Has Anybody Read Any Good Books Lately?

[Thraxas]

Everything was fine until you brought up animal boobs which brought my lunch. It didn't taste as good the second time around. Thanks a lot.

[flew-da-coup]

At least I wasn't talking about animal nipples. I was trying to have some couth.

[Thraxas]

At least I wasn't talking about animal nipples. I was trying to have some couth.

Too late!

[docbyers]

I am re-reading The DaVinci Code in preparation for the forthcoming movie.  Religious implications aside, it's a helluva good read!  Tom Hanks should be interesting in the lead role...

[Thraxas]

I am re-reading The DaVinci Code in preparation for the forthcoming movie.  Religious implications aside, it's a helluva good read!  Tom Hanks should be interesting in the lead role...

As long as he doesn't use that annoying laugh of his, you'll probably be right.

[Thraxas]

Has anybody read a good book recently that's not The Da Vinci Code?

[flew-da-coup]

See Spot Run.

[Thraxas]

Uh...I was looking for something aimed at an older age group.

[docbyers]

Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity
by John Stossel

There are lots of things "everybody knows" these days. "Everybody knows," for instance, that radiation is deadly, especially when food is exposed to it. "Everybody knows" that public school teachers are underpaid, and public schools underfunded. "Everybody knows" that outsourcing puts Americans out of work. The trouble is, in these and so many other cases, what "everybody knows" is flat wrong. Now, in Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, John Stossel exposes the errors behind hundreds of media-generated myths -- and reveals that the truth is often the opposite of what we've been taught to believe. Just as important, he also reveals who benefits from the deception -- whether it's big government, greedy lawyers, or special-interest groups looking for political advantage at taxpayers' expense.

Running parallel to his investigative reports for ABC's 20/20, Stossel's book covers everything from consumer cons and health myths to environmental scare-mongering and big-government propaganda. Get the facts and research behind HUNDREDS of myth-busting revelations like these:

MYTH: Radioactivity is deadly. Keep it away from food!
FACT: Food irradiation saves lives.

MYTH: "Outsourcing" takes jobs away from Americans.
FACT: "Outsourcing" creates American jobs.

MYTH: Overpopulation causes poverty.
FACT: Population has nothing to do with poverty.

MYTH: A higher minimum wage helps poor workers.
FACT: A higher minimum wage puts more poor workers out of work.

MYTH: Farm subsidies help save family farms.
FACT: Most farm subsidy money goes to giant agri-businesses.

MYTH: "Sweatshops" exploit workers in poor countries.
FACT: "Sweatshops" help workers escape poverty.

MYTH: The EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) helps make America less sexist and racist.
FACT: The EEOC fans the flames of sexism and racism.

MYTH: Aside from the obvious physical differences, men and women are pretty much the same.
FACT: Science reveals that there are many differences -- mental, emotional, behavioral, and more.

MYTH: Women earn less than men because of sexism.
FACT: Women earn less for sound economic reasons.

MYTH: Government regulation is necessary to protect consumers from unethical businesses.
FACT: Competition protects us -- if government stays out of the way.

MYTH: Government should put price controls on prescription drugs to protect the poor and sick.
FACT: Price controls will harm the poor and the sick.

MYTH: Business believes in free markets.
FACT: Most businesspeople will use government regulation to stifle competition if it serves their interests.

MYTH: Education is too important to be left to the private sector.
FACT: Education is too important to be left to a government monopoly.

MYTH: Private schools enable segregation.
FACT: Public schools are more segregated the private schools.

MYTH: Vouchers will hurt public schools.
FACT: Vouchers will force public schools to compete -- and make them better.

MYTH: Premium gas is better for your car.
FACT: For 90 percent of cars sold today, high-octane is no better.

MYTH: Malpractice lawsuits protect patients.
FACT: Malpractice lawsuits encourage doctors to perform unnecessary procedures, endangering patients.

MYTH: To invest in stocks, follow the experts.
FACT: Stock "experts" get it wrong more often than right.

MYTH: Global warming is a catastrophe in the making.
FACT: Global warming is just a gradual trend coming out of what scientists call the "Little Ice Age."

MYTH: Cracking your knuckles is bad for you.
FACT: Crack away.

Whether it's a myth, a lie, or just plain stupid, Stossel takes it all on. Prepare to be surprised -- even outraged -- as you learn how conventional wisdom is often wrong. Highlights include:

Stossel on education: "Americans spend much more on schooling than the vast majority of countries that outscore us on international tests."

On "underpaid" teachers: "K-12 teachers average $45,081 a year. But most teachers only work nine months a year. If you look at the average hourly K-12 teacher wage ($30.91), it's more than chemists ($30.64), computer programmers ($28.98), registered nurses ($26.87), and psychologists ($28.49) make."

On "overpopulation": "[Famine-struck] Niger's population density is nine person per square kilometer, miniscule compared to population densities in wealthy countries like the USA (28), Japan (340), the Netherlands (484), and Hong Kong (6,621). The number of people isn't the problem. Famine is cause by things like civil wars and government corruption. . . ."

On gas prices: "If the price of a barrel of oil stays high, lots of entrepreneurs will scramble for ways to supply cheaper energy. . . . At fifty dollars a barrel, it's even profitable to recover oil that's stuck in the tar sands in Alberta, Canada, [which] alone contain enough oil to meet our needs for a hundred years."

On "sweatshops": "In poor countries, the factories the well-fed American protesters revile routinely pay twice what local factories pay, and triple what people can earn doing much harder and more dangerous work in the fields."

On farm subsidies: "In 1984, New Zealand eliminated farm subsidies cold turkey. Farm productivity, profitability, and output have soared since the reforms. The Federated Farmers of New Zealand say that the experience 'thoroughly debunked the myth that the farming sector cannot prosper without government subsidies."

On drug prices: "Less than a third of marketed drugs have enough commercial success to recover the cost of their research and development. The hated pharmaceutical companies make big profits, but I want them to make big profits because they have to make huge investments, suffer lots of failures, and go through ten to fifteen years of testing before they can bring me the drugs that might save my life or alleviate my pain."

On stock "experts": "Over the years ending October 31, 2005, only 5.72 percent of actively managed mutual funds had beaten the 500 stocks that make up the Standard & Poor's Index. In other words, 94 percent did worse. Over that fifteen-year period, you had a 94 percent better chance of making money if you ignored the advice from those well-paid professional stock pickers."

On PBS: "PBS is welfare for the well-off. . . . Compared to other Americans, PBS viewers are 44 percent more likely to make more than $150,000 a year. . . . The free market serves its customers, and in the TV business, the customers are viewers. PBS, on the other hand, is broadcasting by bureaucracy. This is a bad idea. We need separation of news and state."

On bottled water: "Many people believe that bottled water is cleaner. So we sent bottled and tap water samples to microbiologist Aaron Margolin, of the University of New Hampshire, to test for the bacteria, like E. coli, that can make you sick. 'No difference,' he said."

[docbyers]

Coulter Attacks the Cult of Liberalism
by Lisa De Pasquale

In "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," HUMAN EVENTS legal affairs correspondent Ann Coulter lays out one of the most original and perceptive philosophies on the cult of liberalism.

She states, "Under the guise of not favoring religion, liberals favor one cosmology over another and demand total indoctrination into theirs. The state religion of liberalism demands obeisance (to the National Organization for Women), tithing (to teachers' unions), reverence (for abortion), and formulaic imprecations ('Bush lied, kids died!'' 'Keep your laws off my body!' 'Arms for hostages!'). Everyone is taxed to support indoctrination into the state religion through public schools where innocent children are taught a specific belief system, rather than, say, math."

For years liberals have relied on a strategy of faking out the American public in order to win elections. Instead of accurately articulating their beliefs and engaging in an honest debate, they scour the nation for the perfect patsy. A hysterical mother who is willing to go on national television and call the President a "furor" and "evil maniac" is akin to seeing the stigmata. Liberals' ecstasy over Cindy Sheehan, Max Cleland, and the widows who made a spectacle of themselves in the midst of the 9/11 Commission epitomizes their secret weapon for winning back America -- a doctrine of infallibility in which victory goes to the most hysterical.

As Coulter writes:

Finally, the Democrats hit on an ingenious strategy: They would choose only messengers whom we're not allowed to reply to. That's why all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical women. You can't respond to them because that would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering. Liberals haven't changed the message, just the messenger. All the most prominent liberal spokesmen are people with "absolute moral authority" -- Democrats with a dead husband, a dead child, a wife who works at the CIA, a war record, terminal illness, or as a last resort, being on a first-name basis with Nelson Mandela. Like Oprah during Sweeps Week, liberals have come to rely exclusively on people with sad stories to improve their Q rating. They've become the "Lifetime" TV Network of political parties. Liberals prey on people at a time of extreme emotional vulnerability and offer them fame and fortune to be that month's purveyor of hate. Victory goes to the most hysterical.

By embracing phony prophets, liberals strip away any honesty and credibility they may have once had with the public. Unlike Christians, liberals can't shield themselves from criticism by referring to their most outspoken nuts as just a small group of fringe leaders. On the contrary, their leaders are writing curriculum for public schools, cloning obnoxious "apple-polishers" at colleges and universities and intimidating small towns with baseless lawsuits.

In the aptly titled chapter, "The Liberal Priesthood: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Teacher," Coulter peels back the political correctness surrounding the public education bureaucracy, "We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers' raw dedication and be forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don't make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren't they too stupid to be teaching our kids?"

Books like "The Professors," "Brainwashed" and "The Shadow University," exposed liberals' stranglehold on college campuses. But it wasn't until 10th-grader Sean Allen taped his world geography teacher's rant against President Bush that many Americans woke up to the reality of what is going on in K-12 public schools. During his world geography class, Jay Bennish engaged in a 20 minute tirade against President Bush and America, leading to the unoriginal conclusion that Bush is like Hitler. Coulter writes, "Anyone who uses this adolescent cliché should not be in the tenth grade, much less teaching it." Congratulations, Jay Bennish, this clever observation makes you qualified to replace a nose-pierced barista at Starbucks!

Comparing priests and teachers, Coulter notes, "The worst scandal to hit the real churches in 20 years is the priest child-molestation scandal -- which pales in comparison to the teacher child-molestation problem." By comparing studies done on the number of children sexually abused by priests and those sexually abused by teachers and accounting for unreported cases, Coulter concludes that there are roughly 821 children abused by priests per year and 32,000 children abused by educators per year. Given the increasingly explicit sex-education curriculum foisted on children and the incessant assurance from "experts" like Dr. Jocelyn Elders and U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop that it's OK for children to be sexual beings, it's no wonder that predatory teachers treat them as such.

Much of "Godless" exposes the contempt that liberals have for science, especially as it relates to disproving their religious doctrine. Using their strategy of capitalizing on sympathetic messengers, liberals counter science by parading Christopher Reeves, Michael J. Fox and the Reagan family in order to distract from the evidence favoring adult stem cell research over embryonic stem cell research. Coulter puts together an impressive list of successful achievements using adult stem cells, including repairing spinal cord injuries, treating sickle-cell anemia, restoring bone marrow in cancer patients, restoring eye sight and repairing weakened heart muscles. However, adult stem cell research does lack one crucial element -- it doesn't involve the destruction of life. Coulter writes, "At least embryonic stem-cell researchers have a clear financial incentive to lie about adult stem-cell research. Liberals just want to kill humans. ... Stem-cell research on embryos is an even worse excuse for the slaughter of life than abortion. No woman is even being spared an inconvenience this time."

The final chapters of "Godless" should be required reading for all science classes, much like "Treason" should be required for all American history classes. Coulter illustrates why evolution is so important to the church of liberalism, "Liberals' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil record -- and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals' think evolution disproves God."

With the help of the ACLU, liberals and their lawsuits have intimidated school districts into teaching evolution or what Coulter calls -- quoting mathematician David Berlinski -- "the last of the 19th century mystery religions." It's the equivalent of pointing and yelling, "Witch!" In Dover, Pa., a small group of parents backed by the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the school district to prevent the teaching of intelligent design in a high school biology class. The judge ruled in their favor and the school district was ordered to pay the plaintiffs' legal fees, in excess of $1 million. Coulter explains, "After Dover, no school district will dare breathe a word about 'intelligent design,' unless they want to risk being bankrupted by ACLU lawsuits. The Darwinists have saved the secular sanctity of their temples: the public schools. They didn't win on science, persuasion, or the evidence. They won the way liberals always win: by finding a court to hand them everything they want on a silver platter."

For those of us who had to endure countless viewings of "Inherit the Wind" when biology teachers had a hangover and needed the lights off, Coulter gives the true history behind the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn. This phony trial was conceived by civic leaders and the ACLU, who agreed upfront to pay for costs incurred by the defense and the prosecution. Coulter writes, "The rest of Tennessee was not so thrilled with Dayton's public relations stunt. Chattanooga Congressman Foster V. Brown summarized the whole affair when he said the trial was 'not a fight for evolution or against evolution, but a fight against obscurity.'"

Liberals weren't the first to use Darwinism to justify a political movement. After reading "The Origin of Species," Karl Marx wrote, "This is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our views." Coulter writes, "While Marx saw the 'struggle' as among classes, Hitler conceived of the struggle as among the races. 'Mein Kampf' means 'My Struggle,' which Hitler described in unmistakably Darwinian terms."

From Darwinism to Nazism to Liberalism -- finally, some proof in favor of evolution!

In the mockumentary, "This is Spinal Tap," one of the band members points out to a journalist that while most amp volume knobs go to 10, theirs go to 11. To borrow from the philosophy of Spinal Tap, Godless is Coulter at 11 -- at her funniest and most insightful. In "How to Talk to Liberal (If You Must)," Coulter writes, "People don't get angry when lies are told about them; they get angry when the truth is told about them." Perhaps the best compliment one can give to "Godless" is that it will totally enrage liberals.

[flew-da-coup]

I like mad liberals. It's very funny.

[docbyers]

Coulter Says Book Examines 'Mental Disorder' of Liberalism
by Lisa De Pasquale

In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS, Ann Coulter explains what motivated her to write her just-released book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, 2006), how faith played a role, what "virtues" the Church of Liberalism promotes and much more.

What led you to write Godless: The Church of Liberalism?

It's the third of a trilogy. Slander was about liberals' methods, Treason was about the political consequences of liberalism, and Godless is about the underlying mental disease that creates liberalism.

How did your own faith contribute to your book's premise?

Although my Christianity is somewhat more explicit in this book, Christianity fuels everything I write. Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy—you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism. As St. Paul said, if Christ is not risen from the dead, then eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

How do you think Godless will be received by conservatives? How about liberals?

Hmmmm, well, I think conservatives will say, "Oh I see. They're Godless. Now I understand liberals." Liberals will say, "Who-less"?

In Godless, you mention that a far greater number of children are sexually abused each year by educators than by priests. You also write about the sex-education programs in public schools. What suggestions do you have for parents on dealing with these issues?

As an emergency measure: home school. As a long term solution: encourage your home-schooled children to become public school teachers and destroy the temple of liberalism.

A large portion of the book addresses the left's contempt for science. Why do you think the left is uneasy with the scientific facts you discuss regarding AIDS, gender differences, IQ and embryonic and adult stem-cell research?

Because science is not susceptible to their crying and hysterics.

Why do you think the left uses mouthpieces like Cindy Sheehan and Max Cleland to advance their message?

So they can engage in crying and hysterics and hope this will prevent us from responding.

George Clooney said that it was difficult making his movie Good Night and Good Luck because so many people had read your book, Treason, which exposed the truth about Soviet agents in the U.S. government and exonerated Sen. Joseph McCarthy. What impact do you hope Godless will have on the political scene and people's misconceptions about evolution?

I would like evolution to join the roster of other discredited religions, like the Cargo Cult of the South Pacific. Practitioners of Cargo Cult believed that manufactured products were created by ancestral spirits, and if they imitated what they had seen the white man do, they could cause airplanes to appear out of the sky, bringing valuable cargo like radios and TVs. So they constructed "airport towers" out of bamboo and "headphones" out of coconuts and waited for the airplanes to come with the cargo. It may sound silly, but in defense of the Cargo Cult, they did not wait as long for evidence supporting their theory as the Darwinists have waited for evidence supporting theirs.

You frequently write about liberals' using the courts to advance their agenda. Should conservatives start doing the same by electing and embracing conservative activist judges?

Only long enough to get liberals to admit that judicial activism isn't so much fun when the rabbit has the gun.

As a popular speaker on college campuses, you've become very familiar with the "apple-polishers" and their liberal professors. What can conservative students do to combat liberalism on their campuses?

I recommend bringing a tape-recorder to class, taking lots of notes and then writing a bestselling book like my friend Ben Shapiro's Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth. If every right-wing student reading this wrote a book about his college experience, they would all be bestsellers because normal Americans will not believe what is happening on college campuses across America.

What do you enjoy most about your life as a best-selling author and columnist? What do you enjoy the least?

Enjoy most: the prospect of having an impact on the public debate. Irritating liberals is a close second. Enjoy least: the travel.

In your column following the terrorist attacks on September 11, you revealed that when you wrote your columns, you pictured Ted and Barbara Olson reading them at their breakfast table. How does having such a specific audience help you while writing?

When I was writing High Crimes and Misdemeanors, the magnificent writer Joe Sobran gave me the greatest advice a writer could ever get. I called him in desperation, because I was pulling my hair out trying to write the Whitewater chapter. I explained to him that the reason Whitewater was so hard to write about was that the financial transactions comprising Whitewater were incredibly complicated—and they were complicated for a reason: to hide what was really going on. After I whined for about five minutes about how impossible this made it to explain the scandal, Joe told me to write down exactly what I had just said to him—in fact, to write the entire chapter like I was writing an e-mail to him. I did, and the Economist (written by the only economists on earth who liked Hillary's health care plan) described it as one of the clearest explanations of the Whitewater scandal out there.

So now I write everything like I'm e-mailing one of my friends—often a friend I've been arguing with about whatever I am writing. I think the writing is better, and it's a lot more fun.

Also, I noticed that when I e-mailed my friends asking them to explain some point of law to me so I could put it in my book, I'd get a lot of convoluted jargon that read like an 18th-Century legal brief. But when I sent them an e-mail casually asking, "Hey, what do you think of William Ginsberg [Monica Lewinsky's attorney]?" I would get back some of the most beautiful prose ever written. So I recommend to all writers that they write like they're sending an e-mail to a friend—or enemy, for some really punchy writing.

What books do you look forward to reading this summer?

I think I'll just keep reading Godless over and over again. I love it so!

[clacoste]

Was in the US last week visiting relatives and stumbled on a great book at a Virginia shopping center.  'The  Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (And the Crusades)' by Robert Spencer.  Great reading and very enlightening....Five stars from me.

[flew-da-coup]

I got to check that one out.

[Thraxas]

For Father's Day, I got my Dad the books Gulag by Anne Applebaum, Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose, and Guests of the Ayatollah by Mark Bowden. Probably have to wait until I visit my folks to read them myself.