(Note – some mild swearing…)
(Also, a note to Blogger - I really wish you guys would fix your database problems so I can save my work more efficiently and it won't take so long to do this the next time.)
The show began with Bill Maher impersonating an “ambulance-chasing” lawyer: “Have you been indicted? Trouble with the law? Subpoenas piling up at your door? Then call me, Murray Kleinman, Attorney At Law. If you or a Republican you love is the target of an irresponsible partisan witch hunt, then call my office,” with one of his clients guilty of fixing an election sent to a “Club Fed,” where he “took two strokes off his golf game.” The ad ended with, “And remember – if it were a real crime, sex would be involved.”
In the monologue, Maher said that he knew everyone was happy that there was an indictment in the Valerie Plame matter, announcing the person charged as “I. Lewis Libby,” and joking that he would get a lot of practice saying that now – “I, Lewis Libby, do solemnly swear…,” etc. Also: “Libby was really trusted by Cheney. He could finish Cheney’s sentences. And now he will – at Leavenworth.” Maher said that the White House already has a plan in place in case other indictments come down; they’ll make sure the indictments are delivered by FEMA.
Concerning Hurricane Wilma, Maher joked that, “thousands of U.S. tourists are now stranded in Cancun, and Mexicans are starting to complain. They’re saying that, if you’re going to come to our country and stay, the least you can do is learn the language.”
Regarding the just-about-now-forgotten nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Maher said, “the senators demanded her records, so she sent over ‘The Perry Como Christmas Album,’ and ‘The Best of Bread’ (heyyy – watch that:- )." Repeating that George Takei, “Mr. Sulu” on the original “Star Trek” series, announced that he was gay, Maher noted that women's basketball player Sheryl Swoopes made the cover of “No Shit” magazine with the same revelation in the same issue that announced that “Yao Ming is Chinese.”
The first guest in the studio was Helen Thomas, which was a bit of a payback in a nice way since Maher had imitated her the week before, and he recalled that Thomas had asked Bush a couple of years ago when the Plamegate scandal broke why he didn’t just get everyone into a room and ask them who did it. Thomas just shook her head and something to the effect of “Two years and millions of dollars later, you can ask that again.” Maher said, “Why didn’t any of your colleagues ask?” and Thomas said, “Too simple.” Maher then asked again, “Are you referring to the question or your colleagues?” Thomas replied “They’re coming out of their coma. It was ‘the 9/11 syndrome’ and not wanting to say anything to jeopardize the troops, but they’re ‘coming alive again’.” Maher then remarked that Bush “never has to answer a question”; he can just come up with any answer he wants, and nobody calls him on it, and Thomas said, “It takes a lot of nerve, and reporters ‘pulled in their horns’.”
Regarding
Jeff Gannon, Maher wondered how he could have so much access to the White House (recounting the quote on Gannon/Guckert’s military porn web site – “I don’t leave marks, I leave impressions”…bleaugh!), Thomas said, “We knew (Ari) Fleischer or (Scott) McClellan would call on him…he had one more friend than I do,” with Thomas noting that she would be in the front row during press briefings, but not at the press conferences (typical Bushco B.S.). Recounting the Kennedy Administration (which I believe was the first presidential administration Thomas covered), Maher asked if the reporters knew about the private goings on at that time, and Thomas said the reporters probably didn’t, but even if they did, there was a code at that time, and no one said anything partly because all of the reporters at that time were men. Maher then asked if the New York Times was in trouble because they misled people concerning the Iraq war, and Thomas rightly said, “they all misled.” Maher then said, “But if a liberal reads it in the New York Times, they must think it’s true,” harking back a bit to all of the stuff last week with that moron Tucker Carlson. Thomas kind of smiled at Maher a bit and said, “I don’t.”
The panel discussion began with Tony Snow of Faux News, Nadira Hira (not sure what organization she’s with), and actor/comedian Billy Connolly (plugging “Garfield II"…Connolly was also terrific in the movie “Mrs. Brown” in 1997). Maher asked, concerning the right-wing nut jobs, why they have no trouble coming down on Harriet Miers, but they seem to be taking it easy a bit on “Scooter” Libby. In response, Connolly said he was “bewildered… in Britain, you wouldn’t get into government if your name was ‘Scooter’ or ‘Newt’.” Maher said, “I guess the waspy background was the reason why,” and Hira added that, “Miers didn’t further their agenda,” which is absolutely right. Snow then chimed in with his first lie/bit of propaganda of the evening when he said, “the charge against Libby is talking to reporters, and it was OK to out Plame because she wasn’t undercover.” (actually, this was a two-fer of BS from Snow – click
here and
here to access the Media Matters pages that refute this garbage). Maher then said, “It looks like the charges against Libby are perjury and obstruction of justice,” and continued that this is a rehash of some of the Clinton stuff from a procedural point of view anyway. Snow then continued to lie in response when he said that Plame sent Joe Wilson to Iraq and that “the perjury was a technicality.” When someone in the audience yelled out “bullshit” in response (cool), Snow then said, “Well, that’s the conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee, so read their report before you tell me it’s bullshit.”
OK, then, fair enough. I went ahead and did just that. I went to the web site of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee (chaired by Pat Roberts - R., Kan. - and Jay Rockefeller - D., WV). I searched both the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq document and the Conclusions (excerpted from the full report) on these individual keywords:
Hussein, Yellowcake, Niger, Plame, Wilson
I couldn't find anything, so I don't know what Snow was talking about when he said that the committee said that Plame sent her husband Wilson to Iraq...if that were true, then wouldn't it be in either one of these documents? Or was Snow just lying at the spur of the moment because he knew he was wrong and couldn’t think of anything else to do? It certainly didn’t say anything about perjury being a “technicality” either.
Update 11/05: I now can see that I took it way too easy on Roberts.
Maher then pointed out an obvious fact that was starting to get lost in the discussion, and that was that naming a classified spy is treason, and he also wondered why Robert Novak isn’t in trouble also (that’s truly one of the big mysteries of this whole thing, since Novak wrote the story that started this whole mess). I thought Maher also came up with a good line when he said, “When the Republicans get their tits in a ringer, it’s the ringer’s fault, but when the Democrats get theirs stuck, we spend $60 million investigating the tit.” Snow then tried to derail the discussion by saying that Bush “Should have let the special prosecutor statute lapse,” just like Tucker Carlson said last week (as I said, they’re consistently on the same page when they spout their propaganda).
Regarding the appointment of
Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve chairman, Maher noted that “The audience cooed like people do when ‘the retarded kid actually does something good.” Hira noted that “we’re holding our breath for every nomination.”
The next topic had to do with the price gouging of the oil companies in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and Maher said that, “there are three brands out there now – regular, unleaded, and ‘bend over’.” Maher said that “there has to be collusion going on. Exxon-Mobil made $10 million in one quarter…they need competition.” Tony Snow immediately said “Where do you think the profits go? They go back into production. They have a P.R. problem,” and the groaning of the audience was palpable at that point. Maher correctly pointed out that “no other industry makes a profit like this,” and Snow made the ridiculous comparison between Exxon-Mobil’s profit and that of Microsoft. Connolly cleverly came back at Snow with “this is the type of thinking that believes that perjury is only a technicality and Libby is only guilty of talking to reporters. Please,” and the audience gave Connolly a big hand. Connolly said, “this is more evidence to me that we should change politicians every six months”; actually, Maher may have said that because he pointed out that the Repugs, in their “Contract On America,” wanted that, and Snow said something like, “Well, they didn’t expect to win elections when they came up with that, but now that they have…heh heh,” and I was starting to wonder at that point if there was ANYTHING that Snow had said throughout the show that wasn’t total bullshit. Maher, in a vein related to gas prices, noted that, despite the popular fiction, 9/11 and Katrina “changed nothing,” certainly not in the way the oil companies do business and the politicians appropriate money anyway. At that moment (as evidence of that), the “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska came up, and the spat between Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Ted Stevens of Alaska was discussed, with Stevens’ fit over giving the money for the bridge for Katrina relief. Snow actually agreed with Maher that Stevens should hand over the money, with Hira pointing out that they have a ferry that runs up there between the two islands anyway.
Maher then interviewed Richard Clarke, who of course is the former chief of counter terrorism to four different presidents who warned Dubya about 9/11, of course, and is plugging his most current book,
"The Scorpion's Gate." Clarke showed some empathy to Libby, making Maher wonder why Clarke thought Libby was a good person. Clarke, who is currently teaching at the Kennedy School at Harvard, pointed out that there always seems to be a scandal in government, and he faces young people who wonder if they should pursue that kind of a career if that is the case, and he apparently is continually trying to persuade them that they should (bless that man). Maher wondered why it is bad that people like Libby are discouraged from entering government in that case, and Clarke said that the real world effect of discouraging good people from entering government is that you get someone like
Mike Brown in charge of FEMA. Maher pointed out that Clarke remains the only former or current senior Bush Administration official who has apologized for 9/11, and Maher said he didn’t think Clarke had to do that. When he asked Clarke who
should, Clarke said “Bush, on behalf of his administration (amen),” adding that, “this administration has told everyone that they can keep this country safe, but we’ve seen what happened in Iraq as well as the response to Katrina. Now we have to worry about the possibility of bird flu.” Maher asked Clarke if we would have gone into Iraq if we’d captured bin Laden, and he said “Yes” without hesitation, pointing out that Paul Wolfowitz, among others, decided to do that as part of their “New American Century” document, pointing out that “they meant to consolidate power anyway, but 9/11 just allowed them to do it a little faster.” Maher asked Clarke why we haven’t been attacked since, and Clarke said, “no idea.” Maher told Clarke he thought he was a hero, and I absolutely second that.
Turning to the Iraqi constitution that was just passed, Maher said that the media treated it like it was no big deal (uh, yeah…probably because our people continue to get maimed and killed over there), and when Maher asked if that had to do with news judgment, Snow leapt back in on cue and said yes, pointing out that “since they can divide up the oil revenue now, everybody has an interest in getting along” (typical Republican thinking). Maher correctly (I thought) wondered if this would override “the Muslim craziness,” including their treatment of women, and Snow of course pointed out that there are women in Iraqi government (shades of Kellyanne Conway), totally blowing off the issue that strict Shia law, which will be implemented in some provinces, treats women practically like cattle. Maher then pointed out that former Republican administration officials such as
Melvin Laird and
Brent Scowcroft have said that the presence of our troops feeds the insurgency, and not setting a timetable for getting out creates more of a problem, and a timetable would help Iraq get its army together, with Maher also noting that “85 percent of the people want us to get out, and 42 percent want to blow us up.” Snow again pointed out, in response to Maher’s comment about the Iraqi police getting killed, that “people show up over and over to fill those jobs,” with either Maher or Billy Connolly pointing out that “there ARE no other jobs over there.”
Maher then brought up these two generic blonde bimbo teenage girls called “Prussian Blue” (?), apparently two singers who were photographed at a party wearing swastikas (maybe I’m supposed to know who they are, but I don’t care). Maher pointed out that they were “the product of home schooling,” referring to them as “Mary Kate and Ashley Goebbels,” and led into this funny sequence of their "hits" called “Hey Juden,” and “Once, Twice…Three Fifths A Lady,” among others. Maher said he thought the purpose behind home schooling was “to lift open a kid’s head and pour in the bullshit.” Nadira Hira pointed out that “public schools are supposed to help form better kids,” and Maher said that some kids in public schools do bad things, but the teachers there all have degrees for a reason, or something like that, with yet more propaganda from Tony Snow, who said that “home schooled kids have better test scores than kids taught in public school” (Snow was wrong about so much in this show that I didn’t even bother to check for the accuracy on this one). As if that weren’t enough, Snow said a couple of times that, “I know folks in my neighborhood who home school their kids (must be in some “Stepford” community in Kansas, I thought to myself), and all the public school kids want to do is party.” I just shook my head at that point, lamenting such a closed mind, and I just hoped for Snow to shut up and leave. Fortunately, the
“New Rules” segment then began, which granted my wish (Maher’s came up with a line, concerning the study that found – supposedly – that only 15 percent of the people in this country believe in evolution, that “if we get any stupider about science, we’ll forget how to make crystal meth”).
Next week’s show is the finale for 2005, and the scheduled panelists include Joe Scarborough and John Waters (interesting…).
