Those Blazy Days of Summer

By Bill Maher

It's summer, when a young man's fancy turns to wildfires. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, we currently have 52 large fires burning in 14 states. Colorado, in particular, is on fire. Hundreds of thousands of acres have been consumed, thousands of firefighters have been deployed and hundreds of homes have been burnt to the ground.  

Likewise, things are predicted to heat up here in Southern California. A new study of the effects of climate change on global fire patterns finds Southern California is "headed into a more fire-prone future" and West Hollywood can expect to become even more flaming than it is now. 

The study, led by UC Berkeley scientists, says that by the end of the century, the world will see more frequent and more severe wildfires than we see now, including fires in the tundra and the forests of the Far North. "Tundra fires": shouldn't that phrase alone make you say, "Hmm, maybe there is something to this global warming"? I'm not saying we're in for even more extreme weather, but they say Adele really will be able to "set fire to the rain." 

Of course Republicans will dismiss this as bunk because, after all, these are "Berkeley" scientists and they used "16 different global climate models" to gather "global wildfire and climate data for roughly the last decade and examined climate variables that affect fuel availability." And, if that doesn't spell "liberal hoax," I don't know what does. 


By not effectively regulating polluters or funding green technology now, Republicans are ensuring a future of more expense, and possibly even our ultimate demise. Isn't that some serious stuff to be politically toying with -- the survival of Man? 


It's time we realized "the adults in the room" aren't the ones living for the immediate gratification of "right now," with no regard for long-term consequences.

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.

Family Guise

By Bill Maher

A rich Republican started a pro-gay marriage Super PAC. Guess why.

Earlier this month, The New York Times had a fawning profile of Paul Singer, a 67-year-old conservative billionaire who has spent $10 million on gay rights and gay marriage initiatives. He's also a big Romney supporter. So I'm reading this and I'm wondering, "why is this guy for gay marriage?" 

The article doesn't give me a clue until the ninth paragraph, when we find out that he's got a gay son. Yes, once again we have a conservative who has become enlightened because of a family member. Well, good for him. Yet at the same time he's raising a ton of money for a candidate who supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. So I guess the message this guy is sending to his gay son is, "I love you, but not as much as I'd love a reduction in the capital gains tax."

Providence and Pensions

By Bill Maher

Providence means the invisible guiding hand of God, so I'm always sad to see things skidding wildly into shit creek in a place called Providence.  But that's exactly what happened this year to Providence, Rhode Island, population 178,000.  You could fit the entire population of Providence inside two LA Coliseums and have 9,000 extra seats.  It's not exactly Tokyo.  So the townsfolk were surprised when their unions told them they owed them $901 million for their pensions.

And no, I'm not just blaming the unions.  They're the nicest bunch of no-necks you'd ever like to meet.  There are other problems with the system.  Retirees living longer, for instance, and the pension funds losing money in the market.

But unemployment in Rhode Island is 11%.  It's a beleaguered little Chow-Chow of a state.

And Providence was going bankrupt. So last month -- in cooperation with the unions -- they reformed the pension system.  You can do this stuff, if both sides agree not to be assholes.  One of the things they did was get rid of the 5 percent and 6 percent annual increases given to about 600 former firefighters and police.  Another was to cap future pensions at 1.5 times the state's median annual household income, or about $82,000.  Which doesn't sound like any robber barons are kicking the stool out from under the workingman, but that's just me.

There are two dozen city retirees collecting more than $100,000 a year in Providence.  Which is nice for them, but hard on a tiny city of people who aren't evil or greedy or anything. Really. I've been there.

The poster child for the problem with the Providence pension system is former fire chief Gilbert McLaughlin. And I know this is anecdotal, but that's really just another word for "fact you don’t like."  McLaughlin retired in 1991, age 55, making $63,510 a year.  His contract entitled him to a 6% cost of living increase every year.  So this year, for not being fire chief, he made $196,813.  If McLaughlin lives to be 100 -- and why not, it's not like he's fighting fires -- he would've earned $700,000 a year under the old system.

Something had to give.  So Providence -- and the whole state, governed by our old pal Linc Chafee, neither greedy nor evil, nor out to destroy the middle class -- are suspending cost of living increases, and capping benefits.

I think we need unions.  But when people hear about the retired fireman whose pay doubles every twelve years, you can see how they might not like it.

Mission: Failure

By Bill Maher

Obviously, last month’s jobs report sucked. Only 69,000 new jobs were created – about half what economists expected – and the worst number in a year.  The economy has to create about 120,000 jobs every month just to keep up with the increase in population.

That’s just the hard data.  But here’s how I know the news was really bad: Republicans on TV could barely contain their smiles.  To them, an economy back in the shitter means only one thing: “Woo hoo! President Romney!”

The biggest problem they have with this jobs report is that 69,000 jobs created is 69,000 too many.

Since day one, Republicans have cock-blocked any effort to create jobs. They tried to filibuster the stimulus – one thing that did create a ton of jobs – even though roughly one third of it was tax cuts. They filibustered last summer’s American Jobs Act. They took the government hostage over the debt ceiling, which led to our credit rating being lowered and destroyed any potential for recovery last summer.

This is worse than rooting for failure – it’s ensuring failure. People don’t like it when I bring up the “t word” – treason – but I haven’t heard any convincing arguments suggesting Republicans have done anything but try to thwart efforts to create jobs since Obama became president.

We know where the worst job losses are coming from: the public sector. We could hire back the 300,000 teachers who lost their jobs because of the recession right now.

We can also accelerate private sector jobs by doing the massive infrastructure projects that we need to do sometime anyway – why not now, when borrowing money is free? It doesn’t make any sense not to do that unless you’re rooting for the economy to remain stalled. And no, don’t say the deficit. What really hurts deficits is a stalled economy.

Also, when Democrats would criticize the war in Iraq, they got accused of hurting the morale of the troops. What about hurting the morale of the economy? Talking it down definitely creates negative animal spirits that make the economy sucking a self-fulfilling prophecy. On this front, the worst is yet to come: Romney’s Super PACs are going to spend a billion dollars over the next few months telling us how much the economy sucks.

By the way, as bad as the jobs report was, if you watched the news, it was like Lehman Brothers collapsed again. Yet, 69,000 jobs were created. You know how many on average per month were created under Bush, even after you take out his worst months from the Great Recession? 66,000. You know how many for Bush if you include the recession months? 11,000. And ALL his job creation came from public sector growth. He lost private sector jobs, where Obama has created about 3.8 million.

That’s the truly horrible news – as bad as this job report was, it was much better than the average over the last decade. Though it would be nice if both parties were interested in doing something about it. 

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The Endth Degree

The Endth Degree

By Bill Maher

Is going to college still even worth it? College grads are coming out with degrees, yes – and herpes – but also with student loan debt totaling $60,000, $80,000, $100,00. These kids haven’t even gotten started in their careers and they’re already saddled with what’s tantamount to a full mortgage. In this sucky economy, graduates find themselves back in their old bedrooms at their parents’ homes, taking jobs in the service industry that they could have gotten without a college degree.

The cost of higher education in the US has soared in recent decades while median incomes have stagnated. The California State University schools raised their tuitions for the second time in less than a year, making this year’s tuition over 23% higher than the previous fall’s. And those are just the most recent increases. Attending a Cal State school now costs twice what it cost just back in 2007. And that’s not even counting the price of weed.

The old canard is that people with bachelor’s degrees make twice as much as high school graduates over their careers. But average starting salaries for college graduates just fell 10% and, if you take into account the higher income taxes paid by college grads and the four to six years they spend out of the job market getting their degrees, is that $60,000 to $100,000 in college loan debt really worth it?

And is the degree really worth it? A new comprehensive study of college grading over the decades finds that just about everybody who pays their tuition bills is deemed exceptional. 43% of letter grades awarded today are A’s as compared to just 15% back in 1960. By 2008, A’s and B’s represented 73% of all grades awarded at public colleges and 86% of all grades awarded at private colleges. It’s Lake Wobegon, “Where all the children are above average.” And that’s in spite of studies that show college students spend far less time studying today than they did decades ago.

If everybody is a genius, aren’t you paying $100,000 to $150,000 just to get your ticket stamped? You’re not buying an education so much as you’re buying a degree with a commendable GPA. Has the college degree with a B average become just a consumer product you can buy with a $100,000 loan? Wouldn’t a bright, industrious kid be better off in this economy to just jump into the job market and try to excel through merit?

The Right Shift

By Bill Maher

Good news: last month, for the first time in weeks, Congress passed a bill! And wait until you hear what you get: by a vote of 78 to 20, the Senate voted to extend the life of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. …People, please! Control yourselves!

Yes, the Import-Export Bank. It’s been around for 80 years. They re-upped it for another three. Now, what do you 80% of Americans who disapprove of the job Congress is doing have to say about that?? Hit the links, Speaker Boehner! You’ve earned it.

Now, if I were a Washington pundit, I’d launch into some boring speech about how both sides are equally to blame, and then I’d call it a day and we’d all meet at Katherine Graham’s house for cocktails. Which is weird because Katherine Graham is dead. But this is why you never see us booking George Will and Peggy Noonan on my show (besides the fact that they wouldn’t do it): Because the same old Washington pundits haven’t said anything interesting since disco. Also because the idea that the blame for our government’s dysfunction is equally shared by the parties just is a giant, steaming mound of horseshit and anyone who has paid attention to politics over the last 20 years knows it. Or as I like to call it, “The Rise of the Party of the Apes.”

In fact, recently Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two old wonks who have been in Washington as long as the Potomac, wrote a book called “It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism” in which they basically say, flat out, what I say every week: it’s the Republicans who are crazy. And they wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post to go along with the book called, “Let’s Just Say It: The Republicans Are the Problem.”

They write: “We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.” And they’re not saying Democrats are blameless and perfect. We all know there’s only been one perfect man in human history. And that’s David Beckham.

But it reminded me of something Barney Frank recently said: “…people have said to me, well, why can't you work things out with the Republicans, and my answer to my friends has been: Exactly on what issues do you think Michele Bachmann and I can compromise?” Basically Barney is saying, look, how do you expect me to work on the 2+2=4 bill when their side believes math is a liberal plot to turn your kid queer?

Take Dick Lugar. Who was always a staunch conservative, just not the modern-day insane variety. He was just throttled in the Republican Senate primary in Indiana by a Tea Party guy named Richard Mourdock. And after Mourdock won he said this about working with the other side: “I certainly think bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view.” Which is sort of like saying to your girlfriend, “I think both our sexual needs will best be fulfilled by you blowing me.”

Or take Allen West. Seriously, take him to the padded cell and give him 20 CCs of the high test. Ornstein and Mann start off their Post op-ed by noting that recently Rep. Allen West said that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. And not one Republican said, “Allen, come on. You’re making us look dumb.” Not one of the Republican candidates for president said anything. Because in today’s Republican Party, that’s not even edgy anymore. They probably saw him later on and were like, “Word, Allen. Word.” Because that’s how they think black people talk.