Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

By Doug Ross, April 5, Directorblue.blogspot.com

The brilliant Larry Elder offers us the gut-wrenching results of the Democrat Party's "War on Poverty":

...census reports from 1890 to 1940 show that blacks were actually slightly more likely to marry than whites — therefore their children were slightly more likely than whites to be born into a nuclear, intact family.

Enter President Lyndon Johnson's "war on poverty." Johnson established "neighborhood centers," whose workers went door to door, apprising people of their welfare "rights and benefits." Welfare rolls exploded — increasing 110% during one three-year period in the '60s.

...Years ago, the late liberal Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., held hearings on the impact of federal government anti-poverty programs known as "urban renewal."

One resident after another testified about government waste, indifference, corrupt politics, overtaxation and the negative consequences of bulldozing old neighborhoods to make way for what became public housing.

An exasperated Proxmire finally said to one witness, "You would probably have better neighborhoods today if there had been no federal programs at all!"

Elder's book is a must-read.

Once I started I could not put the book down so read it in one evening. Without giving too much away, all I can say is that this is not just a book about a strict father and a son who grew up hating him. This is a story for ANYONE, MALE OR FEMALE who was raised by very strict parents. I identfied with many of the situations such as having my father come after us girls with a belt and me running away from home to escape from him.....But this book is more than just this. This book is incredible in that once we find out why Mr. Elder's father was so angry all the time, we come to understand him, sympathize with him and grow to love him for the enormous pains and sacrifices he made and the conditions he was forced to live with as a child growing up in a very ugly time in America. To me, this is a story about redemption, of understanding, of misconceptions due to lack of knowing one's circumstances they had to endure as a child, etc. It's a fabulous read and made me examine my own life and my relationship with my own father. Luckily, as with Larry Elder, I too, found out how much my father loved me and had many many years of a good relationship with him before he passed away.

If you have the time, it's worth a serious read. And a pass-around.



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Sunday, March 30, 2014

By Brent Bozel III, Sep. 12, 2011, Special to The Washington Times

I lost my television debate virginity to Tom Braden, the old curmudgeon liberal counterpart to Pat Buchanan, on the original CNN“Crossfire” series. His first question was a haymaker: “Who the hell do you think you are passing judgment on journalists?” he snarled. Little did I know this was the official Denial Excuse No. 12 in an endless litany of media denials of what everyone knows, but only they continue to deny: The “news” media are drowning in a liberal political bias. Enter into the fray UCLA professor Tim Groseclose with “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind,” with a new methodology to measure that bias.

I confess that at the outset I wasn’t too keen about doing this review. The Media Research Center, which I head, has conducted more studies on this subject than any other institution on the planet over the past quarter-century, so I turned to the “Left Turn” index out of curiosity to see which ones were chosen for citation. (Clear throat here: Ahem.) Not a one. Worse, where the index cites the MRC, in one instance it misidentifies the group; and in the other, allegedly over three pages, it’s a phantom citation - the MRC isn’t there at all. But I had agreed to review this book, so I read it. On the whole, I liked it.

Mr. Groseclose argues that one can measure liberal media bias through objective and quantitative statistical analysis, that “every [emphasis his] mainstream national news outlet in the United States has a liberal bias,” that out of more than 100 major news outlets studied, only a handful lean to the right and none of the supposedly conservative news outlets is far right.

There is a whole lot of math going on here, and some of the statistical jargon is pure mumbo-jumbo that the layman just must accept, (“To find the pseudo intercept rendezvous parameters b, k and the radial distance d between circular orbits,” “endogeneity problems” and the like), so out of necessity, I will simplify (and the author might well accuse me of oversimplifying). Mr. Groseclose first introduces us to the “PQ” analysis, the “political quotient” that measures the degree to which a person is liberal.

Mr. Groseclose measures the PQs of members of Congress by studying their roll-call votes; for others, he offers a self-testing series of questions. Rep. Michele Bachmann (minus 4.1) and Sen. Jim DeMint (4.8) are on one end and Rep. Barney Frank (103.8) and Ronald V. Dellums (107.4) fall on the other. Next, the author conducts the “SQ” analysis, measuring the “slant quotient” of media outlets based on their source material, i.e., which policy think tanks they turn to for their citations. Thus, the author concludes that the New York Times has a 74 SQ, on par with the 74 PQ of Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent.

Later in the book, Mr. Groseclose introduces another measuring device, estimating the bias based on an analysis of the facts reported about certain issues, when there are facts supporting both the liberal and conservative position


Read the full review:  www.washingtontimes.com

"Left Turn" is available on Amazon.com


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Saturday, March 22, 2014


WHY COOLIDGE MATTERS: LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM AMERICA’S MOST UNDERRATED PRESIDENT

By Charles C. Johnson
, Mar. 14, 2014, Washington Times

Encounter, $25.99, 408 pages

It is disappointing that Calvin Coolidge is consistently relegated to the hinterlands of America’s presidential landscape. There are several reasons for this. First, he is a victim of what Lincoln called the “silent artillery of time” — the way the memory of any earthly thing fades with the years. Secondly, the left has historically depicted Coolidge as a taciturn, arrogant, Mr. Burns-conservative, working for little but the advancement of business interests that, it claims, submarined the economy in 1929.

Journalist William L. Shirer, for instance, recalled “the incredible smugness and emptiness of the Coolidge era.” “Silent Cal’s” reputation for reticence, small government and protection of business is warranted. However, it is important to understand what animated his thinking on the subjects. As Charles C. Johnson shows in “Why Coolidge Matters,” Coolidge is worthy of distinction and praise for his application of the American founding principles to public service.

Read the full review:  www.washingtontimes.com

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