After I watched the Presidential debate tonight (about which I do have a few things to say, but they’ll keep,) I flipped over to HBO to watch Real Time with Bill Maher.  I’m not much of fan of Maher, who purports to be a libertarian  but is actually just a third rate comic and an arrogant douche bag.  Sure, he smokes pot so he’s in favor of legalizing it but that’s about as far as it goes for him.

So I find him annoying but he does get some good guests who say stuff you won’t hear other places, so his show is worth a watch. Except of course when he has people like that horrible no-talent hack Janine Garofolo (who’s name is so unimportant to me I refuse to take the time to spell check it.)  Tonight he had Ralph Nader, some actor I’ve never heard of, and Lisa Schiffren on as guests.  First though, he did a quick interview with Chris Rock who’s new special is on HBO tomorrow night.  Plainly a cross-promotion.  Normally that annoys the hell out of me, but being as Chris Rock is hilarious I’ll allow it in this case.  I’ll also watch his special, and I’d advise you to as well.

Anyway, the interesting part of tonight’s Maher was seeing how fucking insane Ralph Nader appears to be.  Full disclosure: I’ve always hated Ralph Nader just for his part in killing the Corvair, not to mention every other dumb-ass, invasive, save-me-from-myself policy he’s espoused since.  But that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a raving lunatic; watch a replay of Maher if you don’t believe me.

Ralph Nader, pictured here in 1966 getting pumped up to do to Corvairs what he'd later do to Democrats in 2000.

On the other hand, Lisa Schiffren (who I wasn’t very familiar with) was really good.  While I’m not in agreement with her on everything, she’s smart, didn’t engage in misleading rhetoric, and appears to enjoy playing devil’s advocate.  I like that a lot.

One final thought that I refuse to make into a fourth post on the topic.  Sarah Palin, while having had a great moment at the RNC, appears to be almost as dopey as the media implied way back when.  The reason it popped into my head this evening is that after the debate, Biden went on all the news shows to spin for the Democrats.  NBC explained that while Palin was invited to do the same, the Republicans had elected to send shrunken-apple-face Rudy Giuliani instead.  This clip of Palin on CBS News might help explain why:

So it turns out that when my mother referred to Palin as a brainless beauty queen she wasn’t far off the mark.  Yes, mommy was engaging in a little extremist rhetoric of her own, but really – did you just watch that?  And you’ve got to assume she was prepped for that question.  Which was pitched underhand.  At like 3 miles per hour.

If any person reading this would be comfortable with that woman as President of the United States….well shit, I don’t even know what to say.  Did you watch the clip?  Say what you want about taking sections of an interview out of context, but….did you watch the fucking clip? I never thought I’d actually prefer Biden over anyone, but I think I’d even like that lifetime politician and monumentally gung-ho drug warrior to sit in the oval office over Palin.

At least we’d maintain a little street cred that way.

This is a post from: Bradford Schmidt's blog, Bone In The Fan.

Ralph Nader Is Insane, Palin Is Dopey