The Bookworm Beat 9/13/16 — the “I feel deplorably faint” edition and open thread

Woman-writing-300x265I’m going to divide this post into “Hillary stuff” and everything else. Let’s go to town and have fun.

Hillary stuff:

Ah, Hillary’s “basket of deplorables.” It’s the gift that will keep giving and giving and giving. Scott Adams believes that the same people who feel guilty knocking her off their mental ballot just because she had the (ahem) “bad luck” to get pneumonia will grab onto the “deplorables” remark as the lifeline they need to vote against her. Since he’s been darn near psychic about everything else in this crazy election cycle, I’m inclined to believe he’s got a point.

Trust James Taranto to dig deep into what Hillary Clinton said. I love his observation about Hillary’s differing standards for Americans and illegal or potentially dangerous immigrants:

Apart from “half,” she stands behind every word she said on Friday, including these: “They are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

As Mollie Hemingway suggests, “They are irredeemable” is a strange thing for a professed Christian to say about anybody. Theology aside, it is a shocking thing for someone who aspires to the powers of the presidency to say about fellow Americans, even if she rightly thinks they hold deplorable views.

But according to Mrs. Clinton, “thankfully they are not America.” They are voting in an American election, which means by definition they are Americans. People beat up on Trump a while back for proposing an “ideological test” for naturalization. Here is Mrs. Clinton putting forth an ideological test for people who are already American citizens.

Assuming she makes it to the debate two weeks hence, a good question to ask her would be about the policy implications of all this. What if anything, as president, would she do about the “deplorables”?

David P. Goldman, one of the smartest, most objective conservative commentators around thinks that Hillary’s “deplorables” remark was the headshot that kills her campaign. From his keyboard to G*d’s ear, that’s all I can say.

What’s certain is that the Trump campaign is making hay out of the comment while it can:

Andrew McCarthy completely shreds Hillary’s claim that she is innocent of all email charges because the documents didn’t have the word “confidential” scrawled across them — or, in email parlance, the word “confidential” wasn’t in the “re” subject line. As McCarthy points out, if this were an insider trading case, we’d instantly appreciate that any moron, especially a moron who heads the corporation or government branch, should know what’s confidential and what isn’t.

If you’re trying to make sense of Hillary’s email chicanery — or, even better, you’re trying peaceably to get your Progressive friends to understand why you think there’s a problem — you can’t do better than Sharyl Attkisson’s timeline, which organizes the facts and the players without editorials or judgments. And really, Attkisson is right that editorial comments and judgments are superfluous. The facts are incredibly damning.

What’s going on with Hillary is so bad that even her cheerleaders at The New Yorker have come out with a cartoon about her 9/11 collapse.

Although the Clinton campaign is madly hiding and spinning, we do know some facts about Hillary’s health with a fair degree of certainty — and, as is true for the email facts, they are damning. She’s sick and she’s lying.

My Progressive friends, taking their cue from the media, are insisting that Hillary’s collapse, rather than showing weakness, is a sign that she’s a stoic trooper, and more than ready to be president. If you want to read about a real stoic trooper, though, check out this article detailing John F. Kennedy’s health problems. My God, but the man was brave and stoic. He also massively deceived the American people, allowing them to place into the White House an incredibly fragile man who was addicted to drugs. That his stoicism was admirable does not excuse him from lying to the American people to get elected. His ego and fecklessness placed America at great risk.

Rumors are flying that Hillary always has a neurologist at her side. I do know that some in the MSM have attempted to claim that the black man at her side all the time is a Secret Service agent, but the article to which I linked shows that she has both a black Secret Service agent and the mysterious handler. Hmmm….

Zionists4Trump has taken the time to dig deep into all the claims the Hillary campaign is making about her health and discovers . . . you’re going to be surprised (NOT) . . . that nothing adds up. It’s just one “fly by the seat of your pants” story after another as the campaign tries to keep up with Hillary’s escalating issues.

If you’re trying to follow the endless Clinton spin, David Harsanyi has a helpful guide. I highly recommend it.

Sharyl Attkisson is helpful again when it comes to explaining the terrible thing the media is trying to do: It’s not trying to report about Hillary’s health, despite having spent decades conning the American people into thinking it actually does investigate and report facts. Instead, it’s trying to hide her health and accusing all who are curious and trying to connect the dots of being evil-minded conspiracy theorists.

Clinton is reluctant to drink water, which leads me to some conspiracy ideas of my own:

(1) My mother had congestive heart failure and was told to restrict her water intake. Does Hillary have congestive heart failure?

(2) When Hillary drinks, it goes in one end and out the other. With her schedule, she may want to cut down on bathroom breaks. I don’t believe this theory myself because I know that there are medicines for older women who have incontinence problems. (And don’t laugh; depending on your age, it could be you next.)

(3) Hillary has rabies because we all know that a prime rabies symptom is hydrophobia.

(4) My favorite theory for Hillary’s water aversion:

Okay, here’s the most awesome conspiracy theory of all: Hillary has a body double!! And honestly, when you look at these pictures, you find yourself wondering. . . .

Regarding all of the above speculation about Hillary’s health, I leave the last word to the Diplomad:

Normally I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories, or to speculation about Illuminati plots, but the behavior of the HRC campaign makes such theories and speculation more and more respectable. It is yet another example of how this toxic Clinton crime family has corroded and undermined our faith in our most basic institutions and our way of politics. No law applies to her, her husband and cronies; no accepted standards of behavior apply to her, her husband and cronies; no accountability, nothing that the rest of us must abide applies.

In true 1984, neo-Stalinist fashion, they make up the narrative as they go along and rely on the echo chamber media to make us forget the previous now inoperative narrative.

We need to burn down America’s universities. Vanderbilt University is in Tennessee. In Tennessee, for God’s sake! But even that solid address hasn’t prevented it from going full bat guano crazy about this whole fluid gender garbage:

Vanderbilt pronoun name plates

Just as a reminder, my pronouns are “highness” and “majesty.” Please use them appropriately.

A voice of reason tries to sound out at the University of Texas. Do you remember a few years ago when Admiral William McRaven, then commander of all US special forces, gave a commencement speech at the University of Texas? I remember it vividly because I started making my bed every day after I heard that — a major habit change after five decades. And then, having made my bed every day, I started folding the laundry as soon as I took it out of the dryer. It’s a phenomenal (and, for me, life-changing) speech. I highly recommend it:

Admiral William McRaven is not happy about what’s happening at UT, which is also falling victim to the trigger, microaggression, gender, Trigglypuff hysteria infecting all of America’s higher education institutions (except for Hillsdale, of course). The National Anthem kerfuffle was the last straw for him. He just sent a nice letter to the school’s upper-level administration. It is a letter from a knowledgeable humanist:

I made it clear that honoring the flag does not imply that the republic for which it stands is perfect. I said, “Far from it, honoring the flag is our collective commitment that we will constantly attempt to get better as a nation, to improve as a people, and to use the freedoms we have been given to make the earth a better place.”

I spent 37 years defending freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Nothing is more important to this democracy. Nothing! However, while no one should be compelled to stand, they should recognize that by sitting in protest to the flag they are disrespecting everyone who sacrificed to make this country what it is today — as imperfect as it might be.

Those that believe the flag represents oppression should remember all the Americans who fought to eliminate bigotry, racism, sexism, imperialism, communism, and terrorism. The flag rode with the Buffalo Soldiers of the 9th, 10th, 24th and 25th Cavalry and Infantry Regiments. It was carried by the suffragists down the streets of New York City. It flew with the Tuskegee Airman ofWWII. It was planted in the fields where Cesar Chavez spoke. It marched with Martin Luther King Jr. It rocketed into space on the shoulder patches of women, gays, Hispanic, Asian and African American astronauts. Today, it waves high over the White House. It is a flag for everyone, of every color, of every race, of every creed, and of every orientation, but the privilege of living under this flag does not come without cost. Nor should it come without respect.

The nation and everything it strives for is embodied in the American Flag. We strive to be more inclusive. We strive to be more understanding. We strive to fix the problems that plague our society. But in striving to do so, we must have a common bond; some symbol that reminds us of our past struggles and propels us to a brighter, more enlightened future. That symbol is the American flag.

It’s time to segregate Muslim prisoners from other prisoners. For radical Muslims, prison indoctrination is like shooting fish in a barrel. You take your lukewarm believers and your non-believers . . . and you radicalize them. Let me again quote my cousin, a now-retired Christian prison chaplain:

It is not a contradiction to be a Muslim and a murderer, even a mass murderer. That is one reason why criminals “convert” to Islam in prison. They don’t convert at all; they similarly [sic] remain the angry judgmental vicious beings they always have been. They simply add “religious” diatribes to their personal invective. Islam does not inspire a crisis of conscience, just inspirations to outrage.

Just as one bad apple can ruin an entire barrel of apples, so can just one fiery Islamic preacher or prisoner turn people who might otherwise try for a little remorse and redemption into angry mass murderers.

What Obama did regarding Iran is so very, very bad. Billions in illegal payments, untraceable cash payments, back-downs from promised sanctions — you name it, the Obama regime did it when it came to Iran. Claudia Rosett has a few questions she’d like to ask Loretta Lynch who, rather than being the nation’s chief law-enforcer, appears to be America’s chief law avoider and criminal enabler.

Bibi — crazy like a fox. Bibi Netanyahu has been dealt a series of losing hands. Lazar Berman points out, however, that through patience, thoughtfulness, guile, faith, and intelligence, Bibi has managed to parlay a surprising number of them into winning hands. That’s what I want from our next president — and that’s not who or what Hillary is. She is an utterly pedestrian thinker. Trump, I hope, is not.

It helps that some Arabs are wising up. Jordan has long had a rather secretive working relationship with Israel, one that’s becoming more open now that Obama is arming Iran. Perhaps that’s why its journalists are showing unexpected bravery by coming forward and saying that not only is Israel not the problem but without her presence in the Middle East, the more civilized Arab lands are truly lost.

Proof again that Progressives are regressives. In 1925, the Progressives tried to ban revolvers, making the same arguments they make today. H.L. Mencken made the same arguments that Second Amendment supporters make today, although with a lot of flair we really don’t see anymore:

The new law that it advocated, indeed, is one of the most absurd specimens of jackass legislation ever heard of, even in this paradise of legislative donkeyism. Its single and sole effect would be to exaggerate enormously all of the evils it proposes to put down. It would not take pistols out of the hands of rogues and fools; it would simply take them out of the hands of honest men. The gunman today has great advantages everywhere. He has artillery in his pocket, and he may assume that, in the large cities, at least two-thirds of his prospective victims are unarmed. But if the Nation’s proposed law (or amendment) were passed and enforced, he could assume safely that all of them were unarmed.