Tag Archives: new rules

CPAC2013: Keep F*cking That Chicken

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On Bill Maher’s New Rules segment this week, he talked about a “relatively small group of very shrill people [who are] devoted to — and succeeding at — convincing us that this is a much more conservative and religious nation than it is.”

Maher goes on to explain that CPAC is merely an extension of such devotion:

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Maher discusses his term Shit Kicker Inflation ”the phenomenon of all things conservative being portrayed as way bigger than they really are” with the following examples:

  • ONE MILLION MOMS: the number of followers that One Million Moms has on Twitter: 2,258. 
  • THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE: just as there aren’t a million moms in One Million Moms, there is no “league” in The Catholic League. It’s one guy with a fax machine.
  • OBAMACARE: as an idea, it’s unpopular. But ask voters about the elements in it, they’re all very popular. It’s like saying “I hate pizza! I love tomato sauce and melted cheese on dough, but pizza? I hate that shit.”
  • GUNS: gun ownership is actually DOWN in this country… way down. And yet the NRA, with just 4 million members, has a stranglehold on the gun policies in a nation of 300 million.
  • CPAC2013: Among the featured speakers at CPAC this year include Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum, Wayne LaPierre, Donald Trump, and Sarah Palin… a virtual who’s who of what the fuck.

Here are some highlights from a few of CPAC’s featured who’s who of WTF:

Sarah Palin: ”We’re not here to rebrand a party [but to] put on a fresh coat of rhetorical paint.” Then she said: “More background checks? Dandy idea, Mr. President. Should’ve started with yours.” Fresh birther paint!

Next, she dazzled the audience with a boob joke followed by heroically (according to crowd reaction?) drinking from a Big Gulp. Wolverines!

“Outside the ballroom afterward, CPAC attendees raved about the stunt. “Hilarious.” “I thought that was awesome.” “I loved that.” One woman I spoke to said the moment “just really symbolized American freedom.” A man named Tomas told me that Palin holding up the Big Gulp “gave a new look to the Statue of Liberty.” Whether or not anyone, including Palin, realized that Mayor Bloomberg’s soda restrictions wouldn’t even have affected Big Gulps is not clear.” – Dan Amira




Freedumb!

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Donald Trump: “Behold, the scene at Donald Trump’s CPAC speech this morning in the main ballroom. Empty seats were everywhere, although it’s not entirely Trump’s fault. He was given an 8:45 a.m. speaking slot, the very first of the day. Many CPAC attendees aren’t even out of bed yet. Still, Trump was invited not because of his conservative bona fides (he’s donated more money over the years to Democrats than to Republicans), but because he’s supposedly a crowd-pleasing draw.”

Pre-speech:

Post-speech:

These empty seats are Totally False.

Photos via ‘flunky’ Dan Amira

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Mitt Romney: “‘It’s up to us to make sure that we learn from our mistakes — and my mistakes,’ Romney told the crowd Friday. [...] Romney’s re-emergence at CPAC comes after months spent almost entirely out of public view. People close to him say he consumes large volumes of news every day on his iPad and on Fox News. He stews as he reads the coverage of the various budget showdowns in Congress, frustrated that the president has pursued what he sees as an aggressively liberal agenda that won’t solve the country’s economic problems.”

So to Mitt Romney, “learning from his mistakes” includes continuing to bravely watch Fox and continuing to bravely label the President’s insistence on a balanced approach to deficit reduction (spending cuts alongside closing loopholes and subsidies for the wealthy) an “aggressively liberal agenda.” Sure. Apparently the only mistakes Mitt made with his CPAC speech were omitting some birther jokes and not drinking from a Big Gulp.

Let’s be honest: the theme “America’s Future: The Next Generation of Conservatives” really doesn’t describe CPAC. This annual gathering of wingnuts could be more efficiently labeled “Keep F*cking That Chicken.”

Related: Keep F*cking That Chicken

God Save Us from the next generation of conservatives.

Bill Maher explains Donald Trump’s $5 million lawsuit against him (and #Apers)

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Huffington Post: Donald Trump is suing Bill Maher for $5 million in charity donations after “proving” his biological father is not, as Maher joked on “The Tonight Show,” an orange-haired orangutan.

Politico: Trump’s attorney Scott S. Balber released a letter following Maher’s comments and attached a copy of Trump’s birth certificate. “Attached hereto is a copy of Mr. Trump’s birth certificate, demonstrating that he is the son of Fred Trump, not an orangutan,” Balber wrote in the letter.

Seriously! And the best part? Trump released a short-form birth certificate!

…

Maher explains,

“Let me catch you up on how all this got started. During the last week of the presidential campaign last year, Donald Trump – who previously had been a one-issue candidate obsessed with Obama’s birth certificate – announced that he would give $5 million to charity if Obama produced his college records. Because a black guy getting into college? Something fishy there.

So playing on the fact that the only other thing in nature with the same color hair as Trump’s is the orange-haired orangutan, I joked that Donald Trump needed to show HIS papers to prove HE wasn’t hiding a bad secret about HIS birth. This is known as parody. And it’s a form of something we in the comedy business call a joke.

Naturally I also aped, if you will, Trump’s offer of a charity of HIS choosing… which I identified as The Hair Club for Men. Really? We’re going to court about this? Well, this upset The Donald so much that they could barely get him to stop flinging his feces…

[...] You know, I’ll tell you something: the legal system in this country, it’s not a joke. It’s not a toy for rich idiots to play with. And, frankly, Mr. Balber, what you released raises more questions than it answers. At least it does to a growing chorus of patriotic Americans who call ourselves ‘Apers’ …”

Watch the whole thing. Hilarious.

The Donald flinging his feces:

Feb. 4:
1

Yesterday (Feb. 9):
2

MAHER TO ROMNEY: Giving to your ‘ridiculous church’ doesn’t count as charity

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Love him or hate him, Bill makes some good points about this question: what constitutes a charity and especially a tax-deductible charity:


…

Maher on Romney's charitable givingMAHER TO ROMNEY: Giving to your ‘ridiculous church’ doesn’t count as charity

Maher asserted that the real problem here, however, is that when Romney’s money goes into what Maher first calls his “cult,” then softens to “ridiculous church,” taxpayers have to make up the shortfall. Charitable deductions, he said, take more than 60 billion dollars a year out of the public coffer, money that has to come from other programs and services.

“So it is fair,” he said, “to ask what constitues a charity.”

Journalism from journalists? What kind of futuristic sci-fi world is this?

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Because so many of us are tired of the “both sides do it, he said she said” meme in today’s media…

jayrosen: Actually Governor Romney, what you just said is completely incorrect… This is NPR. NPR has a new ethics handbook, which came out February 24th. Here’s the key part: We report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports. Fair to the truth. Pretty cool. It’s already started to have an effect. This is from an NPR report on Feb. 27th about auto bailouts and the Republican candidates. NPR REPORTER: Mitt Romney, son of former American Motors CEO George Romney, criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of the bailout. MITT ROMNEY: Instead of going through the normal managed bankruptcy process, he made sure the bankruptcy process ended up with the UAW taking the lion’s share of the equity in the business. NPR REPORTER: Actually, the U.S. Treasury got most of GM’s equity.  Such a simple word: “Actually….” And now it has a chance to become standard practice at NPR. For more on this, see my post: NPR Tries to Get its Pressthink Right (Photo by Matthew Reichbach. Creative Commons License.) Journalism from journalists? What kind of futuristic sci-fi world is this?

Via: jayrosen – 

Actually Governor Romney, what you just said is completely incorrect… This is NPR.

NPR has a new ethics handbook, which came out February 24th. Here’s the key part:

We report for our readers and listeners, not our sources. So our primary consideration when presenting the news is that we are fair to the truth. If our sources try to mislead us or put a false spin on the information they give us, we tell our audience. If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side, we acknowledge it in our reports.

Fair to the truth. Pretty cool. It’s already started to have an effect. This is from an NPR report on Feb. 27th about auto bailouts and the Republican candidates.

NPR REPORTER: Mitt Romney, son of former American Motors CEO George Romney, criticized President Barack Obama’s handling of the bailout.

MITT ROMNEY: Instead of going through the normal managed bankruptcy process, he made sure the bankruptcy process ended up with the UAW taking the lion’s share of the equity in the business.

NPR REPORTER: Actually, the U.S. Treasury got most of GM’s equity.

Such a simple word: “Actually….” And now it has a chance to become standard practice at NPR.

For more on this, see my post: NPR Tries to Get its Pressthink Right

(Photo by Matthew Reichbach. Creative Commons License.)

 

Thursday morning’s 9 remotely interesting things

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1) Obama ‘confident’ of keeping to Afghan pullout plan - President Barack Obama said he was “confident” the United States could stick to its Afghan drawdown timetable despite a week of deadly unrest over the burning of the Koran at a US base. “I feel confident that we can stay on a path that by the end of 2014, our troops will be out and will not be in a combat role and Afghans will have capacity, just as Iraqis, to secure their own country,” Obama told ABC News. Obama, criticized by Republican opponents for apologizing to Afghan people after US troops sent copies of the Koran to an incinerator at Bagram airbase, defended his decision, saying it was necessary to try to quell the violence.

  • Bush apologized for soldiers shooting the Koran in 2008 - Bush’s spokeswoman said Tuesday that the president apologized during a videoconference Monday with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who told the president that the shooting of Islam’s holy book had disappointed and angered both the Iraqi people and their leaders. ”He apologized for that in the sense that he said that we take it very seriously,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. “We are concerned about the reaction. We wanted them to know that the president knew that this was wrong.”

2) Obama’s Most Dangerous GOP Opponent: Netanyahu - Some new details on the Israeli prime minister’s recruitment of US senators to push back against their own president and chairman of the JCOS: Netanyahu and his advisers briefed a group of senators and senior congressmen during the past two weeks on the Iranian issue, and asked them to pressure Obama on the matter. Last week, Netanyahu met a group of five senior senators over lunch, headed by Sen. John McCain, who ran four years ago against Obama for president. Netanyahu reportedly told the senators he was not interfering in U.S. politics and expected U.S. officials not to interfere in Israeli politics either. So Netanyahu gets McCain – the president’s last electoral opponent – to make the following public statement: “There should be no daylight between America and Israel in our assessment of the [Iranian] threat. Unfortunately there clearly is some.”

3) NPR’s NEW RULES — it says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report - NPR commits itself as an organization to avoid the worst excesses of “he said, she said” journalism. It says to itself that a report characterized by false balance is a false report. It introduces a new and potentially powerful concept of fairness: being “fair to the truth,” which as we know is not always evenly distributed among the sides in a public dispute. Maintaining the “appearance of balance” isn’t good enough, NPR says. “If the balance of evidence in a matter of controversy weighs heavily on one side…” we have to say so. When we are spun, we don’t just report it. “We tell our audience…” This is spin! (The new policy is already having an effect.)

via: sandandglass

4) In case you didn’t believe that Romney will do / say anything and pander shamelessly to the far right for the GOP nomination - One day before a critical Senate vote that could loom large as a 2012 election issue, Mitt Romney came out for a congressional Republican measure designed to roll back the Obama administration’s requirement that employer health plans cover birth control. “Governor Romney supports the Blunt Bill because he believes in a conscience exemption in health care for religious institutions and people of faith,” Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul told TPM. The Blunt amendment, which is scheduled for a Senate vote on Thursday, would permit employers to deny coverage of birth control or other services they deem morally objectionable.

  • Sen. Gillibrand blasts Blunt amendment: Employers shouldn’t dictate health decisions - Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) on Wednesday slammed legislation that would allow employers to refuse to pay for health insurance coverage of specific services if it would be contrary to their religious beliefs or “moral” convictions. “When will my colleagues understand this very non-debatable fact, that the decision of whether a woman takes one medicine or another or what type of health care she should have access to should not be the decision of her boss?” Gillibrand said on the Senate floor.
via: sandandglass

5) China welcomes North Korea nuclear moratorium - North Korea’s key ally China on Thursday welcomed Pyongyang’s announcement that it will suspend its nuclear tests and uranium enrichment programme in return for US food aid. The deal — which came less than three months after the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il — follows talks held in Beijing last week between the United States and North Korean negotiators. [...] “We welcome the improvement in relations between North Korea and the United States and their contributions to maintaining peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei in a statement. “China is willing to work with relevant parties to continue to push forward the six-party talks process, and play a constructive role to realise long-term peace and stability on the Korean peninsula and north-east Asia.”

6) Twilight Of The RINOs? - It’s kind of pathetic for politicians who have spent decades exploiting the far right for political gain to complain now when those forces are becoming dominant in their party. That’s what you get for playing with fire. James Joyner has expressed the hope in several recent posts here at OTB that the Republican Party will return to sanity at some point. Even if it takes an election cycle or two, I hope he’s right because the one thing this country needs desperately is a strong two-party system populated by opposing parties that at least accept the idea that compromise is necessary. Right now, one of those parties has rejected that idea entirely and the current state of Congress is testament to the results of that attitude. But the blame for the current state of the Republican Party doesn’t just lie with Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Santorum. It lies with the party leaders and conservative pundits who let them get away with what they’ve managed to do over the past five years.

7) We are not quite done yet with GOP “debates” - Mr. Huckabee will host his third presidential forum on Saturday, an executive for the Fox News Channel said on Tuesday.  Huckabee, Gasparino and Mrs. Mitch McConnell! I hope those unfortunate “Ohio residents” have their affairs in order, because if a just Judeo-Christian god is ever going to smite those among His followers who have profaned His honor, this event would seem a good place to start.

8) Good thing the issues of birth control, women’s healthcare coverage and abortion never came up this month - Only four women appearied as guests on the Sunday shows. Media Matters with the sad tally: A total of 56 guests were booked on the Sunday programs to discuss national affairs in February. Of those, 52 were men. (The newsmaker tally does not include guests invited to participate in roundtable discussions this month.) And of the four women booked this month, just one, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was associated with the Democratic Party, despite the fact Democrats currently control the White House and the Senate. “We complain about this all the time,” a Democratic aide told Media Matters.

9) YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: GOP lawmaker proposes tax breaks for mustaches - A mustachioed Republican congressman from Maryland is standing up for the rights of the men (and the women) who dare to have hair above their upper lip. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett has introduced the Stimulus To Allow Critical Hair Expenses Act — or STACHE Act — to give people with mustaches a $250 tax break each year. [...] “He sent it over to Ways and Means [committee] without any recommendation of any kind at all,” Wright told U.S. News and World Report on Tuesday. || Note: This is real. We have nothing at all going on right now, so why not fuck around, right? Doesn’t it cheer your heart to know that we pay the do-nothing GOP-led Congress a federal salary plus benefits – but NOW, better still, we’re paying this guy to actually tie up his time and the Ways and Means committee’s time with something like this? BOTH SIDES DO IT though, right?!?

Video: Bill Maher on Republicans’ offensive treatment of President Obama (2/17/12 New Rules)

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Bill Maher (partial transcript via: DailyKos):

But there’s something about this President that makes conservatives think it’s OK to go apeshit in his presence.  They didn’t do this to Carter, an actual pacifist, or Clinton, who really did have a plan for universal health care, or LBJ, who actually made it easier for poor people to vote and eat.  All of them clearly evil America-haters.

But they got treated with a modicum of respect, at least to their faces.  Not Obama.  What can it be that’s different about him?  (ponders for a moment to uncomfortable audience laughter)

It’s either his race, or it’s your brain chemistry, or it’s something that happened when your dad spanked you and you liked it and you were looking at a box of Cream of Wheat.  I don’t know, I’m not a therapist.  Maybe it’s not race.  I don’t know what’s in people’s hearts.  Except Newt Gingrich, I know what’s in his heart: lust and cheese fries.

But this type of in-the-room, in-your-face, in-your-space disrespect is new.  Admit that, and I will admit that, of course, something like impeaching Clinton was far more serious.  But it was also at least in some ways more respectful.  It was done with high pomp, through official channels, and was all about the rule of law, and the Chief Justice wore a special robe he got from a musical or something.

And somehow that is a lot more respectful than this.

(Video) Bill Maher on the GOP: they disdain the lazy yet their solution to everything is ‘do nothing’

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Bill Maher, as usual, properly nails the current attitude of the Republican Teaparty and its presidential candidates:

Partial transcript via inothernews:

“I find it ironic that Republicans have such disdain for the lazy, and yet their solution to everything is do nothing. Their answer to wealth inequality? Do nothing. Healthcare? Do nothing. Climate change? Nothing. Racism? Doesn’t exist. For a group of people so head over heels in love with self-reliance, they sure do recommend a lot of sitting on their ass.

If A Christmas Carol was performed by the Tea Party Dramatic Society, it would be a cautionary tale about how the hero, Scrooge — a blameless job creator — is turned into a socialist through the corrupting influence of Tiny Tim. And the play would end with a simple, plaintive question from Mr. Scrooge: ‘Just how much of my wealth does Mr. Tim think he’s entitled to?’

And that is the great Republican fallacy of this election: that our economic problem are due not to Wall Street’s gambling, but because too many Americans are lazy. But there are 16 million unemployed, and we only created 80,000 jobs last month. The problem isn’t laziness — it’s math.

This is where the Republican Party is now: in favor of people dying because they don’t have health insurance. In favor of letting people go unfed if they won’t work. And if they wanna work, but are Mexicans, in favor of putting up a fence that electrocutes them.”

(Video) Bill Maher’s take on the OccupyWallStreet protesters … excellent!

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From Oct. 21, 2011 Real Time:

Excellent:

“…Rush Limbaugh, who really is too square to be a drug addict, said, “When the free drugs run out, when the free sex runs out, they’ll get bored and move on to something else.”

Oh that’s right, Grandpa.  Look at them, strumming their sitars and wearing dungarees.  Whatever happened to the good old days of segregation and date rape?  But I get it. You’re bitter because we fought a culture war in the ’60s and the Right lost.  Rick Santorum is like that Japanese soldier on the island who doesn’t know the war is over, so he’s still fighting against birth control and butt sex.

Plus, Republicans are now mostly a Southern party, and if there’s one thing Southerners don’t do well, it’s lose a war and get over it. But that war is indeed over. The ideals of the youth movement became assimilated into American society. That’s why we have gays in the military now, and pre-natal yoga classes, and tofurkey. And that’s why Rick Santorum will never be President, and a black guy who snorted cocaine is.

It’s also why there’s not going to be a repeat of what happened the last time the hippies were in the streets.  Those hard hats that you’re depending on to turn against the lousy hippies?  Heh.  Here’s what they’re doing now.  They’re cheering them on.  Because now, the hard hats are just as broke as everybody else.

These people down there, they’re not the counter-culture.  They’re the culture. They don’t want free love.  They want paid employment. They don’t hate capitalism. They hate what’s been done to it.

And they resent the Republican mantra that the market perfectly rewards the hard-working and punishes the lazy, and the poor are just jealous moochers who want a handout. Yeah, because if there’s one group of people who hate handouts, it’s Wall Street.”

— Bill Maher’s take on the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Well done.

transcript via: DailyKos

Bill Maher: Americans LOVE Socialism, even the Teaparty

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via BruinKid | DailyKos:

Yes, Americans say they hate socialism, but when it comes to Social Security, Medicare, unemployment, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, corporate welfare, bailouts, and farm subsidies, what we really say to socialism is, “I can’t quit you.”


Remember this guy, the “keep your government hands off my Medicare” guy?  He’s not alone.  In one survey, 40% of people who get Medicare say they have not used a government program.  Really?  Who do you think paid for that hip replacement, your Secret Santa?

The actor and not very bright person Craig T. Nelson once said about hitting some rough spots in his life that, “I’ve been on welfare and food stamps, but anybody help me out?  No!”

Or take Michele and Marcus Bachmann, or as I like to think of them, America’s Indoor Palins.  Yes, the Bachmanns, tireless advocates of cutting people off from the government tit.  Well, it turns out they live on the tit.  Their farm takes farm subsidies, their counseling clinic takes Medicaid, and their mortgage was underwritten by Freddie Mac.  Michele knows civil servants are evil because she was an IRS agent, and Marcus hates government employees because sailors are so rough.  But come on, if hypocrisy was uranium, they could power the planet.

And that’s what’s so hard about being a closeted lover of big government.  You have to lie to yourself.

More…


But that’s why I’m here tonight, with a special message for all you deniers.

It Gets Better.

Yes, there are millions of people in the world just like you, in nice places like Switzerland and Sweden.  They enjoy high standards of living and freedom, and they’re socialists. Studies show they’re actually happier than we are, and that’s not surprising, because the only difference between American socialism and European socialism is, European socialism works.

For their tax dollars, Europeans get full health care coverage, a generous pension, daycare, long paid vacations, maternity leave, free college, and public transportation that doesn’t smell like pee.

Whereas our tax dollars go towards military bases in Germany, subsidies to oil companies, building bridges to nowhere, wars, and putting half of Cheech and Chong in prison.

They get universal health care, we get a Blue Angels flyover at the Fiesta Bowl.

They get paid maternity leave, we get the Octomom.

They’ve got Airbus, we’ve got the bus.

Isn’t there anything we still do better?  Even their paranoid racist loners look like speed skaters (image of Anders Breivik).  And ours look like Porky Pig (image of Glenn Beck).

Related:

Bill Maher to evangelical Christians: “Jesus lays on that hippie stuff pretty thick…”

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Bill Maher: “New rule, if you’re a Christian who supports killing your enemies and torture, you have to come up with a new name for yourself…”

“My favorite new government program is surprising violent, religious, zealots in the middle of the night and shooting them in the face — but, you see, I can say that because I’m a non-Christian… JUST LIKE MOST CHRISTIANS.”

Source: brooklynmutt