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

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:

“And then this orange apparition had the nerve to say she worked for him!” Dyson told the audience. “You lugubrious leech! You dopey doppelgänger of deceit and deviance! You lethal liar, you dim-witted dictator, you foolish fascist!”

“She ain’t work for you!” he exclaimed. “She worked above you! She worked beyond you! Get your preposition right!”

“Then he got the nerve to say he gonna grab it!” Dyson continued. “That ain’t what Aretha Franklin said – I’mma give you something you can feel.”

“Like the brothers in the streets say, tap lightly! Like a woodpecker with a headache!” he concluded.

It didn’t make it better that the emotionally incontinent Dyson used the same solemn occasion to lambast the Obamas:

Dyson did not hold back from criticizing the Obamas for not showing up to the funeral however.

“She was about transforming the existence of black America!” Dyson said of Franklin. “Now negroes scared to say they black!”

“Scared to show up at a too black place!” he exclaimed to loud applause.  “That’s why some black folk aren’t here today. They sendin’ letters, they don’t wanna get up in this blackness!”

“They don’t want to feel the nasty power of this blackness!” he continued. “We are black in Detroit! We don’t care! Take your shoes off! Dip in the water! Get baptized!”

Keep in mind, please, that this man teaches young people at one of the most prestigious universities in America.

Interestingly, another voice that deviated from the normal eulogies dared the black community to repair itself:

Pastor Jasper Williams launched a scathing criticism of black-on-black violence on Friday at Aretha Franklin’s funeral, where he delivered the eulogy.

“It amazes me how it is when the police kills one of us, we are ready to protest, march destroy innocent property. We’re ready to loot, steal, whatever we want. But when we kill 100 of us, nobody says anything. Nobody does anything,” Williams said.

“Black on black crime, we’re all doing time. We are locked up in our minds. There’s got to be a better way. We must stop this today. Think down, look down, walk down, talk down, act down — most times we are low down. Where is your soul?” the pastor continued.

“If you choose to ask me today, do black lives matter? Let me answer like this: no, black lives do not matter; black lives will not matter; black lives ought not matter; black lives should not matter; black lives must not matter until black people start respecting black lives and stop killing ourselves — black lives can never matter.”

Interestingly, of all the speakers, Williams was the man whom Franklin chose to give her eulogy. In other words, amidst all the ugly noise and deviant people at her funeral, the one person Franklin definitely wanted there believed that black well-being lies in black hands, and requires them to embrace traditional values.

Mueller’s pit bull violates Professional Conduct 101. Thanks to Bruce Ohr’s testimony, we know that Andrew Weissmann, the attorney known as “Mueller’s pit bull,” was part of the whole discredited FISA application. In other words, the same person investigating Trump for alleged Russian collusion was at all times privy to the fact that the whole basis for the Russia collusion — the Steele dossier — was an unveriable hit piece paid for by Clinton collusion with the Russians. Wow!

Without delving too deeply into the minutiae of the Rules of Professional Conduct governing attorneys in federal and state practice, I’d just like to repeat here one apropos rule from the ABA’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct:

Rule 3.7 Lawyer As Witness

(a) A lawyer shall not act as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness unless:

(1) the testimony relates to an uncontested issue;

(2) the testimony relates to the nature and value of legal services rendered in the case; or

(3) disqualification of the lawyer would work substantial hardship on the client.

(b) A lawyer may act as advocate in a trial in which another lawyer in the lawyer’s firm is likely to be called as a witness unless precluded from doing so by Rule 1.7 or Rule 1.9.

The media is dancing fast to deal with info about the FBI and the DOJ. Watching the virulently anti-democratic (but very pro Democrat) MSM try to insulate its Chose Ppeople from harm is getting funny. Here you can see what the New York Times tried to sell versus what the facts are (a hat tip goes to this tweet):

Jews are stupid. American Jews remain one of the groups most vocally opposed to President Trump. That proves to me (a Jew) that despite this group’s vaunted “intelligence,” 50 years of adamantine commitment to American college education has turned them into brainless Leftists. (Along those lines, remember that people like Dyson, above, are their teachers.)

That dis-education is the only way to explain the fact that Jews cannot recognize Trump’s extraordinary commitment to Israel, seen in everything from his moving the embassy to Jerusalem to his defunding Palestinian terrorism to his plan to treat with the contempt it deserves the unique demand that Palestinians, unlike all refugees in the world, can transmit that status genetically to their descendants. They are so anti-Trump and, in many cases, so anti-Israel, that they’d rather see Jews burn again then see Trump bring justice to the Middle East. They are irremediably hostile to  the only liberal, pluralist, open society in the whole misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic, anti-Christian Muslim Middle East.

Jews were smart — but when smart people go bad, they go bad with a vigor and enthusiasm that less smart people cannot hope to achieve.

It’s not only Jews whom the American education system makes dumb. It’s everybody:

Novato High School senior Lucy London doesn’t make corsets out of plastic straws because she loves plastic straws. She does it because she wants to keep the single-use items out of the landfill.

“I do everything to avoid plastic straws,” she said. But when she sees her friends sipping beverages through a straw, “I ask if I can have it when they’re done,” and she repurposes it into something functional, she said.

Now, the 17-year-old is determined to keep single-use plastic straws out of Novato altogether. She’s been so convincing that the Novato City Council this week voted 5-0 to start the conversation, which could make Novato the first Marin jurisdiction to take on the endeavor. Mayor Josh Fryday proposed the idea Tuesday after receiving an email from London.

Please be sure to check out the picture of little Lucy in her “straw corset.” This is the way the Left argues: data from 4th graders and “straw corsets” to make points.

And always — always — it’s about controlling everyone else to promote Leftists’ own “virtuous” policies.

To see Leftist totalitarianism, look to colleges.I noted in the above post that American higher education is the filthy well upon which American Leftism draws. Aside from antisemitism, nowhere is that more clearly illustrated than in the war on men. Leftists embrace the Kafka-esque sexual tribunals that are the norm across American campuses. Countless young men have been hauled before these tribunals without knowing who is charging them, without knowing what the charges are, without the chance to confront their accuser or witnesses, and without any counsel, or even a parent, at their side.

The same Leftists are up in arms that DeVos wants to restore some semblance of due process to this tyrannical travesty that is destroying countless men’s lives, often based upon nothing more than the fact that two drunk people hooked up or a young woman who slept with anything that moved wants vengeance on the last person with whom she had sex before her self-loathing overflowed. (See, for example, the lies, damn lies, and blatantly manipulated statistics out of Yale.)

Trump looks beyond skin color to actual values. Trump, like me, doesn’t care what color your skin is. He cares what values you offer. He again made this clear with his decision to appoint Kiron Skinner to help carry out his “America First” agenda:

President Trump has appointed Kiron Skinner, a well-known conservative African American scholar, as the State Department’s director of policy planning, and she is promising to check egos and carry out the president’s “America First” agenda.
“To counter 21st century threats and take advantage of unfolding opportunities, I will bring together a no-nonsense team of career diplomats, political appointees, scholars, and analysts who want to leave egos and outworn doctrines at the door,” she said in a statement to Breitbart News.

“In the cauldron of Washington politics this may sound naïve, but it must be done to create a 21st century American foreign policy that protects Americans and advances American interests,” she said.

“To effectively implement President Trump’s America First vision means thinking through the President’s ideas and good instincts with the seriousness that they deserve, and that’s exactly what my team and I will do,” she added.

As director of policy planning, Skinner will head the department’s in-house think tank, which provides strategic guidance to the entire building. Conservative foreign policy experts are cheering the move.

I wish Ms. Skinner oodles of luck in her new position.

Herr Dictator Mueller silences General Flynn. General Mike Flynn was one of America’s loudest and strongest voices speaking out against the threat of Islamic terrorism. The Obama government gunned for him. Mueller then almost certainly threatened Flynn’s son to get Flynn to agree to plead guilty to a crime even FBI agents acknowledged he didn’t commit. And now, Flynn is denied his First Amendment rights as Mueller sits on his ill-gotten sentencing:

There’s a reason why you haven’t heard much from Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn lately. The man who served his country honorably for 33 years has been effectively silenced by special counsel Robert Mueller as he awaits sentencing.

Given the circumstances of his plea deal, Flynn cannot speak publicly about anything related to the charges against him. Doing so could void his plea agreement with Mueller’s team and open him up to further legal proceedings that he is financially unable to defend himself against.

Flynn, who has worked his entire career on a government salary, has spent over one million dollars on his legal defense. The financial burden has forced him to sell his home in Alexandria, Virginia, and move into a family home in Rhode Island.

He has been effectively bankrupted and has had his reputation torn to shreds, all for the supposed crime of misleading the FBI about a perfectly legal conversation he had, as incoming national security adviser, with the former Russian ambassador to the U.S.

I don’t know why there isn’t a Flynn GoFundMe campaign yet. There should be.

Shut up, Wesley! If you ever watched Star Trek : The Next Generation, you know that a continuing joke was that Captain Picard routinely told the character Wesley, played by Wil Wheaton, to “shut up.” Viewers were always happy to hear Picard issue that command.

The ensuing years revealed that Wheaton was even more obnoxious than the character he played. He became a maniacally tweeting Left wing activist. This is an example of his tweet style:

And this is karma biting him in the butt:

The media and Catholic church pederasty. I’ll have more to say in a later post about the homosexual pederasty scandal in the Catholic church. For now, I think this is as good an indictment of the media as you’ll see today:

This is what happens to people without the rule of law. If there is no reliable legal process, you make your own:

The uncorroborated rumor of suspected kidnappers freely roaming the streets in the Mexican state of Puebla ended in tragedy Wednesday afternoon when two innocent men were forced out of a jail cell and set on fire by a furious crowd that roared and clapped in unison.

An independent video obtained by Univision clearly shows the brazen attempt when a mob rushed inside a police station house and overpowered the officers, dragging Alberto Flores Morales, 53, and Ricardo Flores Rodriguez, 21, to the town’s main plaza before they emptied jugs of gasoline over their bodies and lit them on fire, killing them both.

What a horrific, ISIS-style way to die. Mexicans, in the face of their government’s ineptitude and corruption, are reverting to the primitive. And these are the people Leftists insist should pour over our border in unlimited and un-vetted hordes.

By the way, anyone who says I’m being “racist,” can go eat soap. This is not about race, which implies inherent qualities tied to someone’s racial DNA. This is about societal collapse and the degradation of values, something that can happen to any people without the benefit of a freedom-oriented constitution and the values that go with it.

Sometimes the old media still does interesting articles. A good example is this Atlantic article, The Blood Harvest, about the extraordinary properties found in blood from the horseshoe crab:

The thing about the blood that everyone notices first: It’s blue, baby blue.

The marvelous thing about horseshoe crab blood, though, isn’t the color. It’s a chemical found only in the amoebocytes of its blood cells that can detect mere traces of bacterial presence and trap them in inescapable clots.

I recommend the whole thing.

Hard evidence of the abuse behind giving “trans” kids’ hormones. For years, I’ve been attacking the Left’s habit of handing The Pill out to little girls like candy. The Pill is a hardcore manipulator of hormones, and there’s no telling what it does to developing young women. We know a few things it definitely does to all women: blood clots, strokes, migraines, and depression, to name but a few of its less pleasant effects. We also know a few things it seems to do, whether making women prefer baby-faced young men or affecting the hormone wash over babies in utero even after their mother is off the pill (which may explain the rising number of LGBTQ etc. young people).

The Pill, of course, is not the only hormone manipulation out there. With the PC demand that the (compliant) medical community intervene with ever-younger children who claim to be transgender, doctors are prescribing powerful sex hormones to both boys and girls.

Buck Angel, a woman who opted in the 1990s to live as a male (when it was a more personal decision, not what may be a culturally-driven fad), got testosterone that her biological body was not prepared to accommodate. She eventually paid the price for those hormone treatments:

As it turned out, the testosterone had atrophied my reproductive system—a condition that could have been prevented by the use of estrogen cream. The atrophy fused my uterus and my cervix together, along with my ovaries and everything else, creating an infection that burst and became septic. The gynecologists who kept sending me home and telling me nothing was wrong could have prevented this from happening if they knew anything about trans men and testosterone. They could have administered estrogen cream for my vagina. They could have done an ultrasound instead of just a pap smear. They could have tried to figure it out. Basic understanding of hormones could tell you that adding testosterone to a genetically female body will remove estrogen, and estrogen is what makes a vagina function properly. These two simple steps could have prevented a situation like mine.

Angel thinks OB-Gyns need to know better, which may well be true in today’s world. It seems to me, though, that the really important issue is that our bodies were not meant to be inundated with hormones, whether those that mimic pregnancy or those that change the body’s external sexual characteristics. If we are going to administer those toxic hormones, we should at least wait until children’s bodies have fully developed with only Nature providing the hormone mix.

Is Thomas Wictor on to something about Hollywood and the flag? You’ve all heard by now that Hollywood doesn’t think the American flag had anything to do with the moon landing. Most people say that this is because of (a) Hollywood’s lack of patriotism and (b) its desire to market the movie outside of America.

The always interesting, but definitely eccentric, Thomas Wictor, though, has a different theory. He says that Hollywood has a history, not just of sidelining the flag, but of deliberately associating it with evil. He spells his theory out in this thread. What do you think?

And since Wictor’s was a very visual thread, I’ll wrap this up with a few posters and one excellent video: