Rating: 
Summary: From a liberal
Review: (Best with books like this to have it on the table where I stand)I've read many of the recent Bush-bashing, liberal-energizing books (Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars . . .", Moore's "Stupid White Men" and "Dude, Where's My Country"), and I honestly think that this book is the best for someone who wants a good view into what liberals are so worked up about. Franken's book is often more humorous and a somewhat lighter read, so it may be better for you depending on your taste, but Ivins and Dubose here do the best job I've seen of setting out a well-reasoned, well-argued case, with not only the anecdotes but the numbers to back it up (although admittedly I haven't gone through their end-notes and checked up on all their sources). While I love all the recent liberal-lit---preaching to the converted may not help so much, but we do so enjoy the sermon---"Bushwhacked" impressed me most for an argument that's both compelling and rational. If I can find an equivalent on the conservative side (it's hard to slog through the partisan reviews and find out anything useful about many of these books, and I hope my review isn't more of the same), I'd read it for such a good view into the other perspective.
Rating:
Summary: From a liberal
Review: (Best with books like this to have it on the table where I stand) I've read many of the recent Bush-bashing, liberal-energizing books (Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars . . .", Moore's "Stupid White Men" and "Dude, Where's My Country"), and I honestly think that this book is the best for someone who wants a good view into what liberals are so worked up about. Franken's book is often more humorous and a somewhat lighter read, so it may be better for you depending on your taste, but Ivins and Dubose here do the best job I've seen of setting out a well-reasoned, well-argued case, with not only the anecdotes but the numbers to back it up (although admittedly I haven't gone through their end-notes and checked up on all their sources). While I love all the recent liberal-lit---preaching to the converted may not help so much, but we do so enjoy the sermon---"Bushwhacked" impressed me most for an argument that's both compelling and rational. If I can find an equivalent on the conservative side (it's hard to slog through the partisan reviews and find out anything useful about many of these books, and I hope my review isn't more of the same), I'd read it for such a good view into the other perspective.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly WRONG
Review: Books like this completely amaze me as they seek only to fuel peoples hatred. It's quite clear Ivins goal is to be among the elite crowd of Bush-haters by pointing out idividual cases of Americans misfortunes as oposed to the state of the entire nation. Once again proving that anything bad for the people of America is good for democrats and liberals. When I read rubish like this it only helps me embrace conservatism more. One question, answer it honestly to yourself, When you vote will it be out of hatred or genuine trust in the other guy ?
Rating:
Summary: Ouch! I've been BushWhacked!
Review: Great Book. I knew Bush was bad, but I had no idea how bad until I read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Be Afraid--Be Very Afraid
Review: I read Molly Ivins' earlier work Shrub (also written with the help of Lou Dubose). Ivins is the consummate reporter of all things Texan. Known for her sardonic wit, she once said in an interview that when she first walked into the Texas Legislature as a cub reporter, "I thought I had died and gone to heaven." And of one legislator she quipped, "If his IQ dropped any lower, we would have to water him twice a day." In Bushwhacked she says of a piece of ill-fated legislation that it "was deader than an armadillo on I-35." I think that one should make it into the language. However, this the one few moments of comic relief in a book that should scare the pants off of you.
No book Stephen King ever wrote is as scarey as Bushwhacked because King's fictional characters cannot leap off the page and really get you, but all that Ivins and Dubose report is frighteningly real, and it has and will continue to affect your daily life from health issues such as toxic waste giving you cancer or whether you will die from eating a sandwich, to economic issues such as whether you get your Unemployment check or your pension. Bushwhacked catalogs the nauseatingly steady stream of sweetheart deals that Bush contributors got that cost you more in a thousand different ways.
Perhaps the scariest part of the book is the Bush Administration's plan for Partiot Act 2. In short, any group the Attorney General deems a terrorist group, could immediately lose their American Citizenship. Look out ACLU-that just may be you!
The book is filled with examples of Bush's hypocrisy, which manifests in two different styles. These two examples should give you a taste of both styles:
The one style of hypocrisy Bushwhacked highlights is that Bush often strenuously opposes something such as AIDS funding, but after losing the fight, publically champions the cause with great fanfare in a photo-op as though he was leading the charge all along.
The other style of Bush hypocrisy the authors expose is Bush's habit of announcing, "We have a plan . . . ". However, the "plan" results in the very opposite of the stated goal. For example, Bush in a 2002 speech said that he had a plan to safeguard 401K and pension plans. The Bush plan encouraged companies with huge tax breaks if they switched from fixed benefit plans to cash balance retirement plans. This would benefit employers saving them millions a year, but older workers could lose up to 50% of what they would have gotten with the traditional fixed asset plans. The Bush plan also shields employers from age discrimination lawsuits.
Bushwhacked also cites numerous examples of Bush's arrogance. The authors point to Bush's interview with Bob Woodward where Bush said that he does not answer to anyone, but that others have to answer to him. This is Bush's "interesting" (his word) view on the presidency, which is clearly out of kilter with the Constitution's system of checks and balances.
The authors chronicle Bush's arrogance and trace it back to his religious beliefs. Even the most casual observer cannot help noticing that W Bush wears his faith on his sleeve. But until I read this book, I was not aware that Bush believes that God chose him as president. This examination of Bush's belief structure explains much. Before reading this book I could not imagine why a guy who slid into the White House on a technicality has acted as though he had an overwhelming mandate. While Bush obviously received no mandate what-so-ever from the American people, Bush's belief that his mandate comes from God explains his colossal arrogance and makes George W. Bush the scariest president that we have had so far.
Thank you, Molly and Lou. Thank you for "splaining" it to me.
Rating:
Summary: good mesh of hard numbers and biting commentary
Review: It should be obvious from the title that unthinking fans of Bush will not like this book, will probably not read it, and if they do will probably not believe it. More thoughtful Bush adherents still might not believe all of it, but there's so much detail and hard factual background to it that it might cause them to think twice about some of his policies. Bush-haters, of course, will enjoy it both for its content and its style, though anyone looking for more "red-meat" blistering sort of attacks would do better to read Franken's new book which has less depth but more anger and sheer nastiness (also more humor, uneven as the book is). Ivin's book is more along the lines of Joe Conason's--a step-by-step critique of Bush's policies: their formation, implementation, and effect leading to the hard to argue against conclusion that Bush' policies, intentionally or not, by far benefit the power class.
Each chapter is devoted to a separate policy for the most part, though some are closely related and they all flow smoothly from one to the other. Though constant in its criticism, it is not a rant because, rather than just doing a lot of shouting, Ivins marshalls her facts in strong support of her arguments. She gives the numbers, the extended quotes from memos, the quotes from senior officials, etc. And while the wit is sharp and biting, it is never over-the-top or overly personal.
To complement the large supply of statistics and officialese, Ivins brings in real-world people affected, negatively of course, by Bush's policies. She isn't saying no one has benefited from Bush's policies, that simply isn't her focus here. Her argument would be that those who have benefited are overwhelmingly the rich and/or powerful while those middle-class and lower who have benefited are in the clear minority. Her use of people who have suffered due to deregulation and other Bush policies serves to ground the more abstract arguments in a reality that is hard for the reader to ignore. It's easy to ask whether the cost-benefit analysis of screening meat supplies more rigorously makes it worth it in the abstract; it's less easy to make that argument faced with the tragic reality of the mother whose son died in lingering, horrible fashion due to contaminated meat. And it is that sort of person-on-the-street reporting that makes this book more than a preach to the choir sort of book but may open some non-Bush-bashers to thinking a bit more about the effects of some of his policies.
Much of this has been gone over before (some of it in Ivin's work Shrub, much of it in newspapers and magazines), but not in this detail. And when all of it is laid out together, it makes for a much more damning critique than the isolated stories that dribble out every few months. There is so much here that even though some might find a few details worth quibbling over or some of it overstated, that still leaves a lot of substantive criticism that's hard to refute. And the style is so reasonable that it's hard to dismiss as just an angry liberal venting. Anyone who saw Molly Ivins during the Franken-O'Reilly dust-up on the book panel can see this is a woman of fairness and reason, not a red-faced blusterer.
Rating: 
Summary: I want to like this book but I can't
Review: Let me say the nice thing first: Molly Ivins has dug up the way that various policies affect individual Americans. The examples are shocking and sad for anyone who cares about public policy and real people.
That said, her overall case isn't persuasive.
1. You can't pin them all on Bush. Some of these are Clinton policies, as she occasionally admits but usually sweeps under the rug.
2. The causal links in this book are spotty at best. There's a lot of innuendo and circumstantial evidence, especially in the chapters on Enron or whenever she mentions campaign contributions. The book is short of smoking guns.
3. The book jacket and "official" reviews tell us the book is funny but it isn't. I can't even tell what the jokes are *supposed* to be, though the odd Texasisms are sometimes mildly amusing. Dan Rather and Keith Jackson do those funnier, though (not always on purpose).
4. Policy analysis by anecdote isn't very satisfying. Most policies help some people and hurt other people, and they all cost money, which is unfortunately finite. Telling stories about the people who get hurt is a helpful reminder that policy matters but unfortunately you also need to do some rigorous analysis too.
For example, spending money on meat inspectors might mean spending less money on heating subsidies for the poor. If you ignore cost-effectiveness, you're saying that we should spend 100% of our money on meat inspectors AND 100% of our money on heating subsidies, AND 100% of our money on everything else we can think of, because a little more spending might help Carrie Ann Smith (not her real name), who has problems.
5. She thinks campaign finance reform will help. Let's see, we've been reforming since the 1970s, which also happens to be the period in which income inequality has been getting worse in this country. So campaign finance reform certainly doesn't seem to help the problem much, does it? Maybe even makes it worse. I'd much rather get rid of gerrymandering and bring back competitive elections. (Which Ivins also mentions, much more briefly.)
So, read this book and get pissed off. But you're probably already pissed off. Don't expect this book to convince anyone unless their mind is already made up.
Rating:
Summary: Plain Talking Populism
Review: Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose have developed a good old down home ring for their populist message. They put the current economic situation in America in the perspective of the average American and what the Bush policies have meant to such individuals in that category.
The authors refer to their method as the Doug Jones Average, with Doug representing the average Joe. This book is replete with stories about Americans treading water. Some are not even treading, and have lost their jobs while others find themselves working longer hours and taking home less pay.
The Ivins and Dubose formula for action begins at the ballot box. They take a hard look at Bush economic policies and conclude that they are disproportionately weighted to the advantage of the wealthy, particularly in the corporate sector. As Ivins said recently after Bill O'Reilly called her a socialist and eventually apologized, what she favors is a regulated form of capitalism such as was practiced in progressive Democratic presidential administrations under chief executives such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
If we would return to those successful policies of yesteryear Ivins and Dubose are confident that things would begin looking up on the Doug Jones Index.
Rating:
Summary: darn good
Review: molly ivins is a texan, and like a texan, she is blunt: bush is an unqualified jerk! good book, some humor, worth a read!
Rating:
Summary: Nothing New.
Review: Quite honestly, this tales of this book didn't surprise me in the least. George Dubya is sneaky crook who somehow became president. He may have friends in high places and he may have Poppy Bush to bail him out.. but nothing lasts forever. This book just tells what we already know. Bush is a crook. He's a liar, one hundred times over. He's not out to help the little guy, but rather step on his back while Bush attempts climbs higher. Luckily, Dubya's days as the pres' are numbered.
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