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Whatever You Do, Don’t Read This Book!

Larry Kummer, Editor

Summary:  On rare occasions a book arrives that’s both important and timely. Mike Lofgren’s new book, “The Party is Over”, is both. Here Winslow Wheeler explains why you should read this book.  Or, for your peace of mind, you shouldn’t read this book. As citizens, understanding the peril of the Republic creates the obligation to act.

The Party Is Over:
How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats became useless,
and the Middle Class Got Shafted

by Mike Lofgren.
Review by Winslow Wheeler, reposted with permission.

Contents

  1. A review of The Party Is Over …
  2. An excerpt & other reviews about the book.
  3. About Mike Lofgren.
  4. About Winslow Wheeler.
  5. Other works by and about Mike S. Lofgren.
  6. For More Information about American Politics.

 

(1)  Book Review by Winslow Wheeler

I recently finish reading my friend and colleague Mike Lofgren’s book, The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats became useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted.

The Democrats like to talk about this book because it will confirm what they want you to believe about the Republicans. But the Democrats also hope you will take their word for what’s in the book and not read it. It contains an important chapter about their own party being just as sold out to the Banksters and Big Money as the Republicans — but also so feckless as to comprise, as Lofgren describes them, just half a political party. Your reading the book would be bad news for the Democrats.

The Republicans are happy the Democrats are making noise about this book; that way they can claim it is just a left wing screed. The Republicans especially don’t want you to read any bio of Lofgren (find one here) because that will explain that Lofgren is no lefty, and if you understand that, you might get interested to read what this conservative voice of conscience has to say. That would be bad news for the Republicans.

In short, no one who has standing in America’s current political system wants you to read this book.

That, of course, is why you should read this book.

It also will explain to you why the pundits who bask themselves in their own opinion on TV, the print media, and—in Maryland — with Robo calls are as useless as Anna Nicole Smith in a spelling bee to explain to you how our political system became so dysfunctional and why it refuses to change itself.

And, it — our current political system — will indeed refuse to change itself unless and until its lifeblood — money — is cut off. Lofgren suggests one way that can be done. The Democrats and Republicans will howl how un-American Lofgren’s proposal is. Indeed, if the way our national politics are running today is American, Lofgren is indeed very un-American.

Be un-American: read this book. It will help us all become Americans again.

(2)  An excerpt & other reviews about the book

(a)  An excerpt from the book: A Devil’s Dictionary, posted at Truth-Out

(b)  Other reviews:

(3)  About Mike Lofgren

Mike Lofgren retired in June 2011 after 28 years as a staff member in the U.S. Congress. From 2005 until his retirement, Lofgren was a professional staff member of the Senate Budget Committee. His primary focus was on national security budgets, but he also worked on such matters as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and the 2009 International Monetary Fund replenishment.

From 1995 through 2004, he was budget analyst for national security on the majority staff of the House Budget Committee. In 1994 he was a professional staff member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee. He began his legislative branch career as military legislative assistant to Rep. John R. Kasich in 1983.

He has a B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Akron. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study European history at the Universities of Bern and Basel in Switzerland and completed the strategy and policy curriculum at the Naval War College.

Since retirement, Lofgren has written about politics, budgets, and national security issues. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Monthly, Truthout, and Counterpunch. His essay on Congressional Republicans appearing in Truthout received over a million views. He has appeared on numerous radio and TV news interviews.

This biography is from the Huffington Post website.

(4)  About Winslow Wheeler

Winslow T. Wheeler is Director of the Straus Military Reform Project Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

(5)  About Mike S. Lofgren

Mike Lofgren retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Congressional staffer. He served 16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees. His book about Congress, The Party is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless, and the Middle Class Got Shafted, was published in paperback in 2013. His new book, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, will be published in January 2016.

(a)  Interviews with Mike Lofgren:

(b)  Articles by Mike Lofgren:

  1. “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult“, Truth-Out, 3 September 2011
  2. “Iraq Is Not a Model for Libya“, Truth-Out, 7 November 2011
  3. “Have the Super-Rich Seceded From the United States?“, Truth-Out, 10 January 2012
  4. “How the media enable the Republican tax agenda“, op-ed The Guardian, 18 January 2012
  5. “Iran: War Drums Beating“, Truth-Out, 7 February 2012
  6. “The Right-Wing Id Unzipped, Truth-Out, 14 February 2012
  7. “Iran and the Shape of Things to Come“, Truth-Out, 23 February 2012
  8. “Why Republicans Need Remedial Math: Their Budget Plans Explode the Deficit“, Truth-Out, 13 March 2012
  9. “GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party, Salon, 5 August 2012 — “A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts By Mike Lofgren”
  10. “Revolt of the Rich“, American Conservative, 27 August 2012 — “Our financial elites are the new secessionists.”
  11. “#GOPFuture: Tempt me back to the old GOP“, op-ed in USA Today, 28 August 2012

(6)  For More Information

For all posts about this see the FM Reference Page Politics in America – and the 2012 Campaign

About conservatives and the Republican Party:

  1. Republicans have found a sure-fire path to victory in the November elections, 5 February 2010
  2. Whose values do Dick and Liz Cheney share? Those of America? Or those of our enemies, in the past and today?, 14 March 2010
  3. The evolution of the Republican Party has shaped America during the past fifty years, 8 May 2010
  4. Two contrasting views of the Republican Party, 23 May 2010
  5. The Republicans are serious about the budget. The results could be ugly., 24 November 2010
  6. Why do Rep Ryan and the Republicans want to gut America’s military defenses?, 14 April 2011
  7. Why Conservatives are winning: they use the WMD of political debate, 28 April 2011
  8. Mitt Romney and the Empire of Hubris.  Setting America on a path to decline., 10 October 2011
  9. A modern conservative dresses up Mr. Potter to suit our libertarian fashions, 17 November 2011
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