Rachel Maddow lies straight to your face

I caught glimpses of tonight's (Feb 9 2010) Rachel Maddow Show.  One part was her interviewing Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), about health care reform.  While he continually tried to extend an olive branch to Republicans, repeatedly saying that they had some good ideas and quoting some specifically (his bill, is bipartisan, co-sponsored by a republican) , her response was to repeatedly ignore his comments and bash Republicans for obstructionism.  It was comical and Wyden looked flustered, though he gamely smiled through it all.  Sorry, I'm having trouble finding the video.  Anyway, we aren't going to reach any compromise / bi-partisanship by watching MSNBC (and maybe not by Fox either).

In a followup segment, Maddow blasted Republicans for complaining about wanting things in the health care reform bill that were already "in the bill".  Implying that they were hypocritical obstructionists.  She said "in the bill" slowly and loudly, so it must be true.

But, in the one example I saw, (there were a few I missed) she lied straight to your face.  Republicans are well known for wanting medical malpractice reform, i.e. tort reform.  This may bring down the cost of doing medicine and lower fees.  She said it was "in the bill".  She then paraphrased the bill.  You could see on screen that the actual text was different, but her paraphrase was essentially correct.

It was the "Sense of the Senate" that it "calls upon individual states to develop new ways to deal with malpractice lawsuits"

There is absolutely no way that this represents tort reform.  First of all, the "Sense of the Senate" is meaningless.  It takes 10 seconds of Googling to learn that this is not a statute or regulation.  It is an opinion, it is "we would like this to happen please".  Actually, it's probably more like "we are claiming that we would like this to happen because it sounds good, but we really don't because then the Trial Lawyers will stop giving us money".  It's probably also the "Sense of the Senate" that the deficit should go down, the Dow should hit 20,000 by the end of this year, and there should be a chicken in every pot.  Doesn't mean doodly.

Even if the "Sense of the Senate" were a legally binding statute, what does it call for?  The "world's greatest deliberative body" passes the buck.  It calls for states to develop the actual plans.  With, from what I saw, no time-line, no definitions, no nothing.  A burger flipper has more structure and guidance than that.  If this is all it takes to accomplish tort reform , health care reform would be easy.  Pass a bill saying that the "Sense of the Senate" is that "states should develop new ways to deal with health care reform."  Declare victory and withdraw.

By any possible analysis this bill does not include tort reform and Rachel Maddow knows it.  But she'd prefer to lie straight to your face, not even bothering to present any facts that support her case.  In fact, she presents facts that directly contradict her claim.
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