[Vision2020] New Rules from "Real Time" wWith Bill Maher (March 24, 2006)

[Tom Hansen]

New Rules from "Real Time" wWith Bill Maher (March 24, 2006)

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Now, it's time for New Rules, everybody, New Rules!

All right, New Rule: Mixing meat and donut is not kosher. A minor league
baseball park has introduced the "Donut Burger." A cheeseburger with bacon
served between a Krispy Kreme donut. It's all part of the team's new
promotion: "Eat s*** and Die."

New Rule: If "Today Show" host Katie Couric gets to become anchor of the
"CBS Evening News," then Barney the Dinosaur gets to replace Mike Wallace on
"60 Minutes." This way, everybody wins. CBS News gets a perky blond, and "60
Minutes" gets somebody younger.

KINGSTON: Much-needed.

MAHER: Thank you. I'll be promoting my next book on "Good Morning America."

New Rule: Stop making me look at this picture. [photo of ad about hepatitis
and HIV featuring battered face] I don't even know what this ad wants me to
do. Donate money? Buy medicine? Consider Mickey Rourke for an Oscar? Leave
me alone. It's hard enough to read my magazines with those fungus monsters
that live on my toes.

New Rule: There's no such thing as a "gateway" candy. Legislators in Georgia
are seeking a ban on "pot-flavored" candy, calling it a "gateway" product to
other drugs. Okay, now you're high. And, kids, listen to Uncle Bill: if
you're smoking pot for the taste, you're doing it wrong.

And finally, New Rule: Nobody can use the phrase "our greatest problem"
anymore unless you're talking about global warming. President Bush has been
saying we're in a war on terror, and now I get it. He's not saying "terror,"
he's saying "terra" as in "terra firma," as in the Earth. George Bush is an
alien sent here to destroy the Earth! I know it sounds crazy, but it made
perfect sense when Tom Cruise explained it to me last week.

Now, last week on "60 Minutes," James Hansen, who is NASA's leading expert
on the science of climate delivered the world's most important message. He
said, "We have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of
carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in
ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice
sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope
around an ice sheet." Although I know a certain cowboy from Crawford who
might think you could.

And that cowboy and his corporate goons at the White House tried to censor
Mr. Hansen from delivering that message, claiming such warnings were
speculative. This from the crowd that rushed into a war based on an article
in the Weekly Standard. This - this from the guy who thinks Kyoto is that
Japanese emperor dude his dad threw up on.

Global warming is not speculative. It threatens us enough so that it should
be considered a national security issue. Failing to warn the citizens of a
looming weapon of mass destruction - and that's what global warming is - in
order to protect oil company profits, well, that fits, for me, the
definition of treason. And codified treason.

Please, wait a second. The guy in the White House who made the edits was
Phil Cooney, who had been an oil industry lobbyist before given this job as
head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. That's the office
that is supposed to be watching out for us. But that's where Phil busied
himself crossing stuff out in scientists' reports, because apparently in
Phil's mind, he hadn't switched jobs. He was just doing his old job - oil
industry lobbyist - from a different office. You know, in the "people's
house."

Republicans have succeeded in making the environment about some tie-dyed
dude from Seattle who lives in a solar-powered yurt and eats twigs. It's
not. This issue should be driven by something conservatives are much more
familiar with: utter selfishness. That's my motivation. I don't want to live
my golden years having to put on a hazmat suit just to go down and get the
mail. Those are my Viagra years. When I'll be thinking about having
children.

But I wouldn't know what to tell a kid about our world in 20 years. "Dad,
tell me about the birds and bees." "They're all gone. Now, eat your Soylent
Green." We are letting dying men kill our planet for cash, and they're
counting on us being too greedy or distracted, or just plain lazy, to stop
them.

So, on this day, the 17th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, let us
pause to consider how close we are to making ourselves fossils from the
fossil fuels we extract. In the next 20 years, almost a billion Chinese
people will be trading in their bicycles for the automobile. Folks, we
either get our s*** together on this quickly, or we're going to have to go
to Plan B: inventing a car that runs on Chinese people.

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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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