by Catherine Giordano
Has this ever happened to you? You just keep killing zombies and they won’t stay dead. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? On episode #354 of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” we learn a little something about that during the “New Rules” segment. Here's the recap and review of the show...with commentary, of course.
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It was all about Republican lies. They certainly won’t admit
to lies. The best they can do is to say they “misspoke.” But worse yet, when
caught in a lie, they don’t stop saying it.
Republican lies about the Iraq war are finally starting to
elicit some outrage, but where is the outrage over the lies about the Affordable Care Act? Everything
Republicans said about it was untrue. There are no death panels. Young people
have signed up. Enrollees have paid their premiums. The number of uninsured has
dropped. People like it—even Republicans-- 75% of Republicans who are now
covered like it. But Republican politicos continue to lie about it. Maybe Republicans
have a case of “If-it-wasn’ t-for-wrong-opinions-I- wouldn’t-have-any-opinions-
at-all.”
On the other side of the ACA debate, Obama may have told one
lie. It was an inadvertent lie about being able to keep your doctor; it
affected less than 2% of people, and when “observable reality” showed it to be
untrue, he stopped saying it.
Republicans are lying about fracking, lying about voter
fraud, lying about tax cuts for the rich trickling down to the middle class, et
cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But no matter how many times these ideas are shot
down, they keep on standing. Maher said,
“They are roaming the countryside, neither living or dead … like Dick Cheney.” Then Maher showed a
picture of Cheney, and, I swear, even without makeup, he looks like a
zombie.
Maher concluded with a brief description of how the lies
circulate from one right-wing media outlet to another until they finally go to
die “being tweeted by Donald Trump.”
Republicans are still lying about climate change/global
warming, although every day the evidence against their denials grows stronger. The
interview was with Jason Box, climatologist,
glaciologist, and professor at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. His
observations indicate that the oceans will rise 70 feet, not just five or six
feet as others are predicting, and hehis predictions have been right before
when others were wrong. Box says that the glaciers are getting sooty, getting
darker and dirtier, and therefore less reflective of sunlight. He says, that
this loss of reflectively is not being factored into the global warming models
of others.
Republicans don’t just tell lies, they tell stupid lies. Republican state senator of Kentucky,. Brandon Smith, claimed that man-made
climate change is scientifically implausible because Mars and Earth share
“exactly” the same temperature and since Mars doesn’t have any coal mines, coal
can’t be responsible for global warming. A rather absurd argument made all the more absurd
by the fact that Earth and Mars do NOT have the same temperature. According to NASA,
the average temperature on Earth is 57 degrees Fahrenheit--138 degrees above
Mars' average of -81 degrees. That pesky observable reality. (Why am I feeling
the urge to type this whole paragraph in caps? Oh, I know, because it is such a
STUPID LIE!)
Speaking of stupid, Governor Rick Perry (R, TX) was the butt of a lot of Maher’s jokes about how
stupid he is. Maher quipped that Obama did not need to go to the border “to see
a five-year old who can barely speak English. I’m with Rick Perry right now.”
Later he said that all the media coverage of Obama shaking hands with a man wearing
a horse head mask shouldn’t have been a big deal because he later shook hands
with “a horse’s ass” (Rick Perry.) Bill got a few more licks in at Perry
because Perry wanted to avoid being photographed with Obama, but as foiled by
Obama. Bill said that Obama not only shook the governor’s hand, but patted Perry
on the arm, back, and shoulders making sure to get his “Kenyan cooties” all
over him.
For more about rick Perry, read: Oopsies
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| Rick Perry |
Obama was meeting with Perry because of the immigration/refugee
crisis happening n Texas. One panelist, Reihan
Salam, a conservative political commentator, columnist
for Slate and National Review, and author of Grand
New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American
Dream, said we should open a processing center in Mexico. News Flash—these
people are NOT Mexicans—they come mainly from Guatemala, El Savador, and Honduras.
They are more refugees than immigrants because they have fled their country to
escape the drug-gang violence.
Maher blamed the crisis on the drug related crime, and said
the solution was to legalize drugs to remove the profit from drug trafficking. No
profit, no gangs. Another panelist, Ron Suskind,
a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author whose most recent book is Life,
Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism, agreed that we
needed to “deal with the problem at the source.”
The third panelist, Congresswoman Donna Edwards (D, MD) attributed the problem to a “patchwork quilt
of immigration laws.” One of those laws,
signed by George W. Bush, requires that unaccompanied minors must see an
immigration judge before a decision can be made as to whether they are sent
back to their home country or allowed to stay. (Currently, about 85% of these
kids already have a family member in the United States willing to take them
in.)
Maher said that the people of Central America seem to think “America
is like the Holiday Inn. Kids stay free.” Maher also railed about the United
States acting like it is being overwhelmed
with 50,000 refugees. He pointed out that many counties far smaller than the
United States manage to deal with hundreds of thousands and even millions of refugees.
Salam reiterated that they should stay
in Mexico—see what I mean about zombies—once again—they are NOT Mexicans. Maher
appeared to lose patience with Salam and said to him, “Your folks weren’t on
the Mayflower.”
The mid-show guest was Sandra
Tsing Loh, a writer, actress, and radio
personality who is the author of The Madwoman
in the Volvo: My Year
of Raging Hormones and Mother
on Fire: A True Motherf%#$@ Story About Parenting! She was a whirlwind of energy as she ranted
about the situation of women in mid-life. Aside from the raging hormones, it
appears she is OK with hormones. It just returns women to the person they were
when they were 12 year-old girls. She said by 2015, one out of every two women
in America will be post-menopausal and “having more sex than ever because they
are not making babies.” In comparison, in 1900, women only lived to an average
age of 48 so there weren’t a whole lot of women dealing with menopause back
then. Tsing Loh doesn’t think we should worry about electing women to high
office because of their monthly estrogen surges—the real problem is electing
men with their continual overabundance of testosterone which makes them too
aggressive.
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| Menopause or Global Warming? |
One woman who should never again be elected to high office
is Sarah Palin, but every time you
think she is gone forever, she ‘s back just like those pesky zombies. Maher
skewered both her and John Boehner over the lawsuit Boehner is filing against Obama.
Palin is all over TV calling Boehner a wuss for not going for impeachment. So Maher
did the mid-show comedy segment giving us Articles of Impeachment written by
Palin. One of the articles blamed Obama for the riots in “Ben Gazarra.” The articles
included a variety of malapropisms and ended up devolving into her grocery
list.
The Hobby Lobby decision was discussed not only as a freedom-of-religion
issue, but as a woman’s issue. Edwards pointed out that 40% of the businesses in
this country are the same type of corporation as Hobby Lobby is and that “women
are not going to stand for it.” Edwards believes
this should be about freedom of religion for employees because “corporations
can’t posses a religious right.” Maher pointed out that Justice Scalia
completely reversed himself from his early opinion involving the religious
rights of native Americans. “No peyote for Injuns,” but Christians can get
exempted from the law. Maher threw out a rhetorical question about what would
have happened if a Muslim group had brought the suit.
Last Maher discussed economic realities. He quoted a group
that reported that it takes about $131,000 a year to live a middle-class life
for a family of four--a house, a car, a one-week vacation—nothing extravagant. The
median income in the United States is $50,000 a year. Salam, who had been
mostly well-behaved up to this point, finally lost it, and began angrily
flailing about. He had half a dozen objections to the study, examining the
trees and missing the forest. The zombies must have eaten his brain because otherwise
he would have seen that the point of Maher’s remarks was that once upon a time
in this country, the median income bought a nice middle-class life.
Thank you, Bill Maher, for being a zombie-slayer each week,
dispatching right-wing lies and making us laugh while you do it.
Bill Maher’s Guests: #324 July 11, 2014
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| CLICK HERE |
Jason Box: climatologist, glaciologist
Rep. Donna Edwards: Congresswoman (D, MD)
Ron Suskind: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author--His most recent book is Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism
Reihan Salam: conservative political commentator, columnist for Slate and National Review, author of Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream
 |
| CLICK HERE |
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| CLICK HERE |
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A small apology: I'm doing zombies again. I thought I was done with zombies for a while after writing about Maher's episode 23, The Real Zombie Apocalypse, and then writing a web article, ZOMBIES: The Mythology, Popularity, Psychology, Philosophy, and Reality, but Bill Maher did a New Rules segment about zombie lies, so here I am doing zombies again.
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