No. 3 Bookworm Room Podcast — Michelle Obama, Tulsi Gabbard, and cat ladies

It speaks to our vapid celebrity culture that Michael Moore believes that talentless, accomplishment-free Michelle Obama is the Democrat Party’s only hope.

Michelle Obama shortsI am having fun figuring out more efficient ways to do the podcast. My first podcast, in addition to the days of trying to figure out how to record, edit, and publish it, took five hours to create; podcast No. 3, the one that is the subject of this post, took only 2 hours. I’m not saying that it’s a better interface from the audience viewpoint but it was definitely a better experience on my end. Here are the ideas I developed in the podcast. Alternatively, just listen to the podcast itself, which you’ll find at the bottom of this post:

Help us, Michelle Obama; you’re our only hope.

My starting point in the podcast is a Michael Moore appearance on MSNBC (h/t American Thinker) in which Moore said, with perfect, almost tearful, sincerity that Michelle Obama is the only one who can win the election for the Democrats and save America from more Donald Trump. His desperation is both charming (from a conservative point of view) and pathetic (from any point of view):

What fascinated me was the fact that Moore doesn’t make any claim that Michelle has the skills to be president. He simply argues that she can debate Trump (I think he’s wrong) and that people like Michelle Obama. In other words, if this election were held in high school, where popularity is everything, Michelle would win.

It’s no surprise that Moore doesn’t point to any of Michelle’s actual accomplishments, because she has none. She spent some time as a junior associate in a law firm, then went to work in Chicago city politics and then, as her husband’s star began to rise, got a make work position at the University of Chicago. Apparently she broke some fundraising records there, but only the naive would think this had to do with her charm and skills rather than scoring points thanks to her husband’s political trajectory. Once she was First Lady, her signature accomplishment was making school children hate lunch.

Michelle Obama is nothing more than a media product: From the very first day, the media has been singing her praises. She’s the new Jackie O, she has the most gorgeous arms, she’s incredibly stylish, she’s brilliant, she’s hip, she’s charming. Peel away the slavish praise and there’s no visible there there. Indeed, the only way in which Michelle Obama compares to Jackie O isn’t about style; it’s about the fact that, like Jackie, Michelle married well and then, after leaving the White House, became fabulously rich and started leading a louche Rivieria lifestyle, something I find decidedly at odds with American values.

Once upon a time, we elected presidents based upon their accomplishments, whether in or out of politics, before they got to the White House. Washington led the Continental Army to victory. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison were towering intellectual giants of the Revolution. Jackson was a war hero. Lincoln was a successful lawyer and effective politician. Grant won the Civil War. Teddy Roosevelt won everything. Wilson (a vile man) was president of Princeton and governor of Virginia, Truman was a successful WWI commander and had a long political history (one that was fairly clean despite the dirty Democrat Midwestern political machine), Eisenhower helped win WWII, Kennedy served with honor in WWII, Reagan had a long career in politics and served as California governor. I could go on but I hope I’ve made my point. Even George Dubya, while a disappointing president, wasn’t elected just because he was H.W.’s son. He also served successfully as Texas’s governor and was an experienced businessman.

And then there was Obama, whose only accomplishment was . . . being Obama. When he took the White House, he’d never achieved anything significant for anybody but himself by constantly attaining higher and higher positions in which he did nothing of note. That didn’t matter, though, because Obama — handsome, Ivy League educated, well-spoken, and hard Left — was part of America’s new aristocracy.

The old aristocracy, the British kind that we broke with in 1776, ignored accomplishments and looked to lineage. For example, that’s how Charles II finally won the throne, long after his father was executed and Cromwell died. He got it because he was born to it. As a ruler, though, he left much to be desired, with a courtier writing of him:

Here lies our sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on.
Who’s never said a foolish thing
Nor ever done a wise one.

The list of foolish monarchs, men and women who got power because they were part of the ruling class, is legion. Sometimes they surprised people by ruling well and wisely; more often than not, people were lucky if these “in crowd” rulers at least had the wisdom to choose good advisers.

America, as I noted, has now developed its own aristocracy, one made up, not of blood, but of the “proper” beliefs and connections. I learned this in 2008 when a Leftist friend told me that it was irrelevant that Sarah Palin, who was running for Vice President, was a much more accomplished executive and politician than Barack Obama, who sought the Oval Office. The problem with Palin, he said, was that “she’s not one of us.” She’s not a graduate of a prestigious college (preferably with a graduate degree), she’s not driving a hybrid car and, most importantly, she doesn’t hew to the Democrat party platform. Not only do “we” dislike her politics, she is not worthy of political victory.

Same goes for Trump, one of the most successful men ever to sit in the Oval office. All that kinds for Moore and his ilk, though, is that Michelle is a new American aristocrat. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and all the other Founders, the ones who fought for a true republic, must be weeping in their graves.

Don’t get fooled: Tulsi Gabbard is just another Leftist

Tulsi Gabbard is a beautiful woman. She’s easily the most beautiful person ever to run for president. She’s also proven that she has the killer instinct to strike like a rattlesnake (witness her recent attack on Kamala Harris). Moreover, her military record and hostility to Islamism make her appealing to centrists. Unlike the other vet on the Democrat stage — Buttigieg — she lacks the poorly disguised existential anger that hides behind his cute little chipmunk face. Buttigieg knows that his Christian God doesn’t approve of his lifestyle and is busy trying to rewrite his faith to suit his desires. It’s not a good look.

Don’t be fooled, though. Just as Williamson, behind the New Age gibble-gabble, is a generic Leftist, the same is true of Tulsi. Just look at her official website.

As is true for all the top tier Democrat candidates, Tulsi supports socialized medicine, although she pays lip service to keeping some sort of private insurance around (probably for the rich people). She voted for the Medicare for All Act of 2019 and mounts the usual attacks on insurance and pharmaceutical companies:

No one should be forced to choose between putting food on the table and paying for life-saving medication. But that’s exactly what’s happening to millions of Americans as a result of Big Pharma’s chokehold on Medicare. They’ve managed to buy access into Congress, barring the government from negotiating cheaper prices for consumers, so they can continue to price-gouge those trying to buy life-saving medication and rake in profits at the expense of the American people.

It doesn’t seem to occur to any of these Lefties that bringing companies into the government fold is fascism. If you’re scared of corporations now, just wait until they’re in bed with government. Then they’re really scary and there’s no free market to protect you.

Also like her fellow Dems, Tulsi wants to socialize American higher education by forcing American taxpayers to fund community and two year colleges and to pay for “middle-class students” at public universities. This is free money for Leftists.

More scarily, publicly funded higher education is a way to complete the indoctrination of all American young people. Colleges are Ground Zero for every crazy idea floating around now: socialism, identity politics, virtue signaling, and the general insanity that we see about race, gender, feminism, etc. Colleges are why corporations are virtue signaling themselves into bankruptcy (see Gillette’s ill-advised ads) — college grads with useless Queer, or Gender, or Race degrees eventually leave Starbucks for mid-level management jobs and destroy companies from within. They also infest the social media companies that are trying to destroy American political discourse.

Tulsi is an abortion extremist. She doesn’t say so explicitly, but she supported 2013’s “Women’s Health Protection Act” which would have removed all state mandated limits on abortion. This means abortion up to and even after the moment of birth.

When it comes to so-called “climate change,” Tulsi checks the “generic Dem” box there as well:

Here are a couple of other Tulsi climate sound bytes, all of which are aimed at returning us to a pre-modern era of green landscapes and starving people:

As president, I’ll tackle climate change by ending subsidies to big fossil fuel and agribusiness corporations, ban offshore drilling, harness innovation to create jobs in renewable energy, provide better opportunities for our farmers, and ensure every American has clean air and water.


We need to invest in 100% renewable and safe energy sources like wind, solar, and geothermal. I also support a ban on fracking, ending the $26 billion/year in fossil fuel subsidies, as well as all subsidies or waivers to the nuclear power industry, which should itself be completely responsible for paying for its own insurance and paying the long term cost for safe storage of nuclear waste over centuries. I will also work to provide other incentives for a renewable energy economy.

On race, Tulsi voted yes on the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals.” No, it’s not voting for reparations, but it’s getting the ducks in a row to vote for reparations. My parents came to this country in 1954 and struggled, always. Most of my classmates growing up were the children of people who had escaped Communist China or Communist Vietnam with the clothes on their backs. Why any of them, who had nothing to do with slavery, should pay reparations to people who were not themselves slaves is beyond me.

On immigration, Tulsi talks about border security, but it’s pretty clear that she wants to fast-track citizenship (that is, voting status) to those who cheated:

The only area in which Tulsi sounds actually conservative is that her passionate anti-War stance is combined with a desire to strike back at radical Islamism. In that way, she’s somewhat like Trump insofar as she and Trump have broken with both the Wilson doctrine and the Obama-led peace movement. I’ve written about Trump’s stance at some length here, so I won’t repeat it now. I’ll just say that, as between Leftist Tulsi and promising-keeping, conservative Trump, I’ll keep Trump for foreign policy, thank you very much.

The Rule of Law applies even to cat ladies

The last thing I want to blog about is a bit random. You may have seen the story from Garfield Heights, Ohio, about a 79 year old woman being sent to jail for 10 days for feeding stray cats.

At first glance, it sounds like government run amok, but it’s really not. Feeding feral cats is not innocuous. Feral cats have lots of nasty diseases and the food you put out for them brings in other animals, such as rats and raccoons. I know this because, about 15 or so years ago, I spent two years of my life working on a crazy cat lady case. She’d started putting food out for cats and was eventually feeding every raccoon and rat within an umpteen block radius. These animals, some of which could have been rabid, were breaking into surrounding homes and threatening children.

Heck, just think about what’s going on in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Seattle, San Francisco, and all those other Leftist-run cities that allow human behaviors that encourage rats and raccoons. Those cities are starting to have medieval diseases. There’s nothing cute about engaging in behaviors that encourage vermin.

I don’t care that this gal is a cute little cat lady. What matters is that she refuses to stop illegal behavior that civil government rightly discourages. It’s a step in the direction of public health and the rule of law to make her take things seriously (something she clearly hadn’t done after numerous citations).

If you want to listen to the podcast, which roughly parallels the post above, you can click on the player below. Alternatively, here’s a link in case you can’t get the embedded link to load. I really would like to make a go of it, so assuming you find the podcast somewhat meritorious — I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word: