Unusually Stupid Politicians

Unusually Stupid Politicians
Author: Kathryn Petras
Publisher: Villard
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2009-03-12
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0307498506

Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras, bestselling authors of the scathingly funny Unusually Stupid Americans and Unusually Stupid Celebrities, now set their bipartisan sights on the hallowed halls of the United States government. Unusually Stupid Politicians exposes the mind-boggling but true political mishaps, missteps, and miscues that have even the savviest spin doctors shaking their heads and saying “No comment.” Sections include • Extreme Hairsplitting–such as when Florida governor Jeb Bush, after being accused of hiding in a closet from rampaging Democrats, denied the allegation completely, stating that “it was actually a boiler room” • Brilliant and Innovative Ideas from The Pentagon– like their groundbreaking "Gay Bomb," their "Bad Breath Inducing" halitosis weapon and their plans to enlist The Three Stooges in the fight against terror. • Creative Political Excuses——such as “I just discovered I’m Jewish and it’s a Holy Day,”——used by Senator George Allen, who, after learning of his Jewish heritage, got out of a Senate hearing to “observe” Yom Kippur • The Most Egregiously Large Political Egos–measured in standard Chuck Schumer Ego Units (CSEUs) This hilarious and eye-opening exposé gives awards for “How I Blew My Campaign” and “Worst Campaign Ad,” and shares a list of candidates “endorsed by God,” as well as a list of those who lost because of Satan. So turn off C-SPAN and quit text-messaging congressional pages–you’re about to learn what the definition of “is” is.

Unusually Stupid Americans

Unusually Stupid Americans
Author: Kathryn Petras
Publisher: Villard
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0307417611

A hilarious collection of lists, statistics, news items, quotations, and facts detailing stupid acts of Americans from all walks of life—by the authors of the bestselling The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said Everyone knows that America is “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but sometimes that means we’re free to be as bravely stupid as we want! In Unusually Stupid Americans, Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras assemble choice bits of stupidity, U.S.A.-style, including •the top seriously flawed American advertising moments, including Pacific Airlines’ brilliant “You’re scared of flying? So’s our pilot!” ad campaign, which led the airline to bankruptcy within two months of the campaign’s inception •the Martin Luther King, Jr., celebration in Florida, where a plaque was un-veiled that was intended to honor the actor James Earl Jones but instead read, “Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive” (an unfortunate slip-up, as James Earl Ray was King’s assassin) •and much more!

Unusually Stupid Celebrities

Unusually Stupid Celebrities
Author: Kathryn Petras
Publisher: Villard
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2009-04-22
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 0307498492

The Greeks honored Zeus, the Romans revered Juno, but modern civilization worships a different sort of god: Celebrity. Face it, we follow the stars’ every move, fashion choice, and deliciously dishy affairs. Now Kathryn Petras and Ross Petras, authors of Unusually Stupid Americans, pull the demanding divas, screwball stars, and celebu-twits off their pedestals–and prove it doesn’t take a degree in rocket science to become famous. Cases in point: • Courtney Love misses an important court date relating to “possession of a controlled substance” because she can’t find a professional bodyguard at the last minute. • Mariah Carey’s entourage includes a skirt-from-touching-floor specialist, a towel hand-off person, and a professional drink holder/lifter. • Savvy traveler Paris Hilton concludes that all of Europe is, “like, French.” • Mensa candidate and rocker Tommy Lee is pretty sure that Winston Churchill was president during the Civil War, that the numeric equivalent of pi is “the two-equals-MC-squared thing,” and that an isosceles triangle is “somewhere in Bermuda.” Feuds, faith, family, money, sex, tantrums, travel–no star-studded stone is left unturned. Filled with jaw-dropping anecdotes, quirky quotes, and special stupid-celebrity awards, Unusually Stupid Celebrities provides a red-faced glimpse of the red carpet.

Rude Republic

Rude Republic
Author: Glenn C. Altschuler
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2001-08-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780691089867

In this look at Americans and their politics, the authors argue for a more complex understanding of the space occupied by politics in 19th-century American society and culture.

The Politics of Stupid

The Politics of Stupid
Author: Susan Powter
Publisher: Crone, Incorporated
Total Pages: 196
Release: 2002
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780972499200

With uproarious humor and enormous amounts of motivation, information and inspiration, Susan Powter explains the Politics of Fat and what Women can do to change the way they look and feel forever. This books contains a remarkable program of honesty, consciousness, behavior, and responsibility that will help you lose the weight you want to lose forever and change millions of women's lives throughout the country and the world.

Rage

Rage
Author: Bob Woodward
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1982131764

Rage is an unprecedented and intimate tour de force of new reporting on the Trump presidency facing a global pandemic, economic disaster and racial unrest. Woodward, the #1 international bestselling author of Fear: Trump in the White House, has uncovered the precise moment the president was warned that the Covid-19 epidemic would be the biggest national security threat to his presidency. In dramatic detail, Woodward takes readers into the Oval Office as Trump’s head pops up when he is told in January 2020 that the pandemic could reach the scale of the 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 675,000 Americans. In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.” At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president. Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making. Rage draws from hundreds of hours of interviews with firsthand witnesses as well as participants’ notes, emails, diaries, calendars and confidential documents. Woodward obtained 25 never-seen personal letters exchanged between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who describes the bond between the two leaders as out of a “fantasy film.” Trump insists to Woodward he will triumph over Covid-19 and the economic calamity. “Don’t worry about it, Bob. Okay?” Trump told the author in July. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to do another book. You’ll find I was right.”

Just How Stupid Are We?

Just How Stupid Are We?
Author: Rick Shenkman
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2010-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1458775801

Fifty percent of Americans can name four characters from aaC--AThe Simpsons, aaC--Au but only two out of five can name all three branches of the federal government. No more than one in seven can find Iraq on a map. Just how stupid are we? Pretty stupid. In Just How Stupid Are We?, best-selling author Rick Shenkman takes aim at our great national piety: the wisdom of the American people. American democracy is as direct as it's ever beenaaC--but voters are misusing, abusing, and abdicating their political power. At once a powerful indictment of voter apathy and political indifference, Just How Stupid Are We? also provides concrete proposals for reforming our institutionsaaC--the government, the media, civic organizations, political partiesaaC--to make them work better for the American people. But first, Shenkman argues, we must reform ourselves

A Short History of Stupid

A Short History of Stupid
Author: Helen Razer
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2014-11-19
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1743437234

Alain de Botton meets Russell Brand in this glorious rant about everything that drives you mad about the modern world. How did everything get so dumb? How did we become hostages to idiocy? What must we do to be freed from a captor whose ransom note simply reads, 'D'oh'? The deteriorating quality of our public debate and the dwindling of common sense in media, politics and culture can drive you to despair and rage. It certainly drove writers Helen Razer and Bernard Keane to a desperate act: befriending each other for long enough to write a book. Join forces with these uneasy allies to fight against a world that has lost its reason. Explore what's behind the remorseless spread of idiocy, and why there's just so much damn Stupid around you. Stupid isn't just ignorance; it's not just laziness. Worse than the absence of thought, Stupid is a virus that drains our productivity and leaves us sick and diminished. And Stupid has a long, complex and terrible past, one we need to understand in order to defeat it. A Short History of Stupid traces the origins of this maddening ill, examining the different ways in which we've been afflicted over the last three thousand years. It damns those who have spread Stupid and celebrates the brave few who resisted. It shows how Stupid tightens the grubby grip of the foolish around our throats. Hilarious, smart, unpleasant, infuriating and rude, A Short History of Stupid is at once a provocation and a comfort. It will spark debate, soothe the terminally frustrated and outrage the righteously Stupid. It is a book whose Stupid time has come.

Primary Colors

Primary Colors
Author: Joe Klein
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2009-05-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307559238

A brilliant and penetrating look behind the scenes of modern American politics, Primary Colors is a funny, wise, and dramatic story with characters and events that resemble some familiar, real-life figures. When a former congressional aide becomes part of the staff of the governor of a small Southern state, he watches in horror, admiration, and amazement, as the governor mixes calculation and sincerity in his not-so-above-board campaign for the presidency.

Enlightenment 2.0

Enlightenment 2.0
Author: Joseph Heath
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2014-04-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1443422541

The co-author of the internationally bestselling The Rebel Sell brings us "slow politics": promoting slow thought, slow deliberation and slow debate. Over the last twenty years, the political systems of the western world have become increasingly divided--not between right and left but between crazy and non-crazy. What’s more, the crazies seem to be gaining the upper hand. Rational thought cannot prevail in the current social and media environment, where elections are won by appealing to voters’ hearts rather than their minds. The rapid-fire pace of modern politics, the hypnotic repetition of daily news items and even the multitude of visual sources of information all make it difficult for the voice of reason to be heard. In Enlightenment 2.0, bestselling author Joseph Heath outlines a program for a second Enlightenment. The answer, he argues, lies in a new “slow politics.” It takes as its point of departure recent psychological and philosophical research that identifies quite clearly the social and environmental preconditions for the exercise of rational thought. It is impossible to restore sanity merely by being sane and trying to speak in a reasonable tone of voice. The only way to restore sanity is by engaging in collective action against the social conditions that have crowded it out.