¡Hola! Fellow Republicans

By Bill Maher

Only when the borders are secure, only then can those who are in the US illegally, "come out of the shadows, get biometrically identified, start paying taxes, pay a fine for the law they broke. They can't stay unless they learn our language, and they have to get in the back of line before they become citizens. They can't cut in front of the line regarding people who are doing it right and it can take over a decade to get their green card."

                                                - Lindsay Graham, on "Face the Nation"

He didn't mean it, really. It sounds harsh, but what Lindsay Graham was saying (as predictably as heartburn after a burrito) is that we're going to be having a great big Latino-loving legislative fiesta before Cinco de Mayo.

The language has to be harsh. The Republicans have to strongly condemn the idea of amnesty and the idea of forgiveness, and make it clear that such things will not be tolerated. And they will strictly enforce the letter of their law by making illegal immigrants suffer the deep, painful, merciless punishment of...paperwork!

That's right -- go back to Mexico, because there's no way, Jose. At least not unless you sign here. And here. And here. And give us a DNA sample. Okay, and wait a couple of years, just like you've been waiting, feel free to keep cleaning those toilets while you do. And then...Hey, welcome to America, citizen! Have fun, and please consider voting Republican!

The language that Republicans are going to be spouting for the next few months will continue to sound harsh, as they struggle to convince their base that they are Solving the Problems caused by shiftless Mexicans. And talk is all that's needed, because several of the key problems are imaginary, which are the easiest sort of problems to resolve.

So we'll "close" the border by beefing up security...and then be able to brag about the fact that we've attained a net cross-border migration of zero. Which, of course, we've already got. And we'll force those Mexicans to learn English, which, obviously, most of them want to do. We won't let them steal the jobs we want, which they’re not doing. And we'll make them wait patiently for their papers, which isn't a huge hardship for people who've been waiting anyway.

Obviously, this will be a huge victory for Democrats and something the Republicans are doing only because they feel they have to if they want to remain politically relevant. But let's not fool ourselves -- it's a victory for Democratic ideas, but politically it could work out to be a way better thing for Republicans. If they can convince their base that they've "solved" the illegal immigrant problem and take the nasty Joe Arpaio-type talk off the table, there's not a lot of reason why they couldn't find themselves grabbing much, much larger percentages of the Latino vote right away, and we'll be saying a fond "¡Adios!" to the new "permanent" Democratic advantage.

Then again, you can never underestimate the Republicans' ability to come across as racist douchebags.

Prescription For Disaster

By Bill Maher

One of the big problems with the Drug War is that it goes after the wrong drugs. Because of prescription abuse, drug-related overdoses have doubled nationally in the last decade. We should lay off the pot and start curtailing the pharmaceutical companies and doctors peddling the prescription shit.

The Los Angeles Times ran an eye-opening series last month, revealing that prescription drug overdoses kill more people than heroin or cocaine. Over a five-year period in four counties in Southern California, The Times found 3,733 deaths from prescription drugs. Compare that to the number of deaths from OD'ing on marijuana, which was just one guy in the Valley who giggled to death.

298 of those deaths resulted from just 71 doctors; 16 of them were under the care of one guy named Van Vu. Ask your doctor if Dr. Van Vu is right for you. Amazingly, he has a spotless record with the Medical Board of California.

Wouldn't we be a lot better served asking our drug czar to stop worrying about the other drugs and focus instead on cleaning up this problem?

Gun Control Debate

Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland), James Carville, Mike Murphy (@murphymike), Bill Maher (@billmaher).

Here's a clip from the January 14, 2011 episode of HBO Real Time discussing gun control after the Gabrielle Giffords shooting of January 8, 2011.

The Fiscal Cliff

By Bill Maher

Now that the election dust has settled, and the big GOP donors have cut off Karl Rove's thumbs, and Donald Trump's syphilis has runs its course, everyone is talking about the "fiscal cliff." In fact, President Obama talked about it in his first appearance as a "two-termer." After which, let’s face it, he's going to be completely gray. He's going to look like Uncle Ben. Happens to every president. You age exponentially. Can you imagine what McCain would have looked like if he'd been president? He'd look like "Blue" from Old School.

What is the fiscal cliff? It's basically a built-in punishment if Congress and the President don't do their homework. Since they couldn't get a deal done last year, this is what they agreed to do in 2011 in order to raise the debt ceiling: come January 2013, automatic tax hikes and spending cuts would kick in that would be so large ($800 billion, according to the CBO) and abrupt that everyone pretty much agrees it'd send the economy back into recession. The Bush tax cuts expire. Obama's payroll tax cut expires. $55 billion cut from defense spending and $55 from nondefense discretionary spending. Basically, we'd be taking a good deal more out of paychecks and whacking government spending at the same time, which is going to do real damage. And if the Republicans could blame it on Obama they'd probably be for it. But chances are they'll get blamed, so they aren't.

So the President and John Boehner have to go golfing again. And these two do not have a relationship like Reagan and Tip O'Neill. Most of what they're fighting over is, of course, the tax cuts for the wealthy. Obama wants to extend the middle class tax cuts, but feels that we can't afford the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and that those have to go back to Clinton-era rates. He also ran on this and won. Also, about two-thirds of Americans agree with him.

Republicans, of course, pretend that all that stands between us and darkest night are tax cuts for job creators, and that even though the Bush tax cuts are a huge contributor to the current deficits they say they despise, they're also perfectly crafted and must never be touched. Make sense? I didn't think so.
Interestingly enough, the CBO put out a report saying that tax hikes on the rich really don't hurt the economy the way Republicans contend: "Allowing income tax rates to rise for wealthy Americans, and maintaining rates for the less affluent, would not hurt U.S. economic growth much in 2013."
And this goes to the larger problem everyone is talking about post-election: Republicans live in their own world, where the key to job growth isn't anything but lowering tax rates for job creators. That's not their belief based on evidence. It's their religion based on faith. And the non-partisan number crunchers at the CBO are saying, "No, that's not really true." It shaves a fraction of a point off GDP growth, and in return you get about $1 trillion in revenue over the next ten years.

Hmm. Non-partisan number crunchers say one thing, Republican Party says another thing is true, and blows off the number crunchers. Where have we seen this before?

Now, the inability for our government to deal with this stuff is a real problem. It spooks the markets. It's already spooking the markets. They're going to need to do a deal. But in the past Republicans have basically held the economy hostage for tax cuts for the wealthy. When these deadlines neared, and ratings agencies started downgrading us, and the markets started tumbling, Obama gave in. Maybe that was smart, maybe it wasn't. Maybe it was all he could do. But now it's different. He holds the cards now. He won the election on this.

Some are arguing for Obama to hold his ground, even if it means we go over the cliff a little bit. Because this time everyone will know who to blame. It'll be like when the Republicans shut down the government thinking it would make Clinton look bad, but it ended up backfiring.

The threat of tanking the economy is the only card the Republicans have to play. Obama is proposing a middle-class tax cut for the 98 percent of Americans who make less than $250,000 a year, letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more. If the Republicans block it, everyone's taxes will rise on Jan. 1.

So that's where we are. Let the golf outings begin.

Climate Change Semi-Denial

By Bill Maher

Last month on Real Time, Margaret Hoover advanced the theory that nothing we do about reducing our carbon emissions will have any real effect on global temperature changes over the next 20 years. And a small but well-funded portion of the Internet let out a tiny cheer. Because on a night while New York and New Jersey were underwater and still struggling to dig themselves out, someone, someone had the guts to stand up for bullshit.

What's interesting is the small industry devoted to propping up this latest incarnation of climate change skeptics. These people don't claim to be climate change deniers. Or even "global warming skeptics." They're only skeptical of climate change scientists, they say. Man-made climate change is real; it's just woefully overstated by the browbeaten scientific community and the hysterical media. They'll tell you how even if we totally eliminated our carbon footprint, it would only slow the rate of temperature rise by less than .1 degree over the next 50 years. They write reasonable papers and blog posts about how, for instance, everyone talks about the decrease of arctic ice, but that nobody talks about the dramatic increase in Antarctic ice. It's not so bad, they say, and even if it is, we can't change it too much.

And yes, you guessed it, they are a teensy tiny part of the scientific community and they get all their money from the fossil fuel industry.

Hoover's information likely comes from guys like Patrick J. Michaels and Chip Knappenberger. They are both climate scientists, they've written papers together, and they both hold titles over at the Cato Institute (founded, yes, by Charles Koch). Michaels runs a consultancy group called "New Hope Environmental Services," and serves as editor of the of the blog "World Climate Report -- The Web's Longest-Running Climate Change Blog." Chip writes for it, too.

The client and funder lists for these very concerned-sounding enterprises are often hard to find, because, as Michaels said in an affidavit, “large companies are understandably adverse to negative publicity." But we know, for instance, that New Hope Environmental Services has done some of its great work for fossil-fuel based power companies like Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association and Intermountain Rural Electric Association.

The insidious thing about guys like Michaels and Knappenberg is that they're masters of Not Getting Pinned Down. They keep a hand in and write scholarly papers in peer-reviewed journals, in which they seem to agree with the basics of climate science. And then they turn around on their blogs and in their congressional testimonies, and cherry-pick data and bash other people's work in a manner that produces the results that oil and coal and "free market" warriors want: A hodgepodge of "reasonable" reasons why we don't need to change what we're doing. They're the new generation of climate-change deniers -- "Climate change agreers and confusers." And they're winning.

Spacial Delivery

By Bill Maher

Republicans don't want anything to do with progressive thinking in any area of American life -- except in the case of military hardware. Then and only then are they willing to embrace the future. That's how we got that weird, mechanical over-land death mule and it's how we got the unmanned drone. We can now visit death upon our enemies without having to show up in person, look them in the eye and have an actual fight. It just feels wrong -- like breaking up with a girl via text message. If you're going to vanquish your enemy, shouldn't you have to confront them? How does a warrior willing to die for his cause in the Takhar Province fight a guy operating a joystick in Tallahassee?

Which brings me to this: Earlier this month we were flying one of our unmanned drones near Iranian airspace -- you know, the ones we use for surveillance and to provide the "something blew" to Muslim weddings -- and the Iranians took some shots at it. The incident was described as "unprecedented" and, as such, we really didn't know how to respond. I mean, it was an unmanned drone, not a plane with an American pilot in it, and they didn't shoot it down; they just shot at it. It's like catching the neighbor you hate throwing a beer bottle at your parked car and missing. We had no idea what level of outrage to feign.

I didn't go to West Point or anything but I’m guessing if one of our planes came upon an unmanned Iranian death-copter off the coast of Jersey the order wouldn’t be to "get a nice picture of it."

We utilize the best means at our disposal to go into foreign lands and blow up the people we consider the bad guys even if that means collateral damage in the form of civilian casualties. When someone does that exact same thing to us, don’t we call it "terrorism"?

God Hates Flags

By Bill Maher

Another way angry old white men have been protesting Obama seizing power through "democracy" is by flying the flag upside down. Which is so fucking chicky it gives me contact-embarrassment. "Take that, Mr. Big Shot, with your fancy 'getting-the-most-votes.' I'm taking this flag and throwing a drink in its face. And you know how the Lincoln Memorial is on the five dollar bill? I'm farting on it." Wow, that really stings. 

There have been dozens of cases, from Ohio to Kansas to Texas, anywhere there are friendless, egg-shaped pink fucks with a flagpole and a mis-held belief that they can do magic, and sometimes just talking back to the TV isn't enough.

Larry Guerrieri, master of angry-flag-inversion-hate-magic, told Pittsburgh CBS affiliate KDKA,"That's a sign of distress; this country is in distress right now. This Benghazi incident, he left them four people there to die. That's the way I feel about it." Gee, I wonder where he gets his news.
A McDonald's in West Virginia flew its flag upside down the day after the election, but claims it was an accident. Their actual statement:

"Unfortunately, a flag cable broke and during the process of trying the fix the flag, it was inadvertently turned upside down. It wasn't noticed that the flag was upside down until a customer inquired about it. We are working on fixing the flag right now. It's important to note that this was an accident, not intentional."

Please, if I wanted to be force-fed bullshit, I'd order the McRib.

Now, I couldn't care less about Flag God, but it does seem kind of small, if you do worship symbols, to wipe your ass on the one that represents your country because your guy lost an election. 
The United States Flag Code Title 36, Chapter 10, says:

"The flag should never be displayed with the union down, except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property."

But we all understand that the rule against flag desecration only applies to the left. It's like calling America a piss-stinking hellhole full of lazy moochers: You're only allowed to do it if you're a patriotic Republican.

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.

The Common Cult

By Bill Maher

Fox News, you win. You have spewed your fact-free bile so insistently and so repetitively that the hypnosis has worked. A significant percentage of your viewers have accepted your ravings as gospel and what you report is no longer just a diversion or entertainment. Your fan base has become a dangerous cult.

We really do have to look at the level of hate and paranoia that's been stirred up in people by a right wing propaganda machine that has not just mischaracterized, but demonized, this President of the United States. The Secret Service recently had to pay a visit to 22-year-old California resident Denise Helms who posted on Facebook, "Another 4 years of this nigger. Maybe he will get assassinated this term." Without even a smiley face or an "LOL" or anything.

When the posting went viral and the local press caught up with Denise, she said, "I didn't think it would be that big of a deal. The assassination part is kind of harsh. I'm not saying like I would go do that or anything like that, by any means, but if it was to happen, I don't think I'd care one bit."

And then Denise went back on Facebook to post, "So apparently my post last night about Obama got onto Twitter and Fox 40 came and interviewed me cause apparently a lot of people in Sacramento think I'm crazy and racist. WOW is all I got to say!! I'm not racist and I'm not crazy. Just simply stating my opinion.!!!"

Thanks to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and all the other anything-goes, whatever-it-takes hypnotists, our President has officially become dehumanized in the eyes of their cult followers, a thing to be dreaded and feared like the Plague or communism or Mel Gibson after a few Captain and Cokes.

We all read what Trump said about Obama's election, as well as Ted Nugent and Victoria Jackson. I'm just saying, it's the second term -- maybe it's time for those re-education camps. There are a lot of people in this country who are in need of some serious deprogramming.

Won Direction

By Bill Maher
 
New Rule: Now that he's been re-elected, President Obama must get back at all those right wing hacks who tried to paint him as an angry black man pushing a liberal agenda by becoming an angry black man who's pushing a liberal agenda.

Now, I have been mostly holding my tongue about the President this past season, because I didn't want to muddy the waters in a country where you only get two choices, but Mr. President, there are two ways to look at your 51 to 48% victory: One is, we love you. The other is, we like you 3% better than Mitt Romney. And by the way, let us never speak that name again... Mitt... let it be a dark and buried memory of a close call with a creature equal parts pure evil and excellent posture, like getting dry humped in a crowded subway by Roger Moore.

I like this President. In all those secret strategy meetings we had, with me and him and George Soros and The New Black Panthers, I found him to be very agreeable, Allah be praised. But it's now the job of progressives to hold his feet to the fire for causes important to us. If not now, when?

There's no third term, Mr. President, so you may as well throw caution to the wind, 'cause it's not like we're using it to produce energy. Yes, clean energy, that's just one of many issues, like civil liberties, the drug war, the drone war, the war war, gun control -- that have been on my mind these last four years, and let's just say I've been waiting to exhale. And by that I mean, I've been holding my nose.

But you're free now -- with no more elections to win, you are free to never again have to kiss the ass of coal miners and say the words "clean coal." There is no such thing as "clean coal." It's like saying "Internet Privacy" or "Tea Party Intellectual." Or "Fox News Journalist."

Another priority should be cutting the defense budget -- we’re the home of the brave, let's prove it by getting by with one less submarine. Yes, we were involved in a struggle against a radical enemy bent on our destruction -- but the election is over, and we need to recognize that America has the same problem with the defense budget that Mrs. Petraeus has with her husband's penis: it's swollen, and we can't bring ourselves to touch it.

And as far as Afghanistan goes, I know you said we're leaving in 2014, but look at it this way: enemies are always on guard for a surprise attack, but they'd never suspect a surprise retreat. Really. We can leave right away. Because we've figured out something the Afghans haven't: air travel.

And as long as we're ending wars, how about the War on Drugs? Two states, Colorado and Washington, have actually legalized pot now, which gives you as president the rare opportunity to improve the world by doing... absolutely nothing. Just tell Eric Holder to stay the hell out of Boulder, and if the conservatives bitch about it, throw states' rights back in their face -- isn't that their big theme, send it back to the states, the will of the people? Well, this is the people who, in those two states on election day, got up off the couch and drove their 1987 Toyota Tercel with the "Visualize World Peace" sticker on the back to the polls, and voted to stop the drug war. And then drove home and got back on the couch.

And finally, instead of rewriting Social Security, how about rewriting the Patriot Act? How about another look at rendition, and warrantless searches and wire taps? And how about stop listening in on our phone calls and reading our e-mails. I'm not a teenager and you’re not my mom, okay? And besides, there's a better way to confirm your suspicions that I'm smoking weed and hanging around the wrong people: just watch my show.

 HBO Real Time will Return January 2013

Hypnosis Politics

By Bill Maher

Did the ability to raise an infinite amount of money in this election make a difference?

If you just paid attention to the Presidential race, then you might think the answer is no. But that's because the Presidential race is unlike any other contest in the country. People take it personally. They're invested in it. They'd seen Obama for four years and they'd seen Romney on Jay Leno and the cable shows and the debates. People in swing states may have been drowning in a bukkake-like stream of Romney and Obama ads, but it's not like those ads were providing all of their information.

But when it comes to state contests and ballot propositions, people generally don't know much beyond the ads, so in those races money isn't just the main thing, it's the only thing.

Prop 37 went down in defeat because $48 million was spent to defeat it. This was a proposition that asked the simple question, "Wouldn't you like to know what you're putting in your mouth?" Before the ads started running, something like 90 percent of Californians who answered were for Prop 37. Now, they're against it. They're against knowing what they're putting in their mouth.

It's not that the anti-37 ads were particularly convincing. They didn't make any real arguments. It's just that there were so many of them. I saw them on Hulu when I watched old episodes of "My Favorite Martian." People keep complaining about the repetition of political ads, the same ad over and over and over, but that's the whole point -- it's hypnosis. That's how hypnosis works. The same thing. Repeated over and over. And over again. The same thing. Repeated over and over. Again. Repeated. And before you know it, you think you're a chicken. Or you don't care what's in your chicken.

The Mormon Non-Issue

By Bill Maher

Andrew Sullivan was on the show Friday, and he's written several blog posts on The Daily Dish wondering why the media never asked Romney to be more specific about his Mormon faith, especially the part about not allowing blacks into the priesthood and temple ceremonies until 1978. 

Sure, they had their prophecy in '78, but the old blacks-are-cursed-by-God stuff is still in their books, and Romney apparently believed it until he was in his thirties. Maybe he still believes it. It's not like they erased the passages in the Mormon literature. Why didn't a journalist ask Romney about this during the election?
The standard line about this stuff is that "religion is off limits," which makes no sense because religion is just something someone believes, the same as their belief on abortion or tax cuts or any other issue. Maybe whether a candidate has Type O blood or is a Sagittarius or enjoys a finger in his butt during sex is irrelevant, but a system of beliefs that informs one's entire moral code?

Why are Mormons against gay marriage? Jealousy? No, it's because of their religion. Because of their religion, gays in California can't get married. Why should this be "off limits" to journalists?

As Andrew points out, if Obama belonged to a church that preached for decades that whites were inferior, don't you think it might become an issue?

The Liberal Agenda

HBO Real Time will Return January 18, 2013

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.

Why Aren't GMOs a Campaign Issue?

By Bill Maher

According to a poll done a few years ago, over 90 percent of Americans in all age groups and income levels think genetically modified food should be labeled. Seems like a no-lose campaign issue for either Romney or Obama. So why aren't they talking about it?

Back in 2007, Obama said he supported food labeling; but since he's been president he's been silent. And so has Romney, even though there's evidence both Romney and his wife eat mostly organic food, which suggests to me that they have at least some concern about what they put in their mouths. Or maybe they're just trying to counteract the daily campaign diet of photo-op corn dogs.

Actually, I can see why Romney would be hesitant to talk about GMOs, because in his early days as a consultant he helped convince the company Monsanto to shift its focus from chemical manufacturing to biotech.

Leaving aside the question of whether genetically-modified crops are good or bad (and since some studies have shown feeding it to rats gives them giant tumors, I vote for "bad"), it’s a simple issue of you have the right to know what you're eating.

Conservatives are constantly having freakouts over the phony notion that Obamacare gives government bureaucrats control over their bodies. But Monsanto already has control over your body, unless you spend eight hours a day researching every item sold at Trader Joe's. Scientists can't even do studies on Monstanto GM seeds unless Monstanto gives them permission first.

It reminds me of how when you buy the new Taylor Swift album on iTunes you don't actually own the music. You only own a license to play the music file.

Corporations are able to arbitrarily make the rules and we just have to suck it up and accept it. That is, if we want to eat and listen to music.

King of the Hill

By Bill Maher

All the time now, I’m starting to hear, "The president had complete control of Congress for two years, and did everything he wanted." This is such bullshit. First of all, no president has that much control over senators. You really think Ben Nelson, whose state deplores Obama, really feels that much pressure to be loyal to him?

But the bigger issue is, it’s just factually wrong. Democrats had a "filibuster proof" majority in the senate for a very short period. It took Al Franken seven months to get seated because of the recount dispute, and by the time he was, Ted Kennedy was dying. So Democrats really only had 60 senators from September 24, 2009, when Kennedy’s replacement was named, until February 4^th, 2010, when Republican Scott Brown won the special election there. The senate was in session for just 72 days over that period, so that’s how long Obama had a real Democratic Congress -- 72 days, not two years.

Or, if you like charts:

111th Senate • Source: Wikipedia

One of the things that sucks is that Obama has never figured out a way to blame Congress for blocking things, presumably out of fear that it will make him appear weak. But how is he not running more against a Congress with a serial killer approval rating? He’s literally three or four times more popular than they are.

Violence Inflation

By Bill Maher

What happened to putting one in a guy's leg?

Because it's not like the movies. People don’t get shot and keep coming at you. They get shot and instantly fall to the ground and scream, "I'm fucking shot! You fucking shot me!!" And even if they do come at you again, you have certain advantages: one, you're not shot in the leg, and two, you've still got a gun with lots of bullets left in it. Often that carries the day. Just saying.

But recently we had another example of a cop in America shooting to kill because he felt vaguely threatened. Because the other guy had a gun? No. Because the other guy had a knife? No.

The other guy was an 18-year-old college student with no clothes on. And now he's dead. Yes, a campus police officer at the University of South Alabama fatally shot a naked freshman.

At 1:23 a.m. on a Saturday, someone was banging on the window of the police station. "When an officer exited the station to investigate, he was confronted by a muscular, nude man who was acting erratically," according to a statement from the university.

The police say he "repeatedly rushed the toward the officer…in a threatening manner." Threatening with what, his hard-on?

Sounds like a college student drunk or on mushrooms thought it'd be funny to mess with the campus police. Because campus police are one step below mall cops.

From there the police statement goes on to describe how the officer did everything by the book -- ordered the kid to halt, retreated, drew his weapon, retreated, but the naked teen wouldn't stop, so he had no choice but to shoot him in the chest and kill him. Yes, according to the university, this cop did absolutely everything required to avoid a lawsuit -- er, I mean, having to use deadly force.

Hasn't this gone too far? I mean, this kid was white, after all.

Weed the People

By Bill Maher

Here's a statement issued by LaToya Cantrell, who's running for New Orleans City Council, about her husband, Jason Cantrell, who's a New Orleans city prosecutor. See if you can guess what Jason did:

“I absolutely do not condone his actions. I love my husband unconditionally and am very concerned for his health and well-being, and for that of our family. I hope that this incident will encourage Jason to seek the professional help [he needs].”

Did Jason abuse a pet? Set up a hidden video camera in a Starbucks restroom? Get caught autoerotic-asphyxiating with a gay male prostitute? No. Jason Cantrell was talking to some cops in the courtroom where he works and when he went to pull something out of his pocket, a joint fell out. A single marijuana cigarette.

Jason was led out of the courtroom, cited by police, suspended without pay and eventually forced to resign from his city attorney job, which he's held for the past 17 years. Over a single marijuana cigarette.

So Jason Cantrell, public servant, like millions of other decent hardworking Americans, chooses to unwind with a benign plant rather than a glass of hard liquor. Fine, Jason, but now that we know about it, your life as you know it has to be over. We "encourage you to seek the professional help you need."

When the prosecutors themselves have loose joints dropping out of their pockets, isn't it clear that criminalizing people and destroying their careers over how they choose to change their headspace is a twisted, immoral disgrace?

Dry Me a River

By Bill Maher

Americans are willfully ignorant. If you give any credence to science whatsoever, you know global warming is happening. If you have eyes and nerve endings, you can see it and feel it. And yet, we somehow dismiss this crisis, this global emergency, as something we'll either think our way out of or Jesus will take care of. But what if Jesus' way of taking care of it is to slowly turn up the thermostat until we take a hint and get off our asses?

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 65 percent of America's mainland is experiencing some form of drought. In Michigan, hay has gotten so expensive people are abandoning their horses. In Colorado, Parks and Wildlife officials have had to destroy 30 "nuisance" bears because they've encroached on populated areas looking for food. In Missouri, over-dry soil is shifting, causing homes to crumble and crack. In New Mexico, ranchers are cutting their neighbors' fences so their cattle can graze. In Texas, water is so scarce Rick Perry’s been forced to grind up and snort his painkillers.

The U.S. Drought Monitor is produced in partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Map courtesy of NDMC-UNL.

 

"Droughts, floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather cost the U.S. economy at least $55 billion in 2011, according to NOAA, with 14 separate events exceeding $1 billion. The devastating drought and associated wildfires in Texas and Oklahoma alone cost American crop farmers $7.6 billion and the cotton and cattle industries around $5.4 billion."

There's a real, measurable economic cost. You'd think, for no other reason, greed would compel us to adjust how we live and make money in a way that would allow us to, well, continue to live and make money.

QUOTES FROM “REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER" Oct. 19, 2012

Friday, October 20, 2012

QUOTES FROM “REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER”

Following are quotables from “Real Time with Bill Maher” for Friday, October 20, 2012.  “Real Time with Bill Maher” airs Fridays at 10:00PM ET (10:00PM PT, tape delayed) on HBO, with additional replays throughout the week on HBO and HBO 2.

This week’s format was a little different. Frist off, there were two debaters.
-        Bill Maher in his opening monologue regarding the second Presidential candidate debate

He said he had binders of women made up. But first of all, who else keeps binders of women? Serial killers. Every serial killer movie, the cops bust into the serial killer’s lair and what do they find? Binders of women…and then they open the freezer and a head falls out.
-        Bill Maher in his opening monologue regarding Romnye’s gaffe

The Mormons had good news today. Billy Graham, who is 112, has taken Mormonism off his website’s list of cults. This is typical of Christian right’s stance on Mitt Romeny. They still believe he will go to Hell for all eternity but in this life, they’d like a tax cut.
-         Bill Maher in his opening monologue

These are rights that are held in fifty other nations around the world. Even really progressive countries like Russia and China have mandatory labeling.
-        Gary Hirshberg on Prop 37

We don’t have elections anymore, we have sales.
-        Gary Hirshberg on elections

It doesn’t matter who said what after those people died. What matters is why wasn’t there enough protection on September 11, 2012?
-        Boris Epshetyn on the attack on the US Embassy in Libya

That is what Mitt Romney represents. He is a kinder, gentler version of Gordon Gekko.
-        Matt Taibbi

Most of the people who will be disenfranchised are black, Latino, young people; basically anyone that can dance.
-        Bill Maher on voter fraud laws

This week's guests were Gary Hirshberg, Goldie Taylor, John Fund, Boris Epshetyn and Matt Taibbi.