Count Me Blue: Bill Maher on Ron Paul & Jerry Falwell

On Friday night, Bill Maher had plenty to say about Rep. Ron Paul's remarks during Tuesday's GOP "debate."

Maher and his guests were right on the money - lots of interesting points from this discussion.

Paul discusses what other GOP candidates (or DemocratIC ones, for that matter) won't, and that's the root causes of 9-11. As Maher so adeptly points out, Paul is the only current Republican Presidential Candidate who doesn't readily accept the prepackaged pap the the Bush administration has been poisoning our political discourse with since 9-11.

To hear Republicans tell it, and Giuliani was the first to pounce (since he thinks he owns the 9-11 "franchise"), you'd think that Paul lit an American flag on fire while shouting "Hail Osama!"

The fact is, no one has really taken the time to evaluate in any meaningful way why 9-11 happened in the first place. (If any of our politicians have, they haven't discussed it publicly that I've heard.) It's simply easier to say, "They hate us for our freedoms and our way of life. We're good, they're evil."

Giuliani did it first, and now others are trying to spin what Paul said by implying that he meant we invited 9-11 (Giuliani did this right after Paul's remarks during the debate). That's NOT AT ALL what Paul said. What Paul meant by his remarks is that by sticking our noses arrogantly into so many other country's business, we have made ourselves a prime target. Paul was not being unpatriotic. Republicans are now trying to Al Gore Paul with another "I invented the Internet" moment.

What's most outrageous of all is the Republican movement to exclude Paul from future debates. How... American!

The fear and war mongering from this debate is about what I'd expect from a group of Republican Presidential Candidates, but Tuesday's debate took it to a whole new level. Mitt Romney's suggestion that we need to "double the size of Guantanamo [the detention center at our Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where we are holding enemy combatants and prisoners of war]" is the most asinine thing I've heard so far in this young 2008 campaign.

I'm already sick of the line "they'll follow us here," which is being used ad nauseam by this administration to scare the living shit out of people. Bush's cabal has been doing it since 9-11, and to often dramatic success. Actually, this is a toned-down version of what Cheney was saying over and over and over again while campaigning around the country prior to the '04 election - "We are the only party that can keep you safe," or a close variant of that.

If there's any hope for this country at all, then that type of absurd political lying is over. At the very least, I'd like to think that this country is sick and tired of Karl Rove's brand of politics. We'll know soon enough.

Maher also points out one other interesting aspect of Tuesday's debate - health care, education and environment questions were all not surprisingly absent from the debate - not ONE question from any of those categories. Yet, those are three of the most important topics that we must address in aggressive ways in the next administration.

Of course, the WSJ's John Fund points out, "that's [due to] the moderator," and Maher quickly shot back "like a presidential candidate can never answer a question that isn't asked." True enough.

And if you want to stick with Fund's moderator argument, the debate was hosted by Fersatz News, so of course the questions were going to play terrorism and homeland security to the hilt.

One other quick clip from Maher's show - his tribute to Jerry Falwell...