The Dream Team

The Professional Left have been Olbermannised.

I've sussed them.

I recognised their deliberate misinformation tactic ages ago, and now I've suddenly realised what cowards they are.

Yes, yes, yes ... I know that the Right lies, and lies blatantly, about President Obama's accomplishments. You have only to look at front runner and professional liar professional flip-flopper professional panderer former Massachusetts governor Willard Romney to see he lies, lies regularly and lies recently about the President to an audience so desperate to believe those lies, that they totally ignore the truth.

And let's not even reference Newt Gingrich. The fact that he's a serial adulterer is proof enough of his propensity for untruths.

But it's not just the Right who've made a habit of lying about this President, and they have a willing enough audience on the Left who'd rather believe a lie than a truth about Barack Obama, and, most likely, for the same reason.

In fact you can point to just about any celebrity talking head on the Left, and - if you could turn them into Pinocchio for an hour, they couldn't walk for tripping over their noses.

But I'm going to concentrate on one tonight - Bill Maher.

Since 2009, he's been saying that the President has done nothing and should be more like Bush; that he gives nothing for truly Progressive people; he's gone on record as saying that it would be a tragedy if we got to the end of four years of Democratic rule without implementing any Democratic policies. He's called the President wimpy and wussy, and likened him to the stereotype of an ineffectual and bumbling black man.

In early October of last year, he actually called the President a liar.

This is a man who proclaims himself a Progressive and counts a plethora of followers who hang onto this perceived wisdom and acumen as if he were almost the sort of religious icon he derides. If I had a dollar bill for every fanbabe and fanboy of Bill's who proclaimed that he and only he told "the truth," I wouldn't have to worry about working. I'd be rich for life.

The real truth is this man is dangerous. The even more real truth is that he's allowed to propagate his lies, and they go unchallenged.

Last week, on the first show of the tenth season, he was hell-bent on propagating the current poutrage lie of the moment regarding the NDAA, calling it "the Indefinite Detention Act." Unfortunately for Bill, Democratic National Committee Chairperson Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on his panel, and she set him straight about what exactly the act was, what exactly it didn't contain and then explained the President's signing statement - but, of course, Bill had to act as though the signing statement was so pithy a thing he'd never heard of it and that it meant nothing. You can watch the exchange here.

Bill seems to be striking out a bit with some of his panel guests. Last autumn, he got called out on his misogyny by Jane Harman; then he ran into Jennifer Granholme on the following week's panel.

Watch the first part of the panel below, when Bill and Seth MacFarlane think they're the too-cool-for-school kids in the class and make dilettantish presumptions about the President in front of a woman who's actually governed a state and knows a bit about politics and how the government operates. Bill resorts to the typically dumbass poutrage Firebagging stance that the President should just "stop caving" and he should have accomplished more. When Granholme nicely reminds everyone that the President simply didn't have the votes necessary to accomplish everything the way it should have been accomplished - ergo, compromise was needed. And, please ... spare me the lie that the President has done nothing for the poor (what "liberals want.") The fact that the two very white and very elitist men propping up either end of this panel wouldn't know a poor person if they ran into one is moot; the other oxymoron is that by effecting a compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years, the President achieved a gaggle of legislation that would benefit the poor, the working poor and the unemployed.

But Bill, who derides people who cannot think critically, seems devoid of that ability himself.

Watch:-



Please note how Bill and his bumchum MacFarlane totally ignore what Granholme, who knows a few things about the government and the Constitution and such, gets it: if you want a more liberal President, elect more liberal legislators ... because Congress legislates. Not the President.

I've no doubt Maher knows this. He cannot help but know it. Yet he willfully pushes the myth of the dictatorial President, who's not only a quasi-King, he has all the powers of a deity invested in his person, thus making him able to achieve the impossible.

Three times in the last three months, Bill Maher has been called out on his fallacies by guests on his panel - all of whom, I might add, have been women; and that's good, but Maher is an infamous misogynist, as are certain other well-known Progressives. It's worth remembering how he behaves when confronted with men who oppose his any of his self-conceived wisdom and opinions.

You can see what happens here, here and here.

Bill gets pissy. He snarks back like a smartass juvenile caught with his hand in the cookie jar. He resorts to making desperate jokes. He gets offended. You can almost smell the tears welling up behind his eyes. In short, he gets handed his ass by people who assume the role of adult in the room, and he's reduced to looking like a chastened little boy at the grown-ups' table.

But Bill is meticulous - or rather, he ensures that his team of lackeys are meticulous - in either booking guests who won't rock the boat precipitously or who adhere to specific requests from the production staff not to steer the vessel into dangerous waters. And that means not challenging Bill - although Bill seems to know well enough not to approach any subject on which he might be challenged by a particular guest.

So ... when Bill accuses the President of being weak and vacillating, isn't it really Bill who's the coward?

If Bill had the cojones he'd like everyone to believe he had, he'd agree to a couple of Dream Team panels.

First, I'd like to propose a panel discussing the President's achievements and how he's performed during the past four years, and I'd like the panel to consist of some very reasoned and seasoned pragmatists who appreciate exactly what the President has been trying to do and the obstacles with which he's been confronted. They'd be people who understand politics, whilst not necessarily being politicians, people who understand how our government is meant to function, and - most important - who aren't afraid to call out the lies and pejorative myths propagated from the Left against the President. Lies and myths Bill has even promoted on his own show.

So I would propose, for this purpose, a panel consisting of Andrew Sullivan, who recently wrote an article articulating why people like Bill are just so stupid in their constant criticism of the President, political fundit Hal Sparks, who's genuinely funny, but who also totally gets the President in a way Maher simply cannot, and George Clooney, who's disillusioned with people like Bill who sell disillusionment with the President by the pound. Then, for good measure, I'd book as the fourth guest, Rev Al Sharpton, who'd have a few things to say about Bill's constant reference to the President as "your boy Obama."

The following week, I'd like to see a panel address racism. Yes, yes, yes ... we know all about the racism and the race-baiting practiced by the Right. I want to see a panel who would address the subtle racism and dog whistling practiced by the Left.

On this panel, there'd be Tim Wise, who'd remind Bill Maher that he couldn't hope to call himself either a Progressive or a Liberal whilst he abhored Newt Gingrich's race-baiting, whilst turning a blind eye to Ron Paul's racist past (and present) as he praised Paul's foreign policy. There'd be Melissa Harris Perry, who'd expound upon her premise that white liberals (like Bill) are abandoning the President in a show of subtle racism; and there'd be Ta-Nehisi Coates, who would discuss how white, wealthy and entitled Progressives like Bill voted for the President because it was cool to vote for the black guy (or their idea of what a cool, black guy should be like), when such a reason was just an ignorant form of overt white privilege.

Then, I'd throw in Adam Serwer, who not only called Bill out on his cognitive dissonance regarding the President, but likened him to Rush Limbaugh in his latent racism.

Two panels such as those would give us the measure of the man; and whilst the first might mean that Bill's lackeys might have more than a bit of a cleaning job to do on Bill's unfortunate person, the second panel would surely see him crying under the table.

Who's the real wussy in the room? Not the President.