Rating: 
Summary: Its time we relegate FOX news back to obscurity
Review: The Rush Limbaugh book was a screamer and this is just as good. As for Fox news, I'd rather watch Jefferson reruns. They are far more informative.
Rating: 
Summary: a race for the top spot
Review: The sad part is Frankin didnt bother to research this himself, had to rely on the Harvard student body (which doesnt say much for them). He spends a chapter on how Bill O'Reilly mistook a Poke for a Peabody award several years back and you cant help to think with O'Reilly being on the news and all over the media if thats the best he could come up with. That like saying you went to McDonalds for lunch and someone finding out you were at Burger King insted. This book was a waste of alot of good trees.
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Summary: The Scientific Method- With Humor!
Review: The scientific method has been a part of western civilization since the renaissance. In a nutshell, you propose a hypothesis, then use a logical process to test the hypothesis. True believers of various persuasions often oppose this process, much as the Office of the Holy Inquisition opposed it, because there is the possibility that certain faith based statements of "fact" may be refuted by "evidence." Here, various misleading statements, illogical conclusions, and outright lies are put to the test by gathering evidence to prove them true or false. Yes, the results are transmitted to us in a humorous way, but that in no way detracts from the factual basis of the book. The facts are the facts and are subject to verification. Certain people aligned politically with the liars Franken takes on accuse him of being mean spirited, and even of lying himself. The latter is a grave accusation. Fortunately, that is not simply an opinion, it is also subject to verification. If they are correct in saying Franken is not telling us the truth in this book, they should be able to back that statement up with verifiable evidence. No such evidence has been produced so far. In other words, if your calling someone a liar, you had better put up or shut up. Here, Franken has put up. His detractors have not.
Rating: 
Summary: Tell us something we didn't already know.
Review: The sole purpose of Mr. Franken's current book is, so far as I am able discern, to sell another book. It is not, to my sense of humor, funny. It lacks the acerbic prose of Harper's Lewis Lapham. Franken's work is analogous to the work of his Israeli bretheren in Palestine: to exchange blows, albeit verbal, with his equally inane opponents. When will the opposition acquiesce? Team Franken, the purported vanguard of Harvard's unpaid "intelligentsia", is guilty of another reductionistic attempt to pidgeon-hole the opposition with labels i.e., conservative, liberal, republican, democrat...etc. There is only one true measure of societal demarcation: wealth and poverty. Intellectualism knows no party or philosophy. Perhaps Franken could share the book's royalties with Team Franken's researchers; that would be a novel egalitarian stroke. Or perhaps the profits could be donated to a new foundation e.g., The Society for the Prevention of the Propagation of Ignorance (SPPI: there always has to be an acronym). No erudite intellect could be threatened by the likes of Coulter or O'Reilly; these people have merely fallen prey to the delusions of their own paradigm. Too many beer-besotted sports fans rely on others to verbalize their frustrations (hence the best-selling status: see also Jos. Goebbels). But Franken, too, has stooped in this attempt to match wits with half-wits. If you burned the books of Coulter, Limbaugh, Franken et al, I contend that they would give off heat but no light. When will western society stop pandering to the lowest common denominator? Didn't Californians just elect another movie star as governor? Save your money, this one will be on the clearance table before you can say Schwarzenegger.
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Summary: While reading this borrowed book....
Review: The song out of touch would be a supurb candidate for theme music... Hall and Oates from Big Bam Boom Shake it up is all that we know
Using the bodies up as we go
Waking up to fantasy
The shates all around aren't the colors we used to see
Broken ice still melts in the sun
And times that are broken can often be one again
We're soul alone
And soul really matters to me
Take a look around You're out of touch
I'm out of time
But i'm out of my head when you're not around Reaching out for something to hold
Looking for a love where the climate is cold
Manic moves and drowsy dreams
Or living in the middle between the two extremes
Smoking guns hot to the touch
Would cool down if we didn't use them so much
We're soul alone
And soul really matters to me
Too much
Rating:
Summary: Be Afraid--Be Very Afraid
Review: The state of affairs in this nation, since Bush has "taken" the presidency, seem to have gone from bad to worse. After eight years of good times, financial abundance, and awesome growth, we are now in a state of contraction. It seems the minute Bush took office, things went bad, like there's a dark cloud over this country that's not lifting. I fear the future of this country is in jeopardy. I listened recently to two men talking politics: one pointed out that Bush is in office to reward his billionaire buddies and that he's no one's friend but theirs (and he presented facts to prove it); that he's taken our surplus and made it into a huge deficit; that he knew about 9.11 before it happened, but did nothing because it would give him a chance to extract revenge on the middle eastern oil guys he had a personal vendetta against; that he has the media in his tight little fist because he threatens to ban any of them from the White House who don't agree with him. The other man, a staunch Bush man, didn't refute anything he heard with facts. All he could say was, "Well, what about Clinton?" How many people who blindly support Bush use that seeming standard line when they can't handle the truth of what they're hearing? Al Franken has opened my eyes to hatemongers I didn't even know existed, although I've seen that raving maniac, Bill O'Reilly, when I've been flipping through the channels. Seems I could never leave his foul mug on my tv screen very long without discomfort and now I know why...he a lying liar! To the Republican reviewer that enjoyed Franken's book but would have liked information on more relevant people like Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft...I refer you to a phenomenal book called "Fortunate Son" by an author named Hatfield. He gives a straightforward account of Bush's background, business affiliations, and voting policies when he was governor of Texas. You even grow to like the young Bush...but something happens to him as he matures. He becomes a "hit" man for his wimpish father in the White House...in addition, he's in charge of the dirty tricks of his father's campaign...and carries them through with venom. He threatens anyone who doesn't support his father and follows up on his threats. He never forgets what he considers a transgression (simply someone who may have an opposing viewpoint). Read "Fortunate Son." It's an eye opener. Thank you, Al Franken, for your brave expose of the yellow media that's got this country hoodwinked. Their propaganda is reminiscent of how communist countries distort the truth to retain control. Big bucks buy power...and power corrupts (see example of greedmeister, Ruppert Murdock). I can only pray that enough people read this book and galvanize to make sure Bush doesn't make it a second term. Otherwise, we might not survive as a nation!
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Summary: Crap
Review: The target audience of this book can't read anyway. Nonsensical propaganda.
Rating:
Summary: A sorely-needed dose of honesty
Review: The thing to remember about Franken in general is that he is a comedian first and foremost, and a liberal second, so unlike those hypocrites he uncovers, he has no obligation to write books criticizing right-wing extremists. This book is meant to be funny, and downright hilarious it will be to anyone reading it without a frothy conservative vehemencence. Even the opening remarks show Franken's brutal honesty in all things, and his ability to poke fun at himself. The part of this most worth reading for me is the expose on Ann Coulter and her novels. Like Franken will constantly remind us, the woman is messed up. Literally, reading her books convinced me to take a liberal standpoint about many issues just so I would be on whatever side she wasn't. Franken points out numerous examples of the many, many, many, many flaws in citation, source, logic, and general accuries Coulter's works have. If I have one complaint about that book, it's that occasionally it's difficult to tell when Franken is joking. But he always tells the reader afterward, so it's not a big problem.
Rating:
Summary: A prime example of liberal "logic"
Review: The title "lying liar" implies that conservatives are telling the truth. Franken's logically challenged viewpoint represents liberalism quite well. Want to transform America into a third-world country? Vote Democrat.
Rating: 
Summary: Fair, not balanced
Review: The title is tongue in cheek, folks. Al is clearly a liberal, writing about certain out-of-control conservative ideologues, and it's not going to be pretty. But it is funny. And yes, fair. For instance, in describing the Wellstone memorial service, he did not defend everything that was said; he admitted that part of it got out of hand. Rather, he said that that segment was not representative of the memorial service as a whole, but was presented as such in the media. The people he attacks and makes fun of in this book would never make that kind of distinction. For them, it is always a zero sum game, which is why they have to distort that part of the truth they're not comfortable with. That is, they have to lie. For me, the most effective and refreshing part was the flat declaration that the Fox emperor has no clothes. Whenever any organization has to continually describe itself as "fair and balanced," chances are they're neither. All you have to do is compare Fox's coverage of any controversial subject with that of other networks, and you can see the difference is that others often offer more than one side; Fox does not. It is refreshing to see someone successfully expose the lie of "The No Spin Zone" (basically "spin" on that show is any opinion or fact of which O'Reilly disapproves). Best of all was the analysis of HANNITY & colmes, because Fox commonly touts that show as an example of its "balance;" it was good to see someone just say honestly that colmes is no match for HANNITY, and that HANNITY can get away with saying anything on the show because of that. A couple of chapters (Barbara Bush, Bob Jones U) were entertaining, but peripheral to the purpose of the book and probably should have been left out. It's an easy read, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool conservative, and I found it hard to put down. Another good section rehabilitated Al Gore in my mind. I voted for him, but reluctantly, and Franken's book actually demonstrates that a number of raps on him during the campaign were not truthful (of course, no right-winger caused him to behave so weird during the third debate). Bottom line: If you're a hard-line conservative, you probably won't like it. But if you're in the middle (there is still a middle in America, isn't there?), you'll find it funny, informative, imperfect, and fair--but not balanced. And you have to be smart enough to take some of the humor--including the title--in the tongue in cheek manner in which it was intended. The Chickenhawks chapter, for instance, is satirical humor; it did not really occur. Down, Ann. Down. If this book results in just one reader coming to the realization that dissent such as this is Not Treason--that it is an essential part of America--then the book will have accomplished something. Hope it does.
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