Sunday Morning Book Thread 02-01-2015: Scoundrel Time [OregonMuse]

Rome – Angelica Library (Biblioteca Angelica)

(library photo stolen from the HuffPo who got it from this guy)

Good morning ~~morons and moronettes~~ citizen morons (I hope we all got ace's memo on this) and welcome to AoSHQ's stately, prestigious, and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread. The only AoSHQ thread that is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Or kilts. Kilts are OK, too. But not tutus. Unless you're a girl.

Book Quote

In a good book the best is between the lines.

-Swedish Proverb

The Counter Narrative

Using the influence of his magazine, National Review, William F. Buckley effectively excommunicated the John Birch Society from the conservative movement in America. The banishment was so thorough and so effective that the JBS has been more or less a fringe group ever since. The usual joke used to express contempt for the JBS, even among conservatives, is that the JBS was fond of finding a communist hiding under every bed in America.

But then a book like Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters - Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler comes out and then I wonder if perhaps the joke is on us.

From the review of Hollywood Traitors in the Washington Times:

At last. After more than a half-century there is now available a book that thoroughly discredits all the movie industry protestations that there were no Communists in filmmaking during and after World War II, when in fact there were hundreds.

Here is irrefutable evidence that they were very adept at using the screen to pound pro-Soviet propaganda into the heads of unsuspecting Americans in theaters coast-to-coast.

The more than 500 pages of "Hollywood Traitors; Blacklisted Screenwriters - Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler" expose in detail and with infinite documentation the pro-Soviet propaganda machine, including during the 22 months when Stalin and Hitler were allies.

This book is probably going to be very depressing to read when you discover the depths of betrayal and perfidy that went on during those years, and the extraordinarily successful efforts made by the communists to push their counter narrative of completely innocent, yet persecuted writers and directors. Lillian Hellman's book Scoundrel Time is perhaps the best known example of this.

I think they even teach this to school children nowadays.

Another interesting review of this book is here, starts out with this anecdote:

Once on a British talk show in the early 1970s, anticommunist actor John Wayne startled the host by acknowledging that there was indeed a Hollywood blacklist. Wayne's follow-up, however, made the host's jaw drop even farther; the blacklist, he stated, wasn't wielded by industry anticommunists against Communist Party members, but by the reverse. It was for this reason, Wayne stated, that he enlisted in the anticommunist fight in order to defend conservative screenwriters and get them back on the payroll.

Wayne, regarded by the Old and New Left, as a fascist, was in actuality more of a rebel against the establishment than they ever would be.

I am reminded of Diana West's monumental American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character which not only angered progressives who didn't like their commie roots brought out into the light, but also a number of ex-red-diaper-baby conservatives who grew up worshiping FDR and did not like their idol blasphemed with the truth. The furor over this book was so intense that West felt compelled to write a second volume, The Rebuttal: Defending 'American Betrayal' from the Book-Burners, to defend the first.

Incidentally, Diana West is also the author of The Death of the Grown-Up: How America's Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, which sounds interesting.

And the 'Booklist' review at the Amazon link is hilarious:

Writing in the Washington Times and elsewhere, West has proven to be a caustic critic of contemporary popular culture as well as a hawkish detractor of Islam. With this book, she fleshes out her archconservative worldview by arguing that today's popular culture is complicit in the threat posed to America by Islamic terrorists, and that the 1960s counterculture is to blame. In rejecting time-honored notions of adulthood (read: modesty, self-discipline, respect for authority) in favor of decadence and inclusiveness, she argues, the baby boomers inaugurated a culture of perpetual adolescence that erodes Western cultural identity. Channeling Samuel Huntington, West claims that this erosion of identity renders us incapable of countering potentially existing threats with adequate resolve and harshness. Although its first chapters weave together some anecdotal musings about the rise of youth culture, readers primarily interested in historical analysis might do better elsewhere. Readers seeking a sweeping polemic against the cultural Left, however, will enjoy this jeremiad's fiery indignance and playfully cutting prose.

You can just see the reviewer wrinkling his face with disgust, as if someone is holding a small turd under his nose. And I especially like his usage of "archconservative", a word typically used by old-school liberals, but not so much now. And sometimes a book is worth reading just because the right people hate it.

On her author's page at Amazon, West writes:

Shortly after I began researching and writing "American Betrayal" back in 2009, I began to feel as though I were forging a new genre, "investigative history." As I mined the discarded documents and memoirs and came across new (to me) historical figures and even heroes of the past, I realized I was engaging in an effort to reclaim what stands as a lost history -- our lost history.

There is more to find.

Of that, I have no doubt.

This brings up a point that others have made, but bears repeating: we're going to have to wait many decades, and maybe even centuries, before someone writes a reasonably accurate history of our times. It will be a long time before a history professor can publicly admit, without fear of losing his tenure or his employment, that, say, Alger Hiss was a communist spy or that the 1980s anti-nuclear "peace" movement was funded largely by the Soviet Union.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

This being Super Bowl Sunday and all, all of you ~~'rons and 'ettes~~ citizen morons are invited to chime in with your favorite football books. Here are a few famous ones to get you started:

First up, there's Paper Lion: Confessions of a Last-String Quarterback by George Plimpton, a bit of participatory journalism where joined the Detroit Lions at their preseason camp as a 36-year-old quarterback, and remained with the club through an intra-squad game before the paying public a month later, and the result is a behind-the-scenes look at professional football as it was played in the mid 1960s. I doubt if this could be done nowadays; the money involved and the seriousness of professional football is just too great for these amateur theatrics.

Then there's Semi-Tough, by sportswriter Dan Jenkins, a satirical novel that one Amazon reviewer says "...is incredibly politically incorrect, replete with satiric racial and sexist slurs, full of (as the song goes)cigarettes, whiskey and wild, wild women."

Next up, North Dallas Forty by Peter Gent, who played wide receiver for Dallas for 4 seasons, a novel chronicling 8 days in the life of aging player Phil Ellliot. Unlike the others, a Kindle edition is available, and it's only $1.99.

High school football is huge in Texas. I remember visiting Houston some years ago and going through the sports section of the local newspaper and being amazed at page after page after page of high school football scores. Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, And A Dream by H.G. Bissinger, is an account of one season in the life of teh Permian High School Panthers of Odessa, a small town in West Texas that boasts the winningest record in Texas high school history, and how the devotion to high school football shapes the town and the people in it. Destined to become a modern classic.

I must confess I haven't read any of these. But I have read Black Sunday, a political thriller (and debut novel) by Thomas 'Silence of the Lambs' Harris, which concerns a Palestinian terrorist plot to detonate a bomb at the Super Bowl stadium during the game. I remember the movie adaptation, with Bruce Dern and Robert Shaw, being pretty good.

So what have you all got?

Here There Be More Dragons

Apparently, there's going to be another Dragon Tattoo book:

A sequel to late Swedish author Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millennium crime trilogy will go on sale in at least 35 countries from August, the book's publishers said on Tuesday.

I've never heard of the author, David Lagercrantz, and, more frustratingly, the Guardian article doesn't say how he landed such a sweet writing gig.

How sweet? This sweet:

[T]he first three books in the Lisbeth Salander series have sold in the region of 80m copies worldwide since the first book.

So you know Lagercrantz will be raking in serious krona from a worldwide audience.

This sequel is going to be called That Which Does Not Kill.

The book will continue the story of the troubled but resourceful heroine Lisbeth Salander first made famous in Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

I think everybody could have guessed this.

And of course, there's this:

"What I wanted to make use of in the book was the vast mythology that Stieg Larsson left behind, the world he created," Lagercrantz told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, adding that he remained loyal to Larsson's writing style which weaved criticism of social and political issues with criminal intrigue.

I hope this doesn't mean that it's going to be a left wing sermon. Stieg Larsson was an out-and-out commie (not some weak-kneed liberal patsy), but he mostly reined it in when he was writing his Dragon Tattoo series, at least, I didn't notice it much. Don't know about this new guy, though.

What'll you bet there'll be a sympathetic Muslim character?

R. I. P.

Another famous author has passed:

Colleen McCullough, author of the bestselling novel "The Thorn Birds," died Thursday at age 77. She had suffered from ill health in recent years and died in a hospital on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific.

The publication of "The Thorn Birds" compelled her to quit her day job:

The novel, about a priest's affair with the wife of a rancher in Australia in the early part of the 20th century, raised McCullough's profile so much she felt she had to quit her research job. "There were threats, and all sorts of weirdos popping out," she told The Times in 1990.

But she wrote other novels, too:

McCullough often switched genres, writing a series of historical novels set in Rome, crime novels set in the 1960s in the U.S., and a science fiction novel titled "The Third Millennium." Her last book was 2013's "Bittersweet," about sisters in New South Wales in the 1920s.

Word Usage

This HuffPo piece that lists some words that are commonly misused is mildly interesting. I knew most of these, but here is one that caught me by surprise

Enormity: Most people think this word describes something huge or momentous. It makes sense -- enormity sounds a lot like enormous, after all -- but its primary definition is not bigness but badness. Merriam-Webster defines it as "a shocking, evil, or immoral act" or a "great evil or wickedness." However, the persistent misuse of the word has caused the definition to expand and shift over time.

That last sentence is a reminder that ultimately, words are not defined by the dictionary, but rather how people use them. Which is why it's painful to hear Joe Biden speak before veteran groups and refer to American KIAs as "fallen angels". I know what he's trying to say, but as Jonah Goldberg noted, doesn't he know that "fallen angels" are actually demons? That is, they're angels fallen from God's grace and hence have become evil. It was obviously not Biden's intent to call American servicemen demons, but that's what he kind of did.

I just hope his usage doesn't catch on.

Moron Recommendations

I received a recommendation in e-mail earlier this week for the mystery novel Woman With A Gun by Philip Margolin. I really can't shorten this Amazon blurb very much

Visiting an art museum displaying a retrospective of acclaimed photographer Kathy Moran's work, aspiring novelist Stacey Kim is stunned by the photo at the center of the show - the famous "Woman with a Gun," which won a Pulitzer Prize and launched the photographer's career...

The image captures Stacey's imagination, raising a host of compelling questions. Has the woman killed her husband...? Is she going to commit suicide? Is she waiting for someone she plans to kill? Obsessed with finding answers, Stacey discovers that the woman in the photograph is Megan Cahill, suspected of killing her husband...But the murder was never solved.

...Stacey finds that everyone involved has a different opinion of Megan's culpability. But the one person who may know the whole story - Kathy Moran -isn't talking. Stacey must find a way to get to the reclusive photographer or the truth may never see the light of day.

___________

So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.

What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:01 AM

Comments

(Jump to bottom of comments)

1 I could spend some time in there. Meanwhile still working on a re-read of the WOT. I am on book 4 now.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 08:54 AM (wlDny)

2 Currently reading The Men Who Lost America by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy.

I'm very much enjoying it. A series of individual portraits of the civil and military British commanders during the American War for Independence. I've been most interested in John Burgoyne and Lord Cornwallis, the two most interesting figures in my opinion.

http://amzn.to/168fY1I

Posted by: David at February 01, 2015 08:56 AM (GkcHG)

3 (never even heard of this book)

Laura Ingalls Wilder Autobiography 'Pioneer Girl' Tops Amazon Bestsellers

The annotated autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a scholarly work put out by the South Dakota Historical Society Press, was the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon Friday morning.

That's right. Ahead of "American Sniper" and the hit thriller "The Girl on the Train."

So many orders have poured in for "Pioneer Girl: the Annotated Autobiography" that customers have been waiting for their copies for weeks--and won't receive them for another month at least.

"Oh man---I'm speechless," said Nancy Tystad Koupal, director of the tiny press. "It just doesn't seem real."

This never-before-published autobiography, released last fall, tells the true, gritty stories behind the beloved "Little House on the Prairie" series. It includes far darker scenes than Wilder later depicted in her fictional children's books, including a disturbing encounter with a drunken man who intended to molest her. The book also includes more than 800 annotations by Wilder biographer Pamela Smith Hill, who researched every single name, place and date Wilder mentions.

wsj

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 08:57 AM (IXrOn)

4

Songwriter, Poet Rod McKuen also Died, At 81yrs old.

He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. wiki

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 09:01 AM (IXrOn)

5 Here There Be More Dragons

Yeah...I kind of liked the first one and progressively hated the other two.

The best review I saw of the third one was actually a blurb of a review on the Swedish movie that said (paraphrasing), "It shouldn't have been called "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest", it should have been called, "The Girl who Sits Quietly in Dimly Lit Rooms".

Posted by: David at February 01, 2015 09:01 AM (GkcHG)

6 Swedes can't do proverbs for shit.

Posted by: Mr. Dave at February 01, 2015 09:01 AM (pMuvd)

7 The only thing the anti-communists got wrong was they underestimated the degree to which the communists infested Whoreywood. Read Ann Coulter's assessment of the communists in Hollywood.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 09:02 AM (wlDny)

8 Spent time last night at Barnes and Noble supporting local authors and chatting. Bought two books off table and then later that night got an email from B+N saying 'last chance 15% off coupon.' Gee thanks.

I was thoroughly gobsmacked at the ignorance of one 'adult' in regards to WWII. Thinking it was chemical weapons we dropped on Japan, but it turns out they really had no grasp of history at all. *thud*

On the positive side, got positive feedback for several of my fiction story ideas. Now just need to you know that pesky thing write. Also got positive feedback on non-fiction idea. So hey overall it was good.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 09:02 AM (M5cQi)

9 more on McKuen from
http://www.catholic.org/news/ae/celebrity/story.php?id=58634

His name raises ire among all so-called serious practitioners of "serious literature." Talk show host Dick Cavett once declared Rod McKuen as "the world's most understood poet." From his most famous poem, "Listen to the Warm:" "You have to make the good times yourself, take the little times and make them into big times, and save the times that are all right, for the ones that aren't so good."

amen

Overall, McKuen was guilty of writing poetry that people read. He certainly did not lack in popular acclaim. He was nominated for an Oscar for the song "Jean" in the 1969 film "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie." He wrote songs performed by Frank Sinatra, Madonna and Dolly Parton and was one of the best-selling poets in history.

Described as sentimental, earnest and unashamed, he tuned into an unspoken spiritual need among those who didn't like traditional poetry. He provided salve for the world battered by war, assassinations and riots of the time.

"I think it's a reaction people are having against so much insanity in the world," he once said. "I mean, people are really all we've got. You know it sounds kind of corny, and I suppose it's a cliche, but it's really true; that's just the way it is."

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 09:07 AM (IXrOn)

11 No fooling, Anna. An amazing % of highly skilled people have ZERO historical knowledge.... Or economics, or math or physics or farming....

Posted by: Mr. Dave at February 01, 2015 09:08 AM (pMuvd)

12 I'm sad to hear about Colleen McCullough's death. I really enjoyed First Man in Rome. I lost my copy and need to replace it and then read the rest of the series.

Posted by: J. Random Dude at February 01, 2015 09:08 AM (8OfdL)

13 I could spend some time in there. Meanwhile still working on a re-read of the WOT. I am on book 4 now.
Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 08:54 AM (wlDny)

you get to the point where it's depressing knowing you won't be able to read all the books you want to in your lifetime

I used to carry a list in my purse. The must reads. I have no idea where that list is anymore...

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 09:10 AM (IXrOn)

14 I got nothin'.

In line with the opening of the post, Robert Spencer has a piece over on PJMedia about a California High School 'Hijab day' which cause me to shout bad words out loud in anger.

Stumbling around the 'net led to a youtube video about a Lockheed Martin aerial photographer who gets to take pictures of aircraft in flight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Nvd_eWg7nk

It is difficult to not be envious.

Meanwhile, in real life, the weather sucks, the roads are [more bad words], I'm outa food except for freeze dried potato slices and something called 'powered cheese sauce'.

It's not that I can not drive under these conditions, rather I use that as an excuse to no leave the house.

I don't know what the answers are, but I'm beginning to suspect these current conditions inside the US, politically speaking, can't go on much longer. Something is going to break.

Posted by: Skandia Recluse at February 01, 2015 09:13 AM (83S+7)

15 I had a professor back during undergrad days who obsessed over Lillian Hellman, thought she was the greatest thing since mayonnaise. I on the other hand, always thought Hellman seemed like a tedious navel-gazing drone. YMMV.

Posted by: Muldoon, a solid man at February 01, 2015 09:13 AM (NeFrd)

16 We've just received "Pioneer Girl" too, but my husband has it and I haven't been able to get my hands on it yet.

Right now I'm reading "La Vida Cotidiana en Espana Bajo el Regimen de Franco" (yes, I know there should be a tilde in "Espana," but my keyboard doesn't do tildes) - it's "Daily Life in Spain during the Franco Years," written in 1985 by Rafael Abella (1917-200

. He was a soldier in Franco's army during the war, was a chemist by profession, and later in life wrote books about Spain during his lifetime.

I don't think he's ever been translated into English, and I think I might just take on the job myself. He comes across as deeply humane and thoughtful - there are no angels or monsters here; the good and bad on both sides is displayed dispassionately. And there are some pretty funny stories.
After Franco won in 1939 and became dictator, it became the custom in theater and movie houses to end shows with regime-approved patriotic song:

"The audience had to listen to these songs while standing, and with the arm held out at a 45-degree angle...these songs were obligatory when the effigy of Franco was brought out, set on its feet and with its arm extended ..."

The image of a life-sized Franco doll with an articulated right arm is ... unforgettable.

Posted by: Annalucia at February 01, 2015 09:14 AM (a5bF3)

17 "An experiment in literary investigation" is what Solzhenitsyn called the "Gulag Archipelago" . Sort of sounds similar to "Investigative history".

Posted by: deepred at February 01, 2015 09:16 AM (xv5cf)

18 What a beautiful old library.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at February 01, 2015 09:17 AM (DmNpO)

19 >>>The image of a life-sized Franco doll with an articulated right arm is ... unforgettable.

"Shit. To zee lumberyard!"

Posted by: Mr. Dave at February 01, 2015 09:18 AM (pMuvd)

20 I picked up the Library of America edition of the novels of Dashiell Hammett and went right to "The Thin Man". It's a breezy read at under 200 pages, achieved by utterly omitting description of settings. You know the characters are in a bar or a hotel room pretty much by the dialogue - what the bar or hotel room look like is totally up to you.

It's a fun read because it's in the first person, so you've always got William Powell talking to you.

BTW, the Library of America series is the best book deal going. And I've got an Amazon Visa card and a Discover card, both of which link their cashback to Amazon, so when I accumulate more than $35 in cashback, I order a couple of volumes.

Posted by: Taro Tsujimoto at February 01, 2015 09:19 AM (4ckfx)

21 Or economics, or math or physics or farming....)))

I learned some of all of those disciplines in my mothers and her friends gardens.

Posted by: Redshirt at February 01, 2015 09:19 AM (Ae09I)

22 13
I could spend some time in there. Meanwhile still working on a re-read of the WOT. I am on book 4 now.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 08:54 AM (wlDny)

you get to the point where it's depressing knowing you won't be able to read all the books you want to in your lifetime

I used to carry a list in my purse. The must reads. I have no idea where that list is anymore...

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 09:10 AM (IXrOn)

Last year when the final book of WOT came out I found that I had to re-read the series as well - I just couldn't remember enough to get much out of it.I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to read Sanderson's latest 10 book series.

Posted by: Tunafish at February 01, 2015 09:19 AM (Pbw9k)

23 Was that really Franco or Inspector Kemp?

http://youtu.be/Mb8JzsMc26o

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 09:20 AM (M5cQi)

24 I've read "American Betrayal" and I highly recommend it.

Many people don't realize that the House Un-American Activities Committee started in the 1930s, not the 1950s. Another takeaway from the book is that Harry Hopkins was basically the Valerie Jarrett of the Roosevelt administration--an unelected "aide" who wielded enormous power and influence, and who may have been working for the enemy. Except that the Soviets were our allies at the time. Yeah, right.

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 09:20 AM (sdi6R)

25 YAY BOOK THREAD!

It's Post-Nicene Christology week for my kiddos this coming week, so this past week I read Athanasius' De Incarnatione (On the Incarnation), Augustine's De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine), and Gregory Nazianzen's Theological Orations. With Life of St. Antony thrown in for good measure.

I'm glad they have a test next week....

All good stuff, but rather heavy sledding to do all in one week!

Posted by: Elisabeth G. Wolfe at February 01, 2015 09:24 AM (iuQS7)

26 I think the real problem with the person I was talking history with lies not in themselves really, but the delivery of the information. They were genuinely interested in learning but admitted what they learned in school made no sense.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 09:25 AM (M5cQi)

27 Instead of reading a book this week, I did something I haven't done in a long time: I read a couple of science fiction magazines. Specifically the Feb issues of Analog and Asimov's.

The Analog issue was disappointing. None of the stories were particularly novel, and ALL of them were about 25% too long for their central ideas. Ruthless editing would make them all much better.

The Asimov's was a mixed bag. Some of the stories were kind of predictable, including a stupidly heavy-handed allegory about gun ownership by Michael Bishop. But there's also a wonderful story by a first-time author from Poland -- it's a Cold War spy story set in a world where Lamarckian biology works (so traits acquired by the parents can be passed on to their offspring). The Soviets are making use of this in their usual horrible callous way, the British have a huge advantage because their class system means aristocrats really are tougher and smarter than anybody else, and the poor Americans are lagging behind because of their attachment to the outmoded Darwinian idea of competition.

Still, one hit out of two whole magazines of misses and near-misses is not impressive. No wonder science fiction's in trouble.

Writing Morons: if you've got any halfway-decent ideas and can execute them competently, submit stories to the magazines! They pay 6-10 cents a word and obviously are in need of talent!

Posted by: Trimegistus at February 01, 2015 09:25 AM (/eOcU)

28 24 Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 09:20 AM (sdi6R)

Both the FDR admin and his successor Truman were deeply infested with communist spies. Hell, the Russians had the plans for the atomic bomb before our own scientists had them.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 09:25 AM (wlDny)

29 From Yesterday...

http://tinyurl.com/omtyjz5

Fire at Moscow Library Damages Rare Texts

Posted by: Chi-Town Jerry at February 01, 2015 09:28 AM (/9Mak)

30 Last year when the final book of WOT came out I found that I had to re-read the series as well - I just couldn't remember enough to get much out of it.I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to read Sanderson's latest 10 book series.
Posted by: Tunafish at February 01, 2015 09:19 AM (Pbw9k)

you re-read Wheel of Time?
Wow. You must be a fast reader.

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 09:28 AM (IXrOn)

31 I'm glad they have a test next week.... All good stuff, but rather heavy sledding to do all in one week!
Posted by: Elisabeth
------------------

Gadzooks! I should say so.

* ponders the meager bit of '41' consumed this week *

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at February 01, 2015 09:29 AM (eeTCA)

32 "Swedes can't do proverbs for shit."
--Old Swedish proverb. Or was it Norwegian? I get them mixed up.

First mention of a H'wood blacklist against conservatives involved Adophe Menjou. The famous line "You'll never work in this town again" was directed at him, by a large-C Communist union boss.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at February 01, 2015 09:30 AM (xq1UY)

33 Trimegistus - Thanks..

I've been wondering how the new sci-fi was doing.. I don't think I ever missed an issue of Analog in the 70's.

Posted by: Chi-Town Jerry at February 01, 2015 09:31 AM (/9Mak)

34 Re-reading a trio of favorites as research for the next book I'm writing. "Slan" by A.E. Van Vogt, "Starfire" by Ingo Swann, and "Dorsai' by Gordon Dickson. Done with two out of three. Dickson's will hold up the best over time, I think.

Have my first non-fiction out on pre-order - "Surviving Your Home Inspection: The Seller's Essential Guide." Not that any of the morons need such advice, but if the hoi polloi, but it and use it, my day job gets a heck of lot easier.

Just added "American Betrayal" to my list of to-be-reads. Sounds like the kind of book to read, and then, drowned with whiskey with friends. Is it just me, or are progressives like hydras?

Posted by: Long Running Fool at February 01, 2015 09:31 AM (/A5gb)

35 Rod McKuen -- the velveeta of poets.

Posted by: Dr. Varno at February 01, 2015 09:32 AM (fIv/H)

36 I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to read Sanderson's latest 10 book series.
Posted by: Tunafish at February 01, 2015 09:19 AM (Pbw9k)

my husband has read all of these, he said he'll move them to my kindle from his...

/sigh

too much to read...

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 09:32 AM (IXrOn)

37 I am determined to leave the television off and step away from the laptop long enough to get through at least part of Attkisson's book today.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at February 01, 2015 09:32 AM (DmNpO)

38 you re-read Wheel of Time?

Wow. You must be a fast reader.

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 09:28 AM (IXrOn)

It took 4 months!

Posted by: Tunafish at February 01, 2015 09:33 AM (Pbw9k)

39 Given my current state of mind, that Commentary piece doesn't read well for Buckley.

The John Birch Society reached the proper conclusion for all the wrong reasons. And so, we throw away the conclusion. Everything follows from that. For example, internet trolls.

I don't know anymore. It looks like we conservatives are outnumbered or shouted down by a small, very loud minority, while the muddled middle remains silent trying to avoid the argument.

Another example, #BlackLivesMatter move into a restaurant and eat your lunch because you are too cowed to fight back.

Posted by: Skandia Recluse at February 01, 2015 09:33 AM (83S+7)

40 I met George Plimpton once, He gave a talk at the local community college and I helped set up the lights, mics, and projector screen (he had slides). After the show was over he hung around while we broke everything down. He asked us if we had any questions and told a couple of MPPPP style Hollywood scandal stories and basically shot the shit with us for about half an hour. Oh, and he gave us beer money. Nice guy.

Posted by: the guy that moves pianos for a living... at February 01, 2015 09:36 AM (M6Vhk)

41 That was supposed to be a period after once.

Posted by: the guy that moves pianos for a living... at February 01, 2015 09:38 AM (M6Vhk)

42 Y'all should read this obit. Probably the best one I ever read.
http://tinyurl.com/lsetaxg

Posted by: Sambo at February 01, 2015 09:38 AM (Y1Jhk)

43 Somebody (mayhap Torquewrench?) mentioned Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" so I decided to dust off my crumbly but gorgeous 1843 version and dive in. By chance I hit this passage:

"The introduction of barbarians into the Roman armies became every day more universal, more necessary, and more fatal. The most daring of the Scythians, of the Goths, and of the Germans, who delighted in war, and who found it more profitable to defend than to ravage the provinces, were enrolled, not only in the auxiliaries of their respective nations, but in the legions themselves, and among the most distinguished of the Palatine troops. As they freely mingled with the subjects of the empire, they gradually learned to despise their manners, and to imitate their arts. They abjured the implicit reverence which the pride of Rome had extracted from their ignorance, while they acquired the knowledge and possession of those advantages by which alone she supported her declining greatness."

Hmmmm... enjoying the fruits of a civilization but not understanding the civil and moral foundation that made it possible.

Sustainability!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at February 01, 2015 09:39 AM (KH1sk)

44 "An experiment in literary investigation" is what Solzhenitsyn called the "Gulag Archipelago" . Sort of sounds similar to "Investigative history".

This is an excellent point, thank you for bringing it up.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 09:40 AM (SNhR+)

45 Analog :
I have a rejection slip from them, he said proudly. But I'm a bad write, probably psycho, who posts selfies.

Asimov, I can't figure out their submission requirements. Apparently they want a printed manuscript mailed to them.

Posted by: Skandia Recluse at February 01, 2015 09:41 AM (83S+7)

46 Somebody (mayhap Torquewrench?) mentioned Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"

Captain Hate was working his way through Gibbons, and he was posting progress reports on the book thread every week,but I haven't seen him on this blog for quite some time.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 09:43 AM (SNhR+)

47 All Hail Eris, FSA or Islam. Partaking of the fruits of Western excellence but not bestirring themselves to learn how such came about or how to continue it.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 09:45 AM (M5cQi)

48 @16 Thanks Annalucia, and may your project bring you glory.

I have it on pretty good authority that Generalissimo Franco is still dead. Nevertheless there are murmurings of a resuscitation of his reputation, such as it was. For a Fascist, he showed a surprising ability to re-invent himself, and probably left Spain in better shape than he took it, which (1)may not be saying much and (2)may not have taken much. That, and the Pegaso Z-102, is all I have to say good about him.

Here, link to recent WSJ review of a new biography (may be pay-walled, but should give the book title and innocent-looking portrait just the same)
http://tinyurl.com/k8veajg

Posted by: Stringer Davis at February 01, 2015 09:46 AM (xq1UY)

49 I finished the latest reading of "The Abolition of Man". So much food for thought in so few words. I can be, sometimes, an effective writer but Lewis is a master. How I wish I had discovered it when I was younger.

I started "Out of the Silent Planet", the first of CS Lewis' sci-fi trilogy. I had read it circa 1971 and sorta enjoyed the books but picked them up most likely because it was sci-fi/fantasy by a contemporary of Tolkien. I knew nothing else about Lewis at the time. Many decades later I find layers of meaning that eluded my late teenage, and almost atheistic, self. The introspection alone makes the reading worthwhile.

Posted by: JTB at February 01, 2015 09:47 AM (FvdPb)

50 (Sigh.)
So many books, so little time. And so much crap to wade through to find them.

Posted by: LCMS Rulz! at February 01, 2015 09:48 AM (TqyFL)

51 I tried to work my way through Gibbons once. I stopped after a few chapters when he started blaming the "fall of Rome" on Christians.

In actuality Rome did not fall as has been said so often. It fragmented into individual areas which later became the countries of the middle ages.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 09:49 AM (wlDny)

52 Y'all should read this obit. Probably the best one I ever read.
http://tinyurl.com/lsetaxg
Posted by: Sambo
------------------------------

A man with a truly well-lived life.

Thanks, Sambo, and a sharp salute for Col. McIntosh.

Posted by: Mike Hammer, etc., etc. at February 01, 2015 09:49 AM (eeTCA)

53 And speaking of barbarians, for fun I'm reading the always entertaining William Gurstelle's "Defending Your Castle: build Catapults, Crossbows, Moats, Bulletproof Shields, and More Defensive Devices to Fend Off the Invading Hordes* (*Mongols, Huns, Tatars, Macedonians, Crusaders, and Vikings)"

I like that he always tells his readers "The instructions and information are provided without any promise or guarantee of safety. All projects and experiments are performed at your own risk! If you don't agree with this, then put this book down -- it's not for you."

Posted by: All Hail Eris at February 01, 2015 09:49 AM (KH1sk)

54 Another thing about "American Betrayal" is that Diana West started out investigating Muslim infiltration of our government in the present day, and ended up writing a book about Communist infiltration decades ago. The point being that it is happening again, this time with Islam.

The blog Gates of Vienna has a whole series of posts about the book and the reaction to it. Ms. West frequently appears in the comments, too.

http://gatesofvienna.net/topical/diana-west/

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 09:51 AM (sdi6R)

55 And speaking of barbarians, for fun I'm reading the always entertaining William Gurstelle's "Defending Your Castle: build Catapults, Crossbows, Moats, Bulletproof Shields, and More Defensive Devices to Fend Off the Invading Hordes* (*Mongols, Huns, Tatars, Macedonians, Crusaders, and Vikings)"

Don't forget the zombies.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 09:52 AM (SNhR+)

56 But what about the Angels? Or the Visigoths?

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 09:54 AM (M5cQi)

57 Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 09:45 AM (M5cQi)
---
Exactly what I was thinking. And of our special snowflakes who believe in magical thinking.

Beloved Comrade Stalin, send us candies from the sky!

Posted by: All Hail Eris at February 01, 2015 09:55 AM (KH1sk)

58 Morning' everyone! I was in a reading mood this week and read two good books! Mail for Mikey, by Orson Bean was excellent. A short book and a vehicle he uses to impart some of his humorous stories, progression with AA and getting religion. He is subtle. I was fascinated by the way he wrote it and how delicately he touched on what he wanted to say without being preachy or boastful. I highly recommend.

Second, I read Tony Howitz's latest ( an author I like) Midnight Rising, on John Brown in bloody Kansas and the subsequent failed attack on Harpers Ferry. I had not read on that attack before and the author lays down a descent argument that the whole affair, though failed, greatly precipitated the war that would shortly follow. I also recommend that one!

Posted by: Yip at February 01, 2015 09:55 AM (84SRe)

59 "So what have you all got?"

"Track Planning for Realistic Operation" by John Armstrong, the same guy who designed the Timesaver switching puzzle that so many people put on their layouts for some reason or another.

Posted by: GGE of the Moron Horde, NC Chapter at February 01, 2015 09:55 AM (6fyGz)

60 I believe Obama has destroyed the techniques that have been used so successfully by Communist and Socialist. At a terrible cost. But Hillary, McCain, et al would have continued marginalizing real leaders and continued the US down the road to hell. Remember all the attitudes of the people who experienced the 1930's depression and following world war. Tough assholes when you tried to get their money. The people 17 to 25 in 2015 are going to make that group look like teddy bears.

Posted by: Huggy at February 01, 2015 09:55 AM (PGh+Q)

61
Read a couple celebrity bios last week, cause why not?

The better of the two was You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman Hardcover by Mike Thomas.

Most in depth on his pre-SNL and post-News Radio years. Hartman's time as a surf bum/commercial artist/Groundling is well covered, as is the fragmentation of his later life with his wife/killer Brynn.

Pro-tip: buying your crazy wife a gun might not be the best idea, and if a distraught friend tells you in the middle of the night that "I shot Phil!" and waves that gun around, then you probably should take her at her word and call the cops.

Not bad, if you find those portions of his life of interest.

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 01, 2015 09:56 AM (kdS6q)

62 Comrade Stalin, the god of the Cargo Cult?

From MiG Pilot. Cynical adult to young Victor Belenko true believer. "Go milk the radio."

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 09:57 AM (M5cQi)

63 Most of the way through Sharyl Attkisson's "Stonewalled." I hesitated to start on it because I was almost convinced she was a nut case but in reading the book, it appears her suspicions were valid. There's just too much about her story that rings true. I almost quit reading in disgust after finishing the Benghazi chapter, but the following chapter on domestic spying was equally infuriating. Her narrative is far more interesting than I expected.

Posted by: wisenheimer at February 01, 2015 09:57 AM (qnhj2)

64 /sigh

It's kind of a love hate relationship I have with books these days.

I love to read but I hate that I have so little time to do so.
Speaking thereof, "American Betrayal" is now in the rotation.

Posted by: Gmac- Pulling in feelers in preperation... at February 01, 2015 09:58 AM (baiNQ)

65 ...and the extraordinarily successful efforts made by the communists to push their counter narrative of completely innocent, yet persecuted writers and directors.

My son's high school class has been reading The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials.

This week he mentioned that his homework is to write an essay about the many similarities between The Crucible and the Red Scare post-WWII.

Can we start with the dis-similarities first? Like, they really did identify real communists who were really traitors who sold real nuclear secrets to the real Soviet Union, who really did want to kill Americans?

Posted by: chipotle at February 01, 2015 09:59 AM (/pxOE)

66 Oh, I also read the book, Ghost Boy, about that young man that regained brain function after falling victim to illness, and was trapped in an unresponsive body for 12 years until finally a care worker convinced his folks that he could understand her and was trying to communicate. I was impressed how well this book was written and flowed.

Posted by: Yip at February 01, 2015 10:00 AM (84SRe)

67 Comment on 58: Ferguson = Harpers Ferry?

Posted by: Huggy at February 01, 2015 10:00 AM (PGh+Q)

68 "I have it on pretty good authority that
Generalissimo Franco is still dead. Nevertheless there are murmurings of
a resuscitation of his reputation, such as it was. For a Fascist, he
showed a surprising ability to re-invent himself, and probably left
Spain in better shape than he took it, which (1)may not be saying much
and (2)may not have taken much. That, and the Pegaso Z-102, is all I
have to say good about him.

...

Posted by: Stringer Davis at February 01, 2015 09:46 AM (xq1UY)"

Franco undoubtedly left Spain in better shape than he took it. The government he overthrew was run by Communists. In 1936 they killed more people than the Spanish Inquisition did during its 400 years of existence. Hell, they killed more priests, monks and nuns than the body count of the Inquisition. While George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" is a worthwhile read, he does pass over this point with a brief dismissal.

When Franco was asked on his death bed what legacy he left Spain, his response is reported to have been, "a middle class".

The one most glaring criticism that can be made of Franco is that he was not ruthless enough with the leftists. Many of them fled Spain for South America where they did mischief for the rest of their lives and caused problems that Latin America is still coping with today.

Posted by: Obnoxious A-Hole at February 01, 2015 10:04 AM (KDbAT)

69 Book rec: Terms of Enlistment by Mark Kloos.

It is a military scifi novel set in a not too distant future where Earth is a crowded, slum-infested mess and the truth about what is happenning out in the Galaxy among Earth's hundreds of colony worlds may be very different than what folks on Earth have been told.

Posted by: eman at February 01, 2015 10:04 AM (MQEz6)

70 I read about half of "Heiroglyph - Stories and Visions of a Better Future" on an Instapundit recommendation, even though I saw one recognizable SJW author in the group (Cory Doctorow). However, it was led by Neal Stephenson so I thought I would give it a try. The idea was that we needed optimistic science fiction to help advance society, which was why Insty recommended it.

Unfortunately, publishing is dominated by lefties and lefties just can't do optimism.

For example, the short story by Madeline Ashby expresses optimism this way - a young Mexican couple immigrates to the US the only way possible, by joining a corporate security-state work compound. Unfortunately her IUD fails and they have to smuggle in an abortifactant.

What a bright and glorious future the SJWs imagine for us plebes.

Posted by: motinoview at February 01, 2015 10:08 AM (h81ez)

71 @49 JTB.. Re: Lewis , Out of the Silent Planet; I put that down and need to pick it back up again. I bought the trilogy and intended to read it all. I was impressed with it, but you know how some times you're trying to read something on a timetable and the book is written in a different gear than you've got time for? I was trying to read them quickly and it was clear to me, that in my haste I was missing stuff and so, ..... I need to try again and take my time!

Posted by: Yip at February 01, 2015 10:08 AM (84SRe)

72 Capt. Hate left over the EoJ kerfluffal.

Posted by: Mr. Dave at February 01, 2015 10:09 AM (pMuvd)

73 Ah, good, the book thread! I've been waiting all week for this, because I need some moron help.

I want to buy an e-reader for my husband for his birthday next month, and I don't know much about them. We're both great readers of "real" books, but I'm finding that cost is becoming prohibitive, even with used books, because they have to be shipped. And even worse, we just don't have room for all the books we want to read. I've also discovered there's a trend for publishing books ONLY in digital format: I got up to volume 6 of Ashok Banker's Ramayan series, then found that volumes 7 and 8 were only available for e-reader. (I'm interested in getting one for myself, too.)

So, what do people think is the best one to get? It looks as if Kindle has the largest selection of compatible books available, or are there e-readers that will read ANY digitalized book out there?

There's also the question of which model to pick. My husband will be 61, and his eyesight isn't that great, so I want something with clear, well-lit print. Wireless connection isn't that important; I expect most books will be bought on a PC, then transferred to the reader. He's extremely non-technical. I build computers; he can't figure out how to change the channel on a TV using a universal remote. So it's got to be easy to use. He also doesn't like touchscreens that much - he says it's because he has stubby fingers, but I think he just doesn't know where anything is on a touchscreen. So he probably won't be doing much typing on it.

Oh, and one other thing: there are some books that we both want to read. If we both have e-readers, do we have to each buy a copy of a book, or can one purchase be shared on two readers?

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:09 AM (VBbCO)

74 Another book this week was "Home to Harmony" by Philip Gulley. The author is a Quaker minister in a small Indiana town who writes about the quirky people and situations that arise there. Not so much a novel as a series of vignettes with recurring characters. The pieces are funny, revealing and poignant and usually end with a lesson or reference from the Bible. It isn't preachy, more philosophical and is simply pleasant reading. And sometimes pleasant is enough.

Posted by: JTB at February 01, 2015 10:10 AM (FvdPb)

75 g'mornin', 'rons

Posted by: AltonJackson at February 01, 2015 10:10 AM (4gN5w)

76
OTOH, Lady Parts by SCTV alumnus* Andrea Martin was a hot mess. A collection of Hollywood knob polishing "I love everyone because they're the greatest" live journal entries, in chaotically random order.

And Andrea, who was quite talented on SCTV, has done a fair amount of creepy things in her personal life: kind of a slut, knowingly married a bi-sexual illegal immigrant to get him a green card and "convert him", dating a guy in his 20s when she was in her post-menopausal 50s, engaging a series of astrologers, handwriting analysts, hydro colonic poop swamis and other tinsel town frauds, and so on.

Disappointing to find our she's, on a personal level, just another self-obsessed silly celeb. Oh well, hope I can just un-remember that while enjoying the re-runs of SCTV.

*and Quark's Moogie

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 01, 2015 10:12 AM (kdS6q)

77 The problem with trying to rehabilitate the JSB is that it doesn't just involve looking at Hollywood or people like Alger Hiss. It involves looking at the full extent of what the JSB claimed was going on.

According to Birch, Eisenhower was a communist stooge. The Birches were also responsible for the fluoridation scare. So, sorry, they were still wackos.

Posted by: AD at February 01, 2015 10:12 AM (e596n)

78 Semi-Tough the movie doesn't really follow the book. They added the Bert Convy part. If they had done the book it would have been NC17. I think the movie is better than the book.

Posted by: Huggy at February 01, 2015 10:13 AM (PGh+Q)

79 Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:09 AM (VBbCO)

If you have tablets, just download a free reader app, such as the Kindle app.

You don't need to buy a dedicated e-reader.

Posted by: eman at February 01, 2015 10:13 AM (MQEz6)

80 I second the endorsement of Terms of Enlistment.
Looking up the ID number I see that as the book's popularity has risen, so has the price.

Depending on your financial circumstances, $4 is still reasonable for a popular work.

http://astore.amazon.com/aoshq-20/detail/B00CIXX144

Posted by: Skandia Recluse at February 01, 2015 10:14 AM (83S+7)

81 Does this mean we are going to argue about who is a natural born moron, a naturalized moron, and whether the correct phrase is illegal moron or undocumented moron?

I think (yes, I know, it hurts...) we may be in for trouble.

Posted by: Mikey NTH - Fight Despair, Stay Angry! at the Outrage Outlet at February 01, 2015 10:14 AM (g+akU)

82 @68 Good'un. I was about to make a Woody Guthrie/Pete Seeger joke, so I looked up the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Did you know, there are [only] four memorials to the bold Americans who fought for peace and justice?

They are located at:
Seattle campus UW
Madison
The Embarcadero, San Francisco
CCNY.

South American isn't the only place suffering from Franco's oversights.
OK, so it made a skeptic out of Orwell, so we have that.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at February 01, 2015 10:15 AM (xq1UY)

83 The one most glaring criticism that can be made of Franco is that he was not ruthless enough with the leftists. Many of them fled Spain for South America where they did mischief for the rest of their lives and caused problems that Latin America is still coping with today.

Commies are like cockroaches. There's just no end to them, You never can stomp on them fast enough or hard enough to eradicate them all.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 10:17 AM (SNhR+)

84 "61

Read a couple celebrity bios last week, cause why not?

The better of the two was You Might Remember Me: The Life and Times of Phil Hartman Hardcover by Mike Thomas.

Most
in depth on his pre-SNL and post-News Radio years. Hartman's time as a
surf bum/commercial artist/Groundling is well covered, as is the
fragmentation of his later life with his wife/killer Brynn.

Pro-tip:
buying your crazy wife a gun might not be the best idea, and if a
distraught friend tells you in the middle of the night that "I shot
Phil!" and waves that gun around, then you probably should take her at
her word and call the cops.

Not bad, if you find those portions of his life of interest.

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 01, 2015 09:56 AM (kdS6q)"

When I post on this board that the most important characteristic to look for in a woman is Not Crazy, the typical reaction I get is that is silly because all women are crazy. That is not true. Women are different and while they have different emotions and often think differently than men, that is not the same thing as crazy.

Growing up I never encountered crazy people. It never occurred to me that was something to look out for. Well, as Benjamin Franklin said, experience is an expensive school but fools will not learn anywhere else.

When I think about my late wife, I sometimes think that I am lucky that she did not kill herself, me or my children. When I saw the movie, "Shutter Island", that was a much more horrifying story than any zombie or vampire tale.

Posted by: Obnoxious A-Hole at February 01, 2015 10:17 AM (KDbAT)

85 eman - We don't have tablets, only PCs. Because my kids are autistic, portable computers aren't a very good idea - they'd likely end up being thrown over the fence. We try to keep everything as big and solid as possible - it's more durable. But the e-reader is so he can read in bed, or on the bus when going to work.

I did download the free Kindle app for my PC, and downloaded a few free samples just to see what it was like. VERY impressed with the dictionaries (I translate and make fansubs), and the cost for a printed book would be astronomical.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:18 AM (VBbCO)

86 I love good historical fiction, and the "First Man in Rome" series is on my short list of great historical fiction.

One of the things it illustrated was the secrets of Rome's success. A political system that allowed "great men" to exist together (mostly), an army composed of highly trained and motivated middle class soldiers who could far outpunch their contemporary rivals (when well lead), and the staggering corruption and incompetence of their "civilized" competitors.

Facinating character throughout.

Posted by: Smashmaster at February 01, 2015 10:18 AM (kTUi+)

87 Latest read: "The Anglo-Saxon World." It's pretty scholarly and a bit of a slow go.

Posted by: Mikey NTH - Fight Despair, Stay Angry! at the Outrage Outlet at February 01, 2015 10:19 AM (g+akU)

88 For a reader, I bought a cheap android 10" tablet, wifi, and get books on it via Google Play. They have a descent collection of what I like to read ( in that format, certain books I will not read electronically). The sharing , at least with GPlay, you buy the books and download them to the tablet ( if you want to) and so you could have the books on multiple tablets , which I do now. Tied to one account though.

I know Kindle is very popular in these parts and I can't speak to it. It was much more expense when I made my choice a couple years ago ( comparing the price of the books I wanted on Azmn vs GP ) so that informed my decision, but the good Kindles are cheaper now and book prices seem to found parity. Good luck!

Posted by: Yip at February 01, 2015 10:19 AM (84SRe)

89 John Howard Lawson of the Hollywood Ten was the head of the Hollywood division of the CPUSA. There's no doubt there were communists in Hollywood.

Posted by: Squirrel at February 01, 2015 10:21 AM (zHVM/)

90 What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.

Posted by: Open Blogger

Once in my past, I read a book that was poor to horrible for 2/3 of it, but the end made it worth the slog. I wish I could remember what it was, because it has been the source of slogging through many bad books.
Waiting for the payoff that never comes.

I'm certain that you Morons are much more well read than I am, so all of you must have a similar story.

Posted by: OneEyedJack at February 01, 2015 10:21 AM (XmOA9)

91 Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:18 AM (VBbCO)

In that case, and since The Kindle device has a good reputation, I say get two. In fact earlier models are very inexpensive.

Posted by: eman at February 01, 2015 10:21 AM (MQEz6)

92 When I was buying historical fiction recommendations amazon recommend Count Belisarius by Robert Graves. Its more of a biography style than fast paced novel so I'm not getting through it very quickly. Almost all of the circa 560-600 ad history is new to me. There is some interesting description of the early Orthodox church as well as the eastern Roman Empire operating out of Constantinople and the Goths, Vandals and so on that I only knew as terms not as historical tribes/nations. Written in 1938 and does not feel like Graves is pushing a PC theme.

Posted by: PaleRider at February 01, 2015 10:22 AM (7w/kf)

93 Most of the way through Sharyl Attkisson's "Stonewalled." I hesitated to start on it because I was almost convinced she was a nut case but in reading the book, it appears her suspicions were valid. There's just too much about her story that rings true. I almost quit reading in disgust after finishing the Benghazi chapter, but the following chapter on domestic spying was equally infuriating. Her narrative is far more interesting than I expected.

*****

She is a very good egg. One of the last true journalists out there.

You heard, I presume, the latest in the hacking investigation. Is that a crock and a half of crap or what?!

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at February 01, 2015 10:23 AM (DmNpO)

94 And Andrea, who was quite talented on SCTV, has done a fair amount of creepy things in her personal life: kind of a slut, knowingly married a bi-sexual illegal immigrant to get him a green card and "convert him", dating a guy in his 20s when she was in her post-menopausal 50s, engaging a series of astrologers, handwriting analysts, hydro colonic poop swamis and other tinsel town frauds, and so on.

You know, I saw the Poop Swamis open for the Butthole Surfers at the Portland Rose Garden in '91.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 10:24 AM (SNhR+)

95 Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:09 AM (VBbCO)

Couldn't you have asked about the Civil War/War of The Rebellion?

It would be less contentious.

Kindle Fire 6" is $84 and uses a fairly easy reader. There are a few other Kindles that are reasonably priced, but I think all of the current models are touch screens.

You can share a single copy of a book between two readers, although you aren't supposed to be able to read them at the same time.

And...there is a huge amount of free stuff out there. Enough classic literature for the rest of your life!

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at February 01, 2015 10:24 AM (Zu3d9)

96 In that case, and since The Kindle device has a good reputation, I say get two. In fact earlier models are very inexpensive.

***

My ex-employer gave me one for Christmas two years ago and it's still in the box, lying in a closet somewhere. Never even opened it.

It's a cheap model, but if someone wants it I'll see if I can dig it out of mothballs.

Posted by: Niedermeyer's Dead Horse at February 01, 2015 10:24 AM (DmNpO)

97 Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 08:57 AM (IXrOn)

Finally got mine a few days ago and haven't had a chance to get to it yet.

I swear I pre-ordered this months ago, but it kept getting pushed back for some reason.

Posted by: Tammy al-Thor at February 01, 2015 10:25 AM (Pauop)

98 I look divine in a tutu so I'm not taking it off. I will put on a jock strap so you don't see the dangly bits.

I'm sort of reading (time etc.) "A Time of Gifts". It's a reminiscence by a Brit who in the early 30s hiked across Europe on foot in lieu of college.

After landing in Antwerp he's made his way across the Rhine and is now hiking through Germany. It's 1933. It's interesting.

I think there's a sequel in which he makes it to Constantinople, but I'm on 1/3 into this.

Posted by: Bandersnatch at February 01, 2015 10:25 AM (1xUj/)

99 Dr. Mabuse,

Get a cheap Android tablet, download the Kindle app, the Nook app, familiarize yourself with Google Play., and you're good to go.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 10:26 AM (SNhR+)

100 Yip... I used to read at Warp 9 and probably missed a lot. Except for 'newsy' stuff and current events, I now read so as to savor the meaning/nuance/connotations of the author as well the words themselves. It is slow but more satisfying. (Also helps to be retired!)

Posted by: JTB at February 01, 2015 10:27 AM (FvdPb)

101 Oh, and one other thing: there are some books that
we both want to read. If we both have e-readers, do we have to each buy
a copy of a book, or can one purchase be shared on two readers?

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:09 AM (VBbCO)

I have been really happy with my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 using a free Kindle app. And if you get two e-readers and register them to the same owner you can trade back and forth freely. If you register them separately and you get books that are not in-coded to prevent copying you and move them freely. All of Baen's titles can be moved at will.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 10:29 AM (wlDny)

102 Semi-Tough the movie doesn't really follow the book. They added the Bert Convy part. If they had done the book it would have been NC17. I think the movie is better than the book.

I remember preferring the book for its tone of voice, which the movie couldn't capture, but it's been ages since I've seen either.

Posted by: Bandersnatch at February 01, 2015 10:30 AM (1xUj/)

103 "The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia" by Tim Tzouliadis.

A gross oversimplification:

Americans fled the USA for Russia in search of a better life during the Depression - and surprise, surprise, ended up 'disappearing'.

What's more, the American government was as feckless and blind, if not treasonous, as it is today.

This book is a must-read.

The revelations are astounding and the parallels with today's circumstances will curdle the blood of the most stalwart.

Posted by: ouch at February 01, 2015 10:32 AM (zYgqi)

104 Wife is reading "The Land of Steady Habits" by Ted Thompson.

We know Ted and his wife through Ted's mom and dad, to which he devotes his first novel, which got good reviews from serious critics.

Cheeverish. Shades of Updike.

Like a mullet haircut, which is business up front and party in the back, Teddy writes of middle agers in Connecticut being prepsters up front and disfunction all the way out the back.

Posted by: the littl shyning man at February 01, 2015 10:33 AM (vSxTY)

105 Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:09 AM (VBbCO)

If you wait for deals, you can get a Kindle for $50. The black on white "electronic paper" screen is easier to read than most other flat screens and you can change the font size so that you can probably read it without glasses if you want. My wife finds that she can read a lot faster with less eye strain and headaches just by increasing the font size a bit.

The big caveat is that the screen is a lot more fragile than other technologies. The Kindle fits perfectly into a cargo pants pocket. Do not carry it there. The screen will get damaged and then the thing is unusable. Buy a cover to match the Kindle. It is cheap insurance, although it will not protect from everything. Get one of the cases that has a built in LED light because the screen is not backlit. I have replaced mine several times because it is such a great thing to have but my wife is more careful and has never broken one.

Posted by: Obnoxious A-Hole at February 01, 2015 10:33 AM (KDbAT)

106 I read Friday Night Lights many years ago and did not particularly like it. As a Texan who played high school football at a traditional powerhouse, I suppose I'm biased, but just imagine a liberal New York Times Manhattan liberal dropped in the middle of Odessa, Texas for a year, and you can guess his assessment of the place will not be very positive.

An interesting old book on the early days of football is Football Days: Memories of the Game and of the Men Behind the Ball, published in 1916 by William H. Edwards. The writing is a bit dense, but an interesting perspective on the early days of football, then about 50 years old, which was really taking off in popularity. It's available for free on Kindle and other places on the interwebs.

It has a forward by Walter Camp, one of the fathers of the game, and is dedicated to John P. Poe, Princeton class of 1895, who was killed in WWI, a man whose life was immensely interesting in its own right.

Posted by: I Work for Dick Jones at February 01, 2015 10:34 AM (D7Plq)

107 Any body ever read " The Definitive Guide to Eating Whole Cubes of Butter" ? God that tome makes me hungry.

Posted by: Chris Christie at February 01, 2015 10:34 AM (+YNzP)

108 Is there a reason to have the Nook app if you also have the Kindle? Not a Nook guy so I don't know what they have available...

Posted by: OG Celtic-American at February 01, 2015 10:35 AM (j1tga)

109 You heard, I presume, the latest in the hacking investigation. Is that a crock and a half of crap or what?!

If you're talking about the DoJ IG report, yeah. What does anyone expect when thugs investigate themselves?

Posted by: wisenheimer at February 01, 2015 10:37 AM (qnhj2)

110 Lots of good advice here. I'll look into a tablet, but I'm edging toward two Kindles. And with cases for protection.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 10:37 AM (VBbCO)

111 "Currently reading The Men Who Lost America by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy. I'm very much enjoying it. A series of individual portraits of the civil and military British commanders during the American War for Independence."

Oh.

When I think of "the men who lost America", I'm thinking not of eighteenth-century Brits, but twentieth and twenty-first century Yanks.

Posted by: torquewrench at February 01, 2015 10:38 AM (noWW6)

112 Is there a reason to have the Nook app if you also have the Kindle? Not a Nook guy so I don't know what they have available...

The Nook app reads .ePub format, but the Kindle does not.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 10:38 AM (SNhR+)

113 I had heard that the Nook was getting into hard times and may not be around much longer. I would stick with the Kindle or Kindle app.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 10:40 AM (wlDny)

114 Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.is a really good book set in Franco's Spain (Barcelona 1945).

Highly recommended.

Posted by: cool breeze at February 01, 2015 10:40 AM (A+/8k)

115 Ouch, this book ties in to what you wrote.

Victor Herman's Coming Out of the Ice.
http://astore.amazon.com/aoshq-20/detail/0915031027

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 10:41 AM (M5cQi)

116 I'd sure be grateful for any recommendations--I'd like to read a good biography of FDR. I can't bear reading some hagiography, but would appreciate an objective author who accurately portrays those years. Thanks in advance for any of the Hoarde's suggestions.

I also have just finished Sharyl Attkinsson's Stonewalled. I read it all in one go and was engrossed from beginning to end. When they do start unravelling the times we live in over the decades or centuries it will take, she will be a good place for future historians to start.

Posted by: MSP at February 01, 2015 10:44 AM (aUlhk)

117 @Trimegistus 27: "Writing Morons: if you've got any halfway-decent ideas and can execute
them competently, submit stories to the magazines! They pay 6-10 cents a
word and obviously are in need of talent!"

Please tell me more... I have a finished, full length novel which has gotten high praise from readers and an editor being shopped around for representation, but I have never written short stories. I did a fantasy serial once back in the 90s, but that's it. I know nothing of magazines.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 10:44 AM (WJ32e)

118 The Nook app reads .ePub format, but the Kindle does not.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 10:38 AM (SNhR+)

Free app available for download is Calibre - will convert epub, mobi, pdf, word - in fact anything but azw3 - to anything else. Takes about 1 minute to convert a book. I also use it to load books on to the Kindle. I found a few times when I dragged a book into the documents file that it didn't show up in the directory, but Calibre always works.Another free download is called PDFlite - it reads pdfs, epub, mobi, txt and others - I find it very useful for previewing books before loading them - I still prefer to read on the Kindle though.

Posted by: Tunafish at February 01, 2015 10:48 AM (Pbw9k)

119 I always thought that one of the reasons Buckley excommunicated the Birchers was because of a strain of anti-semitism that Buckley wanted to distance himself for. There was a Bircher in our neighborhood when I was growing up (in a neighborhood which was otherwise strongly union Democrat) and he had a seething hatred of Jews. That was unfortunate because I did indeed associate right-wing politics with anti-Semitism for many years, until I, you know, actually looked into it.

Perhaps not every Bircher was like that , but it seems as if a significant number of them were the forerunners of today's paleocons.

Posted by: Donna &&&&&& V. (brandishing ampersands & not bitter at all over the Super Bowl. No really, honest.) at February 01, 2015 10:49 AM (+XMAD)

120 Posted by: MSP at February 01, 2015 10:44 AM (aUlhk)

I haven't read it but I know Conrad Black wrote a biography of FDR. Although Black is a Canadian conservative, I read he bent over backwards to be fair to FDR. I'd check it out on Amazon and see what the more sensible sounding reviewers say.

Posted by: Donna &&&&&& V. (brandishing ampersands & not bitter at all over the Super Bowl. No really, honest.) at February 01, 2015 10:52 AM (+XMAD)

121 Dr Mabuse, the Kindle Paperwhite gets good reviews for people with poor eyesight - less glare. As long as you & hubby have the same Amazon account, any book / mag/ etc you buy from amazon will be available on any kindle device you get.
You could get him a kindle paperwhite for reading, and yourself a kindle fire hd for reading/ watching videos / browsing web and you could swap when you want?

Posted by: @votermom at February 01, 2015 10:52 AM (cbfNE)

122 Which is why it's painful to hear Joe Biden speak before veteran groups and refer to American KIAs as "fallen angels". I know what he's trying to say, but as Jonah Goldberg noted, doesn't he know that "fallen angels" are actually demons? That is, they're angels fallen from God's grace and hence have become evil. It was obviously not Biden's intent to call American servicemen demons, but that's what he kind of did.

someone probably either wrote this for him, or told him to describe it that way, and the "duh" that Biden is, he went along with it

we have so many puppets in government, being controlled by much more devious idiots

it strikes me every time, like when Boehner said in his latest interview, that he didn't know the O'team was sent to destroy Bibi in Israel's election. He knows nothing but what is in his bubble, that is why they don't hear us. I do honestly believe he did not know this. We have seen this a million times, with Graham, etc.

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 10:52 AM (IXrOn)

123 I hope this doesn't mean that it's going to be a left wing sermon.

yes

it will be ruined

any "hit" gets destroyed eventually with the extreme sequels

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 10:54 AM (IXrOn)

124 "My son's high school class has been reading The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials. This week he mentioned that his homework is to write an essay about the many similarities between The Crucible and the Red Scare post-WWII."

The lefty literati have been banging that particular drum for so long that I'm surprised it has any sound left in it.

It does work awfully well, though, especially when co-administered with a big dose of bullshit in history class about innocent people having their lives ruined by the completely unjustified and monstrous McCarthyite blacklist.

Posted by: torquewrench at February 01, 2015 10:54 AM (noWW6)

125
Wanna see lefty's heads explode?

Make the argument that McCarthy was right.

Posted by: fixerupper at February 01, 2015 10:56 AM (OBxdH)

126 It is odd that hatred of joos got traction to get Birchers ostrisized but union democrats are still held in esteem when they hate freedom.

Posted by: Redshirt at February 01, 2015 10:56 AM (Ae09I)

127 For SF/Fantasy magazine info, try ralan.com. It has all kinds of listings, pay rates, links to submission guidelines, etc. READ the submission guidelines and follow them. Do not submit horror to a humor magazine. Have some vague idea of the "tone" or style of the magazine. Then have fun! Oh, and it is considered bad manners to submit to multiple magazines simultaneously. Magazine editors often have to decide on the stories for an issue and get a commitment fast, so being told "I am waiting to hear from Asimov's" makes them very grouchy.

That's all the advice I have, since I never conned any paying magazine into accepting one of my short stories ;-) I'm really a novel writer by preference.

Posted by: Sabrina Chase at February 01, 2015 10:57 AM (2buaQ)

128 I always thought that one of the reasons Buckley excommunicated the Birchers was because of a strain of anti-semitism that Buckley wanted to distance himself for

I don't think so. You may be thinking of what happened 20-25 years ago when Buckley fired some of his writers (notably Joseph Sobran) for being so reflexively anti-Israel that, in Buckley's view, there wasn't much difference between them and actual anti-Semitism.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 10:59 AM (SNhR+)

129 Dr Mabuse, amazon also has friendly customer support, and their kindle environment is geared towards non-techies.

Posted by: @votermom at February 01, 2015 10:59 AM (cbfNE)

130 I think I may have recommended the historical fiction novel-

"Creation" by Gore Vidal

before.

It's a story concerning a Persian ambassador who meets Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, and many other great men who influenced the world during his life and career.

The novel really is a lot of fun and very well written, probably the best book Vidal wrote.

And no, as you might fear with Vidal, it's not a fiesta of cornholery. And he's dead, so if you don't like contributing to smarmy libtards you won't be benefiting him in any way shape or form.

And best of all...though not on Kindle, you can buy a copy of "Creation" for $0.01 on Amazon.

So to sum up in bullet points:

1) great, fun read

2) very interesting characters

3) not a fiesta of cornholery

4) no contribution to smarmy libtard

5) Costs $0.01 for hardback copy

You can't say fairer than that.

Give it a try.

Posted by: naturalfake at February 01, 2015 10:59 AM (KBvAm)

131 Friday Night Lights?

Just watched it last night. Never heard of it until a few years ago until my brother suggested it to me. A must in every DVD collection.

Posted by: Buckeye Abroad at February 01, 2015 11:01 AM (AS72E)

132 I'm on DVR delay but the bartender chick is hot on fox this morning.

Posted by: Redshirt at February 01, 2015 11:01 AM (Ae09I)

133 @127: Thanks, Sabrina. I had no idea such a site existed, and no idea that the pay could be so low. Max. $35? Wow. But I guess part of the payoff is getting your work into print.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:03 AM (WJ32e)

134 "Another takeaway from the book is that Harry Hopkins was basically the Valerie Jarrett of the Roosevelt administration--an unelected 'aide' who wielded enormous power and influence, and who may have been working for the enemy."

There's a ton of secret history there, to be sure.

Increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion, especially after reading Fleming's _The New Dealers' War_, that Hopkins, as a Stalinist mole, worked quietly and deliberately within the FDR White House to create the conditions which led to Pearl Harbor. Especially the oil clampdown on Japan, which left Tokyo few options outside of war.

Stalin would have been correctly and deeply alarmed, after the Barbarossa onslaught by Hitler, and as the Soviets were in desperate retreat and regroup, that Imperial Japan would opt to exploit Soviet weakness by starting the Russo-Japanese War Part II, and gobbling up Siberia. That would have been the end of the USSR and Stalin.

The capacity for a multifront war against two powerful adversaries simply wasn't there. The only option was to distract and refocus the one of the two who was not yet attacking the USSR.

So Hopkins received instructions.

Posted by: torquewrench at February 01, 2015 11:04 AM (noWW6)

135

It's sad Hubbard and Scientology is so off the wall.

They have been huge advocates of sci-fi (obviously).

And, their Writers of the Future contests are good.

I assume the contests are still going strong.

http://www.writersofthefuture.com/contest-rules-writers/

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 11:04 AM (IXrOn)

136 Read The Dark At The End by F. Paul Wilson, book #15 I think about Repairman Jack. Pretty good, though was expecting it to be the final volume and he did the Peter Jackson thing and the end comes in the sequel Nightworld (presumably).

I enjoy the Kindle Paperwhite and Voyage a lot for reading books. I've tried doing the same on a Kindle Fire and the Kindle app on phones but found the light hurts my eyes after awhile.

Posted by: waelse1 at February 01, 2015 11:04 AM (x+P8L)

137 Dr Mabuse, I have a Kindle Paperwhite, a Fire, and the app on my PC. If you two use the same account, once you make a purchase on one, it can be downloaded to the other (s). Which one I use depends on which is better for whatever I want to read.

Usually it's the Paperwhite for regular books, the other two for ones with illustrations like craft or cooking books.

Posted by: Empire1 at February 01, 2015 11:05 AM (tvgqE)

138 Friday Night Lights?

Just watched it last night. Never heard of it until a few years ago until my brother suggested it to me. A must in every DVD collection.
Posted by: Buckeye Abroad at February 01, 2015 11:01 AM (AS72E)

fabulous show

we binged on it on Netflix

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 11:05 AM (IXrOn)

139 "Hollywood Party" by Kenneth Billingsley precedes Diane West's book by some time. It covers some of the same ground.

Interesting.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 11:06 AM (+1T7c)

140 Nice review, naturalfake. No matter how loathsome a person Vidal may have been, he certainly could write, I'll give him that.

And "not a fiesta of cornholery" is high praise, indeed.

And I'm stealing that phrase. I already have a use for it for next week's book thread.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 11:06 AM (SNhR+)

141 "Especially the oil clampdown on Japan, which left Tokyo few options outside of war."

Well, to be fair, they could have just quit attacking Indochina.

Posted by: AD at February 01, 2015 11:06 AM (GbSgH)

142 @16 Annalucia

I have friends in Madrid and used to travel alot there on business. I found out the hard way you to bring up the Civil War or Franco in conversations as the feelings are still raw.

And the socialists still suck.

Posted by: Buckeye Abroad at February 01, 2015 11:08 AM (AS72E)

143 One must wade carefully, in the matter of the Birch Society. The past is a foreign country. Their biggest problem was that they could get a crew-cut wrong. They were just against everything, plus they were funny looking.

I have always believed that they were right about the fluoride. It's great in toothpaste, and doesn't belong in the water supply. Now, whether it causes bone cancer, dementia, or feminization is left as an exercise for the reader. Birch spokesmen claimed all that, and more. I do not gainsay. It all may be true.

The first research paper I ever had to write was on the background of that fluoride debate. I found it ethically confusing, the year of the Goldwater campaign; in succeeding decades I have come to recognize it as a prototype for the hep/anti-hep factor in all modern science. Feel what's cool for you, then shop for the science.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at February 01, 2015 11:08 AM (xq1UY)

144 Like a mullet haircut, which is business up front and party in the back, Teddy writes of middle agers in Connecticut being prepsters up front and disfunction all the way out the back.

That is a well turned phrase.

Posted by: Bandersnatch at February 01, 2015 11:08 AM (1xUj/)

145 Thanks, Empire1. I hadn't thought of books with illustrations, but my husband does like history and war books, and they often have maps. An app on the computer might be useful for those volumes.

Posted by: Dr. Mabuse at February 01, 2015 11:09 AM (VBbCO)

146 Almost done Joel C. Rosenberg's latest: "The Third Target." Good news, he writes better than he used to; bad news, that's not saying much.

Premise: "What if the Islamic State [ISIS/ISIL] obtains weapons of mass destruction?"

Spoiler: He takes the premise and drags it out for 433 pages, many of which are entirely forgettable.

Library loan, but I would not even recommend it to other library patrons.

Posted by: doug at February 01, 2015 11:09 AM (1RA3a)

147 126 It is odd that hatred of joos got traction to get Birchers ostrisized but union democrats are still held in esteem when they hate freedom.
Posted by: Redshirt at February 01, 2015 10:56 AM (Ae09I)

Because it's never presented as "we're union dems and we hate freedom." It's "we in the union are fighting for your rights as a worker." And then they bring up the 40 hour work week - they don't mention the "right" to get drunk and smoke dope on the job and call in sick constantly and be a total f- up without losing your job.

Whereas Jew hatred is pretty straightforward (except among those leftists who pretend hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews are two different things). When someone says, "I hate Jews, they're ruining the world" it's pretty hard to mistake the meaning.

Posted by: Donna &&&&&& V. (brandishing ampersands & not bitter at all over the Super Bowl. No really, honest.) at February 01, 2015 11:09 AM (+XMAD)

148 Btw people with e-readers - if you haven't yet, check if your library lets you borrow ebooks. A lot of libraries do now via overdrive.

Posted by: @votermom at February 01, 2015 11:10 AM (cbfNE)

149 Wanna see lefty's heads explode?
Make the argument that McCarthy was right.
Posted by: fixerupper

Joseph Kennedy agreed with you. You know, JFK's father.
McCarty's biggest problem was that he was an alcoholic, and instead of being logical and rational during hearings, he would start to rant and rave at witnesses.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 11:10 AM (+1T7c)

150
I'd like to read a good biography of FDR. I can't bear reading some hagiography, but would appreciate an objective author who accurately portrays those years.
Posted by: MSP

Probably out of luck on an "objective" book that covers his life broadly, although more narrowly topic specific books, say on his war or judicial policies have more room to offer balance.

A well written first book is The Lion and the Fox by James Macgregor Burns. Older book, published in 1956, and overly pro-New Deal natch, but a good start. "Lion" covers his life thru 1940, while a subsequent volume covers the war years.

Better yet, looks like it's up on Archive.org for freebies, so don't cost nothing.

archive.org/details/rooseveltthelion010892mbp

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 01, 2015 11:10 AM (kdS6q)

151 I'm not reading anything important this week - work calls. It's all I can do to read a couple of pages nightly of one of Charlotte MacLeod's Sarah Kelling mysteries every night before I fall asleep.

Upthread, someone mentioned Patrick Leigh Fermer - Time of Gifts! Most excellent, and yes, there were two sequels. Between the Woods and the Water, and a final installment that came out after his death. Woods and Water was particularly poignant, because it was of the leg of the journey through Hungary and Eastern Europe in the 30ies.
During WWII he was a SOE operator on Crete, fighting the Germans. He and another SOE man kidnapped the German general commanding, and smuggled him off Crete. He never wrote much about it himself, but the other guy did - a book called "Ill Met by Moonlight".

Posted by: Sgt Mom at February 01, 2015 11:11 AM (95iDF)

152 @135: That's interesting... one of my chapters reads very much like a short story and might make a good competitor. It's tone is dark and bloody, and the protagonist redeems his own life and that of an innocent with an unexpectedly successful act of suicidal heroism. It's my wife's favorite.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:12 AM (WJ32e)

153 At least The guys that had mullets could fix a car or toilet.

Posted by: Redshirt at February 01, 2015 11:12 AM (Ae09I)

154 Thanks, OregonMuse.

Indeed, "not a fiesta of cornholery" could become the gold standard by which all books are judged.

Posted by: naturalfake at February 01, 2015 11:14 AM (KBvAm)

155 George Plimpton trivia.

His grandfather was Adelbert Ames. Ames was the last living Civil War general officer, dying in the 1930s. Ames was also Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's predecessor as the commanding officer of the famous 20th Maine.

Posted by: ed at February 01, 2015 11:15 AM (4HYng)

156 Re: 105 -- Covers for Kindle

Bought a cheap one from newegg.com -- about $6, IIRC. Fits perfectly. Much cheaper than covers from Amazon.

Posted by: doug at February 01, 2015 11:15 AM (1RA3a)

157 Donna, I haven't read Conrad Black's book about FDR, but I recognize him as one of the conservative critics of Diana West's book. See the GoV link I left earlier.

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 11:15 AM (sdi6R)

158 Because of the nasty-ass, deranged backlash against American Sniper (boy howdy, they really dropped the mask didn't they?), I found myself buying two more books on snipers and Team Dog, by a SEAL dog trainer, not that there's much hope of improving my 10 year old idiot doggehs at this point. They still act like puppies.

The Reaper, by Nicholas Irving, is about Irving's last tour as a Ranger sniper. As it turns out, he lives with his wife here in San Antonio, and she's a big Spurs fan. Maybe I'll run into them some day and thank them for their service. Irving recently incurred some lefty wrath by going on tv and sticking up for Chris Kyle.

Modern American Snipers has sections on Chris Kyle, Irving and others. It goes into training methods as well as combat accounts.

These books are all out of the SOFREP group. In my ADD way I'm reading chapters from each of them as the mood hits, and so far so good.

Posted by: stace at February 01, 2015 11:16 AM (ImzkZ)

159 I have to agree that the book "Friday Night Lights" is actually not too attractive a read.

Yes, the author claims to have grown to like the residents of Odessa, but his contempt comes oozing out in different places.

It's not a terrible book or badly written, just comes off as an unpleasant outsider writing about people he thinks are rubes.
On the other hand, hihh school football is a religion in Texas. Ohio is similar. There are places in Ohio that worship high school football. The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game in Canton is played in a high school football stadium. It's the home stadium for the Canton McKinley Bulldogs.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 11:17 AM (+1T7c)

160 Story time: Not long after I got out of college in the early 1980s, I briefly worked for a few months in a venetian blind factory. At the time I was sort of a leftist firebrand who had all kinds of opinions about How The World Should Be.

The woman who worked next to me was in her 40s, married, and an actual John Birch Society member, the only one I have ever met.

We talked about politics and stuff, and pretty much disagreed about everything, as you might expect. But she was a very nice lady and we got along fine.

I think that was the first inkling I had that "right-wingers" weren't a bunch of hateful kooks.

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 11:17 AM (sdi6R)

161 Donna multiple ampersands

I want to make it clear that I wasn't making the point the birchers were right just that a more pervasive danger exists.

Posted by: Redshirt at February 01, 2015 11:18 AM (Ae09I)

162 I'm pretty sure I have half a dozen (or more) books in my basement that address the matter of commies in Hollywood. The consensus seems to have been, they weren't very effective, the blacklist stuff was something of a p.r. disaster, and there were bigger fish to fry. In Washington.

Is there something in this new book that reveals something beyond the conventional, collected wisdom of the post-Soviet collapse writers who scoured the Russian archives and/or were Russian spies?

If so, this new book might be worth reading. Otherwise, I would say it's old news.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 11:18 AM (Dj0WE)

163 #70

I listened to the audio version of that recently and was left with a deep disgust. The best story was Stephenson's but even that was marred by a doctrinaire need to make the narrator a gay woman, even though it had absolutely zero contribution to the story. It felt like he found himself with an oldtime story about an ambitious industrial project of the sort that were once common in SF and decided he needed an element to make it a story from this decade instead of an earlier era that might easily have produced it.

The Doctorow story was an utter blowjob for lifetime WIRED subscribers. Precious Moments for high-tech hipsters.

The rest was largely hand-wringing bullshit revolving around climate change. One story about a treatment allowing those with cognitive defects making them incapable of adequately handling necessities like reading is followed by an afterword by the author, who makes it sound like dyslexia (real dyslexia, as opposed to the 'I can't handle teaching boys' misdiagnosis that has run amok in schools) is vastly more common than it actually is. The primary cause of illiteracy, especially for girls, in the third world isn't inability to process the printed word. It's Islamic zealots who regard literacy as a source of corruption and murder females thus tainted.

Posted by: Epobirs at February 01, 2015 11:20 AM (IdCqF)

164 Sabrina thanks for the link to that site. Never hurts to have too many possible buyers.

Another site that lists places looking for submissions is found here -
http://www.aswiebe.com/writing/markets.html

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 11:21 AM (M5cQi)

165 I'm with Smashmaster. The First Man in Rome series is serious history wrapped in a Ceasar fetish. The first few books, before Julius shows up, is some of the best historical fiction I've read. I buy copies at used bookstores and give them away to folks who might read them.

Posted by: Mark Andrew Edwards at February 01, 2015 11:22 AM (pWzW/)

166 Maybe it's just me but I find less and less new fiction appealing. The market seems flooded with angst-ridden romance (teenage girls and young women) zombie/vampire (teens and young people) and endless ongoing series that are never resolved and where each book in the series is probably fifty percent longer than they should be. I don't have a problem with series that feature ongoing characters like the Walt Longmire books or the Matt Helm stories. After all, that worked for Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolf.

The upside is that I spend more time with older books that are entertaining, aimed at adults, and have MUCH more subtle and effective writing. Sure, that includes standards from Dickens, Twain, and Melville as might be expected. But there are also the essays of EB White, anything by CS Lewis, H. Rider Haggard, the Barsoom stories, good translations of Jules Verne, and so on and on.

This isn't simply nostalgia but comes from feeling ever more distant from popular culture. (TV is even worse than books.) Some of this is just getting older but that can't be the whole cause.

I don't know if others are finding themselves in the same situation.

Posted by: JTB at February 01, 2015 11:22 AM (FvdPb)

167 Football books. I don't watch pro football anymore, but growing up I was the biggest Cowboy fan in America. I read a couple of histories of the team, and a lot of the big books of the day, including Paper Lion, North Dallas Forty, Lance Rentzel's book about how he became a pervert, Instant Replay, Lombardi:Winning is the only thing. Also read Ball Four twice. I thought it was hilarious, but have no idea if it still holds up.

Posted by: stace at February 01, 2015 11:23 AM (ImzkZ)

168 This a gun thread yet?

Posted by: Ricardo Kill at February 01, 2015 11:24 AM (as+cO)

169 Started the latest installment in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon tales series, "The Empty Throne", late yesterday afternoon. Could not put it down! Finished very early this morning. i loved every single word. Cornwell makes that period just come alive. Wonderful hero and saga.

Posted by: Tuna at February 01, 2015 11:24 AM (JSovD)

170 Un-bannened on the Hughes Net. Yay!

Posted by: Ricardo Kill at February 01, 2015 11:24 AM (as+cO)

171 Not a big reader but a great set of books is the Foxfire series.

Posted by: Redshirt at February 01, 2015 11:25 AM (Ae09I)

172 Hey hey we're the monkeys!

I am assuming Dave will have an award winning Super Bowl Elbow post.

And we will get a gun thread??

Posted by: Nip Sip at February 01, 2015 11:25 AM (0FSuD)

173 Also read Ball Four twice. I thought it was hilarious, but have no idea if it still holds up.
Posted by: stace

i read "Ball Four" as a teenager and thought it was hilarious too.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 11:25 AM (+1T7c)

174 So, Tailgunner Joe -- protoMoron?

We had a brief chat a week ago about Sinatra and "Manchurian Candidate." Sinatra apparently started out thinking it was a parable against the McCarthy-like character, and when he found about the Bircher subtext, did everything he could to take the movie out of circulation.

After kicking that back and forth, the thought occurred that perhaps the dustup was a factor in converting Ol Blue Eyes from a New Dealer to a Nixonian, then Reaganite.

Which reminds me, Ervin (Druckman) Drake, who wrote "It Was A Very Good Year," died a week ago, age 95. Also in his catalogue was a protest song, "I Am A Card Carrying Bleeding Heart Liberal." As we say, he may have made that up.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at February 01, 2015 11:26 AM (xq1UY)

175 Still working on Sheridan's Memoirs, The Moon's Fire-Eating Daughter, Sense and Sensibility, and The Illiad.

Posted by: Polliwog the 'Ette at February 01, 2015 11:28 AM (GDulk)

176 173 -

I'm pretty sure Ball Four contains the story Bouton relayed (he was telling a re-telling he heard elsewhere) where Joe Torre and somebody else hid in the closet of a teammate who was pretty good with the ladies.

Apparently this teammate would say things like "you know, I've never gone to bed with any woman on the first date, but you're special."

At which point Torre and the teammate yell out from the closet, "YEAH, SURE!!!"

Kinda goes against Torre's more recent reputation as a fuddydud.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 11:29 AM (Dj0WE)

177 Just bought Terms of Enlistment (Kindle) through aosAmazon. Does this mean I can expect all future purchases to be monitored by the JEFs minions?

Posted by: Edmund Burke's Shade at February 01, 2015 11:31 AM (cmBvC)

178 @159 Bossy

Yes football is a religion in Ohio. And that's the way God made it so don't even argue. Ha!
Always thought it would be easy to move to Texas because they really understand football there, too.
Every small town reschedules Beggars Night if Halloween falls on a Friday night. Everyone goes to the game, even if your kid doesn't play or even if you don't have kids in school, because its the social thing to do.
My DIL went to Canton McK HS. Her parents live around the corner from the parade route. Its a really big deal there.

My favorite football book is "Playing For Pizza" by John Grisham. And I also liked "Skipping Christmas". I really don't like his legal thrillers.

Also, check out football books written by Woody Hayes. They are amazing.

Posted by: Buckeye Katie at February 01, 2015 11:31 AM (1M/xn)

179 McCarty's biggest problem was that he was an
alcoholic, and instead of being logical and rational during hearings, he
would start to rant and rave at witnesses.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 11:10 AM (+1T7c)

Wait, you say that like it's a bad thing. I am not feeling the love. Most politicians drank heavily, calling them alcoholics was a way to discredit them.

You can not begin to imagine what Churchill drank daily. FDR's wife would not let him return after he almost drank FDR to death.

Yes, I'll have another wine, thanks.

Posted by: Nip Sip at February 01, 2015 11:31 AM (0FSuD)

180 Another vote for Friday Night Lights TV series, recently watched on Netflix and it was most bingeworthy. Especially the first season. Made this Yankee's crush on Texas even worse (all the kids say Yes Sir! No Sir!). Just awesome.

Speaking of murderous Orwellian regimes, am halfway through Orphan Master's Son, about N Korea. Rather harrowing, and if today's literati would only see how blind adherence to "The Narrative" (vs the Truth) is taken to its extreme evil, but likely and logical conclusion over there....It is an excellent but not pleasant book and, fair warning the second half of the book switches narrators and it is really difficult to follow what has happened. The visit to Texas is particularly interesting, parallels of the palace guard press protecting and supressing truth here are unnerving.

Posted by: Goldilocks at February 01, 2015 11:34 AM (5D7mX)

181 @178 Buckeye Katie

"...check out football books written by Woody Hayes. They are amazing."

His old office was a shrine when I was back at OSU in the mid 90s. I wonder if it is still there?

Posted by: Buckeye Abroad at February 01, 2015 11:35 AM (AS72E)

182 166 Maybe it's just me but I find less and less new fiction appealing.
--

Yep. Harder to find gems in the cookie cutter dross coming out.

Posted by: @votermom at February 01, 2015 11:35 AM (cbfNE)

183 Churchill was a moron's moron!

http://tinyurl.com/lw5jo2f

Posted by: Nip Sip at February 01, 2015 11:35 AM (0FSuD)

184 @135: That's interesting... one of my chapters reads very much like a short story and might make a good competitor. It's tone is dark and bloody, and the protagonist redeems his own life and that of an innocent with an unexpectedly successful act of suicidal heroism. It's my wife's favorite.
Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:12 AM (WJ32e)

bonus is the cash reward

go for it

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 11:35 AM (IXrOn)

185 179 -

There is a huge difference between an alcoholic and somebody who likes to drink.

Churchill liked to drink. McCarthy was an alcoholic. And the biggest problem McCarthy created for the anti-communist movement is that he was full of shinola. He claimed to know things he didn't. He claimed he had documents that did not exist. He was bluffing, and the communists called his bluff. Doesn't mean he wasn't right about them, just means he did more damage than good to try to get rid of their influence in government and culture.

All this hero worship of McCarthy is misplaced.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 11:36 AM (Dj0WE)

186 174
After kicking that back and forth, the thought occurred that perhaps the dustup was a factor in converting Ol Blue Eyes from a New Dealer to a Nixonian, then Reaganite.

Posted by: Stringer Davis at February 01, 2015 11:26 AM (xq1UY)

You skipped the part where Sinatra was an avid JFK supporter in 1960.

I read somewhere that he went into hiding for several days after JFK's assassination. It's little details like that which still gives me a nagging suspicion that the assassination was a Mob hit. Lord knows they had sufficient motive.

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 11:36 AM (sdi6R)

187 Last week a book was mentioned in the post called Lone Star Planet. It was cheap on Kindle and i need an SF book for a reading challenge I'm in.

So much fun. Nothing deep or profound, well, except for the brilliant idea that is OK to kill people who just need killing as long as they are practicing politicians. Short, quick read.

Posted by: RagamuffinB at February 01, 2015 11:37 AM (545ep)

188 Maybe it's just me but I find less and less new fiction appealing.
--

one of the reasons people are opting to go self/e-publish
and perusing there for new stuff

publishers/editors are destroying the industry

like everything, you have to find the right one that fits your niche of ideology, genre, and writing style

but mostly - who you know

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 11:37 AM (IXrOn)

189 Dr. Mabuse, if eyestrain is a concern for y'all, I would strongly recommend you go to the local Best Buy or whatever equivalent you may have and actually look at the various devices. They usually have the devices powered on with books loaded so you can get a feel for what it would be like to read on them.

I know a lot of people like the Kindle Paperwhite, and I had thought about getting one, but it just didn't work for me - I could feel the eyestrain coming on after about thirty seconds of looking at it in the store. So I ended up going with the Nook Glowlight. I would definitely recommend it, though of course eyestrain is a personal thing. My only caveat about the Glowlight is that it's slightly too wide for me to easily handle one-handed.

Speaking of things that are too big for me to hold with one hand (i.e., footballs), I had to read Friday Night Lights in college. I don't remember anything about it now, so presumably, it wasn't very good. Also, I grew up in Houston, and there wasn't any obsession with football at my assorted schools that I was aware of. (I'm not saying it didn't exist, just that I was never aware of it.)

Posted by: Mrs. Peel at February 01, 2015 11:39 AM (1EtXn)

190 Two novels that were originally published as short stories -

Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. The short version, Weyr Search, won a Hugo.

God Stalk by P.C. Hodgell appeared earlier in a shorter somewhat different form in Clarion Science Fiction in 1977.

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 11:39 AM (M5cQi)

191 Listening to "Dexter in the Dark", a novel from the "Dexter" TV show ouvre. Pretty good, but I don't think I'd like it if I hadn't seen the series. The characters are sparsely and erratically described, if I didn't know what Vince was like on the show, his character would make no sense. Got an autobiography of Ben Franklin up next, Walter Isaacson.

Posted by: Lincolntf at February 01, 2015 11:40 AM (2cS/G)

192 124 "My son's high school class has been reading The Crucible, about the Salem witch trials. This week he mentioned that his homework is to write an essay about the many similarities between The Crucible and the Red Scare post-WWII."

I've been lazy in overseeing what my son's teachers were up to, other than paying a shit ton of money for private school, but I did make the effort to prophylactically pound into him that Communism=always bad, and it was the biggest manmade cause of death in human history. He will never forget that Communism turned the 20th century into an abattoir.

I think one reason he leans libertarian is that I pounded him with Rudy Rummel's Death by Government. I didn't make him read it, but I showed him Rummel's tables and made him promise not to forget them.

Posted by: stace at February 01, 2015 11:40 AM (ImzkZ)

193 Heh, probably not an AUTO biography. Don't know where I was on that one.

Posted by: Lincolntf at February 01, 2015 11:41 AM (2cS/G)

194 So, what do people think is the best one to get? It looks as if Kindle has the largest selection of compatible books available, or are there e-readers that will read ANY digitalized book out there?

There's also the question of which model to pick. My husband will be 61, and his eyesight isn't that great, so I want something with clear, well-lit print.

I am extremely happy with the Kindle Paperwhite. The e-ink is much more comfortable to read than a tablet or PC screen, and the battery life is much longer than any tablet. Plus you can read e-ink displays in the sun. The lighting is a truly great feature; it's getting to the point where the subtly lit e-ink screen is more comfortable to read than a paper page. It also opens up reading in more situations, such as outdoors at dusk at night, or on an airplane or bus, without using the overhead light.

Posted by: Splunge at February 01, 2015 11:41 AM (qyomX)

195 On steynonline.com there is a post about a recent Steyn book signing. Enormous crowd that most authors would envy.

The post is called "Mood Indigo" and includes this gem: "My security had noticed some surly young men in keffiyehs hanging around. I took a relaxed view of them myself, but the minute I started reading about my old pal Martha Stewart and her coxcomb topiary they figured it was infidel homemaking night and there was no way you'd get the full 72 virgins for blowing up a guy in mid-mulled-cider recipe. So off they wandered."

Has anyone read "The Undocumented Mark Steyn?" Comments?

Posted by: doug at February 01, 2015 11:41 AM (1RA3a)

196 Sabrina thanks for the link to that site. Never hurts to have too many possible buyers.

Another site that lists places looking for submissions is found here -
http://www.aswiebe.com/writing/markets.html
Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 11:21 AM (M5cQi)

thanks, both

Posted by: artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 11:42 AM (IXrOn)

197 Yes football is a religion in Ohio. And that's the way God made it so don't even argue. Ha!

There are several small towns you could rob blind if their team made it to the state championships.

Posted by: buzzion at February 01, 2015 11:43 AM (zt+N6)

198 "I read somewhere that he went into hiding for several days after JFK's assassination"

'Hiding' could also be 'mourning.' Little difference to an outside observer. And Oswald the communist killed Kennedy. The mafia didn't like killing *police officers* because of the heat that would result. Why on earth would they kill the president, and brother of the AG? It makes no sense.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:44 AM (WJ32e)

199 You skipped the part where Sinatra was an avid JFK supporter in 1960.

I read somewhere that he went into hiding for several days after JFK's assassination. It's little details like that which still gives me a nagging suspicion that the assassination was a Mob hit. Lord knows they had sufficient motive.
Posted by: rickl

I suspect that the mob was strongly involved.
For years, Bobby and John wanted Castro dead, and had various plots to have him killed. My guess is that Fidel returned the favor; connections with the mob putting crazy proto-commie Lee Oswald in place to shoot JFK, and then mob capo Jack Ruby killing Oswald the next day.
The Commie Left knew about Oswald, and how crazy he was. Plus Bobby as AG was after the mob and the Teamsters (closely connected in those days), so they had no love for the Kennedys.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 11:45 AM (+1T7c)

200 I still remember "Life Its Ownself," a sequel to "Semi-Tough." Better than the original. A bad knee sends Billy Clyde from the gridiron to the broadcast booth, while the players are conspiring for a new contract by deliberately tanking the entire NFL season. (In the off season, Jenkins punctures the PGA tour and the NCAA basketball three-ring circus.)

In the main plot, Billy Clyde and Barbara Jane are drifting apart, and BC becomes infatuated with his production assistant, a tiny, sexy blonde girl who keeps her mouth shut, gets the job done, eats real food like chicken fried steak and takes no crap from the network bosses. (I still can't figure out why I like this character so much.) Eventually, Shake Tiller returns, detects the structural flaw in Billy Clyde's imaginary triangle, and sets true love back on its rightful course. (Oh, yeah, now I remember why I liked Kathy's character so much.)

I read another sequel, utterly forgettable. "Limo" is pretty much the only other Jenkins book to survive the great library purge of 2011.

Posted by: Little Miss Spellcheck at February 01, 2015 11:46 AM (z899H)

201 I started "Out of the Silent Planet", the first of CS Lewis' sci-fi trilogy.
Posted by: JTB at February 01, 2015 09:47 AM (FvdPb)

I re-read the trilogy every few years. Perelandra is simply a beautiful book.

The first few times I read That Hideous Strength, I thought it was a bit far-fetched. Now I think that it was one of Lewis's most prescient books.

Posted by: Michael the Hobbit at February 01, 2015 11:46 AM (0RdKg)

202 "Joe Don Looney, never was a man more aptly named."

Posted by: MachiasPrivateer at February 01, 2015 11:47 AM (ZPOAu)

203 195 -

I tend to read Steyn's books a couple to three years after they come out. No reason, I just do.

If I were him I would be more sincerely concerned about being killed by those people. There are any number of points he has been known to make that not many other people are making. I could see him as being a high value target for the muzzies.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 11:47 AM (Dj0WE)

204 Thanks for the FDR recommendations. "Lion" is the title I've seen others recommend, and I appreciate the link for the online freebie. Any idea what the sequel's title is? I'll also take a look at the Conrad Black book. Again, thanks!

Posted by: MSP at February 01, 2015 11:47 AM (aUlhk)

205 I've been lazy in overseeing what my son's teachers were up to, other than paying a shit ton of money for private school, but I did make the effort to prophylactically pound into him that Communism=always bad, and it was the biggest manmade cause of death in human history.

Roger that. My boys are mostly private school brats, but No. 1 Son did his last two HS years in public school.

He came home one day with a printout about how the US didn't need to use nukes on Japan, they were ready to surrender, and we just wanted to show Russia our giant warcock.

There was no source attributed. So I said, "that is undoubtedly either Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn", and we googled it. It was Zinn.

You can't stop the fact that academia is riddled with communism, but you can teach your kids to be aware of it and to have a constant anti-commie filter on what they're subjected to.

Posted by: Bandersnatch at February 01, 2015 11:48 AM (1xUj/)

206 The John Birch Society did have some problems with anti-Semites, but they purged them. It's not well known.

Revilo Oliver was a high ranking member who was kicked out for being anti-Jewish.

Posted by: Dack Thrombosis at February 01, 2015 11:49 AM (oFCZn)

207 Fatso by Art Donovan is a great and funny football book.

First Down, Lifetime to Go by Roger Staubach is another good one.

Posted by: Baron Von Ottomatic at February 01, 2015 11:49 AM (ufrZ6)

208
Two books this week:

"Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography," by Laura Ingalls Wilder. This is the memoir that Wilder wrote in 1930, at the age of 63, and is the basis for her fictionalized "Little House" books. She wrote it in longhand in Big Chief tablets (Ignatius Reilly's tablet of choice). It's quite a good read. The editors have done an excellent job of annotation. The preface, which describes the publication history of it and the Little House books, and the involvement of Wilder's daughter, Rose (a professional writer) in their composition, is well done. I think this is a must-read for fans of Wilder's Little House books.

"The Idea Factory: Bell labs and the Great Age of American Innovation," by John Gertner. Between inventing the transistor, creating the UNIX operating system, and discovering the origin of the universe, ATT Bell Labs was one of the key elements in the amazing burst of creativity in American industry in the 20th century. The book is a fine description of Bell Labs, particularly the Murray Hill facility; and an elegy for American industrial greatness that, each day, recedes further into the past.

Posted by: Brown Line at February 01, 2015 11:49 AM (a5bF3)

209 Two novels that were originally published as short stories -

I think Enders Game was originally published as a short story or novella, wasn't it?

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 11:51 AM (SNhR+)

210 I just hope his usage doesn't catch on.

Good luck with that.

Posted by: The word "literally" at February 01, 2015 11:51 AM (9F2c1)

211 199 -

The problem with any/all Kennedy conspiracy theories is that there are just too many of them, and any one of them is just as plausible as the next.

If there was one, it is hiding in plain sight, because it doesn't have to be hidden.

Jackie had him killed. She was getting tired of all the philandering.

There. Case solved.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 11:51 AM (Dj0WE)

212 Speaking of football books and novels...

When I was a kid, I read a novel called "Murder Ball" (or Murder Bowl).

It was about football in the future.

It didn't just involve tackeling. It had knives, blunt weapons, and guns and body armor. And instead of being played in a stadium, it is played in about 10 cordoned off city blocks of an adbandoned (or forcibly cleared ghetto).

It's main character was a veteran, aging 1st string quarterback.

The opening scene has the quarterback making the last throw of the game, going for the game winning touchdown. The play is being run down the center of a deserted city street at night, in a light rain. Illumination is good, provided by still functioning city street lights.

The ball is a in a perfect spiral, the rookie receiver is reaching up to catch it, and *bam*. A defensive sniper shoots him in the throat, killing him and costing the other team the victory.

As the quarterback is left dealing with the agony of defeat, he realizes two things.

He screwed up, because based off of the terrain, he should have realized that was the perfect spot for the as of then not yet seen defensive sniper, and thus he should have run a different play.

And... the roookie screwed up, because only a rookie would have looked skyward for the pass with his whole head, exposing his unprotected throat. An experienced player would have only cut his eyes skyward, looking for the ball, thus protecting his throat and presenting only his armored helmet and body armor and pads to any defensive sniper, making it much more likely that any bullet would be deflected or safely absorbed.

Now, not ALL plays ended in death. The majority didin't. Most plays ended in just a brutal tackle. (No such thing as unnecessary roughness. Clothlines and what not were all acceptable.)

But it did happen. One defensive player might come in for the tackle, while another came in with the knife.

I liked the book.

Posted by: Taco Shack at February 01, 2015 11:52 AM (C+qQ0)

213 Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series were hands down some of the best books I've ever read.

Posted by: Dirk Steed at February 01, 2015 11:53 AM (bCnPs)

214 Steyn and security...

I saw Glenn Beck at a "Support the Troops" appearance circa 2003. He gave a non-partisan talk encouraging support of the troops regardless of one's position in the war.

After the talk, he came out into the audience talking and listening to audience members. He had two or three *very* alert security people with him at all times, even in a red state crowd that really liked him.

This was well before he hit it big and became widely despised by the left. It must be tough on his family to have to live with the required level of security today.

Posted by: doug at February 01, 2015 11:54 AM (1RA3a)

215 Perelandra is simply a beautiful book.
Very true--but also very, VERY suspenseful. I made the mistake of starting it after dark and ended up reading *almost* the entire thing in one sitting so as not to have nightmares about the Unman (conked out after sunrise, just a few pages from the end). Need to read it again one of these days, more slowly.

Posted by: Elisabeth G. Wolfe at February 01, 2015 11:54 AM (iuQS7)

216 214 -

And yet, Breitbart sat down in a bar to have a drink with a stranger who disagreed with him, then walked home alone...

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 11:56 AM (Dj0WE)

217 @artisanal 'ette at February 01, 2015 08:57 AM

Had Pioneer Girl on order on Amazon for 5 weeks and gave up, trying Target but delayed there too. Any tips on how to get appreciated, its a promised Christmas gift and I am in a pickle.

PS reading AN INTRODUCTION TO THE History Of Western Europe BY JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON

Copyright 1903 - I like the bits as it gets to the 19th century without any apparent clue to the cataclysm about to come in 1914. For example, Belgium is considered a viable buffer between Germany and France.

Posted by: JD Will at February 01, 2015 11:56 AM (EEqRQ)

218 If there was one, it is hiding in plain sight, because it doesn't have to be hidden.

Jackie had him killed. She was getting tired of all the philandering.

There. Case solved.
Posted by: BurtTC

LBJ apparently knew more about it than he ever let on, and I don't suspect him as being part of the conspiracy.
Historically, it was attributed to the "climate of hate" in Dallas Texas. Kennedy carried "Democrat" Texas handily ( California was reliably Republican in those days for Presidential elections).

There is just so much that is "made up" these days. But it was a fact that
1) Bobby and John went after the mob/Teamsters hard
2) JFK really wanted the CIA to kill Castro.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 11:57 AM (+1T7c)

219 "When I was a kid, I read a novel called "Murder Ball" (or Murder Bowl)."

That sounds like Urban Brawl, from the old Shadowrun universe. FASA put out a string of novels in the early 90s. Maybe it was one of those?

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:57 AM (WJ32e)

220 "I suspect that the mob was strongly involved."

I thought that
for the longest time. They certainly did have every motive to pop JFK
after Cuba and appointing RFK the AG. But, I've really come around that
Oswald was just a nut. He liked attention. All of his moves....moving
to Russia, moving back, trying to assassinate a General only a few
months before Dallas....were cries for attention. He liked it. He
wanted desperately to be "somebody."

The shots themselves from the Depository aren't that hard. A Carcano is a clanky POS but it's reliable and accurate.

Could a guy from that window make those shots? Yes.

Posted by: Ricardo Kill at February 01, 2015 11:58 AM (as+cO)

221 Kitten Bowl is starting now on Hallmark...

Posted by: Citizen OG Celtic-American, Comrade 69, Level Ultraviolet Troubleshooter at February 01, 2015 12:00 PM (ASn1R)

222 I am reading S.M. Stirling's The Peshawar Lancers based on someone's recommendation a couple of weeks ago and enjoying it quite a bit, so thanks for that.

I read Woman with a Gun last week and found it to be a pretty fair mystery with a deeply flawed semi-protagonist prosecutor who was led around by his dick, a lot. But it was enjoyable and took me a while to figure out.

I also read Tami Hoag's Cold, Cold Heart and enjoyed it thoroughly. It's about a woman who is kidnapped by a serial killer and escapes by killing him, but suffers a traumatic brain injury in the process. Since she stopped writing the romances, I find Hoag's books much more enjoyable.

I appreciate all the reviews and suggestions from the book thread commenters every week. Y'all are the best.

Posted by: huerfano at February 01, 2015 12:00 PM (bAGA/)

223 Meat on the Hoof is a great read about college football.
http://www.amazon.com/Meat-hidden-world-Texas-football/dp/B00005WEQ0

Posted by: Mike McNamara at February 01, 2015 12:01 PM (ko0cq)

224 "And yet, Breitbart sat down in a bar to have a drink with a stranger..."

Yet, Steyn is still alive.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 12:02 PM (WJ32e)

225 The shots themselves from the Depository aren't that hard. A Carcano is a clanky POS but it's reliable and accurate.

Could a guy from that window make those shots? Yes.
Posted by: Ricardo Kill

I have no doubt Oswald made the kill shot. It's just he was so unstable, I think there was an anonymous 'handler' in the background to get him in place on date and time.
Then Ruby waxed him before he could be interrogated about the whole thing.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 12:03 PM (+1T7c)

226
Any idea what the sequel's title is?
Posted by: MSP

ROOSEVELT: The Soldier of Freedom

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 01, 2015 12:04 PM (kdS6q)

227 220 -

This is the point where I recommend the book "Mortal Error," which lays out the theory that the accidental kill shot was fired, not by Oswald, but by a secret service agent in the car behind him.

I know it sounds far-fetched, and I don't exactly believe it, because there are too many unknowns, but he talks about ballistics (including the fact that the carcano round that was allegedly "pristine" was anything but), and I would really like to know if there are any experts out there who could refute this one on those facts alone.

It is incredibly detailed, regarding the trajectory of rounds, the size and location of wounds that could/would be expected, depending where they came from, and what type of weapon was used.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:05 PM (Dj0WE)

228 The problem with any/all Kennedy conspiracy theories is that there are just too many of them, and any one of them is just as plausible as the next. If there was one, it is hiding in plain sight, because it doesn't have to be hidden.

A commie nutjob with a hard on for the Soviet world rule got a gun and started shooting.

Let's face it. That's a far more probable case than some nutjob deciding he needs to kill the president in order to impress Jodi Foster.

Posted by: buzzion at February 01, 2015 12:05 PM (zt+N6)

229 " It's just he was so unstable, I think there was an anonymous
'handler' in the background to get him in place on date and time."

Now that may be entirely possible. He was rash and not possessed of real good instincts.

Posted by: Ricardo Kill at February 01, 2015 12:06 PM (as+cO)

230 181
My husband ran track for OSU back in the day. He got locked out of his training field house one evening and walked over to the old St. John's Arena, where the athletic department offices were. The only light on was in Coach Hayes' office where he was watching the tape of a punt over and over and over again. My hubbie spent a fascinating hour or so watching the coach watch his tape. He said old Woody would alternately talk to himself and my husband. As the coach walked over to the field house to let my husband in he elicited my husband's life story and made him feel like the most important kid on campus. He said the coach had a way with students and was one of the nicest, kindest men he ever met.

Posted by: Tuna at February 01, 2015 12:07 PM (JSovD)

231 225 -

DiMaggio. He never forgave the Kennedys for what they did to Marilyn.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:07 PM (Dj0WE)

232 We do need to resurrect Communist as an insult.

Posted by: Costanza Defense at February 01, 2015 12:07 PM (ZPrif)

233
The more "McCarthy was right" type of books, the better I say. And I would compare the screaming of "McCarthyism!" from those days to the screaming of "Islamaphopia!" today. McCarthy was right and Islam is a major threat to this country and a scourge on the world.

Of course there is speaking out bravely and doing brave things; my wife recommends the book '50 Children'.

http://tinyurl.com/qx4edtw

kind of expensive, but there is the library and also a documentary for the I'd rather watch among us.

Posted by: Guy Mohawk at February 01, 2015 12:08 PM (wg9gY)

234 73
Oh, and one other thing: there are some books that we both want to
read. If we both have e-readers, do we have to each buy a copy of a
book, or can one purchase be shared on two readers?

Well, the way Mrs. Chronda and I do it is that she uses my account for her readers, so all our devices are linked to a single account.

Mostly works great, but every now and then I turn the Wi-Fi of my Kindle on and it gets pounced upon by the 100 free cookbooks she bought while bored one night (this really happened; neither of us cooks).

Posted by: Citizen Moron Anachronda at February 01, 2015 12:08 PM (o78gS)

235 Could a guy from that window make those shots? Yes.

I've only been to Dallas once. I made sure to see Dealey Plaza on my way out. The shot from the 6th floor appears way more close and down than it does on TV, where it seems more flat and across.

Hitting the head from above makes the movement backwards make complete sense. I have no doubt that the shot was by Oswald from that window.

As to who was behind Oswald, if anyone, I don't think we'll ever know.

Posted by: Bandersnatch at February 01, 2015 12:09 PM (1xUj/)

236 225
I have no doubt Oswald made the kill shot. It's just he was so unstable, I think there was an anonymous 'handler' in the background to get him in place on date and time.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 12:03 PM (+1T7c)/i]

In many ways, this is the story of Obama.

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 12:09 PM (sdi6R)

237 @209, Wiki says it was published as a short story in Analog magazine. The novel does seem padded with the activities of the siblings and the movie threw all that out without losing much.

Posted by: waelse1 at February 01, 2015 12:09 PM (x+P8L)

238 230 181
My husband ran track for OSU back in the day. He got locked out of his training field house one evening and walked over to the old St. John's Arena, where the athletic department offices were. The only light on was in Coach Hayes' office where he was watching the tape of a punt over and over and over again. My hubbie spent a fascinating hour or so watching the coach watch his tape. He said old Woody would alternately talk to himself and my husband. As the coach walked over to the field house to let my husband in he elicited my husband's life story and made him feel like the most important kid on campus. He said the coach had a way with students and was one of the nicest, kindest men he ever met.

Posted by: Tuna at February 01, 2015 12:07 PM (JSovD)

And then he sucker punched him?

Posted by: Dack Thrombosis at February 01, 2015 12:09 PM (oFCZn)

239 Oh, and in my opinion tying Ruby back into some elaborate conspiracy is silly. Ruby was a nobody. He owned a bar, frequented by cops and typical, ordinary low-life criminals.

He was a wannabe, and he knew cops. So once he got it in his head to kill the guy who killed Kennedy, it wasn't that hard to walk into the station and pull the trigger.

Case closed.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:09 PM (Dj0WE)

240 Funny thing about the anti-vaxxers.

The same Lefties who won't vaccinate their kids are the same ones who force their kid's school to ban peanut butter cause their kid has an allergy.

Posted by: Costanza Defense at February 01, 2015 12:10 PM (ZPrif)

241 197
Massillon? I wonder if they still put mini footballs in the beds of newborns at the local hospital?

Posted by: Tuna at February 01, 2015 12:10 PM (JSovD)

242
novels that were originally published as short stories -
Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. The short version, Weyr Search, won a Hugo.
Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD)

Novella. Because word count.

Also, the cover and illios from the issue of Analog were it was first published:

forums.srellim.org/showthread.php?t=1716

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 01, 2015 12:10 PM (kdS6q)

243 @227: It's pretty clear from the Zapruder video that the final round came from behind. So unless an unidentifiable SS agent *off camera* point his weapon at the president, in the opposite direction of the gunfire reports, and fired a round and somehow was NOT immediately identified (perhaps in an inventory of rounds after the shooting)... Also, that's a hell of an impact for a pistol round. A single, randomly aimed, accidentally fired pistol round that was never, ever mentioned in the thorough investigation of the assassination.

Sounds like clear-cut BS to me. Someone who has identified a bizarre and untested angle on the assassination and hides the ridiculousness behind authentic-sounding jargon. When I was in law school, I used to debunk a friend's conspiracy theories for fun. This sounds similar.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 12:11 PM (WJ32e)

244 In today's America, McCarthyite is considered a worse insult than Communist.

How many millions did McCarthy kill?

Posted by: Costanza Defense at February 01, 2015 12:11 PM (ZPrif)

245 This was well before he hit it big and became widely despised by the left. It must be tough on his family to have to live with the required level of security today.

When David Horowitz speaks at universities, campus security has to maintain a presence during his presentation in order to keep the more violence-prone students from disrupting the speech or attacking him

These same students will also tell you they believe in free speech, too, I'll bet.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 12:14 PM (SNhR+)

246 " I made sure to see Dealey Plaza on my way out. The shot from the 6th
floor appears way more close and down than it does on TV, where it
seems more flat and across.
"

Dealy is much more compact than it ever seems on TV. It's a small area. It surprised me too upon visiting at how tight everything was.

Posted by: Ricardo Kill at February 01, 2015 12:14 PM (as+cO)

247 I wish I could find the Bloom County comic that implicated Jayne Mansfield as the second gunman. Because that I one of the greatest cartoons I've ever seen.

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 12:14 PM (sdi6R)

248 We hope Seattle wins to honor our President of Color with a winning Quarterback of Color.

Posted by: Mary Clogginstien at February 01, 2015 12:14 PM (D5iCY)

249 is, not I

Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 12:14 PM (sdi6R)

250 He said the coach had a way with students and was one of the nicest, kindest men he ever met.
Posted by: Tuna

I knew several people that were at OSU during the early 70's that interacted with Woody Hayes outside of football. All that is very true. He could be extremely gracious and kind to everyday students......outside of football. He spent a half hour talking to a girl I knew about going to law school and what classes to take. About football...he was nuts.

Posted by: Bossy Conservative on a Sunday morning at February 01, 2015 12:15 PM (+1T7c)

251 243 -

He was in the car immediately behind the President's car. Carrying an AR15. There is one photo that shows him with the rifle, up.

It was known, and is in the extensive Warren Report records that this particular agent raised the weapon as soon as he heard a shot.

Anyway, I don't expect anyone to believe this is what actually happened, but unless and until you read the book you really have no idea whether it's plausible or not. I'm telling you, based on the way it's laid out, it doesn't sound implausible.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:15 PM (Dj0WE)

252 Dealy is much more compact than it ever seems on TV. It's a small area. It surprised me too upon visiting at how tight everything was.

Good to know it isn't just me.

Posted by: Bandersnatch at February 01, 2015 12:16 PM (1xUj/)

253 Interesting stoning story.

http://tinyurl.com/nopaj3e

Posted by: The Great White Snark at February 01, 2015 12:17 PM (LImiJ)

254 Well, I'm off to church, nice thread today, plenty of good recommendations.

Be back later.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 12:18 PM (SNhR+)

255 Geez now this is a serious Pern collection

http://www.pern.nl/library/collection_pern.html

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 12:18 PM (M5cQi)

256 I read the Warren Report. There is no doubt in my mind that Oswald did the shoot.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 12:18 PM (wlDny)

257 238
Funny thing about that incident. So out of character. Something went down there that was never fully explained. Coach was pretty intense once on the football field but the guys who played for him loved him. Anyway, OSU didn't hold it against him. He's got a street named after him and the state-of- the-art football training facility is also. It's fondly referred to as " The Woody" here in Columbus.

Posted by: Tuna at February 01, 2015 12:19 PM (JSovD)

258 247 I wish I could find the Bloom County comic that implicated Jayne Mansfield as the second gunman. Because that I one of the greatest cartoons I've ever seen.
Posted by: rickl at February 01, 2015 12:14 PM (sdi6R)

Buried deep, it is.

Penguins.

Posted by: eman at February 01, 2015 12:20 PM (MQEz6)

259 I have also driven through Dealy Plaza and looked at the window the shot was made from. Not a long shot at all.

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 12:21 PM (wlDny)

260 Dealy is a very small area.

And as far as the "grassy knoll" goes, a postage stamp covered with grass is not much of an exaggeration.

Posted by: weirdflunkyonatablet at February 01, 2015 12:21 PM (j74cO)

261 #237

The original short story was also in the first volume of the 'There Will Be War' series, which is being revived in e-book editions by Vox Day's company this year. I'm currently doing the formatting on the fourth volume of nine.

There was some controversy when the novel was up for the Hugo as to whether it was legit to nominate a longer version of a previously nominated work. Personally, it always struck me as a bit of a shaggy dog story, and there were at least a dozen variations of the theme in the SF mags in the same time frame, including some I liked better. I never cared for a lot of Card's work from that era. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

Posted by: Epobirs at February 01, 2015 12:21 PM (IdCqF)

262 Food up

Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 12:22 PM (wlDny)

263 256 I read the Warren Report. There is no doubt in my mind that Oswald did the shoot.
Posted by: Vic at February 01, 2015 12:18 PM (wlDny)

Yes, the evidence is pretty clear.

It as Oswald, alone.

Posted by: eman at February 01, 2015 12:22 PM (MQEz6)

264 Corgis

Posted by: Anna Puma (+SmuD) at February 01, 2015 12:22 PM (M5cQi)

265 1

Posted by: pumkinbutter at February 01, 2015 12:23 PM (VtTTE)

266 He was in the car immediately behind the President's car. Carrying an AR15. There is one photo that shows him with the rifle, up. It was known, and is in the extensive Warren Report records that this particular agent raised the weapon as soon as he heard a shot. Anyway, I don't expect anyone to believe this is what actually happened, but unless and until you read the book you really have no idea whether it's plausible or not. I'm telling you, based on the way it's laid out, it doesn't sound implausible.
Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:15 PM (Dj0WE)

Yeah, but what is more likely? That an agent raising his rifle after hearing the shot has an accidental discharge that just happens to get a direct headshot on the guy he's supposed to protect? Or that the guy up in the building that is purposefully aiming at his target manages to go 2 for 3.

Posted by: buzzion at February 01, 2015 12:24 PM (zt+N6)

267 Belle Knoxious http://www.nationalreview.com/article/397654/belle-knoxious-kevin-d-williamson via @NRO

She goes to add that she became a libertarian in part because people advised her to wait until marriage to have sex. If you've attended very many libertarian conferences, you know that virginity and libertarianism very often go hand-in-hand, though not always willingly. No doubt Miss Weeks will find an enthusiastic reception among the heroic Randian poindexters.

Posted by: Costanza Defense at February 01, 2015 12:24 PM (ZPrif)

268 And...there is a huge amount of free stuff out there. Enough classic literature for the rest of your life!

Posted by: CharlieBrown'sDildo at February 01, 2015 10:24 AM (Zu3d9)

Once again, CBD, we're on the same page (sorry). I've been plowing through lots of classic literature from Project Gutenberg and Archive.org.
I recently finished a history of mathematics that was published in 1910 (IIRC), and it was fasincating. The book concludes with the first results from a new, promising field called ... kinetic theory of gases. (To non-scientists, this is like a music review citing an up and coming band to watch that hails from Liverpool, and has just returned from an engagement in Hamburg.)

Posted by: Jay Guevara at February 01, 2015 12:27 PM (oKE6c)

269 @251: The presence of a rifle does make it less absurd. But there is still the problem of the fact that it is *obvious* when a rifle is fired. Shell ejection, distinct report, cordite, and the guy was on the scene in a car with other agents and no one noticed?

"unless and until you read the book you really have no idea whether it's plausible or not"

Bah. If the author does not satisfactorily answer basic investigative questions like: if this guy shot the president from a few yards away, how come none of the hundreds of people around watching saw? What happened to the ejected shell? How come no one heard that the shot was distinctly different from the others and much, much closer? Witnessed the look of horror on the agent's face when he realized what he'd done? Did Oswald just arbitrarily decide to stop shooting at that exact moment? If the explanation was immediately obvious, why wasn't this explained until now?

Thought exercise: Would you read a book on how 9/11 was an inside job by the evil Bush administration if the author failed to explain basic investigative questions? And how would you react if I said you can't possible dismiss the theory as implausible until you buy and read the book?

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 12:29 PM (WJ32e)

270 250
" About football...he was nuts."

Yes he was. A common characteristic in those old time coaches, I think. But thank goodness for that because as my husband has always said(and he even realized it when he was running track) the profits from football programs provide for the other sports on college campuses.

Posted by: Tuna at February 01, 2015 12:29 PM (JSovD)

271 Even though I go to Dallas fairly regularly, I hadn't been to Dealey plaza until last February. I agree with y'all about the size of the plaza and the angle and length of the shot. It was not a hard shot.

It was pretty funny to watch everyone waiting for the red light so they could have pictures taken on the X in the street, then run like mad when the cars bore down on them. There was also a conspiracy dude who had chalked a big arrow on the sidewalk with the words, HIS BRAINS SPLATTERED THAT WAY!!!

Posted by: stace at February 01, 2015 12:30 PM (ImzkZ)

272 266 -

Of course. One is clearly much more likely.

What has never been done though, is a good scientific analysis of the ballistics, and the guy whose theory this is did an amateur study of them. He's not just some guy though, he owned a gun store, did freelance ballistics for Baltimore PD and other agencies. And was one of the "experts" brought in by CBS or whomever, for their famous re-creation of the Oswald shots.

This guy was one of only a few, I believe, who was able to duplicate what was then assumed to be Oswald's feat: Hitting the moving target twice, in that time, at that distance, with that rifle.

Anyway, I think it's fun. The thought of a government screw-up, where the agency that was supposed to help, wound up hurting the very person it was SUPPOSED to protect is quite in line with what many of us otherwise believe about government employees.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:30 PM (Dj0WE)

273 Naturalfake @130: I never resist an opening to tout Gore Vidal's "Messiah." A backwoods undertaker launches a thoroughly American cult of death that quickly sweeps the Western world. The kicker is that the Muslim sphere of influence is the last refuge of reason ... or has been until Cavite missionaries arrive in Cairo to finish the work.

Funny, very insightful about the 1950s in which it was written, and no cornholing. (Although the narrator can never be with the woman he's fallen in love with, and we're left to figure out why not.)

Posted by: Little Miss Spellcheck at February 01, 2015 12:30 PM (z899H)

274 First, God bless John Wayne.
Second, JFK assassination theory that possibly has merit, "The Third Bullet" Stephen Hunter. A good read.

Posted by: fairweatherbill holding dominion over the nether regions at February 01, 2015 12:33 PM (Ocusd)

275 Semi-regular reader and part-time writer here. About a year ago I plugged my new book, The Stars Came back, here. I just got word it was nominated for the Prometheus Award for best novel, an award for "libertarian si-fi." Haven't *won* it yet, of course, but even being nominated is a surprise.

I don't know if it was one of you morons that had the rank to pull such a stunt, but if so, thanks.

Guess I gotta get that sequel finished, now.

Posted by: Rolf at February 01, 2015 12:33 PM (H+WqQ)

276 Hey, congrats, Rolf!

Posted by: Elisabeth G. Wolfe at February 01, 2015 12:35 PM (iuQS7)

277 269 -

Those basic questions were asked, and answered. There are witnesses who smelled gunpowder, right there where the cars just passed. Some who said they heard different sounding rifle reports.

The guy lays out credible evidence that Oswald actually squeezed the trigger more than three times, and one shot (most likely the first) missed the car completely. There are witnesses who support that supposition as well.

Apparently there was a bent round found in the sixth floor shooting next, that suggests Oswald's weapon jammed at some point, meaning he was still trying to shoot, but got out when he realized he wasn't going to get off another shot.

One thing though: Good luck finding the book out there. The SS agent is still alive, he sued the author and publisher, and won some thousands of dollars in an out of court settlement. The publisher essentially admitted there was no way they could win in court, but did their best to imply they aren't suggesting in any way that the book is wrong.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:37 PM (Dj0WE)

278 274 First, God bless John Wayne.
Second, JFK assassination theory that possibly has merit, "The Third Bullet" Stephen Hunter. A good read.
Posted by: fairweatherbill holding dominion over the nether regions at February 01, 2015 12:33 PM (Ocusd)

Loved that book, and the whole series. Loved John Wayne too. My parents got his autograph when he was here for the premier of The Alamo.

Posted by: stace at February 01, 2015 12:37 PM (ImzkZ)

279 Posted by: Rolf at February 01, 2015 12:33 PM (H+WqQ)

Awesome! And very well deserved, I might add.

Did you ever find new things for your daughter to read?

Posted by: Tammy al-Thor at February 01, 2015 12:38 PM (Pauop)

280 #272

Penn and Teller's Bullshit! did a conspiracy episode, Season 3 Episode 3. One of the things they looked at was the often made claim that Oswald did a remarkable thing with those shots. They found it was fairly easy for any decent shooter and those claiming it was otherwise were looking to sell books.

Posted by: Epobirs at February 01, 2015 12:39 PM (IdCqF)

281 "This guy was one of only a few, I believe, who was able to duplicate
what was then assumed to be Oswald's feat: Hitting the moving target
twice, in that time, at that distance, with that rifle."

It's been replicated by investigative television shows a number of times. Oswald was a decent shot in the Marines. I was a better one in the Army; never less than Expert. I used to peg pop up targets at the range with head shots at 300 m with iron sites. *I* could have assassinated Kennedy. The difficulty of the shots have been grossly exaggerated by conspiracy theorists to try to damage the most plausible, official explanation.

Aside, I actually bought into Oliver Stone's lies when I was a kid. I will never forgive him for it.

@275: Congratulations, Rolf. I hope to one day imitate such success. I don't suppose you know any good SF/F agents looking for a grown up and somewhat dark trilogy, do you?

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 12:40 PM (WJ32e)

282 Those basic questions were asked, and answered. There are witnesses who smelled gunpowder, right there where the cars just passed. Some who said they heard different sounding rifle reports.

And I smell bull shit. Witness testimony can be wildly inaccurate between witnesses and wrong. And in the confusion of watching the president having his head blown off?

Posted by: buzzion at February 01, 2015 12:43 PM (zt+N6)

283 "When I was a kid, I read a novel called "Murder Ball" (or Murder Bowl)."

That sounds like Urban Brawl, from the old Shadowrun universe. FASA put out a string of novels in the early 90s. Maybe it was one of those?

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:57 AM (WJ32e)

*****

Possible, but unlikely. I read this book in the late 70's/early 80's.

Posted by: Taco Shack at February 01, 2015 12:43 PM (C+qQ0)

284 Attention WWII buffs:

Visions From A Foxhole.

William Foley.

Well-written, with great illustrations drawn in the field by the author.

Posted by: Meremortal at February 01, 2015 12:44 PM (1Y+hH)

285 Some folks here could use a shave.

Posted by: Occam at February 01, 2015 12:45 PM (4ckfx)

286
Fun fact:

The Prometheus Award winner for Best Novel gets a one oz gold coin.

Because Libertarians.

Posted by: Laurie David's Cervix at February 01, 2015 12:48 PM (kdS6q)

287 Jay Edward Epstein has a series of books on the JFK assassination and related spook history, his general thesis is that it was almost certainly a Cuban hit using Soviet assets, IE Oswald and his supports. All the crazy conspiracies were spun out of panicked, purblind attempts by the investigators to avoid recognizing that an anti-communist American president had been murdered by a Soviet satellite with Soviet resources. This refusal to step into the void (recognizing it in a forthright manner almost requires calling it an act of war, a year after the nukes almost went off) made emotional sense, but made everybody involved look guilty as hell, and left everyone to sublimate that rage and paranoia in increasingly crazy and counterproductive directions.

#175 - I used to read a lot of ACW history. There's a lawyer named Eric Wittenberg who specializes in ACW cavalry history, he has a hate on for Sheridan that has to be seen to be believed, he basically considers Sheridan to be the greatest liar of the war. I think _Little Phil_ is the definitive Wittenberg jeremiad on the subject, but whenever Sheridan shows up in any of his books, it's usually to be the villain of the piece.

He has written some good books on cavalry actions during the Gettysburg campaign, and various other campaigns in the Virginia theatre, when he's not gassing on about that devil Sheridan he's pretty informative.

Posted by: Mitch H. at February 01, 2015 12:51 PM (NKVm/)

288 ...an anti-communist American president ...

And a Democrat, no less.

Boy, have times changed.

Posted by: Jay Guevara at February 01, 2015 12:54 PM (oKE6c)

289 I think Enders Game was originally published as a short story or novella, wasn't it?

Posted by: OregonMuse

-------------------

Then it was expanded into a seven-novel franchise and renamed "Harry Potter."

Posted by: Occam at February 01, 2015 12:56 PM (4ckfx)

290 Off, damned Occam sock!

Posted by: Taro Tsujimoto at February 01, 2015 12:57 PM (4ckfx)

291 276 - thanks!
279 - Still working on it. She still reads a lot, and mostly good stuff so I can't really complain, but still trying to expand the horizons. Found out the 8-year old REALLY like the "Humphrey Hamster" series. He reads well enough, just doesn't like most stories. Though he did read the "Uncle Wiggly Longears" stories, even though they have rather old fashioned language (written ~ century ago).
281-No, sorry. I don't have an agent myself, and only found a publisher on accident. General recommendation: make sure they are well edited and no gaping holes in the story, find a friend with a blog with decent traffic. Start posting them in chunks, ~1k words at a time, as a daily series to build readership. Then, when you have enough regulars, publish as an indie on Amazon, tell your regulars to all buy it and leave reviews. If you can sell enough to get it pushed up into the top 100 in the genera it markets itself. When it starts to fade, publish the second one, then a little while later your third. If you can sell a thousand copies, you have a track record and finding an agent/editor will be easier because you are no longer an unknown quantity. Not sure if that's the best possible way, but *selling* has a fairly definitive value.

Posted by: Rolf at February 01, 2015 12:58 PM (H+WqQ)

292 Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:57 AM (WJ32e)

I found it!

It was called "Killerbowl", not Murderball like I thought.

It can be found at Amazon.

Posted by: Taco Shack at February 01, 2015 01:04 PM (C+qQ0)

293 Killerbowl is the first novel by Gary K. Wolf, famed creator of Roger Rabbit.

Did. Not. Know. That.

Wow...

Posted by: Taco Shack at February 01, 2015 01:05 PM (C+qQ0)

294 Posted by: Little Miss Spellcheck at February 01, 2015 12:30 PM (z899H)

I haven't read that one.

Sounds like fun.

Thanks for the recommendation.

Posted by: naturalfake at February 01, 2015 01:06 PM (KBvAm)

295 >Free app available for download is Calibre - will convert epub, mobi, pdf, word - in fact anything but azw3 - to anything else.

There are plugins for Calibre that will take care of that last format. (Actually, it's not the format itself that Calibre doesn't like, but the DRM that's frequently applied to it.)

https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/

Tools to remove DRM from both Kindle & Nook purchases are included. It needs a Kindle for PC installation (or maybe Kindle for Mac, though I use Kindle for PC under Wine on Linux) for that format, while Nook DRM removal only needs (last time I checked, at least) the number of the credit card used to purchase the book. Once the DRM is gone, you can do whatever you want with your books: convert Nook books to read on a Kindle device (or vice versa), share books between devices without artificial limits, etc.

Posted by: salfter at February 01, 2015 01:07 PM (TXsAk)

296 @Taco Shack: Found it, thanks.

@Rolf: One of the publishers I talked to who gave me a good review (in Britain) said they were uninterested in things that were already available on the market. So it seems like a plunge into self-publishing for a trilogy is a no-looking back plunge.

Related, where did you get your cover art? It's really good for an indie.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 01:08 PM (WJ32e)

297 @181 Buckeye Abroad

They took all of Coach Hayes' stuff out of the ROTC building and put it in a room in the Woody Hayes Facility I believe. Tuna might know better. They have the last chalk board with his writings on it still preserved and under glass. They showed it on tv before the Championship game I believe. Really cool.

I could tell a million Woody stories. But I was a waitress at The Faculty Club in the late 70's. And he knew my name. And when I would pass him walking across the Oval he always said hi and called me by my name. Really impressed the hell out of my friends!
I made my sons read "You Win With People" and of course his "Pay Forward" speech. What a guy!

Posted by: Buckeye Katie at February 01, 2015 01:09 PM (1M/xn)

298 I inherited a 78 of "Cigarettes, Whusky [sic], and Wild, Wild Women" from my paternal grandfather.

And, totally off-topic, I would urge SF Bay-area morons to consider attending a charitable fundraiser amongst the elephant seals at Ano Nuevo -- it should be a truly memorable experience. More info: http://tinyurl.com/qjq9r92

Posted by: cthulhu at February 01, 2015 01:22 PM (T1005)

299 For football, Jim Miller's The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football is a must read.

For investigative history, a linguist named Mark David Ledbetter has a series on Kindle that goes up to 1900 called America's Forgotten History. It's fantastic.

Posted by: Mr. Naron at February 01, 2015 01:26 PM (Jrhg/)

300 Well, the only things my dad loved more than cheap gin were football and books, so I've read all of those, albeit 30 years ago.

Paper Lion: I seem to remember the most compelling passage was the description of how disorienting donning a football helmet is.

Semi-Tough: Bawdy, but pointless. When a 10 year old boy wants more plot, it needs more plot.

North Dallas Forty: An American Classic. Read it.

Friday Night Lights: I read this more recently; borrowed the book from the gf at the time after she took me to the movie. A very interesting look at small-town culture. Someone like me, who grew up in NYC and went to a high school with a chess club but no football team, never knew how nuts people go for the only game in town.

Posted by: Oschisms at February 01, 2015 01:26 PM (uqV2n)

301 INSTANT REPLAY: Diary of a Green Bay Packer, by Jerry Kramer.

Great account of the Vince Lombardi years and the very first Super Bowls.

Posted by: Beverly at February 01, 2015 01:30 PM (6E04e)

302 PS: Did anyone else see grotesquely caparisoned Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski on NBC just now? I'm not sure, but I think we've been glitter-bombed.

Oh, and of course they're heavily featuring Barb Costas.

Posted by: Beverly at February 01, 2015 01:32 PM (6E04e)

303 296 - "already available on the market." uh, you mean like the romance genre that has twelve gazillion titles with a total of only four plot-lines? People like good stories, and if it's a comfortable type they'll happily buy and read variations on a theme. Find a readership and let them know you exist. I started posting my story on a gun/politics blog that had about a thousand regular hits a day, I ended up with about a hundred regular readers, who were more than happy to give me feedback and corrections. When I hit "Publish" on Amazon, I had roughly a hundred people who would buy it in the first week. That pushed it up into the ranks.

When I talked to Vox, he said his first reaction was "what the hell is this" because of the format, but he wasn't going to argue with the market, which at that point had bought two thousand copies and left more than fifty reviews. Every conceivable argument against it an editor might have, about language, format, religion, length, tone, or word selection means absolutely ZERO in the face of real, genuine, paid sales. THAT is what means something.

Cover Art - Craig's List. I put out an advert, waded through a lot of dreck replies, picked a local graphic artist that had a portfolio that looked like the right style looking for side-work. Penciled out what I wanted, went back and forth a bunch, finally had something good enough. Paid $300 for it, nothing "stock" about it at all. I also might recommend looking for someone at Deviant Art, depending on what you want.

Posted by: Rolf at February 01, 2015 01:32 PM (H+WqQ)

304 Oh, and I probably didn't notice the sneering in Friday Night Lights because I expected it, being at ground zero of sneering. And I did sort of treat it as an anthropological look at small towns.

Posted by: Oschisms at February 01, 2015 01:36 PM (uqV2n)

305 I'd like to thank whichever one of you Morons recommended "the clans came home" novel about Ireland, "Dark Rose". Had to get it shipped in from overseas, but it was worth the wait. Greatly enjoyed it.

I will make my usual plugs for Larry Corriea, Tom Kratman, John Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson, and the collected work of Dan Bolger.

Other than finishing "Dark Rose" early in the week, I reread a couple Horus Heresy novels put out on Games Workshop's Black Library label.

Posted by: SGT Dan's Cat at February 01, 2015 01:48 PM (7SRVX)

306 I'd like to thank whichever one of you Morons recommended "the clans came home" novel about Ireland, "Dark Rose". Had to get it shipped in from overseas, but it was worth the wait. Greatly enjoyed it.

I will make my usual plugs for Larry Corriea, Tom Kratman, John Ringo, Michael Z. Williamson, and the collected work of Dan Bolger.

Other than finishing "Dark Rose" early in the week, I reread a couple Horus Heresy novels put out on Games Workshop's Black Library label.

Posted by: SGT Dan's Cat at February 01, 2015 01:48 PM (7SRVX)

307 Still slowly plowing my way through M. Twain's autobiography, complete and authoritative edition, volume 1. I may not read much, or fast, but I sure enjoy it. As I may have said before, I run across bits I'd like to quote here, but for full effect, I'd have to quote a prohibitive number of paragraphs.

I was just reading Twain's description of getting caught swearing by his bride of ten years. Hilarious. Had to read it aloud to Milady.

"I dreaded the day when she should discover that I was but a whited sepulchre partly freighted with suppressed language."

Posted by: mindful webworker - avian mentality at February 01, 2015 01:58 PM (U76Nz)

308 Apropos of nothing, I watched American Sniper last night and, after all the hype, was somewhat underwhelmed. I am not a Great American I guess.

Posted by: toby928(C) at February 01, 2015 02:04 PM (rwI+c)

309 dammit

Posted by: toby928(C) at February 01, 2015 02:04 PM (rwI+c)

310 A very good High school football book is 'The 80 Yard Run,' the author went coast to coast across an entire season visiting everything from tiny rural schools to powerhouses like Massillon. Great read, a coupleof years ago I wrote an HS Football novel for NaNoWriMo and the 80 yard run was a great resource.

Posted by: Gregory of Yardale at February 01, 2015 02:14 PM (ETrjW)

311 I'm sorry that Collen McCollough has passed on. Thorn Birds is a great read, and I also enjoyed Possession. Maybe I'll get around to reading some of her other books some day. She wrote a little book, The Ladies of Missalonghi, that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I finished Robertson Davies' Salterton trilogy and now want to reread his fiction. What a great writer, and someone who was a master at breaking the rule about show, don't tell. He lived an interesting career path before he started writing, first as an actor and theater troupe manager, next as a journalist and editor, finally as a professor and university administrator. This provided a rich background for his novels. He was not a fan of writing programs - he thought the best thing for a writer was to have a job that would get him out in the world interacting with others.

I've started reading a Victoria Holt novel on my kindle. I devoured Victoria Holt's book when I was in middle school, so I'm curious to see how this holds up. As a kid I realized that she seemed to write her books in pairs with essentially the same plot, but in one the mysterious man that the protagonist loved would turn out to be evil and in the second book he would turn out to be the good guy.

Posted by: biancaneve at February 01, 2015 02:19 PM (6Turu)

312 I acquired a free pristine pb copy of The Moonstone, the first British detective/mystery by Wilkie Collins. Sometimes I develop a pre-conceived notion about a title that causes me to resist reading it. In this case, a definite misconception! What a wonderful read; I couldn't put it down. Highly recommended to mystery lovers.

Posted by: bnonny at February 01, 2015 02:38 PM (xHubQ)

313 OregonMuse: With your kind permission, I'd like to copypasta your remarks on the JBS.

As an aside, everyone should read Robert Welch's The Politician, in which Welch says Dwight David Eisenhower was an agent of communism. If for no other reason than to read the argument he lays out and the supporting data he uses to back up his charge.

Once you have read the book, you will come to an inescapable conclusion: That while Eisenhower may not have been a communist agent, he certainly was a "small c" communist, with the massive expansion of the federal government on his watch. People blast LBJ for expanding the welfare state, but it was Eisenhower who laid out the framework.

Read it all, and then tell me I am wrong.

Posted by: badanov at February 01, 2015 02:43 PM (OwjVk)

314 @23 Tune

"He (Woody) said the coach had a way with students and was one of the nicest, kindest men he ever met."

Thanks for sharing that. A friend of mine played for him in the 70's and related similiar stories. Tough coach though and his Boys loved him.

Posted by: Buckeye Abroad at February 01, 2015 02:54 PM (AS72E)

315 JTB at February 01, 2015 11:22 AM

I know what you mean about lack of quality in today's fiction. I used to work in a library and from the middle 90's on, fewer good reads were appearing on our shelves. I imagine, the ALA, a rather liberal group, I'd guess, holds sway over a lot if recommendations for libraries to add to their collections.

I remember watching out children's librarian trying to dissuade the library's director not to weed out hundreds of books in the children's non -fiction section. The books, biographies, histories, general non-fictions, were "old" by today's standards, but reflected the culture, mores, and traditions many of which are scarce in modern children's literature. I thought it was a real crime.

Posted by: Susanamantha at February 01, 2015 03:16 PM (VOMks)

316 Posted by: Rolf at February 01, 2015 12:33 PM (H+WqQ)

Congrats! I really enjoyed that book and am glad it got nominated.

Posted by: Polliwog the 'Ette at February 01, 2015 03:21 PM (GDulk)

317 "134
"Another takeaway from the book is that Harry Hopkins was basically the
Valerie Jarrett of the Roosevelt administration--an unelected 'aide' who
wielded enormous power and influence, and who may have been working for
the enemy."

There's a ton of secret history there, to be sure.

Increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion, especially after
reading Fleming's _The New Dealers' War_, that Hopkins, as a Stalinist
mole, worked quietly and deliberately within the FDR White House to
create the conditions which led to Pearl Harbor. Especially the oil
clampdown on Japan, which left Tokyo few options outside of war.

Stalin would have been correctly and deeply alarmed, after the
Barbarossa onslaught by Hitler, and as the Soviets were in desperate
retreat and regroup, that Imperial Japan would opt to exploit Soviet
weakness by starting the Russo-Japanese War Part II, and gobbling up
Siberia. That would have been the end of the USSR and Stalin.

The capacity for a multifront war against two powerful adversaries
simply wasn't there. The only option was to distract and refocus the one
of the two who was not yet attacking the USSR.

So Hopkins received instructions.

Posted by: torquewrench at February 01, 2015 11:04 AM (noWW6)"

I read a book, "Operation Snow" which presented evidence that Harry Dexter White was a Soviet agent who was ordered to push the United States into war with Japan. It seems reasonable that there were multiple Soviet agents all working for the same purpose -- getting the United States into a war with Japan in order to protect the Soviet Union.

Posted by: Obnoxious A-Hole at February 01, 2015 03:27 PM (KDbAT)

318 None of the Kennedy conspiracy theories make sense for two reasons. The first one is the sheer fact that a conspiracy takes a lot of people to be successful and people have big mouths. As Mark Twain famously said, "Three people can keep a secret is two of them are dead...."

The other reason is that Kennedy was facing a re-election one year on...Wouldn't it have been far easier to have him die of natural causes? He daily took a pharmacopeia of drugs for his various illnesses and ailments, It wouldn't have been hard to see to it that he had an "accidental" overdose--and disguise it as a heart attack. Why blow his brains out in public--with his popular young wife and innocent bystanders (Texas Governor Connolly and his wife) inches away?

Even better, it would have been a cinch to make public just one of JFK's multitude of affairs. Just one. ANY one. He would not have been re-elected in US of 1964. It would have been impossible to survive that and his support would have evaporated overnight, beginning with his own Catholics.....

Posted by: JoeF. at February 01, 2015 04:04 PM (8HGb7)

319 Why on earth would they kill the president, and brother of the AG? It makes no sense.

Posted by: Df82 at February 01, 2015 11:44 AM (WJ32e)

And that says it all. If the evidence really pointed that way then saying so would rile up the most anti-mafia movement the world had ever seen. Organized crime has power, but to have the USA riled up about something like that? And it would have been so easy to rile the US up at that time when you consider what everyone had been going through both domestic and foreign when it came to crises. Finding one group to pin all of it on would have been way too easy and way to profitable to avoid.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at February 01, 2015 04:23 PM (g+akU)

320 The other reason is that Kennedy was facing a re-election one year on...Wouldn't it have been far easier to have him die of natural causes? He daily took a pharmacopeia of drugs for his various illnesses and ailments, It wouldn't have been hard to see to it that he had an "accidental" overdose--and disguise it as a heart attack. Why blow his brains out in public--with his popular young wife and innocent bystanders (Texas Governor Connolly and his wife) inches away?

Excellent points.

A good book on the JFK assassination is "Case Closed" By Gerald Posner.

Oswald did it.
Oswald was a crazed commie kook.
He acted alone.

Posted by: OregonMuse at February 01, 2015 04:51 PM (SNhR+)

321

Posted by: Mikey NTH at February 01, 2015 05:30 PM (g+akU)

322 308
Apropos of nothing, I watched American Sniper last night and, after all
the hype, was somewhat underwhelmed. I am not a Great American I guess.

We'll alert Sean Hannity so he can add you to the appropriate list.

Posted by: Citizen Moron Anachronda at February 01, 2015 06:25 PM (o78gS)

323 "227
220 -

This is the point where I recommend the book "Mortal
Error," which lays out the theory that the accidental kill shot was
fired, not by Oswald, but by a secret service agent in the car behind
him.

I know it sounds far-fetched, and I don't exactly believe
it, because there are too many unknowns, but he talks about ballistics
(including the fact that the carcano round that was allegedly "pristine"
was anything but), and I would really like to know if there are any
experts out there who could refute this one on those facts alone.

It
is incredibly detailed, regarding the trajectory of rounds, the size
and location of wounds that could/would be expected, depending where
they came from, and what type of weapon was used.

Posted by: BurtTC at February 01, 2015 12:05 PM (Dj0WE)"

I remember reading this book and thinking that it seemed quite plausible.

His chief contention is that the Secret Service agent with the AR-15 had his finger on the trigger when the car he was riding in hit the gas and lurched forward causing him to fire a single shot that hit Kennedy in the head. The bullet from Oswald's rifle that had hit Kennedy in the back and exited his throat to hit Governor Connely would have been fatal in any case but the .223 round that blew Kennedy's brains all over the trunk of the Lincoln Continental was pretty embarrassing so the SS covered it up.

Anyway, that's the story. No conspiracy just a screw up and a million to one accident. I note that the gun safety rule about keeping your finger out of the trigger guard until you are ready to fire dates from around that time.

Posted by: Obnoxious A-Hole at February 01, 2015 07:23 PM (KDbAT)

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