Season 7, Episode 1 - "February 20, 2009"
20 February, 2009
Guests: Tina Brown, editor-in-chief of TheDailyBeast.com; Chrystia Freeland, managing editor of the Financial Times; Brigitte Gabriel, journalist; Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) On the Economy Clint Eastwood was right to hang on to that Gran Torino. It's worth more than the home. – Bill Maher Bernie [Madoff] stole $50 billion, mostly from other Jews. For Jews, this was the worst pyramid scheme since the actual pyramids. – Bill Maher I mean, frankly, all we need now to find out is that, you know, Warren Buffett is a crook and Derek Jeter took steroids, and the whole country would collapse. – Tina Brown Well, the real problem is, is that we need to do a lot less. We should be doing hardly anything in Washington. But, politically, that is unacceptable. – Rep. Ron Paul [The free market] is free in the same way a reality show is real. – Bill Maher On the Middle East America went to four wars defending Muslims in Muslim countries. We went into Kuwait to liberate a Muslim nation from Saddam Hussein, who attacked them in the 1990. We went into Bosnia, fighting the Christians to liberate the Muslims. So, you know, we try to do a lot to help the Islamic world. – Brigitte Gabriel You know, it's one thing to win hearts and minds, but you have to remember: it's more important to keep them in bodies. – Bill Maher On Afghanistan Unfortunately, the Bush Administration for eight years had this totally laissez faire attitude towards Afghanistan, that instead of dealing with that, they invented this war in Iraq. In a way, Obama has been left with no choice. – Tina Brown The Democrats haven't been in charge too long yet, but they're going to lose credibility if they expand the war. What about sending 17,000 troops into Afghanistan? I mean, that's not the way to have change. I want the troops all to come home. – Rep. Ron Paul It's easy to say Afghanistan is ungovernable. Look, it's not just how long we've been trying. This is the 20th anniversary of the Russian failure there. I mean, it is obviously very difficult. But, there are also real dangers that it could get worse if there's a total American withdrawal. – Chrystia Freeland
