Real Time with Bill Maher #331 10/03/14 "Wake Up America!"

by Catherine Giordano


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 3^rd, 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.



The Republican brand is a lie

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 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!

Secret Service badge

The Secret Service

What is in the news this week? The same stuff that was in the news last week. Every day he learn about another failure of the Secret Service.  Maher quipped, in the monolog that America hasn’t been this worried about a crazy person getting into the White House since Sarah Palin.

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! )

Ebola virus

Ebola

The United States has its first case of Ebola. The victim is a man from Nigeria who was visiting family in Nigeria.  Maher quipped that it is Rick Perry governor of Texas, is now in charge of preventing an Ebola outbreak.  Maher quipped, “Rick Perry doesn’t know whether to shoot it or cut its taxes.”

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

Batman Ben Affleck

ISIS is another problem that was ignored for too long. The discussion on ISIS was dominated by a shouting match between Ben Affleck (panelist) and Sam Harris (mid-show guest). Ben Affleck is an 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). Sam Harris is an 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. 

Waking Up by Sam Harris
CLICK HERE

Sam Harris has correctly pointed out that a large majority of Muslims hold dangerous beliefs. He said, “Islam is the mother lode of bad ideas.” He said a small proportion of jihadists who want to kill people. However, a larger proportion are Islamists who want Muslim supremacy. Many more are Muslim conservatives  who are horrified by ISIS but hold many of the same beliefs about gays and women and death as a punishment for anyone who leaves the religion. Harris is merely informing us that fundamentalists are not a fringe group in Islam.  

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



Sam Harris

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.” 

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

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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HBO “Real Time with Bill Maher” #279 "Sky Diving"

by Catherine Giordano



Half the Sky

HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, episode 279, airing on April 19, 2013, began with a funny monologue, continued with some very interesting guests discussing important topics, but fizzled at the end with a weak, “New Rules.”  I had the feeling that Bill ran out of time and had to cut the “New Rules” segment short.

Let me dive right in to this discussion by reporting that Bill began the show by announcing that the Boston Bomber had just been caught. He followed the announcement with a joke referencing George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq after 9/11, saying that Bush had just called for the invasion of Puerto Rico in response to the Boston Bombing.

Bill went on to talk about the Elvis impersonator who thought the government was selling body parts and so he sent letters containing ricin to Obama and others. (This is so weird that it sounds like Bill made it up.  He didn’t.) Bill joked that you can’t intimidate us with bombs and poison. If you are a paranoid lunatic—this is America--you have to use a gun. 

The interview was with Brian Levin, the Director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Levin, I hate to say this, is the typical knee-jerk liberal. He lost an opportunity to present his views because he was too extreme in his liberalism and ended up arguing with everything Bill said. Yes, the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people, and during the Middle Ages Muslims were far more civilized than the Christians (Crusades, witch-burning, conversion by torture, etc.), but currently an extreme faction of Islam does advocate violence and is murdering and terrorizing in the name of Islam. Bill mentioned the Broadway show “The Book of Mormon” and asked if there could ever be a show “The Book of Islam.” Levin persisted in missing the point until Bill, exasperated, said, “What color is the sky in your world?”    

Bill pointed out that the American Islamic terrorists “don’t have the balls” of the foreign terrorists. The foreign ones are willing to kill themselves; the American ones like the Times Square Bomber and the Boston Bombers try to get away alive. Good point, Bill.  Perhaps living in America does make them “soft.”

One of the panelists was Nicolas Kristoff, a “New York Times” columnist and author of a new book and PBS documentary, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”  Kristoff’s documentary is about the need for education for girls around the world.  Education is the single biggest factor to empower women economically and put an end to violence against women. Kristoff is optimistic. The strong reaction about the rape of a woman on a bus in India shows that change is happening.  Nonetheless the statistics about the gender-cide—the killing of girls and women, are astounding.

While we are talking about killing, we have to talk about guns.  Bill mentioned that 90% of the people in this country want background checks andt a majority of the Senate voted for it, but it was defeated by the filibuster.  Can we still say we have democracy when (90% of the people want something and we don’t get it?

Kristoff compared the all-out effort to capture the Boston bombers who killed three people in the bombing with the 30,000 people who die from gun violence in America every year.

Amy Holmes, another panelist, appears on Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze TV. If she is associated with Glenn Beck, you know she is extreme right wing. I’ve seen her on “Real Time” before so I groaned when I saw that she was a guest. Happily, she wasn’t as strident and loony as I expected, but more strident and loony than I would have liked. Holmes pointed out that support for gun safety is a mile wide and an inch deep. There is much more intensity on the right. She may be right about that, but I hope not. The activists for stricter gun laws are putting up much more of a fight than in the past.

Bill remarked, “The Senate is the place where progress goes to die. Right now a small “red state” might have 166,000 people represented by one senator while a Senator from California, like Democrat Diane Feinstein, represents 15 million people. Bill said the founding fathers never anticipated 50 states. I have to admit that Bill has a point. This is unfair—rural areas are far better represented than urban areas. 

Salmon Rushdie, the author who once had to go into hiding for a decade because the mullahs issued a fatwa calling for his death --They did not like a book he had written--has first-hand knowledge of Islamic extremism. He told an interesting story about his time in hiding. The British government offered to provide him with guns and to provide training so he could defend himself. Rushdie turned down the offer.  He said he knew he was not the kind of person who could shoot someone.

During the man hunt for “the second Boston Bomber,” I thought about what I would want if I lived in the area where the bomber like that was at large. ”Gee,” I thought, “Maybe it would be good to have a gun for a situation like that.”  I decided I did not want a gun.  Like Rushdie, I probably couldn’t shoot someone.  Also, statistics show that when there is a gun in the house, a resident of that house is three times more likely to be the victim of a shooting than a resident of a house without a gun.

The comedy segment was a very funny satire about Michelle Bachman giving a eulogy at the funeral for Margaret Thatcher.  According to Bill, Michelle said, “It is so nice to be here in the cradle of the original tea party. In 1776, we fought together to defeat communism and to end abortion.... We have a lot in common, conservative principles, fearlessness, and dementia…. They called her the ‘Iron Lady’, but I didn’t know the “Iron Man” had a wife.” It was very funny because it was similar in tone to the loony things Bachman actually says.

The interview was with Colin Goddard, an advocate for “The Brady Campaign” and the producer of a new documentary “Living for 32.” Goddard is a survivor of the Virginia Tech mass shooting.  The title of the documentary refers to the 32 people who were murdered during that shooting as well as to the 32 people who are killed in this country by guns every day. Goddard said, “We are never going to shoot our way out of a problem.” Holmes responded with the right wing cliché that a good guy with a gun can take out a bad guy with a gun. Colin refuted her. He said that having a gun wouldn’t have helped him. He didn’t know what was happening until after he was shot four times.

I have two points to make. When a gunman is shooting at you with a semi-automatic weapon, you don’t really have an opportunity to shoot back. The second point goes back to a witness at the Tucson shooting.  A young man who owned a gun was present, but he didn’t have his gun with him.  He said that if he had had his gun, he probably would have shot the wrong person. He initially thought that the person who was subduing the actual gunman was the shooter. If even police who are well trained accidently shoot innocent people due to a mistake or poor marksmanship, what will happen when panicked civilians start shooting?  

Bill had some points to make also. The second amendment is the only amendment with the word “regulated” in it.  Also, it has the word militia in it—it is about a citizen army.  We now have a standing army, we don’t need a citizen militia. I agree. We need to abolish the second amendment—it is outdated and as screwy as Prohibition. It doesn’t mean that people can’t still own guns, but it would turn gun ownership from a right to a privilege.  he Constitution says nothing about automobile ownership, but people still have the privilege of owning a car—under certain conditions (passing a driving test, registering the car, having insurance, not being “under the influence” when driving, obeying traffic signs, etc.)

The overtime discussion took up the issue about the Miranda rights of the Boston Bomber now in custody. Homes predictably jumped right in spouting off with the usual clichés about “high value detainees” and “enemy combatants. Levin called her out saying the criteria had nothing to do with those catch phrases, but rather required a determination of “imminent danger.”  Kristoff said he was uncomfortable about withholding Miranda. Rushdie just cut to the chase. “Just read them their damn rights. Trust the system.”

Rushdie got it right. The bomber was read his Miranda rights on Sunday, and he remained co-operative. When we break our own rules, we are in “free-fall.” The last time we got into “free-fall”, we had “enhanced interrogation” which was actually, in simple language, torture. Kristoff and Rushdie spoke about how when the U.S. abandons its principles, he hurts us around the world.  When the U.S. talks about human rights, “What about Guantanamo Bay” gets thrown back in its face. “Free-fall” means you hit the ground hard.

I’ll conclude with a couple of funny bits.

In New Rules, Bill poked John McCain and is ubiquitous presence on the Sunday morning talk shows.  He said, “John McCain needs to spend Sunday mornings with his family.”  So true, Bill.  I think we are all getting a little tired of seeing John McCain.

During “Overtime”, Rushdie was being sarcastic when he said that social media made up global warming. The ignorant Holmes agreed. She either missd or ignored the sarcasm.

 What color is the sky? I guess it depends on your viewpoint.

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