Sore Losers

By Bill Maher

Fifty-nine million Americans voted for Mitt Romney. Don't ask me why.  Why do they keep seeing Nicholas Sparks movies? Because white people are fucked up, that's why.

Who shops at the Hallmark Store? Who's smoking all the meth? Who's watching Duck Dynasty -- a reality show about rednecks who make duck calls? It gets higher ratings than 30 Rock or Homeland and I can't prove they're white and stupid, but someone's watching it...and it ain't Cornel West.
The fact is, there are people who didn't vote for Obama, and some of them are taking it pretty poorly.
Can white people hold a grudge? Ask anyone with Confederate flag mud flaps. Ask Mel Gibson how he feels about the crucifixion and Jews.

The White House website has a feature called "We The People." You click on it and see Joe Biden eat ice cream, totally nude. No you don't. You click on it, and any yahoo can submit a petition about issues that are "mportant" to the country. Since the election, petitions have been submitted from all 50 states to secede from the union. The Texas petition has over 100,000 signatures, followed closely by the petitions from Louisiana, Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Which is remarkable because, to submit a signature, you have to be able to write.

The Texas petition reads:

"The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights, such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect it's citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government."

Of course, I can understand breaking up the United States over the TSA. Because what real Texan wants someone at the airport finding out how small his dick is? But isn't it odd that it only became a problem after Obama was reelected? Was Mitt Romney going to get rid of the metal detectors at the airport? Is it because they interfered with his titanium endoskeleton?

Or are Texans just chronic sore losers? There was another time they lost some battle, but I can't remember its name.

Why the Republicans Lost

By Bill Maher

Mitt Romney has lost and he'll soon be accepting his new job as professor of method acting at The New School in New York City. And after watching him play all these different characters over the last two years, really, who better?

Now comes the hand-wringing and finger-pointing that always follows electoral defeat; 500 columns of "If they'd done what I said, something, something, measuring the drapes in the Oval Office." And they'll all miss the forest for the trees. Except Dick Morris -- he's always right.

So now that I'm done telling you how everyone else will be full of shit and focusing on the wrong things, let me focus you on the big picture thing that's absolutely correct: Mitt Romney lost because of the Republican brand and Republican policies. There are other reasons, of course, like Mitt being unlovable to anyone not named Ann Romney, but nothing trumps the idea that 2/3rds of America thinks the other 1/3 is a frightening conglomerate of Bible-thumpers, xenophobes, and vaginophobes. (Not a word, but should be.)

Take Mitt's pivot from being "severely conservative" to being "the white Barack Obama." Sure, everyone tacks to the middle after the primaries, but Mitt's performance was different: it was a full-scale repudiation of just about every idea that conservatives hold dear. The positions were changed. The rhetoric was completely different. He was basically Barack Obama, Caucasian Edition.
Now I know what you're saying: this is what Mitt Romney always does. Being a shape-shifting phony isn't an act; that's who he is! And this is true.

But it isn't who Michele Bachmann is. When it comes to nutty right-wing beliefs that are completely false, she's a true believer. And yet what was Michele Bachmann saying during the waning days of her too-close-for-comfort campaign? She was putting out an ad distancing herself from her own Party -- even her conservative district:

"Michele Bachmann is an independent voice working for us, saying no to big spending by both political parties but bringing them together..."

Then Michele pops on the screen and says, "That’s why I've been an independent voice working for you..."

Wow. ...I'm just saying. When even Michele Bachmann can't run as a proud Republican, your brand identification has reached "pink slime" territory.

Rasmussen Closes the Hole

By Bill Maher

When we talk about the conservative bubble, we’re generally talking about the Fox-Rush-Drudge information bubble, and the people who reside in it. This is the information loop that allows any willing right-winger to live in a world where the opinions they already are the only ones that get recited back to them, and the opinions they will one day have get fed to them so they can later recite them and hear them being recited back again, and around and around we go, all without any having to hear any opposing viewpoints expressed beyond – possibly – those of tokens like Kirsten Powers and that old school Irish Dem who periodically loses it and tells Sean Hannity to go fuck himself. I think his name is Bob Beckel or something. And I’d like his job some day.

If you’re a conservative, wherever you turn, the bubble is there. If you want to get your news on TV, you have Fox. If you’re the type who frequents talk radio, there’s Rush, along with a dozen other Rush clones. If you want to get your news online, you get all the links you want to read assembled for you by Matt Drudge, complete with misleading headlines, bad pictures of Hillary Clinton and Michele Obama, and a smattering of racism. Anywhere a Republican wants to turn for news, there’s a friendly face. And by “friendly” I mean the “smiling veneer over the contemptible inner core.”

But there was always one hole in the bubble that continued to let in the air of reality: polling information. As in, surveys that measure what Americans actually believe, or who they plan on voting for, or what they think of ideas like privatizing Social Security, etc. Because wingnuts can go for months and not talk to anyone who doesn’t think Obama is a bigger threat to America than Al Qaeda with airborne AIDS, but that’s because they live in rural Tennessee, and inside the information bubble.

Polling information, on the other hand, when done correctly, comes from a representative sample of everyone. What’s more, polls are often widely reported, mostly because it’s an easy article to write. Even if you do your best to live only in the Fox-Rush-Drudge information world, you’re still going to get information about what people outside the bubble think through polling data. And it can be very disconcerting for Republicans, finding out that millions of other Americans exist in the “not real America” and think they’re completely batshit.

Thankfully, Republicans now seem to have solved this problem. Enter Scott Rasmussen. He’s a Republican and a pollster. And a few years ago, it seemed Scott ran his polling outfit the way everyone else did. But somewhere along the line – and I’m guessing here – Scott saw which way the media winds were blowing and realized there was a new way to distinguish yourself in the world of political news: by taking a side.

You see, polls, when done accurately, have a way of creating a narrative about what people actually want or think, or what may eventually happen. And this narrative is largely immune from the partisans on either side because, well, it just is. Because polls are the temperature of reality. If your candidate is down 8 points in a poll a few weeks out before the election, the story starts becoming about how you’re going to lose, and how everyone knows it, and how you might as well stay home on election day because it’s hopeless. Which is effective, or harmful, depending on which side you’re on. Because lots of people are looking for an excuse not to vote anyway and “My Candidate is down 9 points as of yesterday” is a pretty good one.

These narratives are particularly dangerous for Republicans. And that’s where Rasmussen polling comes in. By designing his to polls to lean Republican, he allows Republicans inside the bubble to continue breathing the air inside the bubble. Ex: When other polls show Obama pulling away from Romney, release a poll that says he isn’t:

Mission accomplished.

You see, now when people inside the bubble get confronted with what people think outside they bubble you can say, “No, according to a poll out today, they don’t think that!” Narrative averted! Thanks, Scott Rasmussen!

There’s only one problem with this, of course. And that’s that the bubble has now plugged its leak. Remaining contact with the outside world is even more limited. Republicans now not only have their own information loop, but their own polling company to deny what everyone outside the bubble thinks, too.

In Defense of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan

By Bill Maher

I'll say this on their behalf: all of those tax loopholes that they pretend they want to close in order to make their tax plan work -- but won't name before the election, and probably won't close anyway after the election, assuming they won -- probably should be closed. They're all things most economists agree are inefficiencies that distort the market and we’d be better off without them.

Here's the thing: you can rarely get rid of any benefit the government gives to its citizens. Whether it's farm subsidies or home mortgage deductions or Medicare prescription drug benefits that aren't paid for or defense contracts, once they're given, they're almost never rescinded. And they add up.

But at least they're talking about closing them (while not talking about closing them). It's slightly more than the Democrats do.

There. I said something nice about Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Credit Canard

By Bill Maher

A recent PPP poll asked Ohio Republicans, "Who is more responsible for the killing of Osama bin Laden?" 38% said Obama, 15% said Romney, and 47% are unsure. I'd like to know the thinking behind that 15% for Romney -- do they think he’s a secret Navy SEAL or something?
It would have been funny to ask who's more responsible for Obamacare, Obama or Romney, because if they said Romney, they might be right.

"Who's more responsible for the New Deal? Romney or Roosevelt?"

I know we're not supposed to make the killing of bin Laden political. It's how the Navy SEAL who shot him ended his interview on 60 Minutes. But there are a couple big things left out of that piece.
First, it wasn't just that the trail for bin Laden had gone cold -- it was that the Bush administration and Republicans had completely abandoned it. Mitt Romney mocked Obama for saying he'd go into Pakistan to get him. He said he wouldn't move heaven and Earth to do it. Why shouldn't that be a major strike against him?

Secondly, presidents don't actually do the fighting. They're not like Bill Pullman in Independence Day -- they don't actually get in the plane. But what Obama did with bin Laden was as close as you get. When the one helicopter went down, the reason there were two others to take them back into Afghanistan was because Obama himself asked for that to be in the plan. Mark Owen doesn't seem to realize that.

Larry Flynt Wants to See Mitt Romney’s Taxes

By Bill Maher 

A radio interview with Ann Romney in Baltimore, back in April:

INTERVIEWER: Do you have to fight back some criticism, like "My husband isn't stiff, OK?"

ANN ROMNEY: Well, you know, I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out because he is not!

I hope, when someone unzips the real Mitt Romney and lets him out, that I am no longer alive. That said, this stupid story is the closest thing Romney has ever come to a sex scandal. So Larry Flynt wants Mitt to whip out his taxes instead. And he's ready to pay (in the well-worn words of Dr. Evil)... one million dollars. According to CNN:

Flynt is offering the reward to anyone who can dig up new evidence of the GOP candidate's "unreleased tax returns and/or details of his offshore assets, bank accounts, and business partnerships."

Flynt ran an ad in the Washington Post and another in USA Today. I wonder about Larry Flynt's motives. What kind of sicko throws away a million dollars on an election? I also wouldn't be surprised if Larry wasn't trying to distract us from his own scandals. The odds that he's Honey Boo Boo's real father are extremely high. But there are two unpleasant things about this story:

1) Mitt Romney has made us all accept that his taxes are a legitimate secret, like his sex life. Instead of something a voter deserves to know, especially if the candidate's only arguments for his candidacy are a) his saintly honor and b) his ability to make money hand over fucking fist. Mitt Romney: Ultra Job Creator not releasing his taxes is like Ulysses Grant running and refusing to talk about the Civil War.

2) Why doesn't Mitt Romney have a sex scandal? He got married at birth or something, and he's never strayed. Because there's no money in it. And there's the risk that it could bring pleasure to someone. But think about it: There's a very real chance that the next president of the United States is a 65-year-old "bishop" who’s only had sex with one woman.

Chump Change

By Bill Maher

There's nothing wrong with change, but there’s also nothing inherently right with change -- if the "change" you're being offered is "Rich people stop paying taxes and let’s see what happens."

If I had been running the Democratic Convention, I would have barely mentioned Obama at all -- you know, like the Republicans did with Romney -- and I would've put up a 100-by-100 foot poster of Mitt Romney and George Bush and never take it down.

You know the Republican Party's "debt clock"?  I would put up this number: 0.82%.

That's Mitt Romney’s tax rate if Paul Ryan’s latest budget became law. 0.82%. As in "less than 1%."
Maybe you don't think that's a problem. An effectively zero percent tax rate on investment, speculation and inherited wealth. But I'll bet most people do think it's a problem, and that's an argument Democrats can win.

Why a Mormon President Might Not Be So Swell

By Bill Maher

On his recent Real Time appearance, Walter Kirn had a lot of insightful things to say about the Mormon Church, but I'm not sure about his claim that if Mitt Romney were -- Kolob forbid -- elected, he wouldn't impose Mormon dogma on government policy.

Now, I don't think Mitt would use Social Security records to secretly baptize everyone in America, although -- now that I think of it -- that's a pretty good plan. I don't think he’s going to use seer stones to make policy ("I see.... I see... school vouchers!") But what about gay marriage?

Mormons hate gay marriage for reasons above and beyond simple bigotry. It's a core doctrine of their faith that a marriage between a man and a woman is the only way you can get the full benefit package, both in this life and the next. This is why the Mormons spent millions to defeat gay marriage in California. What are the chances that a Romney Justice Department is going to pursue gay civil rights cases, or allow gay couples in the military to marry? The NBC affiliate in Salt Lake City won’t even show "The New Normal," that new sitcom about a married gay couple. They didn't reject it because its rife with tired sitcom clichés (sassy black friend, precocious smart-aleck child), they rejected it because it doesn't conform to their religion's requirements for interplanetary spirit tourism.

Birther Control

By Bill Maher

Chris Matthews dressed down RNC Chair Reince Priebus last week for Romney's playing the race card with the birther joke, and the party doing it with the false welfare ads, constantly bringing up that he's a "European-style socialist," etc. At first, Priebus didn't have much of a response at all, because he knows it's true. By the end, he just seemed contemptuous of Matthews, but had no legitimate defense.

But Tom Brokaw chimed in that he disagreed with Chris, and thought it was just an "awkward joke," adding that Republican leaders should have corrected the record when people started calling Obama a Muslim and a socialist, but "both sides" do it. Bullshit. Half of Democrats don't believe Romney was born in a foreign country. On another planet, maybe, but not a foreign country. That was the whole point of Romney's "joke," wasn't it? "Nobody's ever asked to see my birth certificate" -- yeah, because you're a white guy, you dipshit, and you're not the victim of that kind of racism. When people say he can't empathize with ordinary people, that's part of what they mean.

Ta-Nehisi Coates has an amazing essay in this month's Atlantic called, "Fear of a Black President." He writes, "Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others. Black America ever lives under that skeptical eye." True dat.

The first time I ever saw Obama’s citizenship questioned was in a chain email well before the 2008 election. I thought, "Wow, this is obviously racist," and dismissed it as a fringe rumor that would end with white supremacists. How did it grow to the point where half of Republican primary voters believed it? It wasn’t just the silence of Republican leaders, it was the failure of people like Tom Brokaw to just dismiss it as racism from the beginning. People like him are always championing "balance" over objectivity. They have to bring everything back to a discussion about how "both sides" are guilty, instead of doing his job as a referee. If every single journalist just simply labeled birtherism what it obviously is -- racism -- the cancer wouldn't have infected half the party. Maybe 25% or so, but most would be like, "Okay, this isn't socially respectable."

Every journalist knows it comes from a racist place, so why can't they all be as no-bullshit about it as Chris Matthews?

We're All Sarah Palin Now

By Bill Maher

Back in 2008 we all stood with mouths agape when we learned that Sarah Palin, fresh off not being able to tell Katie Couric what newspapers she read or what nostrils were for, would no longer be doing any interviews or taking questions from the Washington press. It was all going to be stump speeches and friendly interviews with the lickspittles at Fox News from then until November (or, as it turned out, eternity). It was unheard of. What had our political process come to?

Except that it turns out Sarah Palin was a bit of a trailblazer. And not just because she was the first person from the slow reading group to become the vice presidential nominee of a major party. Because now everyone is adopting that tactic.

Mitt Romney is not taking questions or doing any interviews with the Washington press corps either. He's done one recently -- when he rolled out Paul Ryan for 60 Minutes. But that's it. No David Gregory. No Chuck Todd. Not even Katie Couric. He's all stump speech all the time. The only questions he takes are from friendly audiences at fundraisers, usually with the press kept outside. There's no way to pin down his position on anything. Or even get him to answer something so simple as, "So when you say you paid no less than 13% in taxes, you mean 13% in income taxes, right?"

Fox News, attack ads, and stump speeches. That's it.

Even worse, the same goes for President Obama. And he's the fucking president. He just gave his first press conference in months, and recently has only granted interviews to the likes of Entertainment Weekly and People. Oh, and to local news stations, like the recent one with the morning team at KOB FM in New Mexico, who asked him "What type of chili do you prefer, red or green?" and "If you could have a superpower, what superpower would you choose?"

Which is how President Obama gets to go from the beginning of the campaign until now without having to mention anything he might do in a second term. Not a peep.

And what's left when no one will talk about any issue with anyone other than a lapdog or a cipher? Gaffes. Endless coverage of gaffes. From Mitt Romney’s gaffe to Obama's gaffe to Joe Biden's gaffe, to Todd Akin's gaffe. And not only their gaffes, but what do other people say about their gaffes? How do you feel about his or her gaffe? Do you condemn his or her gaffe? Does the person who gaffed deserve to be fired? Or should the person who gaffed step down?

In that sense I can't even blame the media here. Because if the candidates aren't going to do interviews or answer questions, or talk about actual issues, and they're going to say the same thing at every campaign stop (and trust me, they do) there's nothing for the press to cover except when someone goes off that script.

So enjoy the coverage of the candidates' gaffes. And their offshoot, the candidate's spokesperson's gaffes. And the offshoot of that, the candidate's celebrity supporters gaffes. It's all you're going to get.

Obama: “He tried. You tried.”

By Bill Maher

On last Friday’s Real Time, we showed an anti-Obama campaign ad that ended with the sadder-but-wiser words, “He tried. You tried. It’s OK to make a change.”

I pointed out that I think this ad is subtly racist and I got called “race obsessed.” Maybe it’s true. I mean, who other than an obsessive madman could possibly even suggest that sometimes Republican ad makers play on white voters’ racial prejudices? It’s not like there’s a long, well-established history of it, outside of the Willie Horton ad, the Jessie Helms’ “Hands” ad, the “Harold Ford is not right for Tennessee” ad, last year’s ad from Turn Right PAC, “Give Us Your Cash, Bitch!,” this year’s Super Bowl ad from Michigan GOP congressman and senate candidate Pete Hoekstra, and about a hundred others I could continue naming just off the top of my head.

The RNC makers of “It’s OK” may have a lighter touch than the people who brought you “Give Us Your Cash, Bitch!,” but they’re in the same business. When they deem Obama a failure and say, “He tried. You tried. It’s okay to make a change,” what do they mean by, “You tried.”? Surely they didn’t pick those words by accident. What did we try with Obama that we had never tried with an American president before? What’s different about him? Hmmm…Is it that he’s tall? No, we’ve had tall presidents before. Is it that he’s an Ivy Leaguer? No, had those, too. I don’t know. I’m stumped. Can I use my lifeline?

This ad is targeted at people who voted for Obama in 2008, but were never entirely comfortable with it. It reassures them that once you go black, you can go back. It comes from the same winking bigotry that had people demanding, about two minutes after Obama’s inauguration, “We need to take our country back!” Back from who? The foreign country that invaded us, Blackmanistan?

I’d never heard any language like “you tried” – addressed directly to the voter – in a campaign commercial before. I think that it’s uniquely about race, and about white people telling other white people that it was brave – really, really noble and brave – the way you gave that black kid a chance to clean out the garage.

And he stole your coin collection. Okay, he didn’t steal it; it fell behind the lawn mower. And you called the cops before it turned up. But that doesn’t make you a racist. You tried. It’s OK to make a change.

If you don’t believe me, that this is a racial dog whistle, try imagining it in an ad between two white candidates. Imagine an ad that gives the listener credit for taking a good-hearted risk on a white candidate. Let’s say, Rick Perry. “You tried.” Tried what? Voting for a crash test dummy?

Can you imagine saying, “He tried, you tried” about a WASP president? If it were an ad run against Bill Clinton, people would have been totally perplexed, like, “We tried what, exactly? A horny president???”

Remember Al Campanis? He was the Dodgers executive who went on Nightline in 1987 and told Ted Koppel that blacks “may not have some of the necessities to be, let’s say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.” Al’s gone now, but his sort of thinking is still alive, and I see this ad as a way of tapping into it. It’s saying, “We gave the kid a shot at managing the big club, but he’s just not cut out for it. Let’s move him back to concessions and make sure we never try that again.”

I’m not race obsessed – just a little skeptical when I hear odd phrasings in Republican ads. I’m also admittedly a little sensitive when I hear Mitt Romney describe Obama’s ideas as “foreign” and claim that he’s a nice guy, but just not up to the job. In a country where whites with criminal records are more likely to be hired than blacks with clean records, shouldn’t we all be?

The “You Tried” ad reduces the election of Barack Obama – a law professor and a United States Senator – to a misguided act of charity. It reduces the President of the United States to his race, while it praises the listener for not being a racist. It’s brilliantly awful. People are going to be studying it for years.

Paul Maul

 By Bill Maher

There are a few “facts” about Paul Ryan that the press keeps repeating that I think we need to grind into dust: 

First, they keep referring to the “Ryan budget.”  There is no Ryan budget.  A budget has numbers attached to it that economists can “score.” The Ryan “budget” is a budget in the way that my doodle of a rocket ship on a cocktail napkin is a blueprint for NASA.

Second, they call him an intellectual. Now, I’m not saying he’s a dummy – he’s not. People equating him to Palin are just wrong on that score. He can read and write and he eats beans with a fork instead of his fingers. Plus, he uses words like “epistemology” in conversation, and he actually knows what they mean. But that still doesn’t make him an intellectual – that just makes him smarter than Sam Brownback. He’s the one guy in the GOP who actually cares about policy, so he’s their intellectual by default.

When Ryan was a 19-year-old intern on the Hill, he was given two books: one by Jude Wanniski and one by George Gilder, the two founders of supply side-economics. These books were discredited looney-tunes nonsense when Ryan got them 23 years ago, yet he devoured them and marked them up with little scribbles in the margins and he still believes their crap to this day. That’s not an intellectual. Intellectuals don’t stop learning at age 19.  

Third, the press acts as if Ryan is some sort of effective legislator. But, according to the Huffington Post, he’s only passed two bills into law in the 13 years he’s been in Congress.  One was to rename a post office in his district after Les Aspin. The other was to reduce the taxes on hunting bows. Why hunting bows? Because Paul Ryan is an expert bow hunter. He goes through arrows like you go through condoms. He was tired of paying the sky-high Federal Arrow Surcharge or whatever it is, so he fixed it. Because that’s what Objectivists do.

A Truce Proposal for the Republican Party

By Bill Maher


No matter who you talk to on the right about the frothing insanity and Congressional belligerence directed at President Obama, inevitably they’ll all raise the same point: You did it to Bush when he was in office. Which wasn’t equivalent, or even close, but this seems to be something we can never get beyond – this tit for tat. Now, I don’t remember Democrats deciding, as an electoral strategy, to oppose everything the president proposed or did, even when they agreed with it, and to use the filibuster in ways never seen before in order to deny him legislative victories so that the public would not see the change they were promised and vote against the president’s party in the midterms – all of which has happened to Obama. No, I don’t remember the Democrats doing that. Quite the opposite. I remember the Democrats saying, “Oh, you want a pre-emptive war? Aye-aye, Captain!” 

But let’s not get into that. I come in peace. 

And I’ll even go first, and make a gesture of goodwill: I apologize for blaming Bush for the conditions at Walter Reed. When that Dana Priest/Anne Hull story came out and we found that Walter Reed was in rough shape and had mold and exposed wires and rats and nothing was being done to fix it, we all added that to the growing list of Bush administration scandals, along with Iraq, and Abu Ghraib, torture, the response to Katrina, outing a CIA agent, etc. But it really didn’t deserve to be there. Because Bush wasn’t in charge of the wiring at Walter Reed, or even aware of it. So, yes, that was unfair and I take it back. Bush wasn’t directly to blame for the conditions at Walter Reed. There. That was overly-partisan. 

Your turn. …I’ll wait. It’ll be like the Dayton Peace Accords. We could even hold it in Dayton. I’m sure they’d appreciate the business. 

And here’s my proposal: if we agree not to go crazy on Mitt Romney should he be elected, and I don’t take to the airwaves days after his inauguration and say that I hope he fails and pledge to oppose everything he does like Rush Limbaugh did after Obama was elected, then Republicans have to agree to chill the fuck out should Obama be re-elected, and to let him run the country, and staff positions without needlessly filibustering, and let bills pass in the Senate with a simple majority, and to finally shut the hell up about the socialism and the Kenya and the America-hating.
…Deal?

The War on Error

By Bill Maher

Someone pointed out that the problem with Obama’s press conference gaffe earlier this month – 

"The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government."
 

– was that Obama didn't have anything else to say in the press conference. If he had made any actual news, the gaffe wouldn’t have been the only thing people had to talk about. And I think that's a fair charge. 

Anyway, gaffe outrage is how we play the game. And since Mitt Romney hired Sarah Palin's speechwriter, that's the only game in town. Or at least the favorite game. You say something, I repeat it, over and over and over and over and over, like it's so obviously fucking comically ludicrous that it doesn't even have to be explained.


Can you believe it? Obama actually said we're a super power "whether we like it or not!" Whether we like it or not??! "Whether" we "like it" or "not"!!!???!!! WHETHER we LIKE IT or NOT???!!!!!!!!?????????

Which is why it was inevitable that Mitt Romney's campaign released a web video all about Obama saying "doing fine." Here's The Hill's description:

The video ad follows Obama's remarks with clips of workers discussing their struggles with the weak economy. 


"We've seen layoffs, cutbacks," says one woman. 


"I've been looking for a job for two years haven't found any," says another.


"I had to file my own personal bankruptcy and had to close my business," says a man.


The video closes by repeating clips of Obama's quote, before an on-screen graphic reading, "No, Mr. President, we are not 'doing fine.'"


Meow! But isn't there a less stupid way to play this game?


Woody Allen once wrote an essay called "Miscellaneous Methods of Civil Disobedience" and one of them was "Standing in front of City Hall and chanting the word "pudding" until one’s demands are met." Woody wasn't wrong by much. But the trick is to wait until your enemy accidentally says "pudding" first.

Mitt Romney’s Best Choice for Vice President: No One

By Bill Maher

Mitt Romney has two arguments for why he should be president (three, if you count, "Give it to me or I'll kill you"). The first is that he loves, loves, loves, loves, LOVES America. Which makes you think the job he should actually get is poet laureate. The second is: I am the king of all business management. Look upon my spreadsheets, ye mighty and tremble.

Mitt Romney has the super power of being able to look at a PowerPoint presentation of a flow chart of a company that makes men's room hand-dryers, and cut its staff by 15%. Now, I don't give a shit about this skill, and I don't see how it entitles you to Andrew Jackson's old job, but there it is. Clark Kent is Superman. Bruce Wayne is Batman. Mitt Romney is Businessman.  Look, up in the sky, it's a guy in business class

Now that we've entered the boring stage in an election year where the party has a candidate, and the candidate has to choose a running mate, how about this: If Mitt wants to prove he can cut the fat out of government, he should choose no one.

The Vice President makes $230,000 a year. Just take that money and put it in the kitty. Give it to the GSA for muffin baskets, or the Secret Service for whores. Or the Air Force, to set on fire and laugh.

The Vice President also gets his own 9,150 square foot house, Number One Observatory Circle. We could turn that into a Subway sandwich shop. It has a high tech 9/11 Doomsday bunker. We could turn that into another Subway sandwich shop.

The Vice President has his own staff, and his own motorcade -- which went through a weird period a couple of years ago, when it was always running people over. He even has his own plane. Sell it all.

If a foreign leader dies, and we care, the President can go. If we don't care, we can send a card. And a gift certificate for a Subway sandwich.

I like Joe Biden.  But even Osama Bin Laden didn't think he was "world leader" material. According to his assassination journals -- Bin Laden's, I mean, not Biden's -- Biden wasn’t even worth killing. Bin Laden wrote to an al-Qaeda aide in 2010 that he wanted assassination teams assembled to target President Obama and Gen. Petraeus, because:

"...Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make Biden take over the presidency for the remainder of the term, as it is the norm over there," bin Laden wrote. "Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis."

I’m thinking our enemies will be even less intimidated by whatever empty suit Romney picks. So don't do it at all. Be a game changer. No Vice President.

It'll be cheaper than feeding Chris Christie.

Republican Debate Review

Republicans sure have the right symbol with the elephant. Republican debates are nothing but elephants in the room.

The biggest of which must be: to someone out there who's hurting, they spend the whole two hours yammering away about earmarks and illegal immigrants and contraception and every other peripheral, wish-I-had-the-time-to-worry-about-it issue they can think of.

Then there is the elephant of how they all -- with the sometime exception of Ron Paul -- nod along to insane statements just because they don't want to ever look like they're to the left of anybody, on anything, especially the evilness of Barack Obama. So Wednesday night when Newt said the president of the United States had a history of practicing infanticide... yep, yep, yessir, that's what he does all right. Clubs infants like baby seals in his spare time. Ike played golf, Kennedy liked boating...

Ron Paul said foreign aid just helps our enemies. Which, I believe, would make Israel and Egypt our two biggest enemies. Yup, yup, hate foreign aid. A meaningless percentage of the budget, btw.

Newt said where government becomes the central provider of services, it's a move towards tyranny -- yeah, except in all the countries where it isn't, like all of Scandanavia and much of Europe. Today a barium enema paid for by medicare, tomorrow Poland.

And isn't a highlight of every debate when Mitt Romney takes umbrage at being accused of the best thing he ever did in his life -- Romneycare? Something he should be proud of? Last night he took out his dueling glove and declared that when he was governor, he made sure there was NO requirement from the church to provide morning after pills for rape victims. They will be punished with a baby, as Jesus would want. Mitt's attitude is always, "How dare you accuse me of helping people or being compassionate! Why, I'll have you know I'm every bit as much of a cold hearted bastard as any of these other pricks up here with me!"

"But Mitt, we have a picture of you giving money to a homeless person."

"I did NOT give a bum money! I was paying him to blow me!"

This Republican field over the last year has been such a comedy gold mine -- which I have compacted into a stand-up special I'm doing Thursday night, February 23, called #CrazyStupidPolitics -- it's free, and it's live-streamed on Yahoo! 10:30 Eastern (with a mindblowing announcement at the end). I apologize for the shameful plug, but I just want you to have a good laugh! Thank you Arianna, you're the best... and now back to our blog.

The biggest elephant in the room tonight for me was Satan. All day, TV news was talking about Satan because of Rick Santorum's dug-up (but, no doubt still accurate) comments about Satan from 2008. It just shows you how when someone is a nobody politically speaking -- as Santorum was in 2008 -- you can say any kind of crazy shit and it's not newsworthy. But when you are seeking the highest office in the land... in the world -- it really worries me that you believe in demons and a personified creature named Satan.

People get mad at me for using the phrase "this stupid country", which I sometimes do -- but, I'm sorry -- Satan? In 2012? This elephant is not only in the room at the debates, but everywhere on TV today where people were talking about this and not breaking down in the middle and screaming, Wait a minute -- We're modern people, surely we don't give any credence to this comic book character that was created in the bronze age!! It's barely worthy of a children's story, and people take it to the Oval Office -- Bush did -- and it affects their thinking and our lives. Why is Santorum so against contraception? Because there's a line in Genesis about not spilling your seed. A random brainfart from some desert dweller 3,000 years ago, before people knew about germs or atoms or round planets, and it gets written down and passed down and in 2012 people like Rick Santorum are still too R-word to see that, and that's why some woman in Akron, Ohio might not get birth control.

And as far as Rick's claim tonight that even though he holds these beliefs, he wouldn't legislate them? Bullshit -- he said states absolutely had the right to outlaw contraception. That's the same thing -- as an officer of the government, he should take the opposite position. Ron Paul would.

My favorite moment of the debate was the last question, when they all were asked to summarize themselves in one word: Ron Paul said "consistency," and you know what? I have no argument with that. It's true, and he's earned it.

The other ones however, I think I could find a more honest word. Mitt Romney said "resolute." I would have gone with "shapeshifter." Or perhaps "irresolute." Rick Santorum said "courage" , whereas I would have said "Bellevue." And Newt Gingrich said "cheerful." I was thinking "pus."

One other thing: in the overtime, I heard Ron Paul make the point to John King that his foreign policy was similar to Eisenhower's, how Ike avoided getting militarily involved in Vietnam or the Suez Canal and got out of Korea. Because he was a military man. Ron Paul served, also -- the other three not so much. I know it will never become law, because it would require a constitutional amendment, but I don't think it would be such a bad thing if you had to have served in the military if you wanted to be president. Kennedy also avoided war where many would not have. After him, though, we got into the era of non-servers and draft-dodgers, and used the military like a toy. Ex-soldiers understand it's not. And the president is Commander-in-Chief -- shouldn't you have served some time in an organization you're the head of?

I hope this was the last Republican debate. Well, I say that, but I'll need the material after I use up an hour of good jokes tomorrow night, so, fuck it, keep going.

Last bullshit call: In his closing statement, Rick Santorum said that in the race against the Evil One (no, not that Evil One, he was talking about Obama), the president would have the media in his pocket (yeah, except Fox News, lots of newspapers, all of radio... ), and way more money. Huh? Sheldon Adelson this week said he might give $100 million to Newt Gingrich! If he'd give that to Newt who has no chance, he might give more to Romney. And he's just one old cranky billionaire who hates Obama, there's a whole gaggle of them.

And Sheldon, if you want to blow money so bad, just walk into one of your hotels in Vegas and go to the Roulette table.

New Rule: No Shame in Being the Sorry Party

New Rule: If Mitt Romney, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin all think America has never done anything wrong, we must be doing something wrong. Look at them: an empty suit, an empty heart and an empty head. It looks like the news team on Good Morning Hell. And what they've been competing about lately is who would not apologize the most. America is infallible, and apologies are horrible things that must never, ever be given. Except by me when I make a joke about the Pope. "We're perfect -- deal with it," is their new handshake. But I say, what's wrong with America occasionally saying, "I'm sorry"? Because these are the three sorriest white people I've ever seen.

If in your eyes America can do no wrong, you should really look into Lasik surgery. There's the rational, mature assessment of our country: that it's a great nation -- especially if you like fried foods -- but it also has its faults. And then there's the Republican view: that it's perfect and pure in every way and it's always right all the time, just like Leviticus and Ronald Reagan.

If the founders were alive today, Republicans would be giving them shit because the Declaration of Independence says, "In order to form a more perfect union? Hello, it's already perfect! Why are you suggesting American apologetics, Ben Franklin?"

One of the things that makes Republicans furious about our current president is their idea that Obama is always apologizing for America's biggest mistakes. Unlike President Bush. Who was one of America's biggest mistakes.

In his first week as president, Obama did an interview with Arab TV in which he said, "We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect." Thought crime! And then he went to Cairo and violated one of those absolute eternal rules the Right Wing is always making up out of thin air: "The president must never apologize on foreign soil. Lest our allies begin to doubt that we're assholes. "

But what did Obama actually say to make Karl Rove's head explode and the popcorn fly out? Cover your children's ears: When he was asked if he believed in American exceptionalism, he said he did, the same way "the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks in Greek exceptionalism." Yes, our so-called president actually said people in other countries might like their countries better. I was so shocked I nearly dropped the Bible I was using to help me masturbate into my gun.

In her farewell speech -- if only -- Sarah Palin kept telling us "how she's wired." Now I'm not a doctor, or an electrician -- but this is faulty wiring, this worldview that, in her words, "we should never apologize for our country." Really? Never? Not for slavery? Or Japanese internment camps, or if we tortured the wrong guy at Guantanamo? The Indians? Nothing, Sarah? "The Real Housewives of Atlanta"? Shouldn't John McCain apologize for... you?

When did intractability become a virtue? Mitt Romney's new book is called No Apology: The Case For American Greatness. You can find it at Borders, in the "Suck-Up" section. It's such a perfect title, combining paranoia with arrogance: "No one has yet asked me to apologize but, if someone ever does, fuck them."

Conservatives think apologizing is a sign of weakness. It's what liberal pussies do, when they're not busy driving electric cars and feeling empathy. When in fact it's the weak and the scared who are too insecure to apologize. Apologies are actually a sign of strength. That's why six-year-olds hate them.

In Rwanda, after a genocide that killed a million people, they set up special courts where people stood up and said, "Hey, sorry I macheted your entire family. My bad." And believe it or not, in most cases, that was enough. That's the power of an apology. A recent study reveals that doctors who are willing to apologize to patients for their mistakes are sued for malpractice about half as much as doctors who aren't willing to apologize.

Apologies can do great things, and they can enable great things. And if you still don't believe me, I have three words for you: make-up sex.