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Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
by Rachel Maddow
(Crown, $25)
Let's get all of the gushing out of the way first: Rachel Maddow is fucking adorable, and everyone and their mom has a crush on her. Okay. Moving on. Maddow's debut book, Drift, is about how the United States military has grown over the last 40 years and how the constitutional restrictions that once prevented any one American from declaring war on another country have disappeared. Drift is textbook-comprehensive, covering nuclear weapons, post-Vietnam policy changes, and the evolving power of the presidency. Thoroughness, however, doesn't make the book dry. Maddow keeps the serious content light when she can: "It's like they thought it was magic," she writes of the 1996 vice presidential report on the Department of Defense. "You half expected the pages of that Al Gore report to shake loose a little glitter, a smiley face sticker or two." Her political ideas transition well from television to the written page, and Drift is all new material. You'll find little repetition from The Rachel Maddow Show reruns.
Maddow doesn't know how to fix the problems within the US military, but she offers eight "to-dos" at the end of Drift—solutions like raising money for each new war and shrinking our nuke supply. One of her suggestions expands on "Colin Powell's cautionary 'Pottery Barn Rule'—you not only own it if you break it," she says, "you own it if you build it too." Simple stuff. Common sense. The sort of thing you shouldn't have to say.
Stranger Personals
Maddow and her book have been well received on this book tour, especially in Seattle. How many other authors get a standing ovation at Town Hall before saying one word? "It's so nice to actually see an audience," she told the sold-out crowd last week. "Usually if people are watching me talk, I can't see them."
In person, Maddow is just like her book: witty, honest, and completely endearing. As she talked onstage about her different career steps, Maddow impersonated herself being drunk, which was almost as funny as her impression of Ronald Reagan having a temper tantrum while writing in his presidential diary. More than anything, she seemed genuinely interested in conversation as she opened up the room for questions. She talked about social justice. She talked about how Dick Cheney can be both a villain and a man to be admired (her book bears the dedication: "To former vice president Dick Cheney. Oh, please let me interview you"). Maddow discussed the ways in which her book will hopefully provoke more conversation about the military. "There are lots of ways to worry about nuclear weapons, and I worry about them all," she said. "Which makes me no fun at a dinner party."
Though American politics are dear to her heart, Maddow admitted to me in a post-reading interview that she didn't enjoy the book-writing process or "the nuances of procrastination" that came with it. "I needed to commit to starting to write," she said. Her distaste, though endearing, doesn't show in the text. Drift resonates with an overwhelming sentiment: Our military situation sucks. So let's fix it. 
Maddow doesn't know how to fix the problems within the US military, but she offers eight "to-dos" at the end of Drift—solutions like raising money for each new war and shrinking our nuke supply.
Why does Maddow support the illegal invasion of Imperialistic Amerika into foreign countries?
Why does Maddow quote Colin "Americal" Powell, involved in the original My Lai Massacre coverup?
Or perhaps she was impressed with his United Nations' performance where he held up that hardward store pipe and claimed it was an Iraqi WMD implement?
Now wonder FoxFiction's douchetard Ailes is so in love with her book, which begs the question why would any other douchetard be so inclined ? ? ?
This excerpt from his Wikipedia entry is very accurate:
Krugman has advocated free markets in contexts where they are often viewed as controversial. He has written against rent control in favor of supply and demand,[148] likened the opposition against free trade and globalization to the opposition against evolution via natural selection,[144] opposed farm subsidies,[149] argued that sweatshops are preferable to unemployment,[40] dismissed the case for living wages,[150] argued against mandates, subsidies, and tax breaks for ethanol,[151] and questioned NASA's manned space flights.[152] Krugman has also criticized U.S. zoning laws[153] and European labor market regulation.
Does this sound like a "liberal" ? ?
Not on my watch, it doesn't. Wether Maddow is quoting Gen. Colin Powell, the aider and abettor to the mass murder of the Bush administration, or his spawn, Michael Powell, former FCC slime, now working for, and promoting the latest anti-privacy crap, show is no liberal, and people who gave her that standing ovation are biggest f**kwads around...
Rachel Maddow’s descriptive phrase of the vile Dick Cheney might not sit too well with family and friends of those people who were thrown off the tops of buildings or otherwise murdered during the Cheney/Bush administration:
John J. Kokal (killed on 11/07/2003), an intelligence analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research – a vocal critic of Cheney’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction;
Paul Sanford, journalist and attorney (killed 12/29/2006) – another vocal critic who also questioned White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on why the outing of Valerie Plame’s CIA status should not be considered an act of treason; and,
Dr. Gus W. Weiss, a senior intelligence planner, former National Security Council official, vocal critic of the Iraq War, killed on 11/25/2003.
Colonel Ted Westhusing, West Point professor who was in Iraq investigating then Carlyle Group-owned USIS for fraud and human rights abuses, supposedly died from a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
During the timeframe Col. Westhusing was investigating, $8.7 billion went missing somewhere between the New York Federal Reserve Bank where monies were kept on account (FRBNY chairman: Timothy Geithner), the Iraqi Trade Bank (JPMorgan Chase’s contract managing director: Daniel Zelikow, Timothy Geithner’s best friend), and the Export-Import Bank and the C.P.A. (the originating points of those missing oil monies).
The chair of the Export-Import Bank during the money’s disappearance, Philip Merrill, would later be found dead in the Chesapeake Bay, with a shotgun wound to his head, his body weighed down with an anchor.
The top financial guy at the C.P.A. was Bush appointee and career Goldman Sachs guy, Reuben Jeffery, later to assume the CEO position at Rockefeller Financial Services, their previous CEO having naturally committed “suicide.”
Gary Webb, investigative journalist and author of Dark Alliance: the CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion --- an exposé of the Bush family’s alleged involvement in drug trafficking --- died on 12/10/2004 from two gunshot wounds to his face, ruled a suicide (suicide by multiple gunshots to the head is highly, highly unusual --- normally after the first shot the individual is in no condition to continue).
I would have sent the boys to Afghanistan and, if I believed Saddam had WMD, to Iraq. Congress seemed to grant authority for both of them.
Our greatest crimes tend to be committed under foreign flags by our proxies (like Mobutu or any number of Miamians) and we have been doing that for a long time, too. We are a warlike people and it's that culture that needs remedying more than Presidential tripping.
5
Guess it is hard to find people to talk to when you are a conspiracy theorist.
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