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From Real Time with Bill Maher Oct. 16, 2009.

Alan Grayson did a great job on Bill Maher’s show and countered some of Bill’s nonsense—like him citing a study that he doesn’t source—that the problem with our health care system’s costs are too many doctors just wanting to prescribe unneeded drugs, unneeded tests and unneeded surgeries. Grayson disagrees with Maher and says that our real problem is the amount of money the insurance companies are taking off the top and making money from denying care.

Grayson responds by saying “One person’s unnecessary test is another person’s life saving test. You can’t get around that”. He reminded Maher that the Bush administration skewed a study to show what they wanted it to show when it came to the amount of money trial lawyers are adding to the total cost of health care in the United States and he gets Maher to concede that “studies can say anything”.

When asked if he was disappointed in the President and how he’s “thrown in with these corporatist Democrats” and Maher says he knows Grayson is not one of them Grayson likens himself to Huey Long and says “You’ve got to put some jam on the bottom shelf where the little man can reach it”.

Grayson defends President Obama and says reads things a little differently and he thinks Obama is trying not to repeat Bill Clinton’s mistakes on getting health care reform passed.

Grayson says “Instead he’s letting Congress decide how to do things and it’s going way too slow. There’s a 122 Americans who die every single day because they don’t have health care. And I’ve been saying that for weeks. We’ve got to pick up the pace. We’ve got to save those lives. But I understand what the President’s doing and you know, people attack him and he turns the other cheek like any good Muslim would do”.

When Maher says his comment is going to be played on Fox News, Grayson says they have no sense of humor. Maher says it will be used as an attack ad against him and Grayson says they’ve got plenty of material already, so he's not too worried about it.

Grayson finished up the interview by saying we should be out of Afghanistan already and that he didn’t support a “war tax” but would be against anyone sending troops anywhere if we don’t have a good reason to be there.

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From Real Time Oct. 16, 2009. Bill reminds us that just because George Bush is gone, comedians still have plenty to work with thanks to the crazy that is the Republican Party.

Maher: It turns out there were plenty of ridiculous Republicans behind him that we just couldn't see.

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From Real Time Oct. 9, 2009. It's time to repeal DADT President Obama. As Bill noted in his article at the HuffPo-- Everyone Deserves Equal Rights:

New Rule: Everyone deserves equal rights. That's why they're called "equal" and "rights." Tomorrow night President Obama will speak before a gay rights group, and on Sunday there will be a massive gay rally in Washington, or as I call it, the Million Mo March. Which makes this weekend the perfect time for Obama to announce he's repealing "don't ask, don't tell" and committing to a full-throated endorsement of gay marriage. One, because it's the right thing to do and two, because it will throw the conservative base into such a frenzied, pants-shitting panic that they'll drop all that BS about death panels and socialism and let us all get some actual work done.

But of course that's not going to happen. I can tell you what the president is going to tell his audience tomorrow: How much he supports them. How much he agrees with them. And how he wishes he was President so he could help them out. But here's the thing about being president. There isn't a lot you can do without either Congress, Oprah or Goldman Sachs behind you. But there is one thing the president can do with the stroke of a pen: He can let gays serve openly in the military. It's called an executive order. Harry Truman wrote one in 1948 for blacks in the military, and that was that.

"Don't ask, don't tell" has always been bad policy that was made out of a bullshit political compromise. You know, like you're doing now with health care. It never made sense to begin with: "Here in the Army we're all about honor. And trusting the man next to you. Now lie to my face about your sexuality, Johnson, or I'll report you behind your back." But forget all the good arguments for repeal, like because it was promised to us in the campaign or because it gets lonely on a submarine. Do it because it'll make Rush Limbaugh explode like a bag full of meat dropped from a helicopter. Do it because it'll make Sarah Palin go rogue in her pants.

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From Real Time Oct. 2, 2009. Bill Maher ponders what Sarah Palin's book title might have been if she had a different ghost writer.

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Real Time's New Rules for Oct. 2, 2009.

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Real Time's New Rules for Sept. 25, 2009.

Maher: And finally if America can't get off its back and get something done it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the You Tube video of the puppy that can't get up. As long as we're pathetic, we might as well act like it's cute.

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Real Time's New Rules for Sept. 18, 2009.

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The panel discussion from this week's Real Time with Bill Maher on the media's constant quest for false balance and pretending there are always two equally valid sides to every issue. This is something that any of us who monitor the cable news daily nonsense already know but it was nice to hear some of these things said aloud for once.

Too many of the talking heads on television are nothing but out of work political consultants. They want a left and right person to battle it out for ratings instead of bringing in people who are actually knowledgeable on a subject. They give cranks equal weight in a debate when they deserve to be dismissed rather than given air time, and they confuse balance for accuracy.

The media has done their best to dumb down the American electorate which unfortunately doesn't always need any help in that department, and as Bill points out, sadly they're doing a good job.

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Real Time's New Rules for Sept. 11, 2009. Bill wants everyone to get off the couch and get out there and protest. I hate to break this to him, but there is a movement out there by the left doing the same thing as the tea baggers. The media has just decided not to cover it and they don't have Fox's Griff Jenkins going along for the ride and Fox Noise promoting it night after night.

I do agree that more people taking to the streets would help. Maybe we can get Bill to agree to cover it so there's not a complete media blackout since he thinks it's so important. Perhaps he can have one of his "Real Time Real Reporters" ride along with the Reform Now bus.

(Warning... video not safe for work.)

Maher: The Democrats just never learn. Americans don’t really care which side of an issue you’re on as long as you don’t act like p#&$ies. When Van Jones called the Republicans assholes, he was actually paying them a compliment. He was. He was talking about how they can get things done even when they’re the minority as opposed to the Democrats who can’t seem to get anything done even when they control both houses of Congress, the Presidency and Bruce Springsteen.

You know I love Obama’s civility, his desire to work with his enemies… he’s positively Christ-like. In college he was probably the guy at the dorm parties who made sure the stoners shared their pot with the jocks.

But we don’t need that guy now. We need an asshole. Mr. President, there are some people who are never going to like you. That’s why they voted for the old guy and Carrie’s mom.

You’re not going to win them over. Stand up for the 70% of Americans who aren’t crazy.

And speaking of that 70%, when are we going to actually show up in all this? You know tomorrow Glenn Beck’s army of zombie retirees are descending on Washington. It’s the million moron march. Although they won’t get a million of them of course because many will be confused and drive to Washington State.

But they will make news because people who take to the streets always do. They’re at town hall meetings screaming at the Congressmen. We’re on the couch screaming at the T.V. You know especially in this age of Twitters and blogs and Snuggies, it’s a statement just to leave the house.

But leave the house we must because this is our last best shot for a long time to get the sort of serious health care reform that would make the United States the envy of several African nations.

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Bill Moyers visited the set of Real Time, and had an honest discussion about why we're going to be lucky to see any real reform on health care with all of the money being thrown at both the Republican and Democratic parties from the insurance industries, big pharma, and Wall Street. Bill is exactly right here, and this needs to be looked at as a moral issue, and not what's in the interest of corporate profits or a good business model.

Thom Hartmann talks to Jeremy Scahill about his run in with Chuck Todd on Real Time with Bill Maher this past Friday.

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It appears Chuck Todd didn't take too kindly to Jeremy Scahill's drubbing he received on Real Time the other night. From Glenn Greenwald:

According to Scahill (via email), Todd approached him after the Maher show and the following occurred:

Right as we walked off stage, he said to me "that was a cheap shot." I said "what are you talking about?" and he said "you know it." I then said that I monitor msm coverage very closely and asked him what was not true that I said on the show. He then replied: "that's not the point. You sullied my reputation on TV."

Media stars are so unaccustomed to being held accountable for the impact of their behavior -- especially when they're on television -- that they consider it a grievous assault on their entitlement when it happens.

Check out the entire post where Glenn's got much more on some similar events going on lately besides just his own dust up with Chuck Todd. Joe Klein got into it with Aimai of NoMoreMisterNiceBlog who happens to be I.F. Stone's granddaughter. Glenn and Marcy Wheeler had an ongoing feud with Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. And now we've got Scahill and Todd's back and forth on Real Time.

Glenn summed all of this up much better than I could ever hope to:

Todd's condescending responses illustrate the same point as the above episodes with Klein and Ambinder: in the eyes of Beltway mavens, those who warned about and worked against the radicalism and lawbreaking of the Bush administration are the fringe, crazed, out-of-touch radicals. While Todd was fiddling around with pretty colored maps and fun polling games, Scahill was courageously investigating one of the most corrupt, dangerous and lethal private corporations in the world, yet it's Todd who understands and must solemnly explain the hardened realities of politics to Scahill, the confused and silly Leftist.

There's little question that when people look back at this period in American history, it will be difficult to comprehend what happened in the Bush era -- and especially how we blithely started a devastating war over complete fiction, while simultaneously instituting a criminal torture regime and breaking whatever laws we wanted. But far more remarkable still will be the fact that, other than a handful of low-level sacrificial lambs, those responsible -- both in politics and the establishment media -- not only suffered no consequences, but continued to wield exactly the same power, with exactly the same level of pompous self-regard, as they did before all of that happened. Looking back several decades or more from now, who will possibly be able to understand how that happened: the almost perfect inverse relationship between one's culpability and the price they paid for what they unleashed?

In fairness to Chuck Todd, he was not one of the ones out there cheerleading for the war and I really liked him when I'd see him on C-SPAN's Washington Journal about every morning when he was working for The Hotline. He's a numbers guy. He was one of the best in the business at reading and sorting through the numbers on how our elections were going to turn out. I don't think coming to MSNBC however, has been good for Chuck Todd.

And now he's on there with the rest of them repeating the narrative of how terrible for the Democrats it would be if any investigations are allowed to happen, and if anyone from the Bush administration is held accountable. It's all politics to Chuck.

Here are my thoughts on that. One of the reasons it would be turned into a game of politics is because Chuck Todd and the rest of the beltway media would report it as such, instead of a legal matter. What Chuck Todd is relaying is what the Republican Party would like to see happen if the Democrats or this Department of Justice goes after the law breaking. It would be the choice of those in the media to validate the Republicans' sniping, which would inevitably follow (and already has for that matter), or to dismiss them as playing partisan politics in order to cover up law breaking for political gain.

Of course since the media was part and parcel in allowing the atrocities of the last eight or nine years, that's never going to happen.

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Chuck Todd got called out on Real Time by Jeremy Scahill for calling investigations into torture "political catnip". Apparently Todd has taken no lessons from his back and forth with Glenn Greenwald on the issue since he was still as defensive as ever when someone with well more than an ounce of journalistic integrity calls him out for his lack of it.

Todd went on Morning Joe defending Cheney, and Glenn Greenwald ripped him for the same thing Scahill took him to task for on Real Time:

NBC's Chuck Todd -- who, remember, is billed as a reporter covering the White House, not a pundit expressing opinions -- was on MSNBC's Morning Joe on Tuesday discussing reports that Eric Holder is likely to appoint a prosecutor to investigate Bush torture crimes. Needless to say, everyone agreed without question that investigations were a ridiculous distraction from what really matters and would be terribly unfair. This, along with Mika Brzezinski and Pat Buchanan, is what Todd argued after he was asked about the Holder story and the Cheney/CIA story (video is below):

Todd: Look, let's take all of these stories in one big thing: really, the only important thing -- the most important thing -- the President has to focus on is getting the public's trust on the economy, and pushing health care. Cheney, the CIA, and in some respects Sotomayor are cable catnip --

Brzezinski: Yep.

Todd: It's news catnip - but they're sort of clouding the two most important issues the President's got to get his arms around this week: winning back trust of the middle on the economy and pushing health care through.

Brzezinski: I would completely agree with you, yet the questions are being raised by news organizations like the New York Times. Pat Buchanan, chime in, because as I've been reporting [sic], and I'll say it for Chuck's benefit here: speaking to a former senior intelligence official yesterday on the phone for quite some time, saying that this program that Cheney was apparently blocking the CIA from giving Congressional intelligence officials information on, was not even a program -- it was not operational -- it was not even at the stage where you would tell Congress about it or talk to high-level administration officials about it.

Is this much ado about nothing to get the attention off what needs to be done?

Buchanan: Well it's exactly what Chuck said, it's a massive distraction . . . . Let me ask Chuck this: it seems to me you got a real problem for the administration if you go forward at Holder's level --

Todd: Right.

Buchanan: and they appoint a Special Counsel, the first thing the CIA guys do is say is: yeah, we did it; we waterboarded them; and here's the authorization from these lawyers who said we could do it --- the lawyers come in and say we were asked for our opinion and Cheney was the guy who asked us, and the President told us to go ahead and do it. Aren't you right into the White House of the Bush administration as soon as you appoint that independent counsel?

Todd: And I think that's why, in the President's gut, he doesn't want to do this. They've made that clear they don't want to do this. I think that's what you see a lot of the West Wing -- they don't want to get into this because of what you're saying.

Ultimately, a lawyer gets paid to not tell you what the law is -- but to interpret the law, to tell you how far you can push things until you cross a line that a judge will say is illegal. That's what lawyers get paid to do: they get paid to interpret the law, and interpret the law in a way that allows you to stretch things.

You are on a slippery slope - this is a very dangerous aspect to go after, because these CIA guys will say, as you said Pat, we got the letter from these lawyers in the Bush Justice Department that said we can do this. You can't suddenly change the law retroactively because there's another interpretation of this. I'm sure there are a legal minds that will fight and say I don't know what I'm talking about here, but it seems to me that's a legal and a political slippery slope.

This is about as typical a discussion as it gets among media stars as to why investigations are so very, very wrong and unfair and unwise. Still, this discussion in particular vividly highlights several important points worth noting about the role of the establishment media.

Todd later tried to defend himself by doing an interview with Glenn as anyone who reads this blog may recall. Todd didn't fare much better with Scahill on Real Time and was making the same sorry arguments that Glenn already ripped him apart on. Heaven forbid that might stop him from doing it again with an audience that probably had no idea what Scahill was talking about.

It's always enjoyable to me watching these beltway bobble heads who are in love with cozying up to power have to answer to someone who is not, and who actually wants some real reporting to take place, and to see how they react. I look forward to reading Glenn Greenwald's response to Todd's statements tonight if he decides it's worth taking the time to write about.

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Real Time's Real Reporter Dana Gould goes from a town hall protest with angry right wingers carrying Obama is Hitler signs and mad as hell, to a Remote Area Medical clinic, where the people waiting in line were polite and hopeful. Gould's response at the end of the segment is priceless, and not safe for work.

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From Real Time, President Obama's former doctor, David Scheiner speaks out on the benefit of moving to a single payer health insurance plan in the United States.