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If you have a young boy, you’ve probably watched Disney’s Cars 2 about a thousand times. For those who don’t know, at the movie’s end (an obligatory spoiler warning here), Sir Miles Axlerod is exposed as a fraud when he’s forced to open his hood by Mater, the hayseed hick. Hold that thought. Three possibilities follow the bombshell discovery that Barack Obama was promoted in 1991 through 2007 by his professional agency as an author “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” (1) Obama untruthfully presented himself as Kenya-born. (2) Obama untruthfully presents himself as Hawaii-born. (3) Obama...

In the early 1970s, the most trusted man in America did a very untrustworthy thing. Unbeknownst to the millions who tuned in religiously to the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite cut a deal with Pan Am to fly his family to vacation spots around the world. Together with a handful of friends, they roamed from the South Pacific to Haiti, with Cronkite snorkeling, swimming, and drinking, thanks to a friend at the airline. According to Douglas Brinkley’s sweeping and masterful biography Cronkite, the news division president, Dick Salant, was upset at what he deemed a blatant conflict of interest, but...

Edward Klein's new book on Barack Obama, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, is a withering portrayal of a radical adrift, in over his head, drowning in his own incompetency -- while being weighed down by a small circle of "advisers" who are compounding the problem of the Amateur in the White House. Klein's book begins with a talisman-like quote uttered by Barack Obama when his recently appointed Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner tried to boost Obama's ego by telling him, "Your legacy is going to be preventing the second Great Depression." To which Barack Obama responded, "That's not...

From the Sherlock Holmes story, Silver Blaze: Gregory: “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” Holmes: “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” Gregory: “The dog did nothing in the night-time.” Holmes: “That was the curious incident.”[ My mention yesterday of Obama’s former literary agent, Jane Dystel, got me thinking about the fishy circumstances under which Dreams From My Father came to see publication, and Ms. Dystel’s strange silence on the subject — even though she apparently was euchred out of a significant payday by her client. You may recall...

OH MY WORD!!!! Fellow Freepers you MUST listen to this!!!! God was NOT mocked yesterday!!!! He was alive and well and used His servant, Eric Metaxas, yesterday to speak straight to the President. It starts at about 35min, BUT the GREAT moment takes place at the 45min mark. BEFORE the Preisdent speaks, God through Metaxas, says that people, even Satan use the scripture to do the OPPOSITE of what God does. I was BLOWN away!!!! Eric did not know that Obama would misuse the scripture in just a few short minutes but GOD DID!!!! THEN the most amazing thing happens...

Many actors have breathed life into a memorable or even iconic role but only a few are capable of reconstructing an archetype. In "Maverick" and then again "The Rockford Files," James Garner stepped into two of TV's most calcified genres — the western and the detective series — and set a new standard that others have been chasing down since...

After months of languishing on the sidelines of the GOP presidential race, Herman Cain has skyrocketed to the top of the national polls and now looks like he might actually be a real contender for the Republican nomination in 2012. Until Cain and his "9-9-9" tax plan dominated Tuesday's presidential debate and vaulted into the national spotlight, few outside of the Tea Party know much about Cain, other than that he is black and likes pizza. That is largely because, until this week, Cain's presidential campaign was virtually non-existent. Eschewing the fundraisers and early voting state visits typical of most...

on TCM, Sunday, September 25 at 8:00 AM (ET) Starring Ronald Reagan, Doris Day. 1952 Grover Cleveland Alexander becomes one of baseball's greatest pitchers, with his wife's support. tcm.com

‘How many of you think Herman Cain won the debate?” Twenty hands shot up. “Well, we can stop right there,” said Frank Luntz, a fast-talking political consultant, as he paced before a Fox News focus group on May 5. “This is unprecedented.” Luntz pointed to the top row, looking for answers. One by one, South Carolina Republicans in trucker caps and business suits raved about Cain. After watching the 65-year-old spar with fellow GOP presidential contenders, many were itching to join his ranks. “He’s a breath of fresh air,” explained one gentleman. “He is the godfather of business sense, and...

Ronald Reagan and the so-called Reagan Revolution have come under the critical hammer of scholars for some time now. But the black nationalist Malcolm X - now called a civil rights leader, though he never was one - is finally beginning to achieve such position under the scholarly microscope. The reason that this is only happening nearly 50 years after his assassination is simple: Those bullying and ruthlessly maudlin ideologues who for so long preferred posturing to thought began to die off and the people victimized by them and other kinds of hustlers for decades are now beginning to grow...

NEW YORK – Manning Marable, an influential historian whose forthcoming Malcolm X biography could revise perceptions of the slain civil rights leader, died Friday, just days before the book described as his life's work was to be released. [snip] Two decades in the making, the nearly 600-page biography is described as a re-evaluation of Malcolm X's life, bringing fresh insight to subjects..." ... The book is based on exhaustive research, including thousands of pages of FBI files and records from the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department.

President George W. Bush's recently released memoir,"Decision Points" "...has sold an astonishing two million copies since it was released in early November-and it's not even in paperback yet....published in both hardcover and e-book form, (the book) is flying off the shelves, the Crown Publishing Group says. By contrast, former president Bill Clinton;s memoir, "My Life," has logged sales of 2.2 million copies since it was first published in 2004." President Bush remains nearly universally vilified by the nattering nabobs of our liberal media intelligentsia: what could explain the public snapping up more copies of W's memoirs in a month than...

Folks, here's the latest news on the beautiful new book about Sarah Palin. It is a full-color slipcased "coffeetable book" that would make a beautiful gift for any Palin fan on your Christmas wish-list. I just got my copy today, and it is much more beautiful than I expected. I think I mentioned it once before, but now that it has arrived, I'm even more impressed.

Said William Buckley for the ages, "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University." In his forthcoming biography, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition, Harvard historian James T. Kloppenberg shows the timelessness of Buckley's wisdom. Although the Kloppenberg book is not yet on the shelves, he gives enough away in a recent New York Times article for me to dismiss it for the blathering nonsense it promises to be. In New York last week to lecture on...

At last, a degree of sanity has come to Hollywood. A film biography of Ronald Reagan based on the work of AT contributor, and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College, Paul Kengor, is set to go into production, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The story of Ronald Reagan's life -- from boyhood to Hollywood actor to leader of the free world -- is about to spill out on the big screen in a way quite different from the miniseries that caused such a stir seven years ago. The feature film, titled "Reagan" and...

his ex-wife, Sandra Harmon, an author on relationship counseling, says he made her life hell. Harmon penned his recently released memoir, "The Man Behind the Nose: Larry Bozo Harmon,". But Sandra's own upcoming memoir, "Sleeping with Bozo and Other Clowns," will depict him as a pathological liar and cheater. "He lied about everything," Sandra told us. "If he ate two steaks, he said, 'I ate seven.' " Sandra was Larry's second of four wives and his mistress during his first marriage. Larry was sex crazed, she says. "He would want to have sex every night and twice on the weekend,"...

Authorized by Willie Mays and written by a New York Times bestselling author, this is the definitive biography of one of baseball's immortals. Considered to be "as monumental ...

This was inspired by a satire headline I wrote back on October 21, 2009: PELOSI MOBBED AT DISNEYLAND BY CHILDREN BEGGING FOR AUTOGRAPHS AND ASKING HER WHY SHE HATES DALMATIANS Actually making it Cruella was just way too easy a story to write, I felt like I needed to work for it a bit... If its tough to read you can click the image to see a larger version. The Looking Spoon is a conservative humor/satire/art/commentary blog, visit www.thelookingspoon.com to see more posts and art

Count me among those who’d really like to get a good long look at Barack Obama’s college transcripts — not because I think they would provide evidence for any of the crazy conspiracy talk that infests the fringes of our political discourse, but simply because I want to know what the man studied and what his grades were. For instance, I’d like to know whether he took any economics and how he did in those classes. I’m also curious about what his literary studies were: especially, I’d like to know whether the man who wrote two self-important memoirs before he’d...

JUNEAU, Alaska – You might call it Sarah Palin's introduction to the cubs. A biography of the former Alaska governor and self-described "mama grizzly" is set for release in September by Christian book publisher Zondervan. "Speaking Up: The Sarah Palin Story," is one in a series of biographies aimed at 9- to 12-year-old readers. Others feature 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and U2 frontman Bono. Kathleen Kerr, an acquisitions editor for Zondervan's Zonderkidz division, said the subjects are prominent figures who children hear about in the news and role models for tweens who are "working for the betterment of...

The Life of Buckley Bethany Stotts, June 21, 2010 At Accuracy in Academia’s June 14 Author’s night, Heritage Foundation scholar Lee Edwards described the late William F. Buckley Jr. as the St. Paul of the conservative movement. The founder of National Review, Buckley Jr. was a devout Catholic. Buckley “could almost be called in some sense the patron saint of the tea party movement,” which supports limited government, is anti-establishment, and “love[s] to stick a finger in the eye of the Republican party, and the Democratic party…and all organized parties,” argued Edwards, author of William F. Buckley, Jr.: The Maker...

What Would Buckley Do? Malcolm A. Kline, June 9, 2010 Two years after his death, William F. Buckley, Jr., the ultimate conservative man of letters, still has a lot to teach the young and the rightward. In turn, there is no better person to pass on these lessons than the man who has become the preeminent historian of the conservative movement—Lee Edwards. Edwards, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, relays the insights that can be gleaned from the National Review founder’s life and work in his invaluable new book, William F. Buckley, Jr.: The Maker Of A Movement. For...

Author Joe McGinniss, the man who just happened to rent the house next door to Sarah Palin while he is writing a biography about Palin, Said Tuesday on the Today Show that he did not move next door to Palin to spy on her. McGinniss said that he needed to be in Wasilla Alaska to do research, and the house next door to Palin just happened to be renting for a good price: "WASILLA, Alaska (AP) - A writer working on a book about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says he moved to her hometown to talk to her longtime...

WASHINGTON - US Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor has attained true stardom. This month, she joins House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Vice President Al Gore and conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh in having her own comic book. Describing the four as "some of the most fascinating and polarizing figures on the national political stage," Bluewater biography comics is publishing separate comic books on each that will be in comic book stores tomorrow. "These four individuals represent some of the most influential and historic figures of the 21st century," said Bluewater president Darren Davis in a statement. "Each has a...

The blogosphere abhors a vacuum. So when the mainstream media (MSM) leave holes in a given narrative -- in this case, the biography of the president -- bloggers individually, incrementally, and indefatigably strive to fill in the blanks -- sometimes successfully, sometimes less so. In his comprehensive, 600-plus-page biography of Barack Obama titled The Bridge, New Yorker editor David Remnick lays down the baseline of what the mainstream media know about the president -- or at least what they want us to know.

Oprah Winfrey -- who built a billion-dollar empire persuading everyone from celebs to average Joes to reveal the truth about themselves -- is a big phony when it comes to her own past, an explosive new book charges. Winfrey's relationship with longtime "love" Stedman Graham, her reputed dirt-poor upbringing in rural Mississippi, her rumored lesbian crushes on women such as Diane Sawyer -- all are stories she has manipulated for decades in the name of sensational ratings, according to writer Kitty Kelley's latest unauthorized biography "Oprah." The much-anticipated book details how: * Winfrey concocted stories about sexual abuse she suffered...

Kelley is generally thought of as an "Uh-oh" writer. That is, when she announces she is writing a book about X, the response is "Uh-oh," usually on the part of the subject. For the rest of us, the "Uh-oh" signifies: "This is gonna be good. It may be down and dirty, but it will be true, and it will be good." If there is hidden history to be gotten, Kelley will get it. Some people belittle her work as muckraking that is perhaps fanciful, if not far-fetched, but that is because they can’t believe that there are facts about a...

Love him or hate him, Antonin Scalia has had a greater influence on the way Americans debate the law today than any other modern Supreme Court justice. Conservatives hail Scalia as the founding prophet of their true faith — the Jurisprudence of Original Understanding — and the leader of the opposition to moral relativism and judicial imperialism in the age of Obama. [...] It’s hard to write a fair-minded biography of such a polarizing figure, but that’s what Joan Biskupic has done with “American Original.” ... On the court, Scalia has shown a disdain for elites that keeps him not...

A new unauthorized biography of "America's pastor" Rick Warren uncovers a marriage with an unconventional beginning and a time of depression that later gave Warren the strength to become who he is today. Jeffery L. Sheler, religion correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, delves into the world of Warren in his latest book, Prophet of Purpose: The Life of Rick Warren. The book portrays the affable yet confident megachurch pastor who calls presidents and billionaires his friends in a much more vulnerable light. In a live Web discussion with Christianity Today editor-in-chief David Neff on Wednesday, Sheler talked about...

"I think Obama's in a league with TR," observes historian and presidential biographer Douglas Brinkley. "He created his political reputation through the written word." To be sure, no one has ever accused Sarah Palin, a defeated vice presidential candidate, of creating her reputation thusly. One has to wonder, then, why her book, Going Rogue, would merit a fact-check by no fewer than eleven Associated Press reporters when neither the AP nor any other mainstream outlet has spent a moment vetting the books of the "author in chief," as President Barack Obama was anointed in a November GQ article, "Barack Obama's...

Rehnquist’s Portrait Allie Winegar Duzett, November 12, 2009 William Rehnquist was by all accounts a fascinating man. His work in the judiciary was unparalleled: he served on the Supreme Court as a justice for over three decades, and led the court as Chief Justice for nineteen years. He was a justice voting on the controversial Roe v. Wade case (Rehnquist wrote the dissent), the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, and for the dispute over 2000 presidential election. As a justice for the Supreme Court, Rehnquist lived his life under public scrutiny—but only a very few got to know the man...

Launching An American Knight in Washington Written by John Horvat    Thursday, October 29, 2009 On October 27, the TFP Washington Bureau was filled with friends and supporters to hear a presentation on the book, An American Knight The Life of Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC just authored by TFP member Norman Fulkerson. The author presented the book to a full and lively auditorium of some 50 people and later personally signed copies. As a special guest, Duke Paul of Oldenburg from the German TFP, gave the opening remarks commenting on the meaning of chivalry today. Also attending was...

Norman Fulkerson, who has been voicing his conservative opinions on the Messenger-Inquirer editorial page for 11 years, has written a book about another conservative, Col. John W. Ripley USMC.... There was much to admire about Ripley, Fulkerson said, during a recent phone interview. Ripley's military career has been documented in other writings, Fulkerson said, but what he was most interested in was telling the other side of the war hero who in 1972 during the Easter Offensive in Dong Ha, Vietnam, blew up a bridge that "virtually halted the largest North Vietnamese offensive of the entire war." "An American Knight,...

As retailers count their robust preorders for Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” a small publisher out West says his decision to issue “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down” by Kaylene Johnson, was one of his best. The book, an unauthorized look at Palin’s life that begins with her early years in Alaska and ends with her winning the governorship, was published originally in May 2008, by Epicenter Press, based in Kenmore, Wash. Kent Sturgis, president, says that the biography sold 13,000 hardcovers and 80,000 paperback copies. Demand was so great that...

THERE are many graceful touches in Mao's Last Dancer, Bruce Beresford's stirring, uplifting adaptation of the best-selling memoir by Li Cunxin, the Chinese ballet star who defected to the West in 1981 while on a fellowship with the Houston Ballet. Snip There's little grace, though, in Beresford's highly efficient if workman-like direction. With so much ground to cover and so many characters to keep track of, Beresford diligently churns through Cunxin's story in a frill-free, matter-of-fact manner. This certainly gives the film great drive, if little rhythm or any real sense of style.

In a soon-to-be-released book based on taped interviews, Bill Clinton discusses his presidency, while dishing on Al Gore, Maureen Dowd, and GOPersOn Monday, USA Today ran a front-page article on the soon-to-be-released book chronicling a series of secret interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch held with President Bill Clinton throughout the Clinton presidency. The piece focused on a bizarre episode in which Russian President Boris Yeltsin during a visit to Washington in 1995 ended up in his underwear and drunk on Pennsylvania Avenue, trying to hail a cab. As for the Lewinsky affair, Clinton told Branch, he "just cracked" under...

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner on Wednesday enthused over a new biography of Friedrich Engels, cooing that Marxism is “back in vogue” and adding that the founding communist comes across as a “jovial man of outsize appetites” in Tristram Hunt’s new biography “Marx’s General.” Garner opened the review by insisting that decrying capitalism is now hip again: “Thanks to globalism’s discontents and the financial crisis that has spread across the planet, Karl Marx and his analysis of capitalism’s dark, wormy side are back in vogue.”

“Kings,” Louis XIV once observed, “should enjoy giving pleasure” and when it came to the fairer sex, he obeyed this precept zealously and often. “They’re all good enough for him, provided they’re women,” his sister-in-law remarked, “peasants, gardeners’ daughters, chambermaids, ladies of quality”; women of every stripe benefited from the Sun King’s sexual largesse. Neither the bonds of matrimony (to the sad, neglected Marie-Thérèse of Spain) nor the intrigues of his “official” mistresses (one of whom, Athénaïs de Montespan, wasn’t above spreading the rumor that a particular rival had scabs all over her body) could deter him from sharing the...

Joseph Kennedy and the Jews By Edward Renehan, Jr. (Mr. Renehan's most recent book is The Kennedys at War, 1937-1945, published in April 2002 by Doubleday.) Arriving at London in early 1938, newly-appointed U.S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy took up quickly with another transplanted American. Viscountess Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor assured Kennedy early in their friendship that he should not be put off by her pronounced and proud anti-Catholicism. "I'm glad you are smart enough not to take my [views] personally," she wrote. Astor pointed out that she had a number of Roman Catholic friends - G.K. Chesterton among them...

A politically neutral friend has asked for recommendations for the best biography of Ronald Reagan. I'm considering "The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister" by John O'Sullivan, but that's probably too narrowly focused. Suggestions would be most appreciated.

One Day at a Time star Mackenzie Phillips was molested by her father John Phillips, the founding lead singer of The Mamas & the Papas! That's the explosive secret the 49-year-old former child actress will reveal in a scathing memoir due to hit bookstores next March, says a publishing insider. While the publisher, Simon Spotlight, has not publicly confirmed Mackenzie's molestation admission, it released a statement saying the troubled actress would reveal a "shocking, lifelong secret." Her addictions led to the downward spiral of her career, arrests and many stints in rehab, as well as two near-fatal overdoses. "In addition...

Guts and grace BOOKS: WORLD’s Lynn Vincent teams up with Sarah Palin on a book that promises to set the record straight about the Alaska governor’s personal and political life | Mickey McLean After last week’s announcement that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would pen a memoir to set the record straight about her personal and political life, HarperCollins revealed Thursday that WORLD Magazine Features Editor Lynn Vincent has been signed on as Palin’s collaborator. The book, not yet titled, will be co-published by HarperCollins imprint Harper and HarperCollins-owned Zondervan and is scheduled for release in the spring of 2010. During...

The Unforgettable Great Communicator by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 12, 2009 The conservative pundits seeking to accumulate intellectual bona fides by aping the intelligentsia’s call to “forget Ronald Reagan” only succeed in proving themselves to be as vacuous as the allegedly educated elite. For example, one cultured pearl of current wisdom is that conservatives have to move beyond “variations of no.” Well, for openers, you have to move towards it before moving beyond it. A federal budget that rose by about $1 trillion when Republicans controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress does not indicate that the GOP...

In 'Sarah Palin: Poised to Become America's First Female President', Recaldo Ochoa explores the life and times of a politician he believes was wronged by the media. He reintroduces Americans to an exceptional American woman, Governor Sarah Palin, who has the character, the qualification, the attributes--intelligence, judgment, leadership ability, and experience--and the unprecedented historical opportunity to become the first female president of the greatest nation on earth.

Cast Two Giant Shadows Heather Latham, February 18, 2009 “Define or be defined; he who wins that debate wins the argument,” said L. Brent Bozell III, founder and president of Media Research Center and nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr., at a Heritage Foundation event. He holds that Ronald Reagan understood this, and nobody could touch him because of it. Nicknames like “the Teflon president” were given to him because no bad press would stick to him. He says, “He understood that there is perception and there is reality, and the perception of reality is all that matters, not the...

Ol’ Blue Eyes Deconstructed by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 29, 2009 Although on the surface, studies of the singer Frank Sinatra seem to be emblematic of the frivolity of university offerings these days, there may actually be some value to this endeavor. After all, most students are not accustomed to listening to vocalists who can keep a beat, hit musical notes with their voices rather than their fists and maintain a melody without an echo chamber. Unfortunately, as with most pedagogical enterprises, the opportunities for inaccuracy abound, and scholars have been seizing on them. “The post-World War II, early cold-war...

Jonathan Bate's eloquent evocation of the man from WarwickshireAt last we have a new kind of biography of Shakespeare. Starting from Ben Jonson’s description of Shakespeare as “Soul of the Age”, and shunning “the deadening march of chronological sequence that is biography’s besetting vice”, Jonathan Bate selects only the material that, he believes, will help to reveal Shakespeare’s cultural DNA. Structuring this loosely around the theme of the Seven Ages of Man from Jaques’s speech in As You Like It, Bate sweeps majestically backwards and forwards in time, moving between history and criticism, appropriating whatever best brings together Shakespeare’s life,...

If you read Obama's biography, you will be convinced he is groomed to be in the farthest left. A true American should fight hard to stop him becoming President

WASHINGTON--The title of a new biography of Michelle Obama is simply "Michelle" by Washington Post Magazine writer Liza Mundy, and an excerpt running in the Sunday edition tells of her discontent as an associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley, Austin, a "challenge to manage." Barack Obama met Michelle at the firm Michelle joined after Harvard Law School. She was part of the marketing group one of the "fun" practices at the firm--dealing with entertainment, after all, but there still was routine second year associate work Michelle Obama was not crazy about. excerpt...... "But Michelle could also frustrate her...

Last week Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble once again reported they were sold out of "Sarah- How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down" written by Kaylene Johnson and first released months ago. But with the rights picked up by a second publisher and a new edition with a print run of 300,000, book stocks were replenished on September 20th and once again ready to be shipped. Today, "Sarah- How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down" continued its climb up the New York Times Best Seller list, reaching the ...