Real Time with Bill Maher

HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher started it's new season on Friday, Feb. 19. For those who are not aware, Bill Maher is a comedian/satirist that does, admittedly, lean to the left but has a very diversified guest list each season. Democrats, Republicans, celebrities, politicians and everything in between end up as guests on this weekly show. The core of the conversations center around real issues confronting our nation today.

Elizabeth Warren was the first guest of the new season. According to Warren, the banking system in the U.S. is still doing the same things they were that caused the system to fail, specifically toxic assets. Toxic assets are still being created and traded within the stock market. It seems obvious that the bad practices that caused the U.S. financial system to fail, which promoted the bailouts of the big banks, are still happening. The banks also were "outed", so to speak, for having too much going on (commercial banking, hedge funds, real estate, etc), causing them to lose track of what was going on in the various divisions. Instead of having to downsize any of their various ventures, they have been allowed to add more to what they had to begin with.

Warren also informed Maher and his audience that the newest credit card regulations that take effect on Feb. 20, 2010, are not going to protect the public as originally meant to. She stated that the Center For Responsible Lending has put out information that out of the ten (10) major new rules for the credit card industry, attorneys for the credit card industry have figured out how to circumvent eight (8) of them. The end result of this, if accurate, is that the majority of the new regulations for the credit card industry have already been nullified before they have even taken effect.

The reasons given for this dangerous behavior to continue was the army of lobbyists that walk through the halls of Congress several times a day. The American people were forced to bail out the banking industry to the tune of several hundred million dollars to keep them from all failing at once which would have led to a second Depression.

The Corporate Machine will continue to spend millions on lobbyists with the intent to circumvent our legislation for as long as we, as a country, allow it. Our National Deficit has spiraled because of the bailouts yet the industry that caused the biggest mess is allowed to continue the same practices because money is language, according to our current Supreme Court, and money is now allowed to buy more of our government.

It does not matter what political vantage you have, all except fringe at any angle, you can actually learn something by paying attention. How many people would have known that the banks were still carrying on as they did before the Bush administration wrote the first checks to bail them out (for those who have forgotten, the Bush administration did write the first several dozen bail out checks)? How many of us would have had a real heads-up that the credit card industry had figured out how to get around eight (8) out of ten (10) of the new rules that they have to abide by?

Republicans and Tea Baggers want less regulation and that helped the banks get away with toxic practices in the first place. We need regulations to stop them from doing it again...unless America wants to bail them out next time as well.

There are those who would call Bill Maher a flaming liberal, but in reality, a flaming liberal would not hammer on other liberals...Maher does. He has no qualms about hammering on anyone, of any political persuasion.

Other issues were covered such as repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", Health Care Reform, Tea-Baggers and a myriad of other current events.

Guests included Elliot Spitzer, Norah O'Donnell, Seth McFarlane and Wanda Sykes.

One controversy mention was again Sarah Palin having an issue with Seth McFarlane's "Family Guy" cartoon series. In one episode, an actress with Down Syndrome played the part of a character with Down Syndrome. Sarah Palin took it upon herself to make a big deal of it in a conversation with Bill O'Reilly of Fox Network. Apparently she felt she had to defend the young actress as well as throw her own son's disability into the mix again. She seems to use her son in certain situations when she confronts a Democrat or "Liberal" but she has not done so for any Republican who have used the same language.

The actress that played the part on "Family Guy", Andrea Fay Friedman, made a statement that Palin needed to "lighten up" and made it clear that the episode had nothing to do with Palin's son.

Real Time With Bill Maher airs on Fridays at 9/8 Central and airs again directly after for those who miss it earlier. Considering the issues that do come up on the show, there is a good chance that you would miss information that you should know if you never take a chance to watch.