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.

Bubba Sparks

By Bill Maher

On Meet the Press, Romney said that Bill Clinton helped "elevate" the Democratic Convention. Did he happen to watch the speech? Because it was a point-by-point evisceration of everything he stands for.

Isn't it time for one of Mitt Romney's advisers to inform him that Bill Clinton is for the other guy? Can anybody name a single issue that Obama and Clinton disagree on, or that Clinton and Romney agree on? Doesn't it seem a little odd for Romney to be embracing this guy that's going out there on the campaign trail, punching him in the face?

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.

Weekend at Gurneys

By Bill Maher

A couple of weeks ago on Real Time, Jack Kingston told us about all the people who come into the United States seeking medical treatment from "the best healthcare system in the world." Not only is this oft-parroted argument out of touch, it's actually out of date: For several years, the number of people leaving the United States for medical care has outnumbered people coming in, and that gap is growing.

According to a study by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, it breaks down like this: Inbound medical tourism is growing, but slowly. Somewhere between 60,000 and 85,000 came here to seek treatment in 2008, and the number is projected to grow to slightly over half a million by 2017. But outbound medical tourism, Americans going abroad, was 750,000 in 2007, a big uptick from the year before. And the number ballooned to 1.3 million Americans in 2008.

It's still going up, by all reports, but the trend line was clear long before Obamacare or even President Obama: Our healthcare system wasn't working, and it was getting worse. Just as they like to ignore the financial shitstorm Obama inherited, Republicans choose to forget that our medical system was also in crisis when we elected Obama.

One reason for Americans getting treated overseas, obviously, is cost. Services abroad are 80 percent cheaper, on average. But they're not just looking for healthcare on the cheap. According to a McKinsey Company report, 40% of medical tourists are seeking better technology, and 32% are looking for better care. Also, despite the dire warnings about future waiting lists and rationing, it's already here. 15% of outgoing medical tourists are doing it because of shorter waiting periods for procedures.

Don't try telling this to Republicans, though -- they still need to believe in the America that draws people to its awesome healthcare, just like they can't let go of the idea that Mexicans are still pouring over the border. Because once they start admitting that the world is just not that into us anymore, they'll have to start examining what we actually have.

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.

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."