Rating: 
Summary: Not what you might expect
Review: So many conservatives associate Al Franken with all that is evil in society. In his latest tome, however, there is much less sprawling of his trademark invective than one might expect from the former SNL comic. For whatever reason, be it that he's trying to appear less anathematic to the right, or whatever else, he tries to paint a more factual picture.Some of his assessments are sensible and true. On the other hand, some of the commentary is just childish and vengeful. You can just see the rabid foaming of his mouth as he writes. Take for example, Bill O'Reilly; the best Franken could muster up is that he misspoke about winning a Peabody on "Inside Edition." This is generally what makes the book difficult and will have you throwing it against the wall. The points make sense, but Franken sometimes make huge leaps to make those points, and the end result is dismal. Franken overplays "TeamFranken", a bunch of Harvard whiz kids that are supposed to lend credibility to his high-school level arguments and taking things out of context. Bottom line: it's somewhat amusing on a comedic level, and of course to laugh at Franken's sometimes misplaced logic, but the level of discourse rarely reaches high ground... check it out at your library.
Rating: 
Summary: Franken is a Liar
Review: So so so immature. Franken is a ranting, out of control, ninkumpoop. His book is devoid of fact, full of hate and unfunny. Franken has perfected the art of namecalling as a substitute for political commentary. Grow up Al!
Rating: 
Summary: Facts trump fabrication; humor beats spite...
Review: So the first thing a lot of people point out the obvious; Al Franken is a humorist. That does give him a little bit of latitude to be cutting in some of his remarks (though he accuses no one of high crimes and misdemeanors based on manipulated research and conjecture, like some Coulters we know). What it also does, is help make this book very funny. What it does not do is take away any of the legitimacy of the well-researched facts he points out, nor does it lessen the impact of the eye-roll inducing stories. But it is more than funny. One way or another, this book will invoke some anger. If you are inclined toward the right-dominated media, you'll quickly affect annoyance and dismiss this book. If you are inclined to believe what is true, and you don't mind a few slaps at icons of the right, you'll enjoy Franken's book, but will seethe at revelations of media manipulation and outright lies by the right. In the end, Franken is no mystery - so you probably have a pretty good idea of whether or not you'll like this book. Besides, you should read books because they interest you - not because someone tells you to, right?
Rating:
Summary: Stuart Smalley Has Quit His Day Job In The Land Of OBSCURITY
Review: So the pitiful parade of closet liberals masquerading as "independents" or Republicans, even, is growing larger and longer by the second. Take the last committer of this fraud, David Beall, who further contributes disrepute by claiming he's an expatriate living in the States for 15 years. What really aggravates one is the increasingly, self-righteously derisive number of positive reviewers who are regularly resorting to tarnishing those Americans that support Bush, or are Republican/Conservative, as being less sophisticated than their unwashed, inert, work-shirking, less productive and less affluent European counterparts. David Beall's review does this nicely, as he attempts to cite-get this-for the "first time" ever in all the reviews, "real" reasons to support Franken's gibberish and "debunk" the one-star reviews. Obviously, his comments are exclusively either so discriminatingly suffocating, so to be unstable and extremist in nature, superficially profiling based on general stereotypes of conservatives, ridiculously immaterial "points" that are harshly secondary to the topic, or DOWNRIGHT, utterly imperfect, unmasking its nature in an unqualified background. Beall spews that the mean Frenchman bests his American counterpart. Beall cites false proofs like Frenchmen "having 4-6 weeks vacation a year, enjoy long lunches with excellent wine, can wander through streets with beautiful architecture, have affordable health care, job security and very little poverty". To anyone NOT programmed with anti-American propaganda from radical sites like Tom Payne, this is offensively outraging. Here's the amending correction to that reviewer's increasingly moronic and classless tripe. France is currently in RECESSION, has DOUBLE-DIGIT unemployment, its government must now stoop to helped employment and its workers aren't nearly as productive as Americans. These are cold FACTS. Do these actual statistics really correspond to David Beall's agenda of smearing Americans as inferiors, where he claims that the French have "job security" and "very little poverty"?? Does anyone really think that having 6 weeks vacation in their incrementally worker protected land is not to blame for their comparably lesser wealth??? Further, since Beall is so loathsomely undereducated about economies, that elusive "French job security" is EXACTLY why they're recession prone-because laws force businesses in Europe to pay lazy bums even when they're not working and it's much more expensive for European firms to cut workers in recessionary times, all further contributing to a feeble economy with lower living standards! Next, Beall loses control in another prejudicial attack, this time on the American worker. He writes, "His American counterpart is lucky to get 2 weeks vacation, works like a dog, eats processed meat from factory farms without proper hygiene and worker safety/benefits, and were there a good chance he lives below the poverty level having had a comparatively poor education, and his future probably means he will lose his manufacturing job in exchange for a job at K-Mart." It's really an outrage for ragingly glaring, closet liberals to try to pull this scheme off. A Frenchman's American counterpart is under no pressure to get only 2 weeks vacation; he does this because of his superior work ethic, wherein America's mentality is more along the lines of working hard to achieve what one wants to attain, instead of the panhandling mentality of France, where that stigma has certainly materialized in LESS jobs and LOWER economic growth. Because of a Frenchman's American counterpart's humbly small vacation time, his American counterpart also enjoys higher living standards in terms of personal wealth, higher pay, stronger spending power, and ultimately contributes to the States' enviably, significantly higher GDP output-both in spending and production, which is the logical side effect of also having much higher production than ol' Europe. All of these factors blatantly improve comforts for people, hence their quality of life. David Beall's jeers at the American worker supposedly living "below the poverty level" is more confirmation of a closet liberal, owing to how insanely biased that is, and how unschooled that statement is. If the American worker's wealth is directly proportional to his output (Americans are number one), it's discreditable for that failure to even write that. Next, stats say that the States boasts the best graduate school program the world over, so, again, it's blasphemy for someone to curse that an American has "comparatively poor education". Anyone still not convinced that Beall is the guiltiest closest liberal prowling these messages?? The last straw is when this closet liberal assaults a job at K-Mart, obviously in his scornfully elitist mind, equating jobs in the retail sector with being demeaning. A fictional employee at K-Mart, much like Wal-Mart (world's biggest employer of workers, btw), would garner advantageous benefits and probably stock options also. Not like in unhygienic France, and miserably most of Europe, where companies are REQUIRED by European's misguided ignorance to "look out for everyone equally", where they waste the comparable 21 billion that the American worker is putting back into his economy, with the infamous French welfare-system/garbage of unnaturally LONG unemployment benefits and punishing penalties for companies that need to downscale by firing employees, by intensifying the money employers HAVE to pay to reduce workforce. Conclusion: If this David Beall, closet liberal, is the best example of the liberals here, who so high-handedly and hypocritically challenge the right to "provide facts", citing "facts" to "back up" their "points", then liberal reasoning is cancerously impaired. Liberals here, and David Beall, need to get an education, a clue, AND a life. Scariest of all, NOT necessarily in that order.
Rating:
Summary: I'm a conservitive idiot
Review: So what. Yeah I hate liberals. I said it. I'm a conservative! I love money and people who make lots of it. That's what I do. That's my job. I'll admit it. If you think differently then you are a communist. Well, I'm not sure what that means but I know it's bad. If you read this book and you like it then you are bad because the president is a great man, even though he didn't get elected legally. Hey I pride myself on being the first republican to admit that I stand up for my side regardless of the lies and regardless of the selfeshness. So what if we went to war for oil and rebuilding rights in Iraq. We deserve it because we are Americans and we deserve to get what we steal. Land, labor, resources... what ever. I love this country and everything it pretends to stand for. And if you don't like it, you can stuff it. That's right, yah lousy liberals, I said stuff it. You people think you're so smart with your facts and your nutty ideas about equality and world peace. I say down with the mud people. We whites will reign and you will all continue to slave away, making me richer and you poorer. FOREVER FOREVER FOREVER!!!
Rating:
Summary: Like the subject, but Al Franken isn't funny
Review: So you detest the people he skewers in this book as much as I do, and you're hoping to read something funny- not gonna happen here. (The next time he's funny will be his first.) Al Franken has singled handedly ruined entire segments on SNL with boring, juvenile, drivel and has managed to fill yet another book with the same sort of offal. The only two reasons this book gets any stars at all are: 1) At least he managed to waste some of Murdoch's money 2) Amazon doesn't allow for anything lower.
Rating:
Summary: Liberals
Review: So, a foul-mouthed ex-SNL juvenile deliquent upholds the entire Righteously Indignant Hysterically Socialist Democrat Leftist Fringe Party now? Oh, as regards book sales, this vast tome IS really more important than the Holy Bible, assuming you come from Berkeley or Boulder or Paris or some other equally enlightened Leftist hive striving for a matriarchal dope-smoking Arabian communist culture where internal combustion is outlawed and crystal gazing is the official religion.
Rating:
Summary: Ammunition
Review: So, I've lived in San Francisco for a long time, and I'm afraid it made me a little soft. I moved to NYC for a few months and actually had to work and converse with actual conservatives -- and I soon realized that I'd gotten so used to being surrounded by people whose politics are similar to my own that I couldn't quote chapter and verse about why I believe what I believe. Sure, Dick Cheney is an evil man -- but why do I think so? Sure, Al Gore was a great candidate and should have been President -- but what about all those lies he allegedly told? Franken's book, while certainly humorous, is also an incredibly well-researched work. After reading it, I'm well-prepared to argue the points I find myself arguing with my Republican friends. More importantly, it encouraged me to consume media in a much more critical way than I had been in the past (there were aspects of the conservative agenda that I'd completely swallowed, simply because I kept hearing the same falsehoods repeated by multiple sources). Thanks, Al. You're the man.
Rating:
Summary: Liberals hate America? GHW Bush didn't think so . . .
Review: So, what's this business about liberals hating America? OK, let's see what G.W.'s daddy had to say about losing the presidency to an America-hating-liberal. The following are verbatim quotes from George H.W. Bush concession speeches after the 1992 election (from the G.H.W. Bush Presidential Library web site.) Nothing in here about a bunch of treasonous America haters taking over. Lots of remarks about the greatness of the democratic system, the need for new ideas, the common goals of all Americans, putting differences aside to help the new president . . . Remarks in Houston on the Results of the Presidential Election November 3, 1992 Hey, thank you very much. Look, here's the way I see it. Here's the way we see it and the country should see it, that the people have spoken. And we respect the majesty of the democratic system. . . .
I just called Governor Clinton over in Little Rock and offered my congratulations. He did run a strong campaign. I wish him well in the White House. And I want the country to know that our entire administration will work closely with his team to ensure the smooth transition of power. There is important work to be done, and America must always come first. So we will get behind this new President and wish him well. . . .
Now I ask that we stand behind our new President. Regardless of our differences, all Americans share the same purpose: to make this, the world's greatest nation, more safe and more secure and to guarantee every American a shot at the American dream. Radio Address to the Nation on the Results of the Presidential Election November 7, 1992 Way back in 1945, Winston Churchill was defeated at the polls. He said, ``I have been given the Order of the Boot.'' That is the exact same position in which I find myself today.
I admit, this is not the position I would have preferred, but it is a judgment I honor. Having known the sweet taste of popular favor, I can more readily accept the sour taste of defeat, because it is seasoned for me by my deep devotion to the political system under which this Nation has thrived for two centuries. . . .
I realize that defeat can be divisive. I want the Republican Party to be as constructive on the outside of executive power as it has been for 12 years on the inside. There must be no finger pointing, no playing the blame game. New ideas will flourish, and that is good. . . .
Ours is a nation that has shed the blood of war and cried the tears of depression. We have stretched the limits of human imagination and seen the technologically miraculous become almost mundane. Always, always, our advantage has been our spirit, a constant confidence, a sense that in America the only things not yet accomplished are the things that have not yet been tried. President-elect Clinton needs all Americans to unite behind him so he can move our Nation forward. But more than that, he will need to draw upon this unique American spirit. . . .
There are no magic outside solutions to our problems. The real answers lie within us. We need more than a philosophy of entitlement. We need to all pitch in, lend a hand, and do our part to help forge a brighter future for this country.
Rating:
Summary: Sobering and Funny
Review: Sobering and funny, this expose reveals the lies and the biggest liars of the right wing including George Bush's false Christianity and his misinformation about improving education (No child left behind) while cutting funding for educational programs (Head Start, Title 1, etc.) and teacher training. George Bush uses friendly sounding names for programs that eliminate health, safety and environmental regulations that are poisoning our air and water including safeguards that protect us from things like Mad Cow disease. George Bush is raping and looting our democracy and handing over the wealth and power of our nation to his richest friends and campaign contributors. Recommend this book to friends and family and help take back our country in November, 2004. There is no left wing bias in the media. There is a right wing bias. Our media outlets are owned by a small number of large corporations which benefit from spreading right wing propaganda and suppressing the truth. Fox Lies - Scare and Dishonest reporting is a GOP infomercial. Despite this, the majority of people who work in the media are liberal because they are better informed than most. Al Franken reveals the lies. To see how the rest of the media suppress the truth read "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by investigative reporter Greg Palast. If you have any doubts, read any of the 20 or 30 books that have come out recently to corroborate the lies of George Bush and the right wing. Here a few reccomendations: Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative by David Brock,
Bushwhacked : Life in George W. Bush's America by Molly Ivins
Pigs at the Trough : Corporate Greed Political Corruption by Arianna Huffington
The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century by Paul Krugman
Weapons of Mass Deception: Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq by Sheldon Rampton
Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine by Joe Conason
Thieves in High Places: They've Stolen Our Country... by Jim Hightower
The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception by David Corn
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