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.

Mike Brown: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

Michael E. Brown (born June 5, 1965) has been a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2003. His team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), notably the dwarf planet Eris, the only known TNO more massive than Pluto. He has humorously referred to himself as the man who killed Pluto. Source: Wikipedia. The book and author was recently the subject of a recent NPR show. On Weekend Edition Sunday, this was said about the book and author: Astronomer Mike Brown didn't mean to kill Pluto — or so he claims. Brown says the ex-ninth planet was just collateral damage in his search for the 10th. The story of that search — and the subsequent demotion of Pluto that raised the ire of elementary school students everywhere — is in his new book, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. You can download the podcast to that NPR show here.

George W. Bush: Decision Points

Decision Points is a memoir by former U.S. President George W. Bush. It was released on November 9, 2010, and the release is being accompanied by national television appearances and a national tour. The book surpassed sales of two million copies less than two months after its release, nearly matching sales of Bill Clinton's memoir, which took six years to achieve. Bush's 481-page memoir is broken up into 14 chapters. The first two chapters are about his life before the presidency. The first chapter is about notable events in his earlier life such as his decision to quit drinking in 1986. The second chapter is about his decision to run for Governor of Texas, and then President of the United States. The remaining twelve chapters are about events during his presidency: the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, aid to developing countries, the "surge" (a decision to deploy more U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007), domestic issues (including Medicare Part D, Social Security reform, No Child Left Behind, and Immigration reform), the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, stem-cell research, and the financial crisis of 2008. He wrote with the research assistance of former White House Deputy Director of Speechwriting Christopher Michel. Source: Wikipedia.



In November of 2010, Spiegel Online reported this about George W. Bush's Decision Points: Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has said that ex-US President George W. Bush is not telling the truth in his memoirs, released on Tuesday. Schröder said he never offered his unconditional support for Bush's aggressive policy against Iraq. Both ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and former United States President George W. Bush have been out of office for some time. But the enmity which they developed for each other while they were in office seems to have survived.



Also in November of 2010, Ryan Grim through the Huffington Post, reported this:

Crown also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections. He took equal license in lifting from nonfiction books about his presidency or newspaper or magazine articles from the time. Far from shedding light on how the president approached the crucial "decision points" of his presidency, the clip jobs illuminate something shallower and less surprising about Bush's character: He's too lazy to write his own memoir. Bush, on his book tour, makes much of the fact that he largely wrote the book himself, guffawing that critics who suspected he didn't know how to read are now getting a comeuppance. Not only does Bush know how to read, it turns out, he knows how to Google, too. Or his assistant does. Bush notes in his acknowledgments that "[m]uch of the research for this book was conducted by the brilliant and tireless Peter Rough. Peter spent the past 18 months digging through archives, searching the internet[s], and sifting through reams of paper." Bush also collaborated on the book with his former speechwriter, Christopher Michel.

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The Influence of Gaming (On The Media: Friday, 31 December 2010) from On The Media by onthemedia@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

According to the market research firm The NPD Group, 27 percent of America's entertainment dollar is spent on video games. According to New York Times Magazine author and game aficionado Clive Thompson, whether you play them or not, video games have changed the way way you interact with technology.

Friday, December 31st - NBR from Nightly Business Report - NBR Podcast | PBS

2010 ends and we have your Market Outlook for 2011. Auto dealers hope to ride the sales wave into the new year. Greg Farrell Author of Crash of the Titans discusses the Bank of America buyout of Merrill Lynch. And our last Market Monitor of the year is Sam Stovall, Chief Investment Strategist, Standard Poors. Download the podcast here.

Monday, December 27th - NBR from Nightly Business Report - NBR Podcast | PBS

Bad weather comes at the end of a busy holiday season. We talk to ”Fault Lines” author Raghuram Rajan about his book on the world economy. Jobs Outlook-- will unemployment get better in 2011? This week in sports we talk $100 million plus contracts and college bowl games. Some ideas on how to get a handle on the country's IOU's, he's economist Mark Zandi. Download the podcast here.

Harold McGee: On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

In December, 2010, the author was a guest on NPR program, Talk of the Nation. There, the author said this about corking champagne: Well, I was in another part of the experiment because Dick's French friends said that the best way to keep a semi-finished bottle of Champagne fresh was to put a silver spoon in the neck. And we thought that putting a cork in the neck would clearly do a much better job of keeping the carbon dioxide in the bottle. So we did a blind tasting. We got some friends together who were interested in this kind of science and did a blind tasting. Some bottles, we opened freshly. Some bottles, we left open overnight. Some bottles, we emptied partway and then put a cork in the neck and let that sit overnight. And we were surprised to find with American sparkling wines, anyway, that some of the bottles that were left open or with a spoon in the neck actually did taste better than bottles that had been recorked. The podcast of that Talk of the Nation episode is posted below.

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

Jonathan Bloom, Wasted Food blogger and the author of American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of Its Food (and What We Can Do About It) talks about why half of America's food goes uneaten and what consumers can do to cut waste. What are your tips for cutting down on food waste? Download the podcast here.

An American in China from WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show by listenerservices@wnyc.org (WNYC, New York Public Radio)

Deb Fallows, author of Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons In Life, Love, And Language, writes about the cultural differences she encountered living in China. Download the podcast here.

Amir D. Aczel: Present at the Creation: The Story of CERN and the Large Hadron Collider

Recently, NPR did a story on the interesting book and author, Present at the Creation. On the radio program, Talk of the Nation, the author was a guest, and this was recently posted on the accompanying webpage for that episode/show: In his new book, Present at the Creation, Amir D. Aczel tells the story of the European Organization for Nuclear Research's Large Hadron Collider. With the multibillion-euro collider, researchers hope to recreate the conditions that existed just after the Big Bang. The podcast of that show is embedded down below.