Wayne Allyn Root is a sharp, savvy, creative, free-thinking, ballsy Nevada politician, honest, with great no-nonsense communication skills, a small business owner, an authentic shrink-government libertarian, a big-thinker, a big-picture realist with foresight willing to reach out to different groups, a coalition-builder. He’s a man with a plan.

And Wayne Allyn Root is running for president in 2012. He’s worth watching. He’s SUPREMELY INTERESTING. He’s eminently quotable. There’s a chance he might actually win. And this excellent book (1) describes him and his values (2) outlines his electoral strategy for winning the presidency (3) critiques American politics and (4) offers his fix.

I’m non-partisan, an independent thinker and TOUGH CRITIC (see my other book reviews) but I couldn’t help thinking, as I read through this excellent book, that Wayne Allyn Root UNDERSTANDS. I found this book refreshing, intelligent, speaking to the heart. There are a few things I disagree, with which will always be the case with any book I review, but I think America would be in much better shape with Wayne Allyn Root at the helm.

What I found profoundly interesting was his strategy for winning. Any serious student of American history knows that rarely, if ever, have third party candidates ever been successful. The American system is a two-party system. But there is tremendous disenchantment with both parties, particularly with the Republican party, by voters — he uses the term “battered voter” syndrome. I think he’s right that the electorate leans center-right. He criticizes both parties for having an agenda at odds with public well-being. But voters describing themselves as libertarian may be, perhaps, 1% to 2% of the electorate. So, what’s a libertarian to do?

He details nine segments to appeal to:
(1) Independent minded small business owners (like himself; sizeable numbers, $ for support)
(2) Parents upset with poor education, particularly home-schooler types
(3) On-line gaming and poker enthusiasts — casino owners will have much-needed cash to support his candidacy
(4) conservative voters who feel abandoned by the GOP (sizeable chunk of voters)
(5) Ron Paul supporters (5% perhaps of electorate?) — he’s “Ron Paul on steroids”, younger, more energetic
(6) Younger voters and college students (helpful for campaigning, but younger voters mostly don’t vote)
(7) Healthy and holistic living types (some may not be happy with his stance on global warming; he feels it’s overblown)
(8) Gun rights (hunters, owners) — a significant, passionate group
(9) Locally elected officials, mostly Republicans disillusioned with the GOP and Bush (sensible)

He reaches out to Christians, as well, saying he prays every day. The word “God” appears in the book’s subtitle. But he argues persuasively for separation of church and state — Christians mustn’t impose their ideas on others lest another religion come to power. Perhaps many Christians will buy into this, but whether they’ll accept his Jewish background remains to be seen. Doing Venn diagrams of these groups — Christians, gun-owners, and gamblers — and you’ve got significant voters if you use the word “OR” to conjoin the circles, but few if you use “AND”. Will Christians not vote for him because of his pro-gambling stance? Or will he pick up both Christians and gamblers?

My rudimentary knowledge of marketing suggests this is a sensible beginning for a political campaign. He knows his base. So there’s a chance that he might be able to break out of the libertarian box, get some traction, become a viable candidate, and in a campaign move to the center, and possibly win. He might pull off a Ross Perot, hopefully better. But surely he knows what political consultants know, that this will be a tremendously uphill battle. America is image-land, entertainment-ville; candidates succeed by looking pretty, saying pretty things, numbing people with bromides and inane promises. And Wayne Allyn Root speaks truthfully and doesn’t present his face on the book’s cover — a seasoned political consultant would sense an image problem from two counties away.

Wayne Allyn Root’s critique of America is tough and intelligent. Government employee unions have gone wild. They’re a privileged bunch. “Why do public employees … deserve higher compensation than private sector employees?” he asks. He’s critical of California’s big government, big taxes, special interests. I delight in his plain-writing ability: “No politician in the US at any level of office should serve more than two to three terms. Period.” He writes with a plain, no-nonsense, easy-to-grasp style which people instantly get. If he speaks like he writes, he’ll be a strong contender.

He grasps the fundamental importance of states’ rights. He believes “competition among the states for business and residents (will) likely becomes fierce”. This means freedom for us — fifty ongoing political experiments vying for our approval — and this is one part of my solution to prevent tyranny and terrorism (see my book below).

If elected president, Wayne Allyn Root would impound funds (Jefferson did this, Nixon too) and return unused monies to the people. I approve. He argues “most government spending today is in violation of Article I, Section 8, of our Constitution”. His hero is Barry Goldwater, a tough free-thinking Arizona Republican from the sixties. He’d stop all unfunded mandates. He’d abolish the alphabet soup of government agencies and — what’s particularly ballsy — he lists the agencies by name over two pages. Perhaps 70 agencies in all (sorry, I didn’t count) including Amtrak, Ginnie Mae, the IRS. I agree with him that employees of these mostly useless agencies do very little to help us, work 9am-5pm while private-sector Americans sometimes work 12 and 14 hour days. The Internal Revenue Service with it’s 70,000+ page tax control is a behemoth of outrageousness in my view (great alternative: “FairTax”). I’d go further: I’d abolish the US Post Office. Wayne Allyn Root would abolish the Federal Reserve System, noting that there’s nothing in the Constitution allowing a central bank. He’s right. He writes: “When we’re done, the US government will be so small that it will be a one-line listing in the white pages of your local telephone directory.” I love it.

Wayne Allyn Root would legalize gambling from coast to coast, and in this respect, I’m somewhat more cautious. He believes gambling revenues would bring in huge revenue, which is probably correct. He writes: “That’s $50 billion — with a B.” But I see gambling as a negative regressive tax, a non-productive activity, a statistical trick to extract money from fools; yet, at the same time, I’m highly in favor of freedom of people to do what they want. My preference is each state to regulate gambling as they choose. But generally I like the idea of his “Nevada Model” being extended from coast to coast.

He’d legalize medical marijuana. I believe all drugs should be legalized (again, part of a terrorism prevention strategy) because it undermines the incentive of criminal enterprises to supply these drugs. I think an intelligent compromise is to restrict drug use to specific times and places, and to penalize violence, not vice. Wayne Allyn Root correctly notes that there are huge swaths of the government which owe their livelihood to the dubious activity of trying to enforce drug laws.

As a government reformer, he thinks big. To solve the problem of lobbying controlling congress, he’s expand its size to 3000 members, with a ratio of one congressperson for every 100,000 voters, and make being a congressperson a part-time job, with limits of two six-year terms. It would be much harder to bribe such a huge body, he argues. While I think suggestions like these demand more thinking, particularly by an enlightened body such as a Second Constitutional Convention, I applaud Wayne Allyn Root for directing his attention to this problem. He wants a return to “true citizen legislators” who could possibly meet by video-conferencing. He’d rethink voting, perhaps with a “ranked choice voting” method which is fairer to underdog third-party candidates. He favors federal referendums, eliminating earmarks (”Period.” he writes), banishing corporate welfare, decreasing foreign aid, allowing any immigrant to move here who agrees to buy a $250K+ house (”That solves our foreclosure problem”, he writes; what a smart solution), presidential vetoes, a balanced budget amendment, spending freezes (first day in office, he says, he’d freeze spending), encourage renewable energy, restoring the power of parents regarding matters of educating their children.

He draws a sharp contrast with President Barack Obama. Barack Obama was a law student, law professor, lawyer, community activist, career politician; in contrast, Wayne Allyn Root has been a small business owner, founded a business, created jobs, risked his own money, paid other peoples’ health insurance and payroll taxes, faced endless government regulations which interfere with all businesses.

Summing up: a great book by a savvy up-and-coming politician, perhaps the next Ron Paul or Ross Perot or Barry Goldwater, energetic, quotable, sharp. Wayne Allyn Root — you have my vote. Last, I believe Wayne Allyn Root is sharp enough to be a delegate to the Second Constitutional Convention in July 2010, and I invite him to be a delegate, and I hope he decides to attend.

Thomas W. Sulcer
author of “Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism” (Amazon/Kindle)
soon free electronically via Project Gutenberg and Google Books
free copies to Amazon review readers savvy enough to figure out my email address and write me

Kip Herriage
CEO, Wealth Masters International

Root’s technique for moving conservatives to more libertarian thinking seems to be to show at the beginning that he has been a conservative himself, and that he still appreciates the values that conservatives value. So, as one reads through the book, Root seems to evolve. For example, page 24 seems to indicate he is only opposed to drug prohibition when the federal government does it. If someone stops reading there, that is the impression one will have of Root’s thinking. But, on pages 79-81, the book makes a strong case against any government (state or local as well as federal) from blocking medical marijuana. Then, on pages 225-226, he makes a stronger, more emotional case against drug laws. Then, on pages 260-263, he talks about the horrible way in which Steve Kubby was persecuted.

Root’s education policy also seems to change as one reads further into the book. Pages 164-167 seems to endorse the idea that state and local government should handle education. But, when one reads further, there is a big shift. Page 207 says, “As long as most of our children are educated in government-run public schools, the government bureaucrats running them will instill the idea into the heads of their captive audience (our children) that more govenment is better.”

In order for a book to persuade, the reader must be open to persuasion. Root’s technique probably works better than most books do to persuade conservatives toward libertarianism. I have re-reviewed all the campaign books published by Libertarian presidential nominees (all LP presidential nominees wrote a campaign book, either before or after they were nominated, except for Andre Marrou). I believe that this is the best book for persuading conservatives toward libertarianism, of any of those books. There are times when I was angry at Root’s book, but those moments came less and less frequently as I kept reading. It is not fair to the book to put it down without reading all of it. And, it is never boring. I spotted a few factual errors but no non-fiction book of this length is ever perfectly accurate.

Wayne Allyn Root is a sharp, savvy, creative, free-thinking, ballsy Nevada politician, honest, with great no-nonsense communication skills, a small business owner, an authentic shrink-government libertarian, a big-thinker, a big-picture realist with foresight willing to reach out to different groups, a coalition-builder. He’s a man with a plan.

And Wayne Allyn Root is running for president in 2012. He’s worth watching. He’s SUPREMELY INTERESTING. He’s eminently quotable. There’s a chance he might actually win. And this excellent book (1) describes him and his values (2) outlines his electoral strategy for winning the presidency (3) critiques American politics and (4) offers his fix.

I’m non-partisan, an independent thinker and TOUGH CRITIC (see my other book reviews) but I couldn’t help thinking, as I read through this excellent book, that Wayne Allyn Root UNDERSTANDS. I found this book refreshing, intelligent, speaking to the heart. There are a few things I disagree, with which will always be the case with any book I review, but I think America would be in much better shape with Wayne Allyn Root at the helm.

What I found profoundly interesting was his strategy for winning. Any serious student of American history knows that rarely, if ever, have third party candidates ever been successful. The American system is a two-party system. But there is tremendous disenchantment with both parties, particularly with the Republican party, by voters — he uses the term “battered voter” syndrome. I think he’s right that the electorate leans center-right. He criticizes both parties for having an agenda at odds with public well-being. But voters describing themselves as libertarian may be, perhaps, 1% to 2% of the electorate. So, what’s a libertarian to do?

He details nine segments to appeal to:
(1) Independent minded small business owners (like himself; sizeable numbers, $ for support)
(2) Parents upset with poor education, particularly home-schooler types
(3) On-line gaming and poker enthusiasts — casino owners will have much-needed cash to support his candidacy
(4) conservative voters who feel abandoned by the GOP (sizeable chunk of voters)
(5) Ron Paul supporters (5% perhaps of electorate?) — he’s “Ron Paul on steroids”, younger, more energetic
(6) Younger voters and college students (helpful for campaigning, but younger voters mostly don’t vote)
(7) Healthy and holistic living types (some may not be happy with his stance on global warming; he feels it’s overblown)
(8) Gun rights (hunters, owners) — a significant, passionate group
(9) Locally elected officials, mostly Republicans disillusioned with the GOP and Bush (sensible)

He reaches out to Christians, as well, saying he prays every day. The word “God” appears in the book’s subtitle. But he argues persuasively for separation of church and state — Christians mustn’t impose their ideas on others lest another religion come to power. Perhaps many Christians will buy into this, but whether they’ll accept his Jewish background remains to be seen. Doing Venn diagrams of these groups — Christians, gun-owners, and gamblers — and you’ve got significant voters if you use the word “OR” to conjoin the circles, but few if you use “AND”. Will Christians not vote for him because of his pro-gambling stance? Or will he pick up both Christians and gamblers?

My rudimentary knowledge of marketing suggests this is a sensible beginning for a political campaign. He knows his base. So there’s a chance that he might be able to break out of the libertarian box, get some traction, become a viable candidate, and in a campaign move to the center, and possibly win. He might pull off a Ross Perot, hopefully better. But surely he knows what political consultants know, that this will be a tremendously uphill battle. America is image-land, entertainment-ville; candidates succeed by looking pretty, saying pretty things, numbing people with bromides and inane promises. And Wayne Allyn Root speaks truthfully and doesn’t present his face on the book’s cover — a seasoned political consultant would sense an image problem from two counties away.

Wayne Allyn Root’s critique of America is tough and intelligent. Government employee unions have gone wild. They’re a privileged bunch. “Why do public employees … deserve higher compensation than private sector employees?” he asks. He’s critical of California’s big government, big taxes, special interests. I delight in his plain-writing ability: “No politician in the US at any level of office should serve more than two to three terms. Period.” He writes with a plain, no-nonsense, easy-to-grasp style which people instantly get. If he speaks like he writes, he’ll be a strong contender.

He grasps the fundamental importance of states’ rights. He believes “competition among the states for business and residents (will) likely becomes fierce”. This means freedom for us — fifty ongoing political experiments vying for our approval — and this is one part of my solution to prevent tyranny and terrorism (see my book below).

If elected president, Wayne Allyn Root would impound funds (Jefferson did this, Nixon too) and return unused monies to the people. I approve. He argues “most government spending today is in violation of Article I, Section 8, of our Constitution”. His hero is Barry Goldwater, a tough free-thinking Arizona Republican from the sixties. He’d stop all unfunded mandates. He’d abolish the alphabet soup of government agencies and — what’s particularly ballsy — he lists the agencies by name over two pages. Perhaps 70 agencies in all (sorry, I didn’t count) including Amtrak, Ginnie Mae, the IRS. I agree with him that employees of these mostly useless agencies do very little to help us, work 9am-5pm while private-sector Americans sometimes work 12 and 14 hour days. The Internal Revenue Service with it’s 70,000+ page tax control is a behemoth of outrageousness in my view (great alternative: “FairTax”). I’d go further: I’d abolish the US Post Office. Wayne Allyn Root would abolish the Federal Reserve System, noting that there’s nothing in the Constitution allowing a central bank. He’s right. He writes: “When we’re done, the US government will be so small that it will be a one-line listing in the white pages of your local telephone directory.” I love it.

Wayne Allyn Root would legalize gambling from coast to coast, and in this respect, I’m somewhat more cautious. He believes gambling revenues would bring in huge revenue, which is probably correct. He writes: “That’s $50 billion — with a B.” But I see gambling as a negative regressive tax, a non-productive activity, a statistical trick to extract money from fools; yet, at the same time, I’m highly in favor of freedom of people to do what they want. My preference is each state to regulate gambling as they choose. But generally I like the idea of his “Nevada Model” being extended from coast to coast.

He’d legalize medical marijuana. I believe all drugs should be legalized (again, part of a terrorism prevention strategy) because it undermines the incentive of criminal enterprises to supply these drugs. I think an intelligent compromise is to restrict drug use to specific times and places, and to penalize violence, not vice. Wayne Allyn Root correctly notes that there are huge swaths of the government which owe their livelihood to the dubious activity of trying to enforce drug laws.

As a government reformer, he thinks big. To solve the problem of lobbying controlling congress, he’s expand its size to 3000 members, with a ratio of one congressperson for every 100,000 voters, and make being a congressperson a part-time job, with limits of two six-year terms. It would be much harder to bribe such a huge body, he argues. While I think suggestions like these demand more thinking, particularly by an enlightened body such as a Second Constitutional Convention, I applaud Wayne Allyn Root for directing his attention to this problem. He wants a return to “true citizen legislators” who could possibly meet by video-conferencing. He’d rethink voting, perhaps with a “ranked choice voting” method which is fairer to underdog third-party candidates. He favors federal referendums, eliminating earmarks (”Period.” he writes), banishing corporate welfare, decreasing foreign aid, allowing any immigrant to move here who agrees to buy a $250K+ house (”That solves our foreclosure problem”, he writes; what a smart solution), presidential vetoes, a balanced budget amendment, spending freezes (first day in office, he says, he’d freeze spending), encourage renewable energy, restoring the power of parents regarding matters of educating their children.

He draws a sharp contrast with President Barack Obama. Barack Obama was a law student, law professor, lawyer, community activist, career politician; in contrast, Wayne Allyn Root has been a small business owner, founded a business, created jobs, risked his own money, paid other peoples’ health insurance and payroll taxes, faced endless government regulations which interfere with all businesses.

Summing up: a great book by a savvy up-and-coming politician, perhaps the next Ron Paul or Ross Perot or Barry Goldwater, energetic, quotable, sharp. Wayne Allyn Root — you have my vote. Last, I believe Wayne Allyn Root is sharp enough to be a delegate to the Second Constitutional Convention in July 2010, and I invite him to be a delegate, and I hope he decides to attend.

Thomas W. Sulcer
author of “Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism” (Amazon/Kindle)
soon free electronically via Project Gutenberg and Google Books
free copies to Amazon review readers savvy enough to figure out my email address and write me

Kip Herriage
CEO, Wealth Masters International

Root’s technique for moving conservatives to more libertarian thinking seems to be to show at the beginning that he has been a conservative himself, and that he still appreciates the values that conservatives value. So, as one reads through the book, Root seems to evolve. For example, page 24 seems to indicate he is only opposed to drug prohibition when the federal government does it. If someone stops reading there, that is the impression one will have of Root’s thinking. But, on pages 79-81, the book makes a strong case against any government (state or local as well as federal) from blocking medical marijuana. Then, on pages 225-226, he makes a stronger, more emotional case against drug laws. Then, on pages 260-263, he talks about the horrible way in which Steve Kubby was persecuted.

Root’s education policy also seems to change as one reads further into the book. Pages 164-167 seems to endorse the idea that state and local government should handle education. But, when one reads further, there is a big shift. Page 207 says, “As long as most of our children are educated in government-run public schools, the government bureaucrats running them will instill the idea into the heads of their captive audience (our children) that more govenment is better.”

In order for a book to persuade, the reader must be open to persuasion. Root’s technique probably works better than most books do to persuade conservatives toward libertarianism. I have re-reviewed all the campaign books published by Libertarian presidential nominees (all LP presidential nominees wrote a campaign book, either before or after they were nominated, except for Andre Marrou). I believe that this is the best book for persuading conservatives toward libertarianism, of any of those books. There are times when I was angry at Root’s book, but those moments came less and less frequently as I kept reading. It is not fair to the book to put it down without reading all of it. And, it is never boring. I spotted a few factual errors but no non-fiction book of this length is ever perfectly accurate.

Farhad Manjoo’s book both describes this phenomenon and attempts to get beneath its surface. He cites examples from both sides of the aisle — the attack of “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” on Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam heroism as well as the claim of certain Democrats that George W. Bush had stolen the 2004 election in Ohio and Florida. Manjoo exposes the personal vendettas (Swift Boaters) and the mistaken calculations (Dems) that started the ball rolling. He then shows the steps by which the groups attracted public’s attention, twisting facts into alternate realities that finally made their way into the partisan echo chambers where their tiny, tinny voices boomed loud and strong. Manjoo also introduces the reader to the psycho-perceptual processes by which human beings in a information-drenched world make decisions. In line with other recent books (such as “Kluge” by Gary Marcus) Manjoo unveils the heuristics, the shortcuts, through which humans beings evaluate reality. Too busy to research car brands? Let a consumer magazine (or your favorite local TV anchor; or your intimidating brother in law) make the decision for you. A fascinating study showed foreign students outperforming US students on questions about the relative sizes of American cities. But this was not because they the foreigners knew *more* about America than the hapless Yanks; it was because they knew *less* — the foreigners heuristically reasoning that cities they had heard of must be bigger than cities they had not.

“True Enough” is filled with this sort of fascinating and illuminating detail. Political partisans probably ought to know that Farhad’s results favor the left side of the aisle. Republicans, he shows, are more likely than Democrats to limit their media intake to sources they already agree with, a phenomenon called selective exposure. And Reps are more likely to see a story as interesting (even when not related to politics!) when branded with a logo of their favorite conservative media outlet. But both sides are as eager to give credence to experts whose credentials sounds impressive (another heuristic shortcut) even when they don’t relate to the matter under study. Depending on your position, these results will either seem legitimate or biased. They rang true to me — “ringing true” being another heuristic, by the way, that predisposes us to accept as factual things we already accept as true. His description of the popular sitcom “All in the Family” was an example of selective perception — liberals loved seeing Archie shown up as a bigot; conservatives loved hearing him spout politically incorrect epithets and viewpoints.

For those who are open-minded enough to accept that the human mind is limited and error-prone, “True Enough” is fun and enlightening. For those interested in politics, it is also a cautionary tale about genesis and stability of human biases. A must-read for those who want to better understand their own minds and those of their fellow voters.

Manjoo tells the story of the ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,’ who created an almost entirely fictional story of John Kerry’s service in Vietnam to discredit his record as a war hero, because they were deeply offended by his declaration of opposition to the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee after he returned from Vietnam. The SBV version was first presented publicly on numerous radio talk programs, with conservative hosts and audiences, to whom that version was truthy because they already held a low opinion of Democrats in general and a high opinion of George W. Bush. It felt right to them, and they accepted it as true, an opinion many hold to this day, despite conclusive evidence that Kerry did, in fact, genuinely earn his medals, and was truly a war hero.

This accords well with the observation of cognitive scientists that when the facts don’t fit a person’s frame, the frame stays and the facts are ignored or denied. (see Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think, by George Lakoff.)

Manjoo tells about a study by Stanford professor Shanto Iyengar and Richard Morin of the Washington Post, in which they obtained a list of headlines in six categories: politics, Iraq war, race, travel, crime, and sports, and randomly placed beside each headline one of four logos: BBC, CNN, Fox, and NPR. Democrats somewhat preferred CNN and NPR, and Republicans very strongly preferred Fox. The Fox logo tripled the interest of Republicans in stories about politics and Iraq, and even increased Republicans’ interest and decreased Democrats’ interest in headlines about travel and sports. Professor Iyengar says that people “have generalized their preference for politically consonant news to nonpolitical domains.”

But why was the Republicans’ bias so much stronger than the Democrats’ bias? Democrats might be tempted to explain it as evidence that Democrats are smarter, but that explanation is questionable at best. I think the correct explanation lies in the correlation between two dimensions of personality characteristics: Progressive vs. Conservative and Liberal vs. Dogmatic. Liberals tend to be progressive, so much so that the political spectrum is often cited as Liberal vs. Conservative, which is not correct. There are dogmatic progressives and liberal conservatives, but they are relatively rare. Dogmatics especially tend to be hostile to opinions that differ from their own, and they tend to be conservative, whereas liberals by definition are willing to consider opinions other than their own, and they tend to be progressive.

Manjoo contends that on many subjects, (not just the obvious one of religion, with its many ‘only true churches,’ etc.) different groups of people hold to different, and incompossible, versions of reality. Republicans and Democrats may legitimately disagree about what should be done about a situation, but when the facts are known, it is not legitimate to disagree about what the situation is. But consider the study by Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach, in which 237 students were asked what they thought about people who were different from them and what they thought was going on in the TV show ALL IN THE FAMILY.

“The majority of those surveyed found ALL IN THE FAMILY hilarious. But bigots and nonbigots harbored vastly different ideas about what was happening on the show. It was a classic case of selective perception. When asked who seemed to win most of the arguments–was it Archie [the bigot] or his hippie [non-bigoted] son-in-alw, Mike?–the bigots thought it was Archie. Those who weren’t bigoted thought it was Mike.”

Chapter 4 has forced me to change my opinion about what happened in the 2004 election in Ohio. If the Republicans stole Ohio by vote-tampering, they did it cleverly enough that the experts couldn’t detect it, albeit several amateurs thought THEY could and did. Beyond doubt, there was skulduggery going on, probably at least some on both sides, but there is not sufficient evidence to support a definite conclusion that it changed the result.

Chapter 6 discusses deceptive advertising practices. One such is video news releases, or VNRs, which are clips of “marketing propaganda produced in the language and style of real news.” Dozens of VNRs are sent out each week to TV stations in the often-realized hope that they will be used on a local news program, usually without the public being told that they are being shown a commercial in disguise.

Another deceptive practice is the creation of a fake grass-roots organization (Astroturf organization), such as GGOOB, the Get Government Off Our Backs Project, which “attracted an impressive array of member groups” including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Traditional Values Coalition, the NRA, Americans for Tax Reform, and many others. GGOOB claimed to have been created “at the ‘grassroots’ by ‘business groups, civic groups, and other organizations’” but it was really created by R.J.Reynolds’ PR company, MBD, to fight against new regulations on the cigarette industry.

I may have two small complaints, which may have been corrected in the final published version:
(1) An index is needed.
(2) While many of the footnotes are where they belong, others are gathered at the end of the book where the index should be.

You need to read TRUE ENOUGH to know what you are up against; how lies are transformed into common (but false) knowledge. IT SHOULD BE IN EVERY SCHOOL LIBRARY. IT SHOULD BE READ AND DISCUSSED IN CLASS IN EVERY HIGH SCHOOL.

watziznaym@gmail.com

For example, he talks about how the rise of conservative radio and the Internet supported the growth of the Swift Boat campaign, an anti-Kerry campaign based largely on conjecture without proof. Before the Internet and niche media such as conservative radio existed, extremist right-wing ideas would likely have been limited to just a few believers. But with today’s media options and the plethora of right-wing radio and Web sites, the Swift Boat campaign was able to gain plenty of supporters nationwide and lots of donations, until the campaign was able to run anti-John Kerry ads during the 2004 election, which many think significantly damaged Kerry’s campaign.

Some of the other, quite diverse, topics covered in the book include news stories that are actually paid ads (which I found fascinating), the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories, and why Apple enthusiasts aren’t able to stomach criticism about their beloved products. But what I really liked about this book was how he discusses the psychological and sociological underpinnings about why we believe what we believe, and how we unwittingly pick and choose our own media sources often to confirm our pre-held beliefs. He unearths study after study that explains how our biases unconsciously play into how we interpret the truth in politics, news, and even football games.

Manjoo has a straightforward and clear writing style, making political details, as well as the complexities of social science research, easy to understand. I came away from this book realizing that in a world where news is often designed for the viewer, and where we are often unaware of how or why we choose to believe what we believe, the truth can indeed be a slippery thing.

First off, let me state that I’m a complete beginner when it comes to making websites. I have very limited experience with HTML/XHTML, and no experience with PHP, MySQL, javascript, modules, etc. But with this book I was able to have a complete up and running website in a matter of hours. The author does a very good job of holding your hand and walking you step by step through the entire process of setting up Joomla! on your web server and customizing the site to make it your own.

I’ve looked at some of the documentation online, but a lot of it assumes that the reader has a more than cursory knowledge of numerous online processes. But Rahmel assumes that you have a shaky foundation of websites and instructs you accordingly. The book is also valuable in that it explains the numerous ins and outs of Joomla! where other documents fall short. For example, one of the templates I downloaded didn’t call up the breadcrumbs module and I had no idea how to insert it into the template. The online documentation didn’t help much, but luckily this book explained the breadcrumbs module and how to insert it. For anyone who is a newb to website design, this is the perfect book to get you started.