In an editorial in today’s New York Times, Gregory Berns, professor of neuroeconomics at Emory University and the author of How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain, posits the intriguing theory that your poodle is probably smarter than Michele Bachmann.

Title: “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked”

Author: Chris Matthews

Rank: 63

Blurb: “A magnificent personal history of a time when two great political opponents served together for the benefit of the country.”

Review: “The two parties could actually work together to get things done despite the vast differences in their views.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays” by Albert Camus

Footnote: I tot I taw illegal wars, Wall Street looting, decimation of social services, and the undermining of the Middle Class!

Tip and the Gipper [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Title: “Killing Jesus”

Authors: Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard

Rank: 3

Blurb: “Millions of readers have thrilled by bestselling authors Bill O’Reilly and historian Martin Dugard’s Killing Kennedy and Killing Lincoln, page-turning works of nonfiction that have changed the way we read history.”

Review: “I was surprised that the biblical scholarship was lacking.”

Customers Also Bought: “The Bible of Unspeakable Truths” by Greg Gutfeld

Footnote: Never mind that — we’re stocking up popcorn for the coming schism between the new Groovy Pope and Asshole American Catholics like O’Reilly.

Killing Jesus [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

In Republican controlled states, the Invisible Hand holds up bridges!

Read more »

Title: “The School Revolution: A New Answer for Our Broken Education System”

Author: Ron Paul

Rank: 81

Blurb: “Ron Paul attacks the problem head-on and provides a focused solution that centers on strong support for home schooling and the application of free market principles to the American education system.”

Review: “A gifted child who is ready for advanced physics or advanced calculus will have to make some special arrangements.”

Customers Also Bought: “Israeli Civilian Childrens Gas Mask w/Nato Filter” (Review: “This fit my 7 year old.”)

Footnote: The free market would prefer that you know just enough to flip burgers.

The School Revolution [Amazon]

Buy or Die [Stinque@Amazon Kickback Link]

Today, Stinque brings you two completely unrelated stories from the great state of North Carolina:

Our first item, comes to us from scenic Randolph County, where the local school board has voted 5-2 to remove all copies of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from public school libraries, after the parent of an 11th grader complained about the book. Ellison’s novel has heretofore been considered  a classic of American literature and an invaluable portrait of the black experience in America and landmark narrative of racial alienation at a time in our nation’s history when, in many regions of the country, African American’s were routinely denied, not just the vote, but the right to eat, shop and attend school in the same establishments as whites. The novel won its author the 1953 National Book award.

However, this assessment has more recently come under fire by members of the Randolph County school board. Speaking for the majority, board member and literary authority, Gary Mason, pronounced that he “didn’t find any literary value” in the work, and so it has been banished.

Our second story, gentle reader, comes to us from Charlotte, where, in a comedy of errors befitting a Three Stooges film, or Movie Night in Hitler’s Bunker, an injured African American man who managed to drag himself away from a horrible accident, found himself, first shunned by a terrified homeowner to whom he had turned for help, and then, riddled with bullets by a police officer who mistook the young black man’s pleas for help as an impending attack. Before making questionable decision to turn to white people in North Carolina for help with his injuries, Jonathan Ferrell played football for Florida A &M, where he majored in Chemistry.

Now, there may be some among you who would seek to find some link between these stories, to see an underlying commonality in a story about members of a white North Carolina school board who see no literary value in the great American Classic Novel of African American alienation and residents and police officers of a North Carolina city who react to the pleas of a wounded African American man with fear and deadly violence. But if that was your first reaction then allow us to assure you that you’re barking up the wrong tree and you couldn’t be more wrong. Trust us, there’s nothing to see here. Apples and oranges. Now, please move on.

He skates: