Reading List 2015

Of the 63 books I read in 2015, the one I enjoyed most was Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase. Brilliant, mind-bending, and quintessentially Japanese. The
worst book I read this year was, again, Iain Banks’s The Wasp Factory, although The Spider’s Web, a cheap rip-off written by Charles Osborne that uses an Agatha Christie play as an outline, gave it a run for its vile money. The
most disappointing book was Charles Stross’s The Annihilation Score. I like his Laundry Files but Stross can’t write women to save his life; the story would have been more credible, and more entertaining, if the protagonist had been Bob in a dress rather than his nominal wife.

On the non-fiction side, two Martin van Creveld books were excellent. Castalia published A History of Military Strategy, and van Creveld’s Technology and War is a must-read for anyone interested in history. On
the downside, J.B. Bury’s A History of Freedom of Thought was little more than a historical prelude to the tawdry philosophical works of the New Atheists and its perspective has been rendered irrelevant by subsequent events. The book was particularly disappointing because I am a big fan of Bury’s great editorial work, The Cambridge Medieval History Series.

Keep in mind these ratings are not necessarily statements about a book’s
significance or its literary quality, they are merely casual observations of my personal tastes and how much I
happened to enjoy reading the book at the time. A five-star book is one that I recommend without any reservations, while three-star or above is likely going to be worth your while. As always, I have read more books than are on this list, but I only rate books that I have read cover to cover.

FIVE STARS

A Wild Sheep Chase, Haruki Murakami
Demian, Hermann Hesse
The Book of the Damned, Tanith Lee
65 Short Stories, W. Somerset Maugham
If Symptoms Still Persist, Theodore Dalrymple
A History of Military Strategy, Martin van Creveld
Technology and War, Martin van Creveld

FOUR STARS

Against a Dark Background, Iain M. Banks
Gorilla Mindset, Mike Cernovich
Danger & Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity, Mike Cernovich
The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu
The Book of the Beast, Tanith Lee
The Book of the Dead, Tanith Lee
The Complete Stories, Evelyn Waugh
After the Quake: Stories, Haruki Murakami
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami
The Changing Face of War, Martin van Creveld
Armageddon, Max Hastings
Japan 1941, Eri Hotta
Carthage Must Be Destroyed, Richard Miles

THREE STARS

Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
Somewhither, John C. Wright
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Dorothy Sayers
There Will Be War, Vol. III, Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War, Vol. IV, Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War, Vol. V, Jerry Pournelle
There Will Be War, Vol. VIII, Jerry Pournelle
Imperial Stars, Vol. I, Jerry Pournelle
Imperial Stars, Vol. II, Jerry Pournelle
Faces Under Water, Tanith Lee
Saint Fire, Tanith Lee
A Bed of Earth, Tanith Lee
Venus Preserved, Tanith Lee
Pirates of the Levant, Arturo Perez Reverte
Purity of Blood, Arturo Perez Reverte
The Sun Over Breda, Arturo Perez Reverte
Captain Alatriste, Arturo Perez Reverte
Back From the Dead, Rolf Nelson
The Sorcerer’s House, Gene Wolfe
Churchill, Paul Johnson
The Fountains of Paradise, Arthur C. Clarke
History of the First World War, Basil Liddell Hart
The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett
Railsea, China Mieville
How to Deal with Narcissists, Michael Trust
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick

TWO STARS

The Annihiliation Score, Charles Stross
Lord Valentine’s Castle, Robert Silverberg 
Hallowe’en Party, Agatha Christie
Murder is Easy, Agatha Christie
Three Act Tragedy, Agatha Christie
Methuselah’s Children, Robert Heinlein
Farnham’s Freehold, Robert Heinlein

The Peril at End House, Agatha Christie
Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Year’s Best SF 18, David Hartwell

ONE STAR

Spider’s Web, Agatha Christie (Charles Osborne)
The Wasp Factory, Iain M. Banks
Hero in the Shadows, David Gemmell
A History of Freedom of Thought, J.B. Bury
Grumbles from the Grave, Robert Heinlein

Matz slaps down Typhoid Coraline

The successful defense of Ruby against SJW infiltrators demonstrates the importance of having a strong project leader rather than a committee, or worse, a democracy, running an open source software project:

The Ruby Community Conduct Guideline

We have picked the following conduct guideline based on an early draft of the PostgreSQL CoC, for Ruby developers community for safe, productive collaboration. Each Ruby related community (conference etc.) may pick their own Code of Conduct.

This document provides community guidelines for a safe, respectful, productive, and collaborative place for any person who is willing to contribute to the Ruby community. It applies to all “collaborative space”, which is defined as community communications channels (such as mailing lists, submitted patches, commit comments, etc.).

  • Participants will be tolerant of opposing views.
  • Participants must ensure that their language and actions are free of personal attacks and disparaging personal remarks.
  • When interpreting the words and actions of others, participants should always assume good intentions.
  • Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated.

It’s worth noting that this not only defeats the primary, secondary, and tertiary purposes of the Code of Conduct that Typhoid Coraline was attempting to install in order to unseat Matz, but it can obviously be used effectively against SJW entryists.

No wonder Typhoid is so upset. It’s a superficial victory of absolutely no utility for him.

Coraline Ada Ehmke ‏@CoralineAda
This is very disappointing. No one to report abuse to. No recourse for victims of harassment. Poor showing, Ruby.

Coraline Ada Ehmke ‏@CoralineAda
Sad that Ruby still doesn’t have a code of conduct. I don’t know what to call that thing.

Coraline Ada Ehmke ‏@CoralineAda
Unfortunately I fear that it will take a nasty incident for Matz to change his mind
about a code of conduct. I feel bad about this.

Put a cassock in it, Your Holiness

Not being Catholic, I don’t pay much attention to Pope Francis, but I’m beginning to see why so many Catholics are not at all happy with him.

‘A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,’ Francis said in answer to a specific question about Trump’s views. ‘This is not in the gospel.’

Asked if American Catholics should vote for someone with Trump’s views, Francis said: ‘I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that.

‘We must see if he said things in that way and in this I give the benefit of the doubt.’

As you can imagine, Donald Trump’s response was appropriately withering:

‘If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been President because this would not have happened.

ISIS would have been eradicated unlike what is happening now with our all talk, no action politicians.

The Mexican government and its leadership has made many disparaging remarks about me to the Pope, because they want to continue to rip off the United States, both on trade and at the border, and they understand I am totally wise to them.

The Pope only heard one side of the story – he didn’t see the crime, the drug trafficking and the negative economic impact the current policies have on the United States. He doesn’t see how Mexican leadership is outsmarting President Obama and our leadership in every aspect of negotiation.

For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian and as President I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened, unlike what is happening now, with our current President.

At this rate, Trump is going to end up being the first man being elected both President and Pope.

Big swing, bigger miss

I like Ace. But I think he has gone very aft agley on this most recent pronouncement concerning the latest imminent demise of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign:

I think Trump hurt himself badly tonight, enough to knock him out of his first-place standing in most states. Oh he won’t completely disappear — but 2nd Place Trump is not the same thing as Frontrunner Trump.

Trump damaged himself with his claim that Bush lied us into war in Iraq. Not botched the intelligence, not read too much into thin intelligence.

Most Republicans, I think, would agree that that.

No, Trump claimed that Bush deliberately lied us into war.

First, this is alarming because it once again demonstrates that Trump has a conspiratorial mind. It’s not enough for the conspiracist to say someone was wrong — no, they have unrealistically black/white minds, and if you made a bad call, you must have lied.

That conspiracism was always present in his claims about Obama’s birth certificate. But that bit of fantasy was about Obama, someone the average Republican voter isn’t exactly eager to man the battlements for.

This corker — this Al Gore roar of quote — is about George W. Bush, someone still looked upon with affection by most of the party.

Which brings us to the second problem.

If Donald Trump is right, and George W. Bush deliberately schemed with his neo-con advisers to “lie” us into a phony war with Iraq, what does that say about the average Republican voter who supported Bush from 1999, voted for him, defended him through the recount, cried with him on 9/11, agreed with him on Iraq, defended him from ceaseless liberal attacks on him during the war, defended him from Obama’s never-expiring “Blame Bush” blame-shifting, etc.?

If Trump is right, then we’re not just wrong to have supported him. If Trump’s right, we’re goddamned rubes and fools to have defended this Actual Hitler-Level Monster for going on 17 years now.

My first response is yes, you were all goddamned rubes and fools to have supported George W. Bush and the invasion/occupation of Iraq. I said so 12 years ago. I was right then, and Donald Trump is right now.

And my second response is to observe that there is already a candidate who is a proxy for the affection George W. Bush enjoys in the party, namely, his brother Jeb Bush. And Jeb has the support of about one percent of the party.

So, I very much doubt that the Republican voters are anywhere nearly as ego-invested in George W. Bush as Ace’s argument requires.

On editing

The SF-SJWs at File 770 are appalled at the fact that Tor Books and Castalia House author John C. Wright is willing to go on the record and state that,
in his opinion, I am a better editor than the late, Hugo Award-winning editor
David Hartwell:

These are the recommendations of my editor,
Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the most hated man in Science Fiction, but
certainly the best editor I have had the pleasure to work with.
– John C. Wright

Charming. Take this and go home, David Hartwell, as we would say in Italy.
– Anna Feruglio Dal Dan on February 17, 2016 at 3:51 am

JCW is a writer convinced that his every work is a glittering jewel of
exquisite literary craftsmanship. VD is an editor who doesn’t meddle
with his writers’ texts. (For an example of this, see “Shakedown Cruise”
in Riding the Red Horse, where Campbell nominee Rolf Nelson makes
*ahem* many interesting and innovative aesthetic choices when it comes
to things like verb tenses and punctuation, and VD lets them all stand.)

That
sort of writer is bound to get on well with that sort of editor. Bit
rough on the readers, of course, but, pffft, what do they know?
– Steve Wright on February 17, 2016

I suspect that what he was good at was being edited by David Hartwell.
– Peter J on February 17, 2016

JCW,
while styling himself as a coldly-rational intellectual, reveals that
he’s actually a fool whose opinions are driven entirely by ignorance,
arrogance, and emotion. Every thing he’s written over the last year has
made it very apparent just how much his career is owed to the efforts of
the editors at Tor who transformed his usual drivel into something
coherent.
– Aaron on February 17, 2016

It is hard to decide whether I am more flattered by the estimable Mr. Wright’s high regard or amused by the level of ignorance demonstrated by the usual suspects. The former, I am finally forced to conclude, as I have come to expect the latter from the low-IQ denizens of an otherwise very good site.

You see, I have perspective that they do not. Unlike them, I have seen Mr. Wright’s unedited prose. I know exactly what it looks like. And as it happens, it looks very much like the prose that appears in Mr. Wright’s novels that are published by Tor Books. John is an excellent writer; he is one of the greatest SF/F writers alive. But he writes very, very quickly and he is prone to what one might describe as an exuberant approach to writing. Last year, Castalia House offered him a contract for a 60k-word book. I am now reading the manuscript, which clocks in at nearly 200k words.

Even those authors who don’t like Mr. Wright or his style might well contemplate suicide if they truly understood how speedily and effortlessly the man writes… and writes well. When I say he is a great writer, I do not do so lightly, nor do I do so because I am fortunate enough to publish some of his works. I say it out of pure envy and awe.

Now, I am not privy to the details of the editing process at Tor Books. I have not discussed it with Mr. Wright or anyone else. But it would not have surprised me in the slightest to learn that it frequently consists of sending the manuscript directly to the proofreaders, correcting any infelicities of grammar and typos, then publishing the book without any real editorial activity at all. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that David Hartwell had not even read all of the books that he “edited” either.

As Castalia House authors know, I either edit a book or I decline to edit it. If I edit it, I decide whether I will apply a scalpel or a machete to the text. In the case of certain authors, I ask them if they would prefer a scalpel or a machete, and honor their preference even if I think it is mistaken. In one recent case, I removed one-third of the manuscript’s word count. In another case, I had the author cut out more than 20,000 words. I suspect that I have excised more words from a single novella by John C. Wright than Mr. Hartwell did from Mr. Wright’s entire oeuvre. So, not only do I “meddle in my writers’ texts”, I do so much more heavily than the average editor does.

The mistake that these File 770 commenters are making is thinking that one can reasonably judge the quality of an editor’s work by the final product. You cannot. You can only judge it by comparing the submitted draft of the manuscript to the final product. For example, my
book The World in Shadow is a MUCH better book than The War in
Heaven. It is better in every way. But the editor at Pocket Books did a brilliant job on The War
in Heaven, because the first draft was a disaster and she made me
rewrite the entire book twice, with lots of hands-on advice and examples.

But she did nothing on The World in Shadow, she did literally nothing. Her entire
editing process consisted of telling me that the book was good to go as submitted. The published book is nearly word-for-word identical to my submitted manuscript, so much so that we were later able to create the ebook from the unedited submission.

It is true, for example, that Rolf Nelson takes a uniquely creative approach to verb tenses and punctuation, but it is very, very far from the truth to claim that I let them all stand. Why do we publish him, then? Because Rolf is an excellent storyteller, and if you are more interested in grammar than story and characterization, then you are not part of Castalia House’s target market. Literary style is only one of the four major aspects of writing; one of the reasons that Castalia House exists is because the mainstream publishing houses have become overly obsessed with style and ideology at the expense of story, characters, and ideas.

And I will go so far as to say this: I am a much better editor than whoever is supposed to be editing George RR Martin’s books. Had I been the editor, A Dance with Dragons would have been 700 pages shorter and it would have been considerably more enjoyable.

UPDATE: It appears my surmise about the extent to which Mr. Wright’s books were edited at Tor Books was correct, as per L. Jagi Lamplighter Wright

Just in case anyone wondered: John has tremendous respect for Mr. Hartwell, whom he admired, appreciated working with, and liked as a person. But Mr. Hartwell almost never made any changes to John’s manuscripts.

The Great Hugo Wars of 2015

Matthew David Surridge, who declined a Hugo nomination last year, explains his take on the situation in the customarily careful and detailed manner that led me to nominate him in the first place. There is also a discussion of it at Black Gate.

Having received no email, I figured I had nothing to worry about.

Then the next night I opened my email to find a message from the Worldcon administrators congratulating me for being nominated for a Hugo. If I wouldn’t be at Worldcon, could I please select someone who’d be able to pick up the award for me if I won?

I emailed Black Gate editor John O’Neill, and asked him if he’d be in Spokane. He said he wouldn’t, and also mentioned that Black Gate had been nominated for a Fanzine Hugo. That meant I’d now heard of three Puppy picks who’d gotten nominations. I poked around some message boards and found speculation from various people plugged into the field guessing that the Puppies would do spectacularly well when the full list of nominees was made public. One (non-Puppy) editor said that he’d heard that the Puppies had three of the nominations for Best Novel—the most prestigious category. I began to wonder if I wanted to be nominated for an award that was being shaped by the Puppy tactics. If nothing else, what kind of backlash would this create?

Over the next few days I did more research on the Puppy program. Beyond politics, it was clear I didn’t share the Sad Puppy sense of what was good and bad in fiction. Beale only spoke about “the science fiction right,” but Torgersen was putting forward an aesthetic argument about the value of adventure writing over “message fiction.” I like good pulp fiction, but prefer experimental writing. More: it became clear to me that Torgersen and Beale knew that what they were doing was a slap in the face of the SF community—the people who attended events like Worldcon and administered the Hugos. As far as they were concerned, many of the existing institutions of science fiction fandom were not only dominated by liberals, but corrupt, and therefore had to be either reformed or burned down. The Puppies were looking for a fight.

Emotions were already running high on both sides. A lot of fans were treating the Puppies as a threat to the Hugos. To the existing fandom, and apparently to the Sad Puppies, too, who wanted the Hugos to acknowledge their own vision of SF. But not to me. The Hugos didn’t generally go to SF novels that were important to me. But so what? I wasn’t the one giving out the awards. What right did someone else have to try to hijack the process?

Turning the nomination down meant picking a side, if only by implication. But accepting it was also taking a side. Of course, people could be Puppy voters and also genuinely believe I was a good candidate. Did I have the right to back out on them? From another angle, could I win? If the category was entirely flooded with Puppy picks, I thought I might do well. And, realistically, the No Award option existed—and people were already talking about using it.

The more I thought about it, the more confused I got. There was a lot at stake. But I didn’t really know how much; this was not, in the end, my world. I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. I did have a sense that a lot of people involved in the debate had a history with each other, and that a certain amount of subtext in the online discussion was based off of meatspace encounters. (Much later, it’d come out that Correia felt he’d been excluded and mocked at the convention where the 2011 Campbell Award was presented.)

I went back and forth for a couple of days trying to figure out the right thing to do—for me, for Black Gate, for the science fiction field in general. I talked with some people in SF, I read and read, and I still wasn’t sure. Finally I thought: What do I know, exactly? I’d been put forward for a prize—but as part of a program that I didn’t agree with. I didn’t like the tactics the Puppies had used, I didn’t like the fact that they’d pulled me into what they knew was going to be a fraught situation without asking, and I didn’t agree with much Torgersen had to say about SF. Put like that, it was simple enough.

First, I should point out the reason that I recommended both Black Gate and Matthew David Surridge for Hugo Awards is because a) they were worthy of winning the award, and b) they would never, ever have been nominated by the very small group of 40-50 Tor-affiliated SJWs who have dominated the nominations, and through them the awards, for the last 20 years.

Second, all Matthew’s actions accomplished was to ensure the award went to a vastly inferior “fan” writer, the professional writer and wife of the then-SFWA president, whose “fan writing” consisted of a single hit piece on one of the lunatics of the field. That, more than anything, is why his decision to renounce his nomination was a mistake. That one is on you, Matthew. If you think Laura Mixon is a better fan writer than you are, fine. But I don’t.

What Rabid Puppies did was to rescue the category from the pro writers in the Tor Books cabal who were intentionally using it as a springboard to win the Best Novel award. John Scalzi did this successfully, Jim Hines and Kameron Hurley did it unsuccessfully. Notice how they abruptly disappeared from the category once they win their “Fan Writer” awards. It is simply laughable to claim that any of the fan writers nominated before the Puppy campaigns can legitimately compare with the fan writers we have been recommending, both at Black Gate and Castalia House. The same is true of the Best Related Work category.

Third, the Hugo controversies are only going to become more intense going forward. Last year, we were quiet and allowed all of the various slanders that appeared in the media to go largely uncommented. Instead, we began doing our research, and while we are not neo-Nazis or any of the various things we are accused of being, we have learned that SF fandom is genuinely full of pedophiles, child abusers, child molesters, sexual deviants, and people who are more than willing to publicly defend and even celebrate child molesters… and it has been for fifty years.

This year it’s our turn to take our case to the media, and we’re going to hit back harder than any of you ever imagined. This isn’t over. It has barely even begun. And every time the SJWs in SF try to double-down, as they did with the media and with rules changes like EPH, we’re going to take advantage of those actions and make use of them.

So for those of you inclined to Puppy-kicking, I encourage you to think twice before you decide to take their side. Because you’re going to find yourself publicly associated with things far darker and more depraved than anything you ever accused the Puppies of being or doing. If you are determined to fight award recommendations in order to defend child molesters, then there is something seriously wrong with you.

And before you protest that we’re being unfair, well, you should probably keep in mind that I have written an entire book about the philosophical legitimacy of utilizing tactics that were introduced by the other side. Every sword cuts both ways.

Shadowbanned by SJWs

Twitter knows the SJWs can’t win on a level playing field, which is why they are attempting to silence the influential voices of the social media Right:

Rumours that Twitter has begun ‘shadowbanning’ politically inconvenient users have been confirmed by a source inside the company, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart Tech. His claim was corroborated by a senior editor at a major publisher.

According to the source, Twitter maintains a ‘whitelist’ of favoured Twitter accounts and a ‘blacklist’ of unfavoured accounts. Accounts on the whitelist are prioritised in search results, even if they’re not the most popular among users. Meanwhile, accounts on the blacklist have their posts hidden from both search results and other users’ timelines.

Our source was backed up by a senior editor at a major digital publisher, who told Breitbart that Twitter told him it deliberately whitelists and blacklists users. He added that he was afraid of the site’s power, noting that his tweets could disappear from users’ timelines if he got on the wrong side of the company.

Shadowbanning, sometimes known as “Stealth Banning” or “Hell Banning,” is commonly used by online community managers to block content posted by spammers. Instead of banning a user directly (which would alert the spammer to their status, prompting them to create a new account), their content is merely hidden from public view.

For site owners, the ideal shadowban is when a user never realizes he’s been shadowbanned.

However, Twitter isn’t merely targeting spammers. For weeks, users have been reporting that tweets from populist conservatives, members of the alternative right, cultural libertarians, and other anti-PC dissidents have disappeared from their timelines.

Among the users complaining of shadowbans are sci-fi author and alt-right figurehead Vox Day, geek culture blogger “Daddy Warpig,” and the popular pro-Trump account Ricky Vaughn. League of Gamers founder and former World of Warcraft team lead Mark Kern, as well as adult actress and anti-censorship activist Mercedes Carrera, have also reported that their tweets are not appearing on the timelines of their followers.

It’s pretty easy to tell when you’re being shadowbanned because your notifications decline dramatically. It’s also easy to see it in the 28-day profile.

Notice how despite the number of tweets being flat and the number of followers increasing, the number of impressions and profile visits dropped significantly at precisely the same time. As it happens, that’s right when I noticed my notifications declining and people began letting me know that they weren’t seeing my tweets.

The reason mentions don’t drop as heavily is because for an account with less than 10,000 followers, many of my mentions are not made in response to my tweets and are therefore not affectived by the shadowban.

But never fear. Alternatives are on the way.

Jobs in Texas

Long time reader, member of the Ilk. The positions are in south Texas.  Here are the details:

SCADA Engineer-72-75K Salary
The right candidate for this position would have SCADA experience in: PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) at automobile-semiconductor or water treatment industry.  We are also seeking not just the level of exposure but years of implementation experience, specifically with Rockwell Automation PLC or Control Logix PLC.  Industrial SCADA control system experience is of great importance as well.

Applications Engineer-60-75K Salary depending on experience.
For this position we are looking highly at the Digi RF products experience: XBee WiFi, Xpress Ethernet Bridge, FIPS 140-2 Crypto module.  We are willing to overlook Digi RF if they have the “networking” experience.  Specifically, we want someone with wireless industrial solution products experience.  We are also looking for experience in troubleshooting and implementation, such as contract work, etc.  This position will travel to sites approximately 30% of the time

If you think you might qualify and you’re interested, shoot me an email with SCADA in the title and I will forward it.

Portrait of a leader

The reason Trump is dominating the other Republican candidates is that he is the only one who is actually a leader of men. The others are politicians, which is a very different skill set. Look at how Trump not only shows that loyalty runs in both directions, but insists on letting them speak for themselves.

Now THAT is a man of the people in action.

Hillary hides in the closet

It’s hardly a secret that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. I remember an interview that Hannity and Colmes did with Gennifer Flowers during the Lewinsky scandal when she quite flatly stated that Hillary was of a Sapphic orientation – hardly a surprise when you consider Hillary’s alma mater – and I have never seen a show go faster to a commercial before or since.

But it is apparent that people in Arkansas who are aware of her orientation are considerably less afraid of the the Clinton machine than they were, as more and more people are speaking openly to the press about what everyone in Little Rock circles has known for decades. Such as, for example, another Arkansas woman who had an affair with Bill Clinton:

The twice-divorced 77-year-old took to social media in recent weeks to post an extraordinary warning that if she dies by ‘suicide’ no-one should believe it.

When Daily Mail Online visited Miller at her Arkansas home she insisted she had been stalked, spied upon and plagued by anonymous phone calls since word of her memoir leaked out.

‘She doesn’t care what I say about Bill, that’s old news,’ Miller told Daily Mail Online. ‘But I think she wonders what Bill told me. I think she wonders how much I know about her that came from Bill.

‘With the election coming up she can’t afford any sort of loose end. She’s the closest thing you can imagine to Al Capone. I don’t think she is going to rest until she puts me to rest.’

And what of those accusations so insulting or damaging that a potential Presidential candidate would unleash her operatives to intimidate or even bump off an elderly lady?

‘Hillary is a lesbian,’ Miller claims, reigniting a lingering but unsubstantiated rumor that has dogged the former First Lady for years.

Frankly, I’m surprised that anyone might still believe that Hillary is straight. One look at those pantsuits she favors would be sufficient evidence to convict in any court of law.