Kevin Phillips is a Great American

[ramapo]

Watching (again) his C-Span presentation on the Bush dynasty. I think I'll buy this latest book of his. Generally I get them from the library but this one is just too full of facts.

He really exposes the Bush lies.

What do the Freepers and other Repubs have to say about Phillips? How do you refute his facts?

[gristy]

1. He has a new book? Wonderful!

How do you refute his facts?

Facts? Facts? Repubs don't need no stinkin' facts.

[TheDalaiMama]

2. Just heard him again too....I googled the "NY directory of directors"..

he mentioned...couldnt find that...I have his book...finding it a hard read...maybe because I dont like the subjects.

dalai

[StClone]

3. Hard read

Yes. The guy has some of the most factually dense literature out there attracting the average (to Doctorate) reader.

[Unknown Known]

4. You MUST read this book

More important than O'Neill's book. I am just finishing it - amazing! He lays it ALL out - 8 decades of the Bush dynasty in arms dealing, oil and intelligence. It is a MUST read for any DU'er.

[John_Shadows_1]

5. I read Amerian Dynasty...

... and it's good. Pulls together a lot of threads, and you really see what motivates the bushes - oil, finance, military spending and intelligence contacts (somewhat contradictorily). He's got a real throwback style of writing, kind of academic, but it's still kind of cool for all of that.

[Stephanie]

6. Reviewed in the Times today!

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/books/review/18ORESKET.html?pagewanted=all

<snip>

The book makes two basic and interlocking arguments. The first is that the United States has entered a period of what Phillips calls dynastic politics, in which the spouses and offspring of political figures are picking up where their relatives left off, to the detriment of democracy. The second is that the most important example of this phenomenon is not the Kennedys but the Bushes, who, beginning with George W. Bush's great-grandfathers, Samuel P. Bush and George H. Walker, assembled wealth and power by exploiting ties to Wall Street, arms merchants, the American intelligence apparatus and foreign dictators including Hitler. That wealth and power, and those connections, are why Bush is president today, Phillips says, and why his policies are what they are. Phillips finds the family fingerprints on everything from Bush's pursuit of Saddam Hussein to his leanings toward the energy industry, which, in the web Phillips weaves, are also related to each other.

<snip>

''If there are other families who have more fully epitomized and risen alongside the hundred-year emergence of the U.S. military-industrial complex, the post-1945 national security state and the 21st-century imperium, no one has identified them,'' he writes. ''Certainly no other established a presidential dynasty.'' Lest there be any misunderstanding, Phillips believes this rise is not just an interesting and undertold tale but a record of deceit, self-dealing, secrecy, crony capitalism and, perhaps worst of all, Ivy League elitism.

[librechik]

11. The tone of this NYT review is an insult to Phillips

The reviewer blows it off as a "campaign screed" motivated by personal hatred. He implies that the scholarship is sloppy and the conclusions reach too far. Not my impression on reading the book, Quite the opposite.

[supernova]

7. Can't wait to read it

if what I've been hearing is true, he's documented all the things we've been saying here at DU about the Bushes since the selection.

Wow! With people like Phillips and O'Neill is the Republican party starting to correct itself and step away from the abyss of fascism?

[Military Brat]

8. Here is the link

I hope it works for you; I have trouble with Real Player :(

http://www.booktv.org/feature/index.asp?segid=4257&schedID=237

[kskiska]

9. He's got a pretty good chapter on Election 2000

I read quite a bit at B&N, where I bought the O'Neill book. He wasn't the most dynamic speaker (on Cspan), either, but in his book he's got the goods on the whole Bush* clan.

[Karenina]

10. YUP!

:kick: