Welcome to Dumbfuckistan

Author: Ian Gurvitz
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781523313952
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
"A lot of what I believe, Ian Gurvitz has silver-tongued into a most readable, cathartic and funny book - congratulations, Ian Gurvitz, whoever you are!" Bill Maher Welcome to Dumbfuckisan is an unapologetic liberal screed about the deteriorating state of our national dialogue, which is dragging down our culture, our politics, and our lives. It contains strong opinions, snarky comments, and gratuitous insults directed at people and ideas I disagree with, disrespect and, in some cases, despise. Although the Western philosophical tradition may be grounded in a Socratic search for truth, American political life has devolved into a mosh pit of willful ignorance, talking points, disinformation, and lies, while the culture has descended into a celebration of the dumbest common denominator. Burning Man for the brain dead. While there has always been an element of stupidity in America, only now it's become a valid intellectual stance. Fact has been relegated to "just another opinion." Voices that, at one time in our history, would have been laughed off the national stage have now been afforded mainstream legitimacy. Idiotic remarks that would have been walked back when the speaker sobered up are now backed up with even more bluster than when they were uttered. Even racist and sexist taunts proudly ride in under the banner of flouting political correctness. And it's all been spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch taking a giant shit in the mouth of the American conversation with Fox News. We assume Orwell's 1984 dystopian nightmare can't happen here, yet we've been narcotized into a more ominous Orwellian somnambulism. We're inebriated on our own mythology, priapic at our military supremacy, and malleable via our ionic imagery, whether it's Jesus or the flag. Jacked up on Adderall, Red Bull and patriotism, we only unite in war, tragedy and the Super Bowl. We've become style over substance, image over reality, propaganda over truth, and symbol over meaning. We claim to value education, yet mistrust intelligence. Immune to facts, frightened of change, we think magically. Magic potions that will heal us, magic diets that will shrink us, and magic beliefs that will save us. And we think all this behavior has been blessed by a big daddy in the sky who lovingly placed us here for profit, guns, and heterosexual marriage. Perhaps evolution is a myth, in that we seem to be devolving. The Roman Empire collapsed due to war, overexpansion and rampant corruption. The British Empire dissolved due to cultural arrogance and imperialistic hubris. Sadly, as we devolve from Democracy to Idiocracy, America may become the first world power to crumble under the weight of its own stupidity.

Billionaires & Ballot Bandits

Author: Greg Palast
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609804791
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

Book Description
A close presidential election in November could well come down to contested states or even districts--an election decided by vote theft? It could happen this year. Based on Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s investigative reporting for Rolling Stone and BBC television, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps might be the most important book published this year--one that could save the election. Billionaires & Ballot Bandits names the filthy-rich sugar-daddies who are super-funding the Super-PACs of both parties--billionaires with nicknames like "The Ice Man," "The Vulture" and, of course, The Brothers Koch. Told with Palast's no-holds-barred, reporter-on-the-beat style, the facts as he lays them out are staggering. What emerges in Billionaires & Ballot Bandits is the never-before-told-story of the epic battle being fought behind the scenes between the old money banking sector that still supports Obama, and the new hedge fund billionaires like Paul Singer who not only support Romney but also are among his key economic advisors. Although it has not been reported, Obama has shown some backbone in standing up to the financial excesses of the men behind Romney. Billionaires & Ballot Bandits exposes the previously unreported details on how operatives plan to use the hundreds of millions in Super-PAC money pouring into this election. We know the money is pouring in, but Palast shows us the convoluted ways the money will be used to suppress your vote. The story of the billionaires and why they want to buy an election is matched with the nine ways they can steal the election. His story of the sophisticated new trickery will pick up on Palast's giant New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Biblical Errancy

Author:
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615924124
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 852

Book Description

Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

Author: Ryan Roenfeld
Publisher: Reedy Press LLC
ISBN: 1681063069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Book Description
How did Omaha get its nickname, “The Gateway to the West” and where can you gawk at the footsteps of the first human to walk in space? Just scratch the surface of a city best known for Warren Buffett, college baseball, and a great zoo and find far more than meets the eye. And Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure is just the book you’ll need to uncover all the stories of Nebraska’s lone metropolis. Omaha rises up out of the low broken bluffs along the west bank of the Missouri River and sprawls west across what was once the prairie grasslands of the Great Plains. The buffalo wallows have been replaced by a more urban mix of grit and gentrification, with tree-lined avenues, boulevards, and varied communities that hold on to their heritage for generations. There’s a giant fork in Little Italy and stories told in stone around what was the world’s largest livestock market. There’s an old blues song by Big Joe Williams about an Omaha intersection that’s now on the National Register, and Irish Nationalists erected a grand monument to the Fenian who invaded Canada twice. Anyone in Omaha can take a gander at Goose Hollow or visit a haven for herons, but now author and Omaha enthusiast Ryan Roenfeld takes you on your own behind-the-scenes tour of the Big O. With his book as your guide, you’ll discover a whole new side to the city that’s inspired him for years.

The Encyclopedia of Biblical Errancy

Author: C. Dennis McKinsey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 560

Book Description
This important new volume is the most comprehensive critique of the Bible ever written. McKinsey strives to tell both the good and bad of biblical writings with this thoroughly-researched expose of the Bible's errors, contradictions, and fallacies. McKinsey believes that it is important that the Bible's inadequacies and negative teachings be exposed.

"Hello" Lied the Agent

Author: Ian Gurvitz
Publisher: Phoenix Books
ISBN: 1614670269
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Book Description
As prevalent as TV is in our lives, most of us have no concept of what goes into creating a show, getting it on the air, and keeping it on. Perhaps we assume that the people in charge simply decide what amuses them at the moment, make those shows, stick them on, and wait to see if the public responds. Or maybe they just throw darts at a board. The truth, as with most things, is more complicated. In “Hello,” Lied the Agent, Ian Gurvitz has produced a corrosively funny insider’s look at what being a television writer is really all about. In his personal journal he details two years in the life of a Hollywood television writer—the dizzying ups and downs, the rewrites, the pitch meetings, the table readings, the studios and networks and execs in a riveting expose of the business. “It occurred to me that keeping a journal while I was going through the development process might illuminate a side of the business few people get to see, and give them a behind-the-scenes (God, I hate that overused ET phrase) look at the day-to-day experience of being a writer in Hollywood. OK, that’s partly bullshit. I’m not that altruistic. The truth is, after twenty years in the trenches, I found myself bitching about many aspects of the business and needed an outlet, which left either writing a book, doing standup, seeing my shrink more often or suffering in silence; but since I don’t have the balls to try stand-up, there’s no reason to waste a shrink visit bitching about the business when I’ve got more seriously fucked-up issues to deal with, and there’s no money in suffering in silence—that left book. Here it is...” Think you’ve got a great idea for a TV show? Read this book—your view of your favorite television show will never be the same.

Deconstructing God

Author: Ian Gurvitz
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781450518277
Category : Psychology and religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
WINNER 2011 NEXT GENERATION INDIE BOOK AWARDS -- RELIGIOUS NON-FICTION Deconstructing God makes a case for an understanding of religion that transcends the conventional categories in which one is either a believer, an atheist, or agnostic, by focusing on mysticism as the experiential core of religion. The book makes the case that this paradigm we've inherited in western culture has left us stuck in a series of false arguments about the subject of religion: Whether there is or isn't "a God"; the religion vs. science debate, the faith vs. reason debate. We bat these discussions back and forth under the illusion that we're engaged in a meaningful dialogue about religion, when all the while there is a more subtle understanding of the phenomenon, in the form of a very human, earthly psychological experience that, while generally referred to as "mystical" is really only a mystery in the sense that it has been obscured by our false understanding. Per Meister Eckhart: "God is at home, it's we who have gone out for a walk." "Although I don't agree 100% with Ian Gurvitz's analysis of religion -- who does on this subject? -- I loved reading this insightful, funny, and illuminating book. And we both think Pat Robertson is a douchebag." Bill Maher

The New New Deal

Author: Michael Grunwald
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451642342
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 545

Book Description
In a riveting account based on new documents and interviews with more than 400 sources on both sides of the aisle, award-winning reporter Michael Grunwald reveals the vivid story behind President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus bill, one of the most important and least understood pieces of legislation in the history of the country. Grunwald’s meticulous reporting shows how the stimulus, though reviled on the right and the left, helped prevent a depression while jump-starting the president’s agenda for lasting change. As ambitious and far-reaching as FDR’s New Deal, the Recovery Act is a down payment on the nation’s economic and environmental future, the purest distillation of change in the Obama era. The stimulus has launched a transition to a clean-energy economy, doubled our renewable power, and financed unprecedented investments in energy efficiency, a smarter grid, electric cars, advanced biofuels, and green manufacturing. It is computerizing America’s pen-and-paper medical system. Its Race to the Top is the boldest education reform in U.S. history. It has put in place the biggest middle-class tax cuts in a generation, the largest research investments ever, and the most extensive infrastructure investments since Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. It includes the largest expansion of antipoverty programs since the Great Society, lifting millions of Americans above the poverty line, reducing homelessness, and modernizing unemployment insurance. Like the first New Deal, Obama’s stimulus has created legacies that last: the world’s largest wind and solar projects, a new battery industry, a fledgling high-speed rail network, and the world’s highest-speed Internet network. Michael Grunwald goes behind the scenes—sitting in on cabinet meetings, as well as recounting the secret strategy sessions where Republicans devised their resistance to Obama—to show how the stimulus was born, how it fueled a resurgence on the right, and how it is changing America. The New New Deal shatters the conventional Washington narrative and it will redefine the way Obama’s first term is perceived.

The Outlier

Author: Kai Bird
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0451495233
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 801

Book Description
“Important . . . [a] landmark presidential biography . . . Bird is able to build a persuasive case that the Carter presidency deserves this new look.”—The New York Times Book Review An essential re-evaluation of the complex triumphs and tragedies of Jimmy Carter’s presidential legacy—from the expert biographer and Pulitzer Prize–winning co-author of American Prometheus Four decades after Ronald Reagan’s landslide win in 1980, Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency is often labeled a failure; indeed, many Americans view Carter as the only ex-president to have used the White House as a stepping-stone to greater achievements. But in retrospect the Carter political odyssey is a rich and human story, marked by both formidable accomplishments and painful political adversity. In this deeply researched, brilliantly written account, Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer Kai Bird deftly unfolds the Carter saga as a tragic tipping point in American history. As president, Carter was not merely an outsider; he was an outlier. He was the only president in a century to grow up in the heart of the Deep South, and his born-again Christianity made him the most openly religious president in memory. This outlier brought to the White House a rare mix of humility, candor, and unnerving self-confidence that neither Washington nor America was ready to embrace. Decades before today’s public reckoning with the vast gulf between America’s ethos and its actions, Carter looked out on a nation torn by race and demoralized by Watergate and Vietnam and prescribed a radical self-examination from which voters recoiled. The cost of his unshakable belief in doing the right thing would be losing his re-election bid—and witnessing the ascendance of Reagan. In these remarkable pages, Bird traces the arc of Carter’s administration, from his aggressive domestic agenda to his controversial foreign policy record, taking readers inside the Oval Office and through Carter’s battles with both a political establishment and a Washington press corps that proved as adversarial as any foreign power. Bird shows how issues still hotly debated today—from national health care to growing inequality and racism to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—burned at the heart of Carter’s America, and consumed a president who found a moral duty in solving them. Drawing on interviews with Carter and members of his administration and recently declassified documents, Bird delivers a profound, clear-eyed evaluation of a leader whose legacy has been deeply misunderstood. The Outlier is the definitive account of an enigmatic presidency—both as it really happened and as it is remembered in the American consciousness.

New York

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : New York (N.Y.)
Languages : en
Pages : 1434

Book Description