"My name is Craig K., and I'm an Obamaholic." So begins the mock confession of a former community organizer who woke up one morning with a massive political hangover. Today, many Americans find themselves in the same uncomfortable position. Just as President Obama's uplifting words and bold promises once inspired exaggerated hopes, failed policy after failed policy have left us a nation of recovering Obamaholics. In this can't-put-it-down diatribe, award-winning journalist Craig S. Karpel alleges satirically--but proves with alarming facts--that voting for Obama was the result of a debilitating political addiction. Karpel guides us through a 12-step program for attaining "voting sobriety," and like any 12-step process, recovery begins with an admission that we have hit bottom and need to make amends. Thus we must admit to each other, and ourselves, that the Obama presidency isn't Obama's fault--it's ours. Rather than returning him to office, we the voters should be impeached for having elected him in the first place. Follow Karpel's 12-Step Guide for the Recovering Obama Voter, and get on the path to recovery--before November 6th!
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Even if you've never dreamed of voting for Obama, this short, addictive
book is one you shouldn't miss. Distinguished by lean, pungent prose
laced with wit, it's a deeply insightful compendium of where things
stand after four years of disastrous executive bungling, and offers a
path out of the mess before it's too late.
--P. David Hornik, PJMedia.com
Karpel has the kind of satirical gifts that legions who blog on these matters earnestly try to attain but which remain, forever, beyond their reach.
--Geoffrey Norman, The Weekly Standard
Karpel is no right-wing zealot. His book is neither rave nor rant. He was once, like the president, a left-wing community organizer. He mocks the soft, gooey language of quackery, of the frauds who have turned once-sturdy verbs into the soggy language of academics, therapists and charlatans.
--Wes Pruden, Editor Emeritus, The Washington Times
--P. David Hornik, PJMedia.com
Karpel has the kind of satirical gifts that legions who blog on these matters earnestly try to attain but which remain, forever, beyond their reach.
--Geoffrey Norman, The Weekly Standard
Karpel is no right-wing zealot. His book is neither rave nor rant. He was once, like the president, a left-wing community organizer. He mocks the soft, gooey language of quackery, of the frauds who have turned once-sturdy verbs into the soggy language of academics, therapists and charlatans.
--Wes Pruden, Editor Emeritus, The Washington Times
About the Author
Craig S. Karpel is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared in such venues as The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Playboy, PJMedia.com, and The Wall Street Journal. He has been a Contributing Editor of Esquire and Harper's Magazine.
As a community organizer fighting for "social justice" in the early 1970s he was an adviser to the far-left firebrand Abbie Hoffman. He counseled John Lennon during the former Beatle's involvement in American leftist politics.
He wrote for the iconic left-wing magazine Ramparts and the ultra-liberal Village Voice of the 1960s and 70s. He was a frequent sit-in host for Ed Koch when the liberal former New York City mayor hosted a weekly show on New York talk-radio powerhouse WABC.
Karpel was the author of the prophetic 1995 book The Retirement Myth: What You Must Know Now to Prosper in the Coming Meltdown of Job Security, Pension Plans, Social Security, the Stock Market, Housing Prices and More.
As a community organizer fighting for "social justice" in the early 1970s he was an adviser to the far-left firebrand Abbie Hoffman. He counseled John Lennon during the former Beatle's involvement in American leftist politics.
He wrote for the iconic left-wing magazine Ramparts and the ultra-liberal Village Voice of the 1960s and 70s. He was a frequent sit-in host for Ed Koch when the liberal former New York City mayor hosted a weekly show on New York talk-radio powerhouse WABC.
Karpel was the author of the prophetic 1995 book The Retirement Myth: What You Must Know Now to Prosper in the Coming Meltdown of Job Security, Pension Plans, Social Security, the Stock Market, Housing Prices and More.
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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
That's what Walt Kelly's Pogo said in the 1960s. His educated readership got it. He was paraphrasing Commodore Perry's famous 1813 quote from the Battle of Lake Erie, war of 1812. Today nobody knows about Perry. Or the War of 1812. Or the Revolutionary War, for that matter. And in fact, nothing much about American history, and certainly nothing heroic. And that, dear friends, is the problem. For you victims of public school education, Perry's original was "We have met the enemy and he is ours." (pwned)
Karpel writes that "Obama's brand of liberalism isn't a political philosophy; it's a debilitating condition - like Parkinsonism, rheumatism, or alcoholism." People who believe in Obama are not very good at arguing to defend him. They are vociferous, yes. They tar any Obama opponent as a racist, sexist, homophobic, Bible thumping, gun toting primitive. They thus make an ad hominem attack on the individual as being the opposite of what they are, and avoid encountering the arguments themselves.
Karpel knows the Obama community pretty well. He was a community organizer fighting for "social justice" in the early 1970s and an adviser to the far-left firebrand Abbie Hoffman. He worked with John Lennon during the former Beatle's involvement in American leftist politics. He then got into writing, for publications that find themselves on both the left and the right of the American political spectrum: The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal.
It is doubtful that he was ever in Obama voter. In 1995, almost a generation ago, he wrote a book which anticipates the coming collapse which Obama is accelerating. That book is entitled "The Retirement Myth: What You Must Know Now to Prosper in the Coming Meltdown of Job Security, Pension Plans, Social Security, the Stock Market, Housing Prices and More." You could say that he saw Obama coming.
In any case, here are his 12 steps. Reading these, you kind of know where the book is headed:
Step one: we need to acknowledge that we became hooked on a political cult that, blurring the distinction between government and religion, presented a politician as a messianic figure.
Step two: we need to acknowledge that instead of valuing only character, we became addicted to charisma.
Step three: we need to acknowledge that instead of being grounded in fact and truth, we became addicted to "narratives."
Step four: we need to acknowledge that no sooner did we express our resolve to put racism behind us by voting for an African-American to be president than we became addicted to an unprecedented form of bigotry: post-racism.
Step five: we need to acknowledge that instead of valuing only a competent, we became addicted to elitism.
Step six: we need to acknowledge that instead of striving for self-reliance, we became dependent on dependence.
Step seven: we need to acknowledge that instead of accepting intractability and impossibility, we became addicted to the fantasy that every problem has a solution.
Step eight: we need to acknowledge that instead of accepting our share of responsibility, we became addicted to blaming others.
Step nine: we need to acknowledge that instead of facing painful truths, we became addicted to denial.
Step 10: we need to embrace a sober alternative to the politics of addiction.
Step 11: we need to make amends for having allowed ourselves to become Obama addict's by helping others to overcome their addiction to this president's belief system.
Step 12: we need to support others, as well as benefit from their support, as we overcome our Obama addiction by taking steps to attain voting sobriety.
Whoever wins the election in 2012, the problem will cure itself. Europe and the US have been living on borrowed money for decades. Borrowed time as well. We have known all along that it cannot continue indefinitely, and the apocalypse is approaching now in a matter of months rather than years. We have been kicking the can down the road.
1. Government long ago passed the point of being able to pay its obligations by raising money through taxation. It had to borrow.
2. About 2008 it lost the ability to pay them by borrowing on public markets, and instead borrowed from the Federal Reserve.
3. Now, the government does not have the ability to redeem short-term borrowings from the Fed, so it has swapped short for long term debt, operation TWIST.
Each action they take presumes some magical source of income in the distant future. That would take favorable demographics - more workers. Actually the birthrate is stagnant. It would require higher productivity. Actually, our population gets dumber and less productive by the year. It would require innovation. Actually, the government stifles innovation. It would require investment. Actually, increasing amounts of capital are lying idle or leaving the country. Capital is especially abandoning places like California, where things are worst.
Moreover, everything they are doing increases expenditures in the future. Adding more people to Social Security disability. Signing up for unbounded obligations through Medicare. Introducing Obamacare. Extending jobless benefits, even as people are not going back to work. Starting and continuing wars. Spending vast amounts on schools to "eliminate the black-white test score gap." Adding employees to the bureaucracy.
When world governments embarked on their regimes of fiat money, now some 80 years ago for the US, they accepted the obligation to put the "full faith and credit" of the government behind their currency. In other words, the promises of politicians. We should have known. Many did know and spoke out at the time, but the voices of the prudent are always drowned, eventually, in a democracy. Our people have demanded more government payments and services than we can pay for. "They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind." That's today's voter.
Obama voters especially, but even most Republicans, cannot come to grips with the fact that we cannot continue indefinitely to live beyond our means. Ryan knows the truth, and knows enough to keep from saying it. Romney probably does as well. Obama's genius is in his naivety. He doesn't even know the truth, so he doesn't run the risk of saying anything politically incorrect.
We have met the enemy, and he is us. In the person of Barack Obama.
Selected bibliography:
This time is different - Eight centuries of Financial Folly
The Black Swan
The Folly of Fools
Thinking Fast and Slow
The Big Short
America Lite
The Amateur
Confidence Men
Karpel writes that "Obama's brand of liberalism isn't a political philosophy; it's a debilitating condition - like Parkinsonism, rheumatism, or alcoholism." People who believe in Obama are not very good at arguing to defend him. They are vociferous, yes. They tar any Obama opponent as a racist, sexist, homophobic, Bible thumping, gun toting primitive. They thus make an ad hominem attack on the individual as being the opposite of what they are, and avoid encountering the arguments themselves.
Karpel knows the Obama community pretty well. He was a community organizer fighting for "social justice" in the early 1970s and an adviser to the far-left firebrand Abbie Hoffman. He worked with John Lennon during the former Beatle's involvement in American leftist politics. He then got into writing, for publications that find themselves on both the left and the right of the American political spectrum: The New Republic, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Playboy, and The Wall Street Journal.
It is doubtful that he was ever in Obama voter. In 1995, almost a generation ago, he wrote a book which anticipates the coming collapse which Obama is accelerating. That book is entitled "The Retirement Myth: What You Must Know Now to Prosper in the Coming Meltdown of Job Security, Pension Plans, Social Security, the Stock Market, Housing Prices and More." You could say that he saw Obama coming.
In any case, here are his 12 steps. Reading these, you kind of know where the book is headed:
Step one: we need to acknowledge that we became hooked on a political cult that, blurring the distinction between government and religion, presented a politician as a messianic figure.
Step two: we need to acknowledge that instead of valuing only character, we became addicted to charisma.
Step three: we need to acknowledge that instead of being grounded in fact and truth, we became addicted to "narratives."
Step four: we need to acknowledge that no sooner did we express our resolve to put racism behind us by voting for an African-American to be president than we became addicted to an unprecedented form of bigotry: post-racism.
Step five: we need to acknowledge that instead of valuing only a competent, we became addicted to elitism.
Step six: we need to acknowledge that instead of striving for self-reliance, we became dependent on dependence.
Step seven: we need to acknowledge that instead of accepting intractability and impossibility, we became addicted to the fantasy that every problem has a solution.
Step eight: we need to acknowledge that instead of accepting our share of responsibility, we became addicted to blaming others.
Step nine: we need to acknowledge that instead of facing painful truths, we became addicted to denial.
Step 10: we need to embrace a sober alternative to the politics of addiction.
Step 11: we need to make amends for having allowed ourselves to become Obama addict's by helping others to overcome their addiction to this president's belief system.
Step 12: we need to support others, as well as benefit from their support, as we overcome our Obama addiction by taking steps to attain voting sobriety.
Whoever wins the election in 2012, the problem will cure itself. Europe and the US have been living on borrowed money for decades. Borrowed time as well. We have known all along that it cannot continue indefinitely, and the apocalypse is approaching now in a matter of months rather than years. We have been kicking the can down the road.
1. Government long ago passed the point of being able to pay its obligations by raising money through taxation. It had to borrow.
2. About 2008 it lost the ability to pay them by borrowing on public markets, and instead borrowed from the Federal Reserve.
3. Now, the government does not have the ability to redeem short-term borrowings from the Fed, so it has swapped short for long term debt, operation TWIST.
Each action they take presumes some magical source of income in the distant future. That would take favorable demographics - more workers. Actually the birthrate is stagnant. It would require higher productivity. Actually, our population gets dumber and less productive by the year. It would require innovation. Actually, the government stifles innovation. It would require investment. Actually, increasing amounts of capital are lying idle or leaving the country. Capital is especially abandoning places like California, where things are worst.
Moreover, everything they are doing increases expenditures in the future. Adding more people to Social Security disability. Signing up for unbounded obligations through Medicare. Introducing Obamacare. Extending jobless benefits, even as people are not going back to work. Starting and continuing wars. Spending vast amounts on schools to "eliminate the black-white test score gap." Adding employees to the bureaucracy.
When world governments embarked on their regimes of fiat money, now some 80 years ago for the US, they accepted the obligation to put the "full faith and credit" of the government behind their currency. In other words, the promises of politicians. We should have known. Many did know and spoke out at the time, but the voices of the prudent are always drowned, eventually, in a democracy. Our people have demanded more government payments and services than we can pay for. "They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind." That's today's voter.
Obama voters especially, but even most Republicans, cannot come to grips with the fact that we cannot continue indefinitely to live beyond our means. Ryan knows the truth, and knows enough to keep from saying it. Romney probably does as well. Obama's genius is in his naivety. He doesn't even know the truth, so he doesn't run the risk of saying anything politically incorrect.
We have met the enemy, and he is us. In the person of Barack Obama.
Selected bibliography:
This time is different - Eight centuries of Financial Folly
The Black Swan
The Folly of Fools
Thinking Fast and Slow
The Big Short
America Lite
The Amateur
Confidence Men
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
Many of us instinctively know that we were fooled by Obama's soaring rhetoric in 2008. Karpel puts all the evidence in front of our eyes so we won't be fooled again.
This election will be a turning point in American history. Our parents, grandparents and great grandparents came to America because they saw it as the land of opportunity. Obama will make it the land of unemployment, class warfare and debt. If Obama told us who he really was and what he really wanted, he would have lost the election by a landslide in 2008.
If you read Karpel's book and give it to your friends, Obama will lose this time around. It's a clear, easy read and worth every penny. If you are beating you head against a wall trying to get people to listen, let this book do the talking. They'd have to be suicidal to vote for him after reading it.
This election will be a turning point in American history. Our parents, grandparents and great grandparents came to America because they saw it as the land of opportunity. Obama will make it the land of unemployment, class warfare and debt. If Obama told us who he really was and what he really wanted, he would have lost the election by a landslide in 2008.
If you read Karpel's book and give it to your friends, Obama will lose this time around. It's a clear, easy read and worth every penny. If you are beating you head against a wall trying to get people to listen, let this book do the talking. They'd have to be suicidal to vote for him after reading it.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a light-hearted book which purports to guide the victim of Obama's pretty speeches -- the Obama addict -- into a situation of recovery. The whole book is loosely modeled on AA.
However, you can't read far before you realize that beneath the light-hearted tone is extremely serious reading-matter. The Obama addicts are almost completely irrational, and they do resemble the town drunk with his bottle of Ripple. I have been called "racist" too many times to remember, while IN FACT my favorite politicians most definitely include Allen West and Marco Rubio! (Has this happened to you, or do I need to ask?)
Karpel tells the Obama voter what he needs to hear: he's got to abandon his quest for more & more government handouts; he's got to give up thinking that every problem can be solved with a government program; he needs to concentrate on character rather than charisma; he needs to deal with facts rather than "narratives."
For example, as far as I am concerned (and I am far, far from alone) Obama is clearly the worst President in American history. Read The Amateur and Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream and realize that these books were written by serious writers, dedicated to the truth.
And then help your fellow sufferers to overcome THEIR addiction.
It's excellent advice, and the book is well worth reading!
However, you can't read far before you realize that beneath the light-hearted tone is extremely serious reading-matter. The Obama addicts are almost completely irrational, and they do resemble the town drunk with his bottle of Ripple. I have been called "racist" too many times to remember, while IN FACT my favorite politicians most definitely include Allen West and Marco Rubio! (Has this happened to you, or do I need to ask?)
Karpel tells the Obama voter what he needs to hear: he's got to abandon his quest for more & more government handouts; he's got to give up thinking that every problem can be solved with a government program; he needs to concentrate on character rather than charisma; he needs to deal with facts rather than "narratives."
For example, as far as I am concerned (and I am far, far from alone) Obama is clearly the worst President in American history. Read The Amateur and Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream and realize that these books were written by serious writers, dedicated to the truth.
And then help your fellow sufferers to overcome THEIR addiction.
It's excellent advice, and the book is well worth reading!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sober up
This an effective set of recipes for those who voted Obama, presumably in good faith, and who need sobering up, given the facts of the last 3-4 years. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Vincenzo Fiorentini
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clear and concise book
This book was an easy and informative read. Thank you, Mr. Karpel! I wish that a print version was available.
Published 7 months ago by Darkroom Diva
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