Elect to Laugh! A Hilarious, Common Sense Guide to American Politics (2012 Election Edition)


Book Description

ABOUT THE BOOK Q. For whom is this book intended? A. This book is designed as a comprehensive guide to the 2012 Presidential Election for potential voters and non-voters alike. Q. What do you mean by potential non-voters? A. People who haven't read the book. Q. Any particular sort of potential voter? A. Potential voters of all types: the decided, the undecided, the almost, kind of, really close to, near-the-vicinity-of decided and the you-couldn't-budge-me-with-anything-less-than-a-$300,000-direct-deposit-into-my-Swiss Bank Account decided. Q. What questions does this book answer? A. Easy questions. Hard questions. Any question that could possibly be answered by a series of smartass, cynical, semi-schmaltzy, highly acerbic, humorist-type ramblings. Even stupid questions. Remember there are no stupid question only Low Information Voters. Q. What does that mean? A. Low Information Voter is a new demographic category that means "stupid people." But the great thing is-you get to say it right in front of them. ROTFLMFAOLARTB. Q. Got an example? A. A recent poll shows 52% of Mississippi Republicans still believe President Obama is Muslim. And that doesn't include the hefty percentage who believe he's muslin. Q. Isn't that a loosely woven cotton fabric? A. Correctamundo. And yes, it does tend to confuse them, but it's a state to which they've become accustomed. Q. You mean Mississippi. A. Exactly. Now you've got it. Q. Got what? A. I don't know, but it's all over the front of your shirt. Go directly to the bathroom and wash it off. Immediately after purchasing the book, that is. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Democracy Is The New Black Welcoming the revolting flocks of the Mid East with a few cautionary notes about freedom. Congratulations from the United States of America to all our freedom loving brothers and sisters in Egypt and Yemen and Jordan and Oman and Tunisia and Libya and Iran and Bahrain and Morocco and Algeria and maybe someday soon Saudi Arabia for standing up to your dictatorial overlords and clutching at the guano covered branches of freedom. Jolly good. You've made majority rule fashionable again. Democracy is the new black. We are all totally psyched how you've dragged yourselves kicking and screaming from the dark ages into the middle 19th Century. You may be excited to hear about some other upgrades we've made in areas such as in transportation, communications, and hygiene. It's all there in your orientation packet. Watch some MTV. Ignore Jersey Shore. No, they're not real. Got to warn you though, self-rule isn't all a bed of roses. It has a thorny learning curve. Rubs rough on beginners. You might want to spend some time wading out towards the deep end wearing your feudal water wings before jumping straight into the parliamentary pool. Thing is, don't expect the world to change overnight. England has been dancing with democratization since the thirteenth century and they're still curtseying to the Queen. Usually what happens is you lose one tyrannical despot only to gain another. You could avoid a particular mistake we made and find someone who can spell despot. Buy the book to read more!




The Gospel According to the Fix


Book Description

A divine guide to deciphering the sinful world of American politics, from the author of the Washington Post's The Fix The political world is full of acronyms, shortcuts, and lingoes that stand as a barrier to entry for anyone not in the business. The onset of social media has only made that barrier higher, as insiders tweet furiously to one another in a language most of us can't even understand. Everyday Americans and even political junkies need a how-to manual for understanding what words matter in this arena and why. Enter Brother Chris Cillizza and The Gospel According to the Fix--an essential guide to the wonderfully odd religion of politics. Based on his highly popular blog, The Gospel According to the Fix will teach you something new about politics, no matter who you are and whom you know. In our torturous political climate, this Gospel is the one true source for comprehending what the heck is going on in DC. Chapter and verse, this political Gospel will include parables the likes of: • Why Ron Paul’s candidacy is a lot like the TV show Friday Night Lights • What it takes to be Richard Ben Cramer and write the political classic What It Takes • The top ten negative campaign ads of all time • The top ten issues candidates should be discussing but aren’t because of the economy • The dos and don’ts of surviving a political sex scandal




Too Funny to be President


Book Description

"With a bumper crop of presidential candidates surfacing, I have concluded that a plague of presidentialitis has swept the nation. Speaking from experience, I must remind all these worthy contenders that once this dreaded disease-- whose symptoms include delusions of grandeur and an urge to make repeated visits to Iowa-- gets into a man's bloodstream, it can only be cured by embalming fluid." --Mo UdallMorris "Mo" Udall, Arizona's Democratic congressman for thirty years, was as well known for his sense of humor as for his dedication to environmental causes. And it was during his 1976 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, when he claims he drew more laughter than votes, that James K. Kilpatrick pronounced him "too funny to be president."Udall kept four black notebooks of jokes that he had collected throughout his public life. Some he heard in the courtroom or on the floor of the House; others he found in old speeches and newspaper articles; still others he swiped on the rubber-chicken circuit. This book, a memoir of Udall's career, collects many of those jokes to create a citizen's guide to the lighter side of politics."After due deliberation and two stiff drinks," Udall writes, "I decided to go ahead and write this book because I'm convinced that humor is as necessary to the health of our political discourse as it is in our private lives." Too Funny To Be President is a testament to the Udall spirit--and an example to all who would win the public's heart.




Guide to U.S. Elections


Book Description

The CQ Press Guide to U.S. Elections is a comprehensive, two-volume reference providing information on the U.S. electoral process, in-depth analysis on specific political eras and issues, and everything in between. Thoroughly revised and infused with new data, analysis, and discussion of issues relating to elections through 2014, the Guide will include chapters on: Analysis of the campaigns for presidency, from the primaries through the general election Data on the candidates, winners/losers, and election returns Details on congressional and gubernatorial contests supplemented with vast historical data. Key Features include: Tables, boxes and figures interspersed throughout each chapter Data on campaigns, election methods, and results Complete lists of House and Senate leaders Links to election-related websites A guide to party abbreviations




The U.S. Constitution and Other Writings


Book Description

“We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union . . . ” — The U.S Constitution The U.S. Constitution and Other Writings is a collection of the crucial documents, speeches, and other writings that shaped the United States. In addition to the Constitution, readers can review the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, important presidential speeches, and many others. Both famous and lesser-known, but equally important, Americans are represented, including Benjamin Franklin, Victoria Woodhull, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, and even the creators of the rules of baseball. The founders' inspirational and revolutionary ideals are all here, and this is a perfect volume for anyone who finds the history of America to be a fascinating and enlightening journey.




America Again


Book Description

Book store nation, in the history of mankind there has never been a greater country than America. You could say we're the #1 nation at being the best at greatness. But as perfect as America is in every single way, America is broken! And we can't exchange it because we're 236 years past the 30-day return window. Look around--we don't make anything anymore, we've mortgaged our future to China, and the Apologist-in-Chief goes on world tours just to bow before foreign leaders. Worse, the L.A. Four Seasons Hotel doesn't even have a dedicated phone button for the Spa. You have to dial an extension! Where did we lose our way?! It's high time we restored America to the greatness it never lost! Luckily, America Again will singlebookedly pull this country back from the brink. It features everything from chapters, to page numbers, to fonts. Covering subject's ranging from healthcare ("I shudder to think where we'd be without the wide variety of prescription drugs to treat our maladies, such as think-shuddering") to the economy ("Life is giving us lemons, and we're shipping them to the Chinese to make our lemon-flavored leadonade") to food ("Feel free to deep fry this book-it's a rich source of fiber"), Stephen gives America the dose of truth it needs to get back on track.




Research Methods in Human Development


Book Description

For undergradute social science majors. A textbook on the interpretation and use of research. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.




This Chair Rocks


Book Description

Author, activist, and TED speaker Ashton Applewhite has written a rousing manifesto calling for an end to discrimination and prejudice on the basis of age. In our youth obsessed culture, we’re bombarded by media images and messages about the despairs and declines of our later years. Beauty and pharmaceutical companies work overtime to convince people to purchase products that will retain their youthful appearance and vitality. Wrinkles are embarrassing. Gray hair should be colored and bald heads covered with implants. Older minds and bodies are too frail to keep up with the pace of the modern working world and olders should just step aside for the new generation. Ashton Applewhite once held these beliefs too until she realized where this prejudice comes from and the damage it does. Lively, funny, and deeply researched, This Chair Rocks traces her journey from apprehensive boomer to pro-aging radical, and in the process debunks myth after myth about late life. Explaining the roots of ageism in history and how it divides and debases, Applewhite examines how ageist stereotypes cripple the way our brains and bodies function, looks at ageism in the workplace and the bedroom, exposes the cost of the all-American myth of independence, critiques the portrayal of elders as burdens to society, describes what an all-age-friendly world would look like, and offers a rousing call to action. It’s time to create a world of age equality by making discrimination on the basis of age as unacceptable as any other kind of bias. Whether you’re older or hoping to get there, this book will shake you by the shoulders, cheer you up, make you mad, and change the way you see the rest of your life. Age pride! “Wow. This book totally rocks. It arrived on a day when I was in deep confusion and sadness about my age. Everything about it, from my invisibility to my neck. Within four or five wise, passionate pages, I had found insight, illumination, and inspiration. I never use the word empower, but this book has empowered me.” —Anne Lamott, New York Times bestselling author




To Make Men Free


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of Democracy Awakening, “the most comprehensive account of the GOP and its competing impulses” (Los Angeles Times) When Abraham Lincoln helped create the Republican Party on the eve of the Civil War, his goal was to promote economic opportunity for all Americans, not just the slaveholding Southern planters who steered national politics. Yet, despite the egalitarian dream at the heart of its founding, the Republican Party quickly became mired in a fundamental identity crisis. Would it be the party of democratic ideals? Or would it be the party of moneyed interests? In the century and a half since, Republicans have vacillated between these two poles, with dire economic, political, and moral repercussions for the entire nation. In To Make Men Free, celebrated historian Heather Cox Richardson traces the shifting ideology of the Grand Old Party from the antebellum era to the Great Recession, revealing the insidious cycle of boom and bust that has characterized the Party since its inception. While in office, progressive Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower revived Lincoln's vision of economic freedom and expanded the government, attacking the concentration of wealth and nurturing upward mobility. But they and others like them have been continually thwarted by powerful business interests in the Party. Their opponents appealed to Americans' latent racism and xenophobia to regain political power, linking taxation and regulation to redistribution and socialism. The results of the Party's wholesale embrace of big business are all too familiar: financial collapses like the Panic of 1893, the Great Depression in 1929, and the Great Recession in 2008. With each passing decade, with each missed opportunity and political misstep, the schism within the Republican Party has grown wider, pulling the GOP ever further from its founding principles. Expansive and authoritative, To Make Men Free is a sweeping history of the Party that was once America's greatest political hope -- and, time and time again, has proved its greatest disappointment.




You're Fired


Book Description

Donald Trump became famous bellowing, “You’re fired!” on TV in a make-believe boardroom. Now, millions of Americans want to yell it right back at him—but Trump has seemed to almost defy the laws of political physics. Paul Begala, one of America’s greatest political talents, lays out the strategy that will defeat Trump and send him and his industrial-strength spray-on tan machine back to Mar-a-Lago. In You’re Fired, Paul Begala tells us how Trump uses division to distract from the actual reality of his record. Distraction, he argues, is Trump’s superpower. And this book is Kryptonite. In it, the man who helped elect Bill Clinton and reelect Barack Obama, details: —The special weapons and tactics needed in the unconventional war against this most unconventional politician —How to drive a wedge—or, rather, a pickup truck—between Trump and many of his supporters, especially blue-collar workers and farmers —Where the votes to defeat Trump will come from, and how the Rising American Electorate can catch Trump flat-footed —How Democrats can run on issues ranging from Coronavirus and healthcare to the economy, as well as climate change and Trump’s long-term plan to dominate the federal judiciary —There is one chapter called simply, “This Chapter Will Beat Trump.” Find out why Begala is so confident and what issue he says will sink the Trumptanic Full of memorable advice and Begala’s trademark wit, You’re Fired focuses on the lessons we can learn from the party’s successes and failures—and the crucial tools Democrats need to beat Trump.