Bad guys can't hide anymore

I'm watching Friday's Real Time With Bill Maher again and I liked what Bill said: bad guys can't hide anymore. The internet is allowing normal people to expose the criminals of the world, like Kony, the first person to be indicted by the International Criminal Court. The Telegraph's headline: 'Luis Moreno Ocampo, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, has defended the creators of the Kony 2012 viral video hit, saying that the campaign has "mobilised the world".'

I posted this on fb and wanted to post it here too, just in case you have not seen it.



The internet has become useful in so many ways.

Obama has done it better

Another great stand up by Bill Maher, and this time it's online. It's mostly about American politics, but at about 25 minutes he compares Obama's foreign policy to George Bush's. Very funny satire. He also made good points, including: Bush spent a trillion dollars to get Saddam, and then Obama spent a billion dollars (1000 times less than a trillion) to get Qadhafi.

Maher says Obama did it better, and it's true. "It's called doing things smart," Maher says. Obama was lucky he didn't have to deal with Iraq, I've said before, but it's not over for Obama. The conflict in Syria could explode. World powers are calling for intense pressure on Assad.

At 20 min he talks about John Steinbeck's quote about socialism, which I happened to see on fb today: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” Bill Maher replaced "embarrassed" with "inconvenienced" but I think he got the message across. Great show.

Real misinformation

I moved and got DIRECTV. I finally saw Avatar. Incredible movie! Also I've watched the last two episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher. In the first episode, Maher pointed out that the three biggest chunks of the US federal government's expenses are social security, Medicare & Medicaid, and defense. Elliot Spitzer responded and said basically the US is big insurance with a big army (I believe he quoted Ezra Klein). I've never thought of it that way, but it is true.

Some dubious and downright false claims were made in the last episode, which I watched last night. Bill Maher implied that Bill Clinton's tax hikes lead to job growth. Bill Clinton was a great president whose admininstration balanced the budget, but his tax hikes did not lead to job growth. The Internet and tech boom did.

Also Maher compared dissimulation in Islam to Jon Kyl's lies about planned parenthood. It was just a segway into the planned parenthood discussion, but he made it sound like Islam allows lying. Irshad Manji mentioned that it's allowed in times of war, but she did not explain that it's called taqiyya and that it's allowed by Shia to lie about their sect when Wahhabis hunt them down. I would lie about my religion too if a Wahhabi wants to kill me because I'm Shiite.

Manji also failed when she implied that most Muslim men force their wives to wear hijab inside the home. That's just silly! And the pic of Saudi men taking pics of a goat to prove I don't know what is also silly.

Also annoying in the last episode was Michael Steele, who disagreed with Maher that the Tea Party are Republicans. He said the Tea Party includes "Blue Dog Democrats". OK there may be a few independent teabaggers, and Blue Dog Democrats are conservative, but it's clear that the vast majority of the Tea Party patriots are Republicans. The audience laughed hard when he said the Tea Party includes Blue Dog Democrats.

At least Michael Steele was challenged appropriately, especially by Ed Schultz. Most misinformation on TV seems to go unchallenged.

Thomas Paine wanted to end slavery

"Thomas Paine wanted to abolish slavery at the same time that American Independence was won, but the pressure from slave owners was too great to overcome, and so it was left to another man to finish the job. Early in life Abraham Lincoln was inspired by Paine's writings, particularly his essay advocating the abolition of Negro slavery. Lincoln said, "I never tire of reading Paine." As a result of Paine's influence, Abraham Lincoln became the Great Emancipator and saved the Union."

WOW. And only six people showed up at Paine's funeral: 'At the time of his death, most American newspapers reprinted the obituary notice from the New York Citizen, which read in part: "He had lived long, did some good and much harm." Only six mourners came to his funeral, two of whom were black, most likely freedmen.'

I have learned much about Thomas Paine in the last 24 hours. Thank you Bill Maher! I've also learned more about the self-proclaimed "patriots" of the Tea Party. Tea Party "patriots" are not like the Founding Fathers. They are more like the people who repudiated Thomas Paine. I guess I should be glad that Glenn Beck thinks he's like Thomas Paine. LOL!

Tea Party not like the Founding Fathers

Muslim Dior

This is hilarious. Bill Maher is great.



This bit of satire was aimed at KSA, but Bill should still read Abbas Hawazin's Categories of Syrian Hijab for a more realistic portrayal of Muslim women outside KSA wearing (and not wearing) hijab.

Islam is in its Dark Ages

Bill Maher is awesome.

Zakaria and Engel (and Barney) on Real Time

I saw Bill Maher's latest last night. A very interesting episode, one of Maher's best, I thought. Bill Maher is very interesting. He's half Jewish and he supports Israel. I'm a big fan of the comedy shows that make fun of the stupidities of government, and I think Bill Maher wins the blue ribbon in this category. John Stewart is a close second. In his last episode Bill's guests were three very smart people: Fareed Zakaria, an Indian American journalist for Newsweek, Richard Engel, and Barney Frank, a US Congressman who happens to be Jewish and gay.

In the clip below Maher and his panel talk about Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and incredibly, Israel & Palestine! Maher gives some stats on Israeli settlers in the West Bank. I was pleasantly surprised. This is the first time I've heard Maher talk about Palestine. Engel basically blames the rightist shift in Israel for the lack of peace. Maher points out that religious extremists in Israel are a big part of the problem. Barney Frank tries to defend the Israeli position, saying that Gaza was an example of how pulling out doesn't work, and then Zakaria slams him in the end with the truth. Love it. America is changing. Zakaria is awesome. I like Barney Frank, but it's clear that Zakaria and Engel are the ones who know what they're talking about. I loved hearing Richard Engel say "I'm also very worried about what happens over there..."



I remember hearing Engel say that the Palestinians are essentially fighting for their homeland, and I expected to see that in Part 7, but it's not there. Whoever clipped this did not include Engel's statement on Gaza. Engel seems to understand that most Palestinians in Gaza are there as a result of ethnic cleansing that's taken place in the last 60 years.

Correction: I fast forwarded to about 40 minutes of the recording to verify what Engel said about Gaza. Engel said about 49 minutes into the episode "but if you are living in Gaza, you feel very much imprisoned, you can't leave, you have no ability to earn an income, you feel that you're bombing an area in Sderot that was really your homeland to begin with..." About two minutes of the episode was left out between Parts 6 and 7 of these clips, where they talk about Sderot and Gaza.

Bill Maher on Bush

One of the reasons I love this country is because we can make fun of the President without being punished for it. Bill Maher makes fun of Bush on every episode of Real Time, and many of his jokes are quite funny. But he also likes to think there was no sectarian violence in Iraq before 2003 - apparently Maher believes that Saddam had some kind of magic mojo that kept terrorists from bombing marketplaces. In this episode he repeated his claim (not seen in the clip below) that there was no sectarian violence when Saddam was in charge. Somebody needs to tell Bill that Iraqi marketplaces were not bombed before 2003 because the Iraqi Shia, who for the most part despised Saddam's Sunni Arab-dominated regime, did not bomb Sunni Arab marketplaces - that's why marketplaces were not bombed when Saddam was in charge. Saddam's henchmen and supporters, who mass murdered Iraqi Shia (and Kurds!) before 2003 continued - ESCALATED - the mass murder of Iraqi Shia after 2003, with lots of help from Al Qaeda.

However, Bill Maher is still funny, and this clip is worth watching. Maher did admit at the end of the show that he's never been to Iraq, so maybe he is not an expert. In this clip he says that this war is not winnable. I wonder what exactly 'winnable' means to Bill Maher. If to 'win' this war means to withdraw from a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic Iraq, then God I hope Bill Maher is wrong about this war not being winnable. (Thanks Dad for the clip)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

A few weeks ago I published a post about Bill Maher and mentioned Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a positive light. Some readers have pointed out that Ali demonizes Muslims, especially Muslim men, and that she has been accused of lying about her life story. I should have written in that post that I was not familiar with Ali's story before I watched that episode of Real Time and I have not read Ali's book called Infidel. I do know that she has received death threats from extremists for her views on Islam, and I believe that she should be able to express her views without being threatened. However, I understand why so many Muslims have criticized her. Forced marriage is not customary in modern Islam, and even Ali's own story about forced marriage is mired in controversy. Also I did not mention that in the episode of Real Time on which she was a guest, Ali completely disagreed with Arab American Congressman Darryl Isa's assertion that Jews and Christians lived peacefully with Muslims in the Middle East for hundreds of years. I thought Isa made an excellent point, and it seemed that Ali was determined to portray Muslims as persecutors of Jews and Christians. She did not mention that Arab Jews and Christians prospered in the Middle East despite their dhimmi status, while Jews in Europe were truly persecuted.

Bill Maher

I have always enjoyed watching his show Real Time With Bill Maher, even though at times he made it sound like Saddam Hussein wasn't such a bad guy. Last night I watched the first two episodes of Real Time's season (On Demand is awesome) and I was pleasantly surprised. Apparently over the three month break Bill talked to Senator Joe Biden, who was a guest on the second episode. They talked about Iraq as three different countries, and Bill observed that most US troops have been killed by the Sunni Arab insurgency. Craig Ferguson pointed out in the first episode that there was sectarian violence in Iraq before this civil war, and he said that 'sectarian violence breeds sectarian violence.' Then they talked about global warming. The guests in the second episode included Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who talked about dhimmis. It's amazing how much they can fit into an hour long show, and they do have to summarize and thus leave out important details (like Baghdad's mixed neighborhoods), but I love watching smart people get together and talk politics.