way of life. And yes, that’s the same pollutin’ and lyin’ EPA I mentioned in the intro to this post. I have two articles for you.
The first is Stephen Hayward’s analysis of just how anti-democratic (that’s small “d” democratic) the regulations are.
The second is Mark Mills’ reminder that even the decrees from the mighty Emperor Obama are insufficient to alter the immutable laws of physics.
Apparently the Jews have bought the Saudis
Obama has been engaged in despicable rhetoric of late, claiming that Republicans are precisely like the Mullahs (i.e., they want to destroy America) and that Jews have bought American politics. Indeed, he’s been so disgusting, even American Jews are taking note. Heck, even Obama apologists are having trouble with his plan.
Assuming, though, that Obama’s anti-Semitic posturings have a basis in reality, apparently Jews have also bought Saudi politics, because Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States between 1981 and 2005, thinks the deal is also the worst thing ever to happen:
Writing for the London-based Arabic news Web site Elaph, Badar suggests that President Obama is knowingly making a bad deal, while President Bill Clinton had made a deal with North Korea with the best intentions and the best information he had. The new deal will “wreak havoc” in the Middle East, which is already destabilized due to Iranian actions, Bandar writes.
Writing about the failed deal with North Korea, which was agreed in 1994 and collapsed in 2003, Bandar says, “it turned out that the strategic foreign policy analysis was wrong and there was a major intelligence failure.” He added that if Clinton had known the full picture, “I am absolutely confident he would not have made that decision.”
The Saudi royal then contrasts this with the present situation with Iran, “where the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national intelligence information, and America’s allies in the region’s intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of the North Korean nuclear deal but worse – with the billions of dollars that Iran will have access to.”
My family calls (and calls and calls). Remind me again when the school year starts?
