Entire chapter viewable here

McCain and the Media

New Chapter - How the media has covered McCain since Free Ride went to press

John McCain is now the presumptive presidential nominee of his party, a position that is accompanied by increased scrutiny and skepticism from the nation's political press. Or at least that's what ordinarily happens. But as we know by now, the rules are different for John McCain. Just a few months ago, McCain had cratered in the polls, and few thought he could bounce back. Yet there was one group of people who had not only the desire but the ability to give McCain the boost he needed, just when he needed it....

About the Authors:

David Brock is the author of four political books, including The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. In his preceding book, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative, a 2002 New York Times bestselling political memoir, he chronicled his years as a conservative media insider. Brock currently lives in Washington, D.C.

Come ring in the Iowa caucus vote with progressive political author Glenn Hurowitz.

Glenn will be speaking at RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH on Thursday, Jan. 3rd, 2008 at 7 p.m. His new book, "Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party," challenges Democrats to show more political courage and embrace confrontation.

SOURCE: OpEdNews OpEdNews

August 12, 2007

By Joan Brunwasser A Timely Second Look at Mark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Again – Introduction to a Multi-Part Series by Joan Brunwasser, Voting Integrity editor, OpEdNews July 12, 2007

Let’s face it, computers sometimes just don’t work.

I have much anecdotal evidence to prove my point, a selection of which I will share with you now.

O’Hare

When I returned from the Take Back America Conference in Washington DC one evening earlier this summer, I flew into Midway Airport, the pint-sized cousin of world-class O’Hare. When my husband came to pick me up, he told me that O’Hare, one of the largest airports in the world, had been shut down for several hours because a computer breakdown kept personnel from calculating how much baggage each plane could safely carry. Planes were not permitted to take off, causing a domino effect of hundreds of delayed and cancelled flights. It didn’t reach epidemic proportions because there was a backup computer that eventually kicked in. But the damage was done, and I was grateful that, for a change, O’Hare hadn’t figured in my plans that evening.

SOURCE: WorkingforChange.com

The Right Gives Away Its Guidebook - Will We Listen?

By David Sirota

During my recent two-week vacation, I read seven nonfiction books, each one of them about American history, politics and culture (I am a huge nerd). During the non-vacation parts of my year, I probably complete a grand total of three books, but when I am on vacation and unplugged from the world, I get a chance to read books all the way through. And the seven I picked this time around were some of the best books I’ve read in a long time – books that every progressive and/or aspiring writer should pick up because they teach us lessons on all the things we think we know, but clearly do not. This is the first of three posts I will do on the books I read. (This one is devoted to only one of the books I read, because it was such an important book – but the other two posts will include groupings of books).

Armed Madhouse, the new book by Greg Palast

THE CON

Kerry Won. Now Get Over It . . .

...because they're putting '08 in their pocket. Republicans just seem to have that winning spirit. They also have caging lists, felons of the future, rotting ballots, snuffed canaries, and a lock on the votes of Kissinger- Americans and the undead.

WARNING! There are cranks and kooks and crazies out there on the Internet who say that George Bush lost the 2004 election, like one titled, "Kerry Won" published on the TomPaine.com web site two days after the election. I wrote it.

On November 11, a week after TomPaine.com published it, I received an e-mail from The New York Times Washington Bureau. Hot on the investigation of the veracity of the vote, The Times reporter asked me pointed questions:

Question #1: Are you a "sore loser"?

Question #2: Are you a "conspiracy nut"?

There was no third question. Investigation of the vote was, for The Times at any rate, complete. The next day, the paper's thorough analysis of the evidence yielded this front-page story, "VOTE FRAUD THEORIES, SPREAD BY BLOGS, ARE QUICKLY BURIED."

read more and listen to the audio book below the fold

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http://www.earth-policy.org/

Check out the Earth Policy Institute Site. There are several great videos of Lester Brown's idea of how to lower individual taxes and to raise environmental taxes. This is definately an idea whose time has come! His new book Plan B, 2.0 will be a best seller.

Grist Magazine has a good interview with Lester Brown here.

A must read for all, in a conservative magazine!

It’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism

Last month, Scott McConnell caught up with Associate Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, whose book on suicide terrorism, Dying to Win, is beginning to receive wide notice. Pape has found that the most common American perceptions about who the terrorists are and what motivates them are off by a wide margin. In his office is the world’s largest database of information about suicide terrorists, rows and rows of manila folders containing articles and biographical snippets in dozens of languages compiled by Pape and teams of graduate students, a trove of data that has been sorted and analyzed and which underscores the great need for reappraising the Bush administration’s current strategy. Below are excerpts from a conversation with the man who knows more about suicide terrorists than any other American.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html

Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press
by Kristina Borjesson (Editor), Gore Vidal (Foreword)

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Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

In this classic text, the first full-scale application of cognitive science to politics, George Lakoff analyzes the unconscious and rhetorical worldviews of liberals and conservatives, discovering radically different but remarkably consistent conceptions of morality on both the left and right. For this new edition, Lakoff adds a preface and an afterword extending his observations to major ideological conflicts since the book's original publication, from the impeachment of Bill Clinton to the 2000 presidential election and its aftermath.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

DFA Grassroots,
My name is Scott Goldstein. I am 19 years old, and was a very active member of the Dean campaign. I volunteered for the campaign in over 5 states, interned, and worked for Generation Dean from American University in Washington D.C. I spent last summer in Burlington, VT as an intern for Democracy for America.

My new book, The Tea is in the Harbor, discusses the fight for Democracy in America, the role of the Howard Dean Presidential Campaign, and the work still ahead to take back our democracy.

One of “our most insightful social observers”* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans

With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash” — the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party’s success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.

In asking “what ’s the matter with Kansas?” — how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union — Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where’s the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism — the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders’ “values” and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.

by Joe Trippi

When Joe Trippi signed on to manage Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, the long-shot candidate had 432 known supporters and $100,000 in the bank. Within a year, Trippi and his energetic but inexperienced team had transformed the most obscure horse in the field into a front-runner, creating a groundswell of 640,000 people and raising more money than any Democrat in history — more than fifty million dollars — mostly through donations of one hundred dollars or less.

This is the story of how Trippi's revolutionary use of the Internet and an impassioned, contagious desire to overthrow politics as usual grew into a national grassroots movement and changed the face of politics forever. But it's also more than that.

It's about how to engage Americans in real dialogue, how business leaders, government leaders, and anyone else can make use of the most revolutionary idea to come along since man first learned to light a fire. No ... not the Internet. Or computers. Or telecommunications.

Democracy.

For those who thought the Dean campaign ended with a screaming speech in an Iowa ballroom, this book is a wake-up call. Joe Trippi explains how — right now — Internet democracy is trans forming every aspect of American life by evenly distributing power. He reveals innovations that are on the horizon, which companies are poised to become first-movers in this new era, and which are in danger of being left behind.

From his behind-the-scenes look at Dean's shocking rise and fall to his "seven inviolable, irrefutable, ingenious things your business or institution or candidate can do in the age of the Internet that might keep you from getting your ass kicked but then again might not," Joe Trippi offers an inspiring glimpse of the world we are becoming.

And he shows how power, in the hands of all of us, changes everything.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

by Arthur M. Schlesinger

The Bush Doctrine in foreign policy and what it means for American democracy.

The gravest decision in a democracy is the one to go to war. In a book that brings a magisterial command of history to the most urgent of contemporary questions, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., explores the war in Iraq, the presidency, and the future of democracy.

Describing unilateralism as "the oldest doctrine in American history," Schlesinger nevertheless warns of the dangers posed by the fatal turn in U.S. policy from deterrence and containment to preventive war. He writes powerfully about George W. Bush's expansion of presidential power and the revived Imperial Presidency (a phrase Schlesinger invented). He reminds us of our country's distinguished legacy of patriotism through dissent in wartime, calling on us to honor that tradition even in the face of our need for security. And he reminds us of the inscrutability of history.

War and the American Presidency shines an essential light on the meaning of our history and a guide for using our understanding responsibly in meeting today's challenges.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

by Meryl Levin, Will Kanteres

Primarily New Hampshire celebrates the work of the young politicos who dedicated a year of their lives to working on the Presidential Primary in New Hampshire during the 2004 campaign season. It combines 160 beautifully reproduced color photographs of the staffers at work and at play with their recollections of the campaign experience. Co-author Will Kanteres writes an overview from the perspective of a former staffer, and former Sen. Bob Kerrey writes the foreword.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

by David Cay Johnston

The Pulitzer Prize-winning N.Y. Times reporter, writes an amazing, troubling expose of the long, gradual and very deliberate shift of Federal taxes from the wealthy to the poor and middle class. Johnston's clear, non-technical stories of how the wealthy and special interests have reworked the system for their own benefit will make you mad as hell — hopefully mad enough to fight back.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.

by Barbara Ehrenreich

The award-winning author and essayist goes undercover, working among America's underclass and living on her $6 to $7 an hour wages. Her goal: to find out how anyone can survive, let alone hope to escape the trap, of working at jobs that pay less than half a living wage. A very personal, entertaining account that will change the way you look at our society, at Wal-Mart, and at the "service economy" workers you encounter every day.

Buy it at Amazon.com and a portion of the proceeds benefits Democracy for New Hampshire.