One of my conservative coworkers went to F 9-11 last night.

[Rainbowreflect]

I asked her what she thought about the movie this morning.
She is pissed. She now does not trust bush & wants to borrow some of the books I have been telling her about.
She also has been talking to other conservative coworkers, telling them they need to see the movie before November.

[Stephanie]

1. Beautiful!

Thanks. What books are you going to give her? We should develop a beginners' reading list for these new converts.

[AdrianInOcala]

5. My list of "Eye Opener" books

Blinded By The Right & The Republican Spin Machine, David Brock
The Hunting Of The President, Conason & Lyons
Shrub & Bushwacked, Molly Ivins
Lies & The Lying Liars..., Al Franken

[Rainbowreflect]

8. I was thinking "Stupid White Men"

or one of David Brock's books.

[Stephanie]

13. Stupid White Men is a good introduction, I think

Or something like that - some lighter reading just to get them interested. Don't want to lose their attention now!

[TeacherCreature]

16. Here are two books she should read first

Blinded By the Right, by David Brock

And

The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President
by Vincent Bugliosi

It is my opinion that the theft of the election is the CRIME and everything since then is footnotes.

[Rainbowreflect]

23. Oh, I had not thought of Vincent Bugliosi's book.

I have that book, but read it so long ago.
I will defiantly give her that one.

[Norquist Nemesis]

26. Don't forget

1984 and Animal House...just for fun! :)

[boilerbabe]

42. Read "Homage to Catalan" by Orwell, too...n/t

[Bandit]

28. Hope you will definitely do it defiantly

:evilgrin:

[boilerbabe]

44. Love your "Homeland Security thingy"! n/t

[Stephanie]

58. That's REAL - that was the original HS logo

Before it was revealed and people were outraged and horrified by it.

[boilerbabe]

41. He wrote "Helter Skelter" too...check it out...n/t

[boilerbabe]

40. Both very good books!! n/t

[G_j]

29. this one is good for Republicans to read (written by one)

"American Dynasty"
By Kevin Phillips

http://www.motherjones.com/arts/books/2004/01/12_103.html

All in the Family

Onetime GOP strategist Kevin Phillips takes on a world he knows well: Aristocracy, fortune, and the politics of deceit in the House of Bush

Reviewed By Douglas Brinkley

January/February 2004 Issue

Viking. 331 pages. .95.

Over the past year a cottage industry of anti-Bush diatribes has exploded onto the best-seller list. Many have unforgettable titles like Molly Ivins' Bushwhacked or Hunter S. Thompson's Kingdom of Fear or Al Franken's Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them). These books are brimming with nasty one-liners and parlor jokes portraying George W. Bush as a dangerous dunce, an aristocratic oil brat unfit for the Oval Office. The Bush Cabinet fares no better: Vice President Dick Cheney, for example, has been characterized as an utterly corrupt stalking horse for Halliburton, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has become Dr. Strangelove incarnate.

Given this left-liberal publishing phenomenon, where evil Bushies lurk around every civic bend dismantling our constitutional rights, it is with welcome relief that political commentator and one-time GOP strategist Kevin Phillips has stepped into the fray. Unlike the recent spate of anti-Bush books, Phillips' American Dynasty -- an erudite manifesto on the dangers of cronyism, hereditary privilege, "paper entrepreneurialism," and tax shelters -- is devastating due to its analytical fair-mindedness. Essentially, he traces how four generations of Bushes corrupted U.S. foreign policy through international business ventures that benefited the family. The most recent two George Bushes aren't evil people, Phillips argues, just greedy and ambitious Ivy League Texans. The Bush family has brought the American political system to a "perilous state," he believes, due to their cunning brand of petro-politics. "The family's ties to oil date back to Ohio steelmaker Samuel Bush's relationship to Standard Oil a century ago, while its ultimately dynastic connection to Enron spanned the first national Bush administration, the six years of George W. Bush's governorship of Texas, and the first year of his Washington incumbency," he writes. "No other presidential family has made such prolonged efforts on behalf of a single corporation."

With great skill, Phillips illuminates how the "Bush Dynasty" has long used such old-boy organizations as Yale's Skull and Bones, the CIA, Dillon Read, and most recently the Carlyle Group to further its main objective: political-economic power. He delineates the family's ethically questionable dealings with such companies as Enron, Zapata Petroleum, and Halliburton. We even learn that Prescott Bush, George H.W.'s father and a U.S. senator from Connecticut, had investment dealings with Nazi Germany in the 1930s while working for the banking firm Brown Brothers Harriman.

A major motif that Phillips develops throughout American Dynasty is the influence of Texas machismo on modern political culture. In his view, the Lone Star State has "an ego to match its acreage." Phillips sees the Dallas-Houston-Waco-Austin- Midland way of doing things as detrimental -- even menacing -- to the world at large. Cleverly, the Bush Dynasty, with its deep New England roots, shifted its operations to Texas after World War II to a land where the law could be more easily manipulated, he claims. Instead of sipping sherry at the Century Club in New York, the Bushes, by the time the Astrodome was built in the mid-1960s, were plopping their cowboy boots on the velvet sofas at the Petroleum Club in Houston. Phillips, however, makes clear that the genius behind the Bush Dynasty is its ability to be from both the Permian Basin and Wall Street. He quotes University of Pennsylvania professor John J. DiIulio -- who had been the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives -- as deeming this dynastic synergy the rise of "Mayberry Machiavellianism."

..more..

[boilerbabe]

47. Definately want to check that one out!! n/t

[sangh0]

57. "American Dynasty" is a MUST

It's written by a Republican and goes into the history of the entire Bush* clan. In addition, it portrays them as a dynasty, which conservatives will abhor.

[boilerbabe]

39. Good Book List!

I haven't read "Shrub" yet, though...
It's pretty cool that a conservative was open minded enough to actually look into it, eh??
XXXOOO

[Stephanie]

56. I think this is a good starter list ^

It helps them understand WHY they had all the wrong information.

[Southpaw Bookworm]

9. As a librarian

I'd say we start with the beginning, chronologically, and move forward in time:

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Greg Palast
Shrub, Molly Ivins
Stupid White Men, Michael Moore
The Bush Dyslexicon
American Dynasty, kevin Phillips
The Accidental President, David Kaplan
Too Close to Call, Jeffrey Toobin
Big Lies, Joe Conason
A Prayer for America, Dennis Kucinich


And after that:

The Preemptive Empire, Saul Landau
Bushwhacked, Molly Ivins
Bush's Brain, James Moore
The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty, Peter and Rochelle Schweizer
something from our own William Rivers Pitt
The Price of Loyalty, Ron Suskind
Worse than Watergate, John Dean
Rise of the Vulcans, Jim Mann
Thieves in High Places, Jim Hightower
Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell them, Al Franken
The Great Unraveling, Paul Krugman
What Liberal media, Eric Alterman
Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward
Understanding Power, Noam Chomsky
Against All Enemies, Richard clarke
Ghost Wars, Steve Coll
David Brock's books about the Right Wing
Fraud, Paul Waldman
House of Bush, House of Saud, Craig Unger
Bush League Diplomacy
Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen

[JHB]

11. Additions to the list:

The Age of Sacred Terror : Radical Islam's War Against America
by DANIEL BENJAMIN and STEVEN SIMON

What's the Matter with Kansas? : How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, by Thomas Frank

Perfectly Legal, David Kay Johnston

The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President
by Vincent Bugliosi, Molly Ivins (Foreword), Gerry Spence

[Stephanie]

12. That list is daunting!

Let's try to choose one to start - something very current. Then if they finish that we should have a short list of follow-ups. Remember, these people are in the dark because they don't read. We're lucky if we get them to read one.

Which of those do you think would be the most enlightening and the most up-to-date, the one book you would have someone read before voting this fall?

[Southpaw Bookworm]

14. Probably the Palast books

He's an investigative journalist, and does very thorough researh. Plus, I believe he just updated "best Money" to take into account what's happened over the past few years.

[Stephanie]

17. I'd pick a newer book - House of Bush House of Saud, or the Dean book

Something that covers Iraq and the deceptions that got us over there.

[Cassandra]

34. What's the Matter with Kansas

It's clear, it's well written, it's full of interesting stories about ordinary people and it reads pretty quickly. Palast's book is also good but has a lot of detail to digest. I would recommend pro-Clinton books be put on the back burner because of the viceral reaction they may cause. Work on basic distrust of Republicans first, then get to more specifics.

[Rainbowreflect]

63. I was at the County Dem meeting yesterday

and someone suggested that book. I had never heard of it before yesterday, now twice in less than 24 hours.
It's weird how that happens.

[pansypoo53219]

22. DEFINATELY the kevin phillips book

i am reading that one now. and phillips is a REPUBLICAN, so she will like it better from her side.

heck, if she likes to read, a bio on caligula wouldn't hurt.

[boilerbabe]

51. great Book List!

Between my brother and I, we have either borrowed from the library or own many of the books you have listed! Reading is my favorite (HANDS DOWN!! ) recreation aside from drinking mass quantities of beer haha

XXXOOO

[Southpaw Bookworm]

2. Good on her

For being able to accept that she's been wrong.

:toast:

[Mr_Spock]

3. It seems that most conservatives who go see it are at least open

minded enough to see what it's all about. Amazes me how many accounts here of people who pissed at Shrub when they leave.

[tigereye]

25. hey great cartoon!

[rfranklin]

4. Shows how effective the right wing media has been...

We sit here day after day knowing that the Bush junta are thieves and liars motivated by greed and power lust. Most of America has a completely different image in their minds.

[DaveSZ]

6. Tell her to read:

House of Bush House of Saud by Craig Unger

I bought it for my dad, and he loved it.

[gratuitous]

15. It also shows the limits of labels

I would hazard a guess that a lot of people identify with the "conservative" label because of the packaging job the RNC does through its faithful lackeys in the media. Folks call themselves "conservative" not because of any great fealty to a repugnant past or because they buy into the whole package of bullshit peddled by the RNC -- they perceive conservatives as winners, or tough, and they want to be tough folks on the winning side.

Seeing the whole mess laid out by an expert like Moore shocks any number of people. How many times in the last three or four weeks have you heard friends, relatives and acquaintances say, "I never knew"?

Perhaps "conservative" will one day soon become a label meaning "Isn't very aware."

[Lefta Dissenter]

7. A "Republican for Kerry" woman I was talking to recently

said that the Paul O'Neill book did it for her.

[greenbriar]

10. I am reading worse than watergate

man it is frightening

[tnlefty]

21. Please tell me more. I was thinking about picking up 2 and giving one to

my mom for her b'day later this month. She's been reluctant to read anything I've given her over the past 3 yrs. I've offered to take her to see F 9/11 and she tells me that she intends to see it, but declines my offer to buy her ticket and take her.

I'm hoping that maybe it will tap into parts of our past history that she's apparently forgotten and at least get her to take a good, hard look at what is actually going on and I was also hoping that something authored by John Dean would at least get her to read it.

[boilerbabe]

52. You know it's Truth when you get it from the "opposition"

That was a very eye-opening book, wasn't it? He made a lot of rational comparisons between the Nixon days and now, and it looks to me like Nixon was pretty harmless compared to what we have in office now....

[NYCGirl]

18. Give her a copy of the book that "converted" Howard Stern...

It's funny and informative, and it'll leave her wanting to read more.

[aden_nak]

20. Agreed - It will help debunk the Propaganda As News she's been fed.

[boilerbabe]

53. That pic on your posting was tooo funny!! n/t

[jean]

19. a conservative in-law saw F 9/11 and gave a review to twelve family

members (nine are bush leaning Catholics who cite abortion as their only concern).

She said: Of course, this movie is ALL propaganda, I knew it would be. I hate Michael Moore but thought I better see it. It's ridiculous the way he strings together unrelated facts and draws illogical conclusions. Pfft. Propaganda, through and through.

I said: Really? Which conclusions are you talking about?

She: Well, there were many. I mean, it was total propaganda!

Me: I was shocked to learn of the Saudi royal family/bush family connection, going back for decades!

Her: Pfft! Everybody knows that!

My daughter: No most people are totally uninformed! I was shocked to see how much of our economy the Saudi's control!

Her: Yes, that is upsetting.

a few moments of silence. . .

Her: Well, ONE thing he got right was that the Poor ALWAYS fight our wars!

Since then (last weekend) two more in-laws have seen F 9/11 and report they are now distraught and will not vote bush this time.

[Tight_rope]

48. At least some of the dead in-laws have risen!...n/t

[jean]

66. haha - yes they have! I think all but 1 of the 9 will vote Kerry

the remaining 3 are me and my kids.

[CBHagman]

24. Kevin Phillips might be a good place to start.

He of course came to prominence as a Republican but has spent the last decade or so examining some of the disturbing trends in this country. "Wealth and Democracy" is his, as is the recent book on the Bush family.

Here in the D.C. area people are talking about "Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism." It was written by someone at the CIA, naturally without revealing his identity, and apparently takes apart the notion that going to war in Iraq was somehow an effective strategy in the so-called war on terrorism. I haven't read it yet (I'm sort of dreading it, because the assessment is terribly grim), but we really need to listen to people with the background in intelligence.

Oh, and for light, amusing reading, try James Wolcott's "Attack Poodles and Other Media Mutants," a HILARIOUS look at pundits.

For journalistic perspective, check out Jack Germond's "Fat Man Fed Up," which is an overview of media and politics. Very much worth checking out.

[Misunderestimator]

27. Excellent.... give her "Stupid White Men" and "Blinded by the Right"

Good reads for disgusted republicans.

[tanyev]

30. Phillips is great, but

something lighter would probably be more appropriate for a newbie. I would recommend Al Franken or Molly Ivins. And Dean's Worse than Watergate is more serious, but still very readable.

[peacetalksforall]

31. And the Chalmers Johnson book.

[loudsue]

60. Yep...Chalmers Johnson's BLOWBACK

Quite informative!

:kick::kick:

[SpiralHawk]

32. Repubs are talking to other Repubs

and they are sending each other to see F9/11. It is happening, I can attest. (I will not call them conservatives, since that is a dignified term and the Republicans are Radical NeoCons, not conservatives in any sense).

The other phenomenon is young people talking to young people, and going to see F9/11 -- that is happening also.

[OnionPatch]

33. Reason...

Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America
is a GREAT book! But the title might scare her right off the bat. If she gets to a point where she wants to understand more of the left and where we stand and why, this book is the best argument for our side I've read. Other than that, Big Lies and Blinded by the Right expose the shady side of the GOP.

[DaveSZ]

35. "nine are bush leaning Catholics who cite abortion as their only concern"

IMO this is the most idiotic reason I can think of to vote for *, but it's brilliant on the part of Rethugs to use this issue this way.


:argh:


Pro-Choice SC justices nominated by Democrats:

Marshall
Douglas
Ginsburg
Breyer

Pro-Choice SC justices nominated by Republicans:

Blackmun
Stewart
Brennan
Powell
Burger
Stevens
O'Connor
Kennedy
Souter

[jean]

36. ooh - this is a great list! Yes, the abortion thing is their easy way out

of having substantive conversation. Next time I'll use your handy Pro Choice SC nominee list and watch their jaws hang low.

[boxster]

37. Heck, if it can sway people out here in Conservativeland NE, no telling

what kind of effect it will have on Independents and undecideds!

[zappaman]

38. 50 reasons not to vote for bush

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1932595023/qid=1090425854/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-2745352-8898221?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

It's great to have all the info in one book. 50 chapters laying it all out by a bunch of different authors. Got my wife really pissed off and motivated her to volunteer her time and work for Kerry.

[boilerbabe]

54. Gotta wait a couple of weeks before I can afford it...

Just spent about 7 months worth of overtime on foolish stuff, like vintage broken down cars, pool liners, etc. so I bookmarked the site in case I decide to cut back on essentials like beer and cigs haha. One less case of Heinekken and I will have that 50 reasons, and also the Jim HIghtower book!!

[proud patriot]

43. Smiling from ear to ear

To quote Randi Rhodes re F911:
"the footage is the footage"

You cannot debunk the footage of the
president's own words that the corperate
Right Wing Media refused to show America.

[nostamj]

45. I Vote for WORSE THAN WATERGATE

It's a fast and easy (and devastating) read.

Phillips and the others are good but... for starters, WTW or one of the Franken books should get the ball rolling...

[Gloria]

55. WORSE THAN WATERGATE, hands down!!!!

I've plowed through a lot of stuff, but just finished WTW. First of all, it's short, clear, and WELL ORGANIZED and covers everything under the umbrella theme of SECRECY. It makes it very clear how everything ties together. It also delves into some of the current issues, including Plame, etc. so it's topical and not about things entirely off the radar.

My reaction was: Kerry could run his campaign off this book. But of course that would be far too easy!!

[wicket]

46. fantastic!

Great news! :D

[libertad]

49. Have your friend read "The Price of Loyalty" because it is about

the former Sec of Treasury (O,Neill) who is a loyal, weel respected Republican who was horrified at the things he saw in the bush* white house.

[ElementaryPenguin]

62. Right on! "The Price of Loyalty" would be a great eye opener for

any Repuke! O'Neill is one of "them" with impeccable credentials and incredible access as a BushCo insider - and he just blows the Busheviks away!

[Tight_rope]

50. Good...the dead are slowly waking up!...n/t

[hayu_lol]

59. The Looting Of The Country/and a good brief bio of Bush/Saudi connections

Here is a small treatise about our current and possibly future economic situation which also has a good bio of the Bush Dynasty at the back. This is downloadable/printable, written in large font in words that everyone can understand. The writer wants the widest possible distribution so send it out to anyone who could benefit from the info:

http://www.gv.net/~edconco/Where_is_the_Money.html

[ElementaryPenguin]

61. Yahoo!!!

:bounce:

[Pithlet]

64. My conservative sister said the same thing

She saw the movie, and will now vote for Kerry. She says she no longer considers herself a Republican. :bounce:

[peacetalksforall]

65. Do some States require that you vote your registration..........-

i.e., is re-registering required?

[RetroLounge]

67. Congrats

I've offered to pay for a couple conservative co-workers, but they would rather bash moore and the movie without seeing it first.

Typical..


RL

[DaveSZ]

68. "ooh - this is a great list!"

Thanks!

I reviewed the major SC cases concerning abortion (like Roe V Wade and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey), and then compiled the list.

The abortion issue is the best thing that has ever happened to the Republicans, because they can pretend to be against abortion to get religious voters, and then appoint pro-choice justices who keep abortion legal.

It's a great little racket.

[Kanary]

69. What a subversive you are!

Feels good, doesn't it?!

:hi:

Kanary