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| Elizabeth Warren |
If anything is going to wake up America it is Bill Maher and his guests on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, episode 331, which aired on October 3rd, 2014.
Elizabeth Warren
The interview was with Elizabeth
Warren, a senator (D, MA) and author of A
Fighting Chance. She is a fighter
with so much energy and enthusiasm. She got a standing ovation from the
audience when she was introduced. She believes
that America has lost its way and she wants to bring us back to our values.
She said after the Great Depression changes were made so
that we would not have a “boom and bust” economy, but we slipping back into an
economy run by Wall Street, the type of economy that brought us the Great
Depression. Wake Up Amercia! “The economy is leaving people and families behind
and we have to fight back.”
Elizabeth Warren believes we need to raise the minimum wage
because no one who works full time should live in poverty. She believes in equal
pay for equal work. She believes it is not your employer’s business what kind
of contraception you use. She believes that the government should not profit
from student loans to pay for tax loopholes for billionaires. She said, “This
is what the upcoming election is all about.”
Warren told us that the government is making $66 billion in
profit annually on student loans. “This fight is personal,” she said. Her
family suffered a lot of economic hardship when she was growing up and the only
reason she was able to go to college was because it only cost $50 a semester to
go to a commuter college.
Flip-A-District.com
Maher mentioned that one of the reasons he is trying to oust
Representative John Kline (R, MN) from
congress in the upcoming election is Kline’s support for oppressive rates of interest
on student loans.
He said Kline’s campaign strategy is simply to hide. Maher believes
that in order for democracy to work candidates have to put their issues on the
table. Maher is encouraging the media to report on Kline’s positions and records.
He mocked people who always vote for whoever as an “R” next to their name.
If you go to flipadistrict.com, you can download posters and other stuff.
Republicans
On the prior week’s show (see my review, Safe), Alexandra
Pelosi, documentary filmmaker, sowed video clips of her man-on-the-street
interviews. One after another, a person
who indicate that they supported the Democrat position (which weren’t labeled
with a party name), and then they would proudly proclaim they were voting
Republican. The Republicans have done a
good job of branding themselves as the party of strong defense, lower taxes and
family values. Wake up America!  |
| The Republican brand is a lie |
The Republican controlled House of Representatives went on a
six week vacation without voting on the war in Iraq in Syria to fight ISIS. They
were too cowardly to take a stand. When Republicans talk about lowering taxes,
they are not talking about YOUR taxes; they are only interested in cutting
taxes for corporations and billionaires. When they talk about family values,
they say one thing and do another. Wake
up America!
Maher mentioned during the show that the unemployment rate
is down to below 6% after a steady decline since Obama took office. Also the deficit has been cut in half sine
Obama took office. And the Obama administration accomplished this while the
Republicans did everything possible to impede his success. But Obama has low
approval ratings (in the mid 40’s). Wake up America!
(P.S. When a Republican says he is going to cut taxes, ask
him what he is going to cut to make up for the lost funding. Chances are it is a
government service that you like and depend upon. Wake up America!)
Mid-show comedy
segment
Republicans are so elitist that they actually had to put out
a commercial saying Republicans are good citizens too. They drive a Prius, they
recycle, etc. So Maher did a parody ad, saying that Democrats are just like
Republicans. They ride scooters (like Sheldon Adelson) they shoot unarmed black
people, etc. It concluded with “Democrats are Assholes Too.”Read more about this segment and see a video at Democrats are A-Holes Too.
New Rules: Dirty Vancing
Maher totally lambasted Republican hypocrisy in New Rules.
He said it was “a good election year for the bad boys of Congress” – congressmen
who blatantly misbehave and the electorate sends them back to congress anyway.
There is Vance McAlister (R, LA) who
was caught on tape passionately kissing a staffer. “His tongue was forming an
exploratory committee.” “That’s not kissing, that’s fracking.”
Mark Sanford, (R, SC) who
gave new meaning to the phrase “hiking the Appalachian Trail ,” when he went
AWOL from his job as governor to see his Argentinean mistress. Maher called him "another born-again booty-caller.
And the worse one of them all Mikael Grimm (R, NY) He’s under a 20-count indictment for fax evasion, fraud, and perjury. He forced his ex-wife to have two abortions and also forced his mistress to have an abortion. He’s a doctor who had an affair
with two of his patients. He’s up for a third term in congress and will probably
get it unlike the fetuses he conceived.
Maher said he has a new definition for insanity: Giving
Congress an 8% approval rating, and then sending them all back to Congress.
Wake up America!
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| Secret Service badge |
Maher pointed out that Obama has three times more threats
made against him than any other president. This is no time for laxity of the
secret service.
Nicholas Kristof is
a journalist,
author, op-ed columnist, and a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. His latest book
is A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating
Opportunity. He said, “The vitriol against this president is unequalled.
No prior president has been called the anti-Christ and had his citizenship
questioned.”
Maher pointed out that the Supreme Court pronounced that racism
is America was over. Even Republican Michael Steele, former chairman of Republican National Committee, political
commentator, and author of the 2010 book, Right Now: A 12-Step Program For Defeating
The Obama Agenda
had to admit it. He knows racism is not over because he is a black man.
(BTW,
take a look at the title of Steele’s book:
It proves my point about Republican obstructionism.If Obama hasn’t
accomplished as much as you hoped he would, it is the Republicans who are to
blame for that. Wake up America! )
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| Ebola virus |
Maher said that it would be nice to have a surgeon general
to deal with this problem We don’t have a surgeon general because Republicans
won’t confirm Obamas nominee because he once said something about guns that
they don’t like.
Kristoff pointed out the problem has come to our country
because we ignored it when it was in West Africa. When will people learn that we cannot ignore
problems anywhere in the world. They
will grow larger and eventually threaten us too. Oceans can’t protect us
anymore. Wake up America!
ISIS
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| Batman Ben Affleck |
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| Waking Up by Sam Harris CLICK HERE |
Affleck couldn’t wait to jump into the conversation and tried
to shout Harris down. Harris, to his credit, stood his ground. Yes, there are
many Muslims who are peaceful, but we can’t ignore the many more who are still
in the Middle Ages with respect to their beliefs.
Maher pointed out that reasonable Muslims are afraid to
speak out. “Islam is the only religion that who acts like the Mafia—they will
kill you for writing the wrong book or drawing the wrong cartoon.”
Maher and Harris have the facts on their side. They
recognized that although there are many Muslims who do not hold dangerous beliefs,
a very large proportion do. Affleck seemed to think that should be no criticism
of Islam. He was acting like an asshole. I think Maher may have had people like
him in mind a couple of weeks ago when he did another New rules segment about holier-than-thou
liberals who make it easy for people to dismiss liberals.
Spiritual, but Not Religious
I wish Affleck would have shut up so Harris would have had
more time to talk about spirituality without religion, the topic of his new
book, Waking
Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Harris explained that
we all have spiritual experiences, but we have to apply science to it, and not just
attribute it to religion. He said, “Swapping a belief in the virgin birth of
Jesus for a belief in Atlantis is not much progress.”
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| Sam Harris |
Wake Up America
I took the title of this review from the new book by Sam
Harris. Harris wants America to wake up about religion. Elizabath Warren wants us to wake up about
the economy. Maher wants us to wake up and stand up for liberal values. One thing for sure, Bill Maher’s show, was
lively enough to keep us all wake.
Maher’s Guests for October 3, 2014
Elizabeth Warren: Senator
(D, MA), author of A Fighting
Chance. Maher did the interview with her.
Sam Harris: author, philosopher neuroscientist. His newest book is Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. His other books are: Free Will, Lying, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Letter to a Christian Nation, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. Harris was the mid-show guest.
Ben Affleck: actor, director, writer, producer, activist. His newest movies are Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Gone Girl based on a novel by Gillian Flynn
Ben Affleck: actor, director, writer, producer, activist. His newest movies are Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Gone Girl based on a novel by Gillian Flynn
Nicholas Kristof: journalist, author, op-ed
columnist, a winner of two Pulitzer Prizes. His latest book is A Path
Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity
Michael Steele: former
chairman of Republican National Committee, political commentator, author. His book, published in 2010, Right Now: A
12-Step Program For Defeating The Obama Agenda, sounds out of date.
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