 "Recommended" | 2009-06-20 |
| - Reviewed By User: AJUOUP5CZ30T1 |
While there were some rants that I didn't agree with, for the most part, I found myself agreeing to alot of what Maher had to say here. Written not long after 9/11 he has some great points about terrorism, national security and the way forward which, sadly, still ring true today (we've made a stunning lack of progress). It made me realize just how far we have to go.
I recently read and reviewed America Alone (another book I really enjoyed, by conservative author Mark Steyn), which makes some of the same points that Maher, a liberal writer and pundit, makes in this book (which is to say the over-arching theme that too many Americans claim not to "do politics"). But both authors argue it's not (solely) about politics. It's about waking up, not believing everything you're sold in the media, doing your own fact-checking and becoming an educated citizen of the world. It's an obligation, not a demand on your free-time.
Some crass remarks and language, but otherwise recommended. |
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| "Issues worthy of debate" | 2009-05-20 |
| - Reviewed By resqgeek |
I've enjoyed watching Bill Mahar on his various TV shows, and while I don't always agree with his politics, he can make be both laugh and think. I was intrigued by the premise of this book, a collection of "propaganda" posters modelled after those produced during WWII, to show the American people what they can do to contribute to the War on Terrorism. Beginning in the months right after the September 11th attacks, I've believed that the messages we were hering and the choices we were making seemed to be at odds with being at war. We moved on, almost as if nothing had happened, no one was asked to make any sacrifices. It seemed like (actually, still seems like) a strange way to fight a war.
This book is full of Mahar's characteristic sarcasm and biting irony, and his fans are sure to love it. But even thoughtful people who disagree with him should find this book of interest. If you look beyond the attempts at humor, there are a number of issues here that merit debate, a debate that we have, thus far, largely avoided. Whether Mahar is right or not, a public debate on these issues would be healthy for the country, and might actually help us improve security in meaningful ways while also reducing the need for it. While the book may have been rushed to the presses in order to prevent it from being overtaken by events, it has weathered the passage of time well, and still remains pretty relevant to current conditions. |
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 "New Rule: Everyone should have to read this book." | 2008-03-13 |
| - Reviewed By jsmoore@charter.net |
When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism - And Still Isn't is a parody of a World War II propaganda poster that read "When you ride ALONE you ride with Hitler !", which suggested that automobile owners carpool to conserve gasoline for the war effort. This isn't just ironic today - it is a complete epiphany for those of us who understand History really repeats itself.
I must applaud HBO's host of Real Time with Bill Maher because he has the courage to speak his mind on topics most Americans staunchly are ignorant of. Like Maher points out - the United States is full of people who are wasteful when it comes to everything from oil, food, and the things we should be conserving and happy to have ready access to. FREEDOM!
Maher critiques of the war in Iraq are right on. He pulls no punches and he shouldn't. Bill Maher is intelligent, funny, and has written another fine book for anyone interested in discovering real truth in real time that may change the way they view our government's practices.
I am a father, a veteran, an author, and a concerned citizen. We need more people like Bill Maher, John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Ron Paul in this world who know what they are talking about when they choose to be serious.
Oh yeah - Bill - if you need me to come participate in the panel, I think I can silence Christopher Hitchens for you when he gets too pompous and contrived.
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| "A Great Book!" | 2006-02-03 |
| - Reviewed By User: A28WJUJF6D2ULA |
| I admire the guts it took to say these things in modern America, a land where political correctness stifles free expression as surely as McCarthyism ever did. And how soon Americans are forgetting September 11, 2001! It floors me how so many people think it is now just a sad day from a history book. More and worse is probably coming, folks, and Bill Maher is honest enough to say so in a message that caters to neither the right nor the left, simply dishes up (in a loud voice) pragmatic commentary on how we are messing up and what we should be doing to fix it. In this semi-survival manual, a collection of topical essays combined with WWII-style political posters updated for our times, some things get said that desperately needed saying. Yes, we Americans can do more to make ourselves safer. Yes, we Americans have a partially-deserved PR problem on the world stage, and yes, our enemies overseas are waiting patiently in a state of extreme motivation, to strike us again. I recommend this book to anyone, but especially those who are too timid to wake up to the reality that we are in a watershed moment in world history, a time in which the culture of enlightenment and freedom is under direct attack by a Medieval-minded foe who would have us descend into repression and totalitarianism. Actually, wait. I'll correct that. Our foe wants the repression and totalitarianism for himself. For us he wants an irradiated wasteland from sea to shining sea. So read this book. It's frequently funny, it's thought-provoking, and it says a lot that stands in contrast to the patriotic but empty drivel that passes for our national dialogue in 2006. |
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 "Loose Hooks Sink Book" | 2006-01-03 |
| - Reviewed By doomsdayer520 |
If only Bill Maher could turn his perceptive political insights into useful prescriptions for change, rather than cranky rants. Or in other words – great ideas, poor execution. Maher's basic concept in this book is that he wishes to compare the real sacrifices that Americans were proud to make in the World Wars with the completely empty gestures and false jingoism which are all Americans are willing to do in the current war on terror. For example, in the old days people actually tried to conserve food and fuel for the war effort. Nowadays, "patriots" continue our dependence on Middle Eastern dictators by buying gas-guzzling SUVs, then slap a cheap fake magnetic ribbon on the bumper and actually think they're helping win the war. Instead of a strong president who encourages us to make personal sacrifices and serve the nation, we have one who tells us to keep shopping and consuming, thus strengthening nobody but the corporations that make campaign contributions.
Bill Maher is great at finding ironies and disconnections like these in modern American politics. But after making such excellent insights, Maher doesn't know how to make his ideas useful at more than a basic oppositional level. It's not really necessary to review this book based on one's agreement with Maher's political stance. I happen to agree with much of it and disagree with some of it. But the main problem here is that Maher first addresses a problem usefully, but then goes on a tirade of self-righteous complaining, while writing as if he has the answers to all those problems. This is a real concern given his attitudes toward Islam, and his know-it-all prescriptions for military strategies. Maher's philosophy can also be very inconsistent and contradictory, especially when it comes to cultural tolerance and political correctness. Bill Maher's insightful mind finds some real breakthroughs here, but then his cynicism takes control and brings us back to regular old finger-pointing and condescending American politics. [~doomsdayer520~] |
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 "The Proboscis Monkey Is A Scornful Pharisee Who Contradicts!" | 2005-11-04 |
| - Reviewed By iwasbornfordying |
Maher's antagonistic!!!! He's suspicious, ever since his P.I. days to inordinate Larry King appearances, where he's imposing his intolerant viewpoints bent exclusively to his bigoted agenda. All these 80+ reviewers who don't sentence Maher's shortcoming drivel to below-average ratings are either traitors, steeped in self-hate OR are willfully subservient to unfounded innuendo, with emphasis on being easily mistaught! In this perpetration copying yellow journalism, Maher commits SO MANY believability contraventions, it's one half-truth or embellishment repetitively.
What seriously outrages me is Maher imitating borderline psychosis, angrily overdoing critical over-ANALysis of petty matters-painful examples being schizophrenically furious fixation on what he, tyrannically, calls rightful reasons to join the military, namely people who reject comfortable lives of wealth for service, and scorching contempt for persons using medication to achieve goals, meaning dieting. Maher's next fault: psychotic pride, assuming he's qualified to lead people in all topics, overstepping into the A-B-N-O-R-M-A-L. The oppressive persecution with which he forms his unstable ideas resembles dictatorialness in Rome. His sneering spite for everyone not sharing his twisted misguidance is palpable in how absolutely he dictates his beliefs.
His book reeks in literacy, aesthetic and adeptness. Maher spitefully attempts humor, but can't redeem his sorrowful face there either!!!! When one's trying to absorb his content, it's usually destroyed by underhanded infiltrations of exerting jokes, which are ALWAYS coarse or awkward!!!! Maher's an incompetently R-E-D-U-N-D-A-N-T jackal, squandering 33 bogus mini-chapters for discussion that would've fit in two, since his fleeting thought-processes are condensed as: 1) "Where's better security in airports????!!!!", or 2) "Why can't Americans get their priorities straight????!!!!"
The worst objectionability is Maher's self-righteous pretexting. Unacceptable, is his insinuation to mishandle aspects of foreign policy in ways resembling rebukable socialism. Maher's short-sighted failure imposes a refusal of isolationism. Fine-except it's distorted to his hinderingly unqualified views. Maher discloses how shoddily unestablished he's business-wise, demonstrated in his continuous sighing over people nowadays taking things for granted, although that's the manifestation of technological and economical advancement, as people's productivity increases at performance. Maher refuses to practically rationalize Bush's suggestion to help the country after 9/11, which was shopping. Instead of understanding consumerism's the backbone of economies, Maher usurps more "fundamental" advice should've been given!!!!
Despite amassments of heinousness, I'm overjoyed at buying this crappiness. Maher's a LIBERAL, despite others' ill-versed fabrications. His maltreated excess of self-loathing is quite convincing. The only reason that I bother these days with noticing liberal-sensationalist tripe is to examine its content to discover the incurably many, ruthless schisms in truth. I'll dissect lie-after-half-truth-after-exaggeration, to expose Maher's ulterior motive of bending facts to the subjection of his plot: Ridicule Americans as "ignorant" or "gluttonous".
Sinfulness #1: p.24, paragraph 1, L.3-4. Maher justifies terrorists' actions and 3rd-World's envy of America. To plant something plotted to verify his slur, Maher blasphemes America inflates produce prices while others starve. Factually, inflated prices (which are enacted to reduce spoilage of produce) reduce domestic production, thereby allowing poor countries' farmers' goods to become competitive. His charges are illicit and ludicrous because he lets the 3rd-World evade blame reserved for it alone, from policies like mismanagement of aid to destitute, abuse of manufacturing workers paid next-to-nothing, and governments' cover-ups of AIDS.
Trespass #2: p.29, last paragraph, L.5. He perpetrates half-truths, damning America for having 2% of world's oil without expanding that America-like Russia-multiplies that subjugated figure to 9% in oil production. Thereby, America's not in such dire graveness as Maher inflates.
Breach #3: Chapters DOPE, CRAZY TALK. Maher demeans relationships between drugs and supporting terrorism, and defames America's drug war. Maher prevaricates that heroin's the "only drug" which benefits terrorism, when cocaine's predominant in South America's drug war. Maher subterfuges that the "only" connection's Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, trading opium. Yet Columbia's FARC annually receives payments of $600 million from wrathful coca farmers to fight Colombia's military, who're funded by U.S. government!!!! Iniquitously shocking Maher stoops to defending injury-sponsoring Colombian farmers, but decries America for spraying their vice-fields. This is an unprincipled plan from Maher to blame America's reaction, instead of the problem's cause: coca farmers.
Evildoing #4: p. 69, paragraph 6, L.1-infests whole chapter. Maher's imperfectness professes America should mother the 3rd-World. Uneducated-in-the-slightest Pharisees everywhere will persist loathsomely equating non-military aid with the "right kind of 3rd-World assistance". B-A-L-O-N-E-Y!!!! Maher's boycotted from calmly examining facts. Cato Institute's extensively studied, since WWII to the present, countries who've received non-military foreign-aid-results are sup-par!!!! By Cato's study, foreign-aid DOESN'T help countries whose economic policies are so constraining they need economic reform. I.E., out of 100 countries from 1980-1995, ones with A/B ratings attained real GDP growth, while countries with F-policy ratings endured shrinking, because countries receiving foreign-aid are encouraged to misallocate aid into primarily the opposite of its intent: economic stagnation. Maher also scandalizes Congress subsidizing farmers-yet it's foreign farmers who're the aggressor: 3rd-World countries injure American farmers by imposing cheap labor on their peoples, facilitating their farmers to sell their products affrontingly undervalued.
Slight #5: p. 118, paragraph 5, L.5-7. Maher fails with Muslim boys entering madrassas to become terrorists. That's not madrassas' preeminent goal-it's radical Islam's teaching's costly side-effect. Most enrollees don't emerge ACTING on their teachings. Besides not being directly answerable, S.A. doesn't sponsor madrassas singularly. There're also Arabs from many countries across the Middle East funding them. It's double-dealing to segregate S.A., because Pakistan is also threateningly active in developing madrassas.
Maher's two not-too-shabby propositions, tighter airport security and less sensitivity. These inadequacies are still harshly shortcoming a mean to the hampering extreme of unsavory misjudgments that are solicited. Maher's impenitently bigotedly unqualified regarding ability to discuss religion, and is an unprincipled double-speaker. Regarding Iraq's war, Maher prostituted himself on talk shows where he inconsiderately invites ingloriousness on America, cursing, "Iraq's a `disaster'." Yet he perpetrates entries where he's responsibly gloating being for, "hard U.S. military a$$-kickings to ANY `gangsta-government', be it Hussein...," and accepts that Hussein could "go biological"!!!! This is the arraignment of two-faced liberals who're overflowing the entertainment "community".
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