Episode #345 (Originally aired 3/6/15)

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Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO late night series, Real Time with Bill Maher.

Start the clock.

Good afternoon.

Afternoon.

Time will be

real giant ball

giants.

Thank you very much.

Wow.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And

let me just say thank you for really applauding and not randpauling it.

You know what I'm talking about?

This is an amazing week.

A week of a lot of fake scandals and one real one.

We'll get to that.

But here's my favorite fake one.

You saw on Tuesday, the Prime Minister of Israel spoke before Congress.

The Republicans fucking love this guy.

I thought they were gay for Reagan, but I mean they were jumping up and down like they're at a Taylor Swift concert.

And

okay, but here's the scandal.

The next day,

all these conservative outlets got on Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator, because he wasn't clapping enthusiastically enough.

Because we live in North Korea now, people.

And the next day, Rand paul said i gave the man 50 standing ovations

one for each jew in kentucky

what do you want me to do play tevy and fiddler on the roof i mean apparently they do i mean the republicans went all out ted cruise was wearing star of david face paint

and a clip on beard.

Lindsey Graham was throwing his panties right at Beebe.

It was amazing.

Mitch McConnell was running around showing everybody his circumcision.

I mean, these...

Now, of course, they did it to get Obama's goat.

But, you know, Obama got the last laugh this week because another fantastic jobs report came out.

Analysts...

Analysts say the economy is in ideal shape for a Republican to come in and wreck it again in 2016.

Isn't that good?

Now, listen to this.

295,000 new jobs last month.

Unemployment is down to 5.5%, which the Fed says is full employment.

For the first time since 1977, private sector job growth has exceeded 200,000 for 12 consecutive months.

Or as they report on Fox News, Hillary used the wrong email.

Oh my god.

Oh the humanity she used her own email address instead of the office one.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is a calamity the likes of which this country has never seen.

I'll never forget where I was when I learned that four brave Americans were CC'd on the wrong server.

Yes, it turns out the Clintons had set up their own personal Clintonemail.com account and people are shocked.

Democrats got a website to work?

And

now,

Curry says it was all a big mistake.

She said, after Bill used the internet, the keyboard keys would stick.

And that's why she...

It's funny, I heard John McCain yesterday.

He said, McCain said, he doesn't use email at all.

He said, because, you know, with my temper, I just don't trust him.

Okay,

you know what, Grandpa?

We know that's not why you don't use email.

Republicans are not the most tech-savvy people in the world.

McCain thinks megabytes is the Secret Service code name for Chris Christie.

So we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking civil rights march in Selma, Alabama.

No one can forget the

images from that horrible day when police with fire hoses and dogs and clubs viciously attacked Bill O'Reilly.

So President Obama and dozens of people from Congress are gathering there to commemorate the event.

And police from Ferguson, Missouri say they'll also be there to hand out jaywalking tickets.

Yeah, now that's the real scandal I was talking about.

Did you see what went on?

The Justice Department released a report about what was going on in Ferguson, Missouri.

Apparently the entire town is basically a scheme run by racist cops to arrest black people, not just arrest them and harass them, but then finance the town.

With the tickets and the fines on the on the police cards, right on the side, it said to collect and serve

All right, and now what you really care about, Harrison Ford.

He's fine.

His condition has been upgraded from cranky to grumpy.

As I am sure you know by now, Harrison Ford owns a vintage World War II era, as most of us do,

plane which crashed at a golf course here in LA.

And he's something of a hero because when the engine failed, he managed to avoid crashing into houses thus preserving the rights of future celebrities to fly dangerous antique aircraft over major cities.

How about that ladies and gentlemen?

Hero!

You know it really is an amazing story because when the plane crashed two doctors who happened to be golfing rescued him and treated him and possibly saved his life.

People are calling it a miracle.

Doctors working on their golf day?

All right, we got a great show.

David Axara, Genevieve Wood, Matt Taibbe are here.

A little later, he'll be speaking with writer director John Ridley.

All right, let's meet our panel.

Hey, guys.

All right, he is a contributing to Rollerstone, Rolling Stone magazine, and author of The Divide, American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.

Matt Taibbi is with us.

Hey, Matt.

She is a senior contributor to the Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal and our old friend from Politically Incorrect, Been Too Long, Genevieve Wood.

Hey, how you doing?

Welcome back.

Thank you.

He's the former senior advisor to President Barack Obama and author of Believer, My 40 Years in Politics.

David Axelrod is over here.

Okay,

so

I mentioned in the monologue there was a few scandals this week, a few I thought were fake and one that was real.

We should talk about the real one first, that's Ferguson.

But let's wait till John comes out to do that because let's be honest, he's he's black and we're not.

So let's talk about Hillary and her emails first.

Now I say it's a fake scandal, maybe it's not.

Let's just ask that question.

Is there any there there?

Should we be talking about it?

I think there's there.

I mean, we don't know what's there yet, but no, I think this is a real scandal.

I think it's a real problem.

Hillary Clinton basically did not do what she even told her own staff at the State Department to do, which is do not use personal email for official business.

Yet the whole time, she's doing it.

And you know, whether there was a law before and after, while she was in that office, a law was out there that said you should not be using your personal email for this kind of activity.

It was a statute.

It's a rule.

A rule.

It's a rule.

It's a rule that I'm not.

It's not a law.

It's in the law.

It's in the employee handbook.

Yeah, it's not in the constitution.

It's in the employee's handbook.

That

you would think a leader would follow.

And I think, look, this is something that we're going to do.

We already kind of fudged it from rule to law.

We already kind of...

I'll give you that one.

But these are national security secrets that we're talking about here.

It could be easier to hack into her email than the government's.

It's one thing I think Adams and the government should be doing is making sure that

Genevieve's worried about national security here.

Well I am worried about national security.

It just seems our scandals have gotten so lame.

Deflate gate and emails.

I long for the day of the blowjob.

Anyway,

I'm also very curious as to why some scandals capture the imagination and others don't, because this seems to me like not a lot.

But here's something that happened this week.

I take it a little personally because it happened very close to where I grew up in northern New Jersey.

For the last 10 years,

there's been a lawsuit to recover almost $9 billion from ExxonMobil because they environmentally contaminated, as they do, the wetlands in that part of the country.

Chris Christie intervened this week and settled for $250 million

from almost 9 billion.

That to me seems like a bigger scandal.

So the difference here is that you have to read past the third paragraph of the news story to understand the Christian issue.

No, that's why it's not resonating with people.

I mean the Hillary thing people immediately understand what that's all about because it's Hillary email secrets.

Wow.

This is actually

and she's running for president.

And she's running.

I mean Chris Christie's running for president too, but he's not the presumptive nominee.

Right, exactly.

So I mean that's why I mean, national security is important, but.

But she hasn't said she's running for president.

And she could be faking these last 67 years.

She's setting up a new email account for her campaign.

I just suspect the outrage would be a little bit different

were she not in a position to be running for president, being the nominee.

But that seems like something, this Chris Christie thing, that actually affects people and people's lives.

And the other one is kind of nothing.

It might affect someone if we find out, but I have a feeling, you know, the last laugh is going to be for Hillary when we find out that her emails are just as boring as the rest of her life.

She's just not that interesting.

Here's what I don't know.

Bill's emails.

Those would be interesting.

Here's what I don't understand.

You got Chris Christie.

He's got a multi-billion dollar pension problem.

He's been downgraded eight times.

You'd think he'd want to get their money.

He needs their money.

Right.

He'll take their money.

Well, apparently the reason for that, though, is that he's getting the money more quickly than he would otherwise.

That's right.

And let's be clear, I mean it was, as you said, almost a nine, it was like an $8.9 billion lawsuit that they wanted.

But lawsuits always start out at a really high dollar amount.

Exxon came back and said, hey, how about we give you $3 million?

That's how different.

So they ended up with about $250 million.

What would happen to be the highest amount New Jersey's ever gotten from one of these kind of suits?

Three cents of a dollar.

They spent 10 years on this lawsuit.

But Bill, the same week they got another $190 million from another energy firm.

So I mean, the money is coming in there.

And I think that the point, no, but you made a good one.

This could have, this has been in court since 2004.

All right.

So I couldn't help notice another irony this week as Fox News loved the Hillary story, obviously.

They were like a dog with a new chew toy.

And yet not a word about the Bill O'Reilly situation.

And

let me read to you Bill O'Reilly's words and you tell me if he is not just a blatant bald ass liar.

He said,

I've reported on the ground in active war zones from El Salvador to the Falklands.

No,

you haven't.

There's no gray area here.

A war zone is where the war is going on.

You were in the capital of a country that was at war, but the war was 1,200 miles away.

Two, Bill O'Reilly, I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head.

No, you saw pictures of that.

Bill O'Reilly, I've seen Irish terrorists kill and maim their fellow citizens in Belfast with

no, again, you saw pictures of it.

It's not the same thing.

I've seen pictures of the Hindenburg.

I don't say I saw the Hindenburg go down.

I mean

Okay, one

One last one.

Okay, there was a guy who was a friend of a Russian guy in America.

He was a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.

So as you might imagine, he's been of some interest to reporters for all the years after the Kennedy assassination.

Maybe that's why in 1977 he killed himself.

Okay,

here's Bill O'Reilly on that in his book, Killing Kennedy.

As the reporter knocked on the door, he's talking about this guy's house, he heard the shotgun blast that marked the suicide of this Russian, assuring assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald will never be fully understood.

By the way, that reporter's name was Bill O'Reilly.

No, it plainly wasn't.

There is a tape of him on the phone with someone talking about this, which happened in Florida when Bill O'Reilly was in Dallas, with Bill O'Reilly saying, I got to get on a plane to cover this.

These are out-and-out lies.

Now, I understand why Fox News backs him, because they're not really a news service.

So they're like

They're like you expect the truth?

That's not what we do here.

But why isn't the mainstream media going after him with the same ferocity, the supposedly liberal media, as they did to Brian Williams?

Because

I suspect it's because they know what you just said, which is Fox News isn't a real news organization, and Bill O'Reilly isn't a real journalist.

Yeah, I mean.

Bill O'Reilly being full of shit about something is not a news story, right?

It just isn't.

I mean,

okay, but it seems amazing the way this guy gets away.

Remember that sex scandal?

He did the same thing.

Just intimidated people, bullied them.

I mean, he said about this one to the New York Times reporter, I'm going after you with everything I have.

You can take that as a threat.

You know what?

If a liberal reporter said they were in in a war zone, what would the Fox News crowd be saying?

They'd be saying, oh, this is an insult to troops who are really in the war zone, this bad American.

You guys don't.

All right, I'm not sure.

There's a bigger deal, too, here, though, I think,

Bill, in the sense that this is, you know, O'Reilly has said that everything you just said is not true.

He said that he can back up his stuff, and I know you've, I've read the stories as well.

Brian Williams actually came out and said, you know what?

I did did do this stuff, and I'm apologizing for it.

So NBC News, I think, had less that they could deal.

I mean, they had to either accept that and go with it.

Fox is going to defend him as long as he's saying

I did what I said I did, and nobody else is really able to challenge him.

I'll move on, but just so we know, there is no gray area here.

He said, I was on a doorstep when there's proof he wasn't.

He said he saw things when there's proof he wasn't.

He claims that evidence doesn't exist.

And there's clearly, I mean, I think any journalist knows the difference between being in a war zone and not being in a war zone.

O'Reilly, if you're in a war zone, you know.

No, not yet.

Let's talk about B.B.

Netanyahu this week.

It was certainly unusual.

I've never seen anything like this in American history where one party invited a foreign leader to bitch about the current president and then they stood for him 50 times.

But here's, let me quote from Bibi's speech to Congress.

If Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country and only for the Middle East, but for all mankind.

The deadline of attaining this goal is getting extremely close.

Of course, he said that in 1996.

He didn't even have to rewrite the speech.

I guess my question is, you know, if he was so wrong then, why are we so believing him now?

Who's believing him?

Well, every Republican.

Look, the fact is that what happened in Washington was it had little to do with Iran.

It had a lot to do with the existential threat to Bibi's political career.

He's got an election in two weeks.

This was a big rally for him and an opportunity for the Republicans to simulate the experience of having a president of their own party deliver a State of the Union speech.

And that's really what it was.

Since when does the U.S.

Congress become a campaign stop for the Israeli president?

I mean, that's the...

Since now.

Yeah, I mean.

Look, he's spoken before.

I don't think this is about his election.

I think this is about the fact that he truly believed.

Not about his election.

They timed it so that it would be shown

at dinner time.

But there's also another timing, which is we're coming up against this deal with Iran, and the clock is ticking.

And the reality is Iran is a real threat to this country.

And the reason he's given that speech before is because Iran's been a nemesis for a very long time.

It's been Republicans and Democratic presidents that had to deal with them.

I mean, that's a reality.

The problem is, he said nothing new.

And he did offer an alternative to what if the talks don't work.

He didn't offer a realistic alternative that would suggest that he knew he had a better idea for how to stop them.

At least the program stalled right now while we're having talks.

That wasn't true before.

We don't know that it stalled right now.

Well, the Israelis.

That's word of the Iranian.

No, no, no.

Everybody agrees on that.

Everybody agrees.

No, not everybody agrees on that.

But I understand why Nets and Yahoo is paranoid.

He lives in Israel.

I would be too if I lived there.

But this is America.

Shouldn't we have a little more objectivity about this?

And you know, there is some history.

In 2005, there was a deal on the table that was pretty good because Iran had a some, you know, what they call a moderate president back then, too.

Bush scuttled it.

Back then, they had 164 centrifuges.

Now they have 19,000.

You know, this is what Republicans always do.

This is how they negotiate.

I get absolutely everything or the deal is off.

Remember the 10 to 1 guys?

We'll give you 10 to 1

revenue to taxes.

No, not good enough.

But basically, you're saying it's the opposite, though, with the Democrats.

Basically, Iran's getting everything they want, including continuing to run out the clock.

We have already released, we've already relaxed the sanctions.

So, what was working in the past that could keep them in check, we've basically already taken that off the table.

You know, when I was with the president, when we traveled around the world and he got world leaders to join in these sanctions, we were being ridiculed because everybody said it was naive to think that you could get withering sanctions that would impact on Iran.

And now, Republicans can't say enough about the sanctions.

Now, they're all for sanctions.

I would be for even stronger sanctions.

It was 10 years, this deal, 10 years of inspections.

Why is that a bad deal?

Because, Bill, first of all, they have to agree to go along with it.

What happens when they don't?

What is our part of the deal when they say, you know what, those inspectors we were going to let in, we're now not going to.

Or we're going to let them see this room, but we're not going to let them see that.

And they have a history of doing that, just like any deals that we've made with North Korea.

We don't know.

And they did not.

But we don't know that that isn't going to be part of what comes forward here.

The thing is, we do have to see the new deal.

And there may not be a deal.

And I don't think there should be a deal if it's a bad deal.

But you also have to wonder what's going to happen if there's not a deal.

And there are people who believe that

every problem in the world is a nail and the American military is a hammer.

And we ought to be very, very, we ask our questions.

What comes next if we don't have a deal?

You know, and this just shows everybody sees what they want to see.

How about that dress, ladies and gentlemen?

How about that for a segue?

How many thought that dress was blue and black?

Okay.

What about white and gold?

Where am I white?

Really?

So plainly blue and black.

Okay.

Anyway, we did a little research into this, and we found out that actually liberals and conservatives see these things differently.

So we want to show you a few of these, and there's optical illusions and pictures, and I'll show you what I mean.

For example, liberals see this as blue and black mostly and conservatives see a slut who wants the government to pay for her contraception.

Look at this one.

Conservatives see an owl's face in a cup of coffee.

Liberals see Newt Gingrich's wife.

Look at this one.

Liberals say this is a black teenager with an orange soda.

Conservatives say, oh my god, he's got a gun, shoot now.

Booing into applause, my favorite reaction.

Conservatives look at this and see an elephant with five legs.

Liberals see the governor of New Jersey.

Liberals say these two lines are actually the same length.

Conservatives say, this Chinese guy is watching me.

Look at this one.

Liberals see two elderly people.

Conservatives see two young people.

Oh, here's a famous one.

People argued this for years.

Is it a rabbit or is it a duck?

Liberals say it's a duck.

Conservatives say, who cares?

Let's deep-fry it in oil.

Liberals see Corey Booker rescuing a dog.

Conservatives see Corey Booker stealing a dog.

Look at this one.

Liberals see a woman's face.

You see the woman's face?

Conservatives see Bill Clinton playing the saxophone with an erection.

Okay.

Now,

before I bring out John, I just want to say something.

I don't often mention the cause that is dear to my heart, which is animal rights.

I figure I don't want to bore the people with the thing that I like the most, and I'm a PETA board member.

It was a great week for animals.

Ringling Brothers has decided not to use elephants anymore.

PETA deserves the credit for that.

And McDonald's is not going to put

chickens, get chickens with antibiotics in them anymore, or at least human.

So

if they stick to that, I'm going to do something I've never done, go to the circus and eat a fucking chicken McNugget.

All right.

He is the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave, who was the creator, writer, and director of ABC's new dramatic series, American Crime.

Please welcome John Ridley.

There he is.

John, how are you doing, sir?

Great to see you.

How are you?

I am very anxious to see your show.

It is highly anticipated, and I think it says a lot about television that you are coming off a Oscar win.

You won for 12 Years a Slave last year.

You got the statue there.

Years ago, no one who just came off an Oscar win would ever go go to television.

Patty Chafsky didn't write network and then go to, hey, I'm going to want to do a Rockford files now.

Says something about TV, right, and where it's come.

In all the platforms, broadcast, cable, streaming, it is a new world, and it's great to be there.

I will say ABC invited me to be part of this long before the Oscar law was on the horizon.

So the fact that they wanted to tackle subject matter that's about who we are, where we are, how we view each other, and is complicated, really says a lot about, again, where TV is going.

What they wanted to tackle is getting more money and what happened in TV is that, I must say, this network for years has done shows like this and then everybody got the idea, oh, that's what American people want to see.

So you saw it now on other cable networks and now we're seeing it, this is a broadcast network for the first time that's doing something.

But if I may say though, I don't have a problem with a network wanting to make more money if part of that strategy is having shows that have people of color in front of the camera, behind the camera, talking about issues that are not only important to us, but important to everybody.

And ABC is doing that.

So I don't want to sound like a shill for the mouse house.

But

we all love money.

We're Americans.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Nothing wrong with loving money.

Unless it's a police department that is making money.

We're going to get to that, yes.

But I just want to ask you one more question about this show.

It seems like it's going to be, I think in the Mauso, I could see critics saying humanizing crime.

Because usually in America, the criminal is just a prop for the good guy to get off a one-liner and blow his head off.

You're going a little deeper.

I mean this show it shows crime but unlike other shows it shows the aftermath, the effects on the victims, how it bleeds into the life of people around the event.

Do you think America is ready for that, for actually humanizing crime and looking into the reasons why crimes are committed?

I hope so because the things that we are seeing happening across the country, they are not of any one thing or the other.

They are complicated.

They're complex issues.

As you said earlier, they go beyond the headlines.

We have the advantage of being able to turn the page, but the people who are in these circumstances, the families of the victims, the accused, the families of the accused, it doesn't go away in 45 minutes.

So I think that audiences, I mean, look, I...

We had an amazing number last night, almost 9 million people watched the show.

I think audiences are ready for something more, and I appreciate that they chose the show to

examine these things.

I mean, as someone who's done so much research, I'm sure you have, as you always do, on crime, why do you think crime has gone down, as it has almost across the board in this country, for years now?

I mean, there are theories, everything from abortion is legal, so less unwanted babies are born to lead in paint.

I've heard that.

I've heard that.

I'm just asking.

I would say there are many things.

The aging demographics, you know, access, the fact that even though we are in difficult times, that the economy is better.

I think unfortunately, you're still seeing people who are at disadvantaged who get locked in a cycle.

Young people of color, once you get convicted of a crime, if you go to jail, it becomes that much harder to get a job.

So there are cycles that continue.

But we are all sold on the fear.

You know, it's violent crime.

It's all out there.

The FBI statistics say, no, we are a safer society.

We are actually a more respectful society.

Again, you look at something like Ferguson, beyond an individual getting shot.

The surprising thing about these reports is is just the daily indignities that are heaped upon, and I mean heaped upon a community that no one would pay attention to until and unless a young man, unfortunately again, an unarmed black man, is killed in the streets and people rise up.

But it is unfortunate because the cycle exists.

And when our show came up, it was after Trayvon Martin.

And there was a part of me that thought, well, this is, maybe we're past something.

But to go back into the cycle, I think we have to look at why.

Even if crime is going down, why do we still see the same effects on a particular group over and over again?

Well, let's talk about that now, because obviously this was the big story of the week, I thought, the Justice Department report from Ferguson.

And to me, it is the smoking gun about racism that

I think we need in this country because when you look at recent polls about what Republicans, especially conservatives, think, 61% in a few say the issue of race has gotten too much attention.

Millennials, 58%, millennials, discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks.

There is this view, right,

that reverse racism somehow is worse than real racism.

This, to me, is the smoking gun that we found out.

Here's Eric Holder.

These are his words.

He said, a community where local authorities consistently approach law enforcement not as a means for protecting public safety, but as a way to generate revenue.

That is

particularly sick

to just harass people just trying to get to and from a minimum wage job.

And instead of paying taxes, nobody wants to pay taxes anymore.

Use the police department as a shakedown organization against the poorest members of society.

It's just ugly.

I mean.

it is, and again, the cascade effect.

And in this report, you hear about individuals who

hit with a $150 fine, which, you know, nobody wants to pay that kind of money.

But for a lot of people, it's not as easy as going on a website and putting in your credit card and paying that.

And if you can't make it to court, if you can't afford that, if you go to court, you arrive late and it's shut down, that $151 then becomes $250, $300.

There was a report of a woman who started $151, ended up $1,000.

She's still paying it off.

People lose their jobs over things like this.

It is a smoking gun, I think, to some people.

I think to a lot of people, a lot of people of color.

This is business as usual.

It is.

The question I'd like to ask, and let me ask everybody this one,

how likely is it that Ferguson is the one town where this is going on, that we just happen to stumble upon the one place where this kind of racism exists.

How many Fergusons are there?

I know it isn't because I did a lot of research in this from my last book.

I spent years sitting, about a year and a half sitting in the courts of New York and I heard story after story that's just like that.

I actually met a guy who spent a year trying to go to jail because he couldn't afford a $150 fine for riding a bicycle the wrong way down the sidewalk and there's courtrooms full of these people every single day.

The thing about Ferguson that's really stunning is you've got a town that's two-thirds black and a police department that's almost entirely white.

90% of the arrests are in the black community.

So I mean just on the face of it, you see the prescription for the kinds of abuses that we've seen.

Yeah, and clearly it's not just Ferguson.

This is happening in other places.

But I think we do have to be careful.

I mean there are the example of New Orleans for example where it's pretty evenly divided.

I mean the city was around 60% black, it was like in 2010, and the police force was about 59% black.

And yet the Justice Department under Eric Holder actually went down and said we've got racial issues there of black officers dealing with black citizens there.

So it's not always a black-white thing, but I do think it's a real issue.

And I think the larger issue, too, is even just the civil forfeiture generally is an issue that I think we need to take on.

Of people's property being seized, their cars, their homes.

I mean, and they're not even, they're not guilty, but what it takes to go get that back.

It seems like if these were white people, this would be a Tea Party issue.

This would be big government, right?

They're brute now.

Well, civil forfeiture.

I think civil forfeiture reform is something Republicans and Democrats can be a part of.

I actually think problems within the criminal justice system have actually united.

You see Rand Paul out there on sentencing reform.

So there is a coming together of the left and right on this.

But, for example, the Selma anniversary, why didn't any Republican leaders go with Obama to Selma?

It seems like an obvious, it's just, it's not even something you actually have.

It's both a shit if it actually occurs that way, it is both shameful and it's just plain stupid.

I mean, it's shameful.

It's just the way you should be dealing with other human beings and recognizing that.

But it's also stupid if you're a political party that says you want to do outreach and you're kidding me?

You've got nobody there.

I heard last minute that maybe Kevin McArthur or somebody's going to go.

But the fact it's last minute is a shame.

Probably going to go now.

After that.

Let me read you a quote.

This is from Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach.

He He said, under Obama,

this is a reaction, I guess, to Ferguson events this week.

Under Obama, the word is going to come down that there won't be any prosecutions of black criminals.

Wild guess which party?

You know, I always say not every Republican is a racist, but if you're a racist and you're looking for a party,

it just is not that hard.

Okay, last issue, the Obamacare suit.

Before the Supreme Court started to hear about Obamacare, this is the second time this has come up before the Supreme Court.

As we know, a few years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts saved the day.

Liberals got to give him a

pound for that one, right?

I'm sure a lot of conservatives still hate him for that.

We don't know how it's going to go this time.

Now, it's a little too boring to get into the minutiae of this case, but if the Supreme Court rules against Obamacare on this specific ruling, they say, the experts all say, the whole thing will unravel.

What's interesting is that when you go before the court, you have to have what's called standing, which means you have to have a legitimate case.

Just any fool can't go up there.

And yet, the case has been brought by four fools.

Listen to this.

One of the people bringing this case against Obamacare wrote that Obama is the Antichrist.

I rest my case.

The Antichrist who won his election by getting his Muslim people to vote for him.

The second, and he's a veteran.

He's a veteran, which means he doesn't have standing because veterans already have

their health care.

It doesn't affect him.

He's already getting socialism.

There's four folks in this case, and I think there is standing.

Look, the practice of the...

Wait, wait, wait.

Let me just read the other ones.

The second one is also a veteran, also getting socialism.

The third one is getting Medicare in June.

Another case of getting the socialism that everybody should be getting.

And she's a very good idea.

Yeah, because the Veteran Affairs Program is so fabulous for our veterans, right?

Yeah.

Well, actually, the VA program is pretty good for most.

No?

No.

Does anybody want to talk about a scan?

Oh, it's better than nothing.

That's our answer to our veterans that it's better than nothing.

But the whole thing is about about uninsured people.

It's about people who have disabilities.

But why doesn't everybody have it?

I don't understand.

Poor people get socialism.

Veterans, soldiers get socialism, old people.

Why am I out of the picture?

Why am I pre-what is the prejudice against me?

I'm not a soldier, and I'm not poor, and I'm not old, and I'm not disabled, so fuck you.

You're on your own.

You're a rich white guy, and you're being prosecuted for that.

That's why.

You're a rich white guy.

Thank God you'll not catch a break and I'm sick of it.

The whole case is predicated on this notion that Congress didn't intend people to get subsidies who were in the exchanges, on these federal exchanges.

Nobody believes that Congress did intend everybody in the exchanges

to get these subsidies.

And so the court would have to go back on its basic precedent, which is legislative intent.

This is just a way to try and unravel Obamacare.

Let me tell you,

when I was young and I had a child with a very serious illness, I was one of those people who almost went bankrupt.

And I had insurance because the insurance was lousy.

I couldn't switch because she had a pre-existing condition.

And I think there are millions of Americans who are in the same position who have a lot writing on this.

And it's more than just a game for ideologues to play.

But this is a law.

We absolutely need better health care in this country.

And my mall for health care reform, but this is a law that was not ready for prime time.

Nobody read it before they voted for it, which is one reason the statement is being questioned today.

People are now saying it doesn't mean what we said it means.

You can keep your doctor, but no, now you can't.

Look, this has been challenged in courts hundreds of times around the country, not just twice before the Supreme Court.

It is a law that even now the CBO is coming out saying we're talking about the uninsured.

By 2025, over 30 million Americans still will be uninsured.

Undocumented Americans.

That's 10 to 12 million.

So what about the other 20 million?

Just one last question since we brought up the subject, and it is about socialism.

You saw the statistics on the economy.

I recited them in the monologue.

They're pretty amazing economy.

Republicans always said Obama was a socialist.

Does that mean they were wrong about that, or does socialism work?

And when did you stop beating your wife?

Dirty trick.

I'm sorry.

All right.

Thank you, panel.

Time for new rules now, everybody.

New rules, Daniel Howland, the Texas man who got a tattoo of that color-changing dress, really needs a 24-hour waiting period before he gets another tattoo.

Because his other tattoos are New Coat, the choice of the next generation,

MySpace, the social network of tomorrow, and Bill Cosby is USA Dad number one forever.

New Bill O'Reilly and Brian Williams must co-host a new evening news program called Eyewitness News.

Not Eyewitness News, this is Eyewitness News, where the two anchors take turns describing events they saw in photos or happened to other people.

Watch Bill O'Reilly in the studio throw to Bill O'Reilly reporting from Syria, who tosses to Brian Williams, who's live in Tokyo, who then throws back to the newsroom, and your host, Brian Williams.

New Rule, after 30 years of trying, Paul McCartney has to admit that he should stick to singing with white people.

You'll get it later.

Anyway,

New Roll, don't be upset if you just found out that Radio Shack went bankrupt and they're no longer honoring their gift cards.

Be upset that someone thought so little of you that they gave you a Radio Shack gift card.

New Roll, North Korea's Kim Jong-un must admit that at this point, he's just daring someone to laugh at his haircut so he can have them killed.

And also that he just sits down in the barber chair, points to the brush, and says, make me look like that.

And finally, New Roll, some conservative somewhere, has to explain to me why they think Barack Obama doesn't love America.

Because every time I hear him talk about America, my reaction is, get a room.

He says things like, in no other country on earth is my story even possible, and America remains the one indispensable nation.

And yet, 69% of Republicans say he doesn't love our country, and only 11%

say he loves it the right way.

But what is the right way?

How much should we love our country and how often?

What if we want to love it, but it's tired and had a long day?

And most importantly, should we love it from behind, or is that demeaning?

Now, for the last couple of weeks, as the oceans die, the debt balloons, and we skid back into Iraq, Republicans have been obsessed with a much bigger issue.

Does it present it was?

It started with America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who implied.

It does kind of look like it.

Rudy Giuliani, who implied that if you criticize America in any way, it means you don't love her.

But that's not how grown-ups think about a country.

It's the way 13-year-old girls think about One Direction.

Obama loves America.

It just doesn't make him do this.

Because he's an adult and he knows the difference between his country and his mommy.

Liberals love America plenty.

They just think Paris is a more interesting vacation spot than Branson.

I have no problem listing what I love about my country.

For one, We aren't ruled by a hereditary monarchy.

The Bushes and Clintons take turns.

Two, we come to the aid of people in need.

I mean, you know, on a case-by-case basis.

Sorry, Rwanda, we'll get you next time.

And three, two words, freedom.

Face it, we complain, but if you had a choice of any country to be born in for the last 200 years, you'd choose, well, Canada, but after that, that,

totally the U.S.

of A.

Which is not to say we're perfect.

There's a lot to love about it and a lot not to, like our legacy of genocide, slavery and racism, our income inequality, militarism, environmental damage, and the worst mass incarceration on earth.

We lead the world in obesity and use 19% of the world's energy.

just getting up the stairs.

And don't get me started on the guys who paint your house number on the the curb without asking first.

I mean,

but there I go, loving my country in the wrong way with my head instead of my heart, which is how conservatives do it.

They love America like those parents who think their kid can never do wrong.

When a note comes home from school reporting bad behavior, they go in and yell at the teacher.

Or, in the case of the school board in Oklahoma,

yell at the people who wrote the American history textbook.

Yes, the conservatives in Oklahoma these days are waging a battle to get rid of the current textbook because they say it focuses too much on negative aspects in America's past.

Like it mentions Japanese internment camps.

Why bring that up?

It's just going to make things awkward down at the sushi place.

You know, when it comes to American conservatives, they're a little like blackout drinkers.

They remember all the good stuff about the night before,

the laughs, the winning at Vierpong, but no recollection of the bad.

The pissing in the lobby fountain,

groping co-workers, wiping out the Indians.

Which is a shame because you can't turn the page on America's bad stuff if you won't print the page to begin with.

If you won't acknowledge that many of the good things America has done are actually reversals of bad things America did.

I think it's great that we gave the Indians the casino business in America.

And I'm proud of the Emancipation Proclamation.

I'm proud of women's suffrage, of the Civil Rights Act, of legal gay marriage in 37 states and counting.

But all of that wouldn't have been necessary if we hadn't been dicks in the first place.

All right, that's our show.

I'll be at the Hope Center in Eugene, Oregon, April 18th at the Kiva Auditorium in Albuquerque, May 2nd at the Bayou in Houston, May 3rd.

I want to thank my guests, Matt, Taibbi, Genevieve Wood, David Axelrod, John Ridley, and Lawrence Wright.

Join us now on Overtime at HBO.com.

Thank you, folks.

All new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 11 or watch him anytime on HBO on Demand.

For more info, log on to HBO.com.