Al Franken's Fans

Chapter 17 of Al Franken's 1996 book, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot, in its entirety:

I Get Letters

The last time I appeared on C-SPAN I did a call-in show during which I talked about Saturday Night Live and political humor for about a half hour. A few days later, I received this letter:

To the Jew Franken:

I saw you on C-SPAN, and I always knew you were a fag Jew. You fucking faggot. I know you spend all your faggot time on your hands and knees getting fucked in the ass by fellow Jew faggot Barney Frank while you suck off that faggot Gerry Studds.

And I thought to myself, "He could tell all this from one little interview?"

The rest of the book is just as funny.

Comments

[Dems are Liars]

"The Democrats Have Made Lying Their Norm"

Posted by Gordon Bloyer

A Democrat claims that the economy is the worst since Herbert Hoover. No reporter says to that Democrat, ''That's not true.'' Why?

Reporters today have no background in history and they do no research. They seem to think when a Democrat says something it is an opinion, or just a point of view. It never crosses their mind that the Democrat is lying.

The Democrats running for president get away with saying that the president lied about the war, that we are in a recession, that unemployment is out of control, that we have the largest budget deficit in history, that budgets for safety-net programs have been cut, and that the election in 2000 was stolen. None of these statements are true--not even close--but reporters just let them slide.

Senator Joe Biden (D), Senator Joe Lieberman (D) and Senator Evan Bayh (D) have all said on national television that the president did NOT lie about the war. Why don’t reporters confront the other Democrats with their statements?

The fact is that the economy has been growing for months. A recession is when the economy is negative for three months in a row.

Bill Clinton was president from 1993 thru 2000. Unemployment was higher than the current rate in five out of the eight Clinton years. It was over 6% in three of those years. If the Democrats told the truth, they would say that we have the worst economy since Clinton. The fact is in the last six months of the Clinton years, the economy was headed down and continued that way for several months into the Bush Administration.

The deficit in dollars is the largest in history. That is meaningless. My debt is higher than ever, but it is smaller in relation to my income. It is the same for the deficit. The deficit in relation to the budget is not close to being the largest in history.

No programs have been cut. All programs have increases in their budget, just not as big as the Democrats want or dream about. Life is hard.

All recounts in Florida, including the newspaper statewide recounts, had Bush winning the election. In the Al Gore lawsuit, he never asked for a statewide recount. In the places where Gore asked for a recount the newspaper recount proved that Bush won. How did Bush steal the election?

Let me add these facts for the reporters. In 1980, the last year of Jimmy Carter, inflation was 13.5%, interest rates were over 18%, and unemployment was 5.8% and headed up. How is that for the worst economy since Herbert Hoover? The unemployment rate under Franklin Roosevelt was 24.9% in 1933, 21.7% in 1934, 20.1% in 1935, 16.9% in 1936, 14.3% in 1937, 19% in 1938 and 17.2% in 1939. All of these rates were higher than three out of four of the Hoover years. World War II came along and everyone went to work.

One more thing: President Bush was NEVER AWOL. Get over it.

The truth about all of the above is available by doing research. Why don’t reporters do it? They have allowed the Democratic lies to become the norm.

Gordon Bloyer

[Mithras]

Riiiiiggghhhhht.

[jholland]

Where are you getting your statistics? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (data.bls.gov), the unemployment rate was as follows:

1993 6.9
1994 6.1
1995 5.6
1996 5.4
1997 4.9
1998 4.5
1999 4.2
2000 4.0

Not only did the unemployment rate decline substantially every year of Clinton, but it was only above 6% (which is close to the current Bureau of Labor rate of 5.9%) for two of those years -- a legacy of the recession of the early 90s. The economist Paul Krugman also has suggested that the current labor figures are deceptively LOW. They count only those people currently collecting unemployment benefits, not the long-term unemployed.

Anyway, the department of labor statistics doesn't provide the data for Hooverville, or the subsequent Roosevelt statistics. But (assuming what I learned in school was correct) during Roosevelt's presidency, the nation saw a net gain in jobs (and a very large one at that). Of course, much of that had nothing to do with him -- as you correctly point out, everyone started working again as soon as WWII kicked in. Which brings me to the original point of the comparison of Bush and Hoover. It is factual to say that Bush is the first president since Hoover to preside when the nation loses net jobs. Hyperbole aside, I don't think any serious democrat could honestly claim that the economy today is as bad as under Hoover (the Great Depression and all that).

Finally, it may be true that the national deficit is lower as a proportion of GDP today than it was in, say, 1987, and the national debt ($6.7 trillion) today is a meager 16% of the GDP compared to 17% in 1987. But this is only part of the story. The Bush tax plan only comes fully into action later this decade. Around that time the baby-boom generation will begin to retire (my mother already has), and subsequently to collect medicare benefits. This has no choice but to drive both debt and deficit much higher. Increased medicare claims will result in increased government spending. But decreased taxes will mean decreased government revenue. And to belabor the point entirely:
deficit=spending-revenue.

[SilverGuardian]

Bloyer's premises are very similar to those we hear from this administration and its media, and it deeply troubles me, because the assertions are false and can be proved to be false (which to my simple calculations means "these are lies"). Either Bloyer has swallowed other lies, or he himself is part of the machinery that is in the process of trying to spread them with the intent of having it be believed by the uninformed and fearful.

"The president lied about the war." What part of this sentence contains a lie? Let us say that as an Independent, I refuse categorically to believe that the president lied. Then I'd have to reword this as what? "The president was uninformed about Iraq and didn't have anyone who could advise him, so in spite of the fact that BEFORE the war, the U.N. (live on C-Span) explained how the information Bush was using was inadequate, in error, and fabricated, he did not have the information at his fingertips that would have helped him to make a wise judgment call." Gad. Does THAT make me feel better? That I ... who had no FBI or CIA operatives at my instant disposal ... knew something that Bush didn't? I should feel better, perhaps, knowing that Bush didn't understand (or didn't even listen to) the delegates explaining in detail that the paperwork involving Iraq's alleged push to purchase uranium could not be bona fide documents. Frankly, I almost prefer the notion that our president lied to us, than believing that he is a moron.

Democrats lie about unemployment? You've already got an answer to this, so I'll be brief. Go to this link. It shows a graph. When Bush Sr left office, unemployment was at a terrifically high amount. It went down ... and down ... and down ... under Clinton. After Bush Jr took office, it once again spiraled up. Look at the graph. Perhaps you'll be able to figure it out, instead of finding it necessary to quote someone else's false figures (where DID you get those, anyway?) Here is one by pbs (In case you decide that pbs is a liberal machine, I'll give another, as well). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/lo/countries/us/us_unemp.html
The pbs site has two easily understood paragraphs on it. I recommend reading them. Another site is http://www.academycomputerservice.com/economics/charts.htm

This is already too long, so I will only mention one other assertion of yours that appears to have been invented out of thin air. You believe that because you are today making more money, and simultaneously have higher bills, this equates to what is happening in our nation. But are you "making" more money, or having to dip into your retirement account, savings account, funds for your children's college, and funds set aside for use if there is an emergency?

My guess is that you are indeed earning more money. But that does not equate to what is happening to the deficit. Our spending is reported as a deficit ... a hugely growing deficit. This MEANS that we are spending more than is coming in. That isn't what you are doing.

Please do enlighten me on how by giving the schools less money, law enforcement less money, programs for the poor less money (etc etc blah blah blah), while simultaneously gutting social security and raising the amount of the deficit, you see this as in any way tantamount to what you have occuring in your personal life.

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