Bill: That was abrupt.
[
Laughter ]
Welcome to "Politically
Incorrect." Let me tell you who's on our show
tonight.
Giselle Fernandez is here.
I'm
always glad to see your pretty face.
I see
you on the back of a bus every time I'm in
traffic.
Giselle: Lucky you.
Bill: You're on the KTLA morning news, and
you're an esteemed journalist.
Thank you for
coming back.
Barney Frank from Massachusetts'
fourth district.
How many terms in Congress
now?
Barney: Eleven.
Bill: eleven terms.
Always the answer
to "Who's the smartest guy in Congress?" That's
my answer, Barney Frank.
Thank you for
coming.
Sally Pipes, you are the president
and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute for
Policy Studies.
I don't know what that means,
but I assume you're funneling arms to the
contras.
No, I'm kidding about that.
[
Laughter ]
Sally: From my homeland in Canada.
Bill: And Jay Mohr, I think most of
America knows you as a spot-on comic
actor.
But you're also a big sports
nut.
And your new series, "More Sports,"
premieres on ESPN in prime time tomorrow night,
and then it'll be on late night Mondays.
Give
a hand to this panel, ladies and
gentlemen.
[ Applause
]
Okay.
Well, we were off all last
week on a little vacation, but obviously, things
in the Middle East did not take a
vacation.
So let's talk about that.
And
what I want to ask tonight is the fact that,
here in America, I think we have to come to
grips with the fact that whatever we see in
Israel, going on now, is going to come
here.
We haven't learned that lesson yet, I
don't think, about terrorism.
But we should
have after September 11th.
Because it went on
there for a long time, it came here.
And
this, what is going on in Israel, is going to
come here, too.
And I'm talking about suicide
bombers.
I'm talking about people with
something strapped on to them, blowing stuff up
to scare a civilian population.
Now, why
don't we get real about this now and decide
--
Jay: How? How do you get real about
it? How do you prepare for it?
Giselle: Make sure that the I.N.S.
doesn't send visas approvals after the
fact.
We make sure that we tighten all of our
security systems in our airports --
Jay: You lost me when you were relying
on the I.N.S.
Bill: Yeah.
Sally: Well, we need to get rid of the
I.N.S.
Giselle: We have to make sure that all
of our efforts are completely targeted at
breaking the infrastructure of whatever
terrorist networks are out there every place
--
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: But we can't even get the
airport stuff done.
Sally: Well, now that the government
is running the airport security, it's even
worse.
So we've got a long way to
go.
There's going be --
I am convinced
there's going to be --
Jay: Be your own federal air
marshal.
That's what I say, Bill.
Listen,
be your own --
you want flights to be safe?
Be your own federal air marshal.
Take a pen
on, and if a guy jumps up, stab him in his [
bleep ] throat.
[ Laughter and applause
]
And you know what? Do you know what?
Maybe he was just food poisoned or
something.
But you don't act like that on an
airplane.
I got a little overzealous,
representative.
Barney: No, I know there are people
who believe the pen is mightier than the sword
--
[ Laughter ]
--
But I think
you're putting too much faith in it.
In fact,
there's no one answer.
We are working on
this, and it's very difficult.
It has been
here.
It was here on September 11th.
Look,
the critical fact on September 11th was, if you
had mature adults, including some intelligent
ones ready to kill themselves, it's a very
serious problem.
Most police officers will
tell you, our criminal justice system works on
deterrents.
You can't physically, and this is
a real problem in a free society, it's very hard
physically to prevent all these things.
Once
you've got people ready to kill themselves, it's
kind of hard to deter somebody who's gonna kill
himself.
So what it's meant is a whole series
of changes.
That's why we have to have more
electronic surveillance.
It bothers people,
because you've got to do more actual physical
prevention.
It's why, with regard to
airports, we used to think that the way to
prevent bombs on airplanes was to make sure no
bag got on the plane unless the person got on
with it.
Now, we're gonna spend several
hundred million dollars to put machines in every
airport so that all the bags go through machines
to do bomb detection.
Giselle: That's what has to
happen.
Barney: And it costs a lot of money,
and it's gonna slow you down 'cause everybody's
bags have to go through that machine.
[
Talking over each other ]
Jay: I mean, if we had to bare bones
it, the suicide bombings back and forth between
the Israelis and the Palestinians.
You don't
see Mexican-Americans going, "Hey, the Louisiana
purchase." Boom! And like blowing themselves
up.
Bill: That's a good point.
Jay: And this is how you rectify
it.
The first time there's a suicide bomb,
we've actually had the World Trade Center
bombing.
And George Bush said, "You're either
with us or without us." And you know what? I
waited my entire life to hear a president say
that, and it made me proud to hear a man say,
"You're either with us or you're out."
[
Applause ]
You may or may not agree, but
I got news for you.
I got news for you.
If
a suicide bomber goes to Cape Manaleenee and
pulls the string and 20 people died, we're not
taking pot shots.
It is parking lot time,
baby.
[ Talking over each other ]
Barney: There's not suicide bombings
back and forth between the Israelis and
Arabs.
There are not Israeli suicide
bombers.
They've got military
responses.
We did do that after September
11th.
We did engage a very effective, serious
retaliation.
Nobody's doubting our right to
do it.
It's just hard to do.
And here's
the hard part.
In a free society, when
deterrence becomes less of a factor, in a free
society, how do you maintain freedom and still
give law enforcement the ability to do more? And
we've got to give law enforcement the ability to
do more.
Jay: Deterrence is, if you do it, you
no longer have a place to live because it's
gone.
Barney: You can't deter suicide people
--
bombers.
They don't care.
By the
very nature of the case --
Bill: Wait a second.
[ Talking
over each other ]
Giselle: The defense minister of
Israel spoke on television this evening, and he
said --
Jay: Oh, shut up.
[ Laughter
]
Giselle: --
You can't go after the
suicide bomber with tanks and military.
That
is true.
But you can break down their
infrastructure.
[ Talking over each other
]
We have cells they talk about
here.
We're training kids here.
We have
people training kids here that, in the name of
God, they're gonna sacrifice their life.
And
they grow up hoping for that moment when they
can kill themselves.
Jay: That's the craziest thing I've
ever heard.
[ Talking over each other
]
Sally: We have schools in the Middle
East --
Jay: Would you say that on national
television?
Giselle: What?
Jay: That we have terrorist cells in
the United States.
Giselle: "Good morning America,"
yes.
Jay: Okay.
"Good morning America."
[ Laughter ]
Do they book comics?
Maybe the kids need to be lightened up a
little.
Barney: That's a bit of a problem,
though, for your theory that if there's a
terrorist being trained in country, we blow up
the country.
Bill: But wait a second.
You said
you cannot deter.
In other Arab countries
where they also have the problem of suicide
bombers and terrorism against their own people
and their own leaders, they have
deterrence.
Jordan does a thing where, if the
suicide bomber blows something up, they will go
and kill your whole family.
Giselle: That's a deterrent.
Bill: So, you can deter a suicide
bomber.
I'm not saying we should do that, I'm
just putting it on the table.
[ Talking
over each other ]
Let's put that on the
table --
[ Applause ]
Jay: What about all the suicide
bombers that are orphans?
Giselle: I think Congressman Frank
brings up a very good point, and I think that
point is, he goes, "Look, it's gonna take
time.
It's gonna take a reallocation of
priorities and funding." And we sit there and
go, "But it'll cause delays." Yes, it'll cause
delays.
And it'll cause some annoyances,
yes.
And you know what? If you want to stay
alive and deter these wackos, that's what we
have to do.
Bill: We don't have time.
Do we?
Sally: No, we do not have time.
I
am convinced --
Jay: She knows.
Sally: I know that something terrible
is going to happen in the not-too-distant
future.
And because we are a democracy, I
think people --
September 11th was seven
months ago.
People are getting
complacent.
[ Talking over each other
]
Barney: What is it that you propose we
should do tomorrow?
Bill: Okay.
I could tell you
what.
Barney: If we wanted to do something
tomorrow, what should we do?
Sally: Well, I think that we got to
shut these cells.
We've got to do more
--
[ Talking over each other ]
Sally: With the FBI and the CIA, they
must --
I mean, that's what we pay them for,
is to search these things out.
Bill: How about, like Israel, we stop
pretending at the airport that the little old
lady from Pasadena and the male teenager from
Yemen are equally likely to blow up the
plane.
Jay: We don't, Bill.
Bill: We do that.
We totally do
that.
[ Applause ]
Israel doesn't
because they don't have the luxury to make that
--
Barney: And, in fact, are searching
young males who --
Bill: At the airport, it's
random.
That is our policy.
Jay: When I'm on tour, I have a first
class, one-way ticket.
Sally: I'm always searched.
Jay: When I'm on tour, I have a first
class, one-way ticket to each city.
And
that's how they decided to strip search me,
because my ticket is one-way.
That's the only
reason.
Giselle: We have to stop worrying
about being politically correct.
That's the
problem.
Barney: Wear clean underwear and get
over it.
Jay: I don't wear underwear, come
on.
You remember.
Barney: But the point is, we are
trying to do something.
You say, "Let's do
something right away." Yes, airport security has
been increased.
It's a lot easier to talk
about it.
You say, "Tell the FBI or the CIA
to catch them." This isn't "Law and Order"
where, in an hour, the good guys are going to
get the bad guys.
[ Talking over each
other ]
Barney: It's a complicated
world.
There are very sophisticated people
out there.
Law enforcement is trying, but
people have these unrealistic expectations.
Giselle: When is the last time El Al blew
up? It doesn't happen.
Bill: Right.
[ Talking over
each other ]
Barney: Are we really saying that
Israel has solved the problem of suicide
bombers?
Bill: No.
Jay: What show am I on?
Bill: On their airplanes.
[
Talking over each other ]
Jay: --
More sports on ESPN.
Bill: All right.
I gotta take a
commercial.
[ Applause ]
Bill: Well, the new Fortune 500 list
of the biggest companies in the world came out
today, and, for the first time, not oil, not gas
--
Wal-Mart, number one.
[ Cheers
]
The largest company in the
world.
Wal-Mart today said they're doing so
well, they're thinking of opening a second
register.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: Well, today the Netherlands
legalized euthanasia.
Very brave, because it
is still against the law in every other country
in the world, although here in America, it's
certainly not uncommon for your HMO to go tell
you to drop dead.
[ Laughter
]
[ Applause ]
Bill: Okay, now we were talking about
how we should fight terrorism.
I think we
were talking short range.
Let's talk long
range here for a minute.
Now, last week I
thought President Bush made a step forward, a
good step forward, increased foreign aid $5
billion.
Wouldn't we do a lot to stop future
terrorism by taking that massive tax cut that
went mostly to the wealthiest 1% --
Jay: No.
Bill: --
Revoke it and give it to
the people in the world --
half the world
lives on less than $2 a day.
We, of course,
find new ways to stuff food into food we're
already eating.
[ Light laughter
]
Giselle: Yes.
Bill: I always say, if they can find a
way to put a chocolate swirl in the cheese, in
the crust in the pizza --
[ Laughter
]
Giselle: And make it no calories and
no fat.
Bill: Because I want to stuff that
into the turkey at Thanksgiving --
[
Laughter ]
--
But I don't wanna do it
unless there's chocolate in the cheese, in the
crust, before it goes in the turkey.
Sally: You need to buy the
turdurken.
It's a combination of turkey,
chicken and duck.
Jay: The turdurken, wow.
[
Light laughter ]
Bill: So if we were to revoke this tax
cut for the wealthy and give the money to the
people who are dying and --
Jay: I have to say --
whenever we
are talking about the tax cut and people say
it's for the wealthy, I think there's a real
miscommunication going on between the speaker
and the listener.
It's simple mathematics, if
you make $1 million, the tax break if it's, just
say, what, 10% across the board, a guy making
$30,000 gets, you know, $3,000, and the guy
making $1 million is gonna get --
Barney: But it wasn't for the tax
cut.
The fact is that the hardest tax on
people who are working, making $40,000, $50,000,
$60,000 a year, is the Social Security payroll
tax.
Every penny that they make is
taxed.
The Bush tax cut didn't give them 1
cent of tax reduction.
It did make reductions
for people who make more than $300,000 a
year.
It also says if Bill Gates dies and
leaves all his money to his kids, they don't pay
any tax at all on his stakes.
So the tax,
it's not across the board.
A tax cut that
helps people who are paid Social Security tax,
making $60,000, $70,000, and paying every penny
in tax, that'd be one thing, but that's not the
tax cut.
We got the composition of that tax
cut did help a number of people.
And I say,
Bill, we ought to undo some of the tax cuts, not
primarily to give it to people overseas in the
first interest, but here.
All the things we
were talking about in fighting terrorism, the
CIA and the FBI aren't volunteering.
Bill: Yeah.
Barney: All those people have to get
paid.
And we've gotta spend several hundred
billion dollars more than we thought we did on
September 11th just to fight terrorism here at
home.
Sally: Absolutely.
Sally: But I'm for --
I'm for not
just a tax cut --
[ Applause ]
Jay: He is the smartest guy in
Congress.
Bill: He is the smartest guy.
Sally: I'm for increasing the tax
cut.
I'm for further tax cuts.
What we
really need to do is reduce spending in this
country.
We have all these funds, Amtrak is a
government program, we give subsidies to people
growing farm crops, we cut spending --
Jay: Yeah, but the farmers are growing
weed for the guys on Amtrak.
Bill: Yeah.
[ Everyone talking
]
Bill: You make a good point.
Giselle: The idea of the tax cut is to
generate the economy.
Right now the economy
is doing far better than anybody ever thought
possible and instead of taking it and giving it
back to generate a better economy when it's
doing it on its own, we might as well take that
money and really give it to the areas that we
need to secure our security.
Bill: Yeah.
Sally: But you know what? If we cut
spending, we cut all these government programs,
we had a tax cut, more and more people will
start businesses.
The economy will be even
better in America.
Barney: Hypothetically.
That was
the argument of 20 years ago.
It's always the
more you cut, the more you have.
The fact is
though, since September 11th, we've committed to
spend about $200 billion on the war in
Afghanistan, on increasing security at the
airports.
We're gonna buy these machines now
to check the baggage because of the suicide
bombings.
You know, you can't just forget
what we were just talking about.
That's gonna
cost us hundreds of millions of
dollars.
We're gonna have to protect the
water supply.
We've got to deal with the
public health emergency for anthrax.
To have
cut taxes before September 11th, they thought it
was a mistake.
But whether you thought it was
right or not, we now are committed to spend an
additional $300 billion, and either it comes out
onto the deficit or it comes out of other
programs.
You're right.
Medicare, no
prescription drug program for the elderly,
cutback on environmental cleanup --
these are
the Bush ways of paying for it.
Sally: Although there are a million
programs that could be cut --
Jay: I don't mind being taxed if I
know --
precisely what you just said.
If I
know that's where my tax money's going, I'm
completely fine with that.
Bill: But that's never gonna
happen.
[ Everyone talking ]
Barney: You're not gonna have
precision.
But in general, I'm gonna tell
you, George Bush is --
we talked about doing
a prescription drug program for older people,
that's --
Bill: But George Bush's father lost
his job because the Ronald Reagan tax cuts
strangled the economy so bad, which is exactly
like this cut, that George Bush had to go back
on his word.
Remember --
"Read my lips
--
no new taxes"? I mean, he got into office
and he found out, "You know what? I am gonna
have to raise taxes." You'd think his son
would've learned something from that.
[
Applause ]
Sally: No, but, Ronald Reagan, by his
tax cuts, made the economy so great that it gave
us the great years that we've had.
Giselle: And then we paid for it in a
major way and it wasn't good.
Sally: Well, you know, look at all the
foreign aid.
Look at the foreign aid.
We
are supporting regimes with our tax dollars all
over the world and these regimes are not
supportive of America.
They hate America.
Barney: Which ones are you talking
about?
Sally: All the foreign aid programs
that --
Barney: You have a great aversion of
specifics.
[ Laughter ]
Which
countries are you talking about?
Sally: Well, whether we give foreign
aid to Afghanistan.
Whether we send
--
[ Everyone talking ]
Barney: Let's talk specifically.
We
were not helping Afghanistan under the
Taliban.
Now, I hope we're gonna send money
to Afghanistan.
I hope we don't make the
mistake of having overthrown the Taliban, which
was a very good thing, and then pull back out so
they start shooting each other and there's more
trouble for us.
Yeah, we're gonna spend more
in Afghanistan.
[ Everyone talking
]
Barney: I asked you for an example,
you said Afghanistan.
Sally: Well, Central America.
There
are all kinds of countries all over the world
that get foreign aid from us and --
Barney: Which ones? Name the countries
and how much do you think is involved?
Sally: Guatemala, it's billions and
billions of dollars.
Whether it's Guatemala
--
Jay: We're always reading about that
Guatemalan regime.
[ Light laughter
]
When will the madness stop in
Guatemala?
Barney: Most of the foreign aid goes
to a very small number of countries.
There
were not billions going in foreign aid to
countries --
[ Everyone talking ]
Giselle: --
To aid the countries
that have turned out to be our greatest enemies,
like Afghanistan, like Russia.
Talking about
those loose nukes, we wonder why did that
happen.
Because we didn't send more money to
make sure.
Barney: I have to defend the
Portuguese.
That's the largest group in my
district.
Bill: Right.
[ Talking over
each other ]
Barney: You can tangle around with
everyone else, but leave way to the Portuguese,
please.
Jay: I love the Portuguese, I just
think it's the Canadians we hate.
Sally: I'm Canadian.
Excuse me?
Jay: Right.
Bill: I'll say this on another
show.
We'll take a break.
[ Applause
]
Bill: All right.
We were talking
about big money.
Today is opening day in
baseball.
You got a sports show.
Congress
held hearings about this.
I've screamed about
this for years.
I think baseball is more
preordained than wrestling.
Because the
people with the big money win.
Here's my
solution.
Sally: What about the Dodgers? The
Dodgers?
Jay: You're Canadian.
What are you
talking about?
Sally: Well, we have the Jays and the
Expos, but --
Bill: Right.
Here's my --
the
Expos have a payroll of about $30
million.
The Yankees --
Sally: Canadian or U.S.? That makes a
big difference.
Bill: U.S.
Jay: She's right.
Bill: The Yankees have a payroll of
about $110 million.
Jay: You know where most of that money
goes, Bill Maher?
Bill: Could you let me just get out
--
[ Laughter ]
Jay: I'm sorry.
Bill: --
My proposition?
Jay: It's the one thing I wish I could
change about myself was interrupting.
And I
apologize.
Bill: I say that payroll should be
factored into the standings.
For every $10
million on your payroll, you start opening day,
today, that many games behind.
So the Yankees
are minus 11 because their payroll is $110
million.
The Orioles, in their division, have
a payroll of $70 million.
The Orioles are
four games ahead of the Yankees without playing
one game.
Let them deal with it that way.
Jay: I can assure you the Orioles
starting a $70 million payroll is twice as
offensive, considering how bad they are, as the
Yankees bigger payroll.
[ Laughter
]
Bill: So they should start four
ahead.
Jay: No, they should just
quit.
[ Laughter ]
If you have a
$70 million payroll in a stadium, just because
of the stadium, a la Wrigley, will bring in $3
million through the turnstiles alone --
Sally: This is affirmative action for
baseball.
I'm ashamed of you.
Bill: Affirmative action for baseball?
Sally: If you read Kurt Vonnegut,
"Welcome to the Monkey House," he had the
government create the handicap for
general.
And he goes around, and he says,
"You're going to be handicapped by starting at
minus ten games.
You're a good baseball
hitter, so you're gonna have a bat that weighs
three times as much as the next guy.
You're a
good runner, you're gonna run with sand bags."
Giselle: Just because you have the
most money and you spend the most, doesn't mean
you have the winning team.
Look at the
Dodgers.
They spend so much money, and we do
nothing.
Bill: That's a red herring.
Sally: No, that's reality.
Barney: I don't want to not say
anything at all, so let me just say as long as
none of the money comes from the public, they
can spend whatever they want, however they
want.
I'm against that.
That's
outrageous.
[ Talking over each other
]
Bill: We're talking about that fact
that on opening day, the Expos and the Pirates
and plenty of other teams are out of it
already.
Sally: Well, they can move to a
different city.
The owner should say, "I'm
taking my team and going somewhere else."
[
Talking over each other ]
Jay: Expos --
case in point.
The
new owner of the Expos had a bad TV
contract.
So he decided, "Hey, you know what?
I don't need a TV contract." So he's an
idiot.
He's gonna lose money because the only
time you can find an Expos game is on the radio
in French because the owner's a
jackass.
[ Light laughter ]
That's
not to say to baseball, that's a guy that bought
a team.
Sally: Jay, listen.
Bill: Gotta take a break.
We'll be
back.
[ Applause ]
Bill: Well, opening day.
All I can
say is you're right.
The American pastime is
greed.
They should even the field for
baseball.
[ Applause ]
