A book that is comfortable to live in its own sphere of fact, evidenced by the mere datum that it takes Ann Coulter as a...
Move over, Mao Zedong. There’s a big, bad, black sheriff in town who’s coming to claim your title as Head Commie by overseeing “the progressive socialist takeover of our country.”
Note the “our country” bit. That’s because Barack Hussein Obama is, of course, from Kenya, or Indonesia or somewhere else. He’s not homegrown, like the much-adored George Bush, who provides the title of this screed through one memorable bout with the English language that Klein and Elliott (co-authors: The Manchurian President, 2010) seem to have drawn the wrong lessons from. The two serve up the stuff that, back in the olden days, you’d have to draw down from the weakest of shortwave-radio transmissions generated from some bunker out in the desert: Obama wants to open the Mexican border so that illegals can come streaming across and get documented so they can vote up in el Norte, which is just one of many nefarious tactics meant to ensure the dominance of the Democrats. Well, if Karl Rove had a game plan to ensure Republican rule for generations to come, it stands to reason that the Democratic Party might have one, too—save that the Dems, of course, will pull this off by weakening America’s military and sending the Army off to fight not al-Qaida but global warming. Gas guzzlers may now wish to tremble in terror, but it will do them no good: The military will be under U.N. command, anyway, thanks to Obama’s love of big one-world government. This book is alternately slipshod and stupid, citing the moral equivalent of Cliff’s Notes as an authority while ignoring some pretty heavy realities—such as the fact that the Mexican border is in fact more tightly controlled than under Bush and that the foreign-policy weakling Obama did actually end Osama bin Laden’s tenure on the planet.
A book that is comfortable to live in its own sphere of fact, evidenced by the mere datum that it takes Ann Coulter as a reputable source.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-193648857-5
Page Count: 290
Publisher: WND Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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