Libertygibit

There's nothing more insufferable than a self-professed libertarian. That's because these days, if you're above the age of, say, 19 and you consider yourself a libertarian there's a pretty good chance you're just an asshole -- an asshole who tries to pompously wrap himself in the cloak of an impressive-sounding political ideology because it's better than just admitting that he's, again, a childish, selfish asshole whose views don't deserve to be lent an ounce of respect or credibility.

Watch as Bill Maher thoroughly takes apart the movement he used to consider himself a part of but which he now can't abide.

The Division Hell

There's nothing about this I don't love, because Maher is spot-on across the board -- especially his point about how we've politicized so much of our culture that no one accepts a common reality anymore. We have the conservative view and the liberal view and each side comes to the table seemingly not with its own set of opinions but its own set of facts. Is one side of that equation far worse these days? Absolutely. But the end result of the political fragmenting of our society, largely through niche media, is furious chaos, and not much more.

Quote(s) of the Day

Every single one comes from Bill Maher's flat-out brilliant piece currently running in the top blogger position on the front page of the Huffington Post:

"When I say religion is a mental illness, this is what I mean: it corrodes your mental faculties to the point where you can believe in tiny ninja warriors who hide in vaginas and lie in wait for bad people's sperm."

"Paul Ryan, who every shit-for-brains pundit in America keeps telling us is a 'serious' guy, still believes in the supply-side theory. All the Republicans do. They all believe in something that both science and history have shown to be pure fantasy. The symbol for their party shouldn't be an elephant -- it should be a unicorn... This is how low we've put the bar for political courage -- that you can just write, "I want a pony" in a binder and call it the "Plan For Restoring Vision For the Future of America's Greatness" or some shit, and then everyone has to refer to you as the serious one in Congress."

"How do they get away with it? They know that, because we're already such a religious country, our minds are primed for magical, fantasy thinking. The gullibility comes factory-installed...The grown-up answer is: identify problems scientifically, prioritize and solve. The Republican answer is: there isn't a problem. And anyone who tells you different is a liar who hates America. We don't have to make hard choices. We just have to ignore the science and the math -- that's why God gave us values."

"If rape babies throw a monkey wrench into the whole right-to-life pitch, just make believe rape babies don't exist. If you want to cut down on teen pregnancy, just tell curious kids with raging hormones to practice abstinence. Until they get married. Because everyone knows, that's when the fucking never stops. Health care? Not a problem if you just keep repeating, "We have the greatest health care in the world." Even though the U.N. ranks it 37th."

"Next week in Tampa the Republicans must admit that the difference between a GOP convention and Comic-Con is that the people at Comic-Con have a much firmer grasp of reality."

I've been talking about this kind of thing for a while -- the fact that a willingness to believe in ridiculous superstition when it comes to the creation of the universe and who its ongoing landlord supposedly is primes you to believe just about anything without proof, to just take it all on faith. This is why most religion is dangerous. It enables and rewards non-thinking on all sorts of issues.

Quote of the Day

"A guy in magic gym shorts talking to virgin Baptists. Clown, meet college."

-- Bill Maher on Mitt Romney's recent address at Liberty University

Maher's "New Rules" evisceration of Liberty as a phony college is one for the ages.

Meet the Depressing

This is the video clip Bob and I talk about in this week's podcast.

Watch at your own risk.

As I said -- begged, really -- at the end of the show: Please, please secede, Mississippi. You will not be missed.

Elephant Shit

I'll admit it: I turned on the umpteenth Republican debate on CNN last night. Sat down on the couch to watch it and everything. I managed to make it all of maybe two or three minutes before actually saying out loud to myself, "Why the hell am I watching this?" then shutting it off to go do something meaningful with my time. Word has it I missed an epic barn-burner of bald-faced lies, shameless pandering and frenzied fear-mongering when it comes to the end-of-America threat posed by our socialist Kenyan, secret Muslim Manchurian ursurper president, Barack Hussein Obama, but honestly I was expecting nothing less -- which is why I shut the thing off in the first place.

Thankfully, Bill Maher watched it all the way through and put together some choice thoughts on it for the Huffington Post.

Here are just a couple:

"Isn't a highlight of every debate when Mitt Romney takes umbrage at being accused of the best thing he ever did in his life -- Romneycare? Something he should be proud of? Last night he took out his dueling glove and declared that when he was governor, he made sure there was NO requirement from the church to provide morning after pills for rape victims. They will be punished with a baby, as Jesus would want. Mitt's attitude is always, 'How dare you accuse me of helping people or being compassionate! Why, I'll have you know I'm every bit as much of a cold hearted bastard as any of these other pricks up here with me!'

'But Mitt, we have a picture of you giving money to a homeless person.'

'I did NOT give a bum money! I was paying him to blow me!'"

And this one echoes what I've been saying here quite a bit over the past week:

"People get mad at me for using the phrase 'this stupid country', which I sometimes do -- but, I'm sorry -- Satan? In 2012? This elephant is not only in the room at the debates, but everywhere on TV today where people were talking about this and not breaking down in the middle and screaming, Wait a minute -- We're modern people, surely we don't give any credence to this comic book character that was created in the bronze age!! It's barely worthy of a children's story, and people take it to the Oval Office -- Bush did -- and it affects their thinking and our lives. Why is Santorum so against contraception? Because there's a line in Genesis about not spilling your seed. A random brainfart from some desert dweller 3,000 years ago, before people knew about germs or atoms or round planets, and it gets written down and passed down and in 2012 people like Rick Santorum are still too R-word to see that, and that's why some woman in Akron, Ohio might not get birth control."

Make no mistake: Anyone who utters the word Satan in the year 2012 in a serious context not only shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House, he or she should be confined to a padded room somewhere and given a steady diet of Lithium and a round-the-clock rotation of psychiatric professionals.

Sand Trap

One of the main reasons I've stayed relatively quite about politics lately -- aside from the fact that I've been incredibly busy -- has a lot to do with a pervading feeling of powerlessness. I realize this may sound like a cop out, but there are times when I've wondered whether I should just give up discussing politics altogether, choosing to keep my head down and live my life rather than letting the chaotic, perpetual drone of left-vs-right turn a good portion of my day into the figurative beating of my head against a computer keyboard. But really, let's be honest: It has less to do with not wanting to add to the noise than it does with that unshakable belief that there's nothing I can say that'll change a goddamned thing -- not in a political climate that allows one party to get away with operating completely divorced from empirical reality.

Seriously, how do you even begin to call out a movement which has made itself nearly bulletproof by virtue of its unwillingness to subscribe to facts -- facts that anybody not currently tied to a bed at Bellevue accepts as a jumping off point for his or her opinions? It's no secret that conservatism as a political ideal is a shadow of its former, somewhat respectable self, having long ago been hijacked from within by its most lunatic fringe. All that remains now is that fringe and those who cater to it, and to extend the metaphor, you just can't argue with a crazy person -- nor with the person who will do or say anything to inexplicably appeal to that person. The American political right, at this point in our history, is so thoroughly shameless and hypocritical -- and so detached from the world that everyone else on the planet inhabits -- that attempting to refute its nonsense with logic and reason is a fool's errand. And while I've been a hell of a lot of questionable things throughout my lifetime, I hope a fool was never one of them.

So I've just kept my mouth shut around here, choosing instead to outsource the outrage to people apparently far more able -- and infinitely more tolerant -- than I am.

But at some point you have to get off your ass and get back into the fight, I suppose. And for me, that time is now. Yeah, I've still got quite a bit on my plate at the moment, particularly when it comes to work. But this site matters to me and I can't deny that it's been neglected of late. So I'm gonna try my damndest to get things back on track around here -- and that means talking not just politics but hopefully anything else that comes to mind, all while attempting to balance my business and personal life.

With that in mind, though, I wanted to give you an example of what I'm talking about when it comes to both the insanity on the right and the entirely calculated and opportunistic pandering to that insanity that's become a staple of conservatism's standard bearers. Listen to this little diatribe from Bill Maher because he's right on the money: the Republicans purport to love America but they really seem to hate Americans, at least a vast swath of them anyway.

Seriously, how do you argue with this kind of horseshit thinking from a smug, morally bankrupt little asshole like Gingrich?

Yeah, That Boycott's Gonna Work Great

Quote of the Week

Yeah, it's from four days ago, but there's no way I can let this kind of hilarity pass by without popping it up here. Plus I so enjoyed the ridiculous outrage the last time I brought up the subject of Jesus's favorite lousy quarterback.

Needless to say, angry conservatives are now calling for a boycott of HBO. That should be effective considering how many hardcore Christians are big fans of True Blood and Hung yet will now be forced to cancel their subscriptions.

Adding: Big props to Andy Levy of Fox News's Red Eye, who's consistently one of the cleverest and genuinely smartest things on that otherwise barren wasteland of a network. This was his response to the Maher tweet "controversy" on Hannity last night: "He's a comedian. People need to stop being outraged by what comedians say. Part of their job is to say things that are outrageous... He's not a politician, he's not running for office. He's got a show on HBO, and he's a comedian. Who cares?"

Quote of the Day

"Overtly racist bullshit thinly painted over. Honestly, could anyone have written a better metaphor for the modern Republican party?"

-- Bill Maher on the infamous "Niggerhead" rock on Rick Perry's property in Texas

Pledge Hammer

FTW

Since I was out of town over the weekend, I missed this.

Just freaking brilliant.

Granting Asylum: Update

You know, Bill Maher's really kind of gone to the dark side during interviews lately, being more bitter and preachy than funny, but he made a great point a little while ago on CNN.

While no one's more excited than me to watch the clown car crash that will almost certainly be Michele Bachmann's rebuttal to the State of the Union address tonight, why the hell is anyone actually carrying the thing? Bachmann certainly has every right to voice the lunatic delusions swirling around inside that tiny hamster cock of a brain of hers, but no one's saying the cable networks or anyone else for that matter have a responsibility to indulge her by broadcasting them to the world. Essentially, the "Tea Party" is nothing but the ultra-nationalist al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade of the Republican party; yes, its leadership and many of its members claim to be above partisanship when it comes to directing their substantial and largely unfocused outrage, but that's really only because they want to see the country move so far to the right that its nose is pressed against the wall and they don't feel like the GOP is doing enough to make that happen. In other words, they're just Republicans who feel like the Republican party isn't being Republican enough. Show me a Democrat who professes to also be a tea bagger and I'll show you somebody in the final stages of syphilitic brain atrophy.

And yet the enabling of Bachmann and the rest of these assholes will mean that the right will be given the opportunity to air its grievances against the president's message not once but twice tonight. And why? Because the cable news channels like trainwrecks as much as we do -- precisely because we like them, because they know we'll be watching.

The Washington Post: CNN Defends Airing Bachmann Speech/1.25.11

Quote of the Day

"One is a group of exclusively white men who live in a bygone century, have bad teeth and think of blacks as three-fifths of a person... and the other are the founding fathers."

-- Bill Maher on the difference between the invoked-to-death Founding Fathers and the Tea Party

America's Favorite Things

This is brilliant.

Quote of the Day

"I think it's worth noting that in one of the alleged photos of him, he's pleasuring himself on a bed while wearing Crocs. And if you think about it, is there any better metaphor for the sad state of America today than an over-the-hill white guy lazily masturbating in plastic shoes?"

-- Bill Maher, on Brett Favre's ill-advised decision to send pictures of his penis to a female former Jets employee and what it says about us

Assistant To the Quote of the Day

"We don't hate rich people, but have a little humility about how you got it and stop complaining. Maybe the worst whiner of all: Stephen Schwarzman, #69 on Forbes' list of richest Americans, compared Obama's tax hike to 'when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.' Wow. If Obama were Hitler, Mr. Schwarzman, I think your tax rate would be the least of your worries."

-- Bill Maher, in a must-read piece in the Huffington Post

Bonus Quote of the Day

"Sarah Palin screaming about death panels? Listen, Sarah, if we were killing off useless people, you'd be the first to know."

-- Bill Maher

Quote of the Day

"Democrats in America were put on earth to do one thing: drag the ignorant hillbilly half of this country into the next century, which in their case is the 19th -- and by passing health care, the Democrats saved their brand. A few months ago, Sarah Palin mockingly asked them, 'How's that hopey-changey thing workin' out for ya?' Great, actually. Thanks for asking. And how's that whole Hooked on Phonics thing working out for you?"

-- Bill Maher

Sure he's giving the Democrats way too much credit, but at this point I'll support almost anybody who can successfully thwart a Republican party that's completely lost its fucking mind.

Sunday Sacrilege: Eastern Edition

"People are always debating, is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy: it's a religion. You're a religion if you do something as weird as when the Buddhist monks scrutinize two-year-olds to find the reincarnation of the dude who just died, and then choose one of the toddlers as the sacred Lama: 'His poop is royal!' Sorry, but thinking you can look at a babbling, barely-housebroken, uneducated being and say, 'That's our leader' doesn't make you enlightened. It makes you a Sarah Palin supporter."

-- Bill Maher on Tiger Woods's apology