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Title: Bushwhacked : Life in George W. Bush's America by LOU DUBOSE, MOLLY IVINS ISBN: 0-375-50752-3 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 23 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.49 (78 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Long Live the Dixie Chicks
Comment: After reading "Bushwhacked," and thus becoming even more disgusted with Bush's corporate kissing policies, I told some of my friends about what I read. As I spoke to each one, I found my voice rising and blood pressure zooming. When I finished, I waited expectantly, wondering how each person would respond.
More than one of them only looked at me, eyes glazed, obviously a bit put off, I could tell, and said, "Do you believe everything you read?"
Well, no. Never did, never will. But I've followed what Bush has been doing to our budget, to our environment, to our country, to MY country, and to our world long before Bushwhacked. When the reports are all the same, everywhere I turn, except from Rush Limbaugh or a talking head on MSNBC, I have to believe most of it. But even then I leave considerable room for my own thoughts and analysis. And my final analysis ain't pretty.
Bushwhacked told me many things I already knew, but it added much more detail and insight. It was humorous at times, but more dreadfully sad than anything else--because it told the dispicable truth. It should be read by anyone who cares even a smidgen about the US and the world.
One good thing: After reading Bushwhacked, I love the Dixie Chicks even more.
Rating: 5
Summary: A broadside from the left
Comment: Despite the allegations from the right, the left does not control the media. From the right-wing pundits to the totally superficial news coverage, the American public has not received a balanced view of the current administration. It is refreshing to see the liberals (BTW: When did liberal become an obsenity?) take some long overdue potshots at the right.
Rating: 5
Summary: Cassandra Redux
Comment: Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam, the mythological ruler of Troy. She was given the gift of prophecy and the curse of not being believed. In their previous book, "Shrub," Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, our Cassandra twins, told America about a pampered preppy named George W. Bush. They warned that he was bad news as governor of Texas, and he would be bad news for America. He helped big bidness (business in Texan), and he hurt little people almost by reflex. He transformed a six billion dollar state surplus into a ten billion dollar deficit. Though Gore won the popular vote, not enough Americans listened to Ivins' and Dubose's plea to offset the Florida fiasco and the Nader vote. The consequence, saw in hand, postures on the book cover.
Will "Bushwhacked," Ivins' and Dubose's latest screed, help unseat "Dubya?" Ivins and Dubose dress up this story of an ill got presidency with a bunch of Texas humor; it makes the bitter story they tell more palatable.
In poignant detail, Ivins and Dubose describe the lives of common people across the United States--in Philadelphia, Louisiana, New Jersey, Oregon, Wyoming as well as Texas. They are extensions of what the authors warned in 2000: the denial of basic services to the needy; environmental deregulations that threaten the health and livelihoods of everyday Americans; the denial of justice to little people fighting major corporations; massive deficits balanced on the backs of the poor. All are Texas problems gone national under Dubya. And they document the international consequences of the Bush presidency.
Even the one thing that Ivins and Dubose credited then Governor Bush with, a penchant for education reform, is shown to be a canard in "Bushwacked." The authors show there was no reform; the numbers were cooked; under performing students were ushered out of the system. The "Texas Miracle" was, in truth, the "Texas Shame" (pp.78-79).
Ivins and Dubose enumerate a litany of what has happened during the Bush presidency. They write that he has acted as president as if he governed by mandate. They talk of policies that have run up massive deficits and alienated long time friends (p. 266). They show how he speaks in platitudes. He attends photo ops for vocational training programs, then cuts funding for them (p. 286). He goes to mines to honor brave trapped miners, then seeks to cut funding for the agency that saved their lives (p.291). He praises our soldiers, then tries to conceal medical benefits from them (p. 285). He praises police, fire and emergency workers, then cuts funding for those programs. While praising work, he tries to get overtime pay for millions cut. Meanwhile, he bequeaths a 337 billion dollar tax break to his wealthy friends (p. 272).
The book is about the consequence of greed. Not only does bidness desire too much, they do not mind creating human misery to get it. In poignant stories about "real" lives the authors describe lives that are harmed so that corporations can extract a few more dollars from the earth too cheaply. In the arid West, they describe how mining and gas companies tip a delicate natural balance away from sustainability (p. 158). Make no mistake about it, Ivins and Dubose state that this presidency is of big bidness, for big bidness, and by big bidness (p. 287-88).
To conceal this duplicity Bush slathers on a good old batch of jingoistic patriotism. The authors offer a quote from one Boots Cooper, a boyhood friend of the late Texas humorist John Henry Faulk. Upon being frightened and then injured as he flees a harmless Chicken Snake, Boots offers John Henry's mother an explanation of self imposed fear: "Ma'am there is some things that'll scare ya so bad that you'll hurt yourself." (p. 277). It is on this basis that the authors embark to explain the PATRIOT ACT and the recent wave of fear in America.
The authors also talk about the dangers that Bush poses to the judiciary in nominating extremists like Priscilla Owen to federal judgeships (pp.230-33). And Ivins and Dubose clever explanation of the situation in the Middle East based on Bush's apocalyptic belief system is worth considering (pp.222-23).
There is much here for the reader to feast upon whether your interest is domestic policy, terrorism, the Iraq War, the judiciary, big bidness, the environment, the economy. But it might be instructive to end with part of a quote from the principle, President George W. Bush, at the beginning of Chapter 16 of "Bushwhacked" entitled "The State of the Union." "I am the commander-- see... I do not need to explain to anyone why I say things" (p.276). The full text of the quote is on page 276. Ivins and Dubose borrow it from Bob Woodward's book "Bush At War."
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Title: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken ISBN: 0525947647 Publisher: E P Dutton Pub. Date: 29 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Dude, Where's My Country? by Michael Moore ISBN: 0446532231 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 07 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman ISBN: 0393058506 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason ISBN: 0312315600 Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books Pub. Date: 25 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country--And It's Time to Take It Back by Jim Hightower ISBN: 0670031410 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 14 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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