Posted 10:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Book Notes
One must read book that is available online is Eric Scheibeler's Merchants of Deception. Click here to download the book. I read it and it is shocking. Amway is a bizarre Republican cult-like organization in which the people at the bottom are the most fervent (probably because, like Sun Myung Moon's devotees, their fervor is all they have). This is sad because despite all of Amway/Quixtar's hype about financial independence by becoming a member, very few people achieve this. Most lose money and some make chump-change by working long hours.

It's also a shame how little scrutiny Democrats have given to these scam artists who are major bankrollers of the Republican Party (also, click here and here). Contrast that with Republicans who target for smearing major funders of Democratic causes such as Hollywood and George Soros (Remember Dennis Hastert's innuendo that Soros makes his money from drug dealing?). Scamway/Quixtar is a huge target that Democrats aren't exploiting.

I was in the bookstore the other day and saw some interesting books. The first was What Went Wrong In Ohio: The Conyers Report On The 2004 Presidential Election. Shocking.

The other day, I mentioned the print form of Outfoxed, co-authored by Alexandra Kitty. I saw her other book, Don't Believe It!: How Lies Become News. It made me think.

One book I saw that didn't make me think was Hoodwinked:How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture by Jack Cashill. Cashill is also the author of the lunatic conspiracy rant Ron Brown's Body : How One Man's Death Saved the Clinton Presidency and Hillary's Future. Hoodwinked is just as nutty. In it, Cashill praises David Horowitz. To discredit Alfred Kinsey, Cashill trots out nut job Judith Reisman. Now it is perfectly reasonable to criticize Kinsey (Abraham Maslow had some valid criticisms of Kinsey's methodology), but Reisman is insane. Once when I was in the library, I read her book Soft Porn Plays Hardball: Its Tragic Effects on Women, Children and the Family It made some bizarre accusations against Playboy that its photos of models were doctored (BTW, this month's Playboy has a great interview with Owen Wilson). One final note on Reisman: a while back she was on a panel on the old Phil Donahue show; a wiseass caller to the show noted that it was ironic that these panel members were talking about sex when it didn't appear if any of them engaged in it.

Another note on books, I noticed on the Google ad that appears on this site that it advertised Edward Klein's libel-laden book The Truth About Hillary(click here, here, here, here, and here). I'm not going to be any part of that. I removed the Google ad from this site.

One final book note, as luck would have it, Mark Fuhrman's book on Terri Schiavo, Silent Witness : The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo's Death, will be released in a couple weeks--right after the autopsy showed the following: Schiavo could not respond to visual stimuli (take that, Bill Frist); Schiavo was in a vegetative state (remember when the Schindler family divined Terri's intent by saying that she said "nooo" when they told her that her feeding tube would be taken out?); and that her state was not due to trauma (take that, "Coach" Sean Hannity; Quick note: read today's Howler for more). Anyway, Fuhrman's book, more than likely, contradicts the autopsy findings because it is aimed at the wing-nut book-buying demographic. It's a good thing that his thunder is being stolen. Synchronicity.

UPDATE: I almost forgot: I noticed that Michael Kelly's Things Worth Fighting for: Collected Writings was now in paperback. It still has the fraudulent "Farmer Al" column.