Amet Reloads: Bill Maher & George Carlin on Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher in 2001

George Carlin & Nobody

Source: Amet Reloads: Bill Maher & George Carlin on Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher in 2001

Not clear the date of this show, but it sounds like the early days of the George W. Bush Administration in 2001, when our long national nightmare was just beginning, to paraphrase former President Gerald Ford. You would think after being appointed President of the United States and losing the popular vote and arguably Florida as well that would have given the election to Al Gore and not being very popular when assuming office in January, 2001 and having a divided Senate and a House with bare Republican majority, that President Bush just might try to govern as a uniter. And not try to force his right-wing agenda that the country didn’t support on the country.

But you gotta give President Bush credit for one thing and that’s where his credit runs out. He told the country what he believed and what he would do and then he did exactly that. He really is one of the most honest president’s we’ve ever had. Which is sort of like being the tallest man in Japan. So what! But its true. That whole cliché that elections matter. That is so true with G.W. Bush. The country knew what they were getting when they voted for him, other than that little trillion-dollar debacle called the Iraq War. And they voted for him anyway. I don’t blame President Bush for being who he was. I blame the Democratic Party who both times had a candidate better than Bush, but barely lost to him twice. For not running good campaigns and taking Bush seriously.

It is one thing to be a bad president and good luck finding a worst one than G.W. Bush where you look at the State of The Union when he took office and where it was when he left. But that person still has to get the job first and beat the opposition. I blame Al Gore, for not winning his home state Tennessee and not winning Florida in a walk with the senior vote and coming off as rude with superficial voters in the debates. For not taking advantage of the most popular politician in the country who just happened to be his boss in President Clinton and using him to take apart the Bush Campaign. I blame John Kerry, for again not taking President Bush seriously enough as a politician. And not taking the swift boat debacle seriously and wasting a whole summer not moving past that. But more importantly, I blame fifty-million or so American voters. Who didn’t have the decency to be awake, sober and on their medication when they went into the voting booths in 2000. And voting for the wrong person.

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Andrew Kaczynski: ‘When Mitch McConnell Supported Changing The Filibuster’

Source:Andrew Kaczynski– U.S. Senate Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Republican, Kentucky) talking about changing the Senate filibuster in 2005.

Source:The New Democrat

“When Mitch McConnell Supported Changing The Filibuster”

From Andrew Kaczynski

Newsflash: there’s bipartisan hypocrisy when it comes to the Senate filibuster. And a big example of why the U.S. Congress has a ten percent approval rating (and the ten percent are probably comatose or living oversees right now) because the upper chamber uses and complains about the filibuster to meet its short-term gains. Instead of what is best for the Senate and the country.

And Senate Democrats were in favor of filibustering presidential nominees before they were against it. And Senate Republicans were against the Senate filibuster before they were in favor of it.

The Senate filibuster debate is purely about politics and short-term political advantage to gain absolute power to the point that the party in power wouldn’t even have to acknowledge the minority party and even the minority leadership about what bills to proceed to and when to debate them.

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C-SPAN: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid- ‘Filibuster Part Of Fabric Of Senate, Meant To Be Used For Executive Nominees’

Source:C-SPAN– U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada) talking about the Senate filibuster, in 2005.

Source:The New Democrat

“Harry Reid: Filibuster Part Of Fabric Of Senate, Meant To Be Used For Executive Nominees. Sen. Harry Reid, Floor Remarks, 5/18/05.”

From Filibuster Flashback 

Senate Democrats in favor of the filibuster before they were against it as it relates to presidential nominees. Again just goes to the bipartisan hypocrisy and an example of why the U.S. Congress has a ten-percent approval rating and that might be generous. That ten-percent might be members of the Senate or mental patients.

But whoever is against the Senate filibuster (when they’re in the majority) is about short-term gain. And even though I’m in favor of Leader Reid using the nuclear option as it relates to presidential nominees because of how Senate Republicans have changed the rules as it relates to blocking presidential appointments, the hypocrisy in this debate is as obvious as the Earth is round.

One thing that is bipartisan in Congress is hypocrisy, as well as long so-called work vacations, getting paid while not working and perhaps a few other things, but Democrats and Republicans love using tools against the other side. But when those tools are used against them, they call them unfair and that they must be unilaterally changed or outlawed.

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PBS NewsHour: Mike Gravel (2007)

Source:PBS NewsHour– 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel.

“Mike Gravel interviews on the October 2nd Edition of ‘The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.’

He discusses his time in the US Senate, NI4D, the FairTax, and much more!”

From Mike Gravel

Mike Gravel sounds like he wanted to turn America into a social democracy where the people could essentially right the laws, because laws could be written through referendum instead of our representatives and senators doing that for us in Congress. And do this instead of the liberal democracy that we are where everything is not done by majority rule, but where we elect representatives to write the laws (that are hopefully constitutional) that the people want.

Senator Mike Gravel from what I know about him (which isn’t a lot and I plan on learning more about him in the future) sounds like someone who mixes social democratic ideology with classical liberal (meaning real liberal) or libertarian ideology as well. Perhaps someone who would be called a Socialist-Liberal with strong social democratic tendencies on economic policy and liberal-libertarian views of social issues.

The Democratic Party has Socialists and what’s left the of the John F. Kennedy Classical Liberal coalition (which is shrinking) but they don’t have many members that combine both philosophies. So if you are looking for a base of the Democratic Party that Mike Gravel represents, good luck because you might need an agency of detectives to find that base in the party.

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DNC Press: ‘Senator Byrd’s Speech Opposing Iraq War 3/19/03’

Source:DNC Press– U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia) speaking out against the War in Iraq, in 2003.

“Remarkably prescient speech opposing the Iraq war by Senator Byrd in March of 2003.”

From DNC Press

I wish more people had listened to Senator Byrd in the beginning, especially in Congress but in America as a whole when the war was popular, because Senator Byrd was right all along. And had more people listened to him who wasn’t an isolationist or pacifist, or some other extremist on the Far-Left, we would’ve saved a lot of lives and money in America and Iraq. And not had gone to war over weapons of mass destruction that weren’t there when we went to war in 2003.

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C-SPAN: ‘The Truth Behind the Trillion-Dollar Stimulus, the Biggest Economic Recovery Plan in History’

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) (Pub.L. 111–5), commonly referred to as the Stimulus or The Recovery Act, was an economic stimulus package enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009 and signed into law on February 17, 2009, by President Barack Obama.”

From The Film Archives

As it turns out, the 2009 Recovery Act to deal with the Great Recession, was essentially a short-term expansion of the public safety net in America to help people deal with the impact of the Great Recession. Actually, not that different from the New Deal in the 1930s.

The Recovery Act had things like an extension of Unemployment Insurance, money to states and localities so they don’t have to further lay people off, as well as infrastructure investment, and middle class tax cuts to encourage consumer spending to help the economy recover and stop shrinking.

As much as Democrats including myself wanted the Recovery Act to about rebuilding the economy and getting the economy back to not just economic growth, but to put people back to work and get the economy back to strength and perhaps get us back to full employment within two years, the Recovery Act was mostly an extension of the public insurance system to deal with the worst aspects of the Great Recession, like unemployment and bankruptcies.

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U.S. Representative Alan Grayson: What is The Republican Health Care Plan?

Source:U.S. Representative Alan Grayson– (Democrat, Florida) on the lack of a health care plan from House Republicans, back in 2009.

“This is Rep. Alan Grayson discussing the GOP plan for health care. Part one, don’t get sick. Part two, if you do get sick… Part three, die quickly.”

From Alan Grayson

Just to make a few points about what Representative Grayson said here:

If this speech was given I don’t know 14-16 months later after the Republican Party had just won the House back picking up 62 seats, if this speech was given in early 2011, instead of 2009, chances are this speech is not given. Why? Because a House Republican would’ve reported him to the Chair and had Representative Grayson’s words taken down. Which in Congressional speak means his speech would’ve been deleted from the record.

Also, further actions would’ve been taken against the Representative, like him losing his committee assignments in that Congress. Why? Because Alan Grayson is essentially saying that Republicans want people to die early to keep health care costs down in America.

Now to speak about the good points that Representative Grayson actually made here:

House Republicans when they were still in the minority in 2009-10, didn’t have an alternative to what became the Affordable Care Act, until that law is finally voted out of Congress (House and Senate) in March of 2010.

Then House Minority Leader John Boehner and his Republican Conference finally released their own plan in late 2009 or early 2010. And their plan would’ve provided health insurance to like 1-4 of what the Affordable Care Act has provided in just 3 years, which is 20 million new Americans who now have health insurance, who didn’t have it at all in 2009.

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Best of World Boxing: ‘Rivals- Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier’

Source:Best of World Boxing– Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier.

“Profile on the greatest rivalry in Boxing.”

From Best of World Boxing 

I realize football is very different from boxing, but the great NFL analyst John Madden once had a great quote about rivalries and what you need for a rivalry to even be a rivalry, let alone a great rivalry. And he was talking about the great rivalry between his Oakland Raiders and the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1970s, the two best franchises in American Football Conference, if not the entire NFL in the 1970s.

What Coach Madden said for a rivalry to be great (and I’m paraphrasing) the two teams involved have to be good at the same time once the rivalry starts and then have to be good after that. Their games have to matter, to be important, to be well-played, and close.

What made the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier rivalry a great rivalry in the 1970s, was not only did they hate each other (even though secretly they respected each other) but they were not just good, or real good, or even great, but they were the two best heavyweight fighters in boxing in the 1970s. That’s why they had those three great fights against each other from 1971-75.

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C-SPAN: U.S. Senator Robert Byrd- On The 1964 Civil Rights Laws (2009)

Source:CSPAN– U.S. Senator Robert Byrd (Democrat, West Virginia) talking to Brian Lamb about his votes against the civil rights laws in 2009.

“Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) explains why he would change his vote on the 1964 civil rights laws. This excerpt is from a Nov. 2005 interview C-SPAN conducted for the 2006 documentary The Capitol. On 11/18/09 Sen. Byrd becomes the longest-serving member of Congress.”

From CSPAN

Senator Byrd seems to be at least trying to put part of the blame for his votes against the civil rights laws in Congress on Dixiecrats that he served with in Congress. I might be over cynical here, but you can understand if you are someone who follows Congress and government and politics in general as much as I do for my cynicism.

In the second part of this interview Senator Byrd talks about losing his grandson and imagined if his grandson was African-American and was in some type of car crash in some area where there were no hospitals that treated African-Americans and probably other racial minorities. I think that’s the Robert Byrd that we can respect here and give him credit for growing up and maturing as a U.S. Senator, at least when it comes to the civil rights laws in America.

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Mark T. Mitchell: ‘The Limits of Liberalism’

Source:Notre Dame Press– author Mark T. Mitchell’s book about liberalism.

“In The Limits of Liberalism, Mark T. Mitchell argues that a rejection of tradition is both philosophically incoherent and politically harmful. This false conception of tradition helps to facilitate both liberal cosmopolitanism and identity politics. The incoherencies are revealed through an investigation of the works of Michael Oakeshott, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Michael Polanyi.

Mitchell demonstrates that the rejection of tradition as an epistemic necessity has produced a false conception of the human person—the liberal self—which in turn has produced a false conception of freedom. This book identifies why most modern thinkers have denied the essential role of tradition and explains how tradition can be restored to its proper place.

Oakeshott, MacIntyre, and Polanyi all, in various ways, emphasize the necessity of tradition, and although these thinkers approach tradition in different ways, Mitchell finds useful elements within each to build an argument for a reconstructed view of tradition and, as a result, a reconstructed view of freedom. Mitchell argues that only by finding an alternative to the liberal self can we escape the incoherencies and pathologies inherent therein.

This book will appeal to undergraduates, graduate students, professional scholars, and educated laypersons in the history of ideas and late modern culture.”

From Notre Dame Press

“Terry Eagleton, John Edward Taylor Professor of English Literature at the University of Manchester, delivers the second lecture in a series of lectures entitled “Faith and Fundamentalism: Is Belief in Richard Dawkins Necessary for Salvation?” In this lecture, Professor Eagleton explores the limits of liberalism.”

Source:Yale University– University of Manchester Professor Terry Eagleton talking about liberalism in 2008, at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut.

From Yale University 

To respond to Mark T. Mitchell’s argument: yes, Liberals don’t believe in tradition, necessarily, unless you are talking about freedom and equal rights, things we’ve always believed in and always will. Liberals tend to be modernists and believers in progress. And sometimes that goes against tradition, especially if you are someone who believes in always conserving the status quo.

What Professor Terry Eagleton seems to be saying and I’m not that fluent in Yale speak but what I get from my decoding of this lecture is that liberalism is counter to Christianity and religion in general. In other words: if you are a Liberal, you worship the state rather than some God.

I’ve heard these stereotypes before and I’m sure there are some Atheist Liberals just like there are Atheist Conservatives and Libertarians and of course Socialists or Communists probably have the largest percentage of people who are Atheists.

But if you are a Liberal, you do not worship the state and you do not worship anything, necessarily. Because Liberals base their beliefs on the best available evidence at the time. And base their ideology on freedom so we do not worship the state because we are not Communists or Socialists. Liberals are supposed to question authority and the establishment. Well government tends to be the largest establishment and authority in any developed society.

If you look at liberalism (at least in the classical sense and I at least would argue the real sense) you are talking about a philosophy about liberty, which is where the word liberal comes from and is based on. So if you are talking about a society where there is no rules not even to protect the innocent from predators, then you are talking about anarchism, which is actually the extreme form of liberalism. You could literally argue that so-called Libertarians today are the extreme Liberals, but not the Socialists and Communists.

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