American Politics Audiobooks | Politics

Donald Trump's Top Secret Concession Speech

Donald Trump doesn't want you to listen to this book. Trump is president. Unfortunately, that bell can't be unrung. But what if ... What if, for a very brief period of time, Donald Trump had actually developed a sliver of moral decency just before the election? What if he thought he was going to lose the election? Even more importantly, what if he thought that he should lose the election because he realized that he's a terrible person with no business being president? What if Donald Trump spent a few days with an audio recorder making notes for the concession speech he thought he would have to deliver on election night? What if those notes were made public? What would Donald Trump sound like if he had something resembling a conscience? Start listening to this book and find out

John Sheirer (Author), Mike Hardeman (Narrator)

Audiobook

Man On The Moon

When Kennedy spoke of landing a man on the moon it seemed an impossible task "We do this not because it is easy but because it is hard". Man was spacebound and Kennedy's goal was to achieve this on many levels; to show the Soviet Union that America was the pre-eminent Superpower, to give a boost to the military industrial complex and to rally America to a common purpose and goal.

Various Artists, Various Artists (Author), Various Artists, Various Artists (Narrator)

Audiobook

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate

From the #1 bestselling author - the story of an award-winning comedian who decided to run for office and then discovered why award-winning comedians tend not to do that. AL FRANKEN, GIANT OF THE SENATE is a book about an unlikely campaign that had an even more improbable ending: the closest outcome in history and an unprecedented eight-month recount saga, which is pretty funny in retrospect. It's a book about what happens when the nation's foremost progressive satirist gets a chance to serve in the United States Senate and, defying the low expectations of the pundit class, actually turns out to be good at it. It's a book about our deeply polarized, frequently depressing, occasionally inspiring political culture, written from inside the belly of the beast. In this candid personal memoir, the honorable gentleman from Minnesota takes his army of loyal fans along with him from Saturday Night Live to the campaign trail, inside the halls of Congress, and behind the scenes of some of the most dramatic and/or hilarious moments of his new career in politics.

Al Franken (Author), Al Franken (Narrator)

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The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

The first in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the White House Chiefs of Staff, whose actions and inactions have defined the course of our country. What do Dick Cheney and Rahm Emanuel have in common? Aside from polarizing personalities, both served as chief of staff to the president of the United States as did Donald Rumsfeld, Leon Panetta, and a relative handful of others. The chiefs of staff, often referred to as 'the gatekeepers,' wield tremendous power in Washington and beyond; they decide who is allowed to see the president, negotiate with Congress to push POTUS's agenda, and most crucially enjoy unparalleled access to the leader of the free world. Each chief can make or break an administration, and each president reveals himself by the chief he picks. Through extensive, intimate interviews with all seventeen living chiefs and two former presidents, award-winning journalist and producer Chris Whipple pulls back the curtain on this unique fraternity. In doing so, he revises our understanding of presidential history, showing us how James Baker 's expert managing of the White House, the press, and Capitol Hill paved the way for the Reagan Revolution and, conversely, how Watergate, the Iraq War, and even the bungled Obamacare rollout might have been prevented by a more effective chief. Filled with shrewd analysis and never-before-reported details, The Gatekeepers offers an essential portrait of the toughest job in Washington.

Chris Whipple (Author), Mark Bramhall (Narrator)

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A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System

Bestselling author T. R. Reid voyages around the world to solve the urgent problem of America’s failing tax code, unraveling a complex topic in plain English and telling a rollicking story along the way. The U.S. tax code is a total write-off. Overstuffed with loopholes and special interest provisions, it works for no one—except tax lawyers, accountants, and corporations, that is—and certainly not me and you. Not for the first time, we have to tear it up and start over. That happened in 1922, and again in 1954, and again in 1986. There’s a pattern here; we reach this point every thirty-two years. Which means the next complete rewrite of the tax code is due in 2018. Can we write a new tax code that is fair and simple? Can we cut tax rates and still bring in the revenue required? In fact, we can—by learning from the world’s other democracies. Around the world, wealthy democracies, from Estonia to New Zealand to the U.K., have all reformed their tax codes, while the United States has languished. With his penchant for making complex subjects accessible and even fun, T. R. Reid travels the world in order to find out what makes for good taxation (if that’s not an oxymoron!) and brings that knowledge home. So byzantine are the current statutes that by the government’s own estimates, Americans spend six billion hours and ten billion dollars every year preparing and filing their taxes. In the Netherlands it takes the average person fifteen minutes! Brilliantly successful American companies like Apple, Caterpillar, and Google effectively pay no tax at all because of loopholes that allow them to move profits offshore. Indeed, the dysfunctional tax system has become so easy to dodge that it is a major cause of economic inequality, as Warren Buffett and Thomas Piketty have pointed out. But it doesn’t have to be this way, the ever-intrepid Reid proves, crisscrossing the globe from the Czech Republic to Mexico. Doing our taxes may never be America’s favorite pastime, but it can and should be so much easier. From the Hardcover edition.

T. R. Reid, T.R. Reid (Author), T.R. Reid (Narrator)

Audiobook

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life

Richard Hofstadter (Author), Adam Verner (Narrator)

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Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media

In this pathbreaking work, now with a new introduction, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order. Based on a series of case studies-including the media's dichotomous treatment of "worthy" versus "unworthy" victims, "legitimizing" and "meaningless" Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina-Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media's behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications.

Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky (Author), John Pruden (Narrator)

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Drain the Swamp: How Washington Corruption is Worse than You Think

Lavish parties. Commitee chairmanships for sale. Pay-to-play corruption. Backroom arm-twisting. Votes on major legislation going to the highest bidder. Congressman Ken Buck (R-CO) is blowing the whistle on the real-life House of Cards going on behind the scenes in our nation's capital. Elected in 2014 as president of one of the largest Republican freshman classes ever to enter Congress, Buck quickly realized why nothing gets done in Congress, and it isn't because of political gridlock-in fact, Republicans and Democrats work together all too well to fleece taxpayers and plunge America deeper into debt. "It is an insular process directed by power-hungry party elites who live like kings and govern like bullies," Buck reports. Buck has witnessed first-hand how the unwritten rules of Congress continually prioritize short-term political gain over lasting, principled leadership. When Buck tangled with Washington power brokers like former Speaker John Boehner, he faced petty retaliation. When he insisted Republicans keep their word to voters, he was berated on the House floor by his own party leaders. When other members of Congress dared to do what they believed to be right for America instead of what the party bosses commanded, Buck saw them stripped of committee positions and even denied dining room privileges by the petty beltway bullies. In Drain the Swamp, Buck names names and tells incredible true stories about what really happened behind closed doors in Congress during legislative battles that have ensued over the last two years including budget, continuing resolutions, omnibus, trade promotion authority, Iran, and more.

Congressman Ken Buck, Ken Buck (Author), Brian Holsopple (Narrator)

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The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

The author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine began his research into the agency's activities when CIA director William Colby gave him free access to interview agency officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would eventually rescind it and made every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented an elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam. While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into this illegal activity focused on the CIA's relationship with the federal agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence, and foreign operations staffs in order to ensure the unimpeded flow of drugs to traffickers and foreign officials in its employ. Ultimately, portions of his research materials were archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University's Vietnam Center, and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. This book includes excerpts from the aforementioned titles, along with subsequent articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current topics, with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the CIA's ongoing illegal and extralegal activities. These articles and interviews illustrate how the agency's activities impact social and political movements abroad and at home. A common theme is the CIA's ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable, government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability. Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then continues to inform CIA praxis today. Valentine tracks the agency's steady expansion into practices targeting the last population to be subjected to the exigencies of the American empire: the American people themselves.

Douglas Valentine (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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The Devil In D.C.: Winning Back The Country From The Beast In Washington

V I C T O R Y A T T H E G A T E S - Government intrusion into our private lives is at an all-time high: unfettered surveillance, massive entitlement programs to redistribute wealth, unelected activist judges trampling religious freedom. The Founding Fathers said our nation demanded a moral, educated, and principled populace to keep elected officials in check, to keep our government and culture clean and free of degrading forces, and to maintain its foundational core values. Today we see what happens when unchecked, greedy, self-serving utopian politicians get the free run of Washington. What can you do about it? The Devil in DC provides more than a dozen different ideas on how to turn back Big Government, stressing the importance of · knowing the Constitution · getting out of debt · holding elected leaders accountable · voting, volunteering, and running for office · standing fast in the face of the progressive onslaught · confessing, repenting, and praying. The Bible teaches of “a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace” (Ecclesiastes 3:8). Right now, with chaos and turmoil increasingly engulfing America, this is a time to fight—by following the battle plan in The Devil in DC.

Cheryl Chumley (Author), Suzanne Chambers (Narrator)

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This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America's Middle Class

The fiery U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and bestselling author offers a passionate, inspiring audiobook about why our middle class is under siege and how we can win the fight to save it This program is read by the author. Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been an outspoken champion of America's middle class, and by the time the people of Massachusetts elected her in 2012, she had become one of the country's leading progressive voices. Now, at a perilous moment for our nation, she has written a book that is at once an illuminating account of how we built the strongest middle class in history, a scathing indictment of those who have spent the past thirty-five years undermining working families, and a rousing call to action. Warren grew up in Oklahoma, and she's never forgotten how difficult it was for her mother and father to hold on at the ragged edge of the middle class. An educational system that offered opportunities for all made it possible for her to achieve her dream of going to college, becoming a teacher, and, later, attending law school. But now, for many, these kinds of opportunities are gone, and a government that once looked out for working families is instead captive to the rich and powerful. Seventy-five years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal ushered in an age of widespread prosperity; in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reversed course and sold the country on the disastrous fiction called trickle-down economics. Now, with the election of Donald Trumpa con artist who promised to drain the swamp of special interests and then surrounded himself with billionaires and lobbyiststhe middle class is being pushed ever closer to collapse. Written in the candid, high-spirited voice that is Warren's trademark, This Fight Is Our Fight tells eye-opening stories about her battles in the Senate and vividly describes the experiences of hard-working Americans who have too often been given the short end of the stick. Elizabeth Warren has had enough of phony promises and a government that no longer serves its peopleshe won't sit down, she won't be silenced, and she will fight back.

Elizabeth Warren (Author), Elizabeth Warren (Narrator)

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The Case for Impeachment

In The Case for Impeachment, Distinguished Professor of History at American University Allan J. Lichtman illuminates exactly how the impeachment of President Trump might work by showing how his actions—past or future—make him uniquely vulnerable to impeachment proceedings. From his dealings with Russia, to his conflicts of interest at home and abroad, to the numerous civil suits involving him, Lichtman zeroes in on Mr. Trump’s key areas of weakness. Professor Lichtman also offers a fascinating look at presidential impeachments throughout American history, including the often-overlooked story of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment, little known details about Richard Nixon’s resignation, as well as Bill Clinton’s hearings. Many historians and legal scholars agree that we are facing uncharted political waters and most citizens—politics aside—want to know where the country is headed. Professor Lichtman has correctly predicted every Presidential election since 1984, including the election of 2016. Now, he is focusing on the 45th President of the United States, demonstrating his view that it is not a question of if President Trump will be impeached, but a question of when.

Allan J. Lichtman (Author), Dan Woren (Narrator)

Audiobook

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