Unintended Satire of the DC Swamp:  Why It Needs to be Drained
588852
Written by a left-wing woman unaware that: 1. Conservatives and Republicans are not the same thing, 2. The battle is between globalists and nationalists, not Dems and Repubs, 3, Both parties make up one, entitled group - "the Uniparty, 4. "PR people for "environmental causes" are  largely working as lobbyists, 5. Some people are paid very well for preaching to the rest of the country about how to live their lives,

ALSO unknown to her: 6. DC is full of power couples, where both work for a 503c, "cause agencies," the media, or government, 7. indulging your children by acting as taxi drivers for daily lessons and PR people for their "projects" is not helpful, 8. this is the top 1%, not your average American family, 9. Daughters who yell "I hate my father" and "I hate all men" really should be talked to, 10. Having a gap on your resume or "losing your identity" is just as important for husbands as for wives,

A few more things she needs to know: 11. stay-at-home wives are not the enemy, 12. Dems also have 20-yr-old blond female assistants, 13. "climate change" is not proven, 14. getting offered $120,000 to start with a hiring bonus for asking money for corporations is not acceptable to people outside DC, 14. if your daughter wants to "save the world," her parents' business associates should not pay her to ride her horse for corporate payments, 15. 8-year-olds are too old for "play dates."

I could go on, but you get the point. Unintended satire about a wealthy power couple in DC with indulged children and a very left-point-of-view. The two parties are all good  or all bad; there's no "uniparty;" there's no revolving door or if there is, it's fine and normal; women who stay home with children are Evil, conservatives go to megachurches (not Catholic -- tell Coulter, Buchanan and Ingram), Dems are savior of the world and GOP (all one, no division between establishment and traditionalists) have deplorable, stereotyped families and want their women barefoot and pregnant. (oh, they're also shifty and crooked at work, but Dems all help each other out by doing favors, getting each other jobs, etc).

In this book, working for a Fox-type network is Evil but having your kids' teams and hobbies, your housing, your benefits etc. being based on getting corporate donations is Good.  If you're aware of the incongruity of a plotline like this, the book works as a satire of the DC swamp. If you're not, you may enjoy it as chick lit -- but only if your politics lean largely to the left. Otherwise, prepare to be slurred as inferior by a book that does not seem to realize it is condescending to the point of insult.
2251986
Like Tim Burton or Frank Zappa, Grant Morrison is one of those creative talents that can bring more idiosyncrasy than genius to a project. While he's become prolific in the mainstream Marvel and DC universes, a decade ago Morrison's name was synonymous with deconstructive comics that loudly challenged expectations. While some of these early works contributed to a more complex relationship with the medium (Animal Man), The Filth is just batshit crazy for the sake of crazy.

Not that this is a horrible thing. Freed of the larger narrative constraints of continuity that complicated The Invisibles, Morrison grabs whatever is within cultural reach and throws together a pure vision of grotesque reality.

Post human genocide, neo-fetish meta-garbagemen, bermensch creating lobotomies, John Lennon quoting cyborg dolphins, giant killer sperm, probably pedophilic protagonists and doppelgangers with anti-person agendas. With the loosest of narratives, The Filth delivers a universe where these absurdities seem more logical than the standard world of Superhero Comics.

While the gesture is impressive, and the results often entertaining, the untethered nature that allows such unconventional creation undermines any larger gestures to cultural insight.

Like a bad mescaline bender, The Filth is a lot of big ideas and surreal freakishness that means little once it's over.
864369
Hedges reports that American culture has slid into a vast, narcotizing, fantasy realm that distracts us from confronting the economic, environmental, political and moral collapse that surrounds us.  The argument goes beyond Neil Postman's in that media and journalism are smoking the same pipes, and have become vapid celebrities and courtiers instead of truth diggers.  Financial movers and shakers are indifferent to the human suffering they are causing.  It takes enormous effort for the citizenry to achieve clear sightedness since society has become a vast forum for illusion immersion.  As the country hurtles toward the rocks ahead, there are demogogues lying in wait for their chance to peddle yet more illusions of healing and relief.  As despair and disillusion become more acute and riots erupt, the incipient forces of authoritarian clampdown will have the excuse they've been waiting for to destroy civil liberties, restore order and make the Constitution a faded memory.  As Hedges notes, "the tools are in place" and all that's needed is a national crisis to legitimize their use.  The novel feature of Hedges's diagnosis is that hatred of the present elites that are leading us to destruction through greed or pipedreams is growing, and these familiar elites may be thrown overboard in favor of a new cadre we cannot imagine, but who will immerse America in a deep valley of tears with all exits blocked.  The route will be blindness to our crisis, then despair, then social convulsions, then the clampdown that extinguishes our democracy for good for the sake of law and order.  Hedges lists the illusions we"ve bought into that are greasing the slide.
1604039
While I have not finished it yet, I was shocked and depressed to find out how deep the corruption of our federal leaders are. The "swamp" is no longer liquid but seems to be cement. Can Pres. Trump ever move it out?
449816
Certainly one of the great mysteries of contemporary American History is why New York City became such an economic basket case during the 1970's.  Yes the clues were there but why exactly did everything happen at once.  The simple answer according to Joe Flood is that the slavish devotion of so called,"experts," resulted in massive disruption in city services when they were most needed.  The reason they were so needed is that decades of terrible planning and failed social policies by the same experts destroyed the fabric of the city.  Flood shows that other social issues may have been minimized or possibly destroyed if not for the destruction of the city by those who so arrogantly assumed they were saving it.

By using the lens of the fire department Flood is able to demonstrate how these failed policies combined with the personal goals of ambitious civil servants who put their own agendas ahead of the good of the citizens of New York.  He also does a wonderful job of showing how the minority community was often under attack by these groups and how their own elected representatives chose to line their own pockets rather than help their constituents.

Quite simply this is an excellent and unheralded book.  I strongly recommended it as the hidden gem of the year thus far.
41965
Obvious from the disclaimer, the Publisher is confused or perhaps more correctly, delusional. I say confused because the Publisher has mistaken our constitution for a series of 'loosely enforced guidelines', rather than the historic law of the land that continues to be the accepted wisdom. That the work is a product of it's time is inarguable in that it suggests that only the rules of political convenience and self service should be allowed any purchase or voice going forward. I likewise suggest that there are any number of resources for responsible consideration of our constitution, and that such resources are preferred to this Publishers bewildering insult to American intellectual and philosophical interests.
3528687
Ellis has provided a tour-de-force through the minds and politics of a small cadre of Revolutionary leaders who turned a poorly-organized and half-hearted secession movement into an authentic political revolution.

This story reveals both the quality and forward-thinking of a core of the early American leadership, as well as the long-standing strain of anti-federalism that has remained an erosive populist force from the founding to the present day.

The so-called conservatives of modern times are still trying to rewrite American history to return to the kind of populist libertarianism that nearly undermined the war against Britain and almost rendered the Confederation of States a global laughing stock (and eventually led to a bloody civil war).

Madison and Hamilton, in particular, but also Washington and John Jay (even Jefferson in less guarded moments) mistrusted the democratic impulse and recognized the danger of mob rule and the dominance of private and regional interests over the general public good.

In 1787, it required a small group of dedicated revolutionaries to create a system that would buffer popular opinion through layers of deliberative process that had at least the potential of separating the wheat from the chaff. The so-called American Revolution was little more than a rebuff of remote British rule. The real American Revolution was perpetrated by a very small conspiracy of unflinching patriots who recognized the unfulfilled potential of the nascent nation.
1111115
Mythological in nature is the battle of words you are witnessing here.  Two people from (seemingly) opposite sides of the spectrum, yet each unable to really assail each other because of the brotherhood that locks them together.  In other words, it's an act.  Al Franken and Rush Limbaugh have only one goal in mind... And that would be Mr. Wizard?  To enhance their personal careers by any means possible.  Get with it people!  This is showmanship, carney-like at the lowest order.  FOCUS...it's just entertainment.  Don't take these baffoons seriously, they're only in it for the money.
3745661
A highly entertaining political satire/dystopia/sci-fi book. A successful conservative president travels to the future (2084, get it? it's by no means subtle) and finds his beloved country transformed into a horrific dystopia. Now he must battle forces within his present time who have caused this future society to come about, while staying within the constraints imposed by time travel paradoxes. A tall order, indeed. The sidetracking discussions of political  philosophy should have been cut out by a better editor, and constant references to real present day individuals and political campaigns are amusing but in the end limiting to the life span of this work. Nevertheless, the cautionary tale is compelling, the satire biting, and the ending clever and elegant. Recommended for political junkies and sci-fi fans alike.
514864
If you care about the poor or the environment, be prepared to vomit in your mouth at nearly every other page of this account of the oil and other resource extraction industries.

Ken Silverstein devotes a chapter to each of the following categories of players in this woeful tragedy: the fixers, the dictators, the traders, the gatekeepers, the flacks, the lobbyists and the hustlers.

While varied dictatorial regimes from Africa and Asia figure throughout the novel, Silverstein profiled Teodorin Obiang, the heir apparent to Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the dictator of Equitorial Guinea.

Have you ever heard of Glencore? It makes mountains of money trading rights to exploit natural resources around the world.

Do you know George W Bush's torture consiglieri John Yoo (and here), who also happens to heartily approve of Barack Obama's warmongering? Before him there was Ronald Reagan's legal yes-man Bretton Sciaroni, who wrote memos explaining why it was legal for the United States government to aid the Contra terrorists killing Nicaraguans. Do these guys end up in prison or at the end of a noose like Nazi war criminals? Yoo is teaching at University of California - Berkeley, and Sciaroni, who talks with Silverstein without the slightest recognition of himself as a sleaze, is a potentate in Cambodia.

If you ever have the opportunity to throw your shoe at Tony Blair, do so with righteous anger. Before you read the chapter about him, you may want to have some inanimate object close by that you can destroy. At least write and perform a song about him.

Lest you think that resource extraction only impacts politics in the Third World, read the chapter on Louisiana. And think twice before voting for Bobby Jindal.

Silverstein ends with a humorous narration of the career of Neil Bush, the son of President George H.W. Bush and brother of President George W Bush. I guess you'll think it's funny if you find humor in the ability of USA blue-bloods to land in money no matter their incompetence.

The book does not offer solutions or best practices. The people interviewed in this book agree that there's simply too much money at stake to care about poor people or the environment.

A large question humanity must answer is whether capitalism can adapt to prevent destruction of our biosphere. This is the premise behind books like Ecological Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and E. O. Wilson's The Future of Life. These liberal environmentalists believe that market mechanisms can be adjusted to delay ecological collapse until technology or human consciousness solves the threats to our biosphere. Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything is more radical in its demand that our entire economic system needs revolutionary change.

Silverstein's book certainly takes the sparkle out of liberal environmentalists' proposals.

Silverstein makes excellent use of USA diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks. Consider supporting whistleblowers and the news outlets which publish material using the leaks.

I'm tweeting some of tidbits from the book under the hashtag #SecretWorldOfOil. Join the conversation.
1444175
Foundering Fathers brings three great American heroes--Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and a mother from another brother, Abigail Adams--together for an adventure in modern day Washington, D.C.

The setup:  a brilliant but mad American scientist, Dr. Gregor Meddlesohm, perhaps funded by evil foreign interests, clones the colonial heroes from the afterlife. Terrorists from the `Stans (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrkgibostan, & Younocanistan) try to kidnap our heroes and put them on YouTube. The infidels escape by crawling in tunnels under Lafayette Park using a smart phone based on the technology developed as a result of Benjamin Franklin's research into electricity.

Then comes the payoff of this comic, historical fiction, as the Foundering Fathers, a most talented trio, find themselves as tourists in a contemporary city that pays homage to their former lives, while trampling on many of their founding ideals. They rediscover a Capitol rife with corruption, and view historical paintings that have mysteriously erased figures in an effort to sanitize the history of the United States. Many funny misadventures ensue: in the National Archives, the Pentagon, military training camps, the Federal Reserve, the White House, Fannie and Freddie Mac, as they witness the progress, or lack thereof, of their fair republic.

In a bracing peek into contemporary local politics, the trio has a scuffle with the (dis)honorable Congressman Patrick James Moronico and his son. Congressman Moronico resembles my local village idiot, James Moran, who has received a mandate from the lemmings in the 8th Congressional district of Virginia for 12 disastrous terms. Rep. Moronico usurps his power by collecting an absurd amount of public funds to build a fictitious airport to nowhere and hires his son to strong arm any opponents. The Founders echo his hollow sentiments that D.C. is a place where public `servants' call the shots for the appropriation of tax dollars with disregard to `Joe Blow' and `to spend as we damn well please!' What's next? Voter fraud!?*! This chapter, as many of the others, is a thinly veiled recounting of and sardonic commentary on actual events.

The Foundering Fathers follows author Ed Moser's successful `A Patriot's A to Z of America: Things that Every Good American Should Know', as a comparison between old school rules and the new regime. I appreciate the book's mix of humor, history, espionage, and Inside the Beltway antics.

The cartoons that accompany the Founders' capers are a great addition to this historical fiction book.

Reading this exciting book is a great trip through my hometown's political heroes of yesterday, who offer hope for tomorrow: Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Abigail Adams.
2318734
Mad Magazine pokes fun at everything worth making fun of. Right now its politicians (on both sides of the aisle) that are the big fat targets. If Washington ever gets back to the people's business I'm sure that Mad will move on. Still stupidly funny and worthy of its place in my bathroom
74675
We learn from everything, in every way, whatever the situation may be. What people sometimes forget is that when we stop thinking or through a condescending attitude we shut down others from bringing forth their Ideas we go dormant.

I always find it amazing when people use name calling and insults to make their point. As if calling Mr. Quasar names and implying he is some type of a con man makes Ms. Morrison's point more valid.  In fact the opposite is true.

I think Mr. Quasar makes some very valid points, and the scientific loop should be closed by doing a search of the swamp. Expeditions are mounted and discovers are made daily because of one persons passion to find the truth.

It is their faith and dedication that brings some of the worlds great mysteries to an end and gives us a valid conclusion.  If you have issue with Mr. Quasar I would like to see your data and research that brought you to your conclusions.  Or are you just quoting someone else theory that you agree with more than Mr. Quasar's ? I would say based on your rude and inflammatory statements you are just regurgitating someone else information that you briefly scanned.

I do not agree 100% with Mr. Quasar and I am a huge septic of many of these issues and events. However in this instance I believe Mr. Quasar's conclusions are valid and I hope one day someone takes the time and attempts to locate the planes in the swamp.
4173613
Mark Leibovich is an entertaining writer, a New York TImes writer who lives in DC. He doesn't pull punches and, while the account of careerism in the political, media, lobbyist class is very funny, it is also very sad and even infuriating. Very few people emerge unscathed in this account of how ideals melt under the hot breath of money offered by the great lobbying firms. Leading senators from both parties often end up in the same lobby, happily making millions while representing the companies they put on a show of attacking while in office. Leibovich illustrates the gradual co-opting of the Obama administration,beginning with a series of "never mind" backing away from promises made to the voters. This DC class is complacent about the struggles of the rest of the country, which seem to mean nothing to them. Highly recommended for anyone who cares about our government and the reasons it is so dysfunctional.
3271881
The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America is a masterpiece of demagoguery, complete with newly-coined (and rhyming!) buzzwords certain to have their pompous parade down the avenues of liberal discourse.  This work is breathtaking in its arrogance, and openly contemptuous of half of our nation's people.  The book does provide some valid fuel for contemplation, particularly regarding the "war on drugs."  These few points, however, cannot redeem its fevered partisanship and hyper-liberal hubris.

The authors' rant against the equal representation of our fifty semi-sovereign states in the Senate led me to amusedly wonder how they would respond to a suggestion that each nation's voting power in various world bodies, such as the United Nations or the U.N. Security Council, should be directly proportional to the size of its population.

On a personal level this book reminded me of my own college experiences as a person from a small agricultural (i.e. "Retro") community in Illinois.  When I went to study engineering and later medicine on the campuses of three universities in Illinois, I was shocked at the contempt and, frankly, the bigotry directed against rural people and rural communities by many (NOT all) people from the Chicagoland area (the most "Metro" area of a "Metro" state).  These people, who naturally considered themselves sophisticated, were in some ways woefully ignorant.

Sadly, this book will only serve to further divide us.  It paints an absurd picture of a "Metro" America which is a bastion of intellect, goodness, tolerance, and true human strength, and contrasts it starkly with an equally ludicrous picture of a "Retro" America which is an alleged cesspool of willful ignorance, malevolence, bigotry, and superstitious fanaticism.  At best, this book will be ignored.  At worst, it will deepen the misunderstanding and bitterness that already exist between liberals and conservatives in this nation.  Most likely, it will just end up preaching fervently to the liberal choir, and stroking the egos of gullible suburbanites everywhere.
1994277
Timothy Penny was a six-term Democratic Congressman from Minnesota. As previous reviews indicated, what set him apart from fellow Democrats was a visceral revulsion to profligate deficit spending by Congress. I became aware of Penny while conducting research for a book that includes a historical review of U.S. federal government science agencies (Manheim, Springer (2009). The curious title of Penny's book derives from an extraordinary but now little remembered Congressional drama.

In 1993 Penny and John Kasich, Republican Congressman from Illinois submitted  an amendment entitled "The Common Cents Deficit Reduction Act of 1993" to the the House "Government Reform and Savings Act of 1993".The Penny-Kasich amendment encompassed an array of budget cuts and federal agency reorganizations estimated to save $90 billion. "A new consolidated Cabinet-level Department of Science, Space, Energy, and Technology was to replace by tranfer or dissolution functions of the Department of Energy, NASA, NSF, parts of a dismantled Dept. of Commerce (including NOAA and NIST). All bureaus of the Department of Interior except the Bureau of Reclamation would be wiped out."  The proposed amendment was estimated to result in reduction of 252,000 full-time equivalent federal positions.

This bill, that would have created cataclysmic change in federal science agencies, came within six votes of passage in the House. To be sure, The Penny-Kasich bill wouldn't probably been vetoed by President Clinton even if it passed the Senate. But it carried a powerful message of Congressional dissatisfaction with the status quo. Two years later backwash from this bill hit my agency, the U.S. Geological Survey. A new Director announced a massive RIF. USGS, which, decades earlier, had been assessed as the most effective scientific organization - public or private - in U.S. history,  has still not recovered from the direct and indirect results of this event.

In his 1996 book Penny sketches out a series of cultures, none attractive, that permeate the U.S. Congress: fear, hypocrisy, spending, power, isolation from voters, etc. Names are named. Penny is nothing if not candid. The Publisher's Review calls Penny's book unbalanced. In a narrow sense this is certainly true, in that he offers no redeeming virtues, successes, etc. But in hindsight Penny's negative perceptions of Congress have been borne out in books like Mann and Ornstein's "Broken Branch", and the Gallup Poll of July 2010. Gallup found Congress's rating with the public dead last among 16 institutions and at the lowest level recorded since Gallup began the polls. Penny may be aroused and angry, but he is not a crank.

Where I think Penny is unconvincing is in prescriptions for improvement, which neither gained traction with the Democratic Party leadership, nor showed awareness of lawmaking systems that do exercise the kind of controls he sought over spending. These are found in parliamentary systems of leading European nations like Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Scandinavian nations, and Germany.

There are thousands of muckraking or  partisan books that serve up dirt about politicians or organizations. Though I try as a policy researcher to maintain contact with all sides of political developments, I find that most authors of polemics so mix facts with assumptions, exaggeration or distortion that sorting out the valid information is not worth the trouble. In my judgment Penny's book rises above this level. His facts and realities are solid enough so that his book remains a useful source of realistic information on Congress.
4558560
<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Ameritopia-The-Unmaking-of-America/dp/1439173249/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America</a>Ameritopia is a much needed breath of fresh air exposing the questionable motivations of those on the Left, many of whom don't seem to even understand their own roots.  I find it amusing how the extreme negative reviews seem to be a campaign by those hostile to the American message of freedom with responsibility.