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.

Let’s Get Fiscal

By Bill Maher

When Republicans aren't inventing straw men to attack President Obama (he hates success, he hates capitalism, he thinks Americans are stuck in their station in life, he's always apologizing for America, etc.) they're almost always attacking him for paying for his programs. Which, I know, sounds crazy because it's the fiscally responsible thing to do, and the Republicans are supposed to be the party of the fiscally responsible. But they're hypocrites like that. The standard isn't truth. It's saying anything that makes Obama look like a socialist who hates America. See: Dinesh D'Souza.

Take the attacks on Obama’s Medicare cuts. According to the Romney campaign, the $716 billion in Medicare cuts comes out of senior benefits (not true) that today's seniors paid into all of their lives (partially true because they use far more in benefits than they ever paid in) and then used that money to fund Obamacare.

...Okay, the last part is true. They used the savings from the Medicare cuts to providers and hospitals to offset the costs of Obamacare. Because unlike all of those programs and wars and tax cuts during the Bush administration, Obamacare is actually paid for. You see, in the fiscally responsible world that's supposed to be a good thing. It means you're not adding to the deficit. But when it comes to fiscal responsibility, Republicans are clearly frauds, so what do you expect? It's not as if they're going to say, "Okay, maybe we screwed up last time, but trust me -- this time is going to be different!"

Cut to Mitt Romney in Ohio: "We're going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time and for a while we didn't do it. When we had the lead, we let people down. We need to make sure we don't let them down this time. I will cut the deficit and get us on track to a balanced budget."

...By slashing taxes for the rich and hiking defense spending.

Which brings us to the charge that Obama is raising taxes on the middle class. Which isn't really true because Obama's lowered taxes on the middle class. But like all of Romney and Ryan's lies, they're really not lies. They're wildly misleading claims hooked on to some small kernel of truth. Otherwise known as being "slimy."

This is how Paul Ryan gets to say that Obama went to that GM plant in his hometown and said it would stay open, and then it closed. Not mentioning, of course, that it closed before Obama took office, or that Ryan himself had lobbied GM to keep the plant open. But it is true that Obama went there in 2008 during the campaign and said something about keeping the plant open. That part is true. And that's enough truth to suggest that he's responsible for closing it. When you're a sleaze.

Same thing with the middle class tax increase. The kernel of truth there is that, as part of Obamacare, those who don't buy insurance have to pay a penalty, or as John Roberts calls it "a tax." And some of those people will be in the middle class. Hence, "middle class tax increase." See how they did that?

But that's basically how Obamacare is paid for: a combination of cuts to Medicare providers and through a series of tax increases. Which, again, is the fiscally responsible thing to do -- to pay for your programs. But the Romney campaign uses that kernel to suggest that Obama has raised the taxes on everyone in the middle class, when the truth is he's lowered them, except for people who won't buy health insurance. Also known as free riders.

Health care mandate? The mechanism we use to pay for all of those people with pre-existing conditions everyone wants to cover. Because in life, benefits come with costs.

"Cap and trade" is also part of this conservative attack. But again, these are taxes going to address a serious problem -- the world catching fire. Or think of it this way: if your roof leaks, you have to spend money to fix it. Your car won't start, same thing: you have to pay money to fix it. Only in the conservative bubble can you address serious problems by not paying for them -- i.e. cutting taxes.

The problem with all of this is that the Democrats, being the party that pays for their programs -- dare I say the "party of fiscal responsibility" -- comes with a political price. And it's that we're a "tastes great, less filling" country that has gotten used to putting everything we do on the national credit card. We didn't pay for Iraq, Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, the prescription drug entitlement program -- none of it. Which is sweet! Especially if you're going to die before the bill comes due.

You see, if you give voters stuff for free, they like it a lot better than when you give them something and charge them the cost of that thing you just gave them. Which used to be called responsible, but now is called "socialism."

Talkin' 'Bout Shaft

By Bill Maher

Here's the big lie of this campaign, the thing the Tea people can't seem to understand: the wealth is being redistributed in this country, but not from hardworking, taxpaying "real Americans" to lazy, good-for-nuthin' welfare leeches. Oh sure, that happens -- but it’s nothing compared to the redistribution from the middle up. Wealth is being taken, and has for decades been taken, from the middle class and redistributed to the rich-prick, top one-percent whose money makes money tax-free.

And the whole time this grand fleecing was going on, healthcare and college prices were skyrocketing. The top one percent realized that these are two commodities that middle class families simply cannot do without. So why not charge an ever-increasing arm and a leg for these necessities, you know, like a gas station does, gouging for 10 bucks a gallon after a hurricane? The cost of a college education has gone up 1,120% since 1978 while the cost of medical expenses has gone up 600% in that same time period.

So, now the have-it-alls are looking around at the American landscape with a dry piece of bread wondering, "Where are the last remaining drops of wealth I can sop up off the plate? The poor are still poor and we're cutting their entitlements, the middle class have been mugged and kicked to the curb with their pockets turned inside-out... I know: the elderly!" Old people still have money. In 1984, old people (65 and up) were ten times richer than young people (under 35). Now they're 47 times richer! That's where all the dough is! And, coincidentally, isn't it time we talked about privatizing Medicare?

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?

Whack-a-Mole Accounting

By Bill Maher

No one seems to be talking about how “putting our financial house in order” and “slashing the federal budget,” while sounding good on the surface, simply transfers responsibility to provide critical entitlements to the states.

Go ahead, cut education, federal funding for municipal projects, Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits. That may make you feel like you’re striking a blow for “ending the culture of dependency,” but kids still have to learn, aging classrooms still need to be renovated, books still need to be bought, teachers still need to be paid, bridges and roads still need to be built and repaired, and poor and out-of-work people will still get sick and hungry and need diapers. Having the feds stop paying to solve these problems doesn’t make the problems go away; it just transfers the onus of solving these problems to the states. The good news: Paul Ryan has reduced your federal income tax responsibility to 10%. The bad news: your state government now needs 55%.

Or do they? Maybe the federal government can stop paying for these things and states run by Republican governors and legislatures can finally start governing based on the cherished conservative principle of “Fuck you, every man for himself.”

Writing for the AP, Carla K. Johnson and Kelli Kennedy point out that many Republican-run states are refusing to abide by the part of Obamacare that shifts Medicaid responsibility to the states. Out of one side of their mouths, they demand federal cuts and out of the other they refuse to pick up the slack.

The national health law calls for individuals to be covered at an income under $15,400 and a family of four at an income under $30,650 – but that’s too generous for a few southern states. According to the AP, “In South Carolina, a yearly income of $16,900 is too much for Medicaid for a family of three. In Florida, $11,000 a year is too much. In Mississippi, $8,200 a year is too much. In Louisiana and Texas, earning more than just $5,000 a year makes you ineligible for Medicaid.”

More from the AP story: “Medicaid now covers an estimated 70 million Americans and would cover an estimated 7 million more in 2014 under the Obama health law's expansion. In contrast, Ryan's plan could mean 14 million to 27 million Americans would ultimately lose coverage, even beyond the effect of a repeal of the health law, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation of Ryan's 2011 budget plan.”

And it’s hardly premium coverage. Medicaid sucks and most doctors refuse to even treat patients on it. It’s so shitty you’d be better off with an actual safety net. Should poor people just go fuck themselves?

Supreme Contort

The Supreme Court will soon rule in the case of Arizona v. United States: Turn That Damn Music Down, We're Trying to Sleep. It's a hot tamale, because it's about Latinos, who are an important voting block, and because it looks like the second case this year -- along with Obamacare -- where the Supreme Court could hand the President his ass. Here's what's at stake: 

In 2010, Arizona -- land that was Mexican, after it belonged to Spain, after it belong to the Anasazi -- passed a law designed to make life as unpleasant as possible for anyone whose skin is less pink than gum. The law was pretty openly intended to make illegal aliens self-deport, and take the legal aliens with them, while they're at it, so that Arizona can be what God intended -- a nice sunny place for angry white people to get skin cancer and die. 

Another irony? The Spanish also gave us the word "vamoose."
The law encourages cops to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being in America illegally. Nothing racist about that. Your suspect could be an illegal Canadian, giving himself away by wearing cross-country skis. The law requires all non-citizens to carry a federal registration card at all times, and produce the document on demand. The law authorizes Arizona cops to arrest any immigrant without a warrant if they have probable cause to believe the immigrant committed a deportable offense. 

The law has only two exceptions: Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber. Some Mexicans have a little Canadian in them. 

It’s a repulsive law that redefines "probable cause" as "not being white." Latino Americans hate it, for good reason, and the Obama administration filed a lawsuit seeking a temporary injunction against it. A federal judge agreed, the Ninth Circuit affirmed, and now the Supremes get their say. A decision is expected very soon.
It could be bad for Obama if he loses, because it makes him look like a weakling and a fuck-up. It could be good for Obama, if it reminds Latinos that Republicans aren't their friends. We'll see.

-Bill Maher