The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate


David Freddoso - 2008
    The Case Against Barack Obama by National Review's David Freddoso, blasts Obama for failing to take on the Chicago machine, for listening to "radical advisors," and for backing "doctrinaire liberal" causes from teachers unions to abortion rights.It does not, however, compare him to Paris Hilton, or dwell at length on his religion or race - making the substance of The Case Against Barack Obama sound a bit unfamiliar amid a campaign cacophony of hyperbolic web ads, alleged race cards, and viral smears. Freddoso says John McCain's campaign and Republicans at large are making the wrong case against the Illinois senator."I don't think you beat Obama by saying that he's Paris Hilton," said Freddoso, a reporter for the conservative magazine National Review, referring to McCain's latest advertising campaign. "The more important thing is really to look at is he who he says he is? Is he really this great reformer?" Freddoso's book, released today by the conservative publishing house Regnery and provided exclusively to Politico by the publisher, occupies a small island in the often-shrill sea of criticism of Obama. As a range of conservatives suggest that Obama is a closet radical, and as McCain's campaign aims to disqualify him from the White House on the grounds of his international fame, Freddoso makes a case that conservatives should look at the presumptive Democratic nominee's record.His thesis: "It's not that Obama is a bad person. It's just that he's like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington. And just like all the other liberals too." Freddoso's is one of two new books harshly attacking Obama. The other, by Jerome Corsi, reportedly covers some of the same territory as the viral emails that have plagued the Democratic candidate, making much of his slender connections to Islam and his teenage drug use.Freddoso opts largely for a fact-based critique, and writes that the viral and overt smears have allowed Obama to evade substantive criticism. "Too many of those criticizing Obama have been content merely to slander him," he writes. False rumors about Obama's religion and ancestry have produced, Freddoso writes, "an intellectual laziness among the very people who should be carefully scrutinizing Obama."His book comes with Republican popularity at a historic low, amid widespread disenchantment with Republican ideals of limited government and hawkish foreign policy. Many - including, apparently, McCain's strategists - doubt a Republican can win a policy face-off. But as the real campaign hones in on the character of the candidates, Freddoso's book attempts to build an alternate case against Obama. Freddoso's argument begins in Chicago....Though Obama's first political steps were in Hyde Park's reformist politics, Freddoso focuses on the smooth accommodation he made to the machine....

Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi-U.S. Connection


Gerald Posner - 2005
    In his new book, Secrets of the Kingdom, Posner exposes the undeniable truth about U.S.-Saudi relations–and how the Saudis’ influence on American business and politics poses a grave threat to our security.The result of an intensive two-year investigation, Secrets of the Kingdom penetrates the innermost layers of the shielded House of Saud and presents indisputable evidence of complicity and deceit at the highest levels–evidence that the 9/11 Commission, either deliberately or negligently, failed to consider. Using bank records and other previously undisclosed information, Posner unearths many disturbing truths and shattering revelations about the ties that bind the Saudi and U.S. governments, including• how countless failures in U.S. intelligence and law enforcement gave extraordinary preferential treatment to prominent Saudis living in the United States, including members of the bin Laden family, in the days after 9/11• a likely close connection between a powerful member of the House of Saud and Abu Zubeydah, the highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative captured so far by the United States• how the Saudi government has turned a blind eye to the role Saudi charities–including many controlled or supported by Kingdom officials– have played in bankrolling al-Qaeda and Islamic terror groups• the never-before-revealed Saudi and U.S. emergency plans in the event of a national crisis in the Kingdom, plans that could affect the security of the United States and the entire Middle EastSecrets of the Kingdom is an explosive study that will have a profound impact on both U.S. policy and Americans’ perception of their government and its extensive ties to a foreign power. Posner uncovers a disturbing picture of how two nations, despite their differing agendas, have become inextricably entwined.From the Hardcover edition.

Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals, and the Media Refuse to Say


Glenn Beck - 2010
    Glenn Beck likes to say that “the truth has no agenda”—but there’s another side to that: people who have agendas rarely care about the truth. And, these days, it seems like everyone has an agenda. The media leads with stories that rate over those that matter. Politicians put lobbyists and electability over honesty. Radicals alter history in order to change the future. In Cowards, Glenn Beck exposes the truth about thirteen important issues that have been hijacked by deceit. Whether out of spite, greed, or fear, these are the things that no one seems to be willing to have an honest conversation about. For example: * How our two-party POLITICAL SYSTEM often leaves voters with NO GOOD OPTIONS. * How extremists are slowly integrating ISLAMIC LAW into our SOCIETY. * How PROGRESSIVE “religious” leaders like JIM WALLIS are politicizing the Bible. * How the CARTEL VIOLENCE on our border is FAR WORSE than people realize. * How “LIBERTARIAN” has been INTENTIONALLY turned into a DIRTY WORD. * How GEORGE SOROS has amassed enough MONEY and POWER to INFLUENCE entire ECONOMIES. In some cases, the truth is out there, but people simply don’t want to hear it. It’s much easier, and certainly a lot more convenient, to keep our blinders on. After all, as a quote attributed to President James Garfield made clear, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” Miserable or not, the truth can no longer be something we hope for; it must be something we live. When courage prevails, cowards do not—and this book was written to ensure that’s exactly what happens.

Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency


Andrew C. McCarthy - 2019
    It was between the Clinton campaign and the Obama administration.The media–Democrat “collusion narrative,” which paints Donald Trump as cat’s paw of Russia, is a studiously crafted illusion.Despite Clinton’s commanding lead in the polls, hyper-partisan intelligence officials decided they needed an “insurance policy” against a Trump presidency. Thus was born the collusion narrative, built on an anonymously sourced “dossier,” secretly underwritten by the Clinton campaign and compiled by a former British spy. Though acknowledged to be “salacious and unverified” at the FBI’s highest level, the dossier was used to build a counterintelligence investigation against Trump’s campaign.Miraculously, Trump won anyway. But his political opponents refused to accept the voters’ decision. Their collusion narrative was now peddled relentlessly by political operatives, intelligence agents, Justice Department officials, and media ideologues—the vanguard of the “Trump Resistance.” Through secret surveillance, high-level intelligence leaking, and tireless news coverage, the public was led to believe that Trump conspired with Russia to steal the election.Not one to sit passively through an onslaught, President Trump fought back in his tumultuous way. Matters came to a head when he fired his FBI director, who had given explosive House testimony suggesting the president was a criminal suspect, despite privately assuring Trump otherwise. The resulting firestorm of partisan protest cowed the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel, whose seemingly limitless investigation bedeviled the administration for two years.Yet as months passed, concrete evidence of collusion failed to materialize. Was the collusion narrative an elaborate fraud? And if so, choreographed by whom? Against media–Democrat caterwauling, a doughty group of lawmakers forced a shift in the spotlight from Trump to his investigators and accusers. This has exposed the depth of politicization within American law-enforcement and intelligence agencies. It is now clear that the institutions on which our nation depends for objective policing and clear-eyed analysis injected themselves scandalously into the divisive politics of the 2016 election.They failed to forge a new Clinton administration. Will they succeed in bringing down President Trump?

Kindergarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks


Evan Sayet - 2012
    Further extrapolating on the ideas in his wildly popular viral youtube talk to the Heritage Foundation, that has received over 600k hits, Evan Sayet uses his signature wit in this new book to ask thought- provoking questions during these turbulent economic and social times. And he provides the reader with some surprising answers. Andrew Breitbart said that Evan Sayet's Heritage Foundation Speech was 'one of the five most important conservative speeches ever given.' That speech was the foundation for this book. How did the song "Imagine" by John Lennon become the perfect symbol of liberal thinking? Why does Bruce Springsteen dub "pain" as the wages of toil and hard work? What's the Democrats' beef with God? What do they have against the Jews of Israel? Why do they want abortion to be commonplace and frequent? Why does the Modern Liberal -the dominant force in today's Democratic Party and in so much of today's popular culture - seem to always side with evil over good, wrong over right and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success? Evan Sayet answers those questions and a lot more.

Billionaire at the Barricades: The Populist Revolution from Reagan to Trump


Laura Ingraham - 2017
    They joined a movement that swept the unlikeliest of candidates, Donald Trump, into the Oval Office. Can he complete his agenda? Or will his opponents in the media, protestor class, and political establishment block his efforts and choke off the movement he represents?In Billionaire at the Barricades, Laura Ingraham gives readers a front row seat to the populist revolution as she witnessed it. She reveals the origins of this movement and its connection to the Trump presidency. She unmasks the opposition, forecasts the future of the Make America Great Again agenda and offers her own prescriptions for bringing real change to the swamp of Washington.Unlike most of her media colleagues, Ingraham understood Trump’s appeal and defied those who wrote his political obituary. Now she confronts the president’s critics and responds to those who deny the importance of his America First agenda. With sharp humor and insight she traces the DNA of the populist movement: from Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, to Nixon’s Silent Majority, to Reagan’s smashing electoral victories.Populism fueled the insurgency campaigns of Buchanan and Perot, the election of George W. Bush, and the Tea Party rallies of the Obama presidency. But a political novice—a Manhattan billionaire—proved to be the movement’s most vocal champion. This is the inside story of his victory and the fitful struggle to enact his agenda.This book has also been published as Busting the Barricades: What I Saw at the Populist Revolt.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton


Ann Coulter - 1998
    She also shreds every conceivable defense the Clintons to bits as she probes the major Clinton scandals, including Monica Lewinsky, Filegate, the China connection, the travel office snafu, and the fundraising fiascos. Coulter combs through the evidence to answer all the questions that kept the Clinton administration embroiled in scandal - the likes of which our nation had never seen. High Crimes and Misdemeanors reveals: WHY the Monica Lewinsky affair would ultimately cause the entire Clinton defense scheme to unravel. HOW Bill Clinton committed impeachable offense that are both criminal and non-criminal (take your pick). WHY, despite popular belief, impeachment DOES NOT require a criminal offense. HOW the Clinton White House got hold of sensitive FBI files - and how it may have used them too intimidate enemies. WHAT Hilary Clinton did to destroy the careers of nonpolitical, completely innocent White House employees. WHY Clinton crony Webb Hubbell abruptly stopped cooperating with Ken Starr after key White House pals got to him. WHO got a top Clinton administration job and most likely used it to funnel classified data to people close to the Chinese Communists.  In this fearless and unapologetic book, you'll get a shocking view of the Clinton White House, where an endless parade of lowlifes brought lobbying opportunities to a president who never met a campaign gift he didn't like - even if it put US security at risk.  You'll venture deep iinside the Clinton machine to discover how witnesses are muzzled, how opponents are intimidated, how the press is led about, evidence concealed, the FBI misued, jobs are dispensed, the Clinton Justice Department corrupted....and why the Monica Lewinsky affair infamously follow Clinton for the rest of his life. From the best selling author of ADIOS AMERICA.

Peril


Bob Woodward - 2021
    Trump to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stands as one of the most dangerous periods in American history.But as # 1 internationally bestselling author Bob Woodward and acclaimed reporter Robert Costa reveal for the first time, it was far more than just a domestic political crisis.Woodward and Costa interviewed more than 200 people at the center of the turmoil, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of transcripts—and a spellbinding and definitive portrait of a nation on the brink.This classic study of Washington takes readers deep inside the Trump White House, the Biden White House, the 2020 campaign, and the Pentagon and Congress, with vivid, eyewitness accounts of what really happened.Peril is supplemented throughout with never-before-seen material from secret orders, transcripts of confidential calls, diaries, emails, meeting notes and other personal and government records, making for an unparalleled history.It is also the first inside look at Biden’s presidency as he faces the challenges of a lifetime: the continuing deadly pandemic and millions of Americans facing soul-crushing economic pain, all the while navigating a bitter and disabling partisan divide, a world rife with threats, and the hovering, dark shadow of the former president.“We have much to do in this winter of peril,” Biden declared at his inauguration, an event marked by a nerve-wracking security alert and the threat of domestic terrorism.Peril is the extraordinary story of the end of one presidency and the beginning of another, and represents the culmination of Bob Woodward’s news-making trilogy on the Trump presidency, along with Fear and Rage. And it is the beginning of a collaboration with fellow Washington Post reporter Robert Costa that will remind readers of Woodward’s coverage, with Carl Bernstein, of President Richard M. Nixon’s final days.

Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation


Andrew Marantz - 2019
     For several years, Andrew Marantz, a New Yorker staff writer, has been embedded in two worlds. The first is the world of social-media entrepreneurs, who, acting out of naïvete and reckless ambition, upended all traditional means of receiving and transmitting information. The second is the world of the people he calls "the gate crashers"—the conspiracists, white supremacists, and nihilist trolls who have become experts at using social media to advance their corrosive agenda. Antisocial ranges broadly—from the first mass-printed books to the trending hashtags of the present; from secret gatherings of neo-Fascists to the White House press briefing room—and traces how the unthinkable becomes thinkable, and then how it becomes reality. Combining the keen narrative detail of Bill Buford's Among the Thugs and the sweep of George Packer's The Unwinding, Antisocial reveals how the boundaries between technology, media, and politics have been erased, resulting in a deeply broken informational landscape—the landscape in which we all now live. Marantz shows how alienated young people are led down the rabbit hole of online radicalization, and how fringe ideas spread—from anonymous corners of social media to cable TV to the President's Twitter feed. Marantz also sits with the creators of social media as they start to reckon with the forces they've unleashed. Will they be able to solve the communication crisis they helped bring about, or are their interventions too little too late?

The Quest for Cosmic Justice


Thomas Sowell - 1999
    It is not a comforting book but a book about disturbing and dangerous trends. The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies. Those consequences include the steady and dangerous erosion of fundamental principles of freedom - amounting to a quiet repeal of the American revolution. The Quest for Cosmic Justice is the summation of a lifetime of study and thought about where we as a society are headed - and why we need to change course before we do irretrievable damage.

Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic


David Frum - 2018
    Media freedom and judicial independence have eroded. The right to vote remains, but the right to have one’s vote counted fairly may not. Until the US presidential election of 2016, the global decline of democracy seemed a concern for other peoples in other lands. . . . That complacent optimism has been upended by the political rise of Donald Trump. The crisis is upon Americans, here and now."Quietly, steadily, Trump and his administration are damaging the tenets and accepted practices of American democracy, perhaps irrevocably. As he and his family enrich themselves, the presidency itself falls into the hands of the generals and financiers who surround him.While much of the country has been focused on Russia, David Frum has been collecting the lies, obfuscations, and flagrant disregard for the traditional limits placed on the office of the presidency. In Trumpocracy, he documents how Trump and his administration are steadily damaging the tenets and accepted practices of American democracy. During his own White House tenure as George W. Bush’s speechwriter, Frum witnessed the ways the presidency is limited not by law but by tradition, propriety, and public outcry, all now weakened. Whether the Trump presidency lasts two, four, or eight more years, he has changed the nature of the office for the worse, and likely for decades.In this powerful and eye-opening book, Frum makes clear that the hard work of recovery starts at home. Trumpocracy outlines how Trump could push America toward illiberalism, what the consequences could be for our nation and our everyday lives, and what we can do to prevent it.

Why We're Polarized


Ezra Klein - 2020
    Most Americans could agree that no candidate like Donald Trump had ever been elected President before. But political journalist Ezra Klein makes the case that the 2016 election wasn't surprising at all. In fact, Trump's electoral victory followed the exact same template as previous elections, by capturing a nearly identical percentage of voter demographics as previous Republican candidates.Over the past 50 years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. Those merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.In this groundbreaking book, Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and each other. And he traces the feedback loops between our polarized political identities and our polarized political institutions that are driving our political system towards crisis.Neither a polemic nor a lament, Klein offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump's rise to the Democratic Party's leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture. A revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.

The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values


Tammy Bruce - 2003
    Through the pages of The Death of Right and Wrong, author, activist, and pundit Tammy Bruce takes you inside the chilling world of the Left—a place where morals and decency have been turned on their heads and the crisp distinction between Right and Wrong has been blurred into a mushy, gray mess.In this world, the Gay Elite exploit our children—under the guise of tolerance and education—to satisfy their sexual obsessions.In this world, the Black Elite laud convicted murderers as community heroes and award-winning “artists.”In this world, the Feminist Elite fawn over a woman who mercilessly killed all five of her children.And much more that will offend your sense of decency and threaten your basic values.Ms. Bruce smashes the facades of “Tolerance,” “Understanding,” and other Leftist slogans to reveal the ugly truth of their agenda. As a gay activist and former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization of Women, she witnessed firsthand the Left’s attempts to undermine our millennia-old code of morals and values, aided by politically biased media and academia. And if the news headlines of today are any indication, they’re winning the culture war. Unless we act now, we are doomed at the hands of special interest groups on the Left who want nothing more than to undermine our ability to judge right from wrong in order to foist their own selfish, anything-goes society on the rest of us. This book reveals what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and what we can do to restore decency in our society.You’ll discover powerful tools in these pages to help you understand the psychology of the Left—what makes them tick and, more importantly, how to stop them from eroding our values completely. Full of controversial opinions and countless examples ripped from the headlines, The Death of Right and Wrong is a powerful, eye-opening book that you won’t want to be without.From the Hardcover edition.

What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era


Carlos Lozada - 2020
    As a book critic for The Washington Post, Carlos Lozada has read some 150 volumes claiming to diagnose why Trump was elected and what his presidency reveals about our nation. Many of these, he’s found, are more defensive than incisive, more righteous than right. In What Were We Thinking, Lozada uses these books to tell the story of how we understand ourselves in the Trump era, using as his main characters the political ideas and debates at play in America today. He dissects works on the white working class like Hillbilly Elegy; manifestos from the anti-Trump resistance like On Tyranny and No Is Not Enough; books on race, gender, and identity like How to Be an Antiracist and Good and Mad; polemics on the future of the conservative movement like The Corrosion of Conservatism; and of course plenty of books about Trump himself. Lozada’s argument is provocative: that many of these books—whether written by liberals or conservatives, activists or academics, Trump’s true believers or his harshest critics—are vulnerable to the same blind spots, resentments, and failures that gave us his presidency. But Lozada also highlights the books that succeed in illuminating how America is changing in the 21st century. What Were We Thinking is an intellectual history of the Trump era in real time, helping us transcend the battles of the moment and see ourselves for who we really are.

The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted


Mike Lofgren - 2012
    So how did the party of Lincoln become the party of lunatics? That is what this book aims to answer. Fear not, the Dems come in for their share of tough talk they are zombies, a party of the living dead. Mike Lofgren came to Washington in the early eighties those halcyon, post Nixonian glory days for what he imagined would be a short stint on Capitol Hill. He has witnessed quite a few low points in his twenty-eight years on the Hill but none quite so pitiful as the antics of the current crop of legislators whom we appear to have elected. Based on the explosive article Lofgren wrote when he resigned in disgust after the debt ceiling crisis, "The Party Is Over "is a funny and impassioned expose of everything that is wrong with Washington. Obama and his tired cohorts are no angels but they have nothing on the Republicans, whose wily strategists are bankrupting the country one craven vote at a time. Be prepared for some fireworks."