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RamboLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:34 PM
Original message
Machiavellian Bush Dynasty Exposed !!!!!
Edited on Tue Dec-30-03 11:44 PM by rmpalmer
The author of Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips, who is a small "r" republican, new book "American Dynasty - Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" has just hit the shelves. I got so engrossed in this book at my local Barnes & Noble tonight I had to buy it even though I had it on preorder with Amazon (luckily I was able to cancel latter).

This book belongs on all our shelves. Every Dem candidate ought to be carrying this one. It exposes the whole sordid history of the Bush cabal.

From the dust jacket:
In this biting book, Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes. beginning with the original alliance between George Herbert Walker and Samuel P. Bush, have ascended the ladder of national power since WWI, soldifying their place in the American establishment - at Yale, on Wall Street, in the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency, and the White House. The Bush family has never produced a doctor, judge, teacher, scholar or lawyer of note. As far back as WWI, the family's single-minded focus has been on three major areas: intelligence, energy, and national security. It is no coincidence that these three categories of Bush family operations were also three of the key enterprises of the American twentieth century.

Phillips demonstrates how the Bush family has perfectly exemplified many of the growing trends of American political life - policy favoritism to the top 1 percent, paper entrepreneurialism, and crony capitalism 'a la Enron (the Bushes' dealings with Enron go back to 1986). Far more than any previous political family, it represents an interlock between the hitherto temporary presidency and the permanent government. As such, the family has threaded its way through political and armaments scandals and, since the 1980's, faint hints of acts that might in another climate have led to presidential impeachment.

American Dynasty brings together many circumstances and relationships that, for reasons both unusual and unfortunate, have never before been examined together and seriously discussed. The evidence accrued over four generations of special interests, biases, scandals (especially related to arms dealings), and blatant favoritism is extraordinarily damning. And given the culture of secrecy that the Bushes have cultivated as an implement of power, dating back to Yale years for several men in the family, deceit and disinformation have become their political hallmarks.

In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with brilliant timing, twisting and turning from silver-spoon Yankees to born-again Texans. As a public family, they are writing a dangerous new definition of the presidency. By uncovering relationships and connecting facts with new clarity, Phillips comes to a stunning conclusion: the Bush family has systematically used its financial and social empire - its "aristocracy" - to gain the White House and to subvert the very core of American democracy, government by and for the people.



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670032646/qid=1072845311//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl14/104-5100852-7583952?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

There are many Bush-bashing books out there, but this one is quite different. Ivins, Franken, and Conason, among others, have focused primarily on the current president's administration. This book, written by a former Republican strategist, is more wide ranging, more scholarly, and in many ways, more disturbing. Focusing on the last four generations of Bush men, Phillips brings the reader into the secretive upper echelon of the American power establishment, where connections are made in Ivy League clubs, and he shows how members of that old-boy network become the policymakers of the country. In the case of the Bushes, this resulted not only in money and power but also in links to the CIA, the energy industry, and the military-industrial complex--links that have shaped this country's national and foreign policy for decades. Phillips explains the Bushes' relationship with Enron and the House of Saud in eyebrow-raising detail and adds confirming information about troubling claims, including the notion that the Reagan-Bush ticket arranged that American captives would not be released from Iran until Reagan took office. One of Phillips' main points is the juxtaposition between the Bush family ascent and European aristocracies, but this discussion almost seems intrusive. Unfortunately, Phillips' source notes were not appended in the galley; it will be interesting to peruse them in the finished book, which will generate much debate in the coming months. Ilene Cooper
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nothingshocksmeanymore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:40 PM
Response to Original message
1. OK let's cast the movie version of this book now
Edited on Tue Dec-30-03 11:41 PM by nothingshocksmeanymo
Hmmm...how about Charlie Sheen as W? How about Roseanne as Barbara Bush? The Olsens could be the twins?

Adam Sandler as Neil? Robert Downey Jr as Jeb?
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nothingshocksmeanymore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:43 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Dawn Wells as Pickles?
BTW can't wait to buy this book!!!! FOr everyone I know...Come on MR Phillips do America a favor..go STRAIGHT to paperback!!!!

Bet George Soros will fund the movie version...let's do it...Micheal Moore could write the screenplay!!!
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scarface2004 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:54 PM
Response to Reply #1
8. steve buscemi as bush...
christopher walken as rove, albert brooks as wolfowitz, pacino as ashcroft, dinero as cheney, michael madsen as rumsfeld, guy pearce as fleisher, joe pantoliano as andrew card, gene hackman as bush senior, katy bates as barbara bush, carmen electra as laura, and eugene levy as himself!!
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Fleshdancer Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 01:16 AM
Response to Reply #1
19. It has to be actors that would really piss off the freepers....
Alec Baldwin as Bush

Barbara Streisand as Pickles

The Bush twins aren't identical so since the actresses don't have to look alike do something extra naughty. Janeane Garofalo and that Jamenson porn star woman.



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nothingshocksmeanymore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 04:30 AM
Response to Reply #19
21. Who will Susan Sarandon play? And should we have the Dixie Chicks
do the score?
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salin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:46 PM
Response to Reply #21
27. Niel's ex wife who tells all?
Or maybe she can be the narrator... in the form of Jennifer (?) who allegedly had a long time affair with poppy...
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efhmc Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:43 PM
Response to Original message
3. Thanks for the info on this book. I really can't buy anything where there
is the slightest possibility that one cent of my money might go to a repuke candidate (you said the author was a repuke, right) but I will see if I can get it from the library.
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RamboLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:48 PM
Response to Reply #3
6. Buy it - the writer says Bushes have turned him political independent
This one is a great desk reference to the sordid history of the Bush clan. Very deep, well-researched.

And I bet we don't see Mr. Phillips on any talk shows promoting his book!
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nothingshocksmeanymore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:08 AM
Response to Reply #3
14. No do buy this book. Kevin Phillips is a great guy and has
been one of the best, biggest and most credible critics of this admin...

BTW..glad to see you posting again.

BTW Wealth and Democracy is one of the best books I ever read!
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efhmc Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:24 AM
Response to Reply #14
16. Thanks, been in Cal. visiting my very pg daughter (due in 2 weeks) I am
scheduled to return then. I received a lovely pantheon of books from my wonderful liberal daughters and SIL. I almost finished the Carville book on the plane and have read Franken's book and have started Fast Food Nation (so scary and so apropos to this time). I have Madeline Albright's book in reserve. I will get this one also since everyone has convinced me that it is will not help repukes.
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sendero Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:44 PM
Response to Original message
4. Kevin Phillips...
.... used to do regular commentaries on NPR years ago.

He almost always had something interesting to say, a fresh point of view.

Sounds like he still does :wow:
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xray s Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:45 PM
Response to Original message
5. This may be one of the most important books of 2004
How will the media horde be able to spin this expose? It isn't "partisan left wing Bush bashing". It isn't "hate politics". It is a history of the BFEE told by a true conservative.

This is new and very important front being opened in the civil war going on in the Republican party.


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maggrwaggr Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:03 AM
Response to Reply #5
12. oh, they'll just ignore it
until it goes away.
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tom_paine Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:47 PM
Response to Reply #12
28. Yep, ignore it
Because we have always been at war with Eastasia. Has your TV told you otherwise?
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SpiralHawk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 05:13 AM
Response to Reply #5
22. Megadittoes, xray s -- I have a feeling that this book
is gonna make a Big Impresion.

It could be a turning point.

Wake up America.

Let the truth be revealed. May justice prevail.
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DrBB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:34 PM
Response to Reply #5
24. The truth is in between
It's definitely an important book, for exactly the reasons you cite. Kevin Phillips is thought of as a defector by the right, but in fact he is merely an old-school Republican who is being true to the values he always thought (however mistakenly) the party really stood for. This will be a much harder book to ignore or smear as loony leftist paranoia. Knowing Phillips, I expect there's little in it that will look like it came straight out of a DU BFEE thread. But that's all to the good.

It's that chain of arms-dealing scandals that really goes to the heart of the BFEE, and if he can get that back on the table in a way that makes it respectable to talk about, all the better. There is a devestatingly ugly pattern there, and the same players keep coming back. Not just old Iran-Contra pals like Poindexter et al, but those scummier BCCI guys and other darker figures. Dear Christ, even Adnan Kashoggi has resurfaced, figuring in the WMD hype stories and maybe even responsible for the yellowcake forgery itself.

I don't think this book will be the death blow to BushCorp or anything, but it's an important strike against them nonetheless, precisely because of who Phillips is. I look forward to seeing it discussed on the book tour interview shows and blogs like TPM and others for months to come.
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mitchum Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:51 PM
Response to Original message
7. I hope he answers questions about Bush the elder
How does a two-term congressman lose a senate bid and then get rewarded with:
Ambassador to China?
CIA head?
Forced onto Reagan as a running mate?

Honestly, there is more information available about Prescott and the Nazi banking connection than there is about the curious rise of GHWB
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Minstrel Boy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:03 AM
Response to Reply #7
11. Re: Bush Sr, here's something you may want to look into:
"The Mafia, CIA and George Bush", by investigative reporter Pete Brewton, published in 1992. It doesn't focus on his rise particularly, but it details how Bush's world intersects that of business, intelligence and crime, which goes some way, perhaps, to explaining his rise. It pays particular attention to his role in the BCCI scandal, the dodgy dealings of Jeb and Neal, and the CIA's role in the Savings and Loan fiasco.

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mitchum Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 01:09 AM
Response to Reply #11
18. Thanks for the heads up on the Brewton book
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mouse7 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:58 PM
Response to Original message
9. What is the release date? n/t 1/1/04
Edited on Wed Dec-31-03 12:00 AM by mouse7
on edit - 1/1/04 is the release date
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RamboLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:03 AM
Response to Reply #9
13. It's out - at least my B&N had it tonight (Pittsburgh, PA)
Of course if wasn't promienently displayed. Maybe Kevin Philips needs to die his hair blonde and pose in a provocative black dress on the cover.

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Indiana_Dem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Dec-30-03 11:59 PM
Response to Original message
10. I really want to buy this book but
yikes!:scared: I'm afraid i will be investigated as a terrorist!! But I guess I've bought Franken, Ivins & Moore's books from amazon already so i guess it wouldn't matter.

People already make fun of me as a conspiracy theorist believer so i guess that wouldn't matter either!! lol:crazy:
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grasswire Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 04:19 AM
Response to Reply #10
20. buy it from your local...
...independent bookseller and pay cash for it.

Your local booksellers really do need the business, anyhoo!
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proud patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:15 AM
Response to Original message
15. Just wrote it down and it's on my list
thanks for heads up :hi:
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pansypoo53219 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:40 AM
Response to Original message
17. always liked him
since he was at the Washington monthly.
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RamboLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 10:01 AM
Response to Original message
23. Phillips btw wrote in 1969 The Coming Republican Majority
Edited on Wed Dec-31-03 10:08 AM by rmpalmer
I haven't read that book but I understand he laid out much of the successful Repug strategy in the coming years, including the Southern Strategy, and the push of religion. He now thinks * and Fundamentalism have gone over the edge.

The website for the book is www.americandynasty.net and you might want to check out the authors book tour, I bet it would be an interesting discussion.

http://www.americandynasty.net/tour.htm

Here's a review from the website:

Kirkus Reviews, November 15 2003

A corrupt dynasty founded on conquest, lies and the certainty that ruler equals divine agent. Ancient China? Imperial Rome?

No, argues onetime Republican party operative and latter-day liberal firebrand Phillips: It’s now installed in Washington, by way of Connecticut and Texas. The power of the Bush dynasty, writes Phillips, extends for four generations, and its scions have been intimately involved in three of the 20th century’s chief growth industries: intelligence, energy and national security. “If there are other families who have more fully epitomized and risen alongside the hundred-year emergence of the military industrial complex, the post-1945 national security state, and the 21st century imperium,” he writes,” no one has identified them.” Fudging the truth, whether over the release of Iranian hostages or the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is an essential skill in such an enterprise, Phillips argues, and the Bushes (and their Walker kin) are masters of deception. Clandestine skills, money-laundering, and perhaps even election-fixing also figure heavily on the family resume, as do other talents essential to covert action but useless in nation building and humane governance. The latest Bush, the author suggests, is the most unsettling of the lot: bound up in the family’s trademark concerns, he also brings to the table a fundamentalist, millenarian view of history and a strong belief that his present station if life is divinely ordained. It is no small irony to discover that the majority of Muslims in the U.S. voted for Dubya. It is also exceptionally meaningful that Bush’s mainstream core is made up of Bible-thumpers; Phillips characterizes the Bush coalition as “a narrowly Armageddon-believing electorate” – of no small importance to an administration bent on continued warfare in the Middle East (save Saudi Arabia, where its interests lie) in the name of good versus evil.

What does the Bush restoration mean for the rest of us? Stay tuned, but consult Phillips for some disturbing scenarios that bode ill for the future of good old-fashioned democracy.


http://www.americandynasty.net/reviews.htm

And this is a good kick for the morning crowd.

I'm a little bleary eyed this morning cause I was getting engrossed last night in it. He covers the 1980 October Surprise (how Bush 41 is alleged to have arranged that the American hostages wouldn't be released till Reagan was president), Iran/Contra, the arming of Saddam by Reagan and Bush 41, the mixed signals 41 gave Saddam concerning Kuwait, BCCI, Carlyle Group, Bush family relationship to Enron, their relationship to the Saudis and bin Ladens, Skull & Bones, PNAC, 43's play to the religious right, Prescott's tie to the Nazis, etc.
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DrBB Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:43 PM
Response to Reply #23
25. "Liberal firebrand"???
Edited on Wed Dec-31-03 12:48 PM by DrBB
Well, that's a glib but not particularly helpful or accurate categorization. He has been an increasingly harsh critic of the GOP, yes, but not because he's some kind of convert to leftist politics. I think he would say that it's the GOP that has moved.

on edit: just to be clear, I realize that phrase is from the website blurb, but it strikes me as the kind of pigeon-holing the reichpundits will want to do with this and shouldn't be allowed to get away with.
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barbaraann Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 12:46 PM
Response to Original message
26. Terror warning about books (almanacs) just when this book is
due out. Is that a coincidence? Maybe not. I think they want people to worry that if they buy this book they will be put on a watch list.
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chromotone Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 01:01 PM
Response to Original message
29. Might help explain why a "Bush" ...
Edited on Wed Dec-31-03 01:03 PM by chromotone
...has been on every GOP ticket from 1980 to 2004, with the exception of 1996 when Dole was sacrificed due to Clinton's popularity (I'm sure the Bushes did not want to attempt to run any of their litter <pre-Diebold?> against the Big Dog and risk losing).

Might explain why two Bush brothers ruled two large states...

I'm getting this book ASAP (with my Christmas money!).
:dem:
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ignatius Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 01:39 PM
Response to Original message
30. Thanks for the critique..free online if you haven't seen it
is the unauthorized biography of George Bush which is quite telling about Poppy and his evil-doings.

Just do a google search for the title. Thanks again.
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TNOE Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 01:52 PM
Response to Original message
31. Kevin Phillips must have managed to avoid
small planes. Can't believe this made it to print. Just finished Al Franken's book which was really great, working on Michael Moore's stupid white men - which is mostly okay I guess. Looking forward to reading this one.

Did anyone else here Colmes last night talk about how "conservatives" are starting to turn against Bush??? I saw just a brief moment of it - but that will be interesting - if conservative groups begin turning on him.
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barbaraann Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Dec-31-03 08:44 PM
Response to Original message
32. Kick!
I hope to see this book on amazon's bestseller list tomorrow. :-)
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