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Bill Maher was back on the air this weekend with the 2011 premier of Real Time and he had a few things to say about what the Founding Fathers might have thought of this anti-intellectual teabagger movement in his New Rules segment.
Allen West: I'll Be VP If God Ordains It
War Mongers Bay Buchanan and Amanda Carpenter Ready to go Bomb Another Country
Former OMB Director Stockman: Romney Can't Say He Learned How to Create Jobs in the LBO Business
Joe Madison: President Obama Needs to Support the Wisconsin Protesters as He Did the Protesters in Cairo
Will Bunch chats with John Amato about his new Ronald Reagan book, 'Tear Down This Myth' |
Colin Powell Takes Hannity to Task for His Obsession with Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright |
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Biden Rips Romney's Social Policy: 'We Will Not Go Back to the 50s!' |
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Former OMB Director Stockman: Romney Can't Say He Learned How to Create Jobs in the LBO Business |
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SNL Digital Short: Andy Samberg and Pee-wee Herman Get Drunk and Attack Anderson Cooper |
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S.E. Cupp Attempts and Fails to Defend Paul Ryan's Immoral Budget |
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Bill Maher Knocks Liberty University: It Cheapens My Degree From a Real School |
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Compassionate Conservatism: Romney Meets Medical Marijuana Patient |
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Krugman: Romney's Business Career is Fair Game |
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Republicans Will Find Themselves in Tough Spot if Supreme Court Strikes Down 'Obamacare' |
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Romney: ‘I’m Not Familiar Precisely With Exactly What I Said, But I Stand By What I Said Whatever It Was’ |
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Colbert: Rush Limbaugh is a Prostitute Who Will Do Anything With His Mouth for Cash |
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President Obama Asks to See Betty White's Long Form Birth Certificate |
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'Family Guy' Does the Tea Party |
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Bill Maher Knocks Liberty University: It Cheapens My Degree From a Real School |
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Bachmann Warns of Hezbollah 'Missile Sites' in Cuba |
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Maher, Carlin, and Vidal; the triumvirate of caustic yet remarkably accurate insights.
I'm always glad to see Maher back for another season. He may not get every issue "right," and he may at times seem woefully under-prepared for the dishonest deluge of his right-wing guests, but he's one of the very few mainstream pundits willing to defiantly and unapologetically stand for liberal policies. If only there were more like him.
A younger contemporary/protege of Carlin. Then theres Hunter S. Thompson (who made the ultimate statement of FU to GWB on his inauguration day in Feb 2005) both sadly missed.
I'm not always a Maher fan, but when he's on, he's on.
It's an unfortunate fact that nobody will ever get through to tea-baggers or any other right wingers. They are simple-minded, uneducated and built to stay that way. They like it.
Any fact they don't like is dismissed out-of-hand as a lie. It's quick, simple and leaves no room for having any kind of discussion with them.
Oh, and they know everything there is to know about everything.
Citing the fact that Thomas Paine was a militant athiest was especially satisfying.
is rather a good read. And considering he wrote the book while languishing in a French jail under daily threat of death during the 'terror', he wrote it using recall of memory.
It is amazing that Thomas Paine wrote the first part of The Age of Reason using only his memory for Bible verses. However, he wrote the first part just prior to being arrested and put in the Luxembourg. He wrote the second part after James Monroe won his release from prison and he was recuperating while a guest of the Monroe family. Part three was written after his return to America.
It's also interesting that the American Revolution embraced people from all of society and that they were all altruistic. For example, Jefferson and both of the Adams brothers were well educated and from fairly wealthy families while Thomas Paine had very little education and was from a poor family. The wealthy revolutionaries risked all they had by taking part in the American Revolution. By today's standards they'd be considered to be on the lunatic fringe since they had every material thing they could want along with very successful careers. But they risked it all, along with their lives and their families to start and to win the revolution. Paine, though never having much money all of his life, earned a lot of money when he wrote and published Common Sense. But instead of holding on to it he spent it on mittens for the soldiers.
Progress! Bob Johnson
www.deism.com
If you read his book The Age of Reason you'll see he was not an Atheist but was a Deist. He wrote it to weaken the influence of both Christianity and Atheism.
Progress! Bob Johnson
www.deism.com
. . . when the teabaggers discover the representatives they sent to Washington to "take back their country" really want to gut their Social Security and Medicare as well as shift the tax burden to them and away from the wealthy, corporate campaign supporters. Like the evangelicals before the, teabaggers have been exploited by GOP operatives and will be cast aside like so many Tom DeLays and Michael Steeles.
Not just exploited. GOP operatives dreamed up the tea party and agitated their base into it. It's an incredible example of supply and demand. They created the demand by whipping people into a frenzy, and then supplied the tea party as an answer.
"The Founding Fathers Would Have Hated Your Gutsanti-colonialst? First thing I thought of was the founding fathers and their views.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
I don't understand your comment. ???
my bad - poor edit.
Meant to say - when Gingrich called Obama "anti-colonialist" - first think I thought of was the anti-colonialist founding fathers.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
...the teabaggers.
They make such cute pets.
"Better." It's what we should ask of ourselves and of our leaders.
For their masters- Fox news and the Koch brothers. Cute until they make a mess on the carpet!
hahahahahaha
Can anyone tell me if there is a setting to turn off that will prevent my browser from scrolling back to the top of the comments every time I post one? It's super-annoying - particularly when the thread gets long and I have to scroll back and try to find where I was.
It's nice to see Maher on a roll like this, but he errs in calling Thomas Paine an atheist. Paine was sharply critical of religion, but he a deist rather than an atheist.
Good to know when the baggers scream back. Deist- atheist lite!
Very funny and true New Rule about our Founding Fathers.
I'm sure if Carville had a say in the New Rules, he'd come back to "go measure my penis and let me get on the airplane." After all, airport security has re-surfaced as an issue in America.
The teabaggers were just a corporate sponsored attempt to get votes by re-branding an incredibly unpopular bush repug party, they'd be nothing without that corporate money. Of course they are nothing like the democratic, with a small d, founding fathers.
for the mess that the Bush presidency left
Before I saw Bill's comment last night about the Founding Fathers and Teabaggers, I had read an article about how a small group of teabaggers in Tennessee is demanding that textbooks take out references to bad things the Founding Fathers might have done......such as owning slaves and mistreating American Indians.
This movement will grow in Tennessee and elsewhere.
Bill is exactly right.....the Founding Fathers would have hated the Teabaggers, and that's why the teabaggers want to change history by changing these textbooks.
I don't agree with him on every issue, but generally he hits the nail on the head. Our Founders were the elite of their day, that's for sure. They were also imperfect human beings, ahead of their times but also clearly unable to foretell the future. They didn't agree on many things, but overall did a great job in creating a good foundation for our democracy. That's why I don't agree with the so-called "strict constructionist". They designed the Constitution so that it could be amended as society grew and circumstances changed, while keeping in mind our basic human rights.
didn't have the Koch brothers and Koch Industries financing them. They did it all on their own.
The Koch Bros and Dick Armey found their goons- TEA GOONS! Distract and fire up hate (energy) with the ignorant and use that energy to help the international scam artist business (US Chamber of Commerce- which isn't interested in helping the US, Murdoch, Koch, etc) would are investing all over the world, especially Asia. What a SCAM they pulled.
This has got to be one of his top ten "New Rules" segments ... Thank you Bill Maher =)
19 - now 20 - comments in and everyone is fairly agreeable?
Civility is back!!
Thank you for posting this! Wow that really outlines the truth and dispels this astroturf romanticized version of modern ignorant tea people being just like the heros of the past! The founding fathers were educated, intellectuals they would have dismissed these modern bigots the minute they opened their mouths or hoisted a pathetic tea party sign on a stick!
One has to wonder at the Bill O'Reilly comment. I mean really you're trying to tell me that Bill O' doesn't know, or believe, that the Moon is responsible for the tides. That's almost crazy talk, except maybe it isn't if on the off chance his purpose were to confuse, mislead or keep people ignorant.
Once again, folks, Bill Maher is right on the money with his remarks. Bill is getting to the point on these tea-baggers, and they don't like it at all. what I fear, however, is the possibility that they will try to go after someone such as Bill Maher, or Keith Olbermann, or even Rachel Maddow.
We had better be ready to deal with these virulent right-wingers should that happen, for it won't be pretty when it does.
That was hilarious.
The tea party acts like the modern day Tories, who kiss up to the Kings- King Koch, King Murdoch, King Beck, KIng GOP, Queen $arah!, etc. Kings who suppress and have no tolerance. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/claimi... Here's a good write up.
I'm amazed no one ever bring up the Jefferson Bible. Thomas Jefferson thought that the Bible had good ethics, but was fraught with superstition that kept the ignorant trapped by their ignorance. However, he thought the Bible was good for teaching ethics for those of lesser minds, namely Native Americans, Afro-Americans, and to a degree the poor and women. He re-wrote the Bible to teach these intellectual lessers morality, but in a way that does not shore up their natural tendency for superstition.
Though I imagine this is why Jefferson was largely removed from the Texas history curriculum.
Wikipedia page with many links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_bible
Another copy of the text at the wonderful Sacred Texts site:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/jb/index.htm
I had a problem with the volume fading in-and-out.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
and it was reported that they (I guess the History Channel) are still releasing the movie internationally. What does that tell you about America?
The Founding Fathers would hate your guts. Purrrfect.
far left loon >.<
Bill Maher is a great person. The world is a better place because of him. What he says about the teabaggers is true. They try to paint America's Founders as Christians when many of the key Founders were not Christians but were Deists. However, he does make a mistake when he says that Thomas Paine was an Atheist. Paine was the opposite of an Atheist; he was a Deist. That is he believed in God based on the application of his reason on the designs in Nature which Deists believe point us to the Designer. A great read is Paine's outstanding book, The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition. He makes it very clear he does not believe in the Bible/Christianity, the Torah/Judaism or the Koran/Islam but he does believe in, as described in the Deistic document the Declaration of Independence, Nature's God.
Another point the teabaggers don't like to think or talk about is that both they and the Founding Fathers are/were in violation of the Bible by resisting the government and powers that be. Romans 13:1-7 openly states that we should be submissive to the powers that be and anyone who resists the powers that be will be damned by God.
Progress! Bob Johnson
www.deism.com
We do not know whose guts the founding fathers would have hated, because they are long dead.
Also the "founding fathers" were not that homogeneous as a group. Furthermore, the reality of the "founding fathers" is far more complex and diverges significantly from the accepted PR narrative that most Americans seem to have adopted for our "founding fathers."
In other words, no need to invoke suppositions of what dead people may or may not do... when stating the clear stupidity of the living.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
No, no, the FF's would have loved the teabaggers because they were all Mormons! In the late 1980s the LDS Church had them all Mormonized by having various men do their "temple work," which posthumously changed them all into Mormons. I was working for a small LDS newspaper in Las Vegas at the time, and typeset an article about it.
It's a miracle! ( :- ) )
http://www.templestudy.com/2008/07/03/the-fou...
I've been thinking the same thing ever since I learned that Dick Armey had anything to do with them and Palin was aligning herself with them, not to mention that loony tunes brunette woman in the House and not to forget Ron Paul's goofy son. We just aren't getting the quality lawmaker in D.C. we once did, and none of them is going up there for altruistic reasons. Matt Taibi's portrait of the new Speaker in "Rolling Stone" promises a civil war within the GOP as the Old Guard demonstrates to the Teabaggers that their election agenda is not going to happen. Boner's weeping is the joy of knowing he'll now make more lucre than any of his brethren, not to mention the best golf junkets. That way, he won't have to be in his offices much and can turn things over to his chief of staff who is paid on taxpayer money.
"Respect for the rights of others is peace." --Benito Juarez
You're absouletely correct that the founding fathers would have been appalled at the behavior of some of these violence pushing nut cases. They would have become nauseated at the sight of American idiots actually calling for the murder of a US President. That these awful displays of hate mongering can happen here is just unbelieveable.......so disturbing.
http://www.binscorner.com/pages/d/death-threa...
The progressives need their own version of the Tea Party. The Antithesis of the Tea Party, in every respect including the fact that it will be a genuine grass roots organization. It will have to be.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
in the back who laughs out loud when the New Rules intro plays a second too early?
What a prick.
Along with the assholes who laughed when Tom DeLay's picture popped up rather than O'Donnell's.
One of the most influencial leaders in history was a radical lefty...a remarkable liberal..and a wonderful person .That would be Jesus.
I guess I may never understand, although I try almost daily, how the Christian right says that they are so devoted to God..but they don't know anything about who Jesus really was. Do they think he'd be a racist, toting a gun, complaining about the Mexicans crossing the border...and holding tight to their riches when asked to take care of their sick less fortunate neighbors who are too poor to go the doctor?? I recall that most of his messages were pretty much just the opposite of this....Can someone help me with this???
Why is it media figures like Bill Maher come up with their best Republican/Tea Bagger critiques in non-election years?
I'm a big fan of Maher. But his sudden interest in a post-midterm election mission to help Democrats reclaim patriotism for their far better policy results (vs the disastrous policy results for their Republican opposition) is, as always with the guys, a day late and a dollar short.
I'll believe Maher and others mean it if he and Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann and John Stewart and others don't return to their usual suppression of Democratic votes agenda by doing everything in their media power to convince the all-important white male blue collar voter that Democrats are "spineless wimps" starting about 6 months before the next election.
Hated tea-bagger's guts is a bit strong.
I think the Founding Fathers would've either just ignored them
Or slap their Founding Mothers.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I don’t know if the Founders would have hated everyone in the Tea Party movement’s guts, but not one of the Framers would have given Glenn Beck the time of day. They were the elites of their time, and reactionary Beck would have been railing against them just as he would have been railing against Lincoln in his time. Whitfield MIGHT have deigned to have lunch with Beck; no one else. Reactionaries in the late 1700’s were solidly on the side of the King.
Glenn Beck seems to be striving to become known in the future’s history as the biggest hypocrite of all time.
"The antidote to bad speech is more speech." ~~J.S. Mill
He who points his finger at another has three pointing back at him and Bill has three big ones pointing back at him: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. His arrogant vulgarity aside lets start at his diatribe against the T.E.A. (Tax...ed Enough Already) Party.
Re: the Founding Fathers as "liberal elitists". Isn't it funny how the meaning of words gets distorted. Take the word "gay" for instance. It used to mean "happy and carefree" but now it means a practicer of homosexual acts. Liberal used to mean:
4. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.
5. favoring or permitting freedom of action, esp. with respect to matters of personal belief or expressions.
6. of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
7. free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant.
8. open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.
9. characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor.
But now it has come to mean one whose intent is to subvert, tear down, or destroy freedom, esp. as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties (as by the Constitution of the United States).
Re: "blacks as 3/5ths of a person". Frederick Douglas researched this statement and found that it did not apply to blacks or slaves (the first slave in America was actually white and owned by a black but that is another story). The 3/5ths clause was to limit the number of representatives allowed by slave owning states who wanted to count their "property" (slaves) in apportioning representation. The North countered by saying they should be allowed to count their "property" (horses and cattle). To settle the issue this compromise was made in order to preserve the Union. Frederick Douglas saw it as actually a Freedom clause because it limited the power of the South to own and control slaves.
Why would the Founding Fathers have "hated the guts" of TEA Party supporters who want the government to abide by the limited authority proscribed the Constitution, and who want to curb the excessive appetite of government and its overreach of powers not granted by the Constitution? The Federal Government of today has become the antithesis of the intent of the Founding Fathers.
Bill mistakes the ability to intellectually store information in ones brain with Knowledge. The Founding Fathers knew that they were fulfilling biblical prophecy in founding America as an extension of the Mosaic "Promised Land". Yes, they knew that Religion, doctrine and dogma had been used to enslave rather than free mankind. Jesus came to free us, not to enslave us. He forgave our "sins" (our misuse of God's energy) which is an action of the Law of God that sets aside the need to make recompense for the error until the soul is able to establish itself and be able to balance and free the "karmic recompense" on it's own. We are one body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27) and we each have a unique Christ Mind (Phil 2:5) with which we will be able to do the things that Jesus did and even greater things (John 14:12). In order for the children of God to be able to accomplish this they need to be able to exercise their free will and seek God on their own terms. A Free Market Economy without government regulation and interference allows the soul to "reap what it sows" and learn and gain mastery in the process.
Was Bill making fun of Gays in the priesthood. I thought he liked "queers". Yes, false brethren (fallen angels) have crept into the priesthood and have distorted and perverted the Teachings of Jesus Christ in order that they may: 1) contain power and control for themselves, and 2) prevent the children of God from putting on Christ and Ascending back to God. Ha Ha Ha. How funny indeed.
"Political power must stay in the hands of the smartest people", not an intellectual elite but in an educated populace who understand the principles upon which this nation was founded. Liberal Progressives in the public educational systems have seen that this is no longer typical but atypical among the populace. Our schools have not "failed", they have "succeeded" in dumbing down America's children so that people like Bill Maher seem "intelligent".
It is not the fact that Obama is a lawyer, and a Constitutional Lawyer at that, but that he was not raised to understand and respect the Constitution and the limited government it formed with maximum freedom to the states and the people. His contempt for the Constitution is reflected in the people he surrounds himself with. Those who take the oath to uphold, preserve and protect the Constitution and do it not are standing on shaky ground. God is not mocked. He will have the last laugh. HA! HA! HA! you shall not pass!
It's a good rant but Maher re-appropriates Tom Paine theologically the same way that Beck and the Teabaggers have politically.
Paine certainly wasn't an atheist, as anyone who has read The Age of Reason can attest. He was actually quite critical of atheism. Paine was a deist.
I say this as both a huge fan of Paine, and as an atheist myself.
The teapotheads are Repigs sidekicks!! Now Boehner's in trouble, not knowing which end is up!!
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