Say What is the segment of Liberty Nation Radio where we unveil some of the most wacky, astonishing and damnable things uttered by politicians and the chattering class. Here is the latest episode:
Tim Donner: And so the jig is just about up for Al Franken. Well, sort of. Maybe. Not now, but in the coming weeks, after mounting allegations of sexual misconduct, seven or eight at last count, the leftist senator from Minnesota took to the floor of the Senate and did his best to have it both ways, saying he will resign, without actually resigning, and apologizing without actually apologizing, saying people should not misconstrue the sorrow he's expressed over all this.
Al Franken: It gave some people the false impression that I was admitting to doing things that, in fact, I haven't done. Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others, I remember very differently. I am proud that during my time in the senate I have used my power to be a champion of women, and that I have earned a reputation as someone who respects the women I work alongside every day. I know there's been a very different picture of me painted over the last few weeks, but I know who I really am.
Tim Donner: So do we, Senator. So do we. So Franken used the new canned response employed by a growing number of men accused of sexual harassment, saying they...quote...remember events differently than their accusers. Now, you would've thought there would be some semblance of contrition from the comedian-turned-senator, but instead he used the occasion to, what else, attack Donald Trump and the GOP.
Al Franken: There is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party.
Tim Donner: That last reference was to conservative Roy Moore, but Franken now joins John Conyers over in the house as the latest leftist hypocrites who are major feminists in public and apparently major sexual predators in private. The remarkable thing is how long this type of conduct was known but not spoken of. Veteran journalist Cokie Roberts said everyone knew Conyers is a pig.
Cokie Roberts: The fact that people are willing to be public can change things. I mean we all talked about for years. You know, don't get in the elevator with him. You know, and the whole, every female on the press core knew that. Right? Don't get in the elevator with him. Now people are saying it out loud.
Tim Donner: And a big part of turning it from a private, to public issue, to saying it out loud, is the growing demand for Congress to release the details of sexual harassment cases involving members of both parties that were settled with a secret taxpayer-funded slush fund. Guy Benson of townhall.com says this is so typical of life in the DC swamp.
Guy Benson: It's hard to imagine something more swampy than this, where our elected representatives can abuse their power, abuse subordinates, and then secretly use a slush fund of our money to pay them off without any of the details ever being released. The fact that that is the current status quo is jaw-dropping, I think, to most taxpayers, and is completely unacceptable on its face. That cannot continue.
Tim Donner: Well one thing that will continue is the left's total obsession with getting rid of Donald Trump by whatever means avail themselves. They have subtly moved off of collusion with Russia, since no evidence of it has been found in three separate investigations going back over a year, and moved onto obstruction of justice, but not before the buffoon, Joy Behar of The View, made a fool out of herself by celebrating a fake news story from ABC.
Joy Behar and leftist colleagues at "The View" swoon over Barack Obama.
Joy Behar: Brian Ross is reporting Michael Flynn promised full cooperation to the Mueller team and is prepared to testify that as a candidate, Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians. Yes!
Audience: Woo!
Joy Behar: He is going to be taken down for what he did, and this country can start to heal.
Tim Donner: Whoops. Turns out the Brian Ross report was wrong. Trump was President-Elect, not a candidate, when he discussed Russia with Michael Flynn, which made the story a non-story, and after his fake news report tanked the stock market for hours before they realized the story was phony, Brian Ross was suspended for four weeks. But you know, lost amidst all this sexual misconduct, and investigations into Trump, and all the rest of the headline-grabbers, is that the Senate passed a once-in-a-generation tax reform package, which they will now reconcile with the House version before the final bill can be sent to President Trump to sign into law. And while the left oh-so-predictively condemns the corporate and individual tax reductions as lining the pockets of the rich litany from the same playbook they've used for decades, they might do well to examine what democrat John F. Kennedy said when he, a democrat, championed major tax reform in the early '60s.
John F. Kennedy: Our true choice is not between tax reduction on the one hand and the avoidance of large federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget, just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. Budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders, but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions. The soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.
Tim Donner: And there you have it. The last democrat president to favor lower taxes. One of the last democrats to embrace the rather simple reality that when you lower tax rates, the result is more jobs and more economic growth. Not difficult to understand, but two things that will certainly be accomplished when a final tax reform bill is passed, and two things that the Democrat Party of today appears ready to condemn at their own peril because it might make Trump look good. God forbid.
