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
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5.0 out of 5 stars 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.

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Review: The Broken Branch–How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Politics

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Helpful to Anyone Planning to Vote in November 2008,

August 9, 2006
Thomas E. Mann
I have long understood the original terrible sin of Congress, the obscene corruption. I did not understand party line corruption (forcing Members to vote the party line instead of for their constituents until I read Tom Coburns Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders.

This book helped me understand that the third sin is that partisan politics have turned Members into (the author's term) “footsoldiers for the President” and thus a complete abdication of their role as the Article 1 (i.e. first) branch of government.

This book helped me understand that it is the long-serving Members who are often shaking down lobbyists and extorting funds from people, not the other way around, where bribes are offered by the lobbyists.

I read this book after reading David Broder's article in the 8 August 2006 issue of the Washington Post, an article entitled “Contempt for Congress” and summarizing the utter disdain that the Governors–both Republican and Democratic–have for most Members. The Congress is indeed broken and dysfunctional. There is a tide sweeping against all incumbents, regardless of party, in this year.

Hence, as Congress reconvenes on 5 September for one last session ending in early October, it could be quite fruitful for as many voters as possible to read this book and Tom Coburn's book, and demand of Congress two things in this next session: Electoral Reform, and a Public Intelligence Agency independent of both the President and Congress. We have a window for reform. This book is one of two pillars for those who wish to “raise the roof.”

See also, with a review, Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.

It is vital that the 100 million voters who have “dropped out” of the broken partisan political scene come back in 2008.

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Review: Fiasco–The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Hardcover)

5 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform), Corruption, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Impeachment & Treason, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Iraq, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

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Extraordinarily Good Review, with Sadness of Deja Vu and Silence of the Lambs,

August 9, 2006
Thomas E. Ricks
There are other vital books to read, not least of which is James Risens State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration and Jim Bamford's A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies and Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq as well as The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. There are lesser books as well, such as Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. On balance, of all the books I have read, this is the best and easiest to read chronicle and teaching device.

Everyone preparing to vote in November for the gutless Congress that betrayed America and failed to maintain either the power of the purse or the power to declare war, should read this book.

And when future politicians who were military commanders that failed to speak up (“the silence of the lambs” as the author notes) ask for your vote, laugh in their face.

There are leadership heros in this book–General Zinni of the Marine Corps, General Shinseki, who told the truth to Congress and was fired for his trouble (as was General Clapper, who said that the national agencies could be cut free from defense). Garner and the Army generals were on the right track, until Garner was fired for doing the right thing (trying to accelerate the turnover of authority to the Iraqis and the exit of Americans).

There are also villains. Chalabi gets his due share but in my view the author underestimates Chalabi's influence on Cheney, and Chalabi's treasonous representation of Iranian interests.

Rumsfeld is documented over and over as one massive ego completely uncaring of inter-agency effectiveness or accomodating to reality.

Edit of 10 Sep 06: the author appeared on a Sunday talk show today, and pointed out that it was Paul Bremer who gave the Iraqi insurgency everything they needed: 1) leadership, with his order to ban Bathists from responsible positions; 2) guns and volunteers with his order to disband the Iraqi military and police; and 3) finances, providing Iran with exactly the right opportunity to further its interests. It can be said that Bremer has done more damange to America than Bin Laden–what an obituary that makes!

This is a superb chronicle of who shot John, when, and how. The headings for each section of text are brilliant. When I first got the book I flipped through it and read only the headings, and they were as compelling and concise of summary of our botched endeavor in Iraq as one could want.

If you buy and read only one book from among all those I have mentioned, this is the book to buy.

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Review: The One Percent Doctrine–Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (Hardcover)

6 Star Top 10%, Education (General), Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Justice (Failure, Reform), Politics

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Impeaches Cheney, Demeans Bush, Crucifies Rumsfeld and Rice,

June 26, 2006
Ron Suskind
In the context of non-fiction literature, I consider this book to be the co-equal of Graham Allison's classic, “Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis.” It joins Bob Woodward's “Bush at War” and the more detailed James Risen's “State of War” as core references. This book specifically and clearly documents three facts:

1) Vice President Cheney is impeachable for dereliction of duty and obstruction of due process in government as well as many violations of international and domestic law. While I do not see the President as quite the puppet some represent him to be, he is certainly childish and petulant and angry at his father (page 107: “I'm not going to be supportive of my father and all his Arab buddies.”) Cheney and his neo-cons nurtured the young President's inclination to “unleash” Israel against the Palestinians, and Cheney is specifically impeachable for not providing the President with a copy of the Saudi Arabian memorandum of grievances that preceded a summit at the ranch which was of MAJOR importance to the entire Middle East situation. The author excels at showing how Dick Cheney has “experimented”, from President Ford onward, with specifically NOT briefing the President, ostensibly to give him plausible denial but in this instance, more as a means of Cheney's deposing Bush as the actual head of State.

2) I cannot take the second step of suggesting that Bush himself is impeachable on the basis of this book. What I see–and the author excels at social-psychological insights across the entire text–is an insecure young man with excessive faith in his gut instinct, loosely-educated, hostile about experts and especially mature experts like Brent Scowcroft, and all too eager to prove his (inadequate) manliness by being belligerent and often a bully. “Bring it on.” The author of this book combines analytic insights into the character of the President, with detailed discussion of the degree to which the White House completely ignored the policy process to “do what they want, when they want to, for whatever reason they decide.” On the basis of this book, one can conclude that Cheney should be impeached and Bush still needs a good spanking from his father. In this context, the author provides a memorable quote on page 227, “America, unbound, was duly led by a President, unbound” and also “free from conventional sources of accountability.”

3) The third major focus of this book is the combination of incapacity of the CIA and the FBI and the Pentagon in evolving to deal with the post-9/11 challenges. The FBI comes off as the most inept, consistently unable to do its job on the home front. Rumsfeld is next in line for condemnation, and while the author is very professional in his review, he quotes Rumsfeld as saying that “every CIA success is a DoD failure,” and he quotes then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller as considering Rumsfeld to be “beneath contempt.” One can only be stunned as the six years going on eight of having a government that is BOTH “out of control” AND inept. The CIA, and George Tenet, are featured as the least incompetent among the three. At a minimum, they did find and track Bin Laden over a week as he fled Afghanistan and the Pentagon refused to put US troops into Afghanistan's border region; and they did get other aspects right in relation to the policy debate that was not allowed to happen. The title of the book refers to the Vice President's decision that even a 1% probability of what he chose to emphasize, was sufficient to eliminate the policy process and all standards of evidence, sufficient to close out all reasoned debate.

There are a number of gems in this book that merit note:

1) Cheney was responsible for both intelligence and terrorism from day one of the Bush Administration, and was clearly derelict in his duty in ignoring both.

2) The book clearly lays out how the Administration's obsession with Iraq sidelined all CIA warnings including the 6 August warning and others. Bush is quoted in the book as having dismissed the last CIA briefing team, which made a frantic attempt to alarm him, as “OK, you've covered your ass now.” Boy kings as “enfant's terribles!”

3) The book captures in detail the incompetence of the CIA and FBI as a general rule. On one page, the author quotes the Vice President as chewing out both agencies, saying “You don't cooperate for shit.” On another page, he quotes George Tenet as telling the assembled Allied intelligence chiefs, “We don't know shit.”

4) The author provides a superb review of successes in one area, following the money, but ends on a down note because now Al Qaeda and everyone connected to the financial support of Al Qaeda has gone “offline” to use couriers and cash. As the author says, we are now, again, deaf and blind. In passing the book puts Western Union out of business in the Arab world, at least among those desiring to do illegal transactions. In this context the author makes it clear that First Data volunteered to help, and confirms that the Bush Administration decided with great deliberation to ignore the FISA court and its *exclusive* mandate from Congress.

Other tid-bits:

1) CIA had the mastermind of the London bus bombings in its sights, but put him on a no fly list rather than help the UK track him.

2) Al Qaeda chose NOT to go after nuclear targets with the 9/11 bombings, “for fear it would go out of control.” This suggests a reasoned enemy.

3) Brent Scowcroft produced a plan for intelligence reorganization that was sensible, and that was blocked by Cheney, who also blocked the 1992 intelligence reform effort.

4) Condi Rice is crucified in this book for a broken NSC process and lack of gravitas.

Book ends with Deuteronomy 16:20, justice twice, once for ends, one for means. This book fails the Bush Administration on both counts.

See also:
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
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Bush's Brain

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Review: Being Right Is Not Enough–What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success (Hardcover)

4 Star, Politics

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Useful High-End Book on Strategy for the Center-Left,

June 26, 2006
Paul Waldman
I bought this book together with “The Good Fight” by Peter Beinart. While both books have their utility, neither is as good as Joe Klein in “Politics Lost.” Waldman gets five stars to Beinart's four mostly because he is much more readable, has many useful tables including an analysis of the states where extremist Republicans as well as extremist Democrats are weak, and his book is generally focused on the left of center middle and the caring citizen as opposed to policy wonks that Beinart addresses in his book.

Page 111 is a very fine diagram of the issue columns that the Democratic Party simply does not address responsibly nor–a theme throughout the book–courageously. Over-all the book does a very fine job of defining the distinctions between conservatives and progressives, as well as the distinctions between what conservatives stand for and what they say, and what progressives stand for and do not say.

The author spends most of his time comparing conservatives to progressives (code for left of center liberals) which is something of a pity because he appears to have a very well developed sense of the issues and what the center and left-center can and should stand for.

There are two bottom lines in this book, and both of them make eminent sense to me:

1) Don't bring a knife to a gun-fight. The author points out in detail how inept and weak and unfocused the Democrats are at every stage of the political game beginning with high school and collage political clubs.

2) Stand for the public, for the individual taxpayer, for the blue-collar worker, the working poor, the lower middle class. The author stresses that this is a fight between those who respresent special interests and believe the government role is to liberate the marketplace (code for allow the looting of the Commonwealth) and those who should be representing the masses of individual workers and taxpayers.

The author takes a long view and believes that it will take a great deal of time to recover from the total abdication to the extremist Republicans. While this nice in principle, the book does not focus as well on what it will take to win over-whelmingly; for that we recommend Joe Klein's “Politics Lost.” On the issues, Matthew Miller's “The Two-Percent Solution.”

On a personal note, I would add that the author's focus on “Being Right is Not Enough” is perfectly consistent with my own view that “Vote Democratic Is Not Enough.” Rove and Cheney have demonstrated, twice, that they can steal Presidential elections that are close–through Florida in 2000, through Ohio is 2004. Even if every liberal-progressive adopted the ideas in this book, they would not be enough. We need a multi-party focus on electoral reform and crushing the extremist Republican thieves (I am a moderate Republican), crushing the special interests, and restoring the Republic to the public—a Republic of, by, and for the People, not Corporations.

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Review: The Good Fight–Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again (Hardcover)

4 Star, Politics
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Wonk Writing for Wonks–Not for Normal People,

June 26, 2006

Peter Beinart

I bought this book together with Paul Waldman's “Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success,” and between the two, would certainly rate this one as being the most detailed intellectually, but that is a flaw as well as a virtue. My eyes glazed over, between the fine print and the fine points.

Without any way disagreeing with the author's belabored and detailed commentary, I would boil the book down to two bottom lines:

1) Liberals also known as Progressives must restore their communion with the PUBLIC and draw the line between conservatives supporting corporate fascism, and the public interest focused on equal opportunity for INDIVIDUALS.

2) Deep in the book is the other bottom line: the Democratic Party has completely lost its mind and heart and its connection with the blue collar white worksrs (as well as other folks that one author would call the “working poor”).

This is a very serious book, and it will help the intellectuals among the left of center elite understand their failure, but this book is not going to win any points with the labor unions, the working poor, or the broader coalition of Independents, Reforms, Greens, Libertarians, and — my own proclivity — moderate Republicans.

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Review: How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok (Paperback)

Congress (Failure, Reform), Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics

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Fine Book by Constitutional Lawyer, Read with “The Case for Impeachment”,

June 16, 2006
Glenn Greenwald
This is a fine book, by a constitutional lawyer, and it focuses largely on how the Bush White House had violated all of the constitutional provisions with respect to checks and balances. On page 79 the author says, after a lengthy discussion, that “the president possessess the power neither to make laws nor to interpret them.” That is of, course, the heart of the matter.

An earlier quote (page 15) sums up the why: “Unbridaled extremism and contempt for the legal limits imposed by Congress and the Courts.”

The author does a fine job of quoting from the Federalist Papers to illustrate just how severe are the violations of the intent of the Founding Fathers by the incumbent President.

This book, which ends with an Epilogue on Iran and the fact that the incumbent President is using the terrorism card to justify any action anywhere, does not make the case for impeachment as ably as another book (see below). It focuses mostly on the NSA wire-tapping.

I strongly recommend this book be bought and read together with Senator Robert Byrd's Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency and The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorg and Barbara Oshasky.” Below is an extract from my review of the latter book:

BEGIN EXTRACT The Republicans set the stage for hard-ball when they actually impeached President Clinton, not for having oral sex with an intern, but for lying about it. This book lists ten specific documented reasons for impeaching President Bush:

1. Stole Florida election in 2005.
2. Lied on Iraq to Congress, the Public, and the United Nations.
3. 9-11 Cover-Up and Obstruction of Justice.
4. Violated Rights of Citizens including Habeas Corpus.
5. NSA Program to Listen to Citizens without Warrant.
6. Violated International Treaties Including Geneva Convention.
7. Actively Encouraged, as a Policy, Use of Torture.
8. Gross Negligence on Hurricane Katrina.
9. Iraq Contract Corruption–Bremer “Lost” $8 billion in cash, sole source awards, and gross negligence in managing the peace.
10. Stole Ohio election in 2004.

This book is not just an indictment on the specifics, it is also a very useful primer for citizens on the purpose and process of impeachment. END EXTRACT.

Both books, together, make it clear that any time the American people want to force Congress, on threat of not being re-elected, to impeach this President, he is toast. The question then arises, are *enough* citizens paying attention?

Sometime after reading this book, I read three books that focus on the failure of Congress:
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that we need to dump virtually every single Senator and every single Representative, demand an Electoral Reform Act, and end the ‘wnnier take all” nonsence for both the Congressional leadership positions and the Cabinet. Transpartisan leaders with a balanced budget, that's the ticket!

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