Sluts should suffer for sex

By Frank Moraes

On Friday's Real Time, Bill Maher performed a really good "New Rules." He cut right to the heart of what we all know is true. All this concern about abortion and birth control and abstinence has nothing whatsoever to do with religion or keeping people safe. It is all about making sluts pay for the sin of enjoying sex. And just look at how sexist it is. Everyone expects that men will enjoy sex. But if that happens to a woman, she needs to pay. These religious people are small-minded and evil.

Maher's rant is pretty funny:

We call them Republicans

By Frankly Curious

On Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher, they did a segment with image confessions. It was pretty funny. You can find the segment over on WhoSay. But I thought this one was good enough to share.

I think that's pretty accurate. It isn't that I think Romney hates everyone. I think just like Rob Portman and most other conservatives, he doesn't give a shit about anyone but his intimate circle. Certainly it is true that Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who can't imagine what it's like to starve to death without actually seeing it happen.

This was also true of Ronald Reagan. If he heard about some kid dying of cancer, he'd write a check for fifty grand. But when it came to providing healthcare for poor children, he didn't really see the problem. Or you can think of the Woody Harrelson character in Seven Psychopaths who weeps over his dog but has no trouble murdering people for the smallest of indiscretions.

When they are in a movie, we call them psychopaths. When they are running for office, we call them Republicans.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Donald Trump is probably not the son of an orangutan

By Richard K. Barry

For reasons unclear to me, it is frequently thought in our culture that those able to make themselves a lot of money are more intelligent than the rest of us. I don't doubt that they are perhaps better at that one specific thing that has allowed the cash to roll in, but we tend to ascribe to them a more general intelligence. Donald Trump is a perfect example of this tendency.

Regarding a recent event in which Trump once again shows how stupid he is, Salon writes:

The real estate mogul yesterday filed a $5 million lawsuit against Bill Maher, after the television host failed to fulfill his end of a deal asking Trump to prove he is not a "spawn of an orangutan."

Maher made the bet on Jay Leno's show, very obviously mocking Donald Trump's non-announcement announcement in October, in which the birther promised to donate $5 million to a charity of Obama's choice upon the release of the president's college transcripts. Maher mocked Trump and "the syphilitic monkey that runs his Twitter tweet," saying, "We did a new rule one week, that suppose that Donald Trump had been the spawn of on orangutan having sex with his mother." He clarified to Leno, "I'm not saying it's true — I hope it's not true. But unless he comes up with proof, I'm willing to offer $5 million to Donald Trump that he can donate to a charity of his choice."

Everyone was in on the joke except for Trump, who amazingly became the joke of the joke (of the joke). He offered up his birth certificate to prove that he was not, in fact, the son of an orangutan: "Attached hereto is a copy of Mr. Trump's birth certificate, demonstrating that he is the son of Fred Trump, not an orangutan."

And after Maher didn't pay up, Trump sued. "I don't think he was joking," Trump said regarding the bet on Fox News yesterday. "He said it with venom. That was venom. That wasn't a joke. In fact, he was nervous when he said it. It was a pathetic delivery."

Wow. Just, wow. Can you image the court proceedings in a lawsuit like this? Or maybe Trump does believe that there is no bad publicity as long as they spell his name right. He's wrong about that. The man is truly an idiot. 

Wrong again, Bill!

By Frank Moraes

Bill Maher was at it again this Friday night on Real Time. It is sad to see, but he seems to be listening to a lot of Very Serious People. Last week, he was bashing disability and assuming that Americans were getting lazier. This week, he was bashing old people. He noted that we spend $4 on every senior citizen for every $1 spent on children. He also said that on average, Americans put in $150,000 into the entitlement programs, but receive $300,000 from them. I haven't been able to verify either of these claims, but let's just assume he's right. (The numbers sound about right, even if they are also probably deceptive on their surface.)

On the first issue: there are a couple of ways you can look at this. You could say, as I do, that this is wrong and we ought to spend more money on our children. Or you could say, as Maher seems to, that we should spend much less on our older citizens. I don't go along with that. We can afford just about anything we want. Our entitlement programs are miserly by European standards. When I see senior citizens on the bus, I think they can use more help, not less; they don't seem to be getting over on the system.

As bad as all this is, it is the second issue where I get really mad. Maher completely ignores the fact that there are two numbers: inputs and outputs. If we want to make entitlements cost neutral, we could increase payments. We could, for example, raise the Social Security tax cap. But that isn't even brought up. In fact, no mention of increased revenue is mentioned at all by anyone on the panel.

Read more »

Republican moderates not so moderate

By Frank Moraes

There was an amusing bit on Real Time last Friday. The panel was talking about Romney's recent conference call and how the adults in the Republican Party needed to take control. Maher said that one way they could do that was to stop all this nonsense about Benghazi. Given that Real Time is at base a comedy show, it is not surprising what happened next. The two "reasonable" Republicans, David Frum and Ana Navarro, got apoplectic. "But there is a cover-up!"

This is the problem with all of the talk about the Republican Party reforming itself. The Republican elite didn't get into power by accident. The difference between the extremists and the moderates is the way that they talk about issues, not where they actually stand on issues. Like the rank-and-file members of the party, moderates are authoritarian followers. As much as I look for reasons to explain the conservative worldview, nothing fits better than John Dean's authoritarian theory.

This gets to the heart of what is so frustrating about talking to Republicans. Most of the time they are incredibly reasonable. Yet in the heat of an election or on an issue that Fox News is pushing (e.g., Benghazi), they lose all perspective. This explains why they look back so fondly on Bill Clinton and how they will gush with praise over Obama in eight years. These people are easily led by demagoguery.

The reason the most vile Republicans rise to the top is that they best pose the issues in a way that the conservative authoritarian followers can accept. The question is never do you want to protect everyone from potential global warming; it is: do you want to destroy the economy or believe in a liberal conspiracy theory? It is never how do we best help the poor; it is: do you want your hard earned money going to a bunch of loafers? It is never what is the proper role of government surveillance; it is do you want another 9/11?

When I talk to conservatives their answers are normally nuanced. But they can't help jumping for the sloganeering of the party elites. And this is as true of the public "moderates" as it is for the rest. Both Frum and Navarro said reasonable things about non-partisan issues. But that doesn't make them any less dangerous. In fact, it makes them more dangerous. They clearly have the capacity to see the complexity of the world but they choose (following Stephen Colbert) to let their guts lead them.

And this is why the Republican Party will not reform itself anytime soon. For all the reasonable talk from the moderates, they are as easy to get worked up in a froth as the rest of their party. The froth production masters are the crazies. When David Frum manages not to get excited by things like the Benghazi scandal, then the party will change.

Afterword

Read John Dean's excellent Conservatives Without Conscience.

And look! Candy:


(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Bill Maher to the Teabaggers: "The Founding Fathers would have hated your guts."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm generally not much of a Bill Maher fan, even if I agree with more often than not, but I think he's quite right about this. The Founding Fathers would have hated the Teabaggers, and vice versa.

Mustang Bobby posted the clip at his place yesterday. Here it is for your edifying amusement -- the part about the Teabaggers starts at 2:51, but it's all pretty good:

Just how crazy is Christine O'Donnell? (3)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The mind is boggled.

Christine O'Donnell may very well be the stupidest public figure in America. Okay, there's a lot of competition, I know. At the very least, she's up there.

On HBO's Real Time yesterday, host Bill Maher again showed a previously-unreleased clip of O'Donnell from Maher's previous show, Politically Incorrect. And what she said back on Oct. 15, 1998, taking one of the most ignorant stands against evolution I've ever heard, is a lot more revealing, and a lot more troubling than what she said about youthful witchcraft-dabbling:

O'DONNELL: You know what, evolution is a myth. And even Darwin himself –

MAHER: Evolution is a myth?!? Have you ever looked at a monkey!

O'DONNELL: Well then, why they — why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?

As Maher noted after showing the clip (which you can watch below), O'Donnell is "someone that could be in the Senate," explaining: "See this is the point I want to make -- is the stuff from the witch from last week was silly. Who cares what she did in high school, if she dabbled in witchcraft. But this is someone who could be in the Senate, who thinks that mice have human brains and doesn't understand 'oh my God, that monkeys don't evolve in the time that it would take to watch them.'"

Of course, O'Donnell is hardly alone in believing evolution to be a myth. It's a common position, and perhaps even a near-universal one, on the theocratic right, among fundamentalists both Protestant and, in O'Donnell's case, Catholic. And while it's true that she could be in the Senate, there are many like her already there. The likes of Jim DeMint may not embarrass themselves quite as ridiculously as O'Donnell, but anti-evolution and, more broadly, anti-science narrow-mindedness, rooted in Christian fundamentalism, is prevalent throughout the Republican Party and its various conservative constituencies.

O'Donnell is insane, but let's not make the mistake of thinking she's the exception.

(You can find more of O'Donnell's craziness here -- click and scroll down.)