America (Founders, Current Situation) – Page 39

2007/06/272009/12/04

Review: The Secret Founding of America–The Real Story of Freemasons, Puritans, & the Battle for The New World

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth

1990's to Date Has Shed New Light on Everything

June 27, 2007

Nicholas Hagger

I have been reading since the 1960's, but it is only in the last ten years that I have seen a virtual nuclear explosion of discovery, dissemination, discussion, and deliberation over matters that in the past have been hushed up, censored, ignored, ridiculed, or crushed.

This is such a book. I list a few others that merit study below. America was, as the author puts forth, a virgin territory in which the Indians were genocided (both deliberately and accidentally, e.g. by infectuous diseases not yet known to them) so that a European war could play out between Catholics, Protestants, and secret societies, the Freemasons in the forefront.

I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but I do believe that when documentation reaches a critical mass, it is essential that we keep an open mind and “deal with it.”

EDIT Inspired by 1st Comment: Rule by Secrecy, which slipped my mind, ends by suggesting that aliens populated the earth and the secret societies evolved as their “straw bosses” when it was realized that the larger mass of now much more intelligent humans could not be “penned up” as slaves. This is certainly plausible, but my own interim explanation is that the secret societies, which evolved to challenge the authorities of both king and pope, may have seen it convenient to claim that they were the represenatives of a “higher order” such as the Illuminati appear to claim. Either way, the longer we continue to eat our own seed corn and kill our own children of the Earth, the less likely we are to defeat these secret societies and redistribute the wealth–there is PLENTY of money for peace and prosperity across the planet, it is simply too concentrated in greedy, corrupt, arrogant, and irresponsible hands.

There is no question in my own mind, as a reader of non-fiction reviewed here at Amazon (the last 1000 books, not the first 2000+), but that the US Government is not in charge of anything. We the People are not in charge of the US Government. I see a very clear connection between secret societies, select bankers, corrupt corporate chiefs all too eager to screw their stockholders and their employees and their customers, and a Congress and a White House that are nothing more than prostitutes.

This is an important book, because it begins to fill the gaps. The people have a digital memory now, and those that have abused power cloaked in secrecy, now need to help create infinite wealth–there is no need to confiscate ill-gotten gains as long as those who have the concentrated wealth now do not stand in the way of our creating “seven billion billionaires” (Medard Gabel's term).

Other references:
Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids
Animal Farm (Signet Classics)
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country
The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve The Case Against the Fed
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

2007/04/272009/12/04

Review: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Congress (Failure, Reform), Country/Regional, Democracy, Economics, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Leadership

National Enema With Wit and Character,

April 27, 2007

Lee Iacocca

This book earns my vote for top transpartisan book of the decade, along with “All Rise” (see link below). This great man is saying things that I and others have been saying since 2000, but because of his stature, we now finally have the national enema that we all need. Lee Iacocca, in my personal view, should link up with Reuniting America, and volunteer to form a Sunshine Cabinet of transpartisan retired leaders (corporate, military, law enforcement, education, and others). We need to show America that it is possible to create a balanced sustainable budget, and to have common sense priorities.

The book opens with a discussion of the nine C's of leadership: Curiosity, Creativity, Communicator, Character, Courage, Conviction, Charisma, Competency, and Common Sense. In evaluating the current crop of candidates for President, all fail with the exception of Joe Biden for President and John Edwards for Vice President.

He stresses people and prioities, and for the first time in any book I have read, he calls for all presidential candidates to appoint their Cabinet BEFORE the election so the people can evaluate the team and not just the Man. This is something I have advocated since 2000, see the original documents at Citizens-Party.org.

His comments on Bush-Cheney cronism are devastatingly on the mark. He points out that the insider game excludes top talent.

He finds Congress to be failing at the five top issues for all Americans: Iraq, Jobs, Health Care, Education, and Energy.

He is critical of the Executive for telling lies to get a war with Iraq, for condoning torture, and for being reactive instead of proactive.

To make his point, he notes that for what we have spent in Iraq, we could have instead hired 8 million teachers, 8 million police, fire, and medical support specialists; funded 25M college scholarships, and given every citizen a year of free gas and health care.

In criticizing the Iraq strategy, he points out that unlike Gulf I, there are no Arab nations in the coalition this time, and that is the truth-teller. He specifically laments the loss of “America the Good” in the eyes of the world.

Among the top issues he personally focuses on in the book are Energy, Fair Trade vice Free Trade, restoration of moral capitalism and an end to the CEO looting of companies at the expense of workers; the protection of the middle class, the reduction of medical (and I would add, educational) bureaucracies, and the US brain gap–South Korea, Japan, and Singapore are getting a reverse brain drain from the US, as well as training their own better than we are.

He slams James Carville for representing the worst of the structured political process, where a candidate is told what their policies will be based on political consultants and focus groups.

The book closes with a discussion of four traits he learned from others: Optimism; Common Sense; Discipline; and–from his mother–Love.

At the end, he calls America to action, asking each of us to give something up, put something back in, and elect a LEADER.

I do NOT agree with those who are critical of either the author or the book. This is an easy to read totally straight-up book that is now, along with “All Rise” and “The Tao of Democracy” among my top-rated Transpartisan books. See my varied lists on Transpartisan, democracy, immoral capitalism, impeachment of Cheney, etc.

If he will help form a Sunshine Cabinet, and Reuniting America can raise $500M a year ($20 from 25 million Americans, or $100 from 5 million Americans) we can close down the Republican and Democratic partisan machines that have corrupted our democracy, and we can restore informed engaged democracy. We need this man's common sense now more than ever.

All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity (BK Currents)
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People

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2007/03/142009/12/04

Review: American Fascists–The Christian Right and the War On America

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Religion & Politics of Religion

Last Call for Sanity in Face of Christo-Fascism,

March 14, 2007

Chris Hedges

Of all the books I have read, inclusive of a good number on religion, on knowledge, and on the pathologies of power, this book is perhaps the single clearest, most up to date, and most compelling definition of the extreme right in America as the world's new fascists.

I created the image that I am uploading with the review several years back, when Condi Rice and others had the temerity to call General Tony Zinni a traitor when Zinni, the most recently retired Command-in-Chief of the US Central Command, made a clear public case for NOT invading Iraq. Collin Powell was more subdued, saying “if you break it, you own it,” but Bush-Cheney do not compute nuances, and were not listening. They both reflected this book's basic premise, that when dissent is considered treason, one is dealing with a neo-fascist regime.

The author is uniquely qualified as both a graduate of a top-level divinity school, and a world-class investigative journalist, to make this case.

He opens the book with an annotated list of fourteen features of fascism that set the stage, and I list them here because of their importance–buy the book to get the whole picture:

1. Cult of Tradition
2. Rejection of Modernism
3. Action for Action's Sake
4. Critics are Modernists
5. Dissent is Treason
6. Fueled by Frustration
7. Lacking Identity, Contrives Birthright
8. Humiliated and Delusional vis a vis external enemies
9. Pacifism is evil
10. Elitist contempt for weak (similar to poorest of whites contempt for hard-working blacks)
11. Cult of Hero, Cult of Death
12. War as Sexual Sublimation
13. Selective Populism (generally White versus All, but Colored can “Become” White)
14. Newsspeak, Hijacking of Language

This very educated and quietly balanced author cites Karl Popper's seminal work on Open Society and its Enemies on the pathological outcomes from faith in excess, faith that is intolerant of others. It is clear throughout this book that America is under siege from two faiths in excess–the external far enemy of violent intolerant Islam, and the more subversive internal danger of neo-Nazi fascists in waiting, mobilizing the dispossessed whites who do not read a lot, and get “all they need to know” from Pat Robertson's 700 Club and other similar self-serving channels whose primary role is to raise cash for the Hitler's in Waiting.

Blinding insight from this author: the extreme right does not limit it's cherry-picking to intelligence–it routinely cherry-picks from the Bible, which contains ample violence and bigotry and hatred for the ends of the extreme right: channeling fury into funding.

The author discussed “dominionism” as the fascist rendition of the Christian faith.

Key intellectual and patriotic contributions in this book include a study of the evangelicals and the number that take the Bible literally, the naming of names at the top who are a danger to American democracy, and in three pages of damning indictment, the manner in which neo-fascist Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State for Ohio, stole that state's electoral votes for Bush by manipulating and disappearing voting registrations and actual votes.

Chisto-Facism is a closed system that demands total obedience and indoctrination into a culture of hate that demonizes all who do not “believe.” Holy Cow! This is not just fascist, it's a cult!

As the book draws to a conclusion, the author compares totalitarian regimes and their elaborate spectacles for the masses, with the Christo-fascists in America. The similarities are compelling, especially when the author discusses how Hitler used homosexuals as an early target group to test drive his extra-judicial witch-hunts.

A very helpful description of the conversion process, which is scripted, deceptive, and akin to “love bombing” as practiced by the Moonies, shows that individual are being recruited into a closed system that labels all “non-members” to be outside the circle. As the author sums it up, this system divides families, friends, and communities.

The author frightens me when he discusses how the non-profit (i.e. not taxed) extreme rightist religion fuehrers favor unrestricted capitalism, the elimination of all taxes, while paradoxically including international bankers with Muslims and others who will be “Left Behind.”

On that note, the author says that the Left Behind series is a window into the souls of the blindly faithful.

My two take-aways from this superb book:

Labor unions and the progressives need to get back into the fight for America's soul. See also my review of “The Left Hand of God.”

School Boards are the weak link in the entire infrastructure of government. The extreme right has adherents from School Boards to State Legislators to Congress. On the one hand, this leads to a complex range of decisions in which our Constitutional separation of church and state is undermined every single day; and on the other, it leads to the unholy alliance of these extremists, who help elect neo-conservative extremists, even if they do not receive the promised concessions after the election (See also my review of “Tempting Faith,” and of “American Theocracy”).

This author is a brave and intelligent man. He is calling it as it is: a fascist is a fascist. I am reminded of the number of white Nazi's admitted to the US after WWII under special intelligence exemptions. Otto Reich, Karl Rove, and the Bush Family are the current manifestation of American fascism. It's time we run them out of town.

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2007/01/292009/12/04

Review: How The World Really Works

6 Star Top 10%, America (Founders, Current Situation), Banks, Fed, Money, & Concentrated Wealth, Corruption, Crime (Corporate), Crime (Government), Crime (Organized, Transnational), Religion & Politics of Religion

Best Insight into Organized Crime-Vatican-Wall Street Collaboration,

January 29, 2007

Alan B. Jones

I am going to put my reputation on the line, and the 850+ non-fiction books I have read that make me the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction (and to my great surprise, today #49 over all fiction, movies, music, and software as well as non-fiction) for the simple reason that too many people discuss books such as this by labeling it “conspiracy theory.”

It's not a conspiracy theory if it is true. I will try to be brief as well as illuminative.

First off, the author has culled a handful of books that support his case against a global financial elite, and these tend, with the exception of the Quigley book, to be left of left of center. I am however happy to add a number of books that support his essential theses that a handful of banking families control the central banks which are NOT government banks, and through loans, control governments, impoverish the middle class, and harvest profit without conscience from the “working poor.”

Try these on for size:

1) Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. 85% rock solid, 15% flakey, but in my view, a perfectly reasonable slam on the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund as instruments for impoverishing lesser developed countries, not empowering them.

2) The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs, another slam on the WTO/IMF, which he relegates to third rate out-dated economist ranks, not at all focused or able to achieve what he calls “developmental economics.”

3) The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back by Jeff Faux, a fine discussion of how our elites bribe the elites in other countries, and the both screw the public by looting the commonwealths of gold, oil, etcetera, without returns to the people whose families have lived on top of these resources for centuries.

4) Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, by Paul Peterson of the Council of Foreign Relations (which the author hates, in my view it has two types of members–one manipulative like Henry Kissinger, another honest, like Paul Peterson), in which both the Republican and the Democratic parties are lambasted for being the ignorant slaves of the ultra-rich elites, and hopeless out of touch with reality and unable to represent We the People.

5) War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It by General Smedley Butler, the highest decorated Marine of his time, who complained about being an enforcer for banks and businesses that lent money to the Third World then sent the Marines to get it back for them.

There are many other books that support this author's book reviews in great detail and from many varied perspectives. I refer you to my various lists, including the list on “Screwing the 90% that do the work.”

The author has some pretensions and some slop, his arguments are not always consistent, but then neither are mine. On balance I regard this book as a first rate personal effort that should be read by every middle class person wondering, as Lou Dobbs on CNN has wondered, why we are exporting middle class jobs and importing poverty in the form of illegal aliens.

The author wraps up his varied reviews with a focus on the relationship between organized crime and the super-elite as well as their political elite (e.g. the Bush family, the best of the servant class), and on the relationship between drugs, covert operations, and Wall Street. Here again the author draws on a very tiny sub-set of books while not listing many others that support his thesis so I will mention a few here.

Having been through both Viet-Nam as a youth and the Central American Wars as an adult, I am quite certain that there are at least four different slices of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where I served for ten years as a clandestine case officer:

A small slice does what the White House wants, including black bag jobs.

A small but more important slice does what Wall Street wants, and helps Wall Street with access to financially relevant information that the public which pays for the CIA does not get. Buzzy Krongard, until recently Executive Director of the CIA, comes to mind as the most recent leader of this section.

A larger slice, that does covert action off the books with funding from Saudi Arabia and others, sometimes called the Safari Club, sometimes having off-shoots like Ted Shackley's Southern Air Transport, and so on. This slice can provide the intersection between criminal activities, white collar crime profits, illegal White House activities, and plain profiteering.

Finally, 90% of the CIA, folks like me that did not realize they were simply going through the motions and giving the local counterintelligence service a full-time rabbit to follow while the commercial clandestine boys and girls looted the bank in bright daylight.

I have two intelligence lists that can be helpful here, but I have not focused on creating crime lists. I'll just say that between the books on the The Working Poor: Invisible in America and on being Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Americaand books on immoral predatory capitalism and unilateral militarism of the Dick Cheney variety (I have compiled a list of 25 specific impeachable actions by Dick Cheney based on three books:

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

There is a very clear-cut and direct relationship between dictators, transnational organized crime and terrorism, and Wall Street as well as the Republican and Democratic National Committees (see Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It)

That reminds me: there is an entire literature on petroleum, peak oil, petrodollars, and so on. Americans have been betrayed by their government since at least 1975, and more likely, back to the 1950's when naiveté about international affairs was replaced by active complicity.

Good news. 1) Internet leveled playing field. 2) Not enough guns to kill us all. 3) A few of the really rich have realized they need to help us create infinite wealth for ourselves, or lose all they have to locusts. Read, be vocal, be active, we're going to get a grip on our commonwealth soon.

Tip of the Hat to Jere for the following added links:
When Corporations Rule the World
The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents–The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. a. Hayek)
Money Masters of Our Time

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2006/10/032010/09/19

Review: The Average American–The Extraordinary Search for the Nation’s Most Ordinary Citizen

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Biography & Memoirs, Civil Society, Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Intelligence (Public), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized)

One Extra Star for Cool Idea That is Also Uplifting

October 3, 2006

Kevin O'Keefe

If you are an Amazon buyer you are probably not average, and Amazon reviewers even less so. I was compelled to buy this book simply on the premise that it would be interesting to learn what “average” was. I was NOT expecting an uplifting book that inspired reflection about what it means to be a good man, a good citizen, a good husband and father, and that is what this book is.

Yes, it would have benefitted from maps as well as a statistical table and a calendar of the search, and I would normally have given it four stars for lacking those “visualization & closure” elements, but I simply cannot get over the fact that this book made me feel good about America and good about the standard run of the mill American.

The idiocy and mendacity of our leaders aside, this is a great Nation, and I have tears in my eyes as I conclude the book, where the man chosen by the author as the average American, informed on the 4th of July, properly concludes that it is a great honor. Honor indeed. This is a superb book.

AA Mind the Gap — Vote and/or Comment on Review

2006/09/162011/02/17

Review: State of Emergency–The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Congress (Failure, Reform), Consciousness & Social IQ, Culture, Research, Democracy, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Politics, Priorities

Patrick Buchanan is the Paul Revere of Our Time

September 16, 2006

Patrick Buchanan

Patrick Buchanan is much more serious, much more relevant, than either Newt Gingrich or the current illiterate President of the United States (illegally, through two stolen elections), George “Bring It On” Bush.

He opens the books with quotes from Teddy Roosevelt and from Wilson that set the context perfectly: you cannot have a Nation if there is, as Alexander Hamilton warned us, a tyranny of minorities that do not buy into the proposition of citizenship and loyalty to the flag.

The author is clearly very well read and historically grounded. He noted that Nations dye when they have dying populations, disintegrating cultures, and unresisted invasions.

His most important point, across the book, is that the Mexicans are invading deliberately and in massive force, and the federal government is failing to fulfill its constitutional responsibility for protecting states from invasion. He specifically suggests, and I agree, that Bush Junior is impeachable for failing to protect (and indeed inciting) illegal immigration.

According to the author:

1) We have gone from 5 to 57 million Asians and Hispanics;

2) There is moral rot in both parties;

3) 1 in 12 of the illegal aliens is a proven criminal

4) Aliens are 12% of the population and 30% of the incarcerated;

5) US allows foreign governments, e.g. China, to refuse returns;

6) Local police are hand-cuffed and not allowed to arrest and depot illegal aliens;

7) Illegal immigrants are a major vector for disease and potential pandemics.

8) Mexico, at 6 to 1, is the primary offender, and 58% of Mexicans believe that the US Southwest belongs to them and they are simply taking it back (to the Guadalupe-Hidalgo line);

9) CORPORATIONS are demanding the importation of poverty by supporting illegal immigration; CORPORATIONS are passing on to the individual taxpayer the social, cultural, and economic costs of accepting millions of poor, uneducated illegal aliens.

10) The churches and the film industry have become propagandists for illegal immigration.

11) America has lost its Christian characters, and is now a mélange of disloyal self-serving religions of all kinds, including Wahabbism which has since the 1990's had imams preaching the murder of Americans from pulpits on American soil, to individuals NOMINALLY U.S. citizens.

12) The emergence of the Minutemen (now spreading across America, not just at the border) is reflective of the fact that illegal immigration is the “crisis of the age.”

12) Babies born in America should NOT be automatically accorded American citizenship unless one of their parents is American; nor should dual citizenship be allowed. RIGHT ON!!!!

This is a tremendous book. I respect the author very much, and believe that he merits the full support and attention of every loyal American that believes that one should speak the language of America–English–and honor the flag of America. The illegal immigrants that displayed the Mexican flag during the recent demonstrations should all be deported.

America has lost its integrity. We need a new leadership team that can protect our borders, protect our middle class, protect our economy, and protect our culture. George Bush is a much greater threat to America than Bin Laden, because he is busy selling America out to the Saudis for oil, to the Mexicans for migrant labor, and to the Colombians for drug profits.

Pat Buchanan is a bright shining light, and this book is a very important contribution to the dialog needed to save the Republic.

2006/09/052009/12/04

Review: The Real State Of The Union–From The Best Minds In America, Bold Solutions To The Problems Politicians Dare Not Address (New America Books) (Paperback)

4 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation)

Amazon Page

First Class Thinking, Morally Sound, Offer Hope,

September 5, 2006

Ted Halstead

The contributing editors, Ted Halstead and Michael Lind, again shine as “hubs” for blending diverse thinkers, including James Pinkerton of the right, and I believe they are completely correct when they say that the State of the Union address has become shallow, partisan, and trivialized. More substantively, they might have offered a piece on the ten reasons to impeach Bush-Cheney, and another on the failure of Congress, which has struck out with the American people: strike one is incumbents shaking down lobbyists for cash; strike two is the extremist leaderships (Democratic as well as Republican) forcing “party line” votes that are totally against the Constitutional intent of having Representatives represent their CONSTITUENCIES; and strike three is the extremist Republicans serving as foot soldiers to a mendacious White House, instead of, as the Constitution intended with Article 1, being the FIRST branch of government. The extremist Republicans (I am a moderate Republican) are nothing less than Constitutional perverts, and I use the term advisedly. (See my reviews on books about these two topics in last two months).

The book is ably summed up in the Preface, which states that neither party has proven capable of offering a coherent, honest, or forward-looking agenda to guide America. Peter Peterson, Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It would certainly agree, as do I. It is my hope that this group might coalesce around someone like Senator Collins (R-MA) running with Governor Warner (D-VA), and announcing a coalition cabinet and one commitment: to electoral reform. Karl Rove knows how to steal close elections, the only way to beat him is to field a multi-party TEAM that can win by a LANDSLIDE. America is ready for that, and the ideas in this book are all implement able by such a team approach to what might be called “networked governance.”

While I have six pages of notes on this excellent volume, still relevant to the future, I will touch on just a few highlights:

1) Mass middle class is vital, and Washington has destroyed that base for democracy.

2) American people are not as polarized as their extremist political leaders

3) Our humans are productive but our processes are not. I am reminded of the book in the 1980's on “Human Scale.” The federal government has indeed become dysfunctional, running at 3-5 mph while the rest of us are going 100 mph.

4) Need a new social contract. Authors identify the first one as building a nation, the second as healing from the civil war, and the third as building a middle class. We need to re-build the middle class with governance that again represents the citizens and their communities rather than predatory corporations.

5) Private sector, not just government, needs reform.

6) Health care can shift from business to government, and in the process we can find $60 billion a year in savings by using information to create metrics to reduce waste and over-treatment. The author discussing this suggests that 20-30% of what we spend on health care is waste. They do not discuss medical tourism, which I find quite interesting as a trend.

7) We need a nation-wide industrial policy that restores the relationship between business, community, and family, while also restricting the mobility of capital unless it restores the social contract with labor.

8) Radical tax reform could yield $200 billion a year (the author's say this is a low estimate, I agree, import-export tax fraud alone is $50 billion a year, I think the number is closer to $500 billion a year).

9) Take back the airwaves in the public interest.

10) James Pinkerton is brilliant in explaining the three eras of education as agricultural (nine-month school year), industrial (rote learning) and experimental (nostrums at expense of basics). See also Derek Bok's piece on “Reinventing Education at Forbes.com. James missed the opportunity to discuss how free universal access to all knowledge, and using serious games to educate on a just enough, just in time basis, in all languages, could reconfigure education world-wide.

11) Matthew Miller (see my review of his superb book, The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love) outlines what $30 billion could buy in terms of moving teachers up the food chain. Just in passing, if we cut our grotesquely ineffective intelligence community back from $60 billion a year to $30 billion a year, we can create a truly smart nation (see my book coming out on 11 September, THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest and in passing get better secret intelligence in the context of a national Open Source (Intelligence) Network that feeds not only the spies and diplomats, but also the schoolhouses, statehouses, and social clubs.

12) A thread that I found interesting throughout the book is how we lack the information needed to make smart choices. We lack statistical information on medical treatments and results that might allow “evidence-based medicine.” As I have pointed out elsewhere (Google for <ten threats, twelve policies, and eight challengers>), the U.S. Government is remarkably ignorant and uninformed across all these areas.

13) The rest of the book on aging productively, incentivizing exercise and penalizing fast food, on rebuilding the heartland with information infrastructure, on mixed races where third generations inter-marry at a 55% rate, on conflicted Muslims, on “opportunity lost” in foreign affairs and national security, all top notch.

The book ends brilliantly, as it began, with a commentary on the dysfunctional duopology of the extremist Republicans where dogma trumps honesty, and the divided Democrats trapped in the past. As the founder of a small non-rival party blog, Citizens-Party.org, I consider this book, and the New America Foundation, to be the people's voice at a time when the Congress and the White House most certainly are not.