A Freedom of Speech Fighter: Real Time With Bill Maher- 'Is Alabama The Stupidest State in America?'

Source:A Freedom of Speech Fighter- Real Time With Bill Maher on State of Alabama.

Source:The New Democrat 

"Damn those homosexuals and their book learnin'!" 

From A Freedom of Speech Fighter  

I Alabama the stupidest state in the union? Well, if it wasn't part of the United States, it would probably a third-world country. Well, maybe third-world is a little insulting, but perhaps 2nd world. I mean we're talking about a state where Judge Roy Moore seems to represent the values of that state. Where their state motto seems to be: "Hey, we maybe be last in education and intelligence, but at least we're number one in football and making up things that Jesus said and believed in." 

So if you want to look at the stupidest state in the entire United States (and there's a long list to choose from) look at states that values their religious beliefs and values over intelligence, reason, and evidence. As well as states with a lot of poverty, both urban and rural, because they're so undereducated. And Alabama, along with Mississippi, Arkansa, West Virginia, and others will be towards the top of your list. 

Matthew Ives: Real Time With Bill Maher- 'The Hypocrisy of Evangelical Christians'

Source:Matthew Ives- Bill Maher, talking about hypocritical Evangelicals.

Source:The New Democrat 

"When evangelical Christians rejoice at Bin Ladens death, what does that say about their belief system?" 

From Matthew Ives

I’m going to be careful here, because there some actual Christians who I actually respect, including Protestants and Evangelicals and who are also still living. And when I think of Christianity and Christians as someone who isn’t, I think of these people and I think of their groups. And all of those charities that they run that house the homeless, feed the hungry, some groups even go as far as educating the ignorant so they can get themselves a good job. All things that the so-called Christian-Right and a certain segment of the Tea Party views as socialism or communism.

When I think of Christians, I don’t think of Michele Bachmann, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, all these so-called leaders of the Christian-Right. Who go out of their way of putting people down and hating and saying so many horrible things about people who don’t live exactly the way they do, or look at the world exactly as they do. You know, 

But I’m happy to look at at the far right-wing of Christianity people I see as fascists, statists, theocrats, hypocrites, especially when they are preaching against big government. Liars, crooks, assholes, bullshit artists, con-people, all of those labels would fit them perfectly. But calling them Christians would be an insult to Christians.

There are people who are truly religious and actually believe in the religion that they say they follow. Those people I respect, even if I disagree with their religion. Christianity especially as it relates to lifestyle, is simply too conservative for me, but so is Islam. 

But I can respect people who truly believe in and follow the values of those religions. But what I can’t respect are people who use a great religion like Christianity to put down other people simply because they disagree with them. Those people are assholes and make Americans look as stupid as we get stereotyped as.

Real Time With Bill Maher: 'If Jesus Ran The Republican Nomination For President'

Source:Atheist Blog- Jesus Christ and the Republican Party, according to Bill Maher.

Source:The New Democrat 

"If Jesus ran for the Republican nomination. Real Time with Bill Maher 30-09-2011

Originally from AtheistBlog.org:The Atheist Blog." 

If Jesus ran the Republican nomination for President, every single presidential candidate the GOP had back in 2011-12 would’ve been disqualified. Except for maybe Ron Paul, who is a good-natured doctor, who doesn’t go out of his way to put people down and actually believes in live and let live and treat others as you would want to be treated. You know, real Christian values that the other candidates up there, the Tea Party and Christian Right views as socialism or communism. Which is my point about Christianity, there’s Christianity that comes from the Bible. And there’s Christianity that so-called Christians like to make up to suit their own political needs.

I’m starting to think the term Christian-Right is offensive to actual Christians and I’m serious about that, because I use that term all the time. And there are Christians who are good people and truly live up to Christian values and the Ten Commandants. 

And then there are Christians who use Christianity to appeal to Christians to gain their political support on one hand. But on the other hand go out of their way to put people down who don’t live exactly the way they do and don’t look at America and the world the exact way that they do. I’m not sure even Religious-Right is an accurate term for people who use Christianity to suit their political goals, but don’t actually believe in what they claim they preach.

I love terms like Christian-Fundamentalist, Christian-Nationalist, Tea Party Nationalist, right-wing fascist to describe people who wouldn’t know what Christianity and conservatism really is if it kicked them in balls. Or in a woman’s case, punched them in the nose. Because a lot of what is supposed to be conservatism today, looks nothing like it did in the 1960s and perhaps even 1970s, that looks more like conservative libertarianism or even libertarianism today. 

I mean Jesus Christ and Barry Goldwater today sure as hell couldn’t get nominated by the Republican Party today, at least at the national level. Why, because they believe in very different things than the Far-Right of that party that now has so much influence.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the Far-Right in the GOP was looked down upon like mental patients that were on the loose and needed to be brought back to their mental hospital. Today Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are treated like mainstream serious presidential candidates. That is how much the GOP has changed in just forty-years where freakin Barry Goldwater would look like a freakin liberal or libertarian today. Mr. Conservative Barry Goldwater looking like a liberal, how times have changed in the Republican Party.

Robert Niro: Heat (1995) Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro

Source: Robert Niro-

Source:The New Democrat

This is my favorite scene from Heat and this is one of my favorite movies of all-time and a movie that is roughly three-hours long. But think about it for a moment, a three-hour movie that doesn’t seem like three-hours. The same thing with Casino, because it was one major scene after another with either great dialogue like in this scene, or with a great action scene. Like the first major robbery of the movie which is in the first scenes of the movie, or the diner scene that’s towards the end of the movie.

You don’t feel like you’re watching a three-hour movie when it is a great movie with one great scene after the other. Just like when you spend three-hours watching a great football or baseball game. Because you want to be there the whole time taking in everything. It’s the mediocre or bad movies that feel like they’re taking forever and feel like they’ll never end and perhaps you even walk out on that seem to go on forever. Heat doesn’t allow you to do that, because there’s always something very interesting going on in the movie.

And what you see in this scene are two men who are both in charge of what they do and who lead the crews they work for and at the top of their game. And what they are doing here is looking at each other as human beings and getting to the feel for each other and perhaps even liking each other, because they are both being real and who they are. And not trying to come off as anyone else. Neil McCauley the bank robber who has one big score left in him. Vincent Hanna the police lieutenant whose job is to stop McCauley and his crew.
Source:Robert Niro

RYY: Heat (1995)

Source: RYY-

Source:The New Democrat

Heat is definitely one of my favorite movies, top 5-10 of all-time and perhaps the best movie of 1995 and even the 1990s as a whole. Which was a great decade for movies and 1995 was also the year Casino came out as well. Both Heat and Casino came out in October or November of 95 and were simply two movies that I couldn’t wait to see. Saw them both on a Friday night when they both came out and knowing I was going to see both movies, sure as hell made going to work those two days easier and this was before I was a blogger-writer.

What I love about Heat, similar to Jackie Brown is the realness to both them. This movie doesn’t try to fool you and show you a world that doesn’t exist for the most part and people who don’t exist for the most part. I love this movie because of the humanity of it. It is not a movie about Devils vs. Saints, but cops against criminals. And the criminals do bad things in this movie and hurt people. But they are professional criminals who in most cases in this movie are only hurting other criminals. And I hate this term, because all people are real and it sounds cliché, but they are real people. With real lives, families to take care of. Who happen to make their living stealing.

The cops are the good guys in this movie like in most action movies that involve good and bad. But the cops led by their lieutenant Vincent Hanna played by the great Al Pacino, is not a Saint. He’s a workaholic, because he spends so much time going after bad people and as a result does not spend enough time with his wife who loves him and his stepdaughter. And tends to only see both of them very early in the morning and very late at night. Why, because he spends so much time trying to track down and catch criminals like Neil McCauley, played by the great Robert De Niro. An ethnic-Italian playing an Irishman, is interesting to me, but perhaps that is a different subject.

Neil McCauley leads a crew or robbers and thieves who are very professional and very good. Why, because they are simply in it for the money and are very calculating in how they approach their work, so to speak and don’t take jobs just to hurt someone or for the thrill ride, because they hate prison and don’t want to go back. So they are very careful in what jobs they take to the point that McCauley has sort of an agent, an adviser who finds jobs and targets for him played by Jon Voight. Who gives him the pros and cons, the price tags of these jobs and the chances of doing the jobs successfully and then getting away with it.

Vincent Hanna played by Al Pacino, is an LAPD Robbery and Homicide lieutenant whose job along with his team is to track down the McCauley crew and put them away. Again Hanna is a workaholic, so putting in the time to put this crew away is nothing new to him and he has the manpower to get it done. The difference being that McCauley crew might be the most skillful and professional crew he has ever seen and it will be difficult for him and his team to put this crew away. Again they are professional criminals who are in it simply for the money. They don’t rape or murder for the hell or thrill of it. But rob banks and other business’s simply for the money.

Heat is a great movie if you cops and robbers movies that are realistic and aren’t cookie-cutter. That are different and clever and even funny, especially with Al Pacino who makes serious characters look like comedians simply because of how he delivers lines and with his ability to add flavor and character to his lines and work. Heat is not a cookie-cutter movie that looks and sounds like a lot of other serious cop movies before and after. That is solely based on style and special effects to look cool. Is has those things to, but with a lot of substance in the movie that the movie is based on.
Source:RYY

Real Time With Bill Maher: Monarchy & State

Source: HBO-

Source:The New Democrat

For all of you lets say Social Democrats on the Left in America who prefer to be called Progressives, or insult liberalism by calling yourselves Liberals, who want America to be more like Britain with their form of government, imagine a George W. Bush, or here's a worst nightmarish thought, imagine a Ted Cruz as President of the United States without having to legally report to Congress and be accountable to Congress. Why? Because he's now a king at least with the power of one, because now America has a monarchy or unitary executive, where most of the power in the U.S. Government is centralized with the White House.

Now of course Britain is a functioning social democracy where executive power resides with a Prime Minister and their government and they at least to a certain extent are accountable to the U.K. Parliament. And the Prime Minister is not king and even though they are more powerful inside of the U.K. Government than the President is inside of the U.S. Government, Britain no longer has absolute power in the national government. Their monarchy instead of now presiding over the country and the government, now is part of the government with ceremonial power. And no longer running the country.

But back in the day the King of Britain or the United Kingdom, was exactly that. The King of that country, a dictator with absolute power that could pretty do however they please without having to report to anyone or get permission. Can you imagine some loony Neoconservative in America with that much power over Americans, a much wealthier and much larger and more powerful country than Britain. Could you imagine Rick Santorum as King of America with the Christian-Right in his back pocket. You could forget about the Federal Republic and Separation of Church and State that Sarah Palin and all of her wisdom sees as a myth if that were to happen.

Bill Maher is correct that Founding Fathers (the Founding Liberals of America) broke away from Britain, because they wanted to escape authoritarian dictatorial rule from the United Kingdom. And no longer have to live in a country where they had to get permission from the King to blow their nose, use the bathroom, bang their wife or mistress, or even another man. That they wanted to create a free society, a liberal democracy where the people could make their own decisions themselves. Which is why they created the Federal Republic with the Checks and Balances that they did. So we wouldn't live under a dictatorship and be free to live our own lives.
Source:Real Time With Bill Maher

Greg Hengler: Contessa Brewer- Interviews Catherine Moleski: 'Britain's Free Healthcare'

Source: Greg Hengler- Catherine Moleski, talking about the United Kingdom's health care system.

Source:The New Democrat  

"MSNBC Cheers Britain's Free Healthcare: It's Free For Tourists Too!" 

From Greg Hengler

Social Democrats and single payer health insurance and health care supporters would do themselves a huge favor and perhaps even risk building their support for their movement if they were simply accurate if not honest about how they say their system would be paid for and stop calling it free. 

There's no such thing as free anything that government provides. Even if they borrow the money to pay for some service they are giving their people, their people still pays for that in interest on the national debt. When you are spending other's people's money even for them, they are paying for the services that you give them.

Contessa Brewer who is not exactly a genius and generally does realty TV and technology related reporting and so-called human interest stories and not hard news, figured out pretty quickly that the U.K. NHS or National Health Service in Britain is not free and neither is their public health insurer that NHS also runs. It is paid for by British taxpayers and they pay for their own health care, just like Americans pay for there's. But Americans generally pay for their health care out of pocket or through their private health insurer. The British pays for their health care in taxes.

Show me free government services and I'll show you a beach house with an ocean view located in Minnesota. I would prefer however that you go first though, because producing a beach house with an ocean view in Minnesota would at the very least be a tall order. I would probably have better luck trying to swim from New York City to London, England. 

The whole Milton Friedman line about spending other people's money is perfectly appropriate here. Because money that government spends of behalf of its people or even at their expense, does not come from some Monopoly game.

Money that government spends for their people doesn't magically appear from thin-air or some genie wiggles their finger and it suddenly appears. Or they print counterfeit money, well I hope about the counterfeit part, because government does so many things in secret, who knows what they are doing. 

But we do know that we pay for whatever they're doing supposedly on our behalf through either taxes, fees or interest on the debt. Government services are as free as cable bills or smart phone bills. Meaning not at all and people who want a government that is big enough to manage our lives for us, need to acknowledge that, if they actually want to have the big government they talk about.