Bookworm Beat 8/8/2018 — a cheerful blend of interesting things

There’s no one theme tying together this Bookworm Beat. Instead, I serve up myriad interesting articles about all sorts of things.

Bookworm Beat logoVictor Davis Hanson’s must-read this week is about the corruption in federal law enforcement. I’m a big believer in the rule of law, which is what separates a civil country from a totalitarian or anarchic hell hole. Sadly, our federal law enforcement leaders are not believers in the rule of law. VDH spells out chapter and verse.

And if you’re in a VDH mood, you may also want to enjoy his excellent article detailing how much the American Left despises each one of you.

When it comes to Jeff Sessions, the media lies by omission.If you make a big deal about accusing someone of something, and then slink away without telling anyone that the accusation was a hollow sham, you’ve committed a lie of omission.  That’s what the media did with Jeff Sessions and the nasty Methodist attack against him.

The Chinese respect Trump. While our media indulges in a non-stop Trump Derangement temper tantrum, people in China, groaning under their totalitarian leadership, call him “Powerful Grandpa Trump.”

And speaking of China, do I need to tell you that Dianne Feinstein had a Chinese spy on her staff for years? The only reason I ask that question is because, while the media can’t get enough of the Trump / Russia narrative, despite the absence of useful evidence, it’s been remarkably silent about DiFi’s little problem. Again, those lies of omission….

Speaking of Trump Derangement Syndrome, I’m glad I’m not flying into LAX anytime soon:

No matter how stupid Bernie Sanders is, his even more stupid followers lap it up. That Bernie Sanders is a stupid man is a given. After all, anyone who supports socialism is — I’m sorry, but I’m going to be blunt here — an idiot. Nevertheless, it’s disheartening to learn that his videos have been seen almost a billion times.

If you belong to Planet Fitness, you might want to rethink that membership. I’d heard about the woman kicked out of Planet Fitness for complaining about a man in the women’s changing area. That’s a fairly anodyne description, though, considering what really happened.

A great poster reminding us that we have to make the Left live by its own rules:

Chris Murphy Social Media Infowars

Right now, of course, the Leftist social media giants are making the rules up as they go along, with the only fixed principle being to silence conservatives. Anything else goes, including antisemitism.

Here’s another reminder to make them live by their own rules:

It’s so delicious when they are forced to play by their own rules. Massachusetts state representative Jim Lyons masterfully played the Left when it came to a proposal to have a “Gender X” on driver’s licenses. You have to read the whole article to appreciate the wonderful Alinsky-ness of it all.

I’m not sure these tactics are going to win friends or influence people. In the Spring, a Sacramento cop shot Stephon Clark, a black man who turned out to have been unarmed. Of course, he was also a black man who behaved suspiciously (by any standards), who ran from the cops, who refused to surrender, and who appeared to have a weapon in his hands.

In any event, the Marxist BLMs apparently identified the police officer who shot the gun and crashed his wedding. As I said in the bold-faced lead-in to this squiblet, I don’t see this endearing BLM to ordinary people.

Give communists power and they will ensure mass starvation. It happened in the Ukraine under Stalin, it happened across China under Mao, it happened in Zimbabwe under Mugabe, and now it’s happening in South Africa under Ramaphosa.  Funnily enough, there’s no media outcry about the non-stop murder of white farmers in South Africa.

Google may not like Alex Jones, but it bends over for China. The same entity that refused to assist the U.S. military is helping China censor its citizens’ access to information. I’ve had Google mail for years, all my appointments are on Google calendar, and I love Google maps . . . but one of these days, I’m going to find myself giving all of them up, just as I abandoned Facebook.

A different insight into how bad the social media giants are. I enjoy the Andrew Klavan podcast and today’s was an excellent one. His guest, who is one of the tech guys behind Daily Wire, explains how the social media giants are eating their cake and having it. It’s good listening.

They always knew about Matt Lauer. All the lecturing aimed at us, the Normals, was the result of massive hypocrisy.

Apparently Sir Thomas More was woke. Back in college, I read Sir Thomas More’s writings, which date back to the first third of the 16th century. I don’t remember whether it was in Utopia or something else, but he made the point that releasing a full bladder is a truly blissful experience. That stuck in my memory because it was such an earthy comment from an intellectual purist. We all know, of course, that everything old is new again, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the “woke” sexual thing today is to have “peegasms.” I won’t comment further, other than to say that the medical establishment warns of risks.

I think Scott Adams modeled a cartoon on me. It’s not very flattering, but this is definitely me.

California’s fires are not a coincidence. California is a dry state. Southern California swimming pools get filled with imported water. Marin County lawns get water from Napa and Sonoma aquifers that are running dry. Despite the fact that the population in California has almost doubled in 60 years, we’ve had almost no water infrastructure investment in that time. And as Trump pointed out, to protect the Delta Smelt, the state releases millions of gallons of fresh water into the Bay, rather than directing it to farming.

Now it turns out that the terrible fires raging throughout California are also a problem of government mismanagement during the Obama era (with help, I’m sure, from Jerry Brown). There’s a new one burning now about 40 miles from me as I write. It’s not currently showing signs of going crazy, but I’m keeping an eye on it and mentally packing a go-bag already.