Damn!
Bill Maher spent about 20 minutes on my "I'd shake his hand" list after his interview with my future wife, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Apparently, he just couldn't stand not being an asshole. Turd!

To be fair, though, he did open my eyes to one thing. I didn't realize Dick Cheney was President.

"And I’m just saying if Maher did die, other people, more people would again watch HBO. And THAT'S a fact."

come on harvey get with it. The really issue is ann coulter calling edwards the f word. It's clearly more important to focus all our media attention on ann coulter calling names versus hoping and wishing people were dead. If someone called me the F word i would have to live with that for the rest of my life. Think of the mental trama that would cause, but if i was dead...well i would be dead and not really care anyway. So clearly we can see that the media should focus on Ann and not that F' bill maher

"I'm just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live, that's a fact."

They still wouldn't rent "DC Cab" and live...

"And I’m just saying if Maher did die..." well, anything resulting from that would be good, so why go into detail?

"And I’m just saying if Maher did die, other people, more people would again watch HBO. And THAT'S a fact."

More people watching HBO, don’t count on it! HBO is pretty much the entertainment septic tank. If no-one wants to see it at the theater and no-one will rent it and Wal-Mart can’t sell it in the $5 bin, than it’s time for the damn thing to go on HBO. I couldn’t name the last time I was entertained by HBO. Bill Maher is pretty much the big ol’ turd that won’t go through the plumbing no mater how many times you flush.

I just stumbled upon this site from a t-shirt site where this website appeared to more-or-less advocate racially/religiously-motivated genocide and saw this...

First of all, Bill Maher did not actually advocate for killing that Dick, Cheney. He often says some stupid things (whether in attempts at humor or misguided thinking, I don't know), but this was not one of those cases.

Secondly, the argument he was making, that if Dick was not the Vice President a lot of people would still be alive, is true. If Cheney was not dividing his time between writing our energy policy with Ken Lay, directing no-bid contracts to his war profiteering buddies at Halliburton, getting drunk and shooting old men in the face, and exerting more influence than anyone else in the Administration by appointing ideological allies to important positions and taking advantage of a President with little interest in silly things like reading and actually governing, the illegal war in Iraq would likely not have occurred. Or at the very least it would have been done very differently, and maybe diplomacy would not be a last resort. The bottom line is that the war in Iraq has killed hundreds of thousands of people (yes, despite what you people think, Iraqis are people, too), and without Dick Cheney, those people would likely still be alive. If at some point after being "elected" he suddenly stopped being Vice President, things would improve. For example, the peace deal proposed by Iran in 2004 might not have been blocked before any negotiations could have taken place and a political resolution in Iraq may have been more likely. Also, without Donald Rumsfeld and the Reagan Administration arming and supporting Saddam Hussein for all those years, his body count would be much lower, too.

And the comparison to Ann Coulter is ridiculous. She used a hateful slur at a convention attended by the leaders of the Conservative movement, including that Dick, Cheney himself and most of the Republican presidential hopefuls. Just minutes before that woman(?) made fun of Barack Obama's racial and ethnic background and used a term beloved by Klansmen, the Westboro Baptist Church, and stupid middle-schoolers to attack John Edwards, Mitt Romney had praised her. She has called Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Edwards, and even Bill Clinton gay (or the epithet version of the word) even though they're all married with children while she is childless and unmarried? And to get upset and hypocritically claim a right to privacy when questioned about her three broken engagements? Besides offensive, this is bizarre behavior indicative of an unstable person. Also, arguing that talking like a bigot and calling for assassinations are on a whole different level is a fair point, but considering that Bill Maher did not do that and that Ann Coulter herself has called for the murder and torture of many people (basically everyone one she doesn't like) on many occasions invalidates the argument. In fact, "bobthemad," you'd have to a complete moron, totally delusional, absolutely ignorant, or unbelievably dishonest, or some combination of these, to make such a stupid statement.

And HBO has some fine programming. Rome, Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, The Wire (from what I hear), Entourage, and various documentaries, these are some fine pieces of programming. They might not include mindless and inaccurate depictions of torture that seem to get you right-wingers off like certain Fox programs, but they're still pretty good. Ratings aren't terribly important to me (I'll take Olbermann over O'Reilly any day, or a principled politician over a successful one), although HBO does well for a pay channel. And for someone who gets their online name from the Matrix movies to claim any moral high ground on the artistic quality of any show or movie is pretty hypocritical...

So, in summation: 1) the premise for your criticism, that Bill Maher called for Dick Cheney to be killed, is false, 2) that there would be a lot less blood spilt if Dick Cheney was not in office is probably true, 3) the comparison to Ann Coulter is odd considering she used hate speech and Bill Maher just stated a reasonable assumption, and is absurd when you consider the fact that Coulter has called for killing on a massive scale, comparable to that of Hitler (invading Middle Eastern countries, killing their leaders, and forcefully converting them would be extremely bloody, as would blowing up the New York Times or executing the majority of Americans who oppose Bush and the Republicans as "traitors"), and 4) the criticism of HBO is nonsensical.

Finally, to preempt anyone who might point out that in criticizing someone like Coulter's disgusting vitriol some of my rhetoric might be described as "a little strong" as well, I remind you that context is important. Some blog written by a bunch or insecure, ignorant little bigots is very different than national television.

Thanks.

Okay Brendork, please take a breath and calm down.

I will give you a clue mantra to help you meditate and become enlightened.

Your mantra is: "Wasted Time it is to post dorky screed on humor/satire site"

Now go away, you may be right, but you are definitely boring.

I need to wake up before posting, the last line above should have read "...even if you were right, you would still be boring"

Iraqis are people too? Ever been there? I have. They're not.

Brendan, I don't have time to tackle everything in your post, so I'll start with your third paragraph--if you're around after work, I'll get to the rest:

"The bottom line is that the war in Iraq has killed hundreds of thousands of people (yes, despite what you people think, Iraqis are people, too), and without Dick Cheney, those people would likely still be alive."

1. No, hundreds of thousands have not died in Iraq. The average estimate (including everyday crime, not deaths from engagements) is 70,000. Does that suck? Yeah. While we're blaming Cheney for those deaths, though--what happened to the Dems who were berating us for starving a couple million people to death during the embargo?

Did you have a plan for stopping that besides ending the embargo and letting Saddam become powerful again? If you didn't, what leads you to believe that wouldn't have led to far more deaths (it sure as hell did in the past) and why is it you want to blame all of those 70,000 on Dick Cheney and not, say, the people placing bombs in street market?

This is the reason the guys on our side believe you and Bill Maher are naive. Implicit in this is that if we go away, so will the terrorists. If we had never been, neither would the terrorists--all those people who aren't starving to death, the people the Taliban isn't executing in soccer stadiums, the people who don't worry about being sprayed by cyanide gas in the night, screw them, the important thing is how can we use this to attack Bush and Cheney.

Saddam Hussein offered peace deals and broke his offered peace deals for a decade whenever we turned the heat up as a stalling measure and if you had been paying attention at all to international politics during that period you'd have known that. You've managed to demonstrate you think Bush has trouble reading, Cheney's been profiteering with Ken Lay (hey, wait didn't Enron go bankrupt 2 years before the Iraq war and isn't Ken Lay dead?), he's colluding with Halliburton, drinks alcohol, and accidentally shot a guy. Outside of the ad hominem attacks, do you have a coherent argument or is this what passes for it?

P.S. wtf are you doing surfing sites that advocate racially motivated genocide?

Brendan,
Frankly, Bill Maher has failed himself into HBO.
He could not handle Politically Incorrect" as a show, because he was too ignorant.
1. Political Correctness is a strict religion of Lefties.
2. The only way to be Politically Incorrect would be to advocate a Right (rather than Wrong/Left) Wing stance.
This was simply beyond his capabilities, and that is why he found himself on HBO. He had too little imagination, and no humor to back him up in prime time.

Addendum-I haven't bothered to read the rest yet after your performance in the third paragraph, so my taking the time to respond will be contingent on there being no good South Park/Dirty Jobs repeats on tonight.

[I have to keep my priorities straight and debating Iraq with a guy who's argument consists of "Bush can't read" isn't high on the list.]

Brendan, I think you should realize that people don't like reading long posts. That's been established in previous commenting threads, so I didn't just make this up.

Having said that, Maher is a jerk. Advocating the death of the Vice President is despicable.

Brevity, Brendan, Bre-vi-ty. Long, meandering posts from troll types? I want more of that!

If Brendan would have died yesterday, many words could have been saved.

"I’m just saying if Brendan did die, it would most likely be due to injuries caused by the horse he was trying to have sex with."

Brendan, you are preaching to the faithful.

Maher, good fella he is, didn't mean what he said,

and

Coulter, that righty mouthpiece, well she obviously MEANT what she DIDN'T say.

Nice defense of HBO. Too. (from what I hear)

Brendan sounds just like another uninformed regressive. Lies, substituting for facts, are still lies.
And I'll have to echo the comments about the absolutely INSANE notion of posting that much drivel in one post. Does it think we're going to read past the first indication of insanity?

Brendan... SSHHHHHH!! All that left wing drivel is making my head hurt. Bring a real argument to the table next time and we can see about detrolling the joint with your a s s!

Aww... I think Brendan is kinda adorable. He very obviously has a Room Temperature IQ, yet he is trying really hard to impress us with his "Knowledge".

I'm getting that same warm fuzzy feeling from this Libiot that I get when a niece or nephew draws me a crappy picture. He just wants to be like us. Unfortunately, the boy is operating with just a brain stem and Bone.

Personally, I'm impressed the little fella has even learned to type. Isn't the little faggot adorable?

Since Bill's such good friends with Satan, maybe he could take a bunch of liberal, left wing, Hollyweird types with him when he went. Maybe we'd get some decent, intelligent movies and comedians finally. Probably not.

Liberals never use one word when 100 will do...

So there.

Soilent Green is people. Terrorists and Bill Maher are not. Case closed.