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Bill Maher closed Friday night's "New Rules" with a great recap of the 2008 election and why it's been the best, most unpredictable race in history.

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Bill Maher issues his new rules based on the pathetic performance of the Republican candidates last week.

New Rule: Jay Leno must sue Katie Couric. Last week Katie Couric got big laughs by asking some ignorant dumbass basic questions about current events. I'm sorry, but that's a Leno bit called "Jay-Walking" and he's been doing it for years. And by the way, Katie, Jay uses real people, not that actress you obviously hired. I mean, nobody in real life is that clueless. [..]

And finally, new rule: If you take the debating part out of a debate, it’s not a debate. Maybe it’s me, but I can’t take one more debate where undecided voters ask, “Do you favor giving us stuff?” To which the candidate responds, “That’s a great question, Slingblade.” And then launches straight in to his stump speech. I’ve seen tougher questions asked of Ron Popeil. In the VP debate, Sarah Palin even announced that she wasn’t going to answer the questions and would just say whatever the hell she wanted! Yes, we have a format for that. It’s called a speech. This is like if Peyton Manning stepped on the field on Sunday and said, “You know what? Today I’m going to play soccer.”

You know, folks, we live in a deeply divided country. Despite all of Obama’s soaring oratory about “no red states or blue states, but the United States,” the truth is we hate each other’s guts. And the debates should reflect that reality. We should get rid of those undecided numbskulls and opening the questions to the most hardcore, angry partisans we can find and let them drill away at the guy they hate.

Full transcript below the fold...

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On Real Time with Bill Maher's New Rules segment, host Bill Maher exhorts viewers not to assume the worst about John McCain just because of the color of his skin.

Now, take a look at these pictures. Here are the CEOs of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the Lehman Brothers. I know the first thing that jumps out about these faces is that they all happen to be white, and they all happen to be responsible for stealing. But what you have to understand is that these whites are a product of a society that made them that way. It was the neighborhoods and the schools they went to: Harvard, Yale, the Wharton School of Business. They never learned the value of doing real, actual work and the first step to fixing that is better role models, so kids growing up white today don't think the only way out of Westchester is corporate crime. Or a government handout or sailing. So I get it, the temptation is to look at McCain and vote against him because you don't see an individual, you just see another typical welfare whitey.

And it's true, he's spent his entire life shuffling from one low-paying government job to another. Well, except those years he spent in prison. Typical! And between you and me, he's not very articulate. Oh, he may have some street smarts, but he's not what you call an educated man. He freely admits he's ignorant about the economy. And apparently the only thing his white running mate knows how to do is crank out one baby after another. And now of course, her teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock. Because she learns it at home! But that doesn't mean we should assume all white people are like that, just because so many of them are.

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Bill Maher returned to HBO last night with a great show and a hilarious "New Rules" segment.

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"New Rule: You can't put a windmill in your ad if you've voted against every single bill that might lead someone to actually build one. As long as you're sending a camera crew to a farm, why not take a picture of actual bullsh*t."

Heather also took the liberty of uploading the Overtime segment and writes this:

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This is the portion of the Overtime segment where they're talking about cable news pundits talking about nothing instead of actually covering the speeches during the convention and just how bad all "news" coverage is right now and the use of advocates as reporters and mixing commentary and reporters and Corzine takes a good shot at the papers for advocating for war and saying there were WMD's on their front pages and that there is opinion buried in almost all reporting now so that people don't know what to trust.

CNN.com: Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns.

The cards would be mandatory for all "federal purposes," which include boarding an airplane or walking into a federal building, nuclear facility or national park, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the National Conference of State Legislatures last week. Citizens in states that don't comply with the new rules will have to use passports for federal purposes.

The Carpetbagger Report: When Speaker Pelosi leads a bipartisan delegation to Syria, she’s a traitor to her country. When conservative GOP lawmakers visit Syria, well, the right doesn’t want to talk about it.

Norbizness: Update on the virulent machinations of The Left

The Passionate Center (leaning to the Left): A federal judge suspended new rules for forests and grasslands that were illegally rewritten in 2005 by the Bush Crime Family

MyDD: The tacky Clintonista/CBC/Fox News backstory

BeggarsCanBeChoosers: A love that dare not speak its name

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Blognonymous...The Quaker Agitator...politburo diktat 2.0...The NewStandard

Congratulations to The Reaction on their two year blogiversary!

*sigh*

NY Times: (reg. req'd.)

The 110th Congress opened with the passage of new rules intended to curb the influence of lobbyists by prohibiting them from treating lawmakers to meals, trips, stadium box seats or the discounted use of private jets.
But it did not take long for lawmakers to find ways to keep having lobbyist-financed fun.
In just the last two months, lawmakers invited lobbyists to help pay for a catalog of outings: lavish birthday parties in a lawmaker's honor ($1,000 a lobbyist), martinis and margaritas at Washington restaurants (at least $1,000), a California wine-tasting tour (all donors welcome), hunting and fishing trips (typically $5,000), weekend golf tournaments ($2,500 and up), a Presidents' Day weekend at Disney World ($5,000), parties in South Beach in Miami ($5,000), concerts by the Who or Bob Seger ($2,500 for two seats), and even Broadway shows like "Mary Poppins" and "The Drowsy Chaperone" (also $2,500 for two).

The lobbyists and their employers typically end up paying for the events, but within the new rules.

Instead of picking up the lawmaker's tab, lobbyists pay a political fund-raising committee set up by the lawmaker. In turn, the committee pays the legislator's way.

NY Times offers this little menu of Lobbyist/Congress get togethers.

Pachacutec explains:

The Justice Department announced new rules yesterday that will make it harder for prosecutors to bring criminal charges against companies, bending to intense pressure from business groups that claim the government has overreached in its pursuit of financial malfeasance....read on

RawStory:

"Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be," according to the Army. The Manassas-based Guardsmen are on a one-year assignment to clamp down on both "official and unofficial Army Web sites for operational security violations."

The team, working "under the direction of the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell" hunts for "documents, pictures and other items that may compromise security" -- and then orders the parties to take the offensive content offline.

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AP via YahooNews:

Franklin Roosevelt had his first hundred days.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is thinking 100 hours, time enough, she says, to begin to "drain the swamp" after more than a decade of Republican rule.

As in the first 100 hours the House meets after Democrats - in her fondest wish - win control in the Nov. 7 midterm elections and Pelosi takes the gavel as the first Madam Speaker in history.

Day One: Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation."

Day Two: Enact all the recommendations made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Time remaining until 100 hours: Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, maybe in one step. Cut the interest rate on student loans in half. Allow the government to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies for lower drug prices for Medicare patients.

Broaden the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds - "I hope with a veto-proof majority," she added in an Associated Press interview Thursday.

All the days after that: "Pay as you go," meaning no increasing the deficit, whether the issue is middle class tax relief, health care or some other priority.

To do that, she said, Bush-era tax cuts would have to be rolled back for those above "a certain level." She mentioned annual incomes of $250,000 or $300,000 a year and higher, and said tax rates for those individuals might revert to those of the Clinton era. Details will have to be worked out, she emphasized.

"We believe in the marketplace," Pelosi said of Democrats, then drew a contrast with Republicans. "They have only rewarded wealth, not work." Read on...