During my days in the recovery movement I ran into a lot of people like Stuart Smalley, the ostensible author of Al Franken’s semi-parody of that same movement. Stuart Smalley is an indecisive spineless man with no sense of self-esteem. Supposedly a book of daily affirmations, it’s more a diary. And over the course of the year’s worth of entries, Stuart gets better and more in control of his life. Which is why I label it a semi-parody. My experience with these kinds of folks is that they never become decisive, confident people through repeating contradictory daily affirmations to themselves. In the end, it’s less a parody and more a caricature.

So while I don’t like the underlying message that the book gives about how to recover it is funny! So read it for that. Everything from Stuart’s story of his dad trying to take a family picture but getting Stuart hit by a car at the moment of the picture to his friend Julia’s numerous breakups with the same man (and a couple with other men) to meeting his ex on a plane (the ex is a flight attendant) are all funny. Especially if you have spent much time with people like Stuart Smalley. You aren’t laughing with him. You are laughing at him.

Title: I’m good enough, i’m smart enough and doggone it, people like me!: daily affirmations with Stuart Smalley
Author: Al Franken
Imprint / publisher: Dell / Bantam Doubleday Dell
Format: Paperback
Length: 352 p.
Publication date: November 1992
ISBN-10: 0-440-50470-8

This is actually my second reading of Al Franken’s book Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them). I was shuffling my books around and got into reading this again.

Al Franken is funny, and puts up some pretty convincing information about the Republican and mainstream media smear machine. Though my thought is he plays up the right wing’s involvement to the detriment of the culpability of supposedly unbiased folks like C.N.N. and the Washington Post.

But I have mixed feelings about the book. See, I think Al Franken is playing Lee Atwater’s game right back at the Republicans. Sure, it worked for them, but I’m not so sure it will work a second time around. And really, I’d rather lose than mimic the tactics of the unscrupulous right.

See, what I think could happen is Franken taking on the actual issues and showing how liberals and progressives are right on the issues. But he could do it with humor that would ultimately win over folks. Kind of like Scott Adams does with his blog and some of his books. For my blog reading money, Scott Adams’ Dilbert Blog is the best blog out there. He covers thoughtful issues in a funny way that makes sense. Granted, Adams is covering a more philosophical set than Franken generally does. But I think Franken could be covering the nitty gritty of political issues much like Adams, and in the process show how we can win without becoming a smear machine like the right.

But it’s still a funny read.

Title: Lies : and the lying liars who tell them : a fair and balanced look at the Right
Author: Al Franken
Imprint / publisher: Dutton / Penguin
Format: Hardcover
Length: 377 p.
Publication date: August 2003
ISBN-10: 0-525-94764-7
Subject: Conservatism — United States — Humor
Subject: Right and left (Political science) — Humor
Subject: Truthfulness and falsehood — Political aspects — United States — Humor
Subject: Rhetoric — Political aspects — United States — Humor
Subject: Mass media — Political aspects — United States — Humor
Subject: Political culture — United States — Humor
Subject: Political satire, American
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 2001- — Humor
LC classification: E902 .F74 2003

Another pick-up from the Friends of the Seattle Public Library September book sale. Now, I’m decently liberal, but I tend not to like a lot of what passes for liberal media these days. A lot of it is all about how conservatives and Republicans are evil: how they lie, what kinds of dirty tricks they pull, etc. I don’t disagree with that assessment, but I’d really rather read substantive media. In other words, give me arguments why the policies of the conservatives are wrong and liberals are right. Don’t give me the liberal talking points.

I figured this book would be much the kind of liberal stuff that I don’t like. But for less than a buck, it’s fun reading. And one or two of the articles included do touch on substantive issues.

And on to the articles…

Dear George, Michael Moore, from Stupid White Men.

The article starts off a little more substantive than I would have thought given that it’s Michael Moore writing it. He lists a litany of policies that George Bush has enacted with which he disagrees. But that’s about as far as he gets. After that Moore gets into innuendo about drug use by the President as well as his literacy level. You can do better Michael.

Defense Secretary: The Peculiar Duplicity of Ari Fleischer, Jonathan Chait, from The New Republic.

Some of the methods by which Ari Fleischer spins, avoids answering questions, and otherwise manipulates the press. Not substantive, but at least it covers the topic nicely. You can do better Jonathan.

Standard Operating Procedure, Paul Krugman, from The New York Times.

How lying has become normal in the Bush administration. Normally, I’m a big fan of Paul Krugman, but this is so pedestrian. You can do better Paul.

Apocryphal Anecdotes, Al Franken, from Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot.

What kinds of misinformation Rush Limbaugh spreads. At least it corrects the spin, and Franken is funny. But… you can do better Al.

The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld, Hart Seely, from Slate.com.

Quotes from Donald Rumsfeld laid out as if they were poetry. Humorous, but fluff.

Jim Crow in Cyberspace, Greg Palast, from The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

It covers a dirty trick, but it covers it in depth. Greg Palast writes about how blacks were systematically removed from the voter registration lists in Florida under the guise of preventing voter fraud. Unfortunately, the methods used resulted in thousands and thousands of eligible voters being removed as well as removing a larger number of ineligible voters. The eligible removed voters would have case Gore to carry Florida and win the election.

The Inconsistency of the Majority Justices, Alan M. Dershowitz, from Supreme Injustice.

I once watched Reversal of Fortune and thought Alan Dershowitz was a brilliant man. Only later did I come to learn he’s a putz. Witness this essay in which he imputes motives to the Supreme Court justices who decided Bush v. Gore based on rumor, innuendo, and hearsay. According to Dershowitz the reason they decided for Bush was that they had a desire to retire under a Republican president. Puh-leeze. I suspect they were biased toward Bush based on the fact that they share his ideology. But I doubt it was a conscious bias. You can do better Alan.

Scandals and Lies, Bridget Gibson, from DemocraticUnderground.com.

Bridget Gibson complains that Democratic scandals are called scandals but Republican problems are not called scandals. You can do better Bridget.

Representative Government: A Correspondence, Richard Bausch, from the New York Observer.

Bausch sends an email to Senator John Warner and gets back an auto-response, then decides to correspond with the auto-responder. Humor.

from Better Than Sex, Hunter S. Thompson

Thompson tails on about how Nixon was evil and despite the late-in-life attempt at rehabilitation, Nixon remained evil.

All the President’s Lies, Drake Bennett and Heidi Pauken, from The American Prospect.

Something of a bit of substance finally, though still not much. It shows the gap between Bush’s rhetoric on education and the environment and his actual policies. Still a bit on the he lies, he’s evil side of things for me.

We’re Number One, Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, from Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush.

An article on the use of capital punishment in the state of Texas and how Bush’s policies made the system even worse. Something of real substance.

from Get Lucky, Jonathan Chait, from The New Republic.

Points out the inanity of a Wall Street Journal editorial that bemoaned low taxes on the poor. With low income taxes on the poor, the poor won’t get behind cutting taxes in general (and for the rich in particular). Therefore we should raise taxes on the poor in order to generate movement to cut taxes on the rich. Gotta love the Wall Street Journal.

Bush, Inc.: A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Enron, Paul Begala, from It’s Still the Economy, Stupid.

Details the links between the Bush administration, George W. Bush, and the Enron Corporation, showing also how Enron got much of what it wanted out of the Bush energy policy. Oddly enough, even when the Enron desire didn’t match up with the rest of Big Oil.

El Busto, Paul Begala, from Is Our Children Learning?.

An article on George Bush’s history in business. George W. Bush is the first President of the U.S. to have an M.B.A. So you’d think he’d have done decently well in business. He did, but his companies didn’t so much. Starting with Arbusto, an oil drilling company he founded in the late 1970s, every single one of Bush’s business ventures failed. However, every time he was bought out on the strength of his family name and connections. So he ultimately made money. His investors didn’t, at least not in cash. They got access though.

The Big Government Smoke Screen, James Carville, from We’re Right, They’re Wrong.

Carville points out that the Clinton administration actually shrank the federal government, so the label of big government doesn’t quite apply to the Democratic Party the way the Republican rhetoric would have you believe.

USA, Inc.: The Corporate-Government Tapestry, Michael A. Jewell.

An article and a graphic showing all the connection between business leaders and the Bush administration. Some of the connections are as tenuous as being tennis partners. Given that the government has to interact with business every day, this chart is not so shocking, nor does it portend any evilness in my opinion. Such a chart could be drawn about any institution. You can do better Michael.

from Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, Ernest B. Furgarson.

Short little piece on how Jesse Helms used race to get the anti-black vote. Geee, thanks for telling me they’re evil.

Trent Lott’s Racist Past, Nate Hardcastle.

A short time line of racist things Trent Lott has done. Again, note the lack of policy discussion.

Bush and Race: Porch Monkeys, Bob Jones, and the Confederate Flag, Paul Begala, from Is Our Children Learning?.

And now George W. Bush uses the same tactics. So shocking. Next.

from The Clothes Have No Emperor, Paul Slansky.

A timeline of the 1988 presidential race, highlighting the not-so-bright Dan Quayle. Next.

Bush: Our Long National Nightmare of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over, from The Onion.

A satire piece noting humorizing (is that a word? it is now.) the fact that Bush took over from what was a pretty good Clinton presidency.

The Nexus vs. the Environment, Arianna Huggington, from Pigs at the Trough.

Arianna Huffington bothers me because she did so much to put Michael Huffington into office. Turns out she wasn’t so much a right-winger as an opportunist, and now she’s hopped on the left-wing bandwagon cause she can draw attention to herself this way. Anyway, here she rails against Bush environmental policy, mostly because it’s what big energy wants. Again, I wish these writers would actually explain why these policies are bad. The implication is that because big companies influenced it and want it, it must not be good for the little guy. But how that is, is never explained. You can do better Arianna.

Unwise Use: Gale Norton’s New Environmentalism, David Helvarg, from The Progressive.

Again with the noting that the Bush environmental policies aren’t good for the environment, but not so much with the explaining why. You can do better David.

There Will Absolutely Be No Dissension, Stanley I. Kutler, from the Chicago Tribune.

This article makes the assertion that dissension during a time of war is patriotic, contrary to what the Bush administration would have you think.

Bill of Rights Pared Down to a Manageable Six, from The Onion.

More satire. Sort of.

George W. Bush, Rick Abraham, from The Dirty Truth: The Oil and Chemical Dependency of George W. Bush.

An account of how George Bush’s administration in Texas banned protests (but not support) from the sidewalk near the governor’s mansion. Abraham points out that Bush hasn’t been much of a friend to openness or civil liberties, so don’t expect him to be a friend after being elected President.

American Dominance, Chris Floyd, from the Bergen Record.

This piece notes how much of the administration were members and founders of the Project for a New American Century (P.N.A.C.), a right-wing group dedicated to expanding American influence, particularly in the Middle East. The Bush policies are nearly exactly what the P.N.A.C. proposed in 1997. It notes it not as a conspiracy, just that the administration is a group of like-minded people, and you shouldn’t expect them to change their stripes from what they previously advocated.

from Fragments from a Diary, Wallace Shawn, from The Nation.

Shawn doesn’t like the idea that the Bush administration went to war for oil. Rather, he proposes that the administration went to war because it likes war (or at least likes the idea of war to achieve their ends). War might seem like a quick and easy way to achieve ends, and I can see why policy-makers in the Bush administration might not have looked further than that prior to taking us to war.

We Stand Passively Mute, U.S. Senator Robert Byrd.

This is a short speech that Byrd gave from the Senate floor when he was one of a small minority that opposed going to war. He notes that no serious discussion of the impending war was taking place in the Senate. Instead it was going on in the media. He notes that war causes huge loss of life, that Pakistan and Afghanistan still serve as refuges for the Taliban and al Qaeda, and generally thinks going to war against Iraq would be a bad idea.

The Arrogance of Power, U.S. Senator Robert Byrd.

And this is yet another speech made by Byrd opposing the war on it’s eve. He notes that Iraq was a convenient target, while Osama bin Laden was much more elusive.

Warmonger Explains War with Iraq to Peacenik, from the internet

Cause you know, everything on the internet is true. This one is just a truly awful way of putting words into the mouth of the right-wing and then knocking them down. Perhaps it would have been better to include the transcript of an actual debate. You can do better, whoever you are.

from The Case Against the War, Jonathan Schell, from The Nation.

Not so much a case against the Iraq war but instead against the doctrine of pre-emption of future but not imminent threats that the Bush administration used as a rationale. Schell writes that if adopted by other nations, it could have disastrous effects. And now we’ve given intellectual room to these nations to do so. In particular, he cites the case of North Korea and that Japan could use this justification to start a war. Which it just might do to prevent the use down the road of North Korean nuclear bombs. And he notes that North Korea is much closer to having nukes (and might even have them already) than Iraq ever was. Best article in the book.

from 888 Reasons to Hate Republicans, Barbara Lagowski and Rick Mumma.

Truly truly awful demagoguery.

That’s it folks. One excellent article (the Schell piece), one or two decent ones, and a large volume of hot air designed to be read by like-minded people, rather than something that will fulfill the promise on the back cover. That promise is that this will give you everything you need to win your arguments with Republicans. It won’t. It’ll let you generate a lot more argument, but nothing that will resolve or win them. Unless you can call feeling right winning.

Title: The I hate Republicans reader : why the GOP is totally wrong about everything
Editor: Clint Willis
Imprint / publisher: Thunder’s Mouth Press / Avalon
Format: Paperback
Length: xiii, 417 p.
Publication date: 2003
ISBN-10: 1-56025-508-0
Subject: Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- )
Subject: Republican Party (U.S. : 1854- ) — Humor
Subject: Conservatism — United States
Subject: Political corruption — United States
Subject: Conservatism — United States — Humor
Subject: Political corruption — United States — Humor
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 2001-
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 1989-
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 2001- — Humor
Subject: United States — Politics and government — 1989- — Humor
LC classification: E902 .I15 2003