Tag: Rant of the Week

As more Americans apply for food stamps and disability benefits, conservative pundits and independent crusaders believe it’s good to shame them.

The US: world’s policeman or schoolyard bully?

by Bill Maher, The Guardian

Ever since 9/11, it seems America’s just been itching for a fight – and any Muslim country will do. Really, who acts like this?

New rule: 12 years after 9/11, and amidst yet another debate on whether to bomb yet another Muslim country, America must stop asking the question, “Why do they hate us?” Forget the debate on Syria, we need a debate on why we’re always debating whether to bomb someone. Because we’re starting to look not so much like the world’s policeman, but more like George Zimmerman: itching to use force and then pretending it’s because we had no choice. [..]

Since 1945, when Jesus granted America air superiority, we’ve bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Serbia, Somalia, Bosnia, the Sudan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya and Yemen. And Yemen only because the tenth one was free.

How did we inherit this moral obligation to bring justice to the world via death from above? Are we Zeus? It doesn’t make any sense. Our schools are crumbling, and we want to teach everyone else a lesson?

NYC mayoral candidate Joe Lhota goes after the key anti-kitten demographic after two lost kittens shut down America’s largest transportation system.

Kittens Stop NYC Subway Service

It only took two kittens to stop the city’s subway in its tracks.

Power was cut to the B and Q lines in Brooklyn for more than an hour after a woman reported Thursday morning that her kittens were loose in the nation’s largest subway system, transit officials said.

The furry felines, one black and the other white with gray stripes, were finally found on the tracks and rescued about seven hours later.

How they got there was a mystery. But they were seen running dangerously close to the high-voltage third rail.

Their owner rushed to a subway station with cat food for transit workers dispatched onto the tracks to use to try to corral them.

Joe Lhota, NYC Mayoral Hopeful, Wouldn’t Stop Trains For Kittens

A former chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority and New York City mayoral hopeful says he wouldn’t have stopped the subway because two lost kittens were scrambling along the tracks. [..]

Other mayoral hopefuls tell the paper they would’ve stopped the trains.

Fortunately, there are more cat lovers in NYC than Republican voters.

At the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s March on Washington, a very short but significant speech was cut from the program. It was only two minutes long, to be delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial by Phillip Agnew, the head of the Dream Defenders, who have been occupying the Florida governor’s office to protest the Zimmerman verdict and calling for the repeal of the “Stand Your Ground” law. It was only two minutes. Mr. Agnew felt it important enough to record the speech on a balcony over looking DC then posting it to You Tube. Before he started the speech, Mr. Agnew asks the viewers to record their two minute with hashtag #OurMarch to share with the world the future of America and The Dream.

h/t Chris Hayes @ All In

Last year HBO debuted the series “The Newsroom” starring Jeff Daniels as a the very flawed anchor, “Will McAvoy“, of a popular nightly news hour on the fictitious cable channel ACN. Up until now, I have only used real people but I thought this rant was worth discussion.

This is a clip from  the “We Just Decided To” episode where “McAvoy” is asked by a college student at a “town hall,”  “Can you say why America is the greatest country in the world?”

h/t Lambert Strether at naked capitalism

New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner uses his time in a televised debate to announce his name.  

The Obama administration alerts Americans about an imminent Al Qaeda attack that could happen any moment, anywhere, at any time.

Bill Maher challenges the left’s super rich to get in the game.

August 2, 2013 – (Real Time w/ Bill Maher – New Rules – Going Coup-Coup) – Bill Maher ended his show Friday night with a plea to rich liberals to even out the playing field so it’s not just “rich assholes” supporting the GOP pushing the policies they want all over the country. In particular, Maher singled out how one North Carolina businessman has been able to push his agenda through the state legislature, and with just a hint of subtlety, Maher used the segment as a direct appeal to the artist Jay Z, who, as luck would have it, was sitting right next to him.

Maher shared with liberal America a tale of “proud people in a region where religious freedom, women’s right, and democracy itself hang in the balance”: North Carolina. Maher explained how the state has gone “apeshit” with laws like a ban on Sharia and allowing concealed guns on playgrounds. Although the latter does mean “if your toddler gets knocked down in the sandbox, he can stand his ground.”

And that’s not even including the abortion debate. Maher explained this shift in the previously-“trending blue” state by introducing the audience to Art Pope, another one of the right-wing “rich assholes” throwing their money and influence around to get the laws they want. Maher declared, “It’s no longer our ideas versus their ideas, or even our base versus their base, it’s our super-rich versus their super-rich.”

He hinted to Jay Z that he should buy a state too, but he didn’t end there. Maher made direct appeals to Steven Spielberg, Tyler Perry, and Oprah Winfrey to buy states of their own to at least even the score.

President Obama takes the first step in racial dialogue by discussing how it feels to be in a room full of white people who are scared of him.

   COLBERT: Nation, it’s time we Caucasian Americans accept that when it comes to furthering the racial dialog, the ball is in our court, even though having the ball on a court has never been our strong suit. President Obama had taken the first step by frankly discussing, as a black man, how it feels to be in a room full of white people who are scared of him.

   Now I believe it’s my turn to be honest about the white experience… black people are scary. And, folks, that’s not just me saying that. I mean, just ask the TV. […]

   That’s not prejudice. That’s just math. Okay? So, if in 2011, out of 42 million African Americans, 4149 were arrested for murder, which means we can reasonably be scared of .009% of African Americans. Now, it doesn’t sound like a lot, until… until you consider… until you consider that we don’t know which nine one thousandth of one percent. So, to be safe, we have to be scared of all of them.

   This is the same reason I assume all Arabs are terrorists and all Irishmen are leprechauns. […]

   Now that I’ve done this, in the dialog of racial understanding, white people have done our part. Okay? We have shown the courage to admit we’re terrified, but it’s a two way street black people.

   Which is why, right now, I would like to address all of my African American viewers. Folks, it is your responsibility to change how white people feel about you and according to President Obama, there’s a simple way you can do it. […]

   So the answer’s obvious. Black people need to become Senators.

h/t Heather at Crooks and Liars  

July 19, 2013 – During tonight’s Real Time, Dan Savage told Bill Maher about his reactions to this year’s monumental Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage, the most laugh-out-loud awful anti-gay arguments, and one of his favorite ways to troll Christian conservatives. He also explained to Maher how gay male couples are most likely to be promiscuous, while lesbian couples are most likely to be monogamous, leading him to conclude that the problem with monogamy is simply “dick.”

Savage credited all of the people brave enough to come out to their families as one of the biggest contributing factors to the social progress that’s been made in the United States. One significant achievement was that, while years ago, “if one of those douchebags who’s always threatening to kill me made good on it,” as Savage put it, his family would not get the same kind of benefits straight couples would when one of the partners dies.

h/t Mediaite