Well it’s hard to argue that last week was a helluva news week (something Nashville may have discovered the hard way). On Friday’s Real Time Bill Maher hit upon a theme for the week: incompetence. Between the BP Oil spill (“an act of Dick Cheney”), the flash crash on Wall St, and the foiled bombing of Times Sq, “we continue to do a much better job of destroying America than our enemies.”

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The panel, which included Salman Rushdie, Alexis Glick, and David Frum — a mixed group if there ever was one — mostly agreed. Said Rushdie: “We’re just lucky that the people coming after us are more incompetent [than the ‘fat fingers’ on Wall St.]”

Maher is also unwilling to put the blame fully on the immigration system: “Let’s talk about the psychology of this guy…he was in a sh*tty marriage, he had a dead-end job, his house was under water, if that’s not an American I don’t know

what is.” He later suggests it’s religion, which prompts Rushdie to point out “before we tar the entire Muslim community in America” that the vendor who notified the cops was also a Muslim.

Hyperbole aside, I think Maher, and everyone else as far as I can tell, is missing a salient point here: If this was real religious fanaticism wouldn’t Shahzad have stayed in the car? Thus far every attack or attempted attack on U.S. soil since and including 9/11 has been a suicide mission. Shahzad fled the scene of the attack presumably in order to save himself. That strikes me as very American. Meanwhile, Glick thinks economic stability leads to political instability, though, she concurs, Tea Party protests are a long ways from attempting to build car bombs.

Later Maher speculates that Rush Limbaugh has gone over the edge because he feels the need to compete with Glenn Beck. Full video of the panel below.
Tags: Alexis Glick, Bill Maher, David Frum, Real Time, Salman Rushdie