Marquis and Elvis, This is hilarious!
[QUOTE=EihTooms;2849484]
[URL]https://deadline.com/2022/01/bill-maher-fires-back-says-his-politics-have-not-changed-1234922380/[/URL][/QUOTE]Take a look at the video link Tooms kindly provided, starting at 2:25. Gee, those wacky Democrats are a barrel full of laughs!
A couple of easy, topical ones
[QUOTE=Xpartan;2849766][b]Eih, is Maher lying in that episode, knowingly or not? If so, where?[/b]
If he's not lying -- then, well, he's a comedian. He's not a Democratic operative. He has the right not to like everything Dems are doing and talk about it loud and clear.
And he even has the right to be wrong about it.
If he unwittingly influenced nudged some folks to stay home on the election night or even vote for the opposing candidate, well, it happened. What is he supposed to do if he feels a certain way -- lie? Keep his mouth shut?
And come on, at least Donald Trump is not on him. That's just wrong.
I guess, we'll have to agree to disagree here.[/QUOTE]Oh, he's lying in damn near every "joke" that looks and sounds a lot more like a fired up, holier than thou, phony outrage Repub campaign speech than a comedy routine.
Two of the more topical ones that certainly have not aged well;.
So Dems passed laws or forced book sellers and libraries to remove Dr. Seuss books, did they?
Nope.
[URL]https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed18335c03319d72f443594c174513[/URL]
The publisher decided to stop publishing them. A free-market Capitalist business decision. Nothing to do with Dems.
Which now begs the question; how much did Bill Maher's pro Repub campaign talking point "joke" provide cover for his beloved Repubs who are now in fact and indeed passing laws to ban books?
[URL]https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/25/politics/florida-school-library-books-law-desantis/index.html[/URL]
So beloved Repub Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is held up as a shining example of good ol' traditionally mislabeled "Law and Order" Repubs while apparently all Dem pols everywhere, randomly choose any Dem candidate for any office, are "legalizing shop-lifting" and especially in California, huh?
Nope.
[URL]https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-160551360299[/URL]
However, it is a fact that California comes in 2nd with the highest per capita robbery rate. But oh look! Texas is not meaningfully far behind at 6th place. And, a Texas bonus, Texas has a higher violent crime rate than California does. As does about a dozen other Repub Red States.
[URL]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_violent_crime_rate[/URL]
[URL]https://247wallst.com/special-report/2021/11/21/states-with-most-robberies/?amp=1[/URL]
Oh, and as long as Bill Maher is comically campaigning on the premise that having Ted Cruz in the Senate is so much better for America's rule of law and avoiding lost wealth and value than apparently any Dem, since that pro-Repub, Dem-Bashing comedy routine aired his shining example of Law and Order, Ted Cruz, voted to let Donald Trump go scott free for inciting and leading a violent cop-attacking, cop-maiming, cop-killing Insurrection in an effort to overturn a free and fair election, overthrow American democracy and, most pertinent to this particular point, set him up to run for so-called potus again so he can once again add to his and his Party's legacy as the Masters of producing one horrific downturn, massive jobs destruction and the wiping out of Trillions in USA household wealth after another.
There should be no doubt why Bill Maher is the new Repub Party Phony Outrage Talking Points Darling. Oh, and he repeats those easily debunked Repub campaign talking points with such learned conviction before his predominantly Dem audience too.
I was one of the first Moderna volunteers
"Why were you able to get the vaccine in 2020 instead of far into 2021? Well, I'd argue part of the reason was Trump pushing the FDA to approve the vaccines, and Operation Warp Speed. I just don't see how the mRNA vaccines would have been available so early in a Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden Administration.
Biden, unlike Trump, was a big believer in COVID tests and masks. But were there masks in every mail box when Omicron broke out? Why was there a severe shortage of test kits?
I'm not a fan of Trump, but he did many things right. Our Democratic friends fail to recognize that because MSNBC and other media have blinded them to believe everything he did was wrong. ".
In late summer 2020 at the University of Chicago (thanks to our Our Lord and Savior), I'm sure Elvis and ET remember me writing about it.
Another article from one of the few people worth reading at NYT.
By Bret Stephens.
Opinion Columnist.
Unemployment is near historic lows, and inflation has come way down. We are inflicting a strategic humiliation on Russia by arming Ukraine without putting American forces at risk. The homicide rate fell by about 10 percent across 30 cities compared with last year. Democrats defied electoral trends by holding the Senate, scoring major legislative victories and easily confirming a Supreme Court nominee.
Why, then, do only 20 percent of voters rate the economy as "excellent" or "good," versus 49 percent who call it "poor," according to a New York Times / Siena poll? Why are Americans overwhelmingly pessimistic about the country's future, according to the Pew Research Center? Why does Gallup find a significantly smaller percentage of Americans have confidence in the presidency today than they did in the last, disastrous year of Donald Trump's tenure? And why is President Biden polling dead even with his predecessor in multiple surveys despite the former president's 91 felony charges?
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Aug. 10,2023.
In short, with everything so great, why are people so down? That's a question that, as The Times's Reid Epstein wrote last week, stumps the White House and its political allies, who seem to think the problem is a failure to communicate all the good news.
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But there's another explanation: The news isn't all that good. Americans are unsettled by things that are not always visible in headlines or statistics but are easy enough to see.
Easy to see is the average price of a dozen eggs: up 38 percent between January 2022 and May of this year. And white bread: up 25 percent. And a whole chicken: up 18 percent. As for the retail price of gasoline, it's up 63 percent since January 2021, the month Biden became president.
Yet none of these increases make it into what economists call the core rate of inflation, which excludes food and energy. The inflation ordinary people experience in everyday life is not the one the government prefers to highlight.
Easy to see is the frequent collapse of public order on American streets. In April hundreds of teenagers wreaked havoc in the Chicago Loop. Two boys were shot. A young couple was beaten by the doorway of a building on North Wabash. Yet only 16 people were arrested. Similar scenes unfolded last month in New York's Union Square and again in Boston, where police officers were assaulted in two separate riots largely by juveniles.
In New York, there were at least 66 arrests. In Boston, just 13.
Easy to see is that the kids are not alright. The causes are many; social media companies have a lot to answer for. But so do teachers' unions, handmaids of the Democratic Party, who pushed to keep school doors closed during the pandemic, helping themselves while doing lasting harm to children. The Biden administration spent much of its early months saying it wanted more than half of schools open at least one day per week by the 100th day of his presidency.
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"It is a goal so modest and lacking in ambition as to be almost meaningless," Politico's Playbook newsletter noted at the time.
Easy to see is that the border crisis has become a national one. In May the administration boasted that new policies had contributed to a sharp decline in the "number of encounters" between border patrols and migrants crossing the southwestern border illegally. By August, arrests of migrants who crossed the border with family members had hit a monthly record of 91,000. In New York City alone, more than 57,000 migrants seek food and shelter from the city's social services on an average night.
Nobody can say for certain how many migrants who crossed the border during Biden's presidency remain in the USA, but it's almost certainly in the millions. In 2021 the president dismissed the initial surge of migrants as merely seasonal. "Happens every year," he said.
Easy to see is that the world has gotten more dangerous under Biden's watch. The president deserves credit for arming Ukraine, as he does for brokering a strategic rapprochement between Japan and South Korea. But he also deserves the blame for a humiliating Afghanistan withdrawal that almost surely played a part in enticing Vladimir Putin into launching his invasion of Ukraine and whetted Beijing's appetite for Taiwan.
How large a part is unquantifiable. Yet it was predictable — and predicted.
Easy to see is that the president is not young for his age. The stiff gait and the occasional falls. The apparent dozing off. The times he draws a blank or struggles to complete a thought. Yet the same people yelling #ResignFeinstein or #ResignMcConnell don't appear to be especially vocal when it comes to the president's fitness, as if noting the obvious risks repeating a Republican talking point.
But people notice, and they vote.
Easy to see are tents under overpasses, from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in New York to the I-5 in Seattle. And the zombified addicts passed out on sidewalks in practically every city and town. And the pharmacies with everyday items under lock and key to prevent shoplifting. And women with infants strapped to their backs, hawking candy or gum at busy intersections. And news reports of brazen car thefts, which have skyrocketed this year.
"There is a great deal of ruin in a nation," Adam Smith said. Not all the ruin mentioned above is Biden's fault, and none of it is irreversible. But there's much more ruin than his apologists — blinkered by selective statistics and too confident about the president's chances next year — care to admit.