Bob Woodward: Obama's Wars

Lyndon B. Johnson, 

South Vietnam, 1966

In December 2009, Michael Lindenberger wrote “Obama's Afghanistan decision evokes LBJ's 1965 order on Vietnam buildup” for The Dallas Morning News. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them. Over the next three years, he would send hundreds of thousands more and launch a carpet-bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Johnson's presidency – and many argue, Johnson himself – were destroyed long before America could finally, 10 years later, quit Vietnam. Obama's decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan has reawakened those memories of Vietnam's early days, and brought unsettling comparisons from an array of historians who have spent their careers studying Johnson. "I'll tell you, the more that I stayed awake last night thinking of this thing, the more I think of it, I don't know – it looks like to me we're getting into another Korea," Johnson said in 1964 during a tape-recorded conversation with national security adviser McGeorge Bundy. "It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of it, once we're committed." McGovern, who campaigned hard for Johnson, said he had expected Johnson to pull back after gaining the presidency in his own right in 1964.

“I think this is a dreadful mistake on President Obama's part. It makes me sad. I am for him. I worked for him, and I still think he is a brilliant man. But it looks to me like Vietnam all over again.”

- Senator George McGovern, 2009

In September 2010, Peter Baker wrote “Woodward Book Says Afghanistan Divided White House” for The New York Times. Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to the new Bob Woodward book. The book, “Obama's Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.

“I have to say that. I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”

- President Barack Obama to Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, when asked about whether or not his deadline to withdraw was “firm”

“This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan. Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room.”

- Barack Obama, telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation

In September 2010, Steve Luxenberg wrote “Bob Woodward book details Obama battles with advisers over exit plan for Afghan war” for the Washington Post. President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward. Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page "terms sheet" that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in "Obama's Wars," to be released on Monday. According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

“It got to the point in the spring, after a top-secret update to the president in the Situation Room at the White House, the president left the meeting and told his aides: What makes us think that given the description of the problem, that we're going to design a solution to this?”

- Bob Woodward, author of Obama's Wars

Sarah Palin: America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag

America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag is the second book by Sarah Palin. It was released on November 23, 2010, and has been described as containing selections from Palin's favorite speeches, sermons, and inspirational works, as well as vignettes about Americans she met in the fall of 2009 while on her book tour for Going Rogue: An American Life. One million copies will be printed for the first run, and a digital edition will be available on the day the book is released. She embarked on a 16-city book tour in America's "heartland" that began on November 23, 2010. The book made number two on the New York Times best seller list during its second week of release. Human Events magazine describes the book as patriotic and optimistic in tone and as bringing life to words from historical figures such as Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy and Abigail Adams. Townhall columnist Katie Pavlich recommends the book to "any American who believes in faith, family, love of country and even history". She describes the book as having a personal touch but as emphasizing faith-guided conservative principles much more than Palin's earlier book, Going Rogue. Amanda Marcotte's review in the Guardian claims that America by Heart is divisive and succeeds in "stoking the feelings of resentment in her target audience against the usual cadre of villains," while containing a subtext which implies that white fundamentalist Christians are the real Americans and that America is the only nation with the right to having feelings of "exceptionalism." The New York Times says the book is full of the patriotic reflections promised by the title, but it is also a road map to the political attacks Palin would make on Barack Obama if she were to run for U.S. President in 2012.





Pre-publication controversy: Several days before the book's release, the website Gawker published excerpts in which Palin criticized Levi Johnston (the father of her grandchild), the TV show American Idol, Hollywood filmmakers, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and the Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Palin, who was described as angry about the leak, posted the following message on her Twitter page: "The publishing world is LEAKING out-of-context excerpts of my book w/out my permission? Isn't that illegal?" Within 48 hours, Palin's publisher had sued Gawker for copyright violations and had obtained a federal court order requiring Gawker to remove the material from its website, despite Gawker Media's claim of fair use. The American Spectator called the legal action a "huge victory". On November 20, 2010, Palin published her own "Exclusive Sneak Peek" of the book on her Facebook page. On the day the book was officially released, The Guardian printed extracts from the book on American values, criticism of Barack Obama and his health care legislation, criticism of Levi Johnston and the younger generation.



A paragraph from the new Sarah Palin book on American values: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.

Excerpts written by Sarah Palin in America by Heart, regarding Barack Obama: Too often we hear from the left a different spin on American exceptionalism _ a view that America is somehow worse than other countries, that it is hypocritical about its ideals, falls short of its responsibilities and is forever in need of correction. This has been the main thrust of President's Obama's speech on the world stage since assuming office in January 2009. [...] Take the recent health care debate as an example. The folks pushing President Obama's government health care bill seemed to think that we could be bought. But when we say we believe that our rights are God-given it means something. Those words in the Declaration of Independence are sacred: government can't legitimately violate or add to them.

SARAH PALIN on HANNITY - America By Heart - VIDEO
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"Still, I don't think it's an accident that the opponents of this new American awakening so often accuse Tea Partiers and others of being racist. For one thing, it's a guaranteed conversation stopper. Just saying the word racist instantly ends any legitimate debate. Just the accusation gives the accuser an excuse not to debate the issues at hand." - Sarah Palin, in America by Heart

From Townhall.com: Sarah Palin’s new book, America By Heart (available free with a subscription to Townhall Magazine), comes out today, and any American who believes in faith, family, love of country and even history, will enjoy reading it. Just by taking a look at the cover, Palin is adorned in flags, clearly representing the pride she has for America. Palin’s first New York Times Bestseller, Going Rogue, gave us an idea as to who Sarah Palin is, where she comes from, where she grew up, how she was raised, the feeling of moose eyeballs and of course, the 2008 Presidential campaign. Going Rogue allowed us to get to know Palin on a personal level without the political hoopla. America By Heart emphasizes everything personal about her first book and touches on many of the same topics such as becoming a mother, guiding Bristol through her teenage pregnancy, Alaska, but it reflects much more heavily on conservative principles guided by her faith in addition to historical references dating back to Roman times, JFK putting a man on the moon, Martin Luther King Jr., Ronald Reagan bringing down the Soviet Union and of course modern American politics.



From the National Review, by Kathryn Jean Lopez: Sarah Palin’s new book, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag, is out today. It’s a good book that reflects exactly what people like about her — her passion for (as it happens) family, faith, and flag. Palin has always been good at highlighting good things that might not otherwise get national attention, and she certainly does that in this book. She praises “unsung heroes” like the Catholic women religious Sisters of Life, “whose members not only pray for the protection of human life but do the hard, selfless work of caring for human life. They help mothers have and raise their children, and they counsel and comfort those who have made decisions they regret.” Speaking of regret, she also mentions AbortionChangesYou.com, “a safe, nonjudgemental place for women and men who are troubled after their own abortions or those of someone close to them. It’s beyond politics or proselytizing, place that honors the legacy of feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony by helping women heal.”



The Christian Science Monitor said this about the book, upon its release: Sarah Palin has a new book out Tuesday, and so far it’s fulfilled one of its main purposes: keeping her in the news. The substance of “America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith, and Flag” – sure to be a best-seller, as was her first work, “Going Rogue: An American Life” – is not surprising. She goes after President Obama, the first lady, the Attorney General, and pretty much anybody in the Obama administration who’s ever talked about race in America. She compares Mitt Romney to John F. Kennedy and finds the former president wanting. She likes hunting (“I eat therefore I hunt”), “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell, and movies with "submersive moral messages," such as “Juno,” “Knocked Up,” and “The Forty-Year-Old Virgin.” Not so much Levi Johnston (the father of then-teen daughter Bristol’s baby), John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign advisers, or the press – referred to as “the media beast.” Then there’s “the shameful tendency on the left not simply to declare their opponents wrong, but to declare them evil.” Much of what leaked out about the book was posted on Gawker.com – at least until Saturday, when a federal judge ordered the excerpts scrubbed from the site as a copyright infringement. (Gawker retaliated with a page called “Sarah Palin Is Mad at Us for Leaking Pages From Her Book.”) According to publisher HarperCollins, Palin’s new literary effort “celebrates the enduring strengths and virtues that have made this country great,” while “ranging widely over American history, culture, and current affairs.”



Comments about in America by Heart about Levi Johnston, father of Bristol's child, Tripp: Of course, we all had to bite our tongues - more than once - as Tripp's father went on a media tour through Hollywood and New York, spreading untruths and exaggerated rhetoric. It was disgusting to watch as his fifteen minutes of fame were exploited by supposed adults taking advantage of a lost kid. [...] But we knew him well enough to see how confused he was during that time, and our hearts broke for him and the price he would pay.

Sarah Palin's comments in the book about the youth of today: In fact, we may be creating a generation of entitled little whiners. I came across an article that reported how growing numbers of employers today complain that many young job applicants exhibit all the signs of having been, there's no other word for it, spoiled. These young people feel entitled to jobs and salaries they haven't earned.

Evgeny Morozov: The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom

Product description: “The revolution will be Twittered!” declared journalist Andrew Sullivan after protests erupted in Iran in June 2009. Yet for all the talk about the democratizing power of the Internet, regimes in Iran and China are as stable and repressive as ever. In fact, authoritarian governments are effectively using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate cutting-edge propaganda, and pacify their populations with digital entertainment. Could the recent Western obsession with promoting democracy by digital means backfire? In this spirited book, journalist and social commentator Evgeny Morozov shows that by falling for the supposedly democratizing nature of the Internet, Western do-gooders may have missed how it also entrenches dictators, threatens dissidents, and makes it harder—not easier—to promote democracy. Buzzwords like “21st-century statecraft” sound good in PowerPoint presentations, but the reality is that “digital diplomacy” requires just as much oversight and consideration as any other kind of diplomacy. Marshaling compelling evidence, Morozov shows why we must stop thinking of the Internet and social media as inherently liberating and why ambitious and seemingly noble initiatives like the promotion of “Internet freedom” might have disastrous implications for the future of democracy as a whole.





Evgeny Morozov wrote "Think Again: The Internet
They told us it would usher in a new era of freedom, political activism, and perpetual peace. They were wrong" for the periodical, Foreign Policy, in which he said this: "The Internet Has Been a Force for Good" No. In the days when the Internet was young, our hopes were high. As with any budding love affair, we wanted to believe our newfound object of fascination could change the world. The Internet was lauded as the ultimate tool to foster tolerance, destroy nationalism, and transform the planet into one great wired global village. Writing in 1994, a group of digital aficionados led by Esther Dyson and Alvin Toffler published a manifesto modestly subtitled "A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age" that promised the rise of "'electronic neighborhoods' bound together not by geography but by shared interests." Nicholas Negroponte, then the famed head of the MIT MediaLab, dramatically predicted in 1997 that the Internet would shatter borders between nations and usher in a new era of world peace.





From www.EvgenyMorozov.com: Evgeny Morozov is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom (out in January 2011). He is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and runs the magazine's "Net Effect" blog about the Internet's impact on global politics (neteffect.foreignpolicy.com). Morozov is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. He was formerly a Yahoo! fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a fellow at George Soros's Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program. Before moving to the US, Morozov was based in Berlin and Prague, where he was Director of New Media at Transitions Online, a media development NGO active in 29 countries of the former Soviet bloc. Morozov's writings have appeared in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Times Literary Supplement, Prospect, The Sunday Times, The Boston Globe, Slate, Le Monde, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Project Syndicate, Dissent and many other publications. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, SkyNews, CBC, Al Jazeera International, France 24, Reuters TV, NPR, BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service. His research has been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Bloomberg News, The Globe and Mail, Die Zeit, Il Sole 24 Ore, Der Standard, L'Express, AFP, Der Spiegel, Corriera della Serra, El País, Le Figaro, and many others



Evgeny Morozov wrote "How the Kremlin Harnesses the Internet" for The New York Times, in which the author said this: Hours before the judge in the latest Mikhail Khodorkovsky trial announced yet another guilty verdict last week, Russia’s most prominent political prisoner was already being attacked in cyberspace. No, Khodorkovsky’s Web site, the main source of news about the trial for many Russians, was not being censored. Rather, it had been targeted by so-called denial-of-service attacks, with most of the site’s visitors receiving a “page cannot be found” message in their browsers. Such attacks are an increasingly popular tool for punishing one’s opponents, as evidenced by the recent online campaign against American corporations like Amazon and PayPal for mistreating WikiLeaks. It’s nearly impossible to trace the perpetrators; many denial-of-service attacks go underreported, as it’s often hard to distinguish them from cases where a Web site has been overwhelmed by a huge number of hits. Although most of the sites eventually get back online, denial-of-service attacks rarely generate as much outrage as formal government attempts to filter information on the Internet. In the past, repressive regimes have relied on Internet firewalls to block dissidents from spreading forbidden ideas; China has been particularly creative, while countries like Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are never far behind. But the pro-Kremlin cyberattackers who hit Kodorkovsky’s Web site may reveal more about the future of Internet control than Beijing’s practice of adapting traditional censorship to new technology.



Evgeny Morozov also wrote "Edit This Page: Is it the end of Wikipedia?" for the Boston Review: Can you trust Wikipedia? Most of us have stopped asking and simply bookmarked it. That makes sense when you consider the alternatives: you can explore the first dozen or so Google search results, or you can go straight to the occasionally erroneous Wikipedia entry, typically culled from the very same search results. If you are looking for fast, up-to-date information, it is Wikipedia or Google (not Wikipedia or Britannica), and Wikipedia wins on speed. Wikipedia still has its critics, skeptics who doubt its merits as a reference source. But even they cannot deny the tremendous social innovation unleashed by Wikipedia-the-project. Every professional conference—on topics ranging from entrepreneurship to journalism to philanthropy—now includes the mandatory, impassioned plea for the industry to adopt The Wikipedia Model, as if it were a set of Lego pieces that could be ordered from eBay and assembled in a newsroom or on the trading floor.



Also for the Boston Review, the author, Evgeny Morozov, wrote "Texting Toward Utopia: Does the Internet spread democracy?" In part, this is what he said: In 1989 Ronald Reagan proclaimed that “The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip”; later, Bill Clinton compared Internet censorship to “trying to nail Jell–O to the wall”; and in 1999 George W. Bush (not John Lennon) asked us to “imagine if the Internet took hold in China. Imagine how freedom would spread.” Such starry–eyed cyber–optimism suggested a new form of technological determinism according to which the Internet would be the hammer to nail all global problems, from economic development in Africa to threats of transnational terrorism in the Middle East. Even so shrewd an operator as Rupert Murdoch yielded to the digital temptation: “Advances in the technology of telecommunications have proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere,” he claimed. Soon after, Murdoch bowed down to the Chinese authorities, who threatened his regional satellite TV business in response to this headline–grabbing statement.

Bill O'Reilly: Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama

Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama is a political commentary by American political commentator Bill O'Reilly, published in 2010. It was published on September 14, 2010. In his this his ninth book, Bill O'Reilly prompts further debate with President Barack Obama and the American people on the current state of the union. Bill offers a blunt political commentary, and offers some introspection, looking back at his own actions and those of past Americans who, he believes, have inspired a code of conduct for modern times. Source: Wikipedia. Tunku Varadarajan at The Daily Beast said this about the book: Bill O’Reilly is a liar. He’s also a total pinhead, to pluck a word from his newest book, which bears the glib and gassy title Pinheads and Patriots. On page 74 he writes, “My ‘social networking’ is done in person. I don’t twitter. Or tweet, or whatever they call it. Also, I don’t chat online, use an iPod, or rely on text messaging. I refuse to do these things because they do not help me.” Oh, really, O’Reilly? So what, then, is @oreillyfactor, a Twitter address “verified” as belonging to “Bill O’Reilly”? Dude, don’t you think anyone with the slightest animus against you—and there are millions who believe you’re the Devil’s spawn—would check this particular assertion against the facts?

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Excerpt:

HEY, YOU! YOU, THE AMERICAN! You who believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This book is about you. No spin.

In this age of Obama, all that you take for granted is changing, yet many Americans have no clue. So I've decided to fix that. After reading the following pages, you will know precisely what's going on in the United States. Then you can plan exactly how to deal with the massive shift in the way our country is being run. Trust me, you need to know what is really happening so that you can make effective decisions for yourself.

These changes are not all bad, but they're not all good, either. Many will hurt you and your family. Most media people and politicians won't tell you that because they don't care about you. But I do.

Why? It's very simple: you guys have made me rich and famous. I worked hard to position myself to succeed, but you made it happen.

Without you watching me on TV and reading my books, I would be just another energetic bloviator -- perhaps teaching school in Miami or reporting the news in Dallas. I appreciate the fact that millions of you have contributed to my success, so now it's payback time: I will vividly chronicle the changes occurring in an America that your great-grandparents would never recognize today, because knowing the facts is how you can preserve the things you love about this country most -- the things they loved, too.

As you must know by now, it has been a great adventure for me to write five consecutive bestselling nonfiction books over the years, and again, I'm grateful that you were there right along with me on those adventures.

Find the rest of that excerpt here, at ABC News.

David Horowitz, Richard Poe: The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party

Conspirators of the world unite. Regardless of what side you fall on, conspiracy theories such as those in this book are interesting. Flip through a few of the pages offered up on Amazon.com or over a Kindle sample, and at almost every other paragraph, there's a claim, it seems, that should be qualified somehow. But there aren't that many foot notes or resources noted. That all said, it's a good read; interesting, somewhat persuasive. It's always good to mix things up. See The Daily Show's "spin" on the paranoia about Soros below.

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Recently, a story out of the Canada Free Press website mentioned the book and author: Like a rotten fish, the reaction to the whole WikiLeaks thing stinks—as they say—from the head, meaning not only Obama but also his Capo di Tutti Capi, George Soros, whose major role in the political lives of both Hillary and Obama and their historically toxic anti-American agendas has been brilliantly, rivetingly, and illuminatingly spelled out in exquisite detail in The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party by David Horowitz and Richard Poe. See that CFP blurb here.

Pauline Maier: Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788

In December, 2010, The Washington Post wrote this about the author and book:

Pauline Maier, the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of American History at M.I.T. and one of the nation's foremost scholars of the American Revolution, explores how the process of ratification worked in each of the 13 states. In doing so, she transforms our understanding of what representative government itself means. Eschewing a traditional focus on great men and their political ideas, Maier investigates the complex route to ratification in each state. After receiving the Philadelphia Convention's proposal for a new Constitution, the Confederation Congress, in accordance with procedures described in the document itself, recommended that the people (meaning white, male property holders) in each of the 13 states hold elections for delegates to state ratifying conventions. (Always contrarian, Rhode Island held a referendum instead.) Again according to the document itself, it would take ratification by nine states for the Constitution to go into effect. Representatives ran on a platform of support for or opposition to the document. What was at stake was nothing less than this question: Did ordinary people believe that an entirely new system of government, never tried before in history, was the best means of ensuring the country's future - or was it a too-risky experiment that they dared not accept?

Read that WP article here. In 2004, the author was a guest on NPR's All Things Considered. See the webpage for that radio show here. The podcast is embedded below.

'No Labels' Political Movement Launches from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

Today a new political movement is launching in New York City called “No Labels.” It’s ambitious. It’s inclusive. The crème de la crème of analysts and strategists are on board, as are former and current politicians of both parties as well as independent. But what exactly is "No Labels?" Here to explain is founding leader John Avlon, a senior political columnist for The Daily Beast, and the author of "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America."

See the webpage for this show, here. Download the podcast here. See also: Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. Last week, a Washington Post opinion was blogged: "No Labels = No Content", by Jennifer Rubin. Rubin said this: The group is comprised of a lot of midterm losers (oops, mustn't label) and retirees. And while they decry name-calling, Avalon immediately denounced partisan loyalty as "cowardly." (Do these non-labelers put a dollar in the jar every time they use a label?) It turns out it's hard to operate without labels. "We're going to call ourselves the radical center, the people who care about results, not rhetoric," said former congressman Tom Davis. "Radical" and "center," Mr. Davis? For shame. The group says it has raised $1 million already. That suggests that people will spend their money on anything, or rather nothing. Really, why is disbanding "labeling" a virtue? It's a con job, really to demean those who have strongly held beliefs for which they rigorously advocate. That is, after all, what small "d" democracy is all about. So as for me, I'll stick to candor, truth in advertising and robust debate.. View that WP post here. Below is the launch video for the movement, which can be found on YouTube.

Afghanistan on Track? from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Despite concerns about the stability of the progress, the Obama Administration’s report assessing the war in Afghanistan says that the U.S. is on pace for troops to begin pulling out in June. NPR’s national security correspondent Rachel Martin digs in to the report. Plus: Former NY Senator James L. Buckley on his new book Freedom is at Risk; and Follow Up Friday looks negotiating with terrorists and mandatory gun ownership.

Download the podcast here. View the WNYC Radio webpage on the story here. Below is a YouTube video of Buckley giving a lecture at the Federalist Society.

"Jindal Speaks About New Book" from KTBS

KTBS in Louisiana reports the following:

In his book, "Leadership and Crisis," Governor Bobby Jindal [Republican] doesn't mince words when it comes to the federal government's response to the BP oil spill, calling it "lackadaisical almost from the start." He blames the lack of boom needed to protect Louisiana's shoreline on rigid rules and regulations, and the government's refusal to relax requirements even in time of crisis. Jindal says it was reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. It was contentious from the start. Government officials, he says, were more worried about procedure than outcomes. He points to the moratorium on all gulf drilling as an example. Estimates are the moratorium has cost Louisiana between 8,000 - 12,000 jobs. The economic impact of that is still out; but the governor says some of the rigs rented for up to half-a-million dollars a day, rents that included taxes to the state.

See the local news page here. Meanwhile, the governor's facing a long-shot recall prospect, spearheaded by Ronnie Caesar, a Ph.D student in public policy at a university in Louisiana. KTBS reports: "With less than a year until the next governor's race, a petition has been filed to recall Governor Bobby Jindal. The petitioner, Ronnie Ceasar of Opelousas, filed the documents Wednesday afternoon with the Secretary of State's Office. Ceasar says he's fed up with cuts to Louisiana's higher education and health care. "Has anyone done an impact study to see what these cuts are going to do to the poor, the disenfranchised," said Ceasar." See the KTBS webpage on this story, here. User-reader comments on the page are interesting to foreigners of Louisiana. The other day, a State Representative Damon Baldone [Democrat] published a letter in a New York newspaper, while Jindal was there fundraising and promoting a book. The Representative said this: “We haven’t seen much of Jindal back home [...] First, he spent months jetting around the country campaigning for other politicians. Now, he’s back on the road promoting his book and raising money. ... Clearly, personal political aspirations are more important to him than the reality we face here in Louisiana. Our people are facing the largest budget deficits in recent memory — a crisis measured in the billions, not just the hundreds of millions.” See the news story on this issue here. See also: Bobby Jindal: The Transformational Story of a Brown-skinned, Die-hard Conservative in the Deep South, Bobby Jindal

Pairing Ron Paul with Paul Krugman - Economics and Politics

Texas congressman Ron Paul has long been a fierce critic of the Federal Reserve. In fact, last year he published a book called End the Fed, calling for an end to the central bank and a return to the gold standard. Now, Paul has been appointed head of the House subcommittee on domestic monetary policy, which, among other things, oversees the Federal Reserve. So, does Paul see this as his chance to try to end the Fed? "In a partial sense, but not directly," he tells NPR's Guy Raz. "What I'm really asking for is competition, to get rid of the monopoly power of the Fed, because they don't have legitimate power to do what they do."

This snippet's from NPR's All Things Considered. The podcast for this show can be found here. The full All Things Considered story can be found here. Here are some other books that are also by Paul: The Revolution: A Manifesto, A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship, Liberty Defined: The 50 Urgent Issues That Affect Our Freedom, Pillars of Prosperity. According to ABC News, Paul recently said, "Now that doesn't mean that the first week in January I send over a subpoena for (Fed Chairman Ben) Bernanke and demand that he come over with a pile of papers, I don't think that would be logical." View that full ABC story here. Paul Krugman opposes Ron Paul's ideas. [Funny how they both have "Paul" in their names.] He writes a regular column at The New York Times, and recently, he's said that "[Paleomonetarism] I used that term — it’s probably not original, but who knows? — in a recent post about the increasingly obscure meaning of the money supply. The best example would surely be Ron Paul, who’s now going to have oversight over the Fed. If you read his stuff, it’s very clear: money is a well-defined quantity that the Fed controls, and inflation comes from — indeed is defined as — increases in that quantity." Read that full NYT post here. Here are a few Krugman titles that you can pair Paul with: The Conscience of a Liberal, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (Updated and Expanded), A Country Is Not a Company (Harvard Business Review Classics)

"Washington: A life by Ron Chernow: review: Ron Chernow's fine biography of George Washington reveals a man who was inspirational despite lacking charisma" from The Telegraphy by Brendan Simms

The remarkable thing, as Ron Chernow shows in his Washington: A Life, is that he was all these things, at different times, and sometimes even simultaneously. This, of course, is well known, and purists may wonder whether we really need another Washington biography. Strictly speaking, the answer has to be: not this one. The author brings no new evidence to bear and advances no fundamentally new interpretation. The justification for Chernow’s book lies elsewhere: in the fluency of the argument, the wisdom of the author’s judgments, and – despite its length – the tautness of the narrative, which keeps the reader engrossed from the first to the last page. Some stylistic slips and a tendency towards the homespun aside, the author writes well, and has a remarkable eye for telling anecdotes and quotations. He takes us deftly through the familiar set-pieces of Washington’s career, beginning with his struggle with his overbearing mother and the disastrous expedition against the French and Indians that nearly brought his career to a premature end in the mid-1750s. [...] Wisely, Chernow does not explicitly set out to write a biography 'for our times’. All the same, his account bears an obvious message for American readers: big government, far from being a betrayal of the Founding Fathers, is as American as pecan pie. The final chapters show that Washington was deeply concerned after independence by the weakness of the bonds holding the 13 states together.

Read that review from The Telegraph, here. Additionally, WNYC Radio's Leonard Lopate Show had Chernow over, as a guest. Listen to that show, here.
See also: Alexander Hamilton, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., The Warburgs: The Twentieth-Century Odyssey of a Remarkable Jewish Family

Legal Implications of Bush v. Gore, 10 Years Later from The Takeaway: Early Edition by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

It was ten years ago this week that the Supreme Court handed down their decision in Bush v. Gore. That decision effectively stopped the Florida recount in its tracks and placed George W. Bush in the Oval Office. Jeffrey Toobin, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, joins us to analyze the legal and political ramifications of that controversial Supreme Court moment.

Download the podcast here. The conservative magazine, the National Review attempts to pick apart Toobin's theses:

Toobin says that the Florida courts “order[ed] a statewide recount of all undervotes and overvotes.” The Florida courts did no such thing, and the point is significant for the reasons given in Bush v. Gore and in Chief Justice Wells’ dissenting opinion in the Florida Supreme Court. (Toobin doesn’t mention that three of the seven Florida justices, all Democrats, dissented from the decision that the U.S. Supreme Court reversed.)

Nelson Lund is the author of that article, and makes several other points, worth considering, about Toobin's arguments. Check those out, here. See also: Bush V. Gore: Exposing the Hidden Crisis in American Democracy: Abridged and Updated (Landmark Law Cases and American Society), Bush V. Gore: The Court Cases and the Commentary, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (Oxford History of the United States), Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election

The Daily Show - December 2, 2010 - Stacy Schiff

Stacy Schiff Episode #15153 Stacy Schiff describes Cleopatra's angular face and her suicide after the death of Mark Antony. (06:54) Tags: Stacy Schiff, interviews, books, history, lookin' good, death, Cleopatra. Aired: 12/02/10Viewed: 36,798.

View the webpage for the entire Daily Show interview here. See also: Cleopatra: A Life, Saint-Exupery: A Biography, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), by Stacy Schiff (Author)Cleopatra: A Life [Hardcover]

Stacy Schiff on Cleopatra from Lopate - Underreported by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Stacy Schiff discusses one of the most intriguing women in world history: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Cleopatra: A Life is an original reconstruction of a dazzling life that reshaped the ancient world. It talks about her marriages, conflicts, and her relationships with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony.

Download the podcast here. See also: Cleopatra: A Life, Saint-Exupery: A Biography, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America, Saint Exupéry: A Biography

NYT: Book Review for 11/05/2010 from NYT Book Review

This week, Stacy Schiff discusses her new biography, "Cleopatra: A Life"; Julie Bosman has notes from the field; Julie Just looks back on her five years as the Times' children's books editor; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.

Listen to the full podcast here. Or you can download the full show here. See also: Cleopatra: A Life, Saint-Exupery: A Biography, Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov), A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America