This book, based on a documentary filmed over the period of a year on the streets of New Orleans and Key West, provides insights about Williams, his most famous characters, and the performances of the actors who played the roles

Product Description: Every four years, the drama of presidential selection inspires a reassessment of our political parties. Central to this assessment are the delegates who gather at Democratic and Republican national conventions. Parties in Transition presents a richly modulated body of data of the changing attitudes and behaviors of these delegates—their ideologies and loyalties, their recruitment into presidential politics, their persistence in or disengagement from it...read more

Language Use offers a philosophical examination of the basic conceptual framework of pragmatic theory, and contrasts this framework with detailed descriptions of our everyday practices of language use. While the results should be highly relevant to pragmatics, the investigation is not a contribution to pragmatic theory. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, Language Use brings out the relevance of Wittgenstein's methods to fundamental problems in central pragmatic fields of research such as deixis, implicatures, speech acts and presuppositions.

Rates mutual funds and provides information on category, quarterly performance, manager strategy, fund history, risk analysis, performance analysis, holdings, total cost, and tax analysis. (view table of contents)

Rates mutual funds and provides information on category, quarterly performance, manager strategy, fund history, risk analysis, performance analysis, holdings, total cost, and tax analysis.

Conservative economic policy has created what investor Warren Buffett has called a Sharecropper Society, a quasi-vassal state indebted to foreign interests. This is the result of a conservative Red-state culture. The author contends that Democrats need to restore a liberal Blue-state culture which will deliver the country from its economic servitude. The book lays out the historical basis for doing that. In addition, the author presents a statistical analysis of Red and Blue regions within states, showing how the local economic context influences voter priorities and uncovering the gaps between what they need and what they get. Candidates have roughly nine seconds to get their message across to the average voter. This book gives coherent statements of Democratic and liberal values and encapsulates information, particularly economic and Democratic Party historical data, in a focused message. The book provides a theoretical and philosophical basis from a historical and economic point of view to advance those ideas that were so successful for the Democratic Party from 1930 to 1964, and shows how the Democrats can become the majority party again.From the Introduction: ... What the Democratic Party lacks today is a theoretical justification, historic, economic, and social, for its liberal policies. Without such a justification, its policies and its platform positions have lacked the cohesion and conviction necessary to compete in, let alone win, the ideological battle with the Republicans and conservatives who have been working on that message since their defeat in 1964. In a sense the victories that the Republicans have achieved can now be seen to have been accomplished by default, because they had no real competition. And despite such lack of competition and with complete command of the ideological platform, as well as the media vehicles to deliver it, the Republicans have failed spectacularly. The day-to-day soap opera of incompetence that is the George W. Bush Administration is graphic evidence of that failure. And yet this administration has survived because there has been no credible alternative to them and there is no answer to the question of why a liberal progressive orientated administration would do any better. These are the questions that this book seeks to answer: What are the historical and economic roots of what we now call liberal progressive thought; and why could it and its political vehicle, which is currently the Democratic Party, succeed where the Republicans have failed?

Product Description: The new political movement that now controls much of the Republican party is a coalition of Americans who simply wish to be left alone by the government. They want to be free to run a business, keep the money they earn, own a gun, practice their faith, and perhaps homeschool their children—in short, to control their own destinies...read more

Product Description: A Common-Sense Platform for the 21st Century represents a starting point for true patriots committed to the ideals and principles of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as the Declaration of Independence...read more

Product Description: Every four years, The State of the Parties brings readers up to date on party action in election years and in between. With the dual themes of continuity and change characterizing the new edition, this essential party primer includes: three new chapters on party roles in the 2008 election, a section on the impact of party resources for the campaign, extensive coverage of party mobilization efforts via the Internet and local activity, and new chapters covering topics ranging from Republicans' fall from grace to party governance under Nancy Pelosi to President Obama's role in party politics, and as always, a distinguished roster of contributors...read more

Product Description: Crisis of Conservatism? assesses the status of American conservatism--its politics, its allies in the Republican Party, and the struggle for the soul of the conservative movement. This struggle became especially acute with the controversial policies of the Bush administration and Republican losses in the 2006 and 2008 elections...read more

More than many areas of American politics research, studies of minor party competition and success are often overly driven by normative concerns that do not hold up to empirical scrutiny. This concise book presents a concerted effort to analyze the barriers in election law, such as ballot access restrictions and single member districts with a plurality rule, that prevent third parties from gaining a durable hold in American politics. Rather than trudge through yet another history of third parties in America or polemical arguments for minor party inclusion, Schraufnagel provides empirical grounding for the claims of third party backers. This thoughtful analysis demonstrates that the inclusion of third parties improves electoral participation rates and that third party involvement in the legislative process is linked to landmark legislative productivity. In the end, the work provides thoughtful suggestions on the types of reforms that would lead to greater third party success in American elections.

Product Description: Just in time for the 2012 US Presidential elections, this book shows how political parties and interest groups have become highly interdependent in the era of candidate-centred elections and media-driven campaigns. With up-to-date data including 2008 and 2010 mid-term results, this book looks ahead to 2012 illustrating important developments such as the Tea Party movement, social media, controversies over healthcare and financial sector reform and the impact of the Supreme Court decision on campaign finance reform...read more

Product Description: How do parties respond to the electorate and craft winning strategies? In the abstract parties are the vehicles to make democracy work, but it is often difficult to see the process working as well as we think it might. Indeed, voters often struggle to see parties as the valuable vehicles of representation that so many academics describe...read more

One of our most prescient political observers provides a sobering account of how pitched battles over scarce resources will increasingly define American politics in the coming years—and how we might avoid, or at least mitigate, the damage from these ideological and economic battles.   In a matter of just three years, a bitter struggle over limited resources has enveloped political discourse at every level in the United States. Fights between haves and have-nots over health care, unemployment benefits, funding for mortgage write-downs, economic stimulus legislation—and, at the local level, over cuts in police protection, garbage collection, and in the number of teachers—have dominated the debate. Elected officials are being forced to make zero-sum choices—or worse, choices with no winners.      Resource competition between Democrats and Republicans has left each side determined to protect what it has at the expense of the other. The major issues of the next few years—long-term deficit reduction; entitlement reform, notably of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; major cuts in defense spending; and difficulty in financing a continuation of American international involvement—suggest that your-gain-is-my-loss politics will inevitably intensify.