I’m not sure why Bill Maher was focusing solely on the space program for the first 90 seconds, but the rest of his rant is great:
I love these quotes:
The problem with the tea party movement … is that they want money for nothing and chicks for free. They want a deregulated free market and their jobs to stay here in the US; they want guaranteed health coverage regardless of preexisting conditions without a big government mandate; they want to call themselves teabaggers and people to keep a straight face. And of course they want big tax cuts along with deficit reduction.
So teabaggers, if you’ll look into that, I will believe you really are “we the people”, “what about our grandchildren” patriots. But if you’re unwilling to cut defense and give up the empire, you don’t really care about the debt, and you have to admit you’re just a racist sore loser.
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Bill comes up with some good segments on his shows. I think he mentioned the space program to point out that spending money on it was a waste. So the theme was cutting waste from federal spending.
Yes, but there is at least some evidence that the space program provides valuable benefits (I like having satellites for weather prediction, studying global warming, and communications), while there are PLENTY of military programs that are a complete waste of money (tons of money earmarked to be spent on weapons that even the military says they don’t want or need — see http://www.cdi.org/adm/615/ and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/07/AR2009030702216.html).
I think it would have been a much more powerful rant if he had stuck to the military as an example, rather than making his case muddier by bringing in the space program. Besides, Obama was trimming the space program, but nobody seems to be able to even touch defense spending, even the parts that are a complete waste of money.
I agree. I think his focus on the space program is misinformed. NASA does way more than try to figure out how to get to Mars. And its budget is so small relative the rest of the federal budget, it is hardly worth mentioning if the larger goal of his rant is to argue that we need to do more to reduce the federal deficit.
Maher has his pet issues that he’ll go off on several times a season. Another is vegetarianism (he is one). But I do like his caustic sense of humor and how he tries so hard to goad uptight prude conservatives to just say one little bad word.
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