Episode #352 (Originally aired 5/1/15)

CRM was supposed to improve customer relationships.

Instead, it's shorthand for can't resolve much.

Which means you may have sunk a fortune into software that just bounces customer issues around but never actually solves them.

On the ServiceNow AI platform, CRM stands for something better.

With AI built into one platform, customers aren't mired in endless loops of automated indifference.

They get what they need when they need it.

Bad CRM was then.

This is ServiceNow.

This podcast is supported by Progressive, a leader in RV insurance.

RVs are for sharing adventures with family, friends, and even your pets.

So if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride, you'll want Progressive RV Insurance.

They protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident, making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

See Progressive's other benefits and more when you quote RV Insurance at progressive.com today.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Pet Injury is an additional coverage and subject to policy terms.

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

Start the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real time.

Thank you, folks.

How are you doing?

Thank Thank you very much.

All righty.

Okay,

thank you.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

You sound great.

Thank you very much.

Please, please, please.

We got a big show.

Big show, and I know why you're excited tonight.

It's tomorrow is the big fight.

Everybody's been waiting for the big Mayweather Pacquiao fight.

And it's so nice after a week of violence and racial strife that we can just

sit back and watch a black guy and a Filipino beat the shit out of each other.

But no, also, this is a historic day.

It turns out if a bunch of cops in America blatantly murder someone, you can actually charge them.

Who knew?

Yes, the

over in Baltimore, the prosecutor there, Marilyn Mosby, charging six police officers with the death of Freddie Gray, including second-degree murder.

And also, the driver of the van got charged with second-degree murder.

Wow, I didn't know you could charge someone murder for driving.

This is very good news for Baltimore and America, and very bad news for Asians on the 405.

I kid the Asian.

I'm just.

No, but

I'm glad things have calmed down and not a moment too soon because the protests, you saw this, were spreading to different cities.

And here in L.A., we were hoping it didn't turn violent because we do not have enough water to turn the hoses on anybody.

We need that water.

But of course, you know, the police in Baltimore are not happy about this coming down from the prosecutor.

I saw the head of the police union today said they did nothing wrong, as always, infallible, do it by the book.

Well, they have their own version of what happened.

They say, first of all, Freddie Gray was resisting not being dead.

That's number one.

And he may have been trying to frame the cops by beating himself to death with a car.

And the violent shaking that happened to him was because of the earthquake in Nepal.

So you have to look at these alternative

versions.

Now,

on the bright side, Hillary Clinton gave a very strong, very liberal speech on this.

So she's getting her mojo going.

She called for.

Yeah, I'm impressed.

She called for reducing the prison population in America and a whole new approach to policing in general.

She said after her trip to Iowa, she knows what it's like to be thrown in the back of a van and taken into a hostile white area.

But you know what?

Hillary Clinton, no longer the only Democrat in the 2016 race.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders threw his yarmulke into the ring.

Wow.

And of course, Bernie says his whole strategy is to run as everything Hillary is not.

And as

as a 73-year-old socialist Jew from Vermont,

he's everything everyone is not.

Like, yeah, we love Bernie.

And he could make it interesting.

Bernie says, this is not a token, Kansas.

He says he is in it to win it.

If he can just put together the coalition that brought him to power in Vermont, craft beer enthusiasts,

ice cream billionaires, and rural lesbians, he could win Berkeley.

But hey,

he's not the real new star in America.

The real new star, the hero, is the Baltimore mom who slapped her kid.

America loved him.

Slapped her kids.

They just...

Just, pow!

She beat him so badly, the cops gave her an application.

That's how badly.

Now, of course, the people who really love this were the conservatives.

They love these are the people, of course, who love it when Bill Cosby tells black people to pull up their pants.

That's what they remember, Bill Cosby, pull up your pants.

That's what they love.

On Fox and Friends, they were so excited about this until Soman explained that you can't actually smack the black off a person.

That's

going back to the O-ing now.

I was enjoying this for a while.

I guess it was a dream.

No, I tell you, the Republican capacity to look away from real problems and not see the cause that's really there.

The Republican congressman from Texas, Bill Flores, he knows why there's unrest in Baltimore.

Gay marriage.

I'm not kidding.

That's what he said, gay marriage.

You know what?

This is no time to cram your pet causes into a wholly unrelated event.

Although, I must say, I think things would be a lot calmer if more cops smoked weed.

I'm just saying,

am I doing that now?

And Ted Cruz also said he knows the problem.

Obama.

No, he did.

He said, Obama has made decisions that inflamed racial tensions rather than bringing us together.

You know what?

Kanye was right.

Obama doesn't care about black people.

I tell you, it is a reflex with the Republicans.

It is blaming Obama.

It's a reflex.

Last night, Ted was making love to his wife, and it just wasn't happening, and he went, Obama.

All right, we got a great show.

We have D.L.

Gugli, Dan Senora, Jane Holman.

And a little later we'll be speaking with chess master Gary Kasparov is backstage.

But first up,

he is the Nobel Prize-winning economist and author of The Great Divide, Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them.

Joseph Stiglitz.

Hey professor,

how are you, sir?

What a great pleasure.

How are you doing?

Great.

Wow.

I'm very

impressed you're on our show because I read you all the time and read about you.

You're one of the most esteemed economists this country's ever known.

Well, flattery get you everywhere.

Yeah, right.

I knew a guy named Stiglitz once.

They called him Stig.

They call you Stig?

Sometimes.

All right, Stig.

You have the perfect book for what's went on in Baltimore this week because you called it the Great Divide and what we can do about that.

And there's a lot of people, like I just said, who are trying to, I think, divert our attention from the real issue.

But the real issue is economic opportunity or a lack of.

So what can we do about it?

I mean, you're absolutely right.

Baltimore illustrated the Great Divide.

and it illustrated it in so many other ways.

It was an imbalance of power.

You know,

the kid didn't even do anything wrong.

And

it illustrated the inequalities in our justice system.

But this inequality has been growing for a very long time.

In fact, the racial inequality goes back to the founding of the country.

But the economic inequality, which is really manifested, and everybody saw it

on the screen,

has been growing basically since 1980.

Oh, and before that, right.

I mean, well,

we've always had inequality, but

the period after World War II,

we had a shared prosperity.

We were creating the first middle-class society.

Even for the black folks?

I don't think so.

Well, they weren't part of it.

That's kind of a big thing in this particular discussion about Baltimore.

But in terms of the

white people,

you're right.

So you wrote a book before this one called The Three Trillion Dollar War about Iraq.

And I'm wondering, you know, the term opportunity costs comes up.

I mean, I read about it a lot in your book, like what would have happened if we took that money and spent it, like, say, in Baltimore and places like that.

So just tell me a little about that, the opportunity cost.

And is it still $3 trillion or is it?

No,

when we wrote the book, we knew that that was an underestimate,

that the true cost was greater, but we wanted to be credible because some people, remember, President Bush said it was going to cost altogether $60 billion.

And we were spending that amount every few months.

By the way, what else in America can you be that wrong about?

You know, from 60 billion to 3 or 4 trillion, whatever it is.

That's a lot of wrong.

That's a couple zeros.

Yeah.

But just to give you one example of how we were conservative, the cost of the disabled coming back to the United States.

You're right, right.

We thought it would be around 40 percent.

It's been closer to 50 percent of those who who went to Afghanistan and Iraq are coming back with multiple disabilities.

And the cost of that, the disability, the health care, just that is over a trillion dollars.

Wow.

So you were critical of Obama and the way he has handled the economy after the crisis, right?

To put it mildly.

But

I mean, and I know that like from 2009 to 2012, most of the gains...

91 percent

went to the top 1 percent.

But this is a president who we know would not like it to be that way.

What does it say about our system that even when we elect a president who's against income inequality like this, he can't affect that change?

Well, part of it, he was really influenced by the money that helped get him elected.

You know, the last election cost $1 billion for each of the candidates, and they're projecting the next election costing much, much more.

The people who put out the money,

they call campaign contributions, but they're really investments.

Right.

And they.

So you really you think they bought him off, too?

I think I would call it cognitive capture.

You know, they they.

Wow.

All right.

So I want to ask you this economic question.

I wrote down here, well, I had someone write it down, I'm not going to lie.

The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in major cities in the country and then the minimum wage in those cities.

Now, two-bedroom, because if you have a family, I'm assuming you need one room for children that's not yours.

I've never had kids, but I'm guessing you want to stick them in another room.

Okay, just for example, New York, the average rent, $3,250 a month, wage $875.

Here in LA, average rent $1,890 a month, much better, and the wage $9

an hour minimum wage.

San Francisco, $39.25 a month is the average two-bedroom, and the wage $11.05 an hour.

So I did some quick math.

I'm not a whiz like you, professor, but okay, like here in L.A., it's pretty easy because $9, $18.90, you'd have to work a 210-hour week,

which is a rough week.

Chicago, you'd only have to work 176-hour week.

And San Francisco, you'd have to work a 350-hour week.

So let me ask a complicated, specific economic question.

How do people live?

I keep asking this question on the show.

How do people live in this economy?

These wages are not livable wages.

There's another way of looking at this that

at the bottom.

How do they actually live?

No, they don't.

What are they doing?

I want to know what people are doing.

But one way of thinking about...

I know what I did when I got to New York.

I sold pot.

Is that what they're doing?

They're selling pot?

I don't know, but...

They must be.

Come on, Stig.

They're selling pot.

Admit it.

They're selling pot.

Write a book about that.

But at the bottom,

the wage, just for inflation, is basically the same as it was 45 years ago.

Now, can you imagine that?

That

these people have not not gotten a pay raise

in close to a half a century.

Wow.

So is there any?

Other people have done very well by the way.

Right.

Yes, exactly.

Is there any hope?

Yeah, I think there is hope.

Okay, why?

Well,

in 10 seconds.

Well, I think finally the issue of inequality is

being raised in the political campaigns.

Right.

Both by the Democrats and the Republicans.

They want to to see a little bit more inequality.

The Democrats want to see a little bit less.

Thank you, Professor.

Real honor to have you here on this show.

Joseph Diglitz.

All right, let's meet our family.

All right.

Here they are.

He's an archer.

He's a fabulous comedian and radio host of the syndicated D.L.

Hughley Show.

Can be seen live in the new black and brown comedy get down tour starting tomorrow, May 2nd, in Vegas.

D.L.

Hughley's with us.

There he is.

He is the co-founder of the Foreign Policy Initiative and co-author of Startup Nation, the story of Israel's economic miracle.

Oh, I'd like to read that.

Dan Senor is with us.

Hey, Dan, how you doing?

And she served six terms in the U.S.

House of Representatives, is now president and CEO of the Wilson Center.

Jane Harmon back with us.

Hey, Jane.

Oh, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Send us your questions for tonight's Overtime Overseas so we can answer them after the show on YouTube.

Let me just continue with what we were talking about there with the professor, the opportunity costs.

Because I know, Dan, you've been to Iraq many times.

You were part of that program that we had going on over there for a while.

When you hear about those numbers,

three, four trillion dollars, and you think about the problems we have in this country, do you you still think it was worth it well two separate issues the question is I don't think they are no I do because we are spending a ton domestically I mean just take Baltimore which is what you were talking about with Professor Stiglitz Baltimore school district it's the second highest spending per pupil in the country if you look the hundred largest school districts in the country Baltimore is number two over fifteen thousand dollars per pupil so we are pouring tons of money into places like Baltimore input isn't the problem the output is a disaster so if if you want to have a discussion about what's really going on in places like Baltimore, we can have that discussion.

But making it an issue that we're not spending enough, I mean, I'm all for spending money if it produces good results, but we're spending money and it's not producing results.

Is that in every school district?

Because, you know, there are all these districts where I think the dropout rate is something like 60%.

I think they call them dropout factories.

And they're usually in black neighborhoods almost.

Listen, I've never been to Baghdad, but I've been to Baltimore.

And

the very area where this upheaval started the unemployment rate between the age for black males between 16 and 65 is 60 percent.

A third of the homes are abandoned and vacant and I think you see things like this happening because primarily when you see this level of disparity and this level of upheaval it is because America has by and large basically said we approve of what's happening.

When Ebola was on the news, we couldn't, people were so frightened.

We couldn't do anything about it.

We couldn't do enough about it.

More black men have been killed by the police, unarmed black men have been killed by the police,

have been convicted of voter fraud, but they felt like voter fraud was the thing we needed to do something about.

It is.

It is.

This deafening silence you hear is America's by and large telling the police and telling brutality in general, add a boy.

That's what you're supposed to do.

Yeah, but now these policemen were indicted.

Of course, you know, I must say, having lived in L.A.

through the riots here, as you probably did too.

Me too.

The police were indicted then too.

But that's the thing.

That shit happened after the trial and they got off.

And that's probably what's going to happen in this one.

No, no.

Well, if we look at me, first there was the trial, then there was a riot.

Then George Bush Sr.

said, hey,

and federally tried them.

To the extent that one of the cops who was convicted, Stacey Koots, is my limo driver from the airport sometime.

Is that right?

I swear to God it's the best thing ever.

We know what happened.

It's the best.

I'm sure they really appreciate you mentioning his name on the airport.

One size doesn't fit all.

And we've done pretty well in this city.

A lot better, I'd say, than these pockets of Baltimore.

Not perfectly, but we have a robust middle class and we have people who are not just Caucasians, who are advantaged here.

And I represented the aerospace part of L.A.

for nine terms in Congress, and there was real progress there.

And the schools are better.

I'm a

LA public school.

And they work.

It's over.

Jane, there are over a million names nationally waiting on charter school waiting lists.

In New York City, where I live, there are 22,000 kids that applied for 3,000 slots in the best charter school network in the city, Success Academy.

There's a problem here where people are trapped in dreadful schools in places like Baltimore.

I'm not our

Baltimore.

I know, it's across the country, right?

And they don't have access to education.

You You want to address this unemployment issue?

Get people an education.

There are good charter schools here, and kids get into them, and they work, and they help.

But why,

here's the thing.

Why does, I grew up in 135th and Laveline.

Why do I have to leave where I come from to go to a school that's not in my neighborhood?

It says everything about where I'm from is horrible, and I have to go somewhere else.

Why is everything better where I'm not?

And

that can't be a reality.

Because the teachers' unions don't allow people to open schools, open schools in the neighborhood that you're from, and students from those neighborhoods can't get access to the students.

I wish you guys hated the police union as much as you do the teachers' union.

I swear to God, I do.

Well, it's not.

Let's talk about that because I've mentioned this before on the show.

I don't understand why the police are infallible.

They remind me a lot of the Catholic Church.

In fact,

well, they do.

Here's the stat.

They gave out, gave out, they were sued,

the Baltimore police, I think

317 suits.

They paid out $5.7 million

since 2011.

This does remind me of the Catholic Church.

And in the Catholic Church, of course, not every priest was a pedophile, but the institution covered up for the pedophiles.

And this is what I see.

The head of the police union said today, I have never seen such a hurried rush to file criminal charges.

Well, it wasn't hurried.

This happened over a week ago.

No one condones police misconduct.

Well, fuck yeah, they do.

Of all the officers involved at all times, acted reasonably and in accordance with their training.

Well, then their training sucks, and how would you know that?

No officer injured Mr.

Gray.

These officers did nothing wrong.

They're infallible.

The police are infallible in America.

They didn't put this man's seatbelt on.

Now, they have this commercial click it or ticket.

So in other words, if I don't have a seatbelt on, I'm going to get a ticket.

And they didn't put one on him.

Here's what I will say about what has happened here.

If they had just treated Mr.

Gray like a human being,

when he asked for help,

if they had just treated him like a human being, they wouldn't be going to court and he wouldn't be dead.

And the only reason that exists in this country is because America, by and large, thinks it's no big deal.

And it could not continue otherwise.

I think this last year with all the demonstrations around this country demonstrates that America thinks it is a big deal.

I think it's a big deal, and I think changes are coming.

And I think these charges today are a very good sign that a courageous 35-year-old prosecutor is ready to

take on a big task

that she just might win.

But it took a black one.

really in a black city hold on hold on hold on i don't think that's you're an african you're an african-american mayor of baltimore an african-american uh state's attorney you've got an african-american police chief the city council president is the

attorney general of america and there have been democratic and african americans in control of baltimore for the last several decades how is this happening well you i'll explain baltimore if you explain the entire southern region of the country so let's not act like no no no no but but i'm just saying how is this how is this a racial issue

i'm not saying that what happened, this is what you don't get.

I'm not saying what happened in Baltimore is a racial issue.

I'm saying what happens across America is a racial issue.

It's not just Baltimore.

It's not just Baltimore.

People believe almost, I have never once in this country seen an African American get killed and America think that it's so deplorable that we all rise up and say enough.

I've never seen it.

You know what you'll never see at a Republican convention?

You'll never see Black Lives Matter.

Black Lives Matter t-shirt.

You'll never see it.

It'll never happen because it's almost like that happens somewhere else besides the country we live in.

When a man or a woman or a child is hurt in this country, I never look to see if they're black and white, but they watch these things happen and they're tacit, quiet,

is tantamount to saying, go ahead and do it.

It's the same thing.

I must say, like, when...

Most of the Republican politicians I heard this week said some variation of, well, it's the breakdown of the black family.

And it's single moms.

And when you say that and you don't go on to say, well, the reasons are for that, you kind of look like you're saying, well, it's because those people act irresponsibly.

This is a trend.

Look,

look at the 1994 crime bill, the

Bill Clinton's crime bill, dramatically increased incarceration, increased minimum sentencing, increased prison construction, put 100,000 more cops on the streets.

To make this seem like this is a Republican thing, we have had an attitude about trends in criminology.

And that's why I'm not crazy about Bill Clinton.

Because he took the Democratic Party way to the right.

Well,

let me say that.

But Hillary Clinton yesterday said we should treat every child in America as though he, she were our own.

Distancing herself from her husband.

Well, Hillary Clinton.

And she's done it before.

And

on a bipartisan basis, people want to change excessive incarceration, including Rand Paul.

What do you think about the fact that I said it it tonight in the monologue about the mother who slapped the kid and liberals who, if you talk about domestic violence with their kids anywhere else, they are against any sort of hitting.

But when the black lady does it, whoa!

Well, there's something weird going on.

I'll say this.

I've taken some of those very ass whoopers.

So

you alluded to this.

I'll say this.

It is.

My mother used to say, and I think that that was the match where this young lady took, I'd rather kill you than let the streets kill you.

It is a shame that people live in such fear that they feel like they have to whip you into shape or someone will take your life from you.

And that is where she comes from.

But I do think it's ironic that Adrian Peterson looked at her and went, damn, I just did that.

But something you said earlier, you said, you talked about how they talk about the breakdown of the family.

Well, the 60s, when we had a lot of race riots, much more destructive and much more violent than we do now, the black nuclear family was largely intact.

It was intact.

Black families were together.

After that, we eroded them.

But the difference is that we still have race riots.

Black families are, you know, are, you know, we have a lot of single-family households.

But the thing that drives these riots is still

lack of opportunity, impoverished schools, community divestment.

So, yes, our family erosion has changed, but the idea that we are less than has not.

It is.

It's also, I mean,

they say, where are all the black fathers?

Well, you put them in prison.

That's where they all are.

I mean, they arrested this Freddie Gray guy 18 times before this, mostly just for possession.

And I heard Rush Limbo say, what about all the times the cops didn't kill him?

I'm not making that up.

And

so I thought, you know, possession, Rush, you're also a drug addict.

You know, and you never got busted for possession.

But, again, one size doesn't fit all.

It depends where.

Washington D.C.

Now, come on.

They're not running anymore here.

It depends where.

And I spend time in Washington, D.C., where there's a large middle class.

Yes, it's full employment because of the federal government.

But a lot of black families and black people are very successful in Washington, D.C.

One of them happens to be President of the United States.

Well, that's not really helpful

because

that's the kind of success.

I don't think.

It really isn't.

I mean, that's the kind of anecdotal success.

And Jaquille O'Neal is doing very well also.

But, you know,

I'm doing okay.

And you're okay.

Yes, I'm okay.

And so do many of you.

I don't think that's fair, Bill.

Well, you know, Chris Rock said it best.

He said, you know, where I live in a very affluent suburb, it's like me,

Mary J.

Blige, Jay-Z, and a white dentist.

You know, like, to be white in that neighborhood, you have to be a dentist.

To be black, you have to be Jay-Z or Chris Rock.

I'm not arguing that there is discrimination and that there is inequality.

I am saying, however, that it's not everywhere.

Okay.

Okay.

In most major intercities.

I wonder where it is.

We're in major cities today.

Most major cities are in the world.

Most major cities.

I have something right here

I think can solve the

debate.

One great thing I think we can all agree about in America is that we have an entrepreneurial spirit.

And whenever people see an opportunity to make a buck, they are the best in this country at jumping in.

Now, with all the incidents with black males males and police officers around the country in recent weeks, the folks at Zagat noticed that this might be an opportunity.

So they have put out the black man's guide to police departments.

Because if you're a black man who's

traveling around the country, you might want to know.

So like,

here's a small town one.

Tired of the cold, sterile beatings of big city police departments?

Well, keep your hands where we can see them and say hello to the small-town charm of the Stubbville, Indiana P.D.

But an N-word to the wise.

When stopped, be extra polite and prepared to answer direct questions like, where are you coming from?

Where are you headed?

And what the fuck are you looking at?

And don't bother bringing drugs.

The officers here have plenty and will plant them in your glove compartment free of charge.

Maricopa County, Arizona.

You know,

you're the pinata at this close-to-the-border racial

profiling hub where everyone knows your name because it's always Jose.

Yes, the good news for black men is the precinct devotes most of its attention to Mexicans.

The bad news is they consider anyone darker than Anderson Cooper a Mexican.

And the best part of being racially profiled in Arizona, it's a dry hate.

Looking for brutality with personality?

Well then New York City is your incarceration destination.

Taste the pavement.

In the greatest city in the world, where morning, noon, or night, it's always Giuliani time.

But New York is never cheap, so expect to reach for your wallet, and when you do, get shot.

Stop that noise.

It's the old noise with the old crowd.

San Francisco.

San Francisco is where the elite meet to get beat.

Whether you're interested in a nickel ride down historic Lombard Street, a late-night chuck hold in Chinatown,

or a 60s-style harassing in I hate Ashberry, you haven't been assaulted until you've been assaulted in an assault vehicle by the bay.

On the minus side, in liberal San Francisco, annoying self-righteous hippies will ineffectually jump to your defense.

On the plus side, the cops will beat the shit out of them too.

And Pensacola, Florida, ever find yourself longing for the down-home blatant racism of the old Confederacy?

Look no further than this death trap on the Redneck Riviera,

where the South may rise again, but you won't.

Yes, you're always going for your gun in this antebellum hamlet where each traffic stop comes with a complimentary wood shampoo.

Because nothing says classic bigotry like a southern cherub with mirrored sunglasses leaning into your car and saying, you a long way from home, boy.

All right, here's the former world chess champ who now chairs the Human Rights Foundation and author of Winter is Coming, why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped.

Gary Kasparov.

Gary Kasparov.

How are you, Master?

Great to see you.

And when I say great to see you, I mean, I always say that to everybody, but it is really great to see you because you got out of Russia, I mean you left two years ago, and if you had stayed there, you could very well be dead.

And then what would I do for a mid-show guest?

Yeah, no, for me, trip back to Russia is one-way ticket.

One-way ticket.

Yes, I was by a round trip.

Because they killed your friend Boris Nepsov just recently, right?

Was that Putin who did that?

Look, it happened in front of the Kremlin at the place where we have more video cameras than in Fort Knox.

Right.

And for just just months and a half, they're still looking

for a killer.

Like we are with OJ.

Yeah,

it's Boris was a very good friend and probably the bravest of

all of us.

And he stayed there and was a really big man, you know, with this imposing presence.

And he knew he was in danger.

But he stayed there because he believed that was still a chance to avoid sort of the

violent, violent transition.

Does this tell us that Putin thinks he can get away with anything?

Of course.

I mean, the guy just annexed, you know, part of a neighboring country, started a war in eastern Ukraine, and you know, just he's he's always winning.

But should that be our problem, though?

It's everybody's problem, because unlike other bad guys, he has nukes.

I mean, not just, you know, a bucket of nuclear waste atoms as a Korean guy.

Oh, come on.

He's going to use them?

No, he can blackmail you.

It's not about what he can.

We can't.

We have nukes, too.

Do you want to find out?

Yeah.

But do you want to find out?

No.

Do you really think Vladimir Putin is an irrational person who's going to launch a nuclear war against America?

Maybe today not.

But you know, I heard so many times that Putin was not irrational to do and he will not do this, this, this and this.

And he already did almost everything.

What did he do that's irrational?

Look, you know,

he just destroyed the security system that has been built in Europe since 1945.

And again, he made many...

made many other things, you know, inside Russia.

He destroyed Russian democracy.

I think so.

He supports every dictator in the world.

You know, Bashar al-Assad is still killing people because Putin is behind him.

Yeah, but there's a lot there's a lot of of bad guys in the world.

Yeah, but Putin is the most powerful one, the richest one, and the most powerful one by far.

He's a ringleader.

Yeah, okay.

But there have been many like that.

Many like that?

Yes, there have been.

Name another one.

Dictators in the world.

That caliber.

Okay, starting with Adolf Hitler, name another one, or Joseph Stalin.

Anybody compared to Putin who had an ability to hurt every other country in the world.

An ability is different than a will given.

Yeah, but the man has nowhere to go.

I mean, he's a very good person.

So we should go back to the Cold War.

We're already there.

That's why I called my book Winter's Coming, you know.

Oh,

I thought.

Okay.

I thought you were plugging Game of Thrones.

Of course I did, you know.

And

I put quotes from Taiwan Lanister and Vladimir Putin

on my website.

And I asked people to identify.

And you know what?

They got trouble.

So because they sound and look very much alike.

But I guess my question is, is no problem in the world a problem of the region itself?

Why does America always have to be the guardian of the galaxy?

Why is Russia

to be reformed by Russians?

The Middle East to be reformed by Middle Easterners and America to stay out?

Yeah, the entire elections in 1940 was about America staying away from World War II.

But that's different.

Why?

Why?

Are you serious?

You think

Hitler taking over all of Europe was not different.

It didn't happen overnight.

Putin taking over Crimea, which is, yes, we're all Crimeans now.

It started with Austria and Schluss, Sudet Land.

It didn't happen overnight.

In 1936, Hitler was well respected.

You know, look at the man that was on the cover of Time magazine.

Maybe you're too close to it.

Well, look, you know, it's too close.

I'm lucky I'm too far away from that.

Many of my friends are there behind bars.

All right.

Can I ask you about the chess master?

I mean, you are a chess master.

I'm a retired chessmaster.

I know.

But there was an English chess master.

It said my good old friend who played with me World Championship match in 1993, Nigel Short.

And you beat him?

I did.

He said that so reluctantly, Gary.

It's like, well,

if you insist I beat him, I.

But he said that men are better chess players than women, and he got a lot of shit.

You read his interview?

Yes.

You did, and it's a direct quote.

Because the biggest problem is that Nigel wrote an article for chess magazine that has 10,000 readers.

Then somebody picked up a quote and actually reversed it.

And then

what we're hearing now is that people keep talking about it without actually reading the interview and without hearing the entire argument.

Welcome to America.

Actually,

he was cursed as far as New Zealand.

So it's suddenly become

the global issue.

But Nigel said, for one week, I was the most popular chess player in the world.

But he was very careful to say that men are not smarter than women.

What he was trying to say was that we have different skills.

Maybe women are better at swords.

Maybe, I don't know.

But of course,

just you look at politics, for instance.

In the 20th century,

many great nations, you know, had a female leader at the time of

the Great Peril,

Israel, India, Great Britain.

So it's, you know, it's...

I don't see any problem with that.

But there are certain facts, you know.

Everyone talks about chess.

Do you think a woman could be as great a player as a man?

Probably, yes.

We have now two top officials.

He's saying the brains are different.

No, one's better.

Even our brains are different.

I'm lying.

Absolutely.

But I could beat you at Strategico.

No, I'm just kidding.

I couldn't beat you.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

No, exactly.

I would never compete with you in such a thing.

Okay, but as long as we're talking about gender, can we talk about Bruce Jenner?

Sure.

Because, well, first of all, it was a very big week for gender issues.

The Supreme Court started to hear arguments about gay marriage, which

17 countries already have, and it looks like even super-Catholic Ireland is going to go that way.

Okay, and then

17 million people tune in.

That's a lot these days in America to hear Bruce Gender say that he's been hiding a shameful secret all these years.

He's a conservative Republican.

I'm kidding.

But it did raise the interesting question.

The GOP does have some problems with the gender prompt, with the gender issue.

And Bruce said something interesting.

He said, neither party has a monopoly on understanding.

I think John Boehner and Mitch McConnell would be very receptive to advocating for LGBT issues.

Speech.

Yes.

This is a man who desperately needs Google.

Oh, really?

What world is he living in?

So I hope he's happy as a woman, but

I hope that he's not upset when he realizes he's making 78 cents to the dollar now.

Well,

but.

And it's interesting, what better way, because Republicans seem to be obsessed with controlling a woman's vagina.

What better way to control a woman's vagina than to get your own?

That's so nice.

But he's not doing that.

No, no, he's not.

He's not.

He's not.

I think what he did was very courageous and tough to do.

And there are Republicans, even Dick Cheney, who supports marriage because of his daughter or Rob Portman.

Let's think about how many Republican kids might be gay or transgender or whatever.

It's time that we get over this and take these issues out of

legislation.

But I'm just asking who.

But, you know, Jane is right.

A bunch of Republicans, Republican legislators in Congress have recently come out in the last couple years for gay marriage.

Have come out.

For gay marriage.

I see.

Hold on.

Hill, if you look at the polling, majority of Republicans, particularly young Republicans, rank-and-file Republicans, support marriage equality, including me.

I mean, I'm not a young Republican.

I'm a Republican.

But this is an important point.

The debate has become so toxic.

If you look at what Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were saying about marriage equality just a few years ago, it was exactly the same line of argument that many Republicans use today.

True.

We should not demonize those Republicans for articulating the same things that Clinton and Obama were saying a couple years ago.

We should have a real discussion.

We should try to move as many people as possible.

But let's recognize that they're not totally wacko extremists just because they held the same positions as Obama and Hillary do.

I would love to see Bruce Jenner at the RNC with

a Black Lives Matter t-shirt on.

That would be great.

Yeah.

No, but he's right.

He absolutely is right.

But here's the problem.

At a certain point, there is,

you talked about young Republicans, it isn't them that get you to the big dance.

It's that you have to pass so many people who are entrenched in their beliefs.

So they have to appeal to those people.

Sure.

But Bruce Jenner will never be at the RNC.

But it was interesting that John Roberts, the Chief Justice this week in the argument about same-sex marriage, said, So Sue loves Joe and Tom loves Joe.

Sue can marry Joe, but Tom can't.

Does that have anything to do with sex discrimination?

This is Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican.

He's going to else that question.

Yeah, but all right, but the point is.

I think he's actually asking.

I don't know if he's being rhetorical.

And he may be asking, but the point is that it's way past time that we get over this.

But okay, okay, but here's

Here's my question.

This is LGBT,

which is lesbian,

gay,

bacon and tomato.

Bisexual.

Transit.

Bisexual.

Oh, transit.

Okay.

Right.

So this is transit.

I mean, I'm having...

I'm learning.

You know, I mean, when Bruce Jenner said, I'm not interested in lopping off old faithful.

I'm a woman and I still want to go out with women.

And by the way, he's 65.

He's newly single and eligible for Medicare and

looking to

mingle at an age when most people are just trying to get something going with Viagra.

I mean,

it's a little hard for just people who don't.

I don't, listen, I know that when men get older, we produce more estrogen.

And when women get older, they produce more testosterone.

So he could have waited.

But

I don't know what's harder for me to see, him looking like a man or looking like a woman or Madonna looking like a man.

It's rough for me.

No, I think what we're learning, and what I've recently, because we had Janet Mock on the show recently, and she taught us, me, that, you know what, it's not like I was born a woman.

I was, I mean, born a man because she is a woman now.

She was always a woman.

And that's what I think Bruce Jenner is saying: is that sometimes your body and your brain just don't line up.

So, what I'm asking is, why is the transgender lumped in with the gay?

Because it seems like if that's the issue, that your brain and your body are on different

signal paths, you know, maybe surgery is the corrective to that.

But there's nothing about gay that needs surgery.

Why the...

Right.

So why is the T in with the...

Why are the black people lumped in with the gays?

I think they always try to connect it to

the cause du jour.

And I think that that's

probably the...

I think the history of this is it was genders,

sexual orientations out of the mainstream, which they're not out of the mainstream.

We're learning this.

And putting it all together by somebody helped all the different groups get the visibility they need.

And they all deserve the visibility and the kindness of all of us, including little kids who realize that they're not the sex they want.

As kids were mentioned, I want just to remind the audience that in Russia, Putin's puppet parliament banned adoption.

by many other countries in Latin America because of the risk that these kids, Russian kids, poor kids, could end up in a gay family.

Well, well, most.

So putin' bad again.

You're right, Putin is bad.

Dedicators are always quite angry with minorities.

What minorities?

Most black children who

are warehoused in state and county facilities can't get adopted, are being adopted

by a lot of gay couples.

They would otherwise be warehoused.

Matter of fact, we asked that a question on our radio show, and people don't care as long as they go to a loving environment.

I think this is a new thing and I think

it is going to take more of a conversation because I think people are uncomfortable.

This is one that we haven't ever had before and I think the more people get used to it, I think the easier it is to have.

What do you think about the fact, if I could go back to Baltimore for just one second, where Ted Cruz was saying, I mentioned it in the monologue, that Obama was the one who has not brought us together, that he had an opportunity to bring us together, but he was divisive.

I racked my brain.

What did he ever do that was divisive?

Can I say what he didn't do this year?

There were three opportunities to talk about it.

It was the 105th anniversary of certain amendments eliminating slavery, the end of the Civil War, April 8th, and the assassination, I believe, the greatest president of this country, Abraham Lincoln, on April 14th.

He had three opportunities to make a big speech.

I didn't expect him to do it at Gettysburg.

You know, I was,

but it's not just speeches.

He was in the front and center in the march on Selma.

I thought that was pretty significant.

This is a complicated mix of factors, as we're talking about.

The idea that the President of the United States can solve it single-handedly is absurd.

When he did his press conferences past week, when he did his press conference last week,

most of it I thought was quite good responding to Baltimore, until he basically said, we know what the problem is in places like Baltimore.

The question is, do we have the will?

We actually don't know exactly what the problem is.

I mean, look at this discussion here.

This is complicated stuff.

No, we do.

This is complicated stuff.

No, no, no, no, we do.

No, no, we do.

We do.

We do.

We do.

We do.

We can't even agree on the education.

No, no, no.

But let's just say this.

How people get educated, okay, we can argue about that.

That they do, okay, nobody's disputing that.

The fact that you,

as a nation, when 60% of a group of people is unemployed, when they walk past rows and rows of vacant broken houses, when they would rather burn down a building to be heard because they have a sense of hopelessness, That tells you everything you need to know.

People have to understand this has been going on ever since we started from the 60s on.

And the problems have always existed.

It is poor people have no hope and they get mad and burn shit.

Right, no, no.

I totally agree with you on that.

But if you look at the last six years under President Obama, and I'm not blaming him single-handedly, but number of people on food stamps has gone up.

Unemployment for young African Americans has gone up, especially in places like Baltimore.

So all I'm saying is this is really complicated stuff.

Well, we were.

He hasn't been able to solve it.

It's not that complicated.

We were coming out of a crash.

Yeah.

Jobless rate has come down for everybody else.

Yeah.

Except young African-American men.

It's gone up.

So don't just blame it on the crack.

Kanye was right.

Obama hates black people.

All right.

I got to go.

Thank you, panel.

Time for new rules.

All right.

new role, white people,

white people have to admit that they've thought about burning down a CBS too.

They're the size of airplane hangers, and there's always just one employee, and she's busy developing photos

for the one person left in the world who still uses film.

New roll,

the winner of Saturday night's Mayweather Pacquiao fight has to take on Baltimore Slap Mom.

And the winner of that has to fight Chuck Knight's car.

New rule, if you're so anti-gay that you not only demonstrated in front of the Supreme Court building this week, but also did a Google image search for gay men kissing?

Click through a bunch of pages to find the one you wanted.

No, not that one.

No, that's the Pope.

No, warmer.

No, too warm.

Perfect.

Yes, that's the one.

Come on.

There's easier ways to tell the world you're gay.

New rule, we don't need a female version of Hooters.

Oh, yes, introducing Tallywhackers, the new chain restaurant where women can live out their wildest fantasy, chicken wings with this side of beefcake.

I don't see the allure, and I'm guessing my female friends don't either, but hey, at least this guy will have somewhere to eat after the anti-gay marriage rally.

New rules, someone has to tell the widows who are buying the new dildo that has a mini urn

inside to hold your departed husband's ashes that

you're supposed to hold a piece of him in your heart.

By the way, this model here also vibrates and has three speeds: slow, medium, and if you could have done this when you were alive, I wouldn't have poisoned you.

And finally, new role, let's not forget that today, May 1st, is the anniversary of the day in 2003 when George Bush landed on an aircraft carrier and prematurely announced mission accomplished in the Iraq war.

And somehow, possibly because Obama is a ninja warrior,

today, May 1st, is also the day in 2011 when he actually accomplished the mission by ordering SEAL Team 6 to kill bin Laden.

So I say,

Let's make May 1st a holiday and call it National Do This, Not That Day.

Or as they used to say on Rapper Room, be a Mr.

Doo-Bee, not a Mr.

Don't Be.

Now, how many of you boys and girls remember Romper Room?

For you millennials, Romper Room was this show they used to have on for preschoolers to bore you into taking a nap in the days before Riddleton.

And two of the recurring characters on it were Mr.

Doobie, who was always doing everything right,

and Mr.

Don't Be, who was a huge fuck-up.

And I credit Romper Room with making me a person who always wanted to do everything right, which is why to this day people refer to me as Mr.

Doobie.

At least I think that's why.

Anyway, Romperum went off in 1994, which is a shame because Mrs.

Doobie and Don't Be would have been perfect to help us illustrate our national do this, not that day.

For example, after an attack on America, Mr.

Don't Be panics and invades the wrong country.

Mr.

Doobie focuses on the real attacker and shoots him in the face.

Mr.

Don'tbe makes up stories about nukes in Iraq that don't exist.

Mr.

Doobie makes a treaty with Iran so they don't build nukes at all.

Mr.

Don't be tortures prisoners.

Mr.

Doobie says, that sounds bad.

Mr.

Don't be gets his actionable intel from Jesus.

Mr.

Doobie gets his from tapping your phone.

Mr.

Doobie's best foreign policy move brings our casualty rate down by over 60%.

Mr.

Don'tby's best foreign policy move was dodging a shoe.

Well,

you get the idea.

I don't mean to make it sound all black and white, but

you know, we were baited, baited into an unnecessary war that cost thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

And what did it really get us besides an Oscar nomination for Bradley Cooper?

Islamic extremists run places where they never even existed before.

And ISIS was created.

ISIS, who's now trying to do the same thing to us, bait us.

They say shit in your pants, and we say how much.

We've learned nothing.

The Republican campaign trail today is the same empty tough guy talk from chicken hawks.

Same as it was in 2003.

Mike Huckabee says, you don't try to reason with a snake.

You get a shotgun and take the snake's head off.

Or how about this?

You leave the snake alone.

Just this once, go to church and handle something else.

You know,

I've been in the woods, and I've never once had a snake problem that couldn't be solved by distance.

Distance.

Pretty much any terrorist who ever attacked us and lived to tell why has said some variation of the same thing.

Hey, idiots, we don't hate you for your freedom.

We could give a goat shit about your freedom.

We hate you for your proximity because you're there in our land.

If it helps you conservatives, think of it this way.

You don't like Mexicans in your country and all they want to do is mow your lawn.

The old plan of let them hate us so long as they fear isn't working.

Let's try absence makes the heart grow fonder.

President Obama once said, we need to do more than end a war.

We need to end the mindset that got us into war.

Yes.

The mindset.

The mindset that centuries-old blood feuds are going to be resolved because we said so.

The mindset that star-spangled American freedom is the salve that heals all wounds.

What everyone knows, that's Jaegermeister.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Kiva in Albuquerque tomorrow.

Wow, tomorrow, May 2nd, and at the Barbara Mann Performing Arts Hall in June and Fort Myers, Florida, June 14th.

I want to thank D.L.

Hughley, Dan Senora, Jane Harmon, Gary Kasmarov, and Joseph Stiglitz.

Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Phil Maher every Friday night at 11 or watch him anytime on HBO on Demand.

For more info, log on to HBO.com.