The Truth (with Jokes)

So, I've finished my contracts final, and have entirely too much damn free time between the finals. It's as though the law school is encouraging procrastination. Hell, we already knew they encouraged alcohol consumption when they sent an email to all 1Ls informing us that there was a free drink waiting for us after our last final next Thursday. Anyway, to battle this excessive amount of time, I've been reading (and not to review for finals).

Here's a few selected passages from "The Truth (with Jokes)" by Al Franken for your enjoyment. I recommend you go out and buy it immediately.

From page 136:

"Unlike Mom, Dad was comfortable talking with me about religion and God. He believed in God, but not as an old man with a long white beard sitting in Heaven. In many ways, Dad's view of God was like our Founding Fathers'. Not Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and James Madison, who were not really Christians so much as Deists.

To Dad, the Bible - meaning the Old Testament - was not to be taken literally. Woman evolved along with man through natural selection. Not from Adam's rib. The work of God could be found, as our Founders believed, in Nature.

Dad told me that he believed Nature, which to him included humankind, to be so beautiful, so magnificient, that there had to be something behind it all. That was it. That was Dad's idea of God: something behind it all. It was no more or less complicated than that."

From page 288:

"You can't trust them to care. About Iraqis. About Americans.
You can't trust them to do the work of actually signing killed-in-action letters. You can't trust them not to lie about not signing killed-in-action letters.
You can't count on them to acknowledge any mistakes whatsoever. You can't trust them not to lie when confronted with those mistakes.
You can't trust them not to believe their own propaganda.
You can't trust them. Period."

From page 305 (a glimpse into the future):

"When Republicans had control of the whole government, they had the chance to pass their own solutions to American problems. But what they did showed what they really cared about. Themselves and their cronies.

I'm glad my party cares about something bigger than that.

Liberals believe that government, at its best, is the way we come together to tackle problems we can't solve on our own. I'm a liberal, and as it turns out, most Americans are liberals, too. A lot of them had forgotten they were, until President Bush tried to mess with Social Security."