Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

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Funny thing happened at the end of the Senate debate on this issue. Republicans, who knew they had the votes to win, kept spouting off about family farms and small businesses. So the Democrats gave them a chance to prove their sincerity. Instead of abolishing the estate tax altogether, how about exempting the first $4 million per couple? Nope. How 'bout the first $8 million? Sorry. Okay. Then how about this? Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, offered an amendment that would exempt the first one hundred million dollars of a couple's net worth before a penny of estate taxes were paid. This would exempt all "family farms" and "small businesses" worth less than $100 million. The amendment went down 48-51. 1 In all this talk, one thing that gets lost is that there are forty-two million working Americans who have not gotten one cent in tax cuts. The Wall Street Journal refers to them as "lucky duckies" because they earn so little that they don't pay any income taxes. Many lucky duckies are deeply in debt to predatory lenders. Many of these lucky duckies couldn't afford college and cannot afford health insurance. Some of these lucky duckies, working Americans, will be homeless sometime during the year. Their children, the lucky ducklings, are far more likely than my kids, or Paul Gigot's, to be killed violently or die of a preventable disease. Apparently, the Wall Street journal thinks that the unluckiest thing in the world is paying taxes. That's why they have been such vociferous supporters of the Bush tax cuts, more than half of which will eventually go to the top 1 percent of families. In the last thirty years, those families saw their after-tax incomes rise 157 percent. The top one percent have incomes starting at $230,000. Their share of the national income has doubled, and is now as large as the combined income of the bottom 40 percent. The thirteen thousand families at the very top have almost as much in come as the poorest twenty million households in America, which is like the population of Bemidji, Minnesota, (home of Paul Bunyan) having more income than the country's six largest cities—New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Phoenix—combined. 1 Kudos to Republicans who voted for the Feingold amendment: Chafee, Collins, Hutchison, McCain, Snowe, and Specter. Huge raspberries to the Democrats who crossed over: Baucus, Breaux, Cleland, Lincoln, Miller, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, and Wyden. Semi-kudos to Stevens of Alaska who did not vote.
You know who I think the real lucky duckies are? The residents of Bemidji, Minnesota. I mean the ones in my analogy. So why are they the ones getting the sweetest deal from the tax cuts? Anytime a liberal points out that the wealthy are disproportionately benefiting from Bush's tax policies, Republicans shout, "class warfare!" In her book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteentb Century, Barbara Tuchman writes about a peasant revolt in 1358 that began in the village of St. Leu and spread throughout the Oise Valley. At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house, killed the knight, and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids. Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady, with the children still watching, they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her husband and then killed her. That is class warfare. Arguing over the optimum marginal tax rate for the top one percent is not.
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LIES (And the Lying Liars Who Tell
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"No problem," Harvard said absentmi
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God chose me to write this book. IN
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1 Hummus Asking whether there is a
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There is, however, a right-wing med
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page. Stock-car racing had been the
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Now, in fairness to Coulter, this k
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an editorial on Thomas titled, "The
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as in an actual chainsaw massacre).
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• And so is "half-wit" Jim Jeffor
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4 Liberals Who Hate America That's
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World War 11) And the ninety combat
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• Civil War reenactments—weird
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6 I Bitch-Slap Bernie Goldberg In J
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So, I, the comedian, bothered to lo
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Why, Bernie asks on page 57, is Rus
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Sure enough, a few hours later, ano
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Okay. Got it. Armed with both our M
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should have been an enormous credit
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national law to clean up hazardous
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SLATER: Governor, were you ever arr
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"All I know is that's what he told
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8 Conclusion: A Lesson Learned As t
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say they're to the right on economi
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10 Chapter for American Book by Kha
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12 The Chapter on Fox They Distort,
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Angered by Murdoch's apparent lack
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ports on Capitol Hill), and Mara Li
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"Look," I said, "I want them to tak
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She laughed. "No, Inside Edition ha
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I'd found four separate incidents w
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So I asked Bill where he grew up. W
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On February 26, 2001, O'Reilly defe
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Rap artist Ludacris never had the p
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When the last lie had been apologiz
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comment on. Instead, he asked Peggy
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For some reason, that set me off, a
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"When you look at schools in relati
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Ollie North—decorated for courage
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The debate over vouchers isn't abou
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Let's parse that sentence. It seems
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ence" number, 3.1 percent. The fact
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Wait. Must be the October 21, 2002,
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so instead of driving back, I playe
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Motberfuckers!, due out in October
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al Qaeda cells in more than twenty
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The final al Qaeda attack of the Cl
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16 Operation Ignore Bill Clinton's
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Homeland Security Agency with respo
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on August 3, after signing off on a
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eight programs, less than half deal
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18 Humor in Uniform As I said, I've
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"But it's funny!" As a comedian, th
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do. And fortunately, there were no
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19 Who Created the Tone? "Scumbag,"
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shed light on some of the clandesti
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Brown had been shot in the back of
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Joe Lockhart, former Clinton press
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No. 20 Did the Tone Chamge?
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Other rumors about McCain that bega
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Rove's innovative approach to campa
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"I know, baby. And I know you love
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22 I Grow Discouraged About the Ton
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Dana Milbank of the Washington Post
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Instead of using this unique moment
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Office." (Evidently, DiIulio never
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The White House had fought hearings
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23 I’m Prudenized Every once in a
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After several mocking references to
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24 Paul Gigot Is Unable to Defend a
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out the Wall Street Journal's cover
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Brady and the assault weapons ban w
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"No," said the kindly nurse. "I did
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Four days earlier, the Wellstone ca
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American Indians did some tribal dr
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like Playboy playmates," the BunnyR
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lican party's most loyal Oaks, pick
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That's it, Rush. The old fallback.
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tainly reverberated into the mainst
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of the Republi can talking heads wh
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"What did you see?" I asked him. "I
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articles—that got it wrong. Some
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our proudest moments of him. When h
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26 I Attend the White House Corresp
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"Oh, really? What?" "Every day, Han
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in listen ing to him sing. About fi
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Don Evans. Evans is among Bush's cl
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couldn't make any sense of it eithe
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to the Pentagon, a trip he had take
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28 Bush Can't Lose with Clinton's M
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The commanders then send the target
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If called on by the commander in ch
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This is me in Vietnam. Sorry the fo
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Van Cong River. Mekong Delta, South
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As Gore watched helplessly, it almo
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"That doesn't make sense," Gore sai
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Page 195 and 196: "Yes ... sir," said Ashcroft, snapp
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Page 199 and 200: "Let's get the fuck outta here." "S
Page 201 and 202: "Noooooo!!!!" Bush poured the nitro
Page 203 and 204: "Help! Help me!" Kerry recognized L
Page 205 and 206: the American Enterprise Institute,
Page 207 and 208: Don't get me wrong. Republicans are
Page 209 and 210: You choose the one with the bad for
Page 211 and 212: 31 I’m a Bad Liar I never lie. Th
Page 213 and 214: So the next day, I had Liz call and
Page 215 and 216: Seeing as how we did spend the time
Page 217 and 218: "Well, Doug, I'm not a scientist. B
Page 219 and 220: Andrew understood. "So it's like an
Page 221 and 222: "No. We don't allow it in the dorms
Page 223 and 224: ness and his willingness to call us
Page 225 and 226: Of course, I nodded. Made perfect s
Page 227 and 228: or "moderate" influence in forty-fo
Page 229 and 230: 33 Abstinence Heroes President Bush
Page 231 and 232: In these days o£ rampant immoralit
Page 233 and 234: 26 "By Far the Vast Majority of My
Page 235 and 236: taxes than in income taxes, so this
Page 237 and 238: It got a laugh in Iowa. And a laugh
Page 239 and 240: longest period of economic growth i
Page 241 and 242: e hard to do. It is, however, easy
Page 243: person who is still alive. The livi
Page 247 and 248: ALLISON: No pie for me. I'm on a di
Page 249 and 250: ALLISON: But, you know, Donna, I'd
Page 251: ALLISON: Are you kidding? If she ca
Page 254 and 255: ME: Sure. RICH: Do you fight a lot?
Page 256 and 257: 39 Vast Lagoons of Pig Feces: The B
Page 258 and 259: ing the Clean Water Act's rules to
Page 260 and 261: In 1995, a spill from one of these
Page 262 and 263: 40 I Meet Former First Lady Barbara
Page 264 and 265: After we landed and were getting ou
Page 266 and 267: It's because I think he is his moth
Page 268 and 269: espiratory failure, and more worrie
Page 270 and 271: Perhaps so many Americans believe t
Page 272 and 273: But to be fair to Bush, there's mor
Page 274 and 275: a. There are seventy-two million ch
Page 276 and 277: It is a great racket. And not just
Page 278 and 279: MEET TEAMFRANKEN The fourteen membe
Page 280 and 281: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This is my fifth bo
Page 282 and 283: my old classmate from college forme
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