Boiling Point by Kevin Phillips

[jiacinto]

Have you ever read this book?

I am also going to read The Case Against Hillary Clinton and the Final Days? Will I be able to read them without barfing?

[Terwilliger]

1. Carlos barfs?

I just don't picture it.

Has he been sick? Morning sickness? what?

[Oracle]

2. Well Kevin Phillips is an old school republican...

not one of these neo-fascist republicans now in power, (however I hate all republicans.)

Phillips' "Wealth and Democracy" was a very good read though.

Why would anyone want to subject themselves to such bullshit like "The Case Against Hillary Clinton and the Final Days?'

Shit, read "The Hunting of the President" by Joe Conason & Gene Lyons or even David Brock's book "Blinded by the Right"...

But for pure fun, insightfulness, and to the fucking point..."Kingdom of Fear" by Hunter S Thompson.

(If your going to read books a year or more old.)

[ajacobson]

3. Phillip's analysis

is interesting. He sees himself as a populist fighting against elitism. The elite target shifts across the political spectrum according to him and so it is hard to classify him as hard right or what not. He was one of the masterminds behind the Nixon "silent majority" approach. However, if you read "Politics of Rich and Poor (1991)" he blisters the Reagan years because of the incredible transfer of wealth that occurred then.

I find his economic analysis of the concentration of wealth fascinating. I've read some of his other stuff, but "Politics of Rich and Poor" really was the best IMHO.

[Zolok]

5. Kevin Phillips is a Nixon era GOP apologist...

othere have taken his pseudo-populist authoritarian rhetoric and ridden it to the stars.
This apparently bothers him on some level....I got no time for stupid naive conservatives who wake up and see what a horroshow modern conservatism has become...too little too late IMHO.

www.chimesatmidnight.blogspot.com

[AP]

8. What Phillips liked about Nixon included...

...his environmental protections and protecting worker rights.

I think if you pushed Phillips he'd claim that the neo-cons who run governmentn now are really marxists who are trying to use the government to privatize benefits and socialize costs, and that they sabotaged Nixon because he wasn't interested in that.

Don't get me wrong -- Nixon was a criminal who had little regard for the constitution. However, Phillips suggests that Nixon had to be that way because he was getting attacked from both ends -- from liberals, and from the far right who wanted a society that existed PURELY to make big corporations very rich without have to engage in any risk to get rich.

[jiacinto]

14. Ok

interseting

[AP]

7. The dust jacket of W&D (if I remember correctly) claims that P of R & P

formed the backbone of the Clinton campaign.

I think that W&D should do the same for 2004.

Phillips really has his finger on the pulse of America business/economic culture and society.

[kodi]

4. phillips is the last living true conservative.

his attacks on the mechanations of the recent and current GOP policies is a must read for all who oppose them.

i wonder if he will support a democrat in 2004.

[jiacinto]

9. Well

Who did he support in the 1990s?

[AP]

10. He didn't like Gore in 2000. Thought it was stupid of the Democrats

to run a privileged guy against a privileged guy when the core issues in America are whether privilege and cronyism is determining who gets rich in America, rather than hard work and innovation.

You get the impression that he liked Bradley. He has a couple quotes suggesting that he and Bradley were on the same page, yet he also thinks it was mad to run Million Dollar Bill Bradley against Bush.

I bet he voted for Perot and Nader in the 90s. Just a guess.

[IrateCitizen]

12. Who cares? Unless you are partisan in your information sources.

Who Phillips voted for doesn't come into play, if you've ever read any of his books. What you read them for is analysis. And he provides that in buckets.

Wealth and Democracy was one of the most informative books I ever read, even if it read in parts like an economics textbook and I didn't necessarily agree with all of Phillips' conclusions. Personally, I couldn't have given a shit as to who he might have voted for. His books are about providing SUBSTANTIVE analysis rather than simpleminded, partisan rhetoric (which rarely offers anything of substance or depth anyway).

[Hamlette]

6. I'm not so quick to dismiss him

I'm not familiar with Boiling Point but he has a new book due out in January that trashes the Bush family empire. A quote from the review:

In this devastating book, onetime Republican strategist Phillips reveals how four generations of Bushes have ascended the ladder of national power since World War One, becoming entrenched within the American establishment—Yale, Wall Street, the Senate, the CIA, the vice presidency, and the presidency—through a recurrent flair for old-boy networking, national security involvement, and political deception. 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, thereby subverting the very core of American democracy. In their ambition, the Bushes ultimately reinvented themselves with brilliant timing, twisting and turning from silver spoon Yankees to born-again evangelical Texans.

snip

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.

I would not put Phillips in the same category of the other books you listed.

[dpibel]

11. Ain't that something?

Sounds like he's lending establishment cred to that online unauthorized bio of George I, which is otherwise dismissible as tinfoil hattery.

Whatever will happen to those who know there are no conspiracies in the USofA when Phillips details the multigenerational skullduggery of the Booshes?

[sendero]

16. I agree with you....

.... I've listened to many a commentary by Mr Phillips back in my NPR days. Forget labels, most of what he says sounds about right to me.

If he's a "conservative" all I can say is if there were more like him we wouldn't be in this mess today.

[Merlin]

13. Kevin Phillips is a great author and a true democrat -- small "d"

He may have worked for the R's at one time. But this guy is the real thing. Nobody has done the kind of yeoman work he has done -- and kept an objective, rationalist's world view while doing it -- like Kevin Phillips.

When I was going to DLC meetings back in '91, he would show up and hold forth for an hour or so and answer questions. His criticism of the right is always devastating. His economic savy is enviable. His political acumen is usually slightly ahead of the facts, but still very interesting.

When this country hits the train wreck it's headed for--because its citizens can't focus on a damn thing for more than 10 seconds, and because they can't think straight--Phillips books will explain what went wrong.

Dem? Repug? Who knows? Who cares?

[0007]

15. Juan this women is a fake and a scam artist...

so cut this holy than thou crap and tell us what makes Juan a happy man, 'eh Carlos?

[bread_and_roses]

17. I highly recommend Kevin Phippips

economic analysis of the Reagan years and aftermath. Both "The Politics of Rich and Poor" and "Boiling Point" are highly informative, and will give you endless ammunition agaist those who say, "the rich earned their money they should get to keep it." I havn't read "Wealth and Democracy" yet but plan to do so. Whatever his politics in terms of voting (I have no idea for whom he voted) he has a deep concern about the destabilizing effects of concentration of wealth, and presents a devastating analysis of the economics of the past twenty years or so.

[Ress1]

18. Phillips

has for a long time recognized the real political battle which is up/down rather than left/right.