[Vision2020] (Corrected) New Rules from "Real Time" With Bill Maher (April 7, 2006)

[Tom Hansen]

New Rules from "Real Time" With Bill Maher (April 7, 2006)

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It's time for New Rules, everybody! 

Okay. New Rule: Instead of censuring President Bush or reprimanding Cynthia
McKinney, have McKinney and Laura Bush do that temporary wife-swap thing. If
TV has taught us anything, it's that there's nothing more entertaining than
a no-nonsense black woman dressing down an incompetent white man. When Bush
goes into his "We're fighting them over here" shtick, McKinney can do the
"Oh, no, you didn't!" Punctuated with the ever-colorful, "Neocon, please!" 

New Rule: No TV until you can hold up your own head. "Sesame Street" has
released a new line of videos for kids as young as six months old. Which is
a stupid business to get into considering what the competition is. [photo of
infant breast-feeding shown] 


New Rule: You can't go out and play until you finish your war. President
Bush kicked off another baseball season with a high, inside ceremonial first
pitch. Come to think of it, the president's pitching style is a lot like
what he's exhibited in Iraq: a lot of balls, with no real plan to get
anybody out. Bill appreciated that just on a comedic level. 

SAMMON: That was good. 

MAHER: Okay. New Rule: If you work at an office, you have to take a turn
cleaning the office microwave. I opened ours the other day, and a bat flew
out. The inside looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. The three settings
are now, "Cook," "Defrost" and "Hepatitis." And if you're not going to clean
the damn thing, at least take out whatever is growing in there so we can
harvest the stem cells. 

New Rule: No product placement in your tell-all confessionals. Soccer great
David Beckham told a newspaper he suffers from OCD, and is so obsessive he
counts Pepsi bottles. Pepsi, of course, being the soft drink that pays him
endorsement millions. I was so offended by this cheap commercialism, I
slammed down my delicious cup of Starbucks Morning Blend, hopped into my
Toyota Hybrid, and raced over to the Kodak Theater on Hollywood Boulevard
where I'll be performing, May 13th-just to clear my head. 

And finally, New Rule: Don't blame illegal immigrants for driving down
wages. Blame Congress. Republicans in Congress have to stop saying that the
problem with Mexicans coming over the border is they keep wages down. You
know what keeps wages down? The fact that Congress hasn't raised the minimum
wage since 1997. 1997, when my dealer still had a beeper! Car dealer, car
dealer, what did I say? 

Yes, news flash: Congress controls what the minimum wage is. Who did you
think it was, the valet parking team at Tony Roma's? And upping the minimum
wage would affect wages. It has to. The word "wage" is right in it. Even
George Bush could understand that. Maybe not. The point is, the elephant in
the room is that no one can live on minimum wage, and that we are making a
whole swath of our society - tens of millions of people - live like animals.
So that the luckier segment can live with indulgences their parents never
dreamed of. 

Do you know that most upper-middle-class people nowadays never clean their
own toilet or do their own laundry...until they go to rehab. 

AFFLECK: Sometimes not even then. 

MAHER: Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage is actually lower than it
was in 1968, the year George Bush graduated from Yale. And that is
unforgivable! And the wage thing is bad, too. 

People like to tell themselves that these immigrants do the jobs Americans
won't do. Not true. Americans will pick fruit in the hot sun. But not at
$5.15 an hour. Trust me. If some of these jobs paid real wages, your wife
would be having sex with a Jewish gardener. 

Americans want the contributions of the poor and the immigrant without
having to actually see or be among them. Which is why I suggest, instead of
building a wall on the border, we build a Wal-Mart. It would be 1,950 miles
long, or the size of a normal Wal-Mart. And there would still be just the
one register open. But it would solve this problem. 

Because if we built this Wal-Mart exactly on the border, the Americans could
come through the front door and shop, and the Mexicans could come through
the back door and work. And then go home the same way at night, unless they
got locked in. It is Wal-Mart. 

In summation, I am not saying that raising the minimum wage is going to
solve the illegal immigration problem. That can only be solved by arming Lou
Dobbs. But five bucks an hour in an America where the luckier ones spend
that on a coffee, is a cruel joke. And if you don't believe me, do what I
do. Listen to the voices of those poor souls who are making this paltry sum.
Of course, I have to. They're my staff.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

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"In America, anybody can become president.  
That's one of the risks you take . . ."

- Adlai Stevenson

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