If liberal elitism has a posterboy, it must be the ever-smug Bill Maher whose combination of arrogance and condescension is matched only by his complete disdain for facts.
On a recent appearance on CNN's "Larry King Barely Live," Maher asserted that Barack Obama has kept America safer than George Bush because "Obama has been president for 20 months and there have been no attacks. Bush was president for 9 months when we got hit."
Maher conveniently ignores the Times Square bomber and the Flight 253 "underwear bomber" who would have caused catastrophic destruction if they weren't thwarted by alert civilians. But overlooking the Fort Hood killings seems to indicate that in Maher's elite world, the lives of soldiers don't really count.
Nor does reality, as Maher extended his rant to say that the Tea Party movement is "extremely racist. I mean it's so funny because the teabaggers, the one thing they hate is black people."
And to prove it, Maher said that Barack Obama's opponents refer to his Kenyan heritage and "Kenyan, of course, (is) code for nigger."
It's hard to imagine anyone on the Right using that particular word to describe the president without creating a career-ending media firestorm. But apparently it's okay for Maher to use such language because the liberal establishment knows what's really in his heart.
As do we.
-- Bill Maher admires his new "Walk of Fame" star, which we hope to visit when our bladder is very, very full. -
Following the recent round of primary elections, the mainstream news media is showing increasing signs of panic about the Tea Party movement.
On the CBS Evening News, a petulant Katie Couric declared that the success of Tea Party-friendly candidates showed that "American voters are in one angry mood," even though the network's own poll showed that twice as many voters were "dissatisfied but not angry."
Meanwhile, MSNBC's Chris Matthews has started comparing the Democrats' situation in Washington to that of the Titanic, saying "The boat is sinking. The establishment is sinking."
Matthews, who famously observed that the sound of Barack Obama's voice gave him "tingles," is now discovering that it also tingles when the oblivious captain and crew of your ship rams an iceberg at full speed, and you're plunged into freezing and unforgiving waters.
Originally, the book (which was written as part of a $1.9 million publishing contract) was supposed to be about young Barack Hussein Obama, a "skinny kid with big ears and a funny name." That version of the book has been shelved, however, perhaps because this didn't seem like the very best time to remind people that the skinny kid with big ears was raised by a Muslim stepfather in Islam-dominated Indonesia.
Instead, the president's new book focuses on famous American symbols like George Washington, whose infamous teeth demonstrated the need for universal healthcare...Jackie Robinson, who proved that African-Americans could play sports...and painter Georgia O'Keefe, who showed us that close-ups of flowers could look like something other than close-ups of flowers.
The book features a colorful cover which shows the president's daughters taking their dog Bo for a walk...but not carrying a plastic bag with which to clean up any steaming mess he leaves on the Whitehouse grounds.
In Washington, "spin" is the art of presenting information in a way that is heavily biased in your own favor or reinterpreting events (and even facts) to change the perception of reality. And like the "spin" on a wild carnival ride, it can also make you dizzy and throw up.
It is this latter definition that comes to mind in association with a recent Whitehouse statement that says if Democrats lose the House in November, Republicans are planning on "simply shutting the government down altogether."
And how would this happen? The Republicans would pass spending bills "that Obama is likely to veto, and Republicans would not be able to override such a veto, creating a standoff that could cause Congress to grind to a halt."
And that's the Republicans' fault...?
The Whitehouse statement then goes on to repeatedly lambast Republicans as "partisans" without seeming to care that they've just gone on record as saying the president will likely veto bills that he knows nothing about, which were passed by the people's elected representatives, only because they were written by Republicans.
As the debate on raising tax rates heats up, the Washington Post has come up with a novel way of raising federal revenues: collect the taxes that are already owed by government employees.
In the Whitehouse alone, 41 of Obama's aides owe $831,000 in taxes that they don't seem worried about paying...and that no one cares enough to collect.
Does that seem like small change? Then let's include the 638 workers in the Senate and House of Representatives who owe a total of $9.3 million dollars. At the Labor Department, 463 employees owe $7.4 million dollars.
Still not enough to impress you? Then consider the total of unpaid taxes for all federal employees (who are well-documented as having much better salaries and perks than private sector peons with similar jobs) - a nice, round $1 billion dollars.
The refusal to pay taxes crosses party lines and is based not in political ideology but in a sense of entitlement...and a clear belief that the governmental "ruling class" does not have to play by the rules they impose on the little people.
As well as an apparent belief that once they catch the "little people," they're owed a pot of gold. -
All's well that ends well. Over the weekend, pastor Terry Jones decided not to have a Koran bonfire, and his congregation presumably made rice krispie treats for the homeless out of all the marshmallows they'd planned to toast.
Similarly, "Ground Zero mosque" proponent Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf conceded that "If I knew that this would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn’t have done it.” So he's going to move the mosque, right? Right...?
Unfortunately, he says he can't move the proposed project now because "the headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack… (there’s) the danger of the radicals in the Muslim world to our national security, to the national security of our troops.” He further explained "If we don't handle this crisis correctly it could become something which could really become very, very, very dangerous indeed.”
Hope n' Change would like to give some free public relations advice to Imam Rauf. If you really want to build a mosque to help heal the wounds of the last 9/11... don't do it by threatening us with the next 9/11.
Oh, have another. Maybe you DON'T have diabetes. -
As much as we'd like to think this is actually the name of a Mike Myers' movie for Halloween, the truth is that Goolsbee - an economics professor at the University of Chicago - has been a longtime economic advisor to the Obama administration. In other words, we're already enjoying the benefits of his keen financial insight!
Goolsbee also considers himself to be an amateur comedian, and has made numerous television appearances. Not, as you might think, on The Addams Family, but rather as a frequent guest on The Daily Show.
In fact, Goolsbee just may be a better comedian than economist; he's a big proponent of letting the Bush tax breaks for small business expire, even though we're in the midst of a crushing recession with record unemployment.
