Year: 2017

Judd Apatow Wasn’t Talking About Al Franken But He Should Have Been

Trish

frankenI couldn’t click fast enough when I saw tweets about Sen. Al Franken and a claim he forced himself on a woman during a USO tour 11 years ago. That’s because I always liked Al Franken, back to the days of appearances on Letterman, then Saturday Night Live, and then the U.S. Senate. His book, “Al Franken: Giant of the Senate” was both inspirational and entertaining, and gave me hope for Washington, since Franken talked about how personal relationships get built (except in the case of Ted Cruz, of course) that cross party lines and lead to better legislation.

When I read talk radio host’s Leeann Tweeden’s account word by word, I came away feeling unconvinced that Franken did something clearly egregious, let alone wildly awful and out of character. It sounded like an incident Franken might have cited in his book, where he talked at length about the “dehumorizing machine” that Republicans ran his works of satire through during his first Senate campaign. Franken said that some of the material they trotted out as proof of his unfitness for office was indeed in terrible taste, while some was just plain bad. But some was funny, or at least it was in context, and during the times it was produced.

Still, I was concerned. Not just that Tweeden’s version of events was accurate but that Franken would be disgraced even if they weren’t.

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InfoWars Plagiarized Russian Propaganda

Buck Banks

1,000+

“Over the past three years, conspiracy site InfoWars has copied more than 1,000 articles produced by Russian state-sponsored broadcaster RT to its website — all without the permission of RT,” BuzzFeed News reports. “InfoWars is headed by radio host Alex Jones who propagated the false Pizzagate conspiracy theory, fueled hate against migrants, and pushed the unfounded theory that former president Barack Obama is not an American citizen.”

The Trump Tax Plan’s Deficit Problem

Buck Banks

$1.7 trillion

CNBC: “The GOP bill including some changes would increase federal budget deficits by $1.7 trillion over 10 years, according to Joint Committee on Taxation estimates shared by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That includes money for additional debt service payments due to the bill. … Under budget rules congressional Republicans are using to pass a tax plan, the bill can only increase deficits by $1.5 trillion over 10 years, before growth is taken into account.”