Real Time with Bill Maher #357 6/19/15 "Kick-Ass"

Bernie Sanders

by Catherine Giordano

Real Time with Bill Maher was a kick-ass show on June 19, 2015, when episode 357 aired.

The interview was with Bernie Sanders. He is kicking ass on the issues hard and I love him for it. I believe he has changed his registration from Independent to Democratic so I am claiming him for the D’s. 

Another guest, Ann Coulter, just kicks ass because it is all a game to her and a way to sell her stupid books and I hate her for it. [Ann Coulter is a conservative commentator and author of many diatribe books. Her latest book is Adios,America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole.]

Bill Maher had to give his conservative guests an ass-kicking several times for telling lies and for their bad behavior on the show. He had to remind Coulter and panelist Matt Lewis (political blogger for the libertarian Daily Caller, contributor to The Week magazine, and author of Too Dumb toFail: How the GOP Won Elections by Sacrificing Its Ideas (And How It CanReclaim Its Conservative Roots) that guests are not allowed to talk over each other. You would have thought they would have learned that in kindergarten. Wait your turn, a--holes!

 
The SC murders
There is not a lot of humor to be milked from these horrific murders. The only thing funny was watching the Republican presidential candidates twist themselves into knots trying to avoid saying that this incident had anything to do with race. The confessed murderer said, “I want to kill black people.” And “I want to start a race war.” But Republicans (some, not all) and Fox News (pretty much everyone) were saying “What could have motivated him?” Maher asked, “Isn’t denying racism a form of racism.”   

The senseless murders of good decent people in a SC church on Wednesday June 17, 2015 got me to thinking about the death penalty. If anybody ever deserved the death penalty it is Dylann Storm Root who murdered nine people in cold blood with premeditation after spending an hour with them in Bible study because he hated black people. When I first heard about this, I was thinking no punishment is too harsh for him. 

 

But then I watched the families of the victims, one by one, look Root in the eye as they struggled to contain their grief, and say that they forgave him. And I knew that the death penalty is immoral no matter how heinous the crime or the murderer. The families showed immense dignity and set an example for us all about how to hold to your moral ideals no matter how great the challenge.  

 

The family members of the victims are true heroes. 

 

The Confederate flag and racism



Luis Gutierrez: "Take the fag down."

The only good thing to come out of this is that the Confederate flag may finally be removed from public property. Panel member Luis Gutierrez, Congressional Representative (D, IL), was especially eloquent. He said “Take the Flag down! The Civil War was over 150 years ago." 

 

Maher said, “It is the flag of treason.” [I agree.]

 

Matt Lewis, of course, had to defend the flag and introduce misinformation to do so. He said it was still flying because of a SC Democratic governor. True enough, but misleading. Maher had to explain that was a governor who held office in the “Old South,” before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and the consequent Republicanization of the South, back when the Southern Democrats were the racists. 

Maher handed Lewis’ ass to him when he said, “We can never know why someone snaps, but I know where he got his news. I looked at your website, Matt Lewis, there was a lot of news about blacks.”

Maher scoffed at those who are trying to make this part of the war on Christians just because it took place in a church. (He was talking to you Republicans and Fox News hosts.) Lewis tried to claim that the killer murdered Christians in a church because he was an atheist because of Maher’s atheist’s views. 

 

Joy Reid, host of The Reid Report on MSNBC, managing editor of the Grio.com, columnist for the Miami Herald, and the author of Fracture:Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide, had to point out that the killer’s clothing and car bore the flags of Rhodesia, South Africa, and the Confederacy—all white supremacy Christian countries.

 

Gutierrez added that the killer said “They [Black people] are taking over our country, raping our women.” Does that sound familiar? It is exactly what Donald Trump said when he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. Only he said it about Mexicans.

 

The Pope and climate change

Pope Francis

Bill Maher loves Pope Frank again. Maher said that the Pope “opened up a can of whoop ass” when he delivered his encyclical.

 

On climate change, the Pope said, “Halfway measures delay the inevitable. We are creating a world of filth.” And he also had plenty to say about poverty, justice, and economic inequality. All the Republicans came at the Pope hard.

 

Gutierrez said that the Republicans are running scared because the pope is coming to the United States. He will talk about these issues and it may cause them to lose the Catholic vote.

 

Lewis’ opinion is full speed ahead, business as usual, was a matter of public policy—it creates jobs. Reid flung his words back in his face. “Is it public policy to not be able to drink the water [because of fracking and oil spills]?” I will add that renewable energy and other “green” policies will create jobs.

 

Desperate for a comeback because he was obviously losing the argument, Lewis said to Maher, “You come to Right to Life and I will be a radical environmentalist.” Is that how it works Lewis? You trade your principles like kids in a schoolyard trading baseball cards?

 

The presidential nomination race

If Donald Trump gets elected president, will the presidency become a reality TV show? I don’t think Trump really wants to win. He just wants a platform from which to tell the world how great he is. Maher said, “Trump was talking out of his ass so much that a roadie came up and put a mic behind him.”

 

Trump said Mexicans bring drugs, crime and they are rapists. Maher said, “No that’s fraternities.” He added, “It is like your abnormal psych textbook came to life.”

 

Jeb Bush earned some Maher contempt also. This week Jeb Bush told the Pope that he should keep faith out of politics. Maher said, “This from the person who brought faith INTO politics.” (As governor of Florida he appointed a guardian for the fetus to prevent a mentally incompetent woman from aborting a pregnancy that resulted from rape despite a court ruling that she could do so. He interfered to keep a brain dead woman—Terry Schiavo—on life support after the courts had ruled that life support should be terminated. He was constantly ignoring the law and making faith-based decisions. 

Bernie Sanders is the best presidential candidate out there in terms of his ideas. He says, “Our country belongs to all of us, not just a few billionaires.” Sanders believes that the United States should join the rest of the world on things like health care and free college education. He said, "We are the wealthiest country in the world, but it is not sustainable with wealth concentrated in the hands of the few."

 

Senator  Sanders (D, formerly I, VT), is running for  the Democratic nomination for president. He is well-known for being America’s only Socialist senator and for his 8.5 hour filibuster against tax cuts for the rich and other economic injustices. You can read his full speech in his book, Bernie'sSpeech: Complete and Unedited. [You might also want to learn more about socialism. John Nichols has written an excellent book on the topic: The S Word: A Short History of an AmericanTradition...Socialism.

 

I’ll give my opinions here. Bernie is closing in on Hillary Clinton in the polls. He is so refreshing because he tells the truth and he looks like he is excited about his ideas. Hillary is the far more qualified candidate but she gets called inauthentic. I think it is because she has this robotic quality about her. She needs to throw away her scripts and give a speech from the heart. Talk like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. No one calls them inauthentic. They sound like they mean what they say. Show a little passion, Hillary.

 

Here’s another recommendation to Hillary. If you are running against Jeb (whose wife is Mexican or Rubio who is Cuban (or even if you are not), you might want to have a Hispanic on your ticket. You couldn’t go wrong with Luis Gutierrez. He’s authentic.

 



Dad-Bods

Dad Bods

Dads who let themselves go got ribbed in the midshow comedy segment--once hot movie stars start to get a bit of a paunch.

So Maher did a mockup of a magazine called Dad Bods. He gave the blurbs for the articles. Here are some of them.

 

• Paul Giamatti: Sexiest man alive
• What happens in the garage stays in the garage
• 7 STD’s you wish you had a chance to get
• 12 TV shows you should be falling asleep in front of
• Ooff vs. Argh: Which picking-things-up grunt is right for you?
• Finally, jeans that flatter your front butt

 

New Rules Gag-Reflex

The final New Rules segment was more “Explaining Jokes to Idiots.” Maher says there is a “new brand of censorship that doesn’t care if the joke is actually offensive. You just can’t say certain words.”

 

Maher says when Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Larry the Cable Guy “all say you have a stick up your ass, u don’t need to wait for the X-rays to come back.” Maybe political correctness has gone too far. All three of these comedians will no longer play college campuses because too many things have been declared off limits. Maher said that it is like the start of a joke—“a black, a Jew, and a redneck …”

“Jokes about men? Yes. Gay men? No.” 

“Jokes about kim Kardahian's ass? Yes. Her stepfather's tits? No.“

 

To make his point, Maher told a Muslim joke. “Islam is a religion of peace. A piece of you here. A piece of you there.” He said it is funny because Muslims blow stuff up more than anyone with the possible exception of the U. S. military.  

 

Friday nights 10pm

Get your ass on the couch in front of a screen next Friday night at 10pm. Watch Real Time with Bill Maher. Because you never know when he will release a can of whoop ass.

 

 

Bill Maher’s Guests, June 19, 2015, episode 357:  

 

The interview 

Bernie Sanders: Senator (D, formerly I, VT), Candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. He is well-known for being America’s only Socialist senator and for his 8.5 hour filibuster against tax cuts for the rich and other economic injustices. You can read his full speech in his book, Bernie'sSpeech: Complete and Unedited. [You might also want to learn more about socialism. John Nichols has written an excellent book on the topic: The S Word: A Short History of an AmericanTradition...Socialism.]

 

Mid show guest

Ann Coulter: Conservative commentator and author of many diatribe books. Her latest book is Adios,America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country into a Third World Hellhole. [I wanted to dip my cursor into a vat of disinfectant just because it touched that title.]

 

Panel

Luis Gutierrez Congressional Representative (D, IL)

 

Joy Reid: Host of The Reid Report on MSNBC, managing editor of the Grio.com and columnist for the Miami Herald. She is also the author of Fracture:Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide

 

Matt Lewis: Political blogger for the libertarian Daily Caller, contributor to The Week magazine, and author of Too Dumb toFail: How the GOP Won Elections by Sacrificing Its Ideas (And How It CanReclaim Its Conservative Roots)   

 

HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher #289 “Rip-Roaring”

A picture of Yosemite Sam to illustrate panelists shooting over their mouths.

by Catherine Giordano

HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” episode 289, airing on Friday, July 12, 2013, was a rip-roaring show. It was a very lively show that crossed the line into “too lively.”  All three panelists as well as Bill Maher are loud, opinionated, extroverts. You put the four of them at the one table and you get a rip-roaring mess. So much of the show consisted of them all talking over each other, all four of them at once, that most of what was said was unintelligible.

Bill’s monologue began with a comment on the Zimmerman trial. What else? Is there anything on TV these past few months except the Zimmerman trial? He said “Florida is trying so hard to get black people to stay in their homes, you’d think it was election day.”

Then Bill commented on the defense bringing a dummy into court. He said, the defense was playing the “my-client-is-a-moron” defense.

Later in the show, Matt Lewis, from “The Daily Caller”, a libertarian website, said “a wannabe gangster vs. a wannabe cop.”  I gasped when I heard that rip-roaring racial insult  (implying all young black men are gangsters). This is “you-set-me-off-now-I-have-to-go-on-a rant” moment of the week.

Trayvon was a kid, only three weeks past his 16^th birthday. He might have fooled around, acting tough, around his friends, like a lot of 16 year-old boys do--that does not mean he wanted to be a gangster. Why is it always “blame the victim”!  Further, even if Trayvon was a gangster, all he was doing that night was walking to his father’s house after a trip to a 7-11 to buy some snacks.

The prosecutor, Bernie de la Rionda, began the trial saying Zimmerman made some “wrong assumptions.”  Perhaps not the best word to use. It implies that Zimmerman only made  a mistake. Why not say “jumped to conclusions.”  I thought De la Rionda gave a terrible closing--way too sarcastic and nasty.

Mark O’Mara, gave a soft-spoken rational play-by-play, although he only spoke about the “plays” favorable to his client. But he went too far bringing in a piece of concrete and claiming Trayvon was not unarmed—he was armed with concrete. (If I was in that room, I would have had a hard time trying not to laugh.) Why go to this extreme if you feel your case for self-defense is strong. Perhaps, O’Mara went over the top like this because Zimmerman had only trivial injuries. (If it had happened the way Zimmerman said it happened, Zimmerman would have been dead.)

Fortunately, John Guy got to give a rebuttal to Mark O’Mara’s closing and to De la Rionda’s botched closing. He was masterful. He calmly went through the evidence exposing the lies that Zimmerman told about the incident, and made an eloquent plea to the jury centered around heart. He talked about Trayvon shot in the heart, Zimmerman having hate in his heart, and he touched the hearts of all who heard him, including, hopefully, the jurors.

The only part of De la Rionda’s closing that moved me was when he held up an evidence packet that held the money that Trayvon had in his pocket that night. He had $40 and 15 cents. It brought a lump to my throat just as it does now as I write about it. I don’t know why it affects me so much.  Perhaps because the money that he will never get to spend represents the future he will never get to have.

Back to the show.  

Liz Mair was another panel member. She was identified as a Republican consultant. She mostly seemed rational except for when she told us how much she loved Rand Paul. Bill was talking about “The Southern Avenger,” a  rip-roaring racist (and proud of it) who co-wrote Paul’s book and is Paul’s press secretary. He will remain on his staff.  Mair thought Paul was right about this, but even Mike Lewis thought he was wrong.  He said “The Republican party is a big tent, but not that big.”

In Overtime, Mair said that she thought Elizabeth Warren should run for president because she would be he would be better than Hillary Clinton.  I think Elizabeth Warren is terrific as a senator, but unlike Clinton, she is known for only one thing—consumer advocacy. I don’t think Democrats are going to be taking advice from a Republican consultant.  (Nice try, Liz.)

The other panelist is Cornel West, a professor at Union Seminary College. His default mode is rip-roaring. He always has an impromptu witty response. (Unlike Lewis, whose gangster comment was obviously prepared in advance.) In the discussion about “The Southern Avenger,” who likes to wear a helmet with a mask covering his face made to look like the Confederate flag which reminds me of Hannibal Lecter, it was mentioned that John Wilkes Booth is his hero.  Mike Rowe said, that some historians think assassination of Lincoln so horrified people that it helped bring the South and the North together faster. Cornell West jumped in immediately. “That is like saying Hitler brought the U.S. and Europe together. Bill topped that by saying, “Everyone likes the Jews more now—you can’t take that away from Hitler.”

The special guest was Mike Rowe, the creator and star of the TV show “Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe.” He was the only laid back person at that table. He talked about the 30 million jobs, many of them good paying jobs that go unfilled, because Americans don’t like “dirty jobs.” The slogan is “Work smart, not hard.” The feelling is that blue collar jobs are demeaning. Rowe said, “People confuse me as an advocate for blue collar work; really, I’m just a fan of it.  I’m just a simple guy in a sewer.” He’s funny too.  I’ve never seen his show, but my guess is that he would have been successful no matter what line of work he took up.

The interview was with Bobby Ghosh, an Indian national and Time Magazine world correspondent. He spoke mainly about the events in Egypt—was it or was it not a “coup”.  Bill said, the U.S. will not label it a coup because we can’t give military aid if it was a coup. Countries who receive this aid use it to by armaments from big  American companies—the military-industrial complex at work.

Ghosh also spoke about how you can’t have democracy and theocracy at the same time. (Hear that—American Christian right.) It may be that the whole Middle East will be in a death match between Sunni and Shia.  (At least, in the U.S., our Catholics and Protestants don’t kill each other, and the Lutherans don’t kill the Methodists.)

The comedy segment was hilarious. It seems a Tea party candidate, Jaxine Bubis, writes a little rip-roaring erotic romance novels on the side. Bill did a great parody of tea- party porn. It began, “He took off his “Obama=Hitler” tee-shirt revealing the chiseled six-pack of a young Glenn Beck.  He leaned over and whispered, “I want to get you off…welfare.  …It was a tiny penis that let her know, oh yeah, he’s a gun owner.” I liked the part where he mentioned a woman as wet as Boenher’s cheeks” and a you-know-what as “stiff as Romney.” (There was a lot more--you’ll just have to watch it for yourself.

  

The final New Rules segment was about immigration. The same Republican party that claims to be all about shrinking government and decreasing the deficit wants to spend $30 billion to increase security on the Mexican border. Bill noted that the bill contains requirements for certain weapons to be bought from certain companies. (The military-industrial complex again.)

“War is the Republicans’ stimulus,” Bill declared.  Then he pointed out that currently Mexican illegal immigration is at “net zero.” Finally, the clincher. “Most illegal immigrants don’t sneak across the border, they fly in on airplanes and just don’t leave. They are Irish relatives.”

A rip-roaring episode.

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