Real Time With Bill Maher 8/9/19

[flamingdem]

Check out New Rules at the end. Maher has warmed to Joe Biden

[Hoyt]

1. Good show, tonight, except for ScarM at times. New Rules, main part, was great.

[flamingdem]

3. Agree. The Mooch is a nobody

I just wanted to hear more from Richard Engel.

Loved the 70s outfits!

[jcgoldie]

4. I wanted to hear more from Engel as well

Engel started talking about climate change and Maher cut him right off. Then he read a bunch of Middle East statistics and barely let Engel respond. By contrast he spent the bulk of the show laying cover for Scaramucci the way he did for Buck Sexton last week. I used to be a fan and my wife and I even bought tickets to see him do standup last year. Now I can barely stand him.

[flamingdem]

10. Yes, I'm tired of this schtick with the obnoxious rightwingers

Glad Engel got his message out about climate. It's no joke!

[misanthrope]

16. "Deep adaptation"

Google it

[flamingdem]

17. Thanks for that tip

[question everything]

14. Agree. But I think that Maher has hard time getting worthwhile Rs on is show

(whatever worthwhile means here) and the Mooch did not take a RW stand except that he still stands by his man.

[NCLefty]

5. Mooch was annoying. He either talked too low or his mic wasn't right.

Still, better than Coulter or Santorum. Maher seems to have a weird obsession with these "unlikables."

[applegrove]

2. Where did you get it. I saw that but missed the stsrt of the show for the first time in years.

I'm jonesing.

[misanthrope]

6. Maher's New Rules was OK until

he decided to issue moral relativism to advocates of American race-based slavery. He tried to illustrate as much by saying an abolitionist organization formed in 1775 had only 24 members in that first year and it was proof few cared.

This was poor and incomplete evidence. Where was said organization based? How many knew about it at that point? What was its membership like in the following 20 years?

He said if you were rich and white in 1780, you would have owned slaves. That's not a given either. The practice was falling from favor throughout Europe and America in that era. The Roman Catholic Church condemned it. The Somersett Case of 1772 established slavery as non-recognized under English common law. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777. In 1780, Pennsylvania followed suit as did other states in the northern half of the U. S.

To depict slavery as a non-issue in that era is more than a misnomer. It is false. It was such a hot topic that it brought the Continental Congress to an impasse in July of 1776 and vexed the Constitutional Convention of 1787. In fact, our second POTUS was an unabashed abolitionist who also wrote of his belief in women's suffrage. Progressive opinions on those human rights were completely accessible by the inhabitants of that era.

[flamingdem]

11. Thanks for the informative post!

Your post inspired me to look up the organization formed in '75 as well as the Vermont abolition of slavery.

New research about Vermont history has been written about here:

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/uvm-slavery-study-challenges-vermonts-abolitionist-rep/Content?oid=2296191


About the group mentioned by Maher:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-american-abolition-society-founded-in-philadelphia

The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American society dedicated to the cause of abolition, is founded in Philadelphia on this day in 1775. The society changes its name to the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1784.

Leading Quaker educator and abolitionist Anthony Benezet called the society together two years after he persuaded the Quakers to create the Negro School at Philadelphia. Benezet was born in France to a Huguenot (French Protestant) family that had fled to London in order to avoid persecution at the hands of French Catholics. The family eventually migrated to Philadelphia when Benezet was 17. There, he joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) and began a career as an educator. In 1750, Benezet began teaching slave children in his home after regular school hours, and in 1754, established the first girls’ school in America. With the help of fellow Quaker John Woolman, Benezet persuaded the Philadelphia Quaker Yearly Meeting to take an official stance against slavery in 1758.

Benezet’s argument for abolition found a trans-Atlantic audience with the publication of his tract Some Historical Account of Guinea, written in 1772. Benezet counted Benjamin Franklin and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, among his sympathetic correspondents. He died in 1784; his funeral was attended by 400 black Philadelphians. His society was renamed in that year, and in 1787, Benjamin Franklin lent his prestige to the organization, serving as its president.

[applegrove]

7. Yes. Good New Rules. "ESPCP" LOL!

[flamingdem]

12. Lol, that needs to be trending on Twitter

ESPCP — Extra Sensory Politically Correct Perception - also known as "Woke" if i have that right.

[smirkymonkey]

8. The Mooch was a joke with his pathetic "loyalty" to his "friend".

It was good to hear from Terry McAuliffe and would have liked to hear more from Richard Engel.

I thought Tom Nichols was on to something when he brought up the point of why our country in particular breeds so many angry, young, male losers who seek vengeance by mass murder. That, besides the easy availability of guns, there is something unique about the US that churns out so many bitter, resentful young men who choose to blow away innocent civilians as a solution to their problems. I think that might even be worth an OP on it's own.

Catherine Rampell was good as usual, I like how she went after the Mooch. Bill gave him way too much credibility.

[flamingdem]

13. Yep, the dysfunction of a certain kind of

white male. Wish he had elaborated, it's not mental illness we're dealing with and some of these guys don't even use guns, though that's part of the syndrome.

[SunSeeker]

9. Thank you! It's a lot easier to watch as 1 video. Yep, Maher likes Biden.

The Mooch likes Harris and Mayor Pete -- yikes, there's an endorsement they don't want. LOL

[question everything]

15. Interesting comment by Richard Engel about red baseball hats in Germany

Make Germany Angry Again...