Episode #368 (Originally aired 10/16/15)

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

AKA Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Month series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Starts o'clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Thank you.

Ah, you're very kind.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you.

I know you're.

Look at that enthusiasm.

Get it out of your system.

Or keep it in your system or loan me your shit.

Thank you very much.

I love the love.

Every week it's love.

And I know why liberals are, of course, happy this week, because the Democratic debate, debate, we finally got to hear the adults speak.

Such a contrast to the Republican debates.

First of all, most of it was nonfiction.

And we got to see all five Democratic candidates.

And you see, Bernie and Hillary have stiff competition.

And when I say stiff competition, I mean three stiffs.

What?

Oh yes, Americans learned a lot from this debate, like Lincoln Chafee is not a car

and not a candidate either.

I mean

really this, you know what he's raised for this campaign so far?

30,000.

He's raised $30,000.

This is what cheerleaders raise with a car wash.

So the word is now after the debate he may drop out, which would be devastating to his supporter.

Now on the other end of the stage was Jim Webb, who spent most of his time bitching about not getting enough time.

There's a selling point.

Vote Webb, because nobody talks to me.

And then the candidates at one point were asked, who is the enemy?

you're most proudest of making and Jim Webb said it's the Viet Cong that threw a grenade at me but he's not around anymore,

you know, because I killed him.

And Jim, this is the kind of thing that gets applause at a Republican debate,

you're at a Democratic debate.

Then he said we should be actually more warlike to China than even Trump wants.

And if he got a chance, he'd kill that rat who stole his pizza.

So, luckily, Hillary and Bernie were all substance, and by that point in the evening, so was was I.

No, it's true.

They were great.

Hillary was on message, Bernie was on message.

I don't know what Jim Webb was on, but it was something.

And everyone is saying now that, you know, this revived Hillary's campaign.

Democrats, you know, hadn't seen her for a while, not talking about emails.

They were like, oh yeah, we like her.

In fact, Bill Clinton said he was this close to accepting her as a Facebook friend.

The only person who did not do well, because of the debate, they say, was Joe Biden, because he was thinking about getting in the race.

Still might, but people looked at that and they were like, well, we kind of got it covered.

If you want someone who says they were progressive, you have Hillary.

If you want an unabashed liberal, you have Bernie.

And if you want someone who will bite the pin off a grenade and throw it at a Chinaman, you have Jim Webb.

Oh, he was not the only one this week who was a little bit testy.

The next Republican debate is on CNBC, and they were talking about what the format would be, and they might get rid of the opening and closing statements.

Did not sit well with Rand Paul.

Rand Paul, polling at 2.7%,

said, This is a quote: He said, if they get rid of the opening and closing statements, CNBC can go fuck themselves.

Rand, I'm on HBO.

Do you blow your donors with that mouth?

But that CNBC was going to have this debate be three hours long.

And then Donald Trump said he wouldn't show up if it was three hours long.

He said, that's too long.

Who needs three hours?

I tell you how fantastic I am.

I call my opponents ugly and stupid.

We go home.

And

CNBC said, you're right, Don.

That's right.

They're all afraid of him.

Two hours it is.

And if you want to fire the candidates at the end of the debate, go ahead and do that.

Now, Donald Trump, this week, after the Democratic debate, he went on a tear.

He called my first guest a communist, which is ridiculous.

Went on a rant about how horrible socialism is.

But you know what?

Isn't Trump's hair socialism?

It's the richer hair covering the poorer hair for the good of the head.

All right.

We got a great show.

John Fury is here.

Katrina Vandenhuble and Johann Hari.

And a little I'll be speaking with

another presidential candidate, Lawrence Lessig.

But first up, now, I bet you all of you are mostly a liberal audience here, are either for Hillary or Bernie.

Who's for Hillary?

Who's for Bernie?

But if Bernie doesn't get the nomination, who will stay home and not vote for him?

I mean, not vote for Hillary.

Good, I'm glad.

Say, exactly.

We have two good candidates.

It's like on the airline.

Sometimes you don't get the fish, you have the chicken.

I'll eat the chicken if I have to so let me introduce a man who in my view is chicken fish and the kosher meal Bernie Sanders is over here

The last man your age to cause this kind of excitement, I gotta think, is Mick Jagger.

And also, you know, after the debate, Google reported that you were the most clicked on name.

More people were searching for you than Justin Bieber's penis.

It was...

So you must be gratified about all this going on.

My question to you, I guess, is the word socialist.

I want to get right to this because I want to help your campaign.

I want to see you get the nomination.

I want to see see you get the nomination.

We have to teach Americans what this is.

We do.

And I don't know if we're doing that yet.

I don't think most Americans realize they're already socialists.

In certain respects.

Okay.

Let's start off with what it is not what we want to change.

We want to deal with the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality in America.

Very few people think it is acceptable or moral that the top one-tenth of 1% owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%.

That we have seen a proliferate.

But see, Bernie, you always say that, and I think

even the Republicans are not for income inequality.

They hear that, but it doesn't compute that that's going to be solved by socialism.

Socialism is the programs they already like.

They like Social Security.

That's socialism.

But here's the thing.

They like Medicare.

They like the VA.

They like the military.

That's exactly right.

It's already a socialist country.

What we have to...

No, it's not a socialist country.

It's quasi.

Quasi.

There are some socialist programs.

But what we have got to do is remind fellow Americans that every other major country on earth guarantees health care to all people as a right,

and they do it more cost-effectively than we do.

We have got to inform the American people that we are the only major country on earth that doesn't guarantee paid family and medical leave.

We have got to

remind the American people that there's something a little bit crazy when in America we have more people in jail, disproportionately people of color, than any other major country on earth.

All right.

I don't know if we're still undemonizing this word socialism.

This is my big thing tonight, to get you to undemonize this word.

Because, you know, they do polls on who people would vote for.

Like, would people vote for a woman, a Jew, a black?

Those are in like the low 90s, like 92, 91% of the people.

Of course, the other 8%, I think we know who those people are.

You won't be getting their vote.

Then like 75% of Americans would now vote for a gay person.

That's a big change from 10 years ago.

60% would vote for a Muslim.

58% would vote for an atheist.

Socialist, 47.

It's at the very bottom of the web.

They hear socialists, they think herpes, Bernie.

We have to.

But then what we do is we have to

make the movement, if you like, to correlate what we're talking about.

Because on every one of the major issues I am talking about, the American people agree.

Do the American people agree that public colleges and universities should be tuition-free, as they are in many other countries?

Correct.

Do the American people believe that the largest corporations and the wealthiest people who today are doing phenomenally well while the middle class shrinks, do people believe they should be asked to pay more in taxes?

The American people say yes.

Okay.

But

now this has been studied.

The amount of tax revenue that we would get just from taxing the people who, I think your fans think you're talking about, the people who own a yacht, does not come close to covering what you want to pay for.

Not true.

Not true.

Come on.

You're saying by only taxing the top nine.

No, what I'm saying is there have been articles out there that have been really unfair and wrong.

For example, what they are suggesting if we move toward a Medicare for all single-payer program, which guarantees health care to all people, it would cost a lot of money.

That's true.

But what they forget to tell you is it would be much more cost-effective than the dysfunctional system we have right now, which is the most expensive per capita on earth.

But it couldn't even work in your home state of Vermont.

They were going to institute it, and the governor said, it's going to cost too much money.

We just can't do it.

It would be the entire budget.

No, well,

that's true.

Well, that's not, I'm not the governor of the state of Vermont.

I'm the senator from the state of Vermont.

But he looked at the money.

Then the question is, Bill, you tell me.

Why is it that every other major country on Earth is the same?

I will tell you why.

Because they control both ends ends of it.

If you're saying that the government is going to pick up the tab, but not make the insurance companies, the hospitals, and the doctors not gouge people,

then we are going to break the budget.

It has to work both ways.

Exactly.

But here's an example.

Here's an example.

So you're going to make the hospitals do that?

The United States is the only major country on earth that allows private insurance companies to make huge profits in the health care system.

The function of health care should be to provide quality care to all people, not to make huge profits of the drug companies and insurance companies.

So

here is my point.

Here is my point.

We are spending more per capita on health care than any other major country on earth.

Our health care outcomes are not particularly good,

and I believe that health care should be a right of all people.

Okay, but you want to increase Social Security.

Yes, and you know how we do that?

We pay for it.

We say that somebody who's making $10 million should not end up paying the same amount as somebody making $118,000.

Lift the cap.

We can extend and expand Social Security.

Okay.

You also want free college.

That's right.

Well, stop on.

We do, not free college.

Public college,

pre-tuition and public colleges and universities.

You know how we pay for that?

Through a tax on Wall Street speculation.

Okay.

Child care.

Yep.

Child care.

Yes.

And single payer.

Now, single payer is more cost-effective than what we have right now.

In terms of child care, in terms of rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and creating millions of decent paying jobs, we do do away with these huge tax loopholes that corporations and the wealthy.

So you're saying we can pay for all this without raising taxes on anybody but the 1 percent.

It may have to go down a little bit lower than that, but not much lower.

But that's okay.

And what people have to understand is right now people can't afford to send their kids to college, and people are graduating school deeply in debt.

Do I think we should join Germany and many other countries and, you know, encourage young people to get the education they need, making our country stronger?

I sure do.

Okay.

I sure do.

So, look, when you first started coming here,

people thought your campaign was a fantasy.

Now it's not.

Now you could be the candidate.

I made a list of states.

Now,

what?

Yay, I made a list of states.

There are like some that even a socialist could win, somebody who's a quasi-socialist like yourself, most of New England, California, New York, Washington, D.C.

Then there's, I made a list of 23.

I call them the Crow states because it's where Crows live.

There's not a lot of North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, Arizona.

I mean, no Democrat.

You, Hillary, nobody's good.

Here's what we have to do.

I get in my own state of Vermont, which is a very rural state, we get about 25% of the the Republican votes, you got a lot of working-class Republicans who are not happy with the trade policy which shuts down plants in America and moves to China.

They are not happy with a situation in which they cannot afford to send their kids to college.

I think if we can bring them into the movement which says now is the time to stand up to the billionaire class and create a government that works for all of us, I think we can get a lot of those Republicans.

You can get Republicans.

Yeah, I do.

Even in states that were toss-up states that Obama barely won, you think...

Bill, this is what we, right now, I don't mean to, you know, be boasting here.

Well, maybe a little bit, but.

You deserve it.

All right.

We, up till now, have received 650,000 individual contributions.

I don't have a super PAC, okay?

The only thing I've got.

I know.

Okay.

We have received more.

The funding is great because I want to give you money and now I can only give you 5,400.

I'm so off the hook this year.

So 650,000 people have come to Bernie Sanders.com.

That's an advertisement.

Okay.

Which is more than any candidate up to this point in American history.

But my worry is that we are...

We are preaching among the converted.

I mean, I see you get these giant rallies of 30,000 people.

But can you get them in Alabama?

Can you get them in Utah?

Can you get them in Idaho?

I mean, and what about the swing states?

Can you get them?

Well, two things.

Democrats win, and we are going to win when the voter turnout is high.

Republicans win when the voter turnout is low.

I think we are generating a lot of excitement among working-class people and young people who often turn their backs on the political process.

We bring them in.

We create the excitement.

Yeah, I do believe we can win.

All right.

You have my support.

Best of luck.

I'll send you a check.

Bernie Sanders, everybody.

But remember,

eat the chicken if you can't get the fish.

Okay.

All right.

He is the author of the New York Times bestseller on the failure of the drug war, Chasing the Scream.

Johan Hari is back with us.

Hi, Johan.

Good day.

She is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, now celebrating 150 years in print.

Katrina van den Hoovel.

Hey, great to see you back here.

And returning to the Lions again, a columnist for the Hill and chief blogger for thefurytheory.com.

John Fury.

John, how are you doing?

Hi, bro.

All right, remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and send us your questions for tonight's overtime so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Obviously, I want to start talking about the Democratic debate, 15 million people, about five times what they predicted, which is an interesting story in itself.

But

what amazed me, I mentioned it in the monologue, was I didn't realize such buffoons on the Democratic side.

Real idiots.

I mean, the two guys on the end, I was ashamed to be a Democrat.

Really, they just were awful.

But the difference is, in the Democratic Party, they're on the end.

They're marginalized.

They're the crazy neighbor who pops in for a line or two.

They're not the lead like in the Republican sitcom.

So

let's just take a measure of it.

They were on the ends.

They were marginalized.

Right.

Ideas weren't marginalized in this debate.

Ideas weren't marginalized.

You heard Bernie Sanders' ideas, which have been marginalized by too much of the media for too long.

This was a debate about ideas, not insults.

And it wasn't like the Star Wars.

The Republican debates remind me of the Star Wars debates.

Listen, we have a lot of good candidates in the Republic.

No, they do.

It's a grotesque debate.

I'm the Republican Republican in this crowd, right?

The only one.

And we appreciate you coming here.

So they have 10 or 11 Republicans, and they all got the sound bites that they got to get in because they don't have much time.

There's plenty of good candidates in the Republican field, but they've got to winnow it out.

And they will winnow it out.

And it's part of the process.

Listen,

but they really aren't.

This is the strongest field we've had.

Even your supposedly sane candidates like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio want to repeal all the financial regulation that's been introduced since 2008.

That will lead to one thing.

We will have another crash.

It will devastate people across the United States and the world.

That sucks.

But

the Republican debate was out of touch with this country, I think, in fundamental ways.

Let's take a moment to take a measure of the Democratic debate.

Bill, you said there were buffoons, but what you saw in that debate, we talk about winning.

Who won?

I don't like that, because it's not a spectator blood sport.

But it was progressive ideas winning.

And it was movements.

Movements are time driving these ideas.

The crucial thing is that activism works.

If you think about the subjects we're talking about, Keystone XL, Black Lives Matter, gay marriage, we're always told we're powerless, nothing's ever going to change, there's nothing we can do.

Those subjects would not be on the table if ordinary American citizens banded together and forced them there.

You are

clearly overstating it.

No, I don't think so.

You are much more powerful than they know.

This is a movement moment.

This is a populist moment.

I wish that were true.

Let me say something.

What's your evidence for you?

Can Can I just say that Bill said in the opening with Bernie Sanders there, 47% of the American people said they'd vote for a socialist.

They're not going to vote for Bernie Sanders if he gets a nomination.

The American people will not vote.

How do you know?

They might

be able to

start educating them.

Thank you.

Again,

I'm glad you brought that up.

Are you against Social Security?

Because that's a socialist program.

You guys hate socialism, but you are not.

If you so hate socialism, why don't you campaign on repealing Social Security,

Medicare, the VA, and cutting back on the Pentagon, which is the biggest socialist organization

in the government.

Bill, I don't want you to.

Let him in.

I don't want you to do it.

Social Security, Rand Paul has a great line in this.

Social Security is actually not socialism, it's actually a Ponzi scheme.

And the fact of the matter is, it's a very popular program.

It's a very popular program.

It's an anti-poverty program.

And we're going broke because of it.

The country's going broke because of that and Medicare.

No, we're not.

But we have a $17 trillion debt.

Yes, but $17 trillion.

It's not because of Social Security, which is the most effective anti-poverty program, and it's helpful to go to the program.

And still solving it.

And we're not going to get rid of it.

We're not going to get rid of the Social Security.

It's not going to pay.

That being said, I do think that we need to have a

private accounts to get...

People get a 1% return on their own.

Hold on, private account on Wall Street?

But wait.

Well, look at the...

The most popular programs are socialist programs.

How can you square this circle?

You hate socialism, but the programs people love, including your voters, are socialist.

But Bill,

there's a complexity to this.

Excuse me,

it's very tempting to be other Republican and fun, but I think there's a complexity to this that we need to look at this a bit deeper.

Think about where the debate happened.

It happened in Las Vegas, right?

I spent some time in Vegas.

If you go to the suburbs around Vegas, it's the absolute ground zero of the home foreclosure crisis.

70% of people with mortgages are underwater.

So many people are homeless.

There's a significant number of people living in the drainage tunnels beneath Las Vegas.

I went down there with a guy called Matt O'Brien, who runs a charity.

Underneath the wind, where they had that debate, there are people living in those tunnels.

And it's very easy to talk about how the Republicans are terrible and they are and talk about why this happened.

And Reagan and Bush is

like,

sorry, but if we want to understand why those people in Vegas are in that position, actually, the legacy of the Clinton years is the single biggest factor.

It was Bill Clinton who did welfare reform, abolished the safety network

in those tunnels.

Deregulated

trade deals.

But let me

say that.

It's painful to say I'd rather.

Are you blaming Hillary for that?

No.

And I'm Bill.

Is it clearly a continuation of Bill Clinton?

No, no, wait a minute, wait a minute.

But then does she get credit for the 22 million jobs he created?

Because I only hear her every day.

No, but Bill, could I just say, when we talk about dynastic politics, that's the Bush family.

That's the Paul, Rand Paul family.

The Clintons are a political marriage.

They're not a dynasty.

She's earned the right to be in this race.

And I think,

but I think to say she's responsible for her husband's policies is unfair.

But may I just say what you did with Bernie?

I think is so important.

Love Bernie.

But he's always going to Denmark.

I love Denmark.

But this country has a great history of socialist tradition.

I mean, as you said, Social Security, public utilities.

And Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Let me...

No, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1944 delivered a speech on the floor of the Congress called the Economic Bill of Rights.

A right to health care, a right to housing, a right to

a job.

And he would have been driven off that house, but no longer, because we have more rising populations.

We have more poverty than any other force in history.

What has?

And the free market system.

Which kind of free market?

Our free market system.

That's why we're a quasi-socialist country like every other modern country.

I would say it is.

Because you need both.

We're not saying we're not capitalists.

We're just saying.

Well, that's what they are saying.

That's what Bernie is saying.

He wants to get rid of the capitalist system.

He does not want to get...

He's a socialist.

First of all, he's a democratic socialist.

He's a democratic socialist.

He wants to tax you by about 80%, takes you.

Never said that.

But you know what's interesting?

Millions of people are looking beyond the label.

Millions of people are meeting Bernie Sanders for the first time.

And a younger generation didn't grow up with socialism.

It grew up with capitalism.

And by the way,

he was someone who taxed people at 80% of the time.

And the interstate highway system under Eisenhower, a little bit of socialism, isn't there.

But it's important to look at the structural things that are going on beneath this debate.

It's tempting to get into the shadow play between Hillary and Bernie.

But we want to understand the real difference.

Hillary Clinton's campaign, it's very tempting to go into the rah-rah.

Hillary's great.

Hillary Clinton's campaigns have been funded by Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley.

The reason you know

it was Bill Clinton who created the shadow banking system that caused the crash.

The reason you know Bernie's different is not because his personality is better, although I think it is, it's that he's structurally different.

He's not

a bad person.

I couldn't agree more.

If you guys could nominate Bernie, I'd be all for it.

Believe me.

I couldn't agree more, but

the chances that he will win those swing states I was about to introduce

are not as good as Hillary winning those states.

That's just a fact.

I agree.

I mean, in places like Pennsylvania, which James Carville once described as Alabama with Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on the edge,

there's a lot of rednecks in the world.

No matter how much we explain socialism, there's not going to be a problem.

Look at what Bernard holds.

Hold on.

Look what happened in this debate.

All the NetRoose guys all said that Bernie won it.

And then what happened to New Hampshire?

Hillary just...

is now beating Hillary.

Hillary is now beating Bernie in New Hampshire.

Because people who have rational understand that Bernie Sanders is not someone who's going to be a good presidential candidate.

How do you know?

Are you speaking for voters?

Voters haven't even voted yet, and with all due respect to Bill Maher, let's see what plays out.

You may be right, and I would say that's what I'm doing.

John, you thought a good presidential candidate would be George W.

Bush.

I'm not sure we should be talking about it.

I am a Bernie supporter, but I'm just saying, don't be babies, liberals.

If you can't get the fish, eat the chicken.

All right, let me ask him.

Let me ask about Joe Biden.

They say, I don't know, I heard on Tuesday night he now had a good debate, finished him.

Now today I hear, no, he's thinking about getting back in it.

This idea that he is going to run for president because his dying son, it's a tragedy, we feel bad for him, said, Dad, I want you to do it.

And then, let's be honest, it was Joe who leaked that.

I know.

That just seems very unseemly to pick up your son's death

and gin up your presidential candidate.

Joe Biden's defense, and I think he might get in because I think he looked at the rest of the field and said, well, if it's me versus Bernie and Hillary, I might have a chance of winning.

I do think that he has.

Listen, here's the fancy.

Maureen Darwin's a friend of his.

I don't think he leaked it.

I think he had a conversation.

I got out.

So I don't think it was.

I don't think it was never.

She's a reporter.

She's not a friend of his.

I think that we have to be careful.

Maureen, are you still working for the New York Times?

It doesn't matter.

You know what?

I've got a

You know

what's even more unseemly is that Joe Biden within the Democratic Party is the major architect of the war on drugs.

There are huge numbers of people in prison in this country because Joe Biden championed really brutal policies.

And Hillary's bad on it.

Appalling, atrocious.

So that was an issue.

And Bernie was great on it all along.

He was very good on it.

And that's the issue that's important to me.

I know it's important to you and you have to write.

You still will eat the chicken.

But you know what?

I learned my lesson with Ralph Nick.

But I asked John when we sat down.

I asked John when we sat down, can you agree with Bernie on anything?

What interests me is we are at a critical turning point in this country.

There is a transpartisan alliance to reform a failed war on drugs and a criminal justice system.

I think there's a transpartisan moment to reform this crazy out-of-control NSA surveillance system.

Got a Tea Party on John Conyers.

Bernie Sanders said something quite radical on the debate.

He was, you know, on Snowden.

He said he helped educate us, but he said, let's abolish that NSA mass surveillance program.

That is a reality.

I have something really false about it.

Hillary said, and I agree that if it's a Tristram Republican Hillary, she's marginally better.

But Hillary said a really false thing.

She said that Edward Snowden could have gone through the whistleblowing chain.

The whistleblower act does not cover the security agencies.

That's not true.

Ebbos Snowden should be welcomed back as a hero the way Bernie said.

Okay.

I have to, we're up there.

Now, speaking of Bernie Sanders, he is the one that makes their heads explode when he talks.

And to proof of that, I want to show you Donald Trump, I mentioned this in the monologue, talking about Bernie the next day.

Because this maniac that was standing on her right is giving everything away, so she's following.

That's what's happening.

This socialist slash communist, he's going to tax you people at 90%.

He's going to take everything.

I said 80%.

Okay, so this is my point.

That what happens is Bernie says something, they hear something completely different.

Completely different.

So, what we did is we put up together a little video package for you.

These are, you'll hear what Bernie actually said, and then you will hear what the Republicans heard.

For example, on the use of force, Bernie said.

I supported President Clinton's effort to deal with ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

And the Republicans heard, I will refocus our military on gardening and interpretive dance.

We must aspire to the fighting style of the Iraqi army.

Tear off your uniforms and run.

On American exceptionalism, Bernie said, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden, and Norway.

and learn from what they have accomplished.

And they heard,

I will not rest rest until every single American is driving a faggy little car with three tires.

You will want soccer and you will like it.

Still then.

This is what Bernie actually said on guns.

Let's begin, Anderson, by understanding.

The Bernie Sanders has a D-min voting reticle from the NRA.

And this is what they heard.

Let's begin, Anderson, by understanding that rifles are for men with small penises.

Every single gun in this country should be confiscated and melted down to make Tony Awards.

They're not hearing it.

They're just not hearing it.

On the military, Bernie said.

When I was a young man, I strongly opposed.

the war in Vietnam.

And this is what the Republicans heard.

I would have have loved to fight in Vietnam, but for the other side.

Not only do I hate our troops, but sometimes I lock John McCain in his office through a Vietnamese accent and laugh.

And finally, on the war on drugs, Bernie said, I think we have to think through this war on drugs, which has done an enormous amount of damage.

And the Republicans heard.

I majored in Sharia law at the University of Havana.

And I know this.

It is a moral catastrophe that we are the only major country in the world that doesn't sell marijuana to children.

Black lives not only matter, they are all that matters.

Die, Whitey, die.

All right.

That's for you, Lawrence.

He is the Harvard professor who is now running for the Democratic nomination.

Lawrence, what's in?

Hey, Lawrence.

How you doing, sir?

You know, everybody here are.

Okay.

All right.

So Lawrence, you're running for president.

You were not on the stage, so we thought we would give you the platform.

I'm so grateful for that.

No problem.

And you're a Harvard professor, and you are a one-issue candidate, which is getting the money out of politics.

I think I agree with it.

Probably most of our audience does it.

My question is...

Isn't that we already have a guy like that in the race who's doing well, the guy who was just sitting over there?

Isn't Bernie Sanders pretty good on that issue?

Look, I mean, what just happened here in your interview with Bernie Sanders, whom I've loved forever and still continue to love, is you asked the wrong question.

Sorry.

So here's the

frame.

Here's the frame.

Can we afford what Bernie is talking about?

And the answer to that question is, of course, we can afford what Bernie is talking about.

What Bernie is talking about is absolutely the things we need to do.

But here's the problem.

I did ask that question.

No, no, no.

You did ask that question.

It's the wrong question.

Here's the question to ask.

That was the wrong question.

Here's the wrong question.

Here's the question to ask.

There's an institution, like I teach constitutional law, right?

There's this institution.

It's called Congress.

And the question is, is it plausible that that Congress, that corrupted, crippled institution that is bending over backwards to raise money, spending 30 to 70 percent of its time raising money to get back to Congress or to get the party back into power, is that institution capable?

of ever enacting any of these changes that they're talking about.

Because my point, the whole reason I wanted to be on that debate stage, was to say, you guys are talking about what we're going to do when we get to Atlantic City should we go to the beach should we go to the boardwalk the guy who works on Wall Street should we go to the casino that's the whole frame of your conversation but the car has four flat tires and somebody stole the battery until we find a way

until we find a way to actually fix this broken democracy, we can't get these things done.

So that's kind of...

No, no, that's the fundamental issue.

Why is democracy one issue?

This is...

Remember, you said that.

You said you're running on this one issue, and that when you got elected and fixed it, you would quit.

Yeah, that's stupid.

That was totally stupid.

Yeah, so look, so.

Now you're the stupid one.

No, no, no, I'm not.

I've been stupid.

When I ask a stupid question, nobody gets hurt.

It's totally stupid.

Okay, so yeah, so we, so that was the pledge I made.

What's weird about politics?

Here's the point.

So wait, you were starting your campaign with the slogan, I was stupid.

No, no, that.

I wish I was starting.

It's midway through, right?

So here's the point.

What's weird about politics is that you come in and you say, I don't want all the power.

You're a little bit humble about what you want.

They're like, what's wrong with you?

You're a crazy man.

You don't want all the power in the world.

You just want to do one thing.

They don't trust you.

And I didn't quite get that.

That was my stupidity.

And every time I get on a show, I'd got four minutes to talk about something, the whole focus would be, geez, you're going to resign, you're going to resign.

And I'd be like, no, what I want to do is pass the most important democracy legislation that we've seen in 50 years.

That's what I want want to do.

So people are obsessed with that.

So here's the thing.

Democratic Party said, we can't take you seriously because you're going to resign.

So here's the thing.

Like my daughter would say, fine, you win.

I withdraw that promise.

I'm not going to resign.

I'm running for president.

I'm running for president with the commitment that we're going to pass the legislation that gets us a democracy back.

And then once we pass that legislation, then there's all the issues, the wonderful things that Bernie is talking about.

Everybody on that stage, well, three, two, maybe on that stage in that Democratic baby, we're talking about we would have a chance to get that done if we actually had a representative democracy again, and that's what I'm fighting for.

But it must.

I mean, I think they are too, but yeah, I mean, but it must feel bad that the Democrats decided that you were sillier than Jim Webb and Lawrence Chafee.

Anyway,

okay, so let me ask you about this.

You want to have a Constitutional Convention, which I think is a great idea.

Thomas Jefferson said, let us provide in our Constitution for its revision, doing this every 19 or 20 years, should be provided in the Constitution so that may be handed on with periodic repairs as opposed to what it's become, this document that was handed directly from Jesus into the hands

of James Madison.

And I could think right off the top of my head that we could get rid of the Electoral College.

I'd like to get rid of the Second Amendment.

I'd like to get rid of gerrymandering.

I'd like to get rid of corporate personhood.

I'd like to get rid of money in politics.

We desperately need a rewrite of the Constitution.

You agree?

But let's be really careful.

People get terrified when you use the word Constitutional Convention, because technically a Constitutional Convention can do whatever the hell it wants.

And that's not what we're talking about.

The Constitution gives us the ability to have a convention for one purpose, to propose amendments.

And I agree with you, we have a whole bunch of things we should be thinking about how to fix.

And my core fix would be to get us a democracy back.

But those changes still have to be ratified by 38 states, which means one House in 13 states could block any reform.

So what that means is people should not be terrified that this event would produce constitutional change that either should scare the right or scare the left.

The only thing that could come through would be something that has strong bipartisan support.

And the things that have strong bipartisan support, I think, are the most important, like changing this corrupt system for funding elections, this gerrymandered way in which we elect the House that produces this radically polarized house that cannot even function right now because it is so amplified the polarization of elections.

Let me ask you one question and let me turn it to the panel too about your issue about money in politics.

I was reading about Marco Rubio.

His campaign has been largely funded by this conservative solutions project.

Apparently their solution is hiding their donors.

They've spent over $8 million advertising for Marco Rubio.

We have no idea who the donors are.

They could be Miami drug dealers, they could be ISIS, they could be Bill Cosby.

It's what they're doing.

We do not know.

And the Democrats have brought up many times something called the Disclose Act that would make you disclose it.

Republicans keep voting this down.

Isn't this a much bigger scandal than Hillary's emails?

Yes.

I think it is.

And

when did this, when did,

when did disclosure become a partisan issue?

When did voting rights become a partisan issue?

When did money and politics 158 families

are funding, have funded half of the campaign so far.

That is a plutocracy.

That is not a democracy.

So I'm all for Larry's ideas, and he should have been in the debates and should be.

But there are movements in this country, Larry, who are pushing and driving much of what you're talking about.

Of course.

I mean, and so I think it's a little bit elite to say, let's get some men, maybe maybe a few women in a constitutional convention exchange to run for president.

I mean he is a man.

That's not his fault.

No, but I'm super.

People should read his excellent book Republic Lost, which is all about it.

But I think we know one of the major backers of Marco Rubio is Sheldon Adelson.

And I think that's a really important metaphor.

Sheldon Adelson is rich because of gambling.

Not yet.

Yeah, no, we know that Marco Rubio has been sucking up to him massively and begging, and there's strong suspicion that he's part of this super PAC, although we don't know for sure.

But I think that's really important.

It's symbolically important, right?

Gambling produces nothing productive.

It's like so much of Wall Street.

It's just speculation.

It's just playing with money.

And those people have hijacked the entire political system.

And what Lawrence is saying has implications not just for the U.S.

but for the whole world.

We can't deal with global warming if we don't deal with getting these fossil fuel companies.

You can't deal with the inequality of power.

However, you know, the idea of public financing, which can make people's eyes glaze over, what it does is allow, there's a woman who was working in a convenience store in Maine.

She's now a state senator.

It allows ordinary people to run.

It empowers voices

and others.

They want to make an observation.

And that's what's happening.

Basically, the one leading the polls on the Republican side is Donald Trump, who has not raised any money from anybody.

And he's done an awful lot of shit.

He's in the paper today.

The corporate scientists

have a huge amount of public money.

That's where his wife comes from.

He's a liar.

He says, I'm financing it myself.

He's put in two million.

People have put in four.

Well, he has brought attention to the corruption

of hedge funds.

Does that raise as much money as everybody else?

What did he say?

What do you think?

He did.

He was a Republican debate.

And he said, I own every one of you.

And that was helpful.

And this is extremely important.

What's your point?

I think my point is that you can get to the top of the polls.

And the guys with the two biggest super PACs, Scott Walker and Rick Perry, dropped out because they couldn't raise it.

I mean, it's not about super PACs.

No, I think Jeb Bush.

What is the point here?

Jeff Bush.

The point is, I'm going on to a new topic.

No, no, no.

I want to go.

Please, just go ahead and do that.

Please, Lawrence.

Go ahead.

Let's do this.

This is why he didn't give it to the words.

He didn't give a word.

This is why he didn't give a rights.

He didn't give a word.

Because doesn't stop talking.

Like you.

You weren't in the debate either.

Here's your word.

I'm not a son.

Exactly right, Katrina.

Public finance.

Financing.

This is the one thing we could do tomorrow that would actually radically change.

And that is the one word that was not mentioned once in that Democratic debate.

No, no, no.

No, no, 11 years don't pay for it.

Eleven times.

All right, so let's go.

I always say this show is to educate the people who don't have the time to follow the news every week about what happened.

There was a lot of foreign affairs this week in the quagmire that never ends.

Troops in Afghanistan will be staying.

I mean, gosh, we have almost 10,000 there now.

Obama said it was going to be down to 1,000 by the end of the year, but apparently, Afghanistan, we just can't quit you.

The headline today in the LA Times was, Obama gives up on gold to end the wars he inherited.

Made me so sad.

And then the Republicans are using the wars as a kind of a campaign prop, which is so, so dangerous.

Here's Chris Christie on how he would handle Syria.

He says, no fly zone in Syria right away.

My first phone call would be to Vladimir.

And I'd say, listen, we're enforcing this no-fly zone.

I mean, we're enforcing it against anyone.

So don't try me.

Don't try me because I'll do it.

I can feel my dick getting harder right now.

And

this is also a kind of an important issue, to say to the voters, you know what?

Do you want more of this or less of this?

Because we've had had 50 years.

Do you know what strength is?

Strength is not Rambo.

Strength is not these bully boys like McCain and Christie.

Strength is about diplomacy.

It's about political solutions.

And, you know, we're on the verge.

It's a Cuban missile crisis time.

We are in a proxy war.

And if you shoot down a Russian plane because you want to do a no-fly zone, you're not resolving the refugee crisis.

You're not resolving the Syrian crisis.

It's even worse than that.

It's even worse than that.

If you look at why there is this catastrophe going on in Syria, they had an an unprecedented drought leading up to 2011.

The water dried up.

If you don't have water, people will do terrible things to each other to get it, right?

The same thing happened in Darfur.

Global warming is precipitating terrible conflicts.

If we really want to deal with these problems, we've got to start getting serious about global warming, and that will require exactly the campaign financial problem we're talking about.

And that was something so interesting about watching the Democratic debate versus the Republican debate is like

in the Democratic debate, guns and climate change are issues.

In the Republican debate, we can't even agree on what the appropriate question is.

We can't even agree on

what are the issues.

In their world, it's immigration.

But there's a fluid.

Which is not even an issue.

I think the Republicans would have been happy to have a lot of good debates and a lot of good questions, but that's the moderators.

The moderators

got that question about climate change, and they all said

what are you talking about?

Well, they have a disagreement on it.

Let me say on keeping campaign promises.

The president kept his campaign promise by pulling the troops out of Iraq, and now we have ISIS.

This is a huge problem.

George W.

Bush pulled him out because status of forces agreement.

The president of Iraq, you respect the president of the United States.

The President wanted to pull the troops out.

It was part of his campaign.

Bill, could I just say one thing?

At thenation.com this morning, we posted a short piece about how there are 17 intelligence agencies and 15,000 contractors who fail to understand,

tell us that we were confronting this catastrophe in Afghanistan, the Taliban.

I mean, what are we doing?

What are we doing?

This endless war is not serving this country well.

You know, we talk all the time about the conflict in Syria, rightly.

It's terrible.

I came here from Mexico.

Almost as many people have died in Mexico.

There's frankly nothing we can do about what's happening in Syria, very little.

The war in Mexico is caused by us.

A little different.

We imposed the war on drugs.

A little different.

There are no Mexicans trying to get a nuke.

How can you be able to do that?

Well, there's loads of Mexicans being beheaded.

There's more Mexicans who've been beheaded than the African people.

That's very sad, but it's different than trying to get a dirty bomb into the port at Long Beach.

Sure, I agree with you.

How can you imagine that?

There's nothing to be done in Syria.

No, no, there's something to be done, but we could do a lot more in Mexico to stop the violence than we could in Syria.

When you end prohibition, you end that.

Here's what's going on this week.

Russia, Iran, and Syria are now fighting ISIS.

This is bad?

What do we need as a cue?

That this is a problem that solves solves itself.

ISIS is our big enemy.

All these other people are going to fight ISIS.

Don't we want that?

Don't we win when we get the other guys into a quagmire?

Afghanistan, Russia was in the quagmire, and then they lost, then we got in it, and we lost.

Here's this next week, wait a second, next week, October 23rd, 32nd anniversary of the suicide bombing.

in Beirut that killed 241 Marines.

George Bush I, who was Reagan's vice president at the time, went over there and he said, the U.S.

will not be cowed by terrorists.

And then what did Reagan do?

He cut out.

He cut out.

Thank you, Reagan and Bush, you cut and run cowards.

That's why the terrorists followed us home.

No, I'm joking.

That was the right thing to do.

Reagan did the right thing.

He cut and ran, and we could do the same thing.

We really could.

This is the perfect time to do it.

All the vipers are fighting each other.

I don't think think we cut and run.

I think we forge a coalition.

Yeah, I mean,

all the parties are going to be a little bit more difficult.

Do you know where I'm setting?

Okay.

I think so.

We cannot allow just pure chaos to break out in that region, which has already broken out.

And if we don't take a leadership role in this, and we don't have to put our troops in, and I'm not sure about the no-fly zone because I'm not sure if that's the right thing, but we can't just turn it back and we can't lead from behind, because I think that's a mistake.

The leading from behind?

No, no, no, wait, but

we need to intensify

negotiations without any preconditions between Russia, Iran,

the regional,

the United States.

The closest ally of the United States and Britain in that region is Saudi Arabia.

They have beheaded more people than ISIS.

They're about to behead a 17-year-old boy for the crime of peacefully protesting.

If we don't deal with Syria, the refugee crisis is going to get worse and worse.

The worst refugees crisis

resolve the Syrian.

What can come from the government.

And they're

huge liars, by the way.

The Saudis say that they allowed in 2.5 million Syrians.

No one has seen any of them.

That's a lot of Syrians to hide.

I have to stop.

Thank you very much, panel.

I appreciate a panel of good talkers.

Time for new rules, everybody.

All right.

New rules, guys need to get it through their head that the only thing sadder than you going on about football is you going on about fantasy football.

And by the way, if you delight in imagining having a bunch of young, fit athletes and what it would be like if they played for your team, it's pretty clear what your real fantasy is.

New Roll, cut some slack to the Alabama Walmart that was selling gun oil, which is a personal lubricant used by gay men, men,

selling it in their actual gun department.

It's Alabama.

You'll find their cheese nips in the Asian food section.

New rules, someone has to tell Walmart, who just announced they're going to try to appeal to middle-class shoppers, that there is no more middle class.

And even if there was, the single biggest advantage to make it get into the middle class is never ever having to set foot in Walmart.

New Rule Playboy has to fess up about the real reason they decided to stop showing pubic hair in the magazine.

It's 2015.

Nobody has any.

New Rule, someone at Costco has to tell me how I'm supposed to sample this toilet paper.

It's creepy enough when you serve me the key lime pie in that little plastic cup that makes it look like Shrek left a sperm sample.

And finally, new rule, Americans have to make a list of all the reasons we've heard over the years why young men with guns use them in mass shootings.

Things like violent video games, poor mental health care, bad parents, Marilyn Manson, lack of prayer in school, Prozac, bullying, and that time the president got blown and didn't go to jail.

And then we have to get real about what it really is.

They can't get laid.

Yes, they may have been on Prozac because they were feeling blue, but do you know what else was feeling blue?

They're balls.

Now as the details emerge about our latest American massacre this month at an Oregon college, the least surprising thing was that the shooter wrote a manifesto and said he was going to die girlfriendless and a virgin.

On a dating site called Spiritual Singles he was on, he described himself as a conservative Republican who lives with his parents and swipe left.

The shooter at the UC Santa Barbara tragedy last year left us with these words.

I've been forced to endure an existence of unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted attracted to me.

I've never even kissed a girl, and I will punish you all for it.

Which is either a cry for help or the worst eHarmony profile I've ever heard.

The Virginia tech shooter was accused of following and harassing female students.

Timothy McVeigh famously never had a date and almost certainly died a virgin.

The Sandy Hook killer left a document on his computer explaining, quote, why females are inherently selfish.

Yes, plainly because they won't give it up to a real catch like that.

This is a pattern no one is talking about.

Mass killers are almost always male and almost always women repellent.

And what must make it even worse for them is America.

Yeah, because if you live in America, it just looks like everyone is getting laid all the time.

Every corner of social media is full of bragging studs and sexy selfies.

Every other line and every sitcom is sexual innuendo.

Every billboard, pop-up, movie, Carl Jr.

ads are practically soft core porn.

A model deep-throating a hamburger?

Right, like models eat.

How can you not?

be thinking of sex all the time when advertising looks like this in America.

Burger King ran this ad with a woman who looks just like an inflatable doll opening her mouth to accommodate a new menu item called the Super 7 Incher

with the big letters, it'll blow

your mind away.

I don't know for a fact.

That no man in history has ever said sex sex sex.

That's all I ever do.

Where's my gun?

I'm mad at the world

I just know it's true.

Unrealized adolescent sexuality can be very dangerous.

Just ask my hand.

We need to wake up and smell the testosterone.

The reason behind so many of these tragedies has been right in our face, throbbing.

angrily.

And if you think young men in America are throbbing angrily, what would you estimate the sexual frustration level to be for a young man who grows up only ever seeing women who look like this

or this?

How do you even masturbate to that?

I know masturbation requires imagination, but that's ridiculous.

All right, that's our show.

We're off next week.

We'll be back on the 30th.

I'll be at the Virginia in Champaign, Illinois, November 8th on my annual New Year's Eve trip to Hawaii this year.

I'll have special guests David Spade and Jeff Ross at the Blaisdale in Honolulu New Year's Eve at Maui Art Center New Year's Night.

I want to thank my guests, Johan Hari, Katrina Van den Huble, John Fairey, Lawrence Flesig, and Bernie Sanders.

Join us now on Overtime on YouTube.

Thank you, folks.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10, or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand.

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