Truth - Al Franken [140]
4 An astroturf group is a corporate-funded organization that tries to present itself as a grassroots group. Take the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security. Sounds like a worker group, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It was created by the National Association of Manufacturers to push for private accounts. Its members now include the right-wing U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the very-right-wing Business Roundtable, and the nutcase-right-wing USA Next. Chuck Blahous, the guy who used to run it, left to become Bush’s special assistant on Social Security.
5 This comes from Hiltzik’s excellent book, The Plot Against Social Security.
6 In the Washington Post’s November 29, 2004, write-up on Bush’s plan to “tap some prominent replacements” for his economic team, Mike Allen reported that “one senior administration official said Treasury Secretary John W. Snow can stay as long as he wants, provided it is not very long.”
7 In 1948, Fortune magazine called H. L. Hunt “the richest man in America.” He was a major funder of the far-right John Birch Society, which, among other things, supported the abolition of Social Security and called Dwight Eisenhower a Communist.
1 For a full account of my battle of wits with Paul Wolfowitz, see the chapter “Bush Can’t Lose with the Clinton Military” in my #1 bestseller, Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.
2 At the time of this writing, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are on the outs. It is my hope that they will one day get back together, because, according to an article I read, she’s heartbroken.
3 The dead were buried in mass graves that would later provide retroactive justification for our own invasion in 2003.
4 Unlike Robert Novak, I’m not blowing anyone’s cover. I found this on Wikipedia.
5 If I had been president, I would have then asked the two teams of analysts to switch sides and argue the opposite positions. That’s how we did it in high school debate.
6 This was in September 2002, long before Shinseki pulled his Shinseki.
7 Most of you are too young to remember World War I, but that’s where poison gas got its bad name.
8 What Colin Powell didn’t know was that there is no such rule at Pottery Barn. If you break something at Pottery Barn, you might feel bad. But you don’t have to pay for it. I learned this the easy way. By calling Pottery Barn and talking to their director of public relations, Leigh Oshirak. She told me in no uncertain terms that if you accidentally break one of their pieces of pottery, or whatever it is they sell in their barns (I’ve never been; that’s Franni’s department), corporate parent Williams-Sonoma, Inc., is happy to mark it out of stock and pick up the full cost of the item.
9 When I e-mailed Makiya about this, he denied the story. David Phillips stands by his account.
1 There it is, the other joke.
2 Bonus joke.
1 In 1987, Herb Deny and Bernie Obfuscate died within a week of each other after torturing audiences for more than sixty years at Grossinger’s Hotel and Resort in the Catskills. This page is dedicated to them.
2 Rush Limbaugh suggested America respond by raising the stakes even further: “Looks like we’re soon going to be making a parking lot out of Najaf, mosque or no mosque, and it’s about time.”
Contents
FOREWORD AL FRANKEN, AMERICAN HERO BY ANONYMOUS
Book One The Triumph of Evil
1 Election Day November 2, 2004, 3:43 P.M.
2 How Bush Won: Fear
3 Bush’s Little Black Dress
4 How Bush Won: Smear
5 A Brief Recuperative Debunk Lenox Hill Hospital—June 17, 2005
6 With Friends Like Zell
7 How Bush Won: Queers
8 Al Franken Talks About God
Book Two Seeds of Collapse
9 “A Great Political Issue”
10 The Tom DeLay Saipan Sex Tour and Jack Abramoff Casino Getaway
11 Social Security: Franni vs. Bush
12 Plan of Attack— Attack the Planning
13 Mission Redacted Off the Coast of San Diego—May 1, 2003
14 Werewolves of Washington
Epilogue The Resurrection of Hope
15 A Letter to My Grandchildren October 2, 2015
NOTES AND SOURCES
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS