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Paul Begala on AC360 makes the case for why it's time for Democrats to stop negotiating with Republicans on health care reform, and puts out the number on just how much Democrats have given to Republicans in order to appease them for a bill they are never going to get a single vote on. David Gergen is dead wrong here. If there is decent legislation passed with some meaningful reform, the public is not going to care who voted for it.

If it's a bad bill and nothing but a giveaway to the insurance industries, then they're not going to be happy in the end no matter what the roll call is when this is said and done. And Amy Holmes is full of it. Republicans are not going to support even the watered down co-op plan. They're already calling it all the same names they would be single payer if it was on the table, and the public option. Republicans do not want any reform of the insurance industry, or anything to be done which cuts into their profits.

COOPER: Paul, we got a text 360 question based on the -- I guess, the Barney Frank thing.

Patty says, "Do you think the Obama administration is considering moving ahead because of negative Republican reaction at town hall meetings?"

I mean, do you think this -- this idea of -- of going it alone is in response to what they have suddenly seen at all these town hall meetings?

BEGALA: I think, frankly, less the town hall meetings. That hasn't moved a lot of Democrats. I have talked to a whole lot of them. They don't seem terribly rattled by that. But I think what they're seeing is...

COOPER: What about independents?

BEGALA: Well, I mean, Democratic members of Congress.

COOPER: Oh, OK.

COOPER: Among independents, it's -- Republic opposition has hardened. And that's fine. They're the opposition party.

But to try to pass something in a bipartisan fashion is just going to be very difficult, and almost impossible. Look at this. There's four committees that have already passed out versions of health care, three in the House, one in the Senate.

If you add all those committees together, they accepted, the Democrats who run the committees, 183 Republican amendments in those four committees, 183. Despite taking all those 183 amendments, you know how many Republican votes they got? Zero, zilch, as we say in the Catholic Church, bubkes, nada.

Now, at what point do you start to get the idea that the Republicans are just not going to play along? More recently, you know, we have the Senate Finance Committee as the last hope of bipartisanship. Senator Max Baucus, the chairman, is trying to negotiate with Charles Grassley, the leading Republican on the committee.

And he's been reached out to, Grassley has, and the president has praised him in the past. And, so, what does he do? He goes home. And, you know, grandpa Twitter gets on his BlackBerry and says, the president wants to pull the plug on grandma, and then he calls the president of the United States intellectually dishonest.

That's who Obama is trying to deal with. So, there's no hope of bipartisanship.

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Howard Kurtz admits that the media "has fun" covering the pissed off Republicans at the town hall protests. Hey Howard, I didn't think having fun was supposed to be something the media considered when deciding what "news" stories to cover. And no, the coverage has not been fair. There's been very little coverage of these Remote Area Medical events with people lined up for miles and hours on end to get treatments they can't afford.

KURTZ: Jeff Zeleny, is Robert Gibbs right and Obama right that the media are providing a distorted picture of these town halls by focusing on the most confrontational moments?

ZELENY: Well, I think in a sense they are, but in a sense they're not. First, I think, I mean, the images and the passions that were shown this week from town hall meetings show real Americans having real concerns about this. I think that's one of the things that has been left out of this.

I spent most of the week in Iowa going to several town halls. There are real, patriotic voting Americans, some who voted for President Obama, who don't like what they see shaping up as a plan. But...

KURTZ: But is that the whole story?

ZELENY: But it's not the whole story. And I think we have been missing the context of all this

YouTube is fantastic. It takes us everywhere, into town meetings that we couldn't go, but it doesn't give us any context. And that has been a problem this week.

KURTZ: And when I watch cable, Amy Holmes, it almost seem like this endless loop of these loud moments. I mean, there's one woman in a blue dress, Katy Abram, we're going to play later. I've seen her 50 times.

HOLMES: Indeed. And it's perfect for television. You've got the audio, you've got the visuals, you've got the heat and the passion. But there are some loops that have not been played endlessly.

Kenneth Gladney, an African-American gentleman who was at one of these town halls, was beaten up. And yet, he has not been splashed on the front pages. He has gotten less attention than Professor Gates and his arrest at Harvard.

So, I think if you look at conservatives, the context that they are concerned about is the context that this is supposed to marginalize and characterize the entire opposition to health care plan as being fringe and hysterical. And the same treatment is not given to the other side when their folks come out to protest.

KURTZ: And Ruth Marcus, Obama keeps repeating this line about how TV loves a ruckus. And here we just heard Gibbs say the media was disappointed that no one yelled at the president after his first town hall meeting in New Hampshire.

Is there a grain of truth there?

MARCUS: Sure. Look, conflict is more interesting than lack of conflict. When flowers bloom and the sun is shining, it's not necessarily news. And so, we are all going to naturally gravitate to -- we, being the media -- naturally gravitate to the more exciting moments.

And it is more exciting if you're a journalist to have those exciting moments. And I think it's a little naive and a sign of some -- to some extent their -- the way they have been rocked back on their heels to hear the White House complaining about, you know, following the ruckus. They know that.

KURTZ: Right.

HOLMES: This White House complaining about media coverage after Obama being on the cover of "TIME" magazine how many times?

KURTZ: It's really striking though how often Robert Gibbs and the president have complained about the media coverage. And here's a funny note.

When Fox News was breaking away from that first Obama town hall, the anchor, Trace Gallagher, said, "Any contentious questions, anybody yelling, we'll bring it to you." In other words, that would cause them to go back.

Now, Jeff Zeleny, the other night, the "CBS Evening News" led off with a story about 1,500 people lined up in L.A. for a clinic that was providing free health care for a couple days. And it made me think, well, the reason the existing health care system -- we've all kind of gotten away from covering it -- I think news organizations have made an honest effort to try to unravel the complexities of this health care issue. But, let's face it, covering angry, shouting folks is a lot more fun.

ZELENY: No question about that. And that free clinic I think was one example of that. I think we had it on the cover of our paper as well, this week.

But I think if you look at the coverage, what I was struck by, talking to voters and seeing people this week, how well-informed people really were about this. Not necessarily -- all the information was not accurate.

MARCUS: They knew about the death panels?

ZELENY: Well, some, I think -- I think that was another thing that was taken a little bit -- perhaps given more attention than people actually thought. But without question, I think a lot of news organizations are devoting a lot of time to serious coverage of this. But it's a complicated issue. It's impossible to break it down in a long newspaper story, let alone a 60-second TV story.

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From Real Time with Bill Maher May 15, 2009. Bill's guests were David Simon, the creator of HBO's The Wire, former Bill Frist staffer and CNN contributor Amy Holmes, senior editor at the National Review's Richard Brookhiser and columnist Dan Savage. The panel discusses how the drug war has failed in the United States.

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The conservative panel of David Brody, Stephen Hayes, Amy Holmes and Brian Debose on CNN's "The After Party" have themselves a little wing-nut delusion festival over how George Bush will be remembered. Hayes continues to perpetuate the myth that George Bush has kept us safe from a terrorist attack. Holmes has a big chuckle over whether Dick Cheney admitting to torture will be a problem for them or not and thinks it won't matter since Bush has only got a month left in office. I guess she thinks there is some statute of limitations on what's been done that expires when Bush leaves office or that The Hague won't deal with if our country and the Obama administration sadly does not. And Brian Debose seems to think that torturing prisoners is legal but maybe not moral and that is his only concern with what's happened. Rough transcript for anyone that can't watch the video:

Brody: Alright let's move on to President Bush, his legacy. He's on the magical mystery tour now, whatever he's doing and do you get a sense Steve, what is this going to be like exactly for George Bush? How will he be remembered? Is this going to be a Harry Truman type situation where he wasn't looked upon all that great coming out of office but maybe give it ten, fifteen, fifty, seventy five years?

Hayes: Well I think that's their hope but they're certainly not taking any chances so I think the Bush administration and his top advisers have been working now for more than six months to help shape this legacy. They've been working on this thing called the Bush Legacy Project where they've been meeting regularly talking about the kind of things that they want to highlight to the country as he's on his way out.

I mean I think, you know it was easy to listen to the progressives sort of down play the fact that we haven't been attacked since 9-11. But if you look back at the public opinion polls taken at the time you know some eighty percent of Americans thought we'd not only be attacked again but we'd be subject to a major catastrophic attack. It's a big deal and it's because of his policies that we haven't been attacked.

Brody: This administration has taken some major hits over waterboarding and torture, especially Dick Cheney. Let me play a clip of Dick Cheney this week on ABC.

[Cut to video.]

Brody: Amy, how much of a problem is this for the administration?

Holmes: With one month to go, not very much and when you look at Gitmo even in the New York Times a few weeks ago said well letting them out, that could be a little tricky. Do we want to throw them into our Federal court system where they could maybe use it against us. Rendition is difficult because these countries actually don't want these guys. These are actual real terrorists that are down there. And we don't have any easy answers and all of the sudden the New York Times figured that out now that Barack Obama is going to be the Commander in Chief.

Debose: That has been the argument all together. The only problem I have with some of the messaging that has come out with respect to Dick Cheney is trying to defend the morality of torture and other things that went on versus the legality. You can defend the legality. Morally that is something totally different and I don't like the merger of those two things. That's, that's the only thing that's really been problematic.

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From Real Time Oct. 31, 2008, the panel of John Legend, Connie Schultz, Amy Holmes and Cornel West talking about redistribution of wealth in the United States and Bill has a pie chart to show just where it's gone.