Real Time

Former United Nations ambassador John Bolton had one of the best lines on Friday's "Real Time" when after he got some scattered applause from the typically liberal audience in attendance, he said to Bill Maher, "You let Republicans in."

As the subject turned to America's military operations abroad, the HBO host told his guest, "You can't really believe that radical Muslim terrorists...need Afghanistan to launch an attack on us."

"I think there are plenty of alternative places," replied Bolton. "And I would say the bigger strategic interest going forward is keeping those nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists."

This produced some scattered applause from the crowd leading Bolton to marvelously say, "You let Republicans in" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

Bill Maher Friday went on quite a little rant about conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

During the opening monologue of HBO's "Real Time," Maher mocked something Limbaugh mentioned on his show about the leaking oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico possibly having been attacked by environmentalists.

"That's right, a secret team of hippie frogmen snuck on board an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and blew it up to frame the oil companies," Maher quipped. 

Next came the cheap shots: "You know what Rush, how many pills is your maid giving you?...Congratulations, Rush Limbaugh, you are now officially the Louis Farrakhan of white people" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill Maher on Friday said Barack Obama is a moderate Republican by '70s standards.

As the subject on the most recent installment of "Real Time" moved to the retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the HBO host actually said that it was the Republican Party that has changed in the past thirty or forty years and not Stevens' view of the world.  

"You know what's ironic is that you know who's really a moderate Republican by '70s standards?" Maher asked. "Barack Obama."

This stupidity came seconds after guest Richard Clarke actually said that the gun rally in Virginia on April 19 was to commemorate the Oklahoma City bombing (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo): 

Friday follies. Before the weekend ends, two quotes from journalists worth noting made on Friday night shows:

♦ On MSNBC’s Hardball, NBC’s Chuck Todd forwarded the notion that if Florida Governor Charlie Crist drops out of the Republican primary -- where polls put him way behind conservative Marco Rubio -- and wins the Senate seat as an independent, “he becomes the most powerful Senator in the United States Senate” and “he becomes, probably, the viable third party candidate in the middle in the country” for President in 2012.

♦ A few hours later on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, David Remnick, author of the new book, ‘The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama,' outed the real liberal agenda behind ObamaCare as he predicted that instead of being an “albatross” that will hurt Democrats at the ballot box in November, all those new beneficiaries will be grateful and vote Democratic:

When you add 30 million people to the rolls of getting health care, access to health care, seems to me a huge gain and the potential widening of the base for the Democratic Party among a lot of people who might not necessarily vote before. So, I don't think you're going to see a repeat of 1994 come this fall.

Of course, few of those 30 million will have any better access to health care by this November than they had before the bill passed.

(Updated with anti-Catholic "New Rules" jokes below.) Liberals complained this week when Rep. Michele Bachmann complained about "gangster government." But do they mind if the Catholic Church is compared to (and prosecuted like) the Mafia? So said former Gov. Jesse Ventura on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday.

MAHER: You did a movie called Predator. Let's talk about the Vatican.

VENTURA: That's a predator, too. Never got me, though, the Vatican. An alien did.

MAHER: My crazy radical friends Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins say that if the Pope travels to England, as he is scheduled to in September, he should be arrested when he hits the tarmac. Now do you think that's going too far?

VENTURA: ...I have another alternative, a question I've asked here in the United States. Why hasn't the Catholic Church been prosecuted under the RICO laws of organized crime?

HBO should name its show "Real Lies with Bill Maher," because on Friday night he was wildly claiming that 98 percent of taxpayers paid lower taxes this year, and so Tea Parties are just a Klan rally:

What a day for the Tea Party people. Did you see that? America's parks and fairgrounds were lost in a sea of man-boobs. (Laughter) As they were venting their anger and rage against taxes, which in most cases for them went down. Protesting, their taxes went down. Why let the truth spoil a perfectly good Klan rally?

After the whoops and applause and laughter, he continued:

It's true, it's true. These are the facts. Federal taxes went down for 98 percent of people -- working families, individuals, almost everybody.

It's an archaic way of thinking - unless it's imposed upon conservatives, then it's OK. It's this notion that commentators that are right-of-center should know their place - that place being only in the realms of talk radio or on the Fox News Channel. Otherwise, it is unacceptable.

Now Politico has joined the fray and is taking news tips from left-wing storefronts that have staked out RedState.com founder Erick Erickson's Macon, Ga. radio show on Newstalk 940 WMAC, to capture any sort of gotcha moment to embarrass Erickson. And all of this seems to have been spurred on by CNN's announcement last month that Erickson would be a network contributor.

At issue is Erickson's claim he would pull a shotgun on an American Community Survey (ACS) worker, an organization that is part of the U.S. Census Bureau, if he attempted to approach his home. However, Erickson's statement has been framed by his critics that he is attempting to prevent the Census Bureau from fulfilling a constitutional requirement, and that has been deemed "threatening" by Andy Barr of Politico in an April 2 post.

In the midst of liberals condemning the tone of anti-Obama conservatives, Bill Maher on Friday pointed to a vulgar and sexually-explicit text message Tiger Woods reportedly sent, which promised aggressive sexual behavior, as representing the attitude Democrats should adopt from the “lying bullies of the right.”

Maher quoted from Woods: “I want to treat you rough, throw you around, spank and slap you and make you sore....I'm going to tell you to shut the f**k up while I slap your face and pull your hair for making noise.” Maher declared that “perfectly represents the attitude the Democrats should now have in their dealings with the Republican Party.” He prefaced his “New Rules” tirade:

Here's a word President Obama should take out of his Teleprompter: Bipartisanship. People only care about that in theory, not in practice. The best thing that happened this year is when Obama finally realized that and said: “Kiss my black ass, we're going it alone George W. Bush style.”

Maher descriptively contended “Democrats need to push the rest of their agenda while their boot is on the neck of the greedy, poisonous old reptile,” arguing: “We need to regulate the banks, we need to overhaul immigration, we need to end corporate welfare including at the Pentagon, we need to bring troops home from everywhere, we need to end the drug war...”

Audio: MP3 clip (3:30)

Editor's Note: The following is an open letter from actress Maria Conchita Alonso, who penned this response to actor Sean Penn's recent remarks on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in which the left-wing actor defended Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

Dear Sean, WHY?

Even though I have great respect for your artistic talent, I was appalled by a recent television interview where you vigorously showed support for the regime of Hugo Chavez. Therefore, I've decided to set the record straight for you regarding the Chavez regime, supporting my case based not only on my political ideologies, but on proven facts you choose to ignore.  Otherwise, I believe your position would be different.

Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

For example, you said that all Chavez-winning elections in Venezuela were "transparent."

Then WHY didn't the government allow a manual recount of the votes and computer information when doubt set in? After all, how do you explain how these votes that were strongly favoring the opposition mysteriously reflected the opposite results the morning after, thus permitting Chavez to continue on?  On what are you basing your conclusions? I strongly recommend that you read a report by the U.S. State Department written in 2009 entitled "The Fraudulent Elections in Venezuela".

On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, during a discussion of Mitt Romney’s recent altercation with rapper Sky Blu on an airplane, host Maher seemed to suggest that Romney might have been motivated by anti-black racism in confronting the rapper as the Real Time host brought up racially tinged quotes from former Mormon church president Joseph Fielding Smith – who died in 1972 at the age of 95 after serving two years as president – as if the words were relevant to Romney’s scuffle. Maher: "I just couldn't help but think maybe this has something to do with the fact that the Mormons traditionally have not had a great relation with the black people."

After reading a quote from Smith that came from a 1963 article in Look magazine, in which Smith contended that "I would not want you to believe that we bear any animosity toward the Negro. Darkies are wonderful people," Maher claimed that the words were only 20 or 30 years old. Maher: "I'm just saying if you're a Mormon and this is the ‘pope’ of your church and he says things like this about Negro and darkies – and this is only like, I don't know how long ago this was, 20, 30 years ago." The HBO host then read a quote from the book, The Way to Perfection, published by Smith in the 1930s, without divulging the date.

Greg Gutfeld and the "Red Eye" gang Tuesday tore apart Bill Maher for wishing that Glenn Beck had been killed during last week's Pentagon shootings.

As NewsBusters previously reported, the so-called comedian during last Friday's "Real Time" said of the tragedy, "When we see crazy, senseless deaths like this, we can only ask why, why, why couldn't it have been Glenn Beck?"

This led Gutfeld, along with guests including Ann Coulter and S.E. Cupp, to lay into Maher for his absurdity while also skewering actor Sean Penn for recently wishing his critics would "die screaming of rectal colon cancer."

For the entertainment pleasure of his audience, Gutfeld enlisted the help of his famous Red Eye Robots to offer Maher some new material utilizing "Glenn Beck died" punch lines (video embedded below the fold, h/t Story Balloon):

"When we see crazy, senseless deaths like this, we can only ask why, why, why couldn't it have been Glenn Beck?"

So joked Bill Maher Friday evening on HBO's "Real Time."

During his opening monologue, Maher addressed John Bedell, the man that was shot and killed Thursday when he attacked the Pentagon.

For some reason, the comedian used the incident as a vehicle to go after the Fox News host (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t Ed Morrissey, file photo):  

Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore, appearing on Friday night’s Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO to plug the DVD release of his Capitalism: A Love Story screed, cited the 250,000 killed in Haiti, which he snidely described as an unregulated “Republican’s paradise,” as an apt analogy to justify further regulation of U.S. banks.

Live via satellite from Manhattan, Moore spouted:

Chile had an earthquake this past week that was 500 times greater than the earthquake in Haiti. But here's the big difference. In Chile, they have various -- very serious regulations when it comes to building codes. So a thousand people died, sadly, but a thousand people died with a 500 times greater earthquake. And in Haiti, where there are no building codes, no regulations -- a Republican’s paradise -- a quarter of a million people died.

Audio: MP3 clip

Haiti could better be characterized as an impoverished nation beset for decades by a corrupt socialist government.

Sarah Palin sends liberals into irrational frenzies of contempt and, in the case of Bill Maher, fits of condescension which drive him to denigrate anyone stupid enough to see anything good in her. Maher began and ended his Friday night HBO program, Real Time with Bill Maher, with derogatory “jokes” based on the presumption Palin and her supporters are morons.

He started with how at the health care summit the attendees recited stories about health care perils: “John McCain told how he once carried a brain-dead woman through an entire campaign.”

About 56 minutes later, Maher raised Tiger Woods and his Buddhist beliefs, wrapping up the show by ridiculing the eastern religion, but turned it into a slam at Palin fans: “Thinking you can look at a babbling, barely house-broken, uneducated being and say that’s our leader doesn't make you enlightened. It makes you a Sarah Palin supporter.”

The left's comedic mud-slingers have been working overtime lately. Bill Maher injected his latest bit of invective Friday when he labeled the Tea Party movement a "cult" and hurled epithets at major conservative figures.
Angry that Americans would dare object to his particular brand of ultra-liberal politics, Maher has recieved a bit of press lately for his unending stream of hatred for anyone who disagrees with him.  He consistently mocks Sarah Palin and her son Trig. And he certainly has a lot of disdain for the American people--you know, the ones who "love the troops the way Michael Vick loves dogs" and are "not bright enough to really understand the issues."
So Maher's latest bit of vitriol on HBO's "Real Time" - reserved for Americans who have the gall to voice their political principles - was hardly a surprise (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript):

Former President Ronald Reagan would have prosecuted Dick Cheney for war crimes, Seth MacFarlane (IMDb page), creator, writer and executive producer of the Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show animated sit-coms which air Sunday nights on Fox, declared Friday night on the season premiere of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. But President Barack Obama, he rued, is too “chicken s**t” do to it.

To affirming applause from the Los Angeles audience, the left-wing MacFarlane -- who at another point recalled he campaigned for Obama -- pretended he’s an expert on Reagan, asserting Cheney’s advocacy of water-boarding terrorists means:

If Ronald Reagan were President, based on Ronald Reagan’s assertion that no matter who it is -- if it’s the Japanese in World War II, if it’s Pol Pot, if it’s us and we’re just scared -- torture is torture and you prosecute that. I have to believe if Ronald Reagan were President, he would try Dick Cheney for war crimes.

Maher agreed “it is a war crime by international law and our own law,” before MacFarlane fretted Obama won’t prosecute because he’s afraid of losing Republican support for his agenda. Generating even louder applause -- and to the delight of a giggling Maher -- MacFarlane countered that Republicans aren’t going to back Obama’s policies, “so you might as well string them up.”

How does one prepare for an upcoming appearance by Seth MacFarlane of Family Guy fame?  If you're Bill Maher, you follow up the Family Guy/Sarah Palin/Down Syndrome attack by doing an 'exclusive rant' for the Huffington Post which includes - you guessed it - a joke about Sarah Palin's son, Trig.

Maher appeals to his lower-intellect audience by stating:

"...while we were off, Sarah Palin agreed to do commentary at Fox News.  Which is actually very similar to her day job - talking to a baby with Down Syndrome."

Video can be found here:

Either Bill Maher was doing his best effort to impersonate Mel Brooks as King Louis XVI in "History in the World, Part I" or he has a complete and utter disregard for the intellectual competency of the American people.

Maher, a perennial bomb thrower with a hard left ideology appeared on CNN's Feb. 16 "Larry King Live," facing the king of softball interviews, Larry King, and let it be known he thought alleged terrorism plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried in New York City and that health care should be forced through by the Obama administration, despite the wishes of the American people.

And why should the American people's wishes be ignored? They're "not bright enough."

"But what the Democrats never understand is that Americans don't really care what position you take, just stick with one," Maher said. "Just be strong. They're not bright enough to really understand the issues. But like an animal, they can sort of sense strength or weakness. They can smell it on you."

A few years ago, comedienne Sarah Silverman disparaged God on her Comedy Central program by throwing him out of her apartment the morning after having sex with him.

On Friday's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Silverman expounding on her anti-theism by introducing a new video wherein she offered a solution to solve world hunger: "Sell the Vatican, Feed the World."

As she chided the Pope for preaching about living humbly despite residing in a "house that is a city," she advised him that such a noble deed would absolve him of any guilt he might have over his alleged connections to the Holocaust.

More disgracefully, Silverman said, "If you sell the Vatican, and you take that money, and you use it to feed every single human being on the planet, you will get crazy p***y" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, h/t Mediaite, vulgarity alert): 

Comedian and kooky leftist Janeane Garofalo is at it again, smearing conservative activists as "white power" racists. Garofalo made her incendiary comments on the October 2 edition of Bill Maher's "Real Time" program on HBO.

Sorry, Janeane, the "real reason that so few people are willing to talk about racism is because, quite frankly, few people are as crazy as Janeane Garofalo is," Media Research Center President and NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell told viewers the next morning on Saturday's "Fox & Friends." [MP3 audio available here]

Bozell noted that Garofalo conveniently forgets that President Obama began office in January with a stunning 83 percent approval rating, before citing more evidence of Garofalo's wackiness:

“Actress/activist” Janeane Garofalo used another media appearance to smear anti-Obama protesters as racists, this time, Friday night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, insisting “it's obvious to anybody who has eyes in this country that tea-baggers, the 9-12ers” are “clearly white power movements” led “by the Glenn Becks, the Michelle Bachmans, the Rush Limbaughs.”

She fretted that “so few people are willing to say that yes it is racism, straight up racism,” before confusing which party controlled segregationist southern states: “The Republican Party has been willing to carry water for racists in this country since about the 1950s.” Garofalo proceeded to repeat a charge she's made often: “Fox News is happy to feed into this; AM radio is happy to feed into this,” including “this tacit nudging towards violence.” [Audio: MP3 clip]

Perhaps this is going to be a common theme of CNN Headline News "The Joy Behar Show." For the second night in a row, two out of two shows - Behar went after the former CNN Headline News host, now Fox News host Glenn Beck as a head of the conservative movement.

On her Sept. 30 show, Behar guests included HBO "Real Time" host Bill Maher and conservative author and columnist Ann Coulter. One had a favorable view of Beck, and the other - not so much.

On Behar's first show, Bette Midler contended Beck would lead to a Rwanda-style civil war in the United States. Behar posed a similar question to Maher on her second show.

Ann Coulter Defends (Video Below Fold)

"The American dream is not totally dead, but it’s being pretty, it’s dying pretty fast...Horatio Alger would move to Europe these days."

So said New York Times columnist Paul Krugman Friday.

Appearing with disgraced former New York governor Eliot Spitzer on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Krugman demonstrated perfectly why his perpertually pessimistic view of America is so revered by perpetually pessimistic liberals (video available here, partial transcript below the fold):

Friday night on his HBO show, Bill Maher tried to discredit critics of President Barack Obama, including those concerned about his talk to school children, by smearing them as racists – before he pointed to a Drudge Report headline, “POLL HELL: OBAMA NEGS RISE,” as somehow an example of the ways “some of the right-wingers are always dropping subliminally racist messages.”

Maher first took up Congressman Joe Wilson's “you lie” shout at Obama: “To heckle a President, to shout in the middle of a speech, would he have done that if it was a white President? I don't think so. I think this is a southern guy who thinks 'I can do whatever I want when it's a black guy speaking.'”

Moments later on Real Time, Maher raised “the folks who did not want the President of the United States to speak to their children. No one who is sane would think the President was going to make a partisan speech to school children. And yet, there's something about that,” recalling “I grew up in an all-white town in northern New Jersey” and “I remember hearing parents talk when I was a kid, you know, they didn't want black people just talking to their kids. That's what this reminded me of.”

Who needs to make health care Barack Obama's Waterloo, as Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. suggested? Why not make it the president's Alamo?

That's the advice PBS host Bill Moyers had for President Barack Obama in an appearance on HBO's August 28 "Real Time with Bill Maher." According to the former press secretary for President Lyndon B. Johnson, a defeat on health care/health insurance reform would do the left more good than crafting some sort of compromise.

"I mean, I would rather see Barack Obama go down fighting for vigorous, strong principled public insurance, than to lose with a bill - look, BusinessWeek had a cover story last week, ‘The Insurers are Winning,'" Moyers said.

If smugness were a crime, they would put HBO "Real Time" host Bill Maher under the jail. 

On NBC's Aug. 24 "Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien," Maher expressed his frustration with President Barack Obama's inability to get health care/health insurance reformed and passed into law.

"I think right now for example, this health care debate looks like it's - we could lose it because I don't think [Obama] he has been tough enough," Maher said. "You know, he used to say in the campaign, ‘It's your time.' This is his time. He should get mad, stop [expletive] around."

One of the hurdles Obama is facing to get his brand of health care made law is some of the more moderate Democrats in the Senate aren't willing to agree to the far-reaching plan Obama and the Democratic congressional leadership want. Maher said it really didn't matter what they thought.

On Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the host mocked Michelle Malkin's new book on the ethically challenged Obama administration, then mocked Jonah Goldberg, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck with fake books that show how conservatives have "jumped the shark" [sic] in attacking Obama after only six months in office:  

He’s been in office, our president, for 6 months, and there is also, or there is already a book by Michelle Malkin. You know Michelle Malkin, she’s been on our show. She won’t come back, but. (Laughter.) But look at this. This is not a fake book we mocked up. This is a real book. Culture of Corruption. Look at him, it’s the American flag, he’s f—ed it up already. [Wrong. It's the Obama campaign logo.]

Six months in office! And already we can make this judgment! It blows my mind, because Bush always said ‘you can’t judge me now. Only history can judge me.' The long – we’ve got to wait 100 years to see how Iraq comes out.

[Update, 2:15 pm Eastern: Audio and video clips from the segment added.]

HBO’s Bill Maher, after being asked during a segment on Monday’s Situation Room on CNN to explain his recent “soulless vampire bastards” moniker of the current health care system, pushed for President Obama’s “reform” plan, paraphrasing the Democrat’s own words: “We can’t do nothing- doing nothing is actually worse.” He also stood by his consistent labeling of the U.S. as a “stupid country” [audio clips available here].

Anchor Wolf Blitzer interviewed Maher for two segments starting at the bottom of the 5 pm Eastern hour. Towards the end of the first segment, Blitzer prompted the HBO host for his take on the health care debate. After playing a clip from his “Real Time” program where he used the “vampire bastards” label, Blitzer complimented Maher for the “very funny stuff” as well as the “serious element” on his program and asked, “What would you want to see emerge from this whole health care debate in Washington?” Maher echoed the Democrats’s talking points on the issue:

"Michael Jackson IS America. We love him so much because he reflects our nation perfectly: fragile, over-indulgent, childish, in debt, on drugs, and over the hill."

So said HBO's Bill Maher on "Real Time" Friday night during his "New Rules" segment.

As he elaborated on how America fit each of these negative attributes, he concluded by claiming, "Monday is the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong first setting foot on the moon, and I can't think of any ambitious goal we've reached since then" (video embedded below he fold, relevant section begins at 1:45):

Film producer/director Oliver Stone, a far-left promoter of conspiracies who is working on a sequel to his 1987 'Wall Street' movie, declared on Friday night's edition of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher that “Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch” and “I really think George W is dumber” and so, after producing movies on the CIA conspiracy to murder President Kennedy and a dark look at President Nixon, he won't create a movie on Ronald Reagan because “by doing the W movie I kind of put all my efforts behind dumbness.”

Stone, who earlier in the pre-taped show made up of three one-on-one interviews Maher conducted (other two were with Cameron Diaz and Billy Bob Thornton) characterized President Obama as no better than Bush (“a sneak Bush administration with different words”), also asserted: “I do think Nixon is the father of Reagan and I think Reagan's the father of Bush. There's sort of a very strong line.” Whatever that means.

Audio: MP3 clip (55 secs, 340 Kb)