will.i.am's great Boehner remix

I have so much to get to- I've, ahem, EARMARKED some blogging time this morning before getting back to condo repairs, but I had to share this first. I found this on Salon this morning, and my laughter jolted me out of my pre-caffeinated slumber. This could very well be some sort of Mastercard "Priceless" commercial, but that's about as far as I can take it.

Will.i.am is awesome; maybe he should change his name to will.i.am.a.genius or something- just a thought. I've seen him on Real Time with Bill Maher numerous times, and he's not just another annoying celeb with an opinion, he's informed about the issues, and he knows how to resonate with his message.

Anyway, there's obviously a deeper message here. When I first watched this, I laughed, but after I watched it again, it got me to thinking- I'm sick to death of the right giving me 15 reasons why I CAN'T have something, especially when in the end our enormously massive federal budget piles up to one big nothing / one big nothing at all (cue Dave Matthews Band music) if we can't provide basic health care to everyone. If you've been following the health care debate, and you even have a scintilla of an open mind, it all boils down to this - Democrats are fed up with a health care system that favors the well off and largely screws the middle and lower classes, while Republicans and conservatives (I'm lumping a few Democrats in the latter group) have whined about "cost."

Of all the reasons to oppose a much-needed health care overhaul, cost is among the stupidest. At the risk of sounding like a broken record because I keep carping about it, in our government's next fiscal year, we are spending around $708bn on our defense budget (not counting the Iraq and Afghanistan missions). Hey, if the military industrial complex, which along with the pharmaceutical companies, banks, and Wall St. pretty much own this country and our politicians, can get theirs, then there's no justifiable reason that any American citizen should be denied health care, period.

I'd like to think that's the underlying theme of will.i.am's nicely produced video.

BTW, extra kudos to will.i.am for putting this together so quickly- it's not like this happened weeks ago.

Maher is back: New Rules

Last night marked the return of Bill Maher's Real Time after a two-month hiatus. As usual, his show was marked with humor, lots of wit, and yes, some serious political discussion. His all-woman panel focused almost exclusively on the economy, and how much trouble we really are in. Not a great way to end an already downtrodden Friday, but we need plenty of frank political discussion like this - we sure aren't getting enough of it in our mainstream media.

I'm glad to see that Maher is continuing his tradition of finishing his show with the New Rules segment - I never miss it. Last night's was more funny than serious, & not his best, but still worth a listen. I'll cut him some slack, since he's just coming back from such a long layoff.

Maher's skewering of Republican Minority Leader John Boehner was particularly funny - seriously, why is this guy so tan? Of course, I can't add much to what Maher said, but I do find it pretty funny. And by the way, I'd like to know just how one comes up with the pronunciation BAY-ner with that spelling? God, the poor guy - he must have been mercilessly teased as a child - that's a lot of anger to be carrying around. His anger took a pretty funny turn last week, which I'll discuss in just a bit.

Set your DVRs for Friday nights at 10 - it's must-view TV for Progressives.

A lil' Real Time for your Sunday morning

Bill Maher's final New Rule on his show Friday night is one of the best I've ever heard him deliver:

And finally New Rule, now that you've lost Republicans have to agree not to waste everyone's time spending the next four years screaming for investigations of Barack Obama over made up bulls#*t. Let's not kid ourselves. The hard core Republican base is like a stalker. Rejection just makes them crazier. You think Matt Drudge was a vindictive p#%ck before. His headline Wednesday morning was Senior Citizen and Woman Beaten By Black Man. [...] And wait till you see Ann Coulter's new book, How to Field Dress a Liberal.

You know there's loyal opposition and then there's just opposition. Let's not do the 90's again except for the part where we have peace and prosperity. You know there was an entire industry back then dedicated to making Bill Clinton's life miserable over expensive hair cuts and old land deals and the Lincoln Bedroom and getting blown. But this ain't the 90's.

We've got two wars, a melting planet and the only thing keeping the economy from total collapse is Sarah Palin's shopping sprees. But you know what phrase I don't want to hear used frivolously for the next four years whenever Barack Obama forgets to put the kids in the car seat? Disrespect for the rule of law. Dick Cheney ordered prisoners tortured by name. That ship has sailed.

I don't want to hear Sean Hannity say that "Barack Obama announced that his daughters will be getting a puppy. A puppy from where? Probably a chihuahua that came in from Mexico illegally. And how do we know this isn't a dog that pals around with terriers?

You know when Obama starts a preemptive war and then f%#ks it up and makes torture our official policy and outs a CIA agent and purges US Attorneys and tries to put his cleaning lady on the Supreme Court and doesn't act on global warming and appoints at the head of FEMA an ex-d*#do salesman who was his college roommate, you know, that kind of stuff, believe me I'll be with you.

But until then I don't want to see Republicans freaking out if Obama isn't singing the National Anthem loud enough or they find out he gets his suits made in France. If he puts a moon roof in the Presidential limo, he's not making himself Fuehrer. He's just trying to get the smell of stupidity out of the seats. And mostly I don't want to hear about ACORN. Your guy lost by eight million votes. Just because you don't know any black people doesn't mean they don't exist.

So that's it. No Special Prosecutors. No trumped up investigations. If Republicans who really want to look into something for the next four years, my suggestion, try a mirror.

Don't hold your breath on Hannity, Bill - the neocons have already kicked the hate machine into overdrive, which is saying something, considering the number of blatant lies put forth by McCain and his enablers during the campaign.

My not-so-bold prediction is that Obama's victory will do plenty for hate radio - narrow minded people who don't want to give Obama a chance and who so despise him will jump into the metaphorical arms of Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Bill O'Lielly, Matt Drudge, etc. We'll see.

Bonus:

How can you not laugh at the above footage of Fox News announcing that Barack Obama has won the presidency? It doesn't get much better than this, & it's pretty telling that the network called the presidential race in this way. Heaven forbid that a Fox personality be associated with declaring Obama president. And the network (and the right) wonder why Obama has shunned the network.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Red State Special!

This is a pretty funny skit from Friday night's Real Time. I'll have much more to say about Friday's show later today, but in the meantime, enjoy - this one's pretty funny.

In lieu of wealth, McSame's spreading something else around

I was listening to last night's Real Time With Bill Maher this morning, and I heard some pretty sage words from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (at right) that really struck me. We've been hearing all sorts of rhetoric from the McCain camp about Obama's comment that he intends to "spread the wealth around," which has been stoking up people's prejudices and hatred toward the lower class since those words came out of his mouth.

Actually the hatred in this country toward those less advantaged is nothing new; it's been happening for decades now, since at least 1980, and actually even longer. Of course, the right is willfully and forcefully aided in no small part in spreading this hatred by the hatemongers on right-wing talk radio and TV: Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, etc.

What gets pathetically little coverage in the media, and quite frankly what the Obama campaign should be doing a better job of articulating, is just how spectacular the chasm is between America's wealthiest and poorest, and how this democracy-threatening trend has spiraled out of control during the Bush administration.

Take it away, Bernie:

We don't talk about it terribly often, something they don't talk about in Congress and certainly in the corporate media - that the wealthiest 1 percent in America earn more income than the bottom 50 percent. The top 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. We have by far, more inequality in terms of wealth and income than any other major country on earth. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty and more billionaires [than any other country] and I don't think that's what our forefathers intended.

Truer words have never been spoken by a politician in my lifetime.

What Sanders had to say is beyond inconvenient for Republicans and their many right-wing enablers - the right has successfully used Karl Rove wedge issues like gay rights, abortion, gun control, RELIGION, immigration (the '08 campaign's #1 wedge issue) and xenophobia to distract people who really need economic relief from nearly 30 years of Reaganomics, which has bankrupted our treasury and worked to destroy the middle class in this country.

We (and by "we," I mean the middle and lower classes of America) are never going to take our country back until we stopped being duped by politicians who really don't have our best interests at heart.

Incidentally, Sen. Bernie Sanders appears on Thom Hartmann's radio show on Air America Radio every Friday for a one-hour Brunch With Bernie segment, and it's excellent. I'm never going to live in Vermont (too cold for me), but I wish I could cast a vote for Sanders, and I hope more like him get elected to the U.S. Congress.

Bill Maher is on a roll

Bill Maher may have been off all summer, but he's certainly making up for lost time... in a hurry.

Maher's teeing off on Sarah Palin is well deserved, and dare I say it less than two weeks after she was declared as McSame's running mate, already long overdue.

At the beginning of the clip above, we are treated to Palin's characterization of our troops as "on a mission from God," which I find despicable and highly distasteful. Isn't that sort of justification for violence something that most Americans chastise (Read: HATE) Middle Eastern Muslims for? Just a thought.

Even more amusing is Michael Steele, the GOPAC chair, defend Palin - that her experiences as a "small town mother" are good enough to be vice president of the United States. An indignant Maher asks, "Are you kidding me?!?" and that's exactly what I was thinking when I heard Steele say it.

Maher was probably over the top when he characterizes Palin as a "Jesus freak," but I do agree with him when I hear people in this country running for elective office talking about our troops being on a "mission from God," I find that wholly offensive. What mission exactly would that be? To go to Iraq, kill people who were no threat to us, and cause one of the biggest refugee problems in the world, currently at over four million people.

And by the way, Dan Savage is brilliant - I love him. And don't believe the spin for one second that Bush wasn't at the convention because of Hurricane Gustav - that crisis had largely passed by the time it was his turn to speak in St. Paul and he very easily could have attended, but McCain's people didn't want him there, making Bush the first sitting president in 40 years to not attend his party's convention.

One other thought - when I heard Steele say with a smile on his face while pumping his fists, "Drill baby, drill!" I let out a mongrel yelp - GOP and Big Oil are so in bed with each other, sometimes it's hard to distinguish between the two, and evidently Steele has little awareness of just how much of a jackass he looks like when he does and says things like that. .

Of course, no discussion of an episode of Real Time is ever complete without mentioning and including his infamous New Rules, and this one was particularly funny. One of my favorites from this week was his lampooning the plastic Fred Thompson for his speech at the convention. In it, Thompson criticized Obama for trying to make a difference with a teleprompter, and, as Maher notes, that's pretty stupid to do when you're reading a speech off of a teleprompter. I guess Thompson is about as familiar with irony as he is with running a presidential campaign that lasts longer than an episode of Law & Order.

And Maher's final New Rule ? It stands on its own - watch it! I can think of nothing to add other than how funny was it for Karl Rove to paint Barack Obama as an "elitist at a country club"? This leads me to believe that Rove has never actually been to a country club.

Bill Maher is back, & better than ever

This morning I got a chance to watch the first new episode of Real Time With Bill Maher, and boy, did I miss him. Above is his opening monologue, and it was one of his better ones. He's an important liberal voice in the media, and I sure look forward to hearing his shows from now until the November election.

And the panel on his show Friday night was good as well, particularly NPR's Michelle Martin - who is no pushover sheep; she really added to the discussion, and best of all, she doesn't simply nod in agreement with all of Maher's points. Now here's hoping that this fall he doesn't bring back his most annoying and moronic guest of all, GOP pollster Frank Luntz. I enjoy hearing competing points of view, but Luntz is a GOP stooge masquerading as a mainstream poll.

However, my favorite segment from Maher's show last night was his infamous New Rules (as is often the case). Maher really took aim at critics (mostly Republican) of John Edwards, who really is the Democratic Party's most prominent, effective voice when it comes to poverty.

I'm not defending Edwards' actions in his personal life - it takes a special sort of dirt bag to cheat on your wife while she's suffering from cancer. But there was plenty of knee-jerk reaction to his adultery. I'd have Google money if I had a dollar every time I heard people, many of them Democrats, say in the wake of the outing of Edwards' affair, "Thank GOD he's not the nominee!" Well, I guess that's true, because the adulterating conservative rubes like Newt Gingrich, Dick Morris, etc. would have derided him mercilessly (and of course, hypocritically).

Of course, as Maher points out, McCain gets a pass for cheating on his first wife - it gets virtually NO discussion in our disgraceful corporate media. McCain's backers would no doubt shout, "But that was over 30 years ago!" Fair enough, but again, it still goes to character, just like the fact that he very publicly called his wife a "cunt" during one of his infamous tirades in the 1990s.

Don't get me wrong - I think politicians' private lives should stay private, but there should be no double standards, but there certainly has been considering the political sex scandals dating back to the Clinton Impeachment.

As Maher sagely points out, some of our most effective presidents in the last 100 years have strayed in their personal lives; FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, Clinton; while some of our most disgraceful presidents have, by all accounts, remained faithful; Carter, Nixon, Reagan, and most of all, President Bush 41 and our current National Embarrassment, President George W. Bush.

Maher's show is as much of a must-see as The Daily Show - it can't be missed. In fact, it's reason enough to get HBO, if you need one more.

Bill Maher's New Rules - on elitism

Last night's New Rules on Real Time With Bill Maher was one of his best segments in recent memory. His joke about Pope Benedict was funny, but I loved his slamming the Blockbuster/Circuit City deal. Great! My boycott list will shrink by one - now two companies I hate and will never frequent are getting married. I'm not sending a gift.

But, as usual, his best New Rule was saved for last, and it was about McCain.

The highlights:

If you think the Democrats are going to take away your Bible, you're an idiot. If you think they are going to take away your gun, you're an armed idiot. And if you think they are going to take away your gun to give to a Mexican immigrant to kill your God, you're Bill O'Reilly.

[Snip]

...The truth is that religion, and guns, and hating gays and immigrants are crutches that people lean on. So are fast food, crystal meth and child beauty pageants, but we don't have time to tackle all of America's addictions in one night. So let's focus on the big thing. The people who claim to be the non-elitists, are the ones who shift tax burdens from the people who fire you, to you. [Emphasis Mine] John McCain voted to repeal the estate tax, voted against raising the minimum wage, has no health care plan, and is fine with keeping the working class in Iraq for 100 years, but he's a real man of the people. And the president went to Harvard and Yale and inherited your country from his dad, but he's not an elitist because he can neither read nor write. What does it take to label someone an elitist these days, anyway? They wear shoes? They don't buy their groceries at the gas station? Their dog has a name and their truck doesn't? You know who's bitter in America? I am! Because shit kickers voted twice for a retarded guy they wanted to have a beer with, and the rest of us had to suffer the consequences.

Television gold. Don't think a small part of me didn't say to myself (okay, a very small part of me) that the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast deserved the shoddy treatment the government gave them following Hurricane Katrina because Bush carried both of those states, twice. I bet they'll think twice this time, won't they? That's if McCain doesn't work like crazy to suppress the vote in poor areas, which the Republican Party was so tragically effective at in 2000 and 2004. We'll see.

Maher's New Rules

On Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday night, Maher had some pretty strong words for those who are getting pretty impatient and antsy that there isn't a presumptive Democratic Party nominee for president.

And finally, new rule: If voting can destroy the Democratic Party, then the party isn't very democratic. Democrats need to stop freaking out about how this long primary battle between two popular candidates needs to be "settled yesterday! Because the candidates are bloodying each other! They're causing irreparable harm! Mommy and daddy are fighting!" Hey, you people need to reach into your teenager's knapsack and pull out a Paxil or Prozac and chill out.

Democrats, your task is not just to choose between this pair, it's to grow a pair. Now, I know the idea of a very close race brings up some pretty bad memories for Democrats, but these are Democratic primaries. There are no Republicans in this race, so there is nobody organized enough to actually steal the election. What is so terrible about a long, drawn out contest? A season of American Idol is, what, 87 weeks? That's a lot of time just to pick out a cruise ship entertainer. This is the presidency we're talking about. I understand that a lot of Democrats feel passionately about their candidate, and that's great. But then their passion gets the best of them and they go on Websites like DailyKos, and post stuff like the Obama supporter who wrote, "I will vote for Hillary, but then I will leave the country." Yes, because who could live in a nation that elects the person that you just voted for?

And that is what is so great about the Internet. It enables pompous blowhards to connect with other pompous blowhards in a vast circle jerk of pomposity. But that doesn't mean I'm throwing my hat in for Hillary. For one thing, she would say I was shooting at her. And I know she's going to have a tough time catching Obama, because he's black and she's not that fast. But this is America, we don't call the election before we know who the real winner is. That, after all, is the job of the Supreme Court.

Another good set by Maher, especially the crack about Coulter's, ahem, balls.

I have to respectfully disagree with Maher about "pompus blowhards" on the Internet. Hey pal, how are so-called "blowhards" on the Internet different from blowhards on TV? I'll remember that word the next time you take off on on of your "legalize marijuana" or "down with religion" rants. Just a thought, Bill, even though I love your work most of your work.

And yes, I guess I'm getting a little defensive, but sometimes, can't we just agree to disagree? I don't call Maher a blowhard when I disagree with him on something. His show is one of the few on TV anywhere where opposing views are generally debated in a reasoned and spirited yet respectful manner. He should know better.

Maher's New Rules, the coarse edition

Warning: This clip is for mature audiences and it not safe to play at work!

Bill Maher's New Rules last night were some of his funniest yet. He certainly took plenty of swipes at Hillary last night, from his humor piece on her Bosnia gaffe lie (see below) to his making fun of her not becoming president (with a beard), he made good sport of roughing her up last night. I'm sure it was mostly in good fun, and if, by some slim chance, she becomes the nominee, Maher will support her. As irritated as I am with the Clintons and their borderline despicable behavior (more on that in a bit in a separate post), I too will support her if she gets the nod to go up against McCain.

Anyway, enjoy, but again, be careful at work and who you play this one around - it's probably one of his rawest version yet. The upside: this version of New Rules would not have been nearly as funny on regular, network TV.

Bill Maher on Hillary's Village

Last night, Bill Maher took aim at Hillary Clinton's "mis-speaking" on her Bosnia trip, and it's pretty funny. Take a look...

I'm glad the writers are back. Maher is a major talent with lots of wit, but we didn't see anything this good when the writers were out.

New Rules: McSame scares Maher (Me too)

Last night, Bill Maher's New Rules on his show, Real Time With Bill Maher, ended with some pretty poignant points about John McCain. Maher contends that McCain's supposed strength, foreign policy, is his weakness. Considering McCain's multiple gaffes this week in Iraq and Israel, I don't know how anyone could argue otherwise. Some in the media really have dismissed it as a "senior moment." Well, considering the firepower he would have at his disposal were he to become president, that sure is comforting.

This really was an edition of New Rules for the ages. Just in case the video gets taken down for some reason or is no longer available in the future, here's what Maher had to say about McSame:

New Rule: Old soldiers never die, they get young soldiers killed. This week John McCain said for the third time in two days, that Iran, a Shi’ite stronghold was training Al-Qaeda, a militant Sunni organization. That the Hatfields of the Muslim world would be working with the McCoys is so not true even Dick Cheney hasn't said it. Now the press, which loves McCain because he feeds them BBQ, dismissed this as just one of those senior moments. Not to worry, he's only going to have his finger on the nuclear trigger. But it's not just a 'gaffe,' it's what McCain really thinks. And therein lies the paradox of this campaign: McCain's strength is really his weakness. He's a warrior who's dumb about war. Whoever read The Art of War, chapter three of The Art of War says, "Know thy enemy." And John McCain plainly doesn't. He thinks the solution is our presence in the Middle East. No, the problem is our presence in the Middle East. [Emphasis Mine.]

That's why I don't care if John McCain is better than Bush on global warming or torture or campaign finance, because he's exactly the same as Bush on the war. They both don't get the same thing. As long as we're setting up shop in the heart of the Arab world, we're not keeping America safer. Bin Laden goes ballistic over cartoons in Danish newspapers, and Goober and Grandpa want to put up a Hooters in Fallujah. They don't "hate us for our freedom," they hate us for our fiefdom. [Emphasis Mine] Winning the War on Terror comes down to this: what will make us safer from pissed off Arab teenagers who are willing to die? There are a number of good answers to that question, but occupying their land for the next 100 years is not one of them.

Some people look at McCain and see a tough guy who is going to protect us from the "Islamofascists." I look at him and see a walking Tom Clancy action figure who is going to get us all killed. [Emphasis Mine] And yet a new poll shows that a majority of Americans believe John McCain is the candidate best qualified to answer when that red phone rings at 3 a.m., because he'd be up anyway, trying to pee. Yes, 55 percent of Americans think it's McCain who should answer that phone, because they know John McCain is a warrior. He will not waver or hesitate. He will answer that phone and give the order that sends men to die and it will turn out to be a recording asking him if he's happy with his mortgage.

I hear Maher loud and clear, but I'm not at all confident that the rest of America does. But, Obama & Hillary need to continue to hammer away at McCain's views on the war, including his getting wrong so many facts and assumptions about Iraq and the War on Terrorism. Soundbites as usual aren't going to get it done in '08.

By the way, Maher is right about Diet Chocolate Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. As much as I love the Diet Dr. Pepper flavors, this one doesn't cut it. As I've written before, it tastes like the world's first dessert soda. It's something I want to drink about once a month or so. Just my 2¢.

Maher's New Rules

I forgot to post these last weekend, but they are still apropos and worth a listen. Plus, Maher is taking a week off, so his show won't be seen tonight on HBO; normally it airs every Friday night at 11 p.m. with lots of repeats throughout the week. So, here's a clip to tide you over until his show returns next week.

I won't try to add much to the clip above - it stands on its own, but I love how he dealt with the already trite "3 a.m. phone call" adverts from both the Hillary and Obama camps.

He's also spot on about people who are willfully misinformed and/or uninformed. It's quite amazing to me how many people there are in America today who fit one or both of the above descriptions, and some of them I know personally. Newsflash, people - if you're getting your information from one source, you're not really getting news - you're just getting that source's bias and slant on the news. (This is why I have such a big issue with the sheeple who watch Fox News - their version of reality is hard to reconcile in even the most forgiving of circumstances.)

Maher deserves credit for taking a stand against the 9-11 conspiracy theorists, too; I happen to share his opinion that 9-11 was not an inside job, but is it so far out there that I'd be completely blown away if it ever were revealed that it was? Nope - that's how little credibility this administration has.

Anyway, he wraps up with what is no doubt his line of the year...

How do I know 9-11 wasn't an inside job? Because it was a success! It took lots of planning!

Amen.

Friday's New Rules are Maher's best yet

I've been singing Bill Maher's praises for some time now, and last night, on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, he was at his ball-busting best during his New Rules, which he ends every show with every week.

My favorite part about this one was the very end - the total falsehoods and lies that are bumping around the Internet as "facts" when it comes to Barack Obama. Maher also strikes gold when he mentions how Republicans are bastardizing the memory of the late William F. Buckley, a reasonable yet well-spoken conservative and founder of The National Review. Buckley represents old-school conservatism, which is a trip down Sensible Street when compared to the likes of the scum that occupy most of the far right today; Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Lielly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Dr. Michael Wiener Savage among them.

I'll my own personal thoughts of the use of Barack Obama's middle name soon in a separate post.

More from Friday's Real Time

I took off on a rant earlier today about the lies and distortions that Rep. Jack Kingston and former Bush speech writer David Frum were spewing on Real Time Friday night. Certainly not unexpected, but what creased me was how Maher just sat there on his hands. He put up a bit of a fight, but most of the time, he just swallowed his tongue. C'mon Bill, you're just a bit better than that.

Some of my particular favorites...

Kingston: "If you want to talk about change, McCain is the candidate of change..."

Perhaps Maher gave him a bong hit backstage before the show started.

More Kingston: "What left-wing interest group has come out against Hillary or Obama. They've got all the usual suspects; the unions, and all the wacko environmentalists..."

That's just the sort of contempt for the environment that Bush has made de rigueur among Republicans. When will voters make the GOP pay the price? Polls clearly show that Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of tougher environmental regulations. I guess we have to wait for a new president. Even McCain would be better than Bush in this area. (Wouldn't he? Please? He couldn't possibly be worse, could he? Let's hope we don't find out.)

What's more, I guess I missed the memo that candidates' qualifications hinge on how many normally friendly interest groups come out against them. Asinine.

Even more Kingston: He refers to McCain as having bona-fide bipartisan credentials. I have to give McCain credit here - he has worked with Democrats on a number of important bills. This is one of his strengths.

But to suggest that Obama and Hillary have not worked together is flat-out false. And I laughed out loud at this Kingston comment: "I have served with both of them," implying that he knows them personally. First of all, I don't know how well he knows either one of them, but they are both U.S. Senators, and Kingston is in the House. That's not serving with either one of them.

Kingston, Part IV: "[McCain] wants to win the doggone war and bring the troops home."

Really? Is this the same McCain who said that our troops could end up being in Iraq for over 100 years?

I can't leave out Frum, either: "I think that the day is going to come, if Obama becomes president, a year or two into his administration, when people are trying to remember what went so terribly wrong, they will look back to that line of Hillary Clinton's about the difference between "'making speeches and making changes.'" Frum was referring to Clinton's assertion earlier recently that Obama is good at giving speeches, but not bringing about change.

The irony is not lost on me that Frum is putting Obama down for making speeches and not doing much about it. Isn't that the embodiment of what the Bush Presidency has been all about? This guy has given more lip service to more problems in this country, and done so little. What's more, Frum spent a great deal of time putting those words into W's mouth.

I also got a kick out of Frum's putting Obama down for his "windy cascades that he goes into..." Again, coming from a speech writer, that's the height of hypocrisy.

h/t to Crooks & Liars for the video clip

Great new rules from Bill Maher

I never miss Bill Maher every Friday night, ever. If we are not home, I always TiVo it and catch it over the weekend. My favorite part of every episode, his show-ending "New Rules," were particularly spot-on last Friday night. As Mahablog sagely puts it: "Sad that the best political commentary is from comedians, on cable, and not the free airwaves." Amen. Anyway, the following passage from the video above really struck a chord with me:

And finally, new rule... This Halloween, when you see something that's supposed to scare you, like a skeleton, or a severed head or a gay wizard [Referring to to gay wizard from Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore], take a moment and think about fear - what are you afraid of, and what should you be afraid of? What's really scary this Halloween - is that the same idea-free losers who won the last presidential election, may very well win the next one, by making us afraid of the wrong things. Which is why this Halloween, I'm going as something truly horrifying - a melting polar ice cap.

It's so exceedingly rare to get any sort of reasonable, thought-out, rhetoric-free political commentary these days - I'm glad that Maher is providing it (Okay, with some rhetoric, but still...) Of course, many/most on the right would vehemently disagree with me - no surprise there. The most frequent "argument" I hear is the feckless witticism that "Maher is a comedian!" [I used to hear that same thing about Al Franken, too - and he's going to be elected to the Senate a little over a year from now.] As if making someone laugh while making a powerful political point is some sort of sin, thereby disqualifying someone from having valid political opinions.

The only thing I can conclude about Maher's many critics on the right - it's jealousy. Still don't believe me? Listen to, read or watch what the right is serving up these days - Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Bill Bennett, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Lielly - Yea, that group is a barrel of laughs. I mean, the Half Hour News Hour, Fox News' "answer" to The Daily Show, lasted about as long as a bad case of chicken pox.

And Maher is absolutely right about the "idea-free losers" possibly prevailing in '08 - as much as all Americans should be concerned about homeland security, our totally out-of-whack tax policies, health care for every American, and a whole host of other issues (oh yea, the War in Iraq) - what we'll get is a whole bunch of wind-blown b.s. from the right, and we all know the good 'ole stand-bys now - gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, "family values" (I have to put that in quotes when Repubes us it), and of course, the well-worn page out of the Karl Rove play book - "Scare 'em to death with the war on terror. Lather, rinse, repeat."

Maher interviews Garry Kasparov

Bill Maher is a bomb thrower - this is not news. But, what his opponents are loathe to acknowledge is that Maher flat-out gets the great guests, and he conducts excellent interviews. One of the best I've seen Maher conduct in quite some time was on Friday night with former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is a candidate for Russian president in 2008.

As Former KGB General Oleg Kalugin said about Putin (via Crooks and Liars)

Putin? Well, I was always outspoken about him. I know this man's background better than many others. I do not talk in details—people who knew them are all dead now because they were vocal, they were open. I am quiet. There is only one man who is vocal, and he may be in trouble: [former] world chess champion [Garry] Kasparov. He has been very outspoken in his attacks on Putin, and I believe that he is probably next on the list.

That would be the very definition of political courage. Kasparov is one courageous activist, and this situation bears watching.

Kasparov spoke about the risk of his outspokenness during his interview with Maher on Friday (also via Crooks and Liars):

Bill Maher: Do you think your fame protects you? Do you think you are such an icon in Russia because of your past chess history that Putin would not kill you?

Garry Kasparov: No I don't think my name affords me an ultimate protection but unlike many other activists in Russia I can rely on my name and my fame, but still I take some measures to minimize the risk. I have bodyguards in Russia, I do not fly Aeroflot, (laughter) I do not consume any food or liquid in places that I'm not fully aware of, but again it's just minimizing the risk. I know that it may not offer me any ultimate protection if the worst comes to worst.

Maher: But when you look at what's going on in Russia, Putin has a very high approval rating. I mean there is something in the...

Kasparov: How do you know? (laughter) I mean are you sure? Are you relying on the polling results of the police state? I think that with the same type of media and pervasive security force, I believe Bush and Cheney could enjoy the same approval rating here. (Applause)

Maher: Checkmate to me.

What an interview. Click on the video above to watch the 7+ minute interview - quite fascinating.

Maher confronts 9-11 Truth Tellers

I've got a big problem with how the Bush administration (and America's Profiteer, Rudy Giuliani) handled 9-11 on that day and immediately after, but I'm firmly not in the corner of the 9-11 conspiracy theorists.

Neither is Bill Maher, who got in several verbal confrontations last night with the so-called 9-11 Truth Tellers. Take a look - mildly entertaining.

Bill Maher's take on Obama lapel pin b.s.

I'm a big fan of Bill Maher, and I make no apology for it. His Friday night show on HBO, Real Time With Bill Maher, is always can't-miss TV, but on Friday, Maher was at his best when talking about one of the dumbest news stories to ever come out of a presidential campaign - that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) stopped wearing a lapel pin.

It never ceases to amaze me (and I'll never tire of pointing out) the moronic news stories that gain "mainstream media" traction, when the real news stories go under-reported, or not reported at all. So Obama ceasing to wear a lapel pin makes him less patriotic than our windshield cowboy, President Bush? Boy, thank God Bush wears his American flag pin every day, but he routinely under funds the troops, cuts taxes on the rich in dozens of ways, gives the finger to the constitution whenever inconvenient laws clash with his political agenda, to say nothing of the fact that he started a war on a mountain of lies, which has tragically taken the lives of thousands of Americans (3,827 as of this morning) and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

But Barack Obama may not fit to be president because he stopped wearing a pin of an American flag? You've got to be kidding me. This is typical Republican pseudo-outrage though - when times get tough, wrap yourself in the American flag and question your opponents' patriotism. It's a song that's been sung far too many times in recent years - this is the first example from the '08 election, but it sure won't be the last. And nothing is more pathetic than that.

The Dow is up! All is well! Yea, right.

I'm soo tired of hearing from (mostly) politicians something that goes like this: "The economy is strong, the stock market is (choose one from: booming, surging or rising)."

For the millionth time - just because the stock market is booming, that doesn't mean that a great deal of America (and as of right now, dare I say the majority) thinks the economy is headed in the right direction.

From Gallup:

I won't pretend to be an economist, but to me, when the stock market is on the rise, that means that company profits are up. And two of the principle ways companies have increased their profits in the last decade are offshoring and downsizing - two things that devastate the average American worker.

Proof positive came last Friday on Bill Maher's HBO show, Real Time With Bill Maher. On of his guests was John Fund of the Wall St. Journal. During a discussion on the economy, when Maher brought up some not-so-great statistics about the economy, the first thing Fund said was, "but the stock market is up!" Thankfully, Maher pounced, and when Fund boasted about a four percent unemployment rate, Maher jumped on that, too.

A low unemployment rate is a good thing, but it's not completely indicative of the "health" of the workforce. When I lost my full-time, well-paying corporate job nearly five years ago, I could not find one that even remotely paid what I was earning. This forced me to wait tables and go back to graduate school. But, the minute I took a part-time job, I was no longer considered unemployed. And right now, there are millions of people in that same boat.

Another critical factor is the price of gas. At right is what the price of a gallon of gas was in San Francisco a week or so ago. (It's probably higher now.) And it's not going to get any better, probably ever. I've read in some places that a barrel of oil could top $150 by the end of the summer.

More on the oil crisis in a separate post later tonight or tomorrow.

My point here is that the economy isn't so rosy because stock prices are high. You know who that's good for? Corporations and the very rich, who are only paying 15 percent on dividends now, thanks to the Bush tax cuts. I find it nuts that a vast majority of the middle class pays well into the twenties, yet millionaires and billionaires pay 15 percent on stock dividends.

When I mention this to some Republicans I know, they accuse me of "class warfare." To me, it's only class warfare when liberals fight back. And we need to fight back more.