In March of this year, we all went to Texas for a week to speak about Iraq and, for those making the first trip, the first thing that stood out was how huge the state is. Other things stood out as well including the number of businesses closing. In East Texas, we'd see an empty store in towns where Wal-Mart had come in. (Often Wal-Mart threatened to leave so the area offered tax breaks again for a new store to be built and the old Wal-Mart became an unnoccupied eye store.) There was a five and dime store that we believed was called Perry's that we came across often. It was gone. The town's had a Wal-Mart.
We open with that because when we would ask about an empty building we had passed, people would talk about what it housed and how they grew up with it, it was there and offered something different. Now it was all the same. Go to Van, go to Canton, go to Athens, go to Terrell, you'd find a Wal-Mart. Stocking the same stuff in every town.
With attempts to 'manage' the internet underway, many 'shops' might close down as a result. If that happens, you'll still have the net equivalent of Wal-Mart but you'll be missing out on a great deal. One of the unique online stops is Consortium News and all of the above is our way of intro-ing an upcoming event (Saturday, November 17th) that they'll be having:
For the first time, the three authors of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush will appear together at a book talk and signing.
Award-winning investigative reporter Robert Parry (who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s) and two of his sons, Sam and Nat Parry, will be at the new Busboys and Poets restaurant in the Shirlington Village section of Arlington, Virginia, from 4-6 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 17.
Neck Deep is the first critical examination of the Bush presidency, from its unusual beginning in Election 2000 through more than six years of George W. Bush asserting extra-constitutional presidential powers. The book also highlights the complicity of the Washington news media and the ineffectual Democrats in this national fiasco.
So, if you live in the D.C. area, please join us in celebrating this remarkable new book and hearing from the authors. Busboys and Poets is located in Shirlington Village, Arlington, off I-395 at the Glebe Road-Shirlington exit. (For the PDF version of the invitation, click here. For directions, see http://www.busboysandpoets.com or call 703-379-9757.)
If you live elsewhere - and would like to host a Neck Deep book party in your city - we do have a modest budget for a book tour. Please contact Diane Duston at dduston429@aol.com about possible times and locations.
You also can order a copy of Neck Deep from the publisher at http://www.neckdeepbook.com (with $5 of each sale rebated to help pay the bills at Consortiumnews.com) or you can buy it from Amazon.com. Retailers can order the book from the distributor, Baker & Taylor Books.