Bill Maher: I’m not trying to be sexist here, but I’m just saying that women try a lot of different tacks when they’re in arguments.

Harry Shearer: Do you remember the website in the 90s , where it was all her different hairstyles?

Maher: Well, hairstyles.

Harry Shearer: Yes, but now there’s going to be a website with all her different personalities.

Maher: Well, we made a montage, actually. Just to show you that, just — I’m not being sexist — I’m just saying that men, when we argue, we’re kind of a one-trick pony, we try our one thing, and then we —

Shearer: We yell.

Maher: And then we sulk when we don’t get our way.

[Plays a clip of Hillary, misty-eyed at a campaign event]

Maher: But look at Hillary Clinton. Because the first thing a woman does, of course, is cry. [Affecting a dramatic, teary voice] “I just want to be happy. Why can’t you just love me?”

Maher: And then they go to sweet talking.

[Plays a clip of Hillary complimenting Obama at a recent debate]

Maher: “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me! And you look so handsome in that tie!”

[Plays a clip of Hillary saying “shame on you” about Obama’s “Harry and Louise” brochure]

Maher: And then they throw an anger fit totally unrelated to anything. “Stay home and watch the game. See if I care.”

[Plays a clip of Hillary mocking Obama’s soaring rhetoric]

Maher: And when it doesn’t work, they bring out the sarcasm. “Oh, I’m just a woman, I couldn’t possibly understand the issues like you could.” Don’t write me, please ladies, don’t write me.

Christopher Hitchens: And then if you say “whine, whine, whine,” they say that’s sexist.

Goddamn it, Shearer, you’ve got it all wrong.

Obama’s speech ended with a ringing evocation of three words he claimed were emblematic in the life of the nation: “Yes, We Can”; and the crowd joined in chanting those words in response. But, in their turning away from a “man-made engineering disaster” (in the words of UC Berkeley’s Dr. Bob Bea), in their turning away from a city that was betrayed by its country twice—in the faulty construction of a “protective system” and in the refusal to follow the letter of the nation’s own National Response Plan when that system failed, the candidates, Obama included, are paying silent tribute to the three words that more accurately describe America’s contemporary approach to problems: We Moved On.

Don’t you get it, man?

The nation wants change!  Read more 

You may have heard that Al Franken has announced his candidacy for the Minnesota Senate seat. Go Al, I say. I listened to his AAR show a lot, he knows his stuff on the issues and he’s not afraid to shove the wingnuts’ talking points right back in their faces.

You may also have heard that Harry Shearer, who you may know as the shortest member of Spinal Tap and the voice of Mr. Smithers, among other things, has a weelkly radio show. Le Show rules. It’s become a Sunday tradition in the Shystee household. Politics, music and teh funny.

Last week Harry did a bit impersonating Garrison Keillor in all his soporific glory, narrating a visit by “Dick Yinkel”, an Al Franken stand in, to “Lake Reverie” Minnesota. Click here to listen to the bit.  Read more