Tchotchkes: Sharia Law invades Fox News

Sidebar: Book Report on the Fly

While Amazon.com seems to have a virtual monopoly on discounted books, Kindle downloads and such, it still can’t beat going to a local bookstore (in my case “Books a Million”) to look them over in hand. Although I’d never buy a book by one of these authors (or even one from someone who shares my political views), it’s still a good idea to read what they have to say.

So I looked over three books today that I’m going to discuss here; they all had certain similarities. They were prominently displayed in the “New Releases” non-fiction section at the front of the store, and naturally they were by people who were not “liberals” who seem to dominate in this area:

•  “Broke” by Glenn Beck
•  “Pinheads and Patriots” by Bill O’Reilly
•  “America By Heart” by Sarah Palin

Un-Broke my Heart. If I was going to buy any of these three, it would be Beck’s “Broke”. Wide paged, highly glossed with lots of color, it was replete with charts and tack notes; it seemed like a “Conspiratorial Libertarians for Dummies” kind of book in the way it was laid out. The “tack notes” were often entitled “Teachable Moments.” Now that the word “Liberal” has been successfully demonized and mischaracterized, he has now moved on to the word Progressives in order to do the same.

But on Page 120-1, he doesn’t celebrate Republicans either; he has a laundry list of the “bads” that George W. Bush accomplished during his administration, such as the Medicare prescription bill of 2003 which added hundreds of billions to the national debt, and the Homeland Security Act which added 100,000 government employees.

Of course, he spends a lot of time on Social Security and Medicare as the focus of the blame for America’s “broke” condition. Here’s a notable block quote on Page 205 called “Mr. Ponzi Would Be So Proud”: