the Bill Maher thread....

[poker]

I love Bill Maher. Very insightful.

I love this answer from a recent interview....

VA: What about a Democrat you’re especially critical of?

BM: Well, all of them. I’ll say this for the Republicans: they do have the courage of their convictions. They do not run from polls. Democrats run from polls. Republicans don’t. If something is polling at 40 percent or 30 percent, that doesn’t bother Republicans. They’re like, “Fuck that! We’ll all get in a room. We’ll get our talking points straight, we’ll all stand out on the talk shows for the next six months, and we’ll get it up to 60. Or if it’s at 60, and we want it down to 40, we’ll do that, too.” They did it with the public option. The public option was polling at 70 percent approval before they got their fangs into it. So they’re not intimidated by polls. Democrats, just the opposite.

You know, it’s so funny. Gay marriage, when it started polling at 51 percent, that’s when you saw a lot of [Democrats] “evolving” on that issue. Which is pretty funny that they called it evolving, because they did it in about a day and a half. But that’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans. I wish you could have one party that would combine the brains that the Democrats have and the balls that the Republicans have.

As soon as Obama comes on board with one of their ideas, then they don’t like it anymore because, you know, it has Kenyan cooties.

 

[poker]

http://www.real-time-with-bill-maher-blog.com/real-time-with-bill-maher-blog/category/bills-blog

The Spy-Based Economy
October 18, 2013

By Bill Maher

This summer, Edward Snowden gifted The Washington Post with America's "black budget" for spies. Basically, you know how Italy has olive oil, and Saudi Arabia has oil oil, and China has everything else? What America makes is spies.

According to the Post:

"The document describes a constellation of spy agencies that track millions of surveillance targets and carry out operations that include hundreds of lethal strikes."

According to the budget, for fiscal 2013, America is spending $52.6 billion on spies. $14.7 billion goes to the CIA, and the rest goes to America's 15 other spy agencies. I don't want to sound like a hippie, but do you think we could get by with, I dunno, 12? The CIA budget is 56% higher than it was in 2004. Is the world that much more dangerous?

That's over a billion dollars a week. Not military spending. Just spies.

Just keep that nice, round, easy-to-remember number in your head anytime a Tea Party politician complains about the cost of Obamacare, or food stamps, or the EPA, or Masterpiece Theater, or anything.

A billion a week, just to keep the monsters away. Well, not keep them away exactly, but to keep track of their calls.

 

[elmo]

I love this guy, he seems to be able to cut the BS of American politics and make a lot of sense, and he's funny as shit while doing it.

 

[Azprint]

I really like the guy. I think he's funny. But he's a treehugger and way too environmentalist for my taste. Tries to pose as libertarian, but Bill is a true American Liberal.

 

[luv2fress]

Nothing like "New Rules" to make me laugh

 

[movzzz]

He calls guests on their Bullshit as well.... He isn't perfct but he definitely doesn't pander.

 

[poker]

Its sad when Comedy Central and HBO can put out better political opinion shows than most major news networks.....

 

[bishop]

He calls guests on their Bullshit as well.... He isn't perfct but he definitely doesn't pander.

The problem is that his guests usually do not have the balls to call BM on his BS. I like BM alot, Stewart and Colbert have more finesse, but many things are just so absurd that you can not take the risk of being subtle and instead just have to go in with gun blazing and call Sarah Palin a straight up ret@rd. For some reason when BM does standup he is boring as sh*t, but when he is on his show with guests he is funny as hell.

 

[poker]

Yoho Oh No
October 16, 2013
By Bill Maher

"I think we need to have that moment where we realize [we're] going broke. If the debt ceiling isn't raised, that will sure as heck be a moment. I think, personally, it would bring stability to the world markets."

That's Ted Yoho, freshman Republican Rep from Florida, talking to The Washington Post. And he should know, because until last year Ted was the Vice President of Global Strategy at Citigroup. ...Oh, I'm sorry, he was actually a large animal veterinarian. With zero economic or political experience.

When people talk about the 30-40 Tea Party know-nothings driving this country towards default, Ted Yoho is one of them.

"I see one side of our government, or two-thirds of it, running 100 miles an hour toward socialism," Yoho said, meaning President Obama and the Democrat-led Senate. "You're seeing the tremor before the tsunami here. I'm not going to raise the debt ceiling."

Sounds like a reasonable man. Well, here's a fun number for Ted, which he'll ignore because it is a big one: $517 billion. That's the amount Lehman owed when it filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008, which started the financial collapse and the Great Recession.

And here's an even bigger number: $12 trillion. That’s the amount of outstanding government debt. It's 23 times as large as Lehman. That's what idiots like Ted Yoho are fucking with.

And the fun part is: most of the people in Ted's ultra-conservative district agree with Ted. In north central Florida, being a moron and a hostage taker is a big winner.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the modern day Republican Party.

 

[poker]

BILL'S BLOG
Getting Owned
October 29, 2013

By Bill Maher

Everyone's up in arms over the Fourth Amendment and the NSA reading the sexy texts you've been sending to Paula Deen, but what about the Fifth Amendment? You know, the one that says nobody can take away your property without due process? That one seems to have gone down the tubes, too, but nobody really cares.

Every day it seems like there's another story of someone losing their home because of a clerical error, or because their mortgage has been sold to a third party they weren't even aware of, or some other crazy financial shenanigans.

So many big banks (BofA, Citibank, HSBC, Wells Fargo, etc.) were caught screwing homeowners over that they had to pay a massive fine and agree to stop. So now they've turned over mortgage servicing to "non-bank" companies, who aren't a party to the settlement and don't have to follow its rules.

One of the things they like to do is not tell you when a new company is servicing your mortgage, so you keep sending money to the old company, and then one day they call you up and tell you that you owe a zillion dollars in "fees." Or they just foreclose on you.

Fines: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/mone...state-mortgages-banks-fined-by-fed/53655164/1
Non-bank compliance: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/news...age-servicing-problems-at-banks-and-nonbanks/

 

[great bear]

Maher is just a very sharp, insightful, humourous man who would be main stream in Canada.

 

[Rufus Doofus]

I'm a huge fan of Maher's and would like to get a job rolling joints for him. Nonetheless, I seriously question how left of centre he truly is as he owns a handgun(s) and I suspect he banged Ann Coulter doggy-style and had her call him "Mandingo".

 

[FirstCaveman]

I'm a Maher fan as well, but he always pisses me off by insisting on changing the subject instead of debating when a right-wing guest scores a few points in a row.