Bill Maher: Victory Begins at Home

Ladies and gentlemen, Bill Maher.

Thank you very much.

How are you doing?

Thank you, everybody.

Thank you.

Wow.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Oh, boy.

Please, folks...

Thank you very much.

Thank you. That is a wonderful reception.

I appreciate that. It is great to be back in New York.

Great to be back on Broadway.

The show you're about to see tonight

is one I did for a little while here on Broadway in the spring,

and the idea behind that show was embodied

in that first poster that you see...

"Victory begins at home."

The idea that when you're in a war,

the home front, us, the citizens, can make a difference.

We can count.

The government used to believe that.

They used to tell you that.

They used to make posters like that.

But they don't do it anymore.

So I thought I'd make a few.

Now, of course, my posters might be a little different

than what the government would tell you.

But then the government tells you things like

drugs fund terrorism.

'Cause what better way to get the heat off the oil companies?

You can always... yeah, you know...

You can always blame anything on drugs.

There's an anti-marijuana commercial running.

Have you seen this ad? Where two 12-year-old boys are left home alone

and they start smoking pot

and then one of them finds Dad's gun

and shoots the other accidentally

because they're high.

Only in America is the villain in this scene

not the guns or the shitty parenting, but the pot.

It's... it's always the pot.

Drugs fund terrorism. Come on.

Terrorists get their money from the same place everybody gets their money...

From their relatives.

And their relatives sell oil.

And therein is the problem.

They have the oil,

we have the Ford fuck-you-mobiles.

Which I'm not here to speak ag...

Look, I am not the car police.

I don't want to be the car police.

I understand Americans love their cars.

I don't get it, but I know Americans love cars

and would hump them if they could.

But does anybody really need a Hummer

in city traffic?

You know? I mean...

I mean, what... what is next?

"Honey, let's take a tank to the PTA meeting tonight."

You know, Arabs are in the oil business.

Same as Texans, you know?

That's... no, that... that is not...

No, no, no, that is...

That is not to equate our government.

It's just to say that a political party

that gets a lot of its campaign contributions from oil companies

is not going to make this connection.

And neither are the Democrats

who like the money they get from automobile unions.

So the two parties are gonna do the only thing they ever really do well

on a bipartisan level...

They're going to change the subject.

Ladies and gentlemen, on September 11th, 2001,

America was attacked by a squad of Saudi Arabians

working out of Germany, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

And by that I mean we were attacked by Iraq.

What the...

What?

Yes, the true axis of evil in America

is the genius of our marketing

combined with the stupidity of our people.

The... the way they were able to morph bin Laden into Hussein

was just too easy, wasn't it?

I mean, I'm glad Hussein is gone,

but the Joker is not the Riddler,

and...

on this particular crime,

there was no blood in his Bronco.

The...

Do you know that the...

You know that the governor of this state

suggested that we melt down the toppled statues

of Saddam Hussein from Baghdad

and use them in a new World Trade Center

so that we could send a message to the world

that we are a people who cannot tell Arabs apart.

Which all seems especially hypocritical

when you think about... the first thing

the administration told us after the attacks

was no lumping the terrorists in with the whole Muslim world.

These are terrorists who happened to be Muslim,

but don't enflame them all by lumping.

But then when they can't find bin Laden,

"Lump!

Who said no lumping? We love lumping!

We're lumping people!"

It must've been so frustrating for them, you know?

After all that tough talk about,

"We're gonna get 'em dead or alive."

Which at some point became, "Well, he's either dead or alive.

You know, that's what we meant.

It's"...

"It's not about one man."

But it is, and people wanna know, where's Waldo?

And now we can't find Hussein,

the guy we went after because we couldn't find bin Laden.

And now... and now they're both making tapes.

It's like...

I guess what we're trying to do is get them into some sort of rappers' war

where they're dissing each other on each other's records,

and hopefully they'll pop a cap in each other's ass

or s... I don't...

But, look, if you were against this war

or you don't like the president, you have to root for the plan

because this may have been Bush's war,

but it's America's peace now.

And you have to root for the plan to succeed.

The plan, as I understand it,

being the total humiliation and liquidation of Iraq,

followed by her rebuilding from scratch in our image.

Otherwise known as Scientology.

It is amazing to me what lies people care most about.

It blows my mind that the one lie

that they still can't get over is Monica Lewinsky.

That... that one is the standard of mendacity

that ever came out of the White House.

When I think about the lies...

The huge, steaming-turd whoppers

that I've heard that have affected all of our lives

just in my lifetime... "JFK shot by a lone gunman."

"We're winning the war in Vietnam."

"We didn't trade arms for hostages."

"Global warming needs more study."

"Clarence Thomas is the most qualified person we can find."

But the one they can't get over is...

"I did not get my dick sucked by that woman."

I'm so...

"My hand was not on the titty when she was on the knob

and that technically was not... "

This is what people obsess about?

It just backs up my case that this is a feminized country

because obviously the worst thing anyone can ever do in America

is get a blowjob.

But lying about a war? Eh, so what?

And, you know, look. There is no doubt

that this is a war that started under false premises

because this is a war that originally was sold to us

as one we had to fight for our own self-preservation, right?

Because there was this meteor named Iraq

heading right for us,

and that if we did not get rid of Saddam Hussein,

the moon would crash into the Earth

and eagles would eat your cock.

But when nobody bought that bullshit,

Bush started to end every speech with,

"And did I mention the torture?

The torture! He gassed his own people!"

Uh, yeah, when your dad was president.

And he was so upset about it, he almost interrupted his golf game.

I mean, talk...

Talk about a delayed reaction.

Even the Kurds are like, "Come on, it was the '80s."

"People were experimenting. It was a crazy time."

I mean, this is why we never really had a coalition, you know.

We had England because Tony Blair

is George Bush's prison bitch.

And... and we had 200 Australians

and a Polish Jeep driver named Lars.

That...

And by the way, on that subject, if I could say one thing.

If I could give the president just one bit of advice,

it's not a critique, but, Mr. President,

when you have those joint press conferences,

let Tony Blair do the talking, you know?

Come on, Mr. President.

You're too big for that. You're the star of this thing.

You're Clint Eastwood.

Let the gay English character actor...

lay the pipe.

No, war is a lot easier than peace.

There's a lot of bright guys in that administration,

but they forgot about that.

But it is too late for the Democrats to be crying foul

about this weapons of mass destruction stuff.

They knew that was hyped bullshit

when they voted for it in October.

Now, should the President of the United States

be a little bit more careful about the intelligence he gets

and perhaps not trust Austin Powers?