Maher, Bill

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Bill Maher getting Kennedy Center award — after Trump officials claimed he wouldn’t - Alternet.org

an 9 25

Having used federalized National Guard troops in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., President Donald Trump is threatening to do the same thing to other major cities with Democratic mayors — including Chicago and Baltimore. And Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is declaring that Trump needs to leave law enforcement matters in his city to the Philly government.

During a humorous but scathing monologue on [VID] the political comedian Bill Maher argued that Trump is insulting the police by using National Guard troops and members of the U.S. military for local law enforcement — and setting a dangerous precedent.

Maher told viewers, "Someone has to ask cops: Why are you not insulted that Donald Trump thinks so little of you that in city after city, he's sending in military troops to do your job?...... When Donald Trump was a little boy, someone forgot to teach him the difference between a policeman and an Army man. But there's a difference: the Pentagon is not Paw Patrol, and SEAL Team 6 is not 'Adam 12.' We don't need to send in the Marines to pacify Shake Shack."

The "Real Time" host continued, "Like they say on 'Law and Order,' the cops and the Navy are two separate but equally important groups. And if you don't believe me, ask The Village People."

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But for all his humorous pop culture references, Maher warned that deploying federalized National Guard troops and members of the U.S. Army in U.S. cities is a recipe for disaster.

"Page 1 of the dictator handbook is pretext," Maher told viewers. "You find a pretext to do what you want to do anyway…. Will militarizing our cities make them safe? Yes, but not safe for democracy…. Once it's normal to have an Army that's loyal to you already in the streets, game over. That is how all future political disputes will be decided."

Maher's monologue is receiving some responses on X, formerly Twitter.

The Democratic group Blue Georgia tweeted, "Bill Maher blasting Trump's authoritarian streak for deploying troops in US cities. 'The new normal is troops in the streets. The exact thing we've never done here except for true emergencies — and the thing we most don't want to become normal.'"

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When "Real Time" host Bill Maher cautions liberals and progressives against reacting to every offensive thing that President Donald Trump says and does, his point is that they should save their energy for Trump's most egregious actions. Maher had a lot to say about Trump during — warning that Trump's "slow-moving coup" may prevent Democrats from ever running the federal government again no matter how many supporters they have.

Maher told his guests, "If there was a slow-moving coup, let me just describe some of the steps — and you tell me if I'm being paranoid. First, create a masked police force. Get people used to looking at that. Normalize snatching people off the street. Get them used to looking at that. Normalize seeing the National Guard and the military on the street. Then, start talking about crime in the capital, which has always been a fairly crime-ridden city."

The "Real Time" host warned that Trump's militarization of U.S. cities could put Democrats at a major disadvantage in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential race.

"So, you have, in the capital, a sort of permanent police presence," Maher argued. "So when an election dispute might come up, just hypothetically — I mean, I don't want to be a big pessimist. And I'm going to pretend, for the rest of the duration, that the Democrats do have a chance of winning, and they might win the next election. I just don't think they're ever going to take power. Because this is what's going to happen. Because I think this coup is going to go off a lot smoother than the last one."

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Maher's comments are generating a lot of responses on X, formerly Twitter.

Some X users resent Maher for meeting with Trump in the White House earlier this year.

Sean McDaniel wrote, "Was @billmaher saying that to Trump during their Big Beautiful Dinner they had when he was delightful and insightful? Conned. A sucker born every minute."

But others were glad to see Maher sounding the alarm.

X user Michael Beckerman posted, "Trump is now slowly turning up the heat in the pot so the frog in it doesn't even realize it's been cooked. Guess who the frog is?"

The Democratic group Blue Georgia highlighted Maher's comments, tweeting, "Bill Maher warns of a 'slow-moving coup' — masked police, troops in DC, federalized forces setting up a permanent security state so even if Dems win, Trump won’t give up power. 'The next coup will go a lot smoother than the last one.'"

*Watch the full video below or at this link.

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no lnx

Defamation, capitulation and phonies: Inside this week's wild and disgusting news

D. Earl Stephens April 27, 2025

Tuesday was a banner day in the news business as it continues its transition into authoritarian-controlled propaganda that is sold to the highest bidders, which in this case are our nation’s ever-increasing collection of hideous tech bros — otherwise known as Boosters of Trump (BOTs).

It was nothing if not a wild and disgusting day, and featured some heavy-hitters in the political, entertainment and journalism world, as well as reputable truth-tellers like Larry David, who was the only person proving capable of seeing though all the never-ending BS that has blanketed the United States of America.

Good ol’ Sarah Palin appeared out of the Alaska wilderness and into a courtroom in New York City Tuesday where she once again provided some much-needed, albeit brief comedic entertainment to a starving American public.

You’ll remember Palin, who with the help of John McCain and his slippery handlers was hurled downward into the Republicans’ glass floor 17 years ago, making it possible for literally anything or anybody to lower themselves and land with a thud in the basements of power in Washington.

Before there was Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, Marsha Blackburn or Lauren Boebert, there was Sarah Palin …

The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, Russia-stalker, second-rate reality TV star, and Hall-of-Fame embarrassment lost in the retrial of her defamation case against The New York Times, because of course she did.

Defamation cases are almost impossible to prove, but you can’t blame her for trying, because as delicious as this loss was by one of America’s all-time fools, the real news here is how bad it made the supersonic losers at ABC-News look by comparison.

Just four months ago, that one-time reputable news outlet flew the white flag in their very public $16M surrender to the America-attacking Trump on similar charges.

This time George Stephanopoulos was the target of the beady-eyed Trump, who was incensed that he was incorrectly referred to as “a rapist” on the air during Stephanopoulos’ questioning of Mace about Trump’s veracity as a serious candidate given his talent for treating women like one of his sand wedges.

Turns out all Trump was technically found guilty of was being a lowly sexual-abuser. Before settling, ABC-News decided to conveniently forget the fact that the very judge who tried the case, said that most people would call what Trump did, and what the jury found him guilty of, was in fact, “rape.”

You say, “potatoes.” I say “rape.”

ABC-News’ capitulation, while weak and embarrassing, also only encouraged lowlifes like Trump, because … also on Tuesday … CBS-News signaled it was about to tell its once-rivals at ABC-News to hold their beer …

The venerable 60 Minutes, which has been one of the few news programs that has continued to righteously pound away on the America-attacking Trump will now be in search of a new leader. Executive Producer Bill Owens, announced his resignation Tuesday saying:

“Over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ‘60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

Owens sudden departure is hinting loudly at yet another surrender by yet another billionaire to Trump.

This time Shari Redstone. The Chairwoman of the Board at Paramount which owns CBS, has been dutifully kissing any inappropriate ass she can find in the White House to ensure her sale of Paramount for gobs of billions to the son of tech billionaire Larry Ellison goes through.

She can’t have Trump mad at her for telling the truth on air, so Owens had to sacrifice herself on the Mar-a-Lago altar first.

No surprise, Ellison is yet another slimy tech bro and the buddy of the sexual-abuser Trump, who some judges refer to as a rapist.

The sexual-abuser, who some judges refer to as a rapist, has sued CBS for $20 billion claiming the network aired two different versions of an answer Kamala Harris gave about Israel and Gaza on the network’s flagship news programs, Face the Nation as well as 60 Minutes.

As if the serial-lying Trump doesn't give 17 different answers to any question every hour ….

Well, rather than fight that one out and win going away, Redstone has apparently figured it is much easier to just hand the whole franchise over to Trump’s buddy, Ellison, and be done with the damn thing. And if and when that deal goes through, if you are wondering if you will ever be able to trust anything from the CBS-News division again, the answer is, no.

While insiders at 60 Minutes like correspondent Scott Pelley are saying, “This isn't something Bill (Owens) is doing of his own volition: There was no choice in any of this," I am saying I’d have a whole helluva lot more respect for him, if he stood in strong and made these grotesque sellouts fire him and drag him out of the building.

Resigning in advance is just weak, Bill. I’ve walked a mile in your shoes during my career, and take great comfort I didn’t cave to dishonest brokers who had it out for me and the truth. Ask me about it. I’d be glad to enlighten you ...

Finally, Larry David arrived on the scene to save Terrible Tuesday when he took to the editorial pages of The New York Times to politely skewer the smarmy, one-time comedian, turned Trump-propagandist, Bill Maher, with some deftly aimed satire in his short and sweet piece “My dinner with Adolph.”

David, the genius behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm never mentioned Maher by name preferring instead the roughly 257 million people across the world who will end up seeing or hearing about the piece connect the dots all on their own.

I’ll guess it’s behind a paywall for now, so I’ll treat you to the piece’s conclusion:

“Two hours later, the dinner was over, and the Führer escorted me to the door. “I am so glad to have met you. I hope I’m no longer the monster you thought I was.” “I must say, mein Führer, I’m so thankful I came. Although we disagree on many issues, it doesn’t mean that we have to hate each other.” And with that, I gave him a Nazi salute and walked out into the night ...”

Maher of course accepted an invitation to dine with the America-attacking Trump recently, and through his 500-lb. smirk bragged to everybody that breaking bread with the racist, Lysol-guzzler was actually a very normal and wholesome experience. Hell everybody should try it, but of course they can’t because not everybody can be Bill Maher.

Here in part is how Maher described his dining experience, sandwiched around his usual overcooked, fatty condescending barf:

“Honestly, I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk to Donald Trump. That’s just how it went down. Make of it what you will.”

Oh we will, sport, no worries there.

Your foolish capitulation and normalization of a woman-abusing, America-attacking thug should finish you off for good. That you tipped him at the door after being played like Stephen Miller’s used violin was pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty, pret-ty pret-ty …pathetic.

You’ve been a damn fool for going on a long time now, Bill. Your once-clever condescension is now full-blown, look-at-me arrogance.

I know you will invariably ignore my advice to just shut up and go away for a period of about six years for some serious introspection, because I have come to understand that guys like you and Trump simply can’t help themselves.

You have the phonies in our billionaire-controlled media to do that for you …

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

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visit WH said trump was cordial?

During a recent political comedian Bill Maher bluntly addressed MAGA Republicans who think he might be ready to come over to their side. Maher (who met with President Donald Trump in the White House) stressed that for all his disdain for "wokeness" and political correctness, he has zero desire to embrace the far-right extremes of MAGA — he will talk to MAGA Republicans, but he is still far some being on board with their agenda and detests their cultish devotion to Trump.

Maher even compared fawning MAGA adulation of Trump to the. n korea?

Maher's "anti-wokeness" draws a lot of attention from what is sometimes described as the "dissident right" — people who have a history of expressing liberal views but grew fed up with "political correctness" and "social justice warriors." However, the New York Times' Michelle Goldberg, in her April 14 column, is noticing a trend: the "dissident right" feeling major anxiety now that the United States has a far-right MAGA administration in the White House.

"The writer Richard Hanania once said that he hated bespoke pronouns 'more than genocide,'" Goldberg observes, "and his 2023 book, 'The Origins of Woke: Civil Rights Law, Corporate America, and the Triumph of Identity Politics,' provided a blueprint for the White House's war on DEI. But less than three months into Trump's new term, he regrets his vote, telling me, 'The resistance libs were mostly right about him'…. Scott Siskind, who blogs under the pseudonym Scott Alexander, has been an influential figure in Silicon Valley's revolt against social justice ideology, though he's never been a Trump supporter."

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Goldberg continues, "Last week, he asked whether 'edgy heterodox centrists' like himself paved the way for Trump by opening the door to once-verboten arguments….. It is too early to know what these small cracks in the dissident right mean and whether they presage more substantial defections. They suggest to me, however, that not everyone can sustain the level of cognitive dissonance necessary to rationalize away this administration’s destructiveness."

The Times columnist cites podcast host Alex Kaschuta as another "dissident right" figure who is rebelling against MAGA and Trump's second administration.

"When liberalism was firmly entrenched," Goldberg explains, "its discontents could treat authoritarian ideas as interesting avant-garde provocations. Authoritarianism in power, however, was always going to be crude and stupid…. Well before the tariffs, Kaschuta, who trained as an economist, was moving away from the movement that once thrilled her…. For all her mounting disgust, however, the tariffs seemed to push her over the edge. When she looks back on the milieu she was once a part of, she said, she sees no solid ideas for a post-liberal society — it was all just aesthetics, resentments and vibes."

Goldberg draws a parallel between "dissident right" figures rebelling against MAGA and the late Irving Kristol's move to the right. Kristol was the father of The Bulwark's Bill Kristol, a Never Trump conservative and neocon who became an unlikely ally of Democrats.

"Irving Kristol famously said that neoconservatives were liberals who'd been 'mugged by reality,'" Goldberg writes. "Maybe soon, we'll need a similar word for the right wingers who can't stand to live in the world they helped build."

*Michelle Goldberg's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).

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"Real Time" host Bill Maher recently noted that when Republicans and right-wing media outlets find a new talking point, they work it to death regardless of its merits. And he cited the claim that President Joe Biden is using some type of drug or stimulant ahead of his first 2024 debate with presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump as a prime example.

Right-wing media outlets have been claiming that if Biden performs well against Trump in the June 27 debate that CNN is hosting in Atlanta, it will be because he is getting an unfair advantage via a stimulant. But there is no proof or evidence to support that baseless claim.

In an op-ed published on June 26, the Washington Post's Aaron Blake details how that claim took off in right-wing media.

"When Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo asked Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) about the just-announced presidential debate last month," Blake explains, "she prefaced the question oddly. 'So, let me get you to put your doctor's hat on for a second, given the (GOP) Doctors Caucus that you are leading'…. What did being a doctor have to do with handicapping the debate?.... Murphy quickly took the cue, though, launching into a baseless suggestion that Biden might take something to enhance his performance."

Blake continues, "He said Biden 'must have been jacked up' during his State of the Union address in March — that 'they gave him something.' Murphy gave no evidence but said he could provide proof for his claim to Bartiromo 'offline.'"

The Washington Post columnist notes that "a little more than 40 days" after that Bartiromo/Murphy conversation, "such evidence still hasn't seen the light of day." But Trump and allies like Fox News hosts Jesse Watters and Sean Hannity, Blake adds, continue to promote their claim anyway.

"Responsible journalists don't just accuse people of drug use based upon suspicion," Blake argues, "and there's still no actual evidence."

*Aaron Blake's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).

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the Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro is fond of saying, "Facts don't care about your feelings," while others on the right have a more in-your-face slogan: "F*** your feelings." Liberals and progressives, the argument goes, are easily "triggered" and need to grow a much thicker skin.

"Real Time" host Bill Maher, himself a liberal with libertarian leanings, believes that liberals per se aren't the problem, but argues that "wokeness" is a departure from traditional liberalism — and that Americans are sick of having to "walk on eggshells" because of "woke" people who are constantly offended. Maher, however, is also a scathing critic of MAGA Republicans he considers hypersensitive.

Right-wing hypersensitivity is the focus of an op-ed written by journalist Joe Berkowitz and published by the Daily Beast on June 5. Berkowitz emphasizes that "the same MAGA Republicans who once wore 'f*** your feelings' t-shirts to Trump rallies now exist in a perpetual state of emotional outpouring."

"Being a conservative these days sounds emotionally exhausting," Berkowitz laments. "At any given moment, you might find out, for instance, that your favorite light beer sent a brew to a transgendered influencer and get so mad about it you have to film yourself using that beer for target practice. Or you might discover —gasp! — that Target is selling t-shirts with little rainbows on them for Pride Month and simply have no choice but drive to the nearest Target, threaten employees with violence, write a song about it, and whine that the song is being censored.… That's just how it goes in the United States of Wokemerica: another day, another space that is not safe."

A common MAGA argument, Berkowitz points out, is that being easily offended makes liberals "unfit to hold the majority in a tough world that demands a thicker skin."

The journalist, however, observes, "January 6, (2021) proved once and for all that 'f*** your feelings' never meant that feelings themselves were frivolous signs of weakness, only that yours are…. The years since the insurrection have seen conservatives retreat into constant, shrieking victimhood."

triggered’ Marco Rubio blasted for criticizing Biden official’s 'accurate' description of Republicans ›

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/10/joe-manchin-2655208688/

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go where the funny is?

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Filmmaker and Michigan native Michael Moore says he knows the kinds of people who have been bringing guns, Confederate flags and swastika iconography to the Michigan state capital to protest the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, and they’re nothing to worry about. “I want to appeal to people to not be afraid of these guys with the guns,” the 66-year-old liberal provocateur and Flint native said Friday on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher.” “I went to high school with them. I know them.” Moore, who correctly predicted Donald Trump would win the presidential election in 2016, said those protesters tal…

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/how-trump-it-ratcheting-up-his-dangerous-war-on-the-first-amendment/

no lnx

How Trump is ratcheting up his dangerous war on the First Amendment

Written by Bill Blum / Independent Media Institute April 24, 2020

Donald Trump is at war with the First Amendment and the free press. The war is on full display nearly every day in his rage-filled press conferences on the COVID-19 pandemic, in which he regularly condemns the “fake news” media and bashes reporters who dare to ask the slightest probative questions about his handling of the ongoing public-health crisis.

Trump’s war is also longstanding. And it is waged not only on television and in angry tweets and at campaign rallies (which have been put on hold because of the coronavirus), but also in courtrooms across the country in the form of defamation lawsuits designed to shame, silence and punish his critics.

The latest victim of the president’s intimidation-by-litigation strategy is TV station WJFW, an NBC affiliate located in Price County in the rural reaches of northern Wisconsin. On April 13, Trump’s principal reelection campaign committee—Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., headquartered in New York City—sued the station in the county’s circuit court. The suit alleges that the station had libeled the campaign and harmed the reputation of the president by airing an anti-Trump attack ad produced by Priorities USA Action, a pro-Democratic Super PAC.

Entitled “Exponential Threat,” the ad features audio and video clips of Trump downplaying the severity of the virus and disavowing any responsibility for his administration’s slow and incompetent response to the virus overlaid against a graph displaying the exponential rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. since January.

The lawsuit contends that the ad stitched together Trump’s statements about the virus in a false, misleading, deceptive and malicious manner to make it appear that he had called the virus a “hoax.” According to the complaint, Trump never termed the virus itself a hoax, but instead said at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina, on February 28, that the Democrats were perpetrating a hoax by politicizing his record on the virus.

The lawsuit comes on the heels of other recent threats made by the Trump campaign to take legal action against TV outlets in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania for broadcasting the same ad.

The president’s campaign committee has also been busy suing print media. In March, the committee sued the Washington Post for defamation allegedly arising from opinion columns written by journalists Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman in June 2019 on the possibility of renewed foreign collusion in the 2020 election. And in February, Trump’s 2016 campaign committee sued the New York Times, claiming defamation stemming from an op-ed about Russian collusion written in March 2019 by Max Frankel, who had served as the paper’s executive editor from 1986-94.

Sadly, the president’s latest round of defamation revenge is part of a pattern that dates back to his formative days as a real-estate developer and publicity-seeking huckster in New York City.

As detailed in a 2016 study published by the Media Law Resource Center, Trump filed his first major libel suit in 1984, when he took the Chicago Tribune and architecture columnist Paul Gapp to court, claiming that he had sustained $500 million in damages as a result of an article Gapp had written, maligning Trump’s plans to build a 150-story skyscraper in lower Manhattan. The case was dismissed the following year after the presiding judge determined Gapp’s article was a constitutionally protected expression of opinion.

The Media Law Resource Center study also summarizes Trump’s failed defamation lawsuit against writer Timothy O’Brien and the Time Warner Book Group, Inc. Now a senior columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, O’Brien asserted in a 2005 book—TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald—that Trump wasn’t actually a billionaire. O’Brien’s estimate of Trump’s net wealth so rankled the future president that he demanded “a whopping $5 billion in damages.” Like the lawsuit against Gapp, the case was eventually dismissed.

In addition, the study chronicles Trump’s case against comedian Bill Maher. Trump targeted Maher in 2013 for a disparaging joke he told on NBC’s Tonight Show, in which he offered to donate $5 million to charity if Trump could prove he was not “the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan.” After Trump sent a copy of his birth certificate to Maher and the comedian refused to pay up, Trump sued Maher for breach of contract in California. Trump voluntarily withdrew the case eight months later, however. Although his then-spokesperson, Michael Cohen, told Politico that Trump planned to amend and renew the lawsuit, he never did.

Like most of Trump’s past defamation forays, the president’s latest round of defamation lawsuits seems destined to crash and burn. The cases will falter for one simple reason: they are utterly devoid of legal merit.

Under the Supreme Court’s landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, criticism of public officials is entitled to stringent First Amendment protections. As the great liberal Justice William Brennan wrote for a unanimous court in Sullivan, the Constitution embodies our “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks…”

Public officials, Brennan instructed, must be precluded from recovering damages for allegedly defamatory statements related to official conduct unless they prove that the statements are made with “actual malice”—that is, that they are made with the knowledge that they are false or with “reckless disregard” of whether they are true or false.

In subsequent cases, the Supreme Court extended Sullivan’s “actual malice” holding to defamation lawsuits initiated by “public figures” and business entities that have obtained public-figure status, such as Trump’s political campaign committees.

Sullivan is one of the Supreme Court’s most consequential decisions, providing the press with the safeguards needed to keep the public informed and hold the rich and powerful to account. Among the court’s current members, only Clarence Thomas has gone on record to suggest that Sullivan be reconsidered.

Why, then, does the president persist? The answer, it appears, is purely political.

At a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, in February 2016, Trump told a throng of cheering red-meat followers, “I think the media is among the most dishonest groups of people I’ve ever met. They’re terrible. … If I become president, oh, do they have problems. They’re going to have such problems.”

And then he added, in a veiled reference to Sullivan:

“One of the things I’m going to do if I win, and I hope we do, and we’re certainly leading, is I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws so that when the New York Times writes a hit piece, which is a total disgrace, or when the Washington Post, which is there for other reasons, writes a hit piece, we can sue them and win money instead of having no chance of winning because they’re totally protected.”

As of now, the president is losing his war on the First Amendment and the free press. But as Trump’s improbable rise to power confirms, the future remains uncertain. If we have learned anything in the Trump era, it is that our constitutional rights can never be taken for granted.

Bill Blum is a retired judge and a lawyer in Los Angeles. He is a lecturer at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. He writes regularly on law and politics and is the author of three widely acclaimed legal thrillers: Prejudicial Error, The Last Appeal, and The Face of Justice.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/the-phony-liberalism-of-bill-maher/

no lnx

The phony Liberalism of Bill Maher

Bill Maher, Wikipedia

Written by Alan MacLeod / FAIR October 4, 2019

Bill Maher rose from being an “edgy,” opinionated comedian to becoming one of the most influential and recognizable faces in our media. His political talk show, Real Time With Bill Maher, has been on HBO since 2003, spanning 17 seasons with over 500 episodes to date. Real Time continues to be one of the most popular shows on cable TV, drawing in more than 4 million viewers per episode, according to a new New York Times interview (9/30/19), which frames him as a straight-shooting satirist on an “antihypocrisy crusade,” with Maher presenting himself as the voice of liberals across the country fed up with PC culture. Certainly, he has a legion of dedicated, primarily Democrat-voting Baby Boomer and Generation X fans, who take seriously his every pronouncement.

That is why his latest outbursts are noteworthy. On the September 20 edition of Real Time, he condemned the Democrats for reviving their opposition to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, claiming that continuing to “go after a guy for what he did in high school” “looks bad.” He implied that Democrats lost seats in the Senate for their “preposterous” opposition to what Kavanaugh did when he was just 17 (which, for the record, was multiple alleged attempted rapes or sexual assaults).

A week previously, Maher appeared on MSNBC’s flagship breakfast show, Morning Joe (9/12/19), where he claimed that the Democrats’ left-wing (i.e., Bernie Sanders) was a “cancer” destroying the party, warning that the left is “scarier and crazier than Trump,” and nominating a leftist as its presidential candidate would spell disaster in the next election. (Decrying the supposed unelectability of the left is a favorite pastime of elite pundits—FAIR.org, 2/26/19, 7/2/19, 8/21/19.)

Media almost unanimously present Maher as a “liberal” (e.g. Salon, 10/11/14, 9/21/19; USA Today, 7/8/18; New York Post, 6/29/19) or even a “progressive” (The Hill, 2/2/17) comedian. Yet any inspection of his political positions dispels this illusion. To be sure, he generally supported President Barack Obama and opposes Donald Trump (although he has been known to do the opposite of both). But he also has a long history of repeatedly taking reactionary positions on many subjects, especially war.

On his previous Comedy Central show Politically Incorrect, Maher praised the Vietnam War as “necessary,” arguing it helped end the Cold War. (The US officially began its involvement in Vietnam 36 years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.) In 2013, he joked about killing antiwar activist Medea Benjamin after she interrupted Obama, and recanted his anti-Iraq War position, claiming, “Iraq is doing better than I thought it would be.” He praised George W. Bush for “creating a country” there.

And he championed Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, tweeting:

Dealing w/ Hamas is like dealing w/ a crazy woman who’s trying to kill u — u can only hold her wrists so long before you have to slap her.

Bill Maher on Twitter: Dealing w/ Hamas is like dealing w/ a crazy woman who's trying to kill u

As that last comment suggests, sexism and rampant Islamophobia are also constant features of Maher’s ideology. In 2009, he called a woman who was reportedly choked by her boyfriend a “bitch,” claiming that it was surprising he did not attack her sooner.

He has also described Islam as a “cancer,” and told Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, that the Quran is a “hate-filled holy book.” He defended the arrest of 14-year-old Ahmed Mohammed for bringing a clock into school, comparing him to an ISIS fighter, and expressed alarm over the rising popularity of the name “Mohammed,” worrying that the Western world was being “taken over by Islam.” He also offered advice to Western women: “Talk to women who have ever dated an Arab man,” he insisted: “The reviews are not good.”

Maher fully supports the Israeli occupation of Palestine. “I love Israel,” declared the celebrity atheist, professing his affection for the ethno-religious state.

The point is that Maher’s beliefs, actions and outbursts, if they are coherent at all, are not consistent with liberalism and are, if anything, more in keeping with a right-wing shock jock like Rush Limbaugh.

Indeed, when asked, he has been explicit about his ideology: “I’m a libertarian,” he said to Rolling Stone (4/13/11). “I would be a Republican if they would. Which means that I like the Barry Goldwater Republican Party, even the Reagan Republican Party.” His choice in naming the two figures whose mission was to upend the liberal order, often through appeals to racism and white nationalism, is telling.

“I want a mean old man to watch my money,” he added. “Because government is a sieve that takes as much money as it can and gives it away, usually needlessly.”

Yet corporate media continue to describe him as a liberal. Newsweek (3/16/19) did so in a story about him criticizing the Democratic Party, the Washington Times (9/13/19) did the same when it reported on his recent claim that the new “far-left” Democrats’ ideas are a “cancer” and they look “crazier” than Trump to him, while Fox News (5/11/19) reminded its readers twice that Maher was a liberal in a story about him praising Trump’s handling of the economy.

And therein lies the utility for the media in persisting to describe the self-described libertarian as a liberal: It allows media to formulate “he’s a liberal but” stories. “Conservative Criticizes Democrats” is not going to drive any clicks, whereas “Liberal Praises Trump” does. It is a classic example of the “Man Bites Dog” phenomenon.

Ultimately, Maher has built up an impressive following and continues to espouse snarky elitist hot takes weekly for HBO, earning an estimated $10 million per year doing so. Call him a racist, a bigot or an astute businessman; just don’t call him a liberal.

https://www.alternet.org/qanon-conspiracy-nuts-freak-out-after-hbos-bill-maher-ridicules-their-bonkers-theories

no lnx

HBO's "Real Time" returned Friday night after a month hiatus. Host Bill Maher came back from vacation to find the country in bigger disarray than he could have imagined.

One new phenomenon that popped up last week was the emergence of QAnon in the national discourse. QAnon is a running conspiracy theory made popular by an anonymous online figure named Q. According to The Daily Beast, Q began posting on anonymous internet forums 4Chan and 8Chan in late 2017. The person or group behind the Q persona claim to have top-level security clearance in the federal government. Q has surfaced, supposedly, to whistleblow a monstrous worldwide criminal conspiracy that portrays high-profile Democrats as pedophiles and President Donald Trump the liberator of vulnerable children.

This article first appeared in Salon.

To no surprise, Trump fans latched onto the conspiracy and have used the narrative to justify their distrust in the media. People who've attended Trump's recent rallies have shown up with signs and t-shirts that promote Q and "The Great Awakening," a nod to the rising awareness of pedophile rings orchestrated by Hollywood celebrities.

Maher attempted to explain all this to his studio audience in Los Angeles on Friday.

“This is a big movement on the right. See, we don’t hear about these things because we’re not crazy,” Maher said near the end of his monologue. “Q is a person—a member of the ‘deep state,’ way high up in the ‘deep state’—but now he’s turning on them, and he’s revealing that the world is run by a giant pedophile ring. Really. Every president since Reagan has been part of it."

"You know who’s a pedophile? Tom Hanks. Steven Spielberg," Maher revealed. "And who’s gonna stop this? Trump. Because who’s more qualified to stop pedophilia than the creep who used to walk in on Miss Teen USA pageants?”

"He wasn't being a creep. He was looking for pedophiles," Maher joked.

Maher's reference to QAnon wasn't lost on the people who believe in the conspiracy. The Reddit channel r/greatawakening shared the video of Maher's monologue and subsequently chastised his ignorance on the subject.

"This is why it's really hard to feel sympathy for the sheep who follow the media/Hollywood," one reddit user wrote. "How can they laugh at this shit? What the fuck is wrong with them? This makes me not want to console them at all when the truth comes out but rub it in their faces."

"It's amazing how well-crafted their lies are," another reddit user said. "People buy into this shit and we have to fight even harder because people are too stupid to actually look into and understand things for themselves. How frustrating."

You can watch the video below via YouTube:

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mark bray antifa bk see milo 2

warm recep pre 13yo video

https://www.salon.com/2018/01/31/antifa-vs-milo-yiannopoulos-who-won/

“Real Time” host Bill Maher, during his “New Rules” segment Friday, peacocked California’s thriving economy after the state raised taxes on its wealthiest citizens.

“If Republicans are going to keep calling states ‘laboratories of democracy,’ they have to start looking at the results from the lab,” Maher said, noting that after California raised taxes on the wealthy, the state now sits sixth on the list of world’s largest economies. “Whereas states like Kansas and Louisiana that went back to the old trickle-down theory of ‘cut taxes on the rich and they’ll always do the right thing,’ are financial catastrophes.”

Maher explained that, after former-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger left office, California elected Democrats up and down the ballot, “so we can really study what happens when liberal policies are tried unimpeded. And the only thing I have to say to Republicans about that is: scoreboard, bitches.”

Watch the full segment below:https://youtu.be/BtNbMD96xgY

MoD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rk6Q4hfYThc maher

bonehead on islam 10/14 (b/c atheist?)

http://nymag.com/news/features/bill-maher-2012-4/#print

long fluff?

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It is far too easy to find misinformation on vaccines today. Celebrities such as Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey use their fame to tout scientifically disproven claims that vaccines cause autism or that mercury in vaccines is deadly to young children. Liberal firebrand Bill Maher evenwaxed apocalyptic [12]about flu vaccines.A proliferation of organizations [13] claim to offer parents a safe place to learn the truth about vaccines yet offer no scientifically credible resources, offering scientifically disproven claims to parents.

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crit on GMO

If Monsanto has anything to do with it, it must be evil. That seems to be the prevailing opinion on the monolithic biotech company. Following that logic, if they produce corn or soybeans or another crop that has been genetically modified (GM), those too must be evil. That’s Bill Maher’s reasoning at least—reasoning that lures liberals away from science and towards denial.

Making the leap from Monsanto’s business practices—whatever you may think of them—to the “dangers” of GM foods is a mistake in logical reasoning. It is akin to saying landscape paintings are potentially evil because the painter was a serial killer. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. And giving some product or process the attributes of its user is the logical fallacy that currently leads typically pro-science liberals like Maher astray on questions of nuclear power, vaccination, and especially GMOs. Whether genetically modified foods are safe is a scientific, not a political, question. To intertwine views of Monsanto with GM foods is therefore anargumentum ad monsantum, a disturbingly popular logical fallacy, and Bill Maher is the classic example.

I am a fan of Real Time with Bill Maher. It’s HBO’s version of The Daily Show, with a liberal host poking fun at the foibles of government and politicians. But every so often, satire can veer off course, lampooning scientific findings as if they were the latest sex scandal. This is the case with Bill Maher. Though you will hear him on Real Timestaunchly defending the science of climate change and evolution against politically-charged deniers, you will also hear him railing against vaccines, nuclear power, andGMOs with the same polemic language he satirizes.

For example, in episode #294 of Real Time, Maher invites the director of “GMO OMG” for a conversation about the “dangers” of GM foods. (Note that fellow Scientific American writer Ferris Jabr has convincingly argued why “GMO OMG” is an emotionally manipulative film that skimps on the science.) Maher begins the conversation with a question: “I don’t want to start things off by asking why Monsanto is evil…but why is Monsanto evil?” The director goes on to explain why, with the rest of the panel chiming in. Then you see something very telling. CNN contributor David Frum, a Republican, interrupts to explain how humans have been genetically modifying food ever since we prioritized seeds from desirably growing crops at the dawn of agriculture. He was booed and hissed by the crowd. I mentioned Frum’s political affiliation because Real Timehas an admitted slant towards liberalism, and Republicans encounter much resistance on each episode. This time was no different. Though Frum was exactly right on the science, he was treated as exactly wrong. The argumentum ad monsantum struck again.

Maher, who I think gets a lot of science right, gets the science of GM food so wrong because he is unable or unwilling to disentangle the politics from the science. Many liberals seem to have the same problem.

The first component to the liberal opposition to genetically modified food appears to be a genuine misunderstanding of how it works. The genetic modification of food is a much more exact science than many opponents realize. As this fantastic explaineroutlines, genetic modification is typically about inserting a single gene—whose effects we test for toxicity and allergenic properties—into a crop. It is not a haphazard Frankenstein process of sowing and suturing animal and plant parts together. In fact, a Frankenstein-style process is exactly what was done before genetic modification.

In the early days of agriculture, farmers crossbred plants to take advantage of the genetic diversity thrown up by evolutionary processes. Whatever beneficial properties emerged were saved in the seeds and transplanted into the next generation. This is a Mary Shelly-style process, with more recent farmers exposing their plants to radiation in the hopes of increasing the genetic variations at their disposal. That’s a fact that is absent from many a Monsanto discussion. If anything exemplifies the messy, unknown nature of altering crops, it’s what farming looked like before genetic modification.

Even when we are taking genes from animals and inserting them into plants or vice-versa, the results are still safe, reduce pesticide use, and dramatically increase crop yields. In fact, this year, a review of over 1,700 papers [PDF] concerning the safety of GM food in the journal Critical Reviews in Biotechnologyconcluded, “The scientific research conducted so far has not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of genetically engineered crops.”

Increasing the hardiness of our crops to better feed the world is also the main benefit of genetic modification, often omitted from the curious liberal opposition to GM food. As climate change picks up its pace, we will need crops that can feed more people while at the same time resisting parasites, infections, and drought. Scientifically established safety is bolstered by moral obligation.

While Bill Maher has a habit of outright denying the safety of GM food, he does sometimes taper his views by offering the alternative—growing food “organically” (GM food is still organic material, of course, but it may not fit the FDA’s designations of what “organic” food is). However, the supposed superiority of organically grown food has little scientific justification. Organically grown food still uses pesticides, those pesticides are largely untested, the pesticide reduction that organic food does offer isinsignificant at best, and the food itself is no more nutritious or safe than its engineered alternative.

Still, even though the scientific community is in agreement over the safety of GM foods, there is a question of disclosure—the second component of the argumentum ad absurdum. To Maher, the “evil” nature of Monsanto is bound-up in the fact that GM foods are not currently labeled as such. We deserve to know what we are eating, and if Monsanto won’t tell us, GM food must be bad for us, or so the argument seems to go. But again, the science must be separated from the politics. No one will deny that Monsanto had a dog in the fight to prevent GM labeling in California, but Maher might be surprised to hear that labeling genetically modified foods is a bad idea, despite the benefits of transparency. There is no scientific reason to label from a safety standpoint, and doing so would likely only create more fear around the already beleaguered technology. And that fear would probably have damaging implications for all advances in food technology. Just look at what happens when people realize that fluoride—a safe and amazingly effective addition to our public water supply—is coming from their tap.

For questions that science, and not politics, has a bearing on, it really does not matter what you think of Monsanto. It does not matter what you think of the corporation’s business tactics or how it treats its customers or employees. Similarly, it does not matter if you think Al Gore a hypocrite or Charles Darwin a heathen–climate change and evolution are real and established. By calling GMOs “poison” and “evil”, Bill Maher poisons the well of reasoned scientific discussion with ideologically driven fear mongering.

It’s fashionable to think that the conservative parties in America are the science deniers. You certainly wouldn’t have trouble supporting that claim. But liberals are not exempt. Though the denial of evolution, climate change, and stem cell research tends to find a home on the right of the aisle, the denial of vaccine, nuclear power, and genetic modification safety have found a home on the left (though the extent to which each side denies the science is debatable). It makes one wonder: Why do liberals like Maher—psychologically considered open to new ideas—deny the science of GM food while accepting the science in other fields?

The answer to that giant question is an unsettled one, but themes do leap out of the literature. Simplifying greatly, cognitive bias and ideology play a large role. We tend to accept information that confirms our prior beliefs and ignore or discredit information that does not. This confirmation bias settles over our eyes like distorting spectacles for everything we look at. Could this be at the root of the argumentum ad monsantum? It isn’t inconsistent with the trend Maher has shown repeatedly on his show. A liberal opposition to corporate power, to capitalistic considerations of human welfare, could be incorrectly coloring the GM discussion. Perhaps GMOs are the latest casualty in a cognitive battle between confirmation bias and reality.

But just how much psychology plays into the opposition of GMOs is a question that can’t even be asked until the politics and the science are untangled.

To his credit, Bill Maher has a record of seeing the science forest for the political trees when it comes to topics like climate change and evolution. He spots the political manipulation of climate change when the Koch brothers fund disinformation. He picks out when arguments to “teach the controversy” are just semantic manipulations to get religious ideology into science classes. I hope that he, and the liberal bastion of science denial he sometimes represents, one day gets real and recognizes how much his political views are manipulating his stance on genetically modified foods.

Tip of the hat toBrian Dunningwho came up with the phrase “argumentum ad monsantum” on Twitter.About the Author: Kyle Hill is a freelance science writer and communicator who specializes in finding the secret science in your favorite fandom. Follow on Twitter@Sci_Phile. More »

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