[Vision2020] New Rules from "Real Time" with Bill Maher (October 20, 2006)

[Tom Hansen]

Now it's time-you were very, very good to stay for us-New Rules! 

Just because you're drunk and it's October, it doesn't make it Octoberfest.
When you drink in November, it's not Novemberfest. It's just Thanksgiving
and you hate your relatives. Besides, we already know what happens when
people get drunk and start acting like Germans. [slide of Mel Gibson's mug
shot] Suddenly controversial. 

New Rule: You can't make me dress like PeeWee Herman. According to the New
York Times, this is the hottest look in men's fashion. From the waist up, it
says Wall Street; from the waist down, it says, "Hurricane Katrina." Let me
tell you something. This "exposed sock" look is never going to fly in
Hollywood, because that's where we keep our weed. 

New Rule: Banks must stop putting up Halloween decorations and open up
another teller window. You're a bank, not a college dorm room. Your service
charges are scary enough. And while we're at it, stop trying to make my
supermarket look like an old-fashioned farmstand. We get it. It's fall. And
so now the floor is now made of wood and the fruit is stacked in hay. 

And finally, New Rule, in two parts: A) You can't call yourself a think tank
if all your ideas are stupid. And B), if you're someone from one of the
think tanks that dreamed up the Iraq War, and who predicted that we'd be
greeted as liberators, and that we wouldn't need a lot of troops, and that
Iraqi oil would pay for the war, that the WMD's would be found, that the
looting wasn't problematic, and the mission was accomplished, that the
insurgency was in its last throes, that things would get better after the
people voted, after the government was formed, after we got Saddam, after we
got his kids, after we got Zarqawi, and that the whole bloody mess wouldn't
turn into a civil war...you have to stop making predictions! 

You know, there's a name for people who are always wrong about everything
all the time: husbands. You know, it's a shame what happened to think tanks.
They used to produce valuable, apolitical analysis. But partisanship crept
into many of them. And the Bush Administration doesn't just come up with
something as stupid as "If we leave now, they'll follow us home." No, they
have someone from a think tank say it first. It's a way to lend
respectability. The same reason a titty bar has food. I hear. 

The think tanks that incubated the Iraq war have lofty names like the
Heritage Foundation and the Project for a New American Century. Whatever.
They've been wrong so often, I'm surprised they're not my broker. Richard
Perle thought we could win Iraq with 40,000 troops. Paul Wolfowitz
predicted, in 2003, that within a year, the grateful people of Baghdad would
name some grand square in their fine city after President Bush. And he was
right when he said they'd be waving American flags. They were on fire. 

William Kristol pooh-poohed the fears that Sunnis and Shiites would be at
each others' throats, as "the stuff of pop psychology." Right. And having
your head chopped off is just a quick way to drop 11 pounds. Kristol, of
course, is revered by much of the right because he was Dan Quayle's chief of
staff, and was known as "Quayle's Brain." You know that. Which sounded
impressive until I remembered Dan Quayle didn't have a brain. 

And now, Mr. Kristol proposes immediate military action against Iran,
predicting the Iranians will thank us for it. Hey, you know what,
Nostrodamus? Why don't you sit this one out? 

We'll get by using the Magic Eight Ball for a while. Because you guys have
been so wrong about so much for so long, people are actually turning to the
Democrats. So, we can say Iraq was a noble experiment, if that helps you.
Our intention was good: to penetrate Iraq and bring it to a glorious,
euphoric climax. But it's clear now that's just not going to happen. And yet
we're still pounding away. 

Causing the whole area to become painfully inflamed. And in that situation,
the kindest thing you can do is...just pull out.

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This Friday at 8 pm (Time-Warner Cable, Channel 201), Bill Maher welcomes
guests actor/singer Harry Belafonte, blogger Andrew Sullivan and former
governor and EPA boss Christine Todd Whitman. Plus, via satellite, Rep.
Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN) and blogger Arianna Huffington.

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Vandalville, Idaho

"Madness does not always howl.  Sometimes, it is the quiet voice at the end
of the day saying, 'Hey, is there room in your head for one more?'"

- Author Unknown