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Books/Literature (Bloggers & Personal)

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  • The End of the Republic [Book Review of Robert Harris' "Dictator"]

    02/14/2016 11:22:29 PM PST · by Cincinatus' Wife · 10 replies
    The Washington Free Beacon ^ | February 14, 2016 | Daniel Wiser
    In his Republic, Cicero produced one of history's staunchest defenses for a career in politics. Composed in the late 50s B.C. while the Roman republic enjoyed a period of precarious stability under the triumvirate of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, and styled after the famous work of Plato, the Republic first addressed the claims of those who want nothing to do with governing the state, and would prefer a quiet life unsullied by politics. Politicians, after all, tend to be "worthless," according to these critics. Moreover, who would want to try to rule a capricious citizenry, or subject themselves to "foul...
  • Donald Trump to Be Labeled ‘Racist Bully’ on Every HuffPost Story

    01/29/2016 2:28:25 AM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 34 replies
    The Wrap ^ | January 28, 2016 | Itay Hod
    News site will include an anti-Trump addendum on each article about the GOP presidential frontrunnerHow’s this for a kicker? The Huffington Post will now end every article about Donald Trump with a special note calling him a “racist,” “liar” and a “xenophobe,” while reminding its readers of the GOP presidential frontrunner’s controversial proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States....
  • New book 'Inventology' shows how today's inventors can tap big data, 3D printing, crowdfunding, more

    01/26/2016 8:59:32 PM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 2 replies
    Tech Republic ^ | January 26, 2016 | Hope Reese
    With the internet age and its endless possibilities in the realms of publishing, communication, and collaboration, opportunities have never been so widely accessible for creators. But how has our new digital world affected the pathways to invention? In Inventology: How We Dream Up Things That Change the World, out today, journalist Pagan Kennedy offers a fresh take on how the digital era has upended the traditional pathways for creation. When Kennedy began writing about inventors for The New York Times, she soon "would marvel at how few of the people were professional inventors, designers, in corporate innovation labs." It led...
  • Review: Origins and Development of the Second Amendment

    01/26/2016 9:22:49 AM PST · by marktwain · 6 replies
    Gun Watch ^ | 24 January, 2016 | Dean Weingarten
    If you want to understand how the United States came to have the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, David Hardy's book may be the best place to go. I have read numerous books and articles about the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Some have been short, others hundreds of pages.  But I had not read David T. Hardy's slim book. This is surprising, because the book was originally published in 1986! But, I was in Panama in 1986.  The Internet was just starting to form. At that time in its early development, I had an...
  • New Book of Putin Quotes Echoes History’s Darkest Dictators

    To celebrate the New Year, the Russian government gave hundreds of high-ranking officials a special gift: a 400-page book of “prophetic” quotes by President Vladimir Putin. The book, titled Words That Change the World, includes 19 of the most important speeches and interviews Putin has given during the last 12 years. Hundreds of short, tweetable passages are bolded in the text. Anton Volodin, who spearheaded the book’s publication, said Putin’s words are valuable to Russian leaders largely because they tend to be prophetic: “We noticed that everything Putin says, to varying degrees, comes true,” he said. “In this book, we...
  • The End of Economic Man, the Origins of Totalitarianism, a Book Review

    01/15/2016 8:00:14 PM PST · by tbw2 · 12 replies
    Hubpages ^ | 01/15/2016 | Tamara Wilhite
    Peter Drucker wrote the first version of this book during Hitler's rise to power. Most explanations for the rise of fascism focused on political reasons or economic ones, while Drucker explains the social movements that made leaders like Mussolini and Hitler possible. It also explains what is (and isn't) fascism, how they hobble their own economies, and the social warpage they create. Peter Drucker updated "The End of Economic Man" in the 1960s, seeing horrifying parallels between the 1960s activism and the 1930s. And while history does not repeat, it rhymes - and this book explains the social trends that...
  • Progressive Google cooperates with Libertarian Telegraph.UK to Honor Founder of Fairy Tale Genre

    01/12/2016 10:24:01 AM PST · by CharlesOConnell · 5 replies
    Freep | 1/12/2016 | CharlesOconnell
    The Google Doodle today is about a Frenchman who apparently preceeded Hans Christian Andersen and the Grimm Brothers in the Fairy Tale genre. "Charles Perrault [(1628-1703)], author of Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella was born 388 years ago, and has been commemorated with a Google Doodle." - Rhiannon Williams, "Who was Charles Perrault? Why the fairy tales you know may not be as they seem" Google's Doodle today is not linking to their own servers, or WikiMedia Foundation, but directly to the reactionary, patriarchal (though distinctly not "homophobic") servers of Telegraph.Co.UK. Here is the Doodle. Here is...
  • Gallup: Record–Low Percentage of Americans Say Watching TV Is Favorite Way to Spend Evening

    01/11/2016 8:57:03 PM PST · by Olog-hai · 73 replies
    Cybercast News Service ^ | January 11, 2016 | 12:55 PM EST | (CNSNews.com Staff)
    A record-low 16 percent of Americans said that watching television was their favorite way to spending the evening, according to a Gallup poll conducted in December. Since the 1960s, Gallup has periodically asked Americans what is their "favorite way to spend an evening." In 1966, watching TV hit a high of 48 percent. Since then, that option has been on a generally downward trend. [...] People 55 and older (25 percent) are more likely to say watching television is their favorite way to spend an evening than are people in the younger age brackets of 18-34 (10 percent) and 35-54...
  • Chesterton Orthodoxy III Suicide of Thought - Does It Remind You of Someone Famous Today?

    01/09/2016 12:46:33 AM PST · by CharlesOConnell · 2 replies
    Leader U ^ | 1908 | Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874-1936
    The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues.… It is not merely the vices that are let loose. … The virtues do more terrible damage. [The truth of some scientists] is pitiless. … Some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity is often untruthful. ORTHODOXY III THE SUICIDE OF THOUGHT The phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle: for a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition. Phrases like "put out" or...
  • Niccolo Machiavelli: Advice on Disarming

    01/05/2016 7:43:27 AM PST · by marktwain · 25 replies
    Gun Watch ^ | 31 December, 2015 | Dean Weingarten
    Niccolo Machiavelli is what some have called the first modern analyst of political power.  Some have called him the founder of modern political science.  Others have compared him to the Devil, as he showed the moral underbelly of political power.  He is widely honored on the left as showing how to use power to stay in power.  Most of the people who know of Machiavelli know him from his most famous work "The Prince".  "The Prince" is essentially a short course on how to get and keep political power.  At the time it was written, it was a rather...
  • Travis McGee on the radio in a few minutes.

    01/04/2016 1:52:38 PM PST · by Travis McGee · 41 replies
    Kim Wade Show, WYAB 103.9 FM, Jackson, MS ^ | January 4, 2016 | Matt Bracken
    I'm going to be on Kim Wade's show right after Michael Savage, to discuss current events.
  • SO PROBLEMATIC: 13 Words and Phrases Are Hereby Banished from the Queen’s English

    01/02/2016 10:19:57 AM PST · by Olog-hai · 24 replies
    Cybercast News Service ^ | January 2, 2016 | 11:34 AM EST | (CNSNews.com Staff)
    Thirteen words and phrases--including "so" and "problematic"--have been banished from the English language because of their mis-use, over-use and general uselessness. The banishment was pronounced by a committee at Lake Superior State University, which has been banning words from English for forty-one years. [...] The statement went on: "Overused words and phrases are 'problematic' for thousands of Queen's English 'stakeholders,'" said an LSSU spokesperson while 'vaping' an e-cigarette during a 'presser.' "Once something is banished, there's no 'walking it back;' that's our 'secret sauce,' and there's no 'price point' for that." ...
  • "Resilience" is a Book for Everyone

    12/30/2015 9:00:22 PM PST · by newstlnewss · 7 replies
    Olivette Patch ^ | December 15, 2015 | B.W. Durham
    Review by B.W. Durham “Resilience,” the new book by former Navy Seal and Rhodes Scholar Eric Greitens, is an inspiring guidebook for anyone who has confronted personal loss, harsh challenges in their own life, the death of a loved one or emotional pain. That is to say… “Resilience” is a book for everyone. The sub-title of Greitens’ book is “Hard-Won Wisdom for Living a Better Life.” Indeed, “Resilience” offers earned wisdom and insights that can help people forge ahead in times of struggle, and become stronger. But this is not a “how-to” book. It acknowledges serious traumas that can change...
  • Catastrophic Failure: A Review, Part I

    12/20/2015 6:27:46 PM PST · by Ray76 · 6 replies
    "What we've got here is failure to communicate." In terms of understanding Islam, that would include a failure, or an outright refusal, to grasp and integrate the truth about Islam by those charged with the responsibility of fighting the "War on Terror" and securing the safety of this country. As things stand now, in their eyes Islam is not an enemy, but an "innocent" bystander upon which is heaped the "calumny" of associating it with terrorism. Coughlin has assembled a mountain of information about the perilous deficiencies of our "warfighting" policies and the "efficacy" of the Islamic Movement's interlocking and...
  • Eerie front-page NYT story examines ISIS prophecies about an apocalyptic showdown

    12/10/2015 8:31:52 AM PST · by cdga5for4 · 11 replies
    Joel Rosenberg Flashtraffic ^ | December 9, 2015 | Joel Rosenberg
    Readers of this column know that I have been trying to draw the attention of leaders in Washington and Jerusalem, U.S. presidential candidates, journalists, Evangelical leaders, and the American people more broadly to the emerging threat of what I call “Apocalyptic Islam” of both the Shia and Sunni varieties. My last series of political thrillers — The Twelfth Imam, The Tehran Initiative and Damascus Countdown — imagined a scenario in which Iran’s Shia Muslim leaders, driven by their genocidal belief in End Times Islamic prophecies, built an arsenal of nuclear weapons and set into motion a plan to annihilate Israel...
  • Philly Daily News Likens Donald Trump to Hitler With "Furor" Cover

    12/08/2015 2:50:49 PM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 23 replies
    The Hpllywood Reporter ^ | December 7, 2015 | Ryan Parker
    "Remind you of someone?" The Philadelphia Daily News will run a front page on Tuesday that likens Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The cover shows a picture of Trump speaking with his hand in the air, the gesture looking similar to the Nazi salute, with the headline "The New Furor." Furor and Führer -- the infamous German word for leader -- are homophones. The cover was shared by David Lee Preston, assistant city editor of the Daily News, with the comment, "Remind you of someone?" [continued]
  • Crystal Ball Communism: "Toward Soviet America"

    11/30/2015 1:58:14 PM PST · by No One Special · 6 replies
    Toward Soviet America by William Z. Foster, CPUSA chairman, was first published in 1932. Later, copies of the book would be purged and almost eliminated entirely from American bookstores and libraries in what was presumably the CP response to the latest Moscow line; but surely it was also to try to put this spitting Soviet-American cat back in the bag. Interestingly, the book would be reprinted in 1961 with a foreword and commentary by the chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Rep. Francis E. Walter, who recommended that every American read it as a blueprint of Soviet intentions...
  • Upon the Rock, a short story

    11/24/2015 4:53:42 PM PST · by tbw2
    Hubpages ^ | 11/23/2015 | Tamara Wilhite
    A story written imagining what happens if we don't fight the world-wide wave of Jihad but continue to appease and retreat.
  • Sanders is top contender in Time's Person of the Year poll

    11/24/2015 12:35:07 PM PST · by 2ndDivisionVet · 28 replies
    The Hill ^ | November 23, 2015 | Jesse Byrnes
    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) currently leads online polling for Time magazine's 2015 Person of the Year, with less than two weeks to go before voting ends. The Democratic presidential candidate, a self-described democratic socialist, leads among the magazine's readers with 11.2 percent of the overall vote in the survey...
  • Drop the gun or forget sex forever

    11/22/2015 9:20:26 AM PST · by Oldpuppymax · 43 replies
    Coach is Right ^ | 11/22/15 | Suzanne Eovaldi
    When all else fails, try no sex. Chicago’s street violence is so bad that a very brave and self-composed South Side woman, April Lawson, is organizing black women to vow no sex until the killing stops, like now! “Make sure these fools put down their guns,” she’s telling her lady warriors. And her sex strike mission is based on Aristophanes’ classic Greek play, “Lysistrata!” To stop the perpetual war between Athens and Sparta, a strong Athenian woman “explains to the other women: They are to withhold sexual privileges from their menfolk as a means of forcing them to bring an...