World War W

Bill Maher: Pointing Out the Truth

by Marc D. Allan

 

Comedian Bill Maher's current tour has no name. But if it did, he jokes, it'd be the "Better Than Staying Home and Smoking Pot Tour."

"I always laugh when people say 'tour,' " he said in a telephone interview, "like I'm the Rolling Stones and it's been going on for two years."

OK, so it's not Steel Wheels. But on second thought, Maher said, maybe it is a tour. He's on the road three nights a week – which he has time to do, since his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher is on hiatus until Aug. 29 – and the performance consists of all-new material.

Whatever this is, it's certainly a chance to see one of the smartest and most controversial political comics working today. You can always count on Maher to say what he thinks. And that's what he did in our interview, which covered topics such as his talk shows (1993-2002's Politically Incorrect and Real Time, going into its sixth season), his upcoming movie about religion, Religulous (pronounced like "ridiculous," out Oct. 3), politics and anything else we could fit into 15 minutes.

Q: What's wrong with this country?

A: Basically, the people are too stupid to be governed. I saw yesterday that two-thirds of the American public now thinks it would be a good idea to drill for more oil, when even oil people like T. Boone Pickens are telling everyone this is not the answer. It's not going to make your gas prices go down, it's only going to hurt the environment more, it's going to keep us stuck in the past. (New York Times columnist) Tom Friedman had a great analogy: He said it's as if in 1980, someone was clamoring for more IBM Selectric typewriters. Forget about this Internet stuff. It's going nowhere.

Plainly, we have to hitch our wagon to different kinds of energy sources. They're available. We could do it. It just seems incredibly selfish of the president to push for this drilling solution – which is no solution – and it's just so depressing that it takes so little to convince the people of something so erroneous.

http://www.altweeklies.com/culture/bill_maher_pointing_out_the_truth/Story?oid=459735

IF THIS IS HOW THE McCAIN PEOPLE CAMPAIGN, THIS IS HOW THEY'D GOVERN

No More Mister Nice Blog

Here's Joe Lieberman launching the latest McCain attack on Barack Obama's patriotism:

One of the McCain campaign's new themes, that Senator John McCain has always put his country first, has been seen by some analysts as a subtle suggestion that his opponent, Senator Barack Obama, has not.

But as he introduced Mr. McCain at a campaign event here on Tuesday, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut made the attack a lot more explicit, calling the election a choice "between one candidate, John McCain, who has always put the country first, worked across party lines to get things done, and one candidate who has not."...

I'll say what I said a couple of weeks ago: Barack Obama needs to tell the public that this gutter approach to politics will be America's problem if John McCain is elected president, because if he and his crowd campaign this way, they'll govern this way -- by dividing the country, questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them, and going into character-assassination mode whenever they're challenged.

Obama should say,

John McCain doesn't like it when I say he's running for Bush and Cheney's third term, but this is exactly what George Bush and Dick Cheney have done for eight years. Their attitude is "my way or the highway." They've turned America into a divided country: allies on the one hand, mortal enemies on the other -- and they think their enemies don't deserve the slightest bit of respect. If you question their policies, they say you're a traitor to your country, they say you hate America, they'll say you're the problem, just because you disagee.

Do we need four more years of that? Every day, with every low-road attack, John McCain makes it abundantly clear that if we elect him president, that's exactly what we'll get.

This wouldn't just be a way for Obama to deflect criticism of himself. This is a fact. John McCain gives every indication that he will govern like a typical attack-dog Republican. Can you even remember the last time he took the high road?

 

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2008/08/if-this-is-how-mccain-people-campaign.html

Still at large!

Putting the pressure on Osama

McCain: ‘In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.’

In recent days, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) rhetoric toward Russia has mostly been overblown bluster, including an accusation that the country wanted to restore its old empire. However, since a cease-fire was announced and his predictions were proven wrong, McCain has backtracked, saying there won't be a Cold War. To justify his new position, he told reporters in a press conference today:

In the 21st century, nations don't invade other nations.

Watch it:

As Matt Yglesias writes, "We all recall, of course, John McCain's outrage when the United States violated this rule back in 2003."

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/08/13/mccain-21-century/

Swift boat express

Georgia War a Neocon Election Ploy?

October comes early? Sen. John McCain and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili.

By Robert Scheer

Is it possible that this time the October surprise was tried in August, and that the garbage issue of brave little Georgia struggling for its survival from the grasp of the Russian bear was stoked to influence the U.S. presidential election?

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser.

Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain's presidential campaign.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080812_georgia_war_a_neocon_election_ploy/

Big Oil Ties Could Hurt GOP

As Republicans Push Offshore Drilling, Oil Company Links Might Pose Liability

By Mike Lillis

Monday night, after weeks of pressure from Republicans to lift a federal moratorium on new offshore oil drilling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) abandoned her adamant resistance, indicating that she's now open to a vote on expanding exploration.

"[Republicans] have this thing that says drill offshore in the protected areas," Pelosi told CNN's Larry King late Monday. "Well, we can do that. We can have a vote on that. But it has to be part of something that says we want to bring immediate relief to the public and not just a hoax on them."

The sharp change of position arrives as Republicans, who face a potentially disastrous November election, think they've found a lifeline in offshore drilling. Indeed, with gas prices near historic highs, polls indicate that most Americans now support more drilling. In a continuing Capitol Hill revolt, dozens of House Republicans have circulated through Washington over Congress's August vacation, taking to the dim and empty chamber floor with demands that Pelosi call a vote on the controversial measure.

The Republicans hope to portray the Democrats as the party of callousness on the issue of towering gas prices. In retaliation, Democrats accuse the GOP of cozying up to big oil interests. The debate has evolved into a blame-game over which side is blocking the process — and which is fighting hardest for the needs of constituents.

Yet if a Republican primary in Tennessee last week is any indication, GOP leaders might want to reconsider their strategy. In an upset victory Thursday, GOP challenger Phil Roe defeated freshman Rep. David Davis in a contest where Roe portrayed the incumbent — one of the House Republicans giving energy speeches — as an oil company minion. It marked the first primary defeat for a Tennessee incumbent of either party in 40 years. Many political experts say the Republicans' defense of the thriving oil industry may haunt other GOP candidates in November.

http://washingtonindependent.com/171/big-oil-ties-could-hurt-gop

No blood for oil

Why We Don't Shoot Back

By Sara Robinson

Drew Westen and Mike Lux both have cogent and persuasive posts up that deftly explain — and raise the alarm about — the timidity that's recently settled into Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Sen. John McCain's shooting live rounds now; and, as usual, the Democrats are refusing to fire back. If that doesn't change — this week, before the Olympics starts — this could all too easily turn into Dukakis-all-over-again.

Progressives have been picking at the whys and wherefores of this pattern ever since Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower. (One of my favorite explanations came from Paul Rosenberg, who dug into the psychology of both sides in this excellent series last year at Open Left.) But there's one fairly simple and glaring factor that I'm increasingly convinced plays at least some role in this — and since I've never seen it discussed anywhere else, I'm going to propose it here.

We've all got our short lists of books that changed the way we look at things forever. One of the ones I keep going back to is Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, published in 1989 by Brandeis historian David Hackett Fischer. Fischer's basic argument -- which he supports with a weighty and richly researched sociological survey that runs to 700 pages plus another 200 pages of footnotes -- is that most of America's most enduring cultural and political conflicts can be traced back to essential differences between the first four groups of English settlers, who brought four very different worldviews with them, and set deep patterns that continue to influence America's identity and choices to this day.

To quickly summarize, the first of these groups were the Puritans, the bulk of whom arrived in New England between 1630 and1650. They were Reform Protestants who brought with them a notion of "ordered liberty." They believed that government authority, including the right to use force, properly belongs not to individuals, but to communities; and that individuals would necessarily need to conform their will to that of the larger whole for society to succeed. In the generations that followed, their descendants spread Puritan culture across the northern tier of the county, into the Pacific Northwest, and down the West Coast to northern California. These are, today, still the most liberal parts of the country.

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008083205/why-we-dont-shoot-back

Good news from home

Is Laura Leaving Bush After he Leaves Office Because He's Been Hitting the Sauce Again?

by Mark Karlin

Okay, don't tell me you don't look at the tabloids on the sly when you are in the supermarket checkout line. I do. Sometimes, yes, I even buy one, if there is a timely potentially believable political scandal story.

Most of the time, the tabloids focus on Britney and Paris (now also of John McCain ad fame), but when they go after a political figure, we have found that some of them have about a 50% chance of being onto something. For instance, The National Enquirer had such specific details of the Edwards trip to the hotel in Beverly Hills that he could have sued them for libel if it weren't true. And as sleazy as these publications are, The Enquirer was credited with being one of the more accurate sources on the Lewinsky scandal.

The main reason that the mainstream press looks down on them on political stories is that they pay for information if they need to, not to mention that "real" reporters look down on their tabloid brethren.

So it's not surprising that there's been a persistent tabloid story that the corporate establishment media has been ignoring: allegations that Laura Bush has basically decided to part company with Junior after his term of office is over again.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorblog/112

Persian diplomat

Iranian comic Maz Jobrani tries to help
Americans think beyond the idiot box

SCHOOLING THE WEST ON THE EAST: Jobrani

by NARCEL X

Nursing a broken ankle and eagerly awaiting the birth of his son, Maz Jobrani, the Persian element of the Axis of Evil comedy quartet, is no stranger to multi-tasking. From starring alongside Sean Penn in The Interpreter to being a staple voice at the world famous Laugh Factory, Maz is at his best under pressure.

From making fun of his heritage by saying Iranians refuse to be called anything but Persian (like the cat, he says) to teaching the crowd how to pronounce the current president's name (Ahmed I'mma-need-a-job), Jobrani serves as a light-hearted diplomat in the ever-growing gap between the East and West. Hitting the stage for this year's Just for Laughs, he spoke to me from his Los Angeles home about future plans, political misconceptions and his knack for Iranian spiced humor.

Mirror: With all the rhetoric and finger pointing at Iran in the last couple of months, what do you feel your role as a comedian is?

Maz Jobrani: It's to educate and shed light on the origin of my people. A lot of Americans don't think beyond the idiot box. Iran has been demonized and definitely simplified—there are 75 million people there. I think it's important to humanize my people, and make the advocates of war realize the cost of war. Before war, there is diplomacy. That's what I do, a form of diplomacy. I try to make people laugh and leave with a different perspective on Iran.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/2008/071008/comedy3.html

30 years later...