Fox Fatwa on Bill Maher - Sin of criticizing Reagan, fountain head of tea party

The fatwa against Bill Maher

Watch this 4 minutes video of Bill Maher criticizing Reagan
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=582384805115084&set=vb.62507427296&type=2&theater

 

Moderate republican majority does nothing, but the intolerant ones will not watch it. This has got to change. Reagan is not God and must be subjected to criticism like any one else.

Mike Ghouse 

 

Politically correct TV executives and advertisers are rushing to censor the talk show host for exercising his right to free speech.

http://www.salon.com/2001/09/24/maher_5/

By Arianna Huffington
Since Sept. 11, we’ve been told again and again that our failure to act in a certain way would be the moral equivalent of allowing the terrorists to win. As in: “If we don’t get back to work, they win;” or “If we don’t go ahead and play football this weekend, they win;” or “If this changes the way we think about Arab-Americans, they win.” And, in a way, it’s true — few of us are going to be fighting the battle on the ground in Afghanistan, but there are ways in which we can all do our part. Ways that include resolutely defending values that define our country.
But just as this new military battleground is going to be complicated and risky, so, too, is the one at home. And in the last few days, there is one front where it appears that our enemies might be winning: the First Amendment. To the extent that we give up our fundamental freedoms of expression and dissent, then, yes, “they” have clearly won.
One of those battles is going on right now. It involves Bill Maher, who has been excoriated for what he said on “Politically Incorrect” last week. But excoriation — a valuable form of free speech — is not a problem. Censorship is.
Aren’t “they” winning when three ABC affiliates, including the Washington, D.C. station, cancel the show?
Aren’t “they” winning when networks cave in to rabble-rousing, self-promoting radio shock jocks like Dan Patrick from Houston who started this tempest in a teapot, and who midweek called the show to suggest himself as a guest?
And aren’t “they” winning when major sponsors like Federal Express and Sears put a higher price on their corporate image than on the essential democratic ingredient of free speech by pulling their ads? These companies have no problems defending capitalism, but they shrink from defending the values that make it possible.
When the country just learned with such penetrating anguish what real terror is, how can the corporate logo polishers fear Bill Maher? Particularly when the point he was making was such an important one.
So what, exactly, was his point?
In response to conservative guest Dinesh D’Souza’s assertion that people who are willing to die in service to their cause, whatever else they may be, are not “cowards,” Maher said: “We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly.”

I was sitting next to Bill when he said this. And not only did I not object, I wholeheartedly agreed. In fact, in the past, I’ve made much the same criticism of a foreign policy that obliges our military to fight at great remove from the theater of battle. It was a mistake when we bombed a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan, and it was a mistake when we killed the very Albanian refugees we were trying to protect with our indiscriminate carpet-bombing of Kosovo.
President Bush, himself, has been making much the same point that Bill Maher did: “It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.”
Presumably, if Maher had made those same comments on Sept. 10, nobody would have batted an eyelid. But by uttering the same opinion seven days later, he put the very existence of his show at risk.
Have we all gone mad? What becomes of a country when opinions considered perfectly legitimate — and indeed uttered by hundreds of academics, journalists and members of Congress — suddenly become a crime worthy of the media death penalty?
If the attacks on innocent American lives end up making us more like our attackers, don’t they most spectacularly win? And don’t the corporate sponsors, the affiliates, and ABC itself see the inconsistency in the fact that, as a way of showing solidarity against the Taliban, they are using the Taliban’s trademark weapon — the stifling of dissent?
Isn’t freedom what we’re fighting for? And isn’t lack of freedom — including freedom of the press — the hallmark of our enemies?
“Cowardly” was the injurious word uttered by Maher. Well, let me use it now where it really belongs — to describe ABC if it decides to cancel a show that is, after all, called “Politically Incorrect.”
The “Politically Incorrect” episode in question was the first since the attack. At curtain time, the entire studio was electric with anxiety. “Politically Incorrect,” though it deals with serious subjects is, after all, a satirical program. So we all held our breath as Bill stepped onto the tightrope.
Maher’s tone-setting opening comments, which took the place of his usual monologue, were nothing short of brilliant and — in light of the media firestorm that followed — remarkably prescient. “I do not relinquish,” he said, “nor should any of you, the right to criticize, even as we support, our government. This is still a democracy, and they’re still politicians … Political correctness itself is something we can no longer afford. Feelings are gonna get hurt so that actual people won’t, and that will be a good thing.” At the end of the show, the audience rose in a standing ovation.
As well as being the host of the show, Bill is my friend. And, as his friend, at that moment, and throughout that show, I was really proud of him. Proud of how perfect a note he had struck between rallying around the flag, showing grief, and expressing dissent. How he had shown that they are not mutually contradictory. And everything that has happened since has only made me prouder of him — and more disgusted at the politically correct cowards who are trying to stifle him.
We cannot let them succeed, for, as Benjamin Franklin put it, “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”

 

Allen West persists because the good for nothing Republican majority won't do a thing about it.

Evil persists because good men do nothing about it, Allen West persists because the good for nothing Republican majority won't do anything about it, but I am speaking out.

 

Allen West has a few losers who applaud him for making stupid statements like that - as long as we have them in our party, he will keep doing it. He should learn that idiots like Santorum, Gingrich and their likes were badly turned down by the Republicans. Extremism and ugliness have no place in America.

 

Republicans need to get their act together, before the American public including Republicans puke on them in 2014.

Mike Ghouse

 

Allen West: Muslims Are All 'Honor Killings, Beheadings, Suicide Bombings'
The Huffington Post  |  By Nick Wing

Former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) boiled down the entire religion of Islam to "honor killings, beheadings [and] suicide bombings" in a message tweeted Monday night in response to a column by comedian Bill Cosby.


Last week, Cosby wrote an op-ed in the New York Post encouraging African American communities to abandon apathy in an effort to better raise the next generation. In one passage, Cosby suggested that some parents could take cues from Muslims:

I’m a Christian. But Muslims are misunderstood. Intentionally misunderstood. We should all be more like them. They make sense, especially with their children. There is no other group like the Black Muslims, who put so much effort into teaching children the right things, they don’t smoke, they don’t drink or overindulge in alcohol, they protect their women, they command respect. And what do these other people do?

Allen West        ✔ @AllenWest

2day in NY Post, Bill Cosby said we should b more like Muslims. U mean honor killings, beheadings, suicide bombings? Hope ur kidding sir.

They complain about them, they criticize them. We’d be a better world if we emulated them. We don’t have to become black Muslims, but we can embrace the things that work.

West responded in a tweet ignoring the values that Cosby had chosen to highlight. Here's how he explained Muslim behavior instead:

West was an outspoken critic of Islam and Muslims throughout his short tenure in Congress. In 2011, a member of the Council on Islamic-American Relations questioned the tea party-backed congressman, asking him clarify an earlier claim that the Quran commands Muslims "to carry out attacks against Americans and innocent people." West appeared upset at the man's defense of moderate Islam, telling him not to "try to blow sunshine up my butt." West had long contended that CAIR had ties to extremist groups.

CAIR got the last laugh earlier this year, however, when the organization auctioned off a letter written by West to its Florida chapter for more than $2,500.
Thank you.

Mike Ghouse
(214) 325-1916/ text
....... Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a writer on pluralism, politics, peace, Islam, Israel, India, interfaith, and cohesion at work place. He is committed to building a Cohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day at www.TheGhousediary.com. He believes in Standing up for others and has done that throughout his life as an activist. Mike has a presence on national and local TV, Radio and Print Media. He is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity show on Fox TV, and a commentator on national radio networks, he contributes weekly to the Texas Faith Column at Dallas Morning News; fortnightly at Huffington post; and several other periodicals across the world. His personal site www.MikeGhouse.net indexes all his work through many links.