Committee chairmanships for sale. Pay-to-play corruption. Backroom arm-twisting. Votes on major legislation going to the highest bidder. Welcome to Washington, D.C., the swamp that President Donald Trump was elected to drain.Congressman Ken Buck is blowing the whistle on the real-life House of Cards in our nation's capital. Elected in 2014 as president of one of the largest Republican freshman classes ever to enter Congress, Buck immediately realized why nothing gets done in Congress, and it isn't because of political gridlock—in fact, Republicans and Democrats work together all too well to fleece taxpayers and plunge America deeper into debt."It is an insular process directed by power-hungry party elites who live like kings and govern like bullies," Buck reports.Buck has witnessed first-hand how the unwritten rules of Congress continually prioritize short-term political gain over lasting, principled leadership. When Buck tangled with Washington power brokers like former Speaker John Boehner, he faced petty retaliation. When he insisted Republicans keep their word to voters, he was berated on the House floor by his own party leaders. When other members of Congress dared to do what they believed to be right for America instead of what the party bosses commanded, Buck saw them stripped of committee positions and even denied dining room privileges by the petty beltway bullies.In Drain the Swamp, Buck names names and tells incredible true stories about what really happened behind closed doors in Congress during legislative battles that have ensued over the last two years including budget, continuing resolutions, omnibus, trade promotion authority, Iran, and more. If the Trump administration is going to bring real change to Washington, it first needs to get the whole story—from deep inside the swamp.

    Indeed, American students lag behind their peers in other nations, but America remains on the leading edge economically, scientifically, technologically, and militarily. The reason for this paradox, explains Barone in this brilliant essay, is that “from ages six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America—the parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability. But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America—the parts of American life subject to competition and accountability.” While Soft America coddles, Hard America plays for keeps. Educators, for example, protect children from the rigors of testing, ban dodgeball, and promote just about any student who shows up. But most adults quickly figure out that how they do depends on what they produce. Barone sweeps readers along, showing how we came to the current divide—for things weren’t always this way. In fact, no part of our society is all Hard or all Soft, and the boundary between Hard America and Soft America often moves back and forth. Barone also shows where America is headed—or should be headed. We don’t want to subject kindergartners to the rigors of the Marine Corps or leave old people uncared for. But Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping part of our society Soft only if we keep most of it Hard.Hard America, Soft America reveals: • How the American situation is unique: In Europe, schooling is competitive and demanding, but adult life is Soft, with generous welfare benefits, short work hours, long vacations, and state pensions• How the American military has reclaimed the Hard goals and programs it abandoned in the Vietnam era• How Hardness drives America’s economy—an economy that businesses and economists nearly destroyed in the 1970s by spurning competition • How America’s schools have failed because they are bastions of Softness—but how they are finally showing signs of Hardening• The benefits of Softness: How government programs like Social Security were necessary in what was a harsh and unforgiving America• Hard America, Soft America is a stunningly original and provocative work of social commentary from one of this country’s most respected political analysts.From the Hardcover edition.

    Colonel, U.S. Representative, “Dad,” and Scourge of the Far Left. He rose from humble beginnings in Atlanta where his father instilled in him a code of conduct that would inform his life ever after.  Throughout his years leading troops, raising a loving family, serving as Congressman in Florida’s 22nd district, and emerging as one of the most authentic voices in conservative politics, West has never compromised the core values on which he was raised: family, faith, tradition, service, honor, fiscal responsibility, courage, freedom. Today, these values are under attack as never before, and as the far Left intensifies its assaults, few have been as vigorous as West in pushing back.  He refuses to let up, calling out an Obama administration that cares more about big government than following the Constitution, so-called black “leaders” who sell out their communities in exchange for pats on the head, and a segment of the media that sees vocal black conservatives as threats to be silenced. Now more than ever, the American republic needs a guardian: a principled, informed conservative who understands where we came from, who can trace the philosophical roots of our faith and freedom, and who has a plan to get America back on track. West isn’t afraid to speak truth to power, and in this book he’ll share the experiences that shaped him and the beliefs he would die to defend.From the Hardcover edition.

    Buckley, Jr.—traces Abraham Lincoln's ambitious climb from provincial upstart to political powerhouse and calls for a renewal of the Lincoln ethic of relentless striving.Revered today across the political spectrum, Abraham Lincoln believed in a small but active government in a nation defined by aspiration. Fired by an indomitable ambition from a young age, the man who would be immortalized as the "railsplitter" never wanted to earn his living with an ax. He educated himself in a frontier environment characterized by mind-numbing labor and then turned his back on that world. All his life, he preached a gospel of work and discipline toward the all-important ends of self-improvement and individual advancement. As a Whig and then a Republican, he worked to smash the rural backwardness in which he was raised and the Southern plantation economy that depended on human bondage.Both were unacceptably stultifying of human potential. In short, Lincoln lived the American Dream and succeeded in opening a way to it for others. He saw in the nation's founding documents the unchanging foundation of an endlessly dynamic society. He embraced the market and the amazing transportation and communications revolutions beginning to take hold. He helped give birth to the modern industrial economy that arose before the Civil War and that took off after it.His vision of an upwardly mobile society that rewards and supports individual striving was wondrously realized. Now it is under threat. Economic stagnation and social breakdown are undermining mobility and the American way. To meet these challenges, Rich Lowry draws us back to the lessons of Lincoln. It is imperative, he argues, to preserve a fluid economy and the bourgeois virtues that make it possible for individuals to thrive within it.

    A year later the world learned they had been taken hostage by the Islamic State. Throughout 2014, all the Europeans came home, first the Spanish, then the French, then an Italian, a German, and a Dane. In August 2014, the Islamic State began executing the Americans--including journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff--followed by the British hostages.Joel Simon, who in nearly two decades at the Committee to Protect Journalists has worked on dozens of hostages cases, delves into the heated hostage policy debate. The Europeans paid millions of dollars to a terrorist group to free their hostages. The U.S. and the U.K. refused to do so, arguing that any ransom would be used to fuel terrorism and would make the crime more attractive, increasing the risk to their citizens. We Want to Negotiate is an exploration of the ethical, legal, and strategic considerations of a bedeviling question: Should governments pay ransom to terrorists?

    Cited by politicians as diverse as Hillary Clinton and John McCain, Niebuhr’s masterpiece on the incongruity between personal ideals and political reality is both an indictment of American moral complacency and a warning against the arrogance of virtue. Impassioned, eloquent, and deeply perceptive, Niebuhr’s wisdom will cause readers to rethink their assumptions about right and wrong, war and peace. “[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there’s serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction. I take away . . . the sense we have to make these efforts knowing they are hard.”—President Barack Obama  “The supreme American theologian of the twentieth century.”—Arthur Schlesinger Jr., New York Times“Niebuhr is important for the left today precisely because he warned about America’s tendency—including the left’s tendency—to do bad things in the name of idealism. His thought offers a much better understanding of where the Bush administration went wrong in Iraq.”—Kevin Mattson, The Good Society “Irony provides the master key to understanding the myths and delusions that underpin American statecraft. . . . The most important book ever written on USforeign policy.”—Andrew J. Bacevich, from the Introduction

    Devoted to materialism, extravagance, luxury, and the pursuit of sensual pleasure, it was a privileged society. But, there was also injustice, poverty, and oppression. It was the great and ancient Babylon--the center of the universe. And now we find Babylon redux today in Western society. Consumer capitalism, a never-ending cycle of working and buying, a sea of choices produced with little regard to life or resources, societal violence, marginalized and excluded people, a world headed toward climactic calamity. Where are the prophets--the Jeremiahs--to lead the way out of the gated communities of overindulgence, the high rises of environmental disaster, and the darkness at the core of an apostate consumer society? Walter Brueggemann--a scholar, a preacher, a prophetic voice in our own time--challenges us again to examine our culture, turn from the idols of abundance and abuse, and turn to lives of meaning and substance.

    officials were turning the surveillance powers of the federal government -- designed to stop terrorist attacks -- against the Republican presidential team. These were the ruthless tactics of a Soviet-style police state, not a democratic republic.The Red Thread asks the simple question: Why? What is it that motivated these anti-Trump conspirators from inside and around the Obama administration and Clinton networks to depart so drastically from "politics as usual" to participate in a seditious effort to overturn an election?Finding clues in an array of sources, Diana West uses her trademark investigative skills, honed in her dazzling work, American Betrayal, to construct a fascinating series of ideological profiles of well-known but little understood anti-Trump actors, from James Comey to Christopher Steele to Nellie Ohr, and the rest of the Fusion GPS team; from John Brennan to the numerous Clintonistas still patrolling the Washington Swamp after all these years, and more.Once, we knew these officials by august titles and reputation; after The Red Thread, readers will recognize their multi-generational and inter-connecting communist and socialist pedigrees, and see them for what they really are: foot-soldiers of the Left, deployed to take down America's first "America First" and most anti-Communist president.If we just give it a pull, the "red thread" is very long and very deep.

    But is the media telling us the truth?No, say internationally-recognized prophecy expert and Fox News and History Channel commentator Paul McGuire and Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigative journalist Troy Anderson. America's most insidious enemies are not hostile nations; they are elite globalists-the "Establishment" that is making the "1 percent" even richer while working- and middle-class people watch their incomes and net worth's flatline or plummet.The authors fearlessly expose the globalist elite's secret plan for humanity and campaign of mass deception. Using documentation gleaned from years of journalistic investigation and extensive interviews with over fifty of the world's most respected geopolitical, economic and military affairs experts, faith leaders, and biblical scholars, McGuire and Anderson unmask these elites as members of secret societies with deep occult connections who have gained control of America's dominant institutions-government, education, entertainment, international banking, and even the media.Trumpocalypse explores the enigmatic prophecies and "biblical codes" involving Trump, and asks whether God raised up President Trump as a fearless leader to guide America and the free world through a series of major crises as the biblical end-time narrative unfolds, as many people with prophetic gifts are predicting, and shows why everyday Americans and evangelicals have rallied around Trump as their last hope of saving America and averting the horrors of the Apocalypse. It further reveals why Trump and millions of "deplorables" are fighting to stop the hidden agenda of the Establishment, and how the perplexing chaos enveloping the planet could paradoxically signal the beginning of the great end-times awakening that millions are praying for.Here is an invitation to join the anti-Establishment surge-what evangelist Franklin Graham calls "the Christian revolution"-and discover how to fulfill your own destiny in the run-up to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

    In September 2014, he came close to realising that dream.In a riveting daily diary, written with his trademark wit and charm, Salmond takes us into the heart of the YES campaign, revealing what was said and done behind the scenes as the referendum reached its dramatic climax.He explains how the YES campaign energised the entire Scottish nation and rewrote the rulebook for grassroots political campaigning, not just in the UK but throughout the world.He also looks ahead to the critical role of the ‘national question’ in the future of British politics, making clear that the referendum was not the end of a process, but the beginning of one. The dream of Scottish independence is very much alive.

    This fissure is evident across the nation in conflict over LGBTQ rights; in challenges to religious liberty; in clashes over abortion; in tensions between law enforcement and minority communities. With all of this physical and emotional violence enacted by our legal system and such seemingly irresolvable differences in beliefs, values, and identities across the country, we are forced to ask—how can the people of this nation ever live in peace together? In Confident Pluralism, John D. Inazu analyzes the current state of the country, orients the contemporary United States within its broader history, and explores the ways that Americans can—and must—live together peaceably in the future despite these deeply engrained differences. Pluralism is one of the founding creeds of the United States—yet America’s society and legal system continues to face deep, unsolved structural problems in dealing with differing cultural anxieties, and minority viewpoints.  Inazu not only argues that it is possible to cohabitate peacefully in this country, but he also lays out realistic guidelines for our society and legal system to achieve the new American dream through civic practices that value toleration over protest, humility over defensiveness, and persuasion over coercion. An essential clarion call during one of the most troubled times in US history, Confident Pluralism offers a refreshing argument for how the legal system can protect peoples’ personal beliefs and inherent right to differ and shows how we can build towards a healthier future of tolerance, patience, and empathy.

    

    The first section lists well over 100 books for Christians, which you can instantly download for free from Amazon. The second section offers totally above-board techniques on how to access NEW books on many Christian topics from Amazon every single day, without ever paying one cent!This book will save you thousands of dollars and will enrich your spirit with amazing free books.Enjoy your exploration and the amazing discoveries!M.C. (Editor)AS OF JANUARY 25, 2015 ALL LINKS HAVE BEEN TESTED TWICE AND THEY ARE WORKING. ANY COMMENT TO THE CONTRARY IN THE COMMENTS SECTION COULD BE THE RESULT OF TECHNICAL PROBLEMS IN THE CUSTOMER'S KINDLE OR COMPUTER  OR THE BUYER'S GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION. IF THE YOU EXPERIENCE ONGOING TECHNICAL PROBLEMS, FEEL FREE TO RETURN THE BOOK AND GET YOUR  MONEY BACK.

    Will they allow faith and forgiveness to heal their wounds and learn to love again? BOOK 1 : LEAST EXPECTED Can such complete opposites find a way to make their love work? When Maggie Golding, unconventional and artistic 50-something, agrees to help a friend by working as a window dresser at Pettett & Mayfields London department store, she never expected to fall in love with Edgar Pettett, staid and sensible heir to the business. Nor did she expect that he’d still love her when she revealed her past, the consequences of that long-ago sunflower summer working in Tuscany. Her daughter, Rachel. Between her shaky faith, their huge differences, and his mother’s disapproval, how can they possibly work things out? BOOK 2 : DOLCE VITA (Sweet Life) La dolce vita, a sweeter life of love, awaits Rachel. But can she accept it? Rachel Golding loves her uncomplicated life in Wales, until the trip to Italy to meet her Italian grandmother for the first time stirs unwelcome emotions. Between her cousin’s accusations, her mother’s wedding, and her realisation she feels way more than she should for her best friend Jonathan, Rachel’s organised life is spiraling out of control. Always ready for adventure, especially with the woman he loves, Jonathan Davies gladly accompanies Rach on a return journey to Tuscany. But now she needs his friendship and support more than ever, revealing his love is a risk he dare not take. Not without some sign she wants more. A sign she may never give. In the haze of a sunflower summer, can Rachel learn to surrender her hurts and fears to God and so embrace the life He intends for her? La dolce vita, a sweeter life of love. BOOK 3 : LA RISPOSTA (The Answer) One marriage ends, as another begins. Or can faith and forgiveness bring a troubled couple back together? When the harvest celebrations and a family wedding bring the entire Rossi family back to the villa at summer's end, along with their new loved ones, the final secrets are revealed. But can these secrets be forgiven, healing old wounds and mending broken hearts, or will the mistakes of the past be repeated? The future of a marriage about to crumble depends on the answer! BOOK 4 : INNAMORATA (Sweetheart) Too old for love? Widowed Isabella Rossi is content with her life at the villa. In the past year, all her grandchildren have discovered faith and love, and huge family heartbreaks have been healed. But what about her? When a beau from her teens returns to Tuscany, can the flame of love be rekindled? Or is eighty-something too old for romance? NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR Please be aware that Books 1 & 2 use British spelling and grammar. All four books are previously published. Least Expected is also in my London Loves boxed set, and the remaining three books were part of the A Tuscan Legacy boxed set.

     Their lives are in shambles with Veronica being gone. MJ is adjusting to fatherhood while Dynasty is taking the absence of her mother extremely hard. How could a woman who knows what it feels like for their mother to walk out on them turn around and do the same to her own kids. The apple definitely doesn't fall too far from the tree. Meanwhile, Veronica has decided to rekindle her flame with Iesha. That doesn't sit too well with Adrian, who has also joined them on their little getaway. Although she's been Iesha's ride or die through it all, Adrian feels she will never have Iesha to herself because of the love she has for Veronica. This drives Adrian to extremities that will cause Iesha’s life to be turned upside down. As the search continues for Veronica, secrets are revealed and pieces of the puzzle are put together. An unexpected visitor sheds some much needed light on the entire situation. Why did Veronica really walk out on her family? Is there more to the story? Will the Millhouse family survive and stay strong, or have these confessions destroyed them? Nothing is ever what it seems and just when you think you have it all figured out God allows another bomb to drop. Who will be left standing when the smoke clears and can God repair all that is broken?