Jan 20 2009

In the Mail: politics edition

–> Welcome to Obamaland: I Have Seen Your Future and It Doesn’t Work by James Delingpole

From the Inside Flap

If the election of Barack Obama fills you with dread rather than elation, you’re not alone; in fact, pull up a chair next to James Delingpole who has seen this all before and knows exactly where America is heading: into a morass of sprawling government that will slowly start suffocating our economy, our liberties, and our culture. You might as well call it socialism, he says, because that’s what it is. In Britain it came in under the smiling face of Tony Blair and has left the British bulldog castrated, whimpering, and sick; in America it’s coming under the vibrant, youthful guise of Barack Obama. But the result will be the same: the brave, independent American eagle will become the American turkey, oven-basted by the nanny state of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.

[. . .]

Hilarious, witty, impassioned, and perceptive, Welcome to Obamaland will have you laughing through your tears and taking courage from the eternal truth of conservative convictions.

–> The Threat Closer to Home: Hugo Chavez and the War Against America by Douglas Schoen and Michael Rowan

Description

The American government has shrugged off South American politics for nearly forty years. In the meantime, our neighbor to the south has grown into an unprecedented threat. Hugo Chávez, the current president of Venezuela and a self-proclaimed enemy of the United States, commands what even Osama bin Laden only dreams of — but few Americans see him as a true danger to this country. This book argues that we should.
Chávez has the means and the motivation to harm the United States in a way that few other countries can, and he has declared an “asymmetric war” against America. He runs a sovereign nation that is the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States. He enjoys annual windfall oil profits that equal the net worth of Bill Gates. He has more modern weapons than anyone in Latin America. He has strategic alliances with Iran, North Korea, and other enemies of America, yet he has duped many Americans — from influential political and cultural leaders to ordinary citizens who benefit from his oil largess through his state-owned oil company — into believing that he is a friend.

Drawing on two decades of experience working at the highest level of Venezuelan and American politics, Schoen and Rowan go behind the scenes to examine Chávez’s efforts to subvert both the American economy and his own country’s stability. Not only did he help drive the price of oil from ten dollars a barrel to more than a hundred dollars a barrel, he’s sponsored and become increasingly involved in civilian massacres, drug running, money laundering, nuclear weapons proliferation, and terrorist training.

By Kevin Holtsberry • In The Mail • 0 • Tags: Barack Obama, Hugo Chávez, non-fiction, Tony Blair