Review of Andrew Kreig's blockbuster "Presidential Puppetry"--point of pride that he is a frequent and welcome contributor to OEN

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"We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."--Karl Rove

  If you want to understand who Andrew Kreig is and what he does, you'd better have lots of time on your hands, because he cannot be summed up in a few words and his opus is at least cross-disciplinary.

  Profession? Add an -s to that: investigative reporter, attorney, author, business strategist, nonprofit executive, et cetera (lecturer, speaker, academic researcher, radio broadcaster). At home on Capitol Hill and hence reality in all of its dimensions, he is headquartered most lately at the Justice Integrity Project--can there be such a thing in this day and age? Unlike so many hypocritical euphemisms floating around in our culture, the DC-based nonpartisan legal reform group fulfills its promise, investigating and exposing power structures the mainstream media cozy up to and flatter. Most lately you'll find on their front page, www.justice-integrity.org, a column by former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, objecting to the imprisonment and torture of Legal Schnauzer reporter/blogger Roger Shuler for publicizing bad news about the son of an ex-governor of Alabama.

  What is the bad news? Just an illicit affair? Kreig's subject matter shows how such events rarely occur outside of a context, and that context is the subject and theme of his electrifying new book Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney, and Their Masters (Washington, DC: Eagle View). Its 345 pages include twenty-two chapters, an Appendix of reform resources, an ample bibliography, and hundreds of notes rife with sources and URLs, so completely up-to-date that Kreig's preface is dated September 10, 2013, the first book about President Obama's lame-duck second term.

  Progressives will find coverage and uncoverage of issues of deepest concern: besides the full history and latest update on Siegelman's continued imprisonment, there is hitherto-unknown and must-read documentation about Obama, Romney, and a genetic chart of interconnected politicians and operatives that all converge at the axis of "How is that possible?"

Didn't the Abu Ghraib torture occur under extraordinary circumstances that would have driven any compassionate human being to vulgar excesses? What of the abuse of Shuler? The sabotaging of the Boston Marathon by the CIA? The revelation that Romney's religion forbade full participation by African Americans until 1978?

The first chapter ends with a teaser that will keep readers riveted throughout the remaining, mostly unillustrated pages: Should the Romney-Ryan ticket have triumphed? How can such a projection even occur to such a progressive activist (who does reject specific political labeling)?

Well, retrospectives on the Obama administration up to today show that the president's puppet strings are wielded by a covey of elite sponsors, so that the following policies assume a logical context: "undermining New Deal safety nets, retaining relatively low taxes and major tax breaks for the super-wealthy, and otherwise accepting . . . austerity for the general public."

  At the top of the genetic chart, above all of the obscenely corrupt, filthy-wealthy, power-sucking, incestuous hierarchy is a huge platinum beacon that guides all of our actions in today's culture, willy-nilly: the dollar sign, star of our Christmas tree.

  We all stand on the shoulders of giant . . . bank accounts.

  *****

  The book is divided into four sections. The first deep-structures Obama and the Bushes after a brief foray into nothingness (Herman Cain) in the opening chapter that unexpectedly yields the book's leitmotif--the hapless pizza mogul was a puppet of the Koch brothers, poorly groomed to step into any elevator shoes--the first of many puppets to dance onto Kreig's stage, though one of the hastiest retreats of them all. Romney and then Romney-Ryan step in to finish the chapter. Most enigmatic principal within this preliminary text is Romney's religion, which upstages all else.

  The second section explores "Romney Henchmen . . ." Karl Rove, David Petraeus, Michael Leavitt, and others. The third delves more deeply into Romney-Ryan, and the fourth raps up by returning to Obama-Biden and where they and we readers go from . . . right here and now.

  Read this book as soon as you can. It's all about you.

  *****

Did you know that JFK's average at Harvard was C? Bush's entire resume would be lucky to be graded at that level, as open as it was to the public, but Obama's transcripts and associated documentation have never been released to the public and no one knows why.  At Harvard Law it must have been stellar if he became head of the prestigious Law Review, but who knows?

  The author introduces his own remarkable mother into the narrative of the first section, in the context of Krieg's research at the National Archives into one of her CIA connections. One of the first women to enlist into the U.S. Marines during World War II, she also authored murder mysteries and articles on crime, medicine, and even drug abuse by teenagers, a novel topic at the time. Her book Green Medicine: The Search for the Plants That Heal discusses LSD and folk remedies. Her Black Market Medicine deals with the dangers involved with mafia distribution of counterfeited prescription drugs.

  In 1967 she was a star witness in one of the first congressional hearings ever to focus on the mafia. But as a result of her deep knowledge of medical topics, she visited "Red" China in 1972, ahead of President Richard Nixon, whose official elevation of the Bamboo Curtain has had such a stunning impact on subsequent history. Krieg's mother briefed the CIA on her visit. Mrs. Kreig's brief forays into the narrative are a tribute from a proud son to a truly remarkable and revolutionary role model.

  Other CIA liaisons follow in the narrative--relevant to Barack Obama, whose first employer after his graduation from Columbia University was a CIA front company.  Moreover, according to other Archival records, ten years earlier, young Obama undertook a CIA-related trip to Pakistan from Indonesia, where he was living with his mother and step-father at the time. US citizenship issues kicked in.

  Disallusioned? I'm fascinated. I lived in Warsaw, Poland, for two months as a child and am now searching for my own puppet strings. I'm sure that I rubbed elbows with the CIA, but did they rub elbows with a terrifically skinny, buck-teethed eleven year old with overly thick glasses? I could go on, but who cares?

  The CIA even played a role in bringing together Obama's biological parents in Hawaii--Ann Dunham's father's alleged career as a furniture salesman was also a CIA cover, according to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen. The associations fan out from there.

  But more is missing from the Obama and family records than transcripts.

  Want to find out how Barack met Michelle--as a legal mentor? Questions surrounding Barack's tenure-track position at the University of Chicago--no relevant publications, de rigeueur there, have ben found.  Read on.

  Three subsequent chapters summarize the roles, both overt and covert, played by the Bush dynasty. Herein was find not only an overt CIA connection--G.H.W.'s appointment to head the CIA by Gerald Ford, but a possible covert connection with the JFK assassination: someone who resembled "Poppy" was seen standing close to the infamous Dallas book repository shortly before the shooting, an allegation denied with a vehement alibi by the family.

  Be that as it may. By the time you finish this book, nothing will surprise you. Here is the "puppet-string prototype": "secret agendas, elite institutions, greed, and corruption behind the veneer of normal civic life and public service" (p. 87).

  We next read of "America's Machiavelli" (he's been called worse than that, including "Turd Blossom") Karl Rove and his role in the notorious firing of the nine Republican prosecutors in 2006, which led to the forced retirement of both Rove and Antonio Gonzales, among a scandalous number of others.  We read of the tragic descent of the hero-for-our-time David Petraeus, of Romney's transition (which never happened) director Mike Leavitt, a fellow Mormon, both of whom wished to "replicate [their religion] throughout the government," a situation Kreig describes would entail "male supremacy, racism, secrecy, dominance of church over state," and more.

  Then there was Election 2012, saved from descent into a Romney "selection" by heroic Ohio attorneys who caught Columbus officials in the act of another network of deceit patching voting machines for "experimental" purposes in the setting of a presidential election. Who experiments with voting machines in a presidential election rather than a school gymnasium? Only those Rove-runners who think they can get away with it.

  They were caught, again by Bob Fitrakis and Cliff Arnebeck at the eleventh hour in another court hearing that convinced the judge that no good was afoot--a tour de force pulled off again by the Ohio heroes who had seen such a ruse succeed in 2004 and quelled it in 2008 but not rested on their laurels, which didn't interest the press anyway. Election integrity is "not sexy enough" after all, in the eyes of the scandal-starved media and the expert academics more interested in grant money to ignore certain realities while dwelling on devoutly centrist issues like which state's machinery will bring it to the top of the list. No one looks twice at ugly voting machines, though going through the motions less and less cynically thanks to such activists who risk so much and influence so much in return for slow results and anonymity.

  "EI" does interest Kreig, though, and it is hoped that through his words THE word may reach more--that more than landslides are denied within the present system. History is changed for the better through human sacrifice. Democracy in action.

*****

The final section, on the 2012 challengers, "killing us softly" Ryan and "prophet of profit" Romney, answers the initial question why even those most liberal among us should question our allegiance to the lesser of evils. It seems that . . .

  Fill in the blank. You'll be surprised. Mr. Kreig will sell more books that way and the words will go farther afield.

  The section on Reform Resources directs us all how to cut the puppet strings and return to life, like Pinocchio, and full awareness of how self-propulsion in positive directions will benefit all of us and not just a flagrant few who know less about governing and more about self-destruction. They are human nature on steroids. Andrew Kreig will detox society with his solutions.

  Put down this article and read the book. And then get to work. That's what democracy is about--remember? Hard work, not cruises to excess by the one percent or envy of them by us ninety-niners.

  Onward.

Authors Website: http://www.wordsunltd.com

Authors Bio:

Marta Steele is an author/editor/blogger who has been writing for Opednews.com since 2006. She is also author of the 2012 book "Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement's Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People's Vote, 2000-2008" (Columbus, Free Press) and a member of the Election Integrity movement since 2001. Her original website, WordsUnLtd.com, first entered the blogosphere in 2003. She recently became a senior editor for Opednews.com. She has in the past taught college and worked as a full-time as well as freelance reporter. She has been a peace and election integrity activist since 1999. Her undergraduate and graduate educational background are in Spanish, classical philology, and historical and comparative linguistics. Her biography is most recently listed in "Who's Who in America" 2019 and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Who's Who.