Mark Finkelstein's blog

Call yourself a Christian?  Then you can't oppose whatever welfare programs the Democrats devise.  So in effect argued Al Sharpton on his MSNBC show this evening.  

In the course of criticizing House Republicans for having passed a bill reaffirming "In God We Trust" as the national motto, Sharpton somehow equated Christianity with support for the liberal agenda.  And although I'm the opposite of an expert on Christian theology, he also came up with a formulation on faith and works that might be surprising to some Protestants.  Video after the jump.

"We need to re-evaluate what is required in our lives, so that we have a sense of satisfaction.  What really counts?  One friend of mine has reduced it to this: you should get up in the morning and ask 'what do I need,' not just 'what do I want?'" -- Tom Brokaw, Morning Joe 11-1-11.

"Of course, one of the reasons I bought it was to be able to get away from the frantic life I lead and to have some privacy." -- Tom Brokaw, explaining his purchase of an interest in a 4,000-acre mountain retreat in Montana.

Tom Brokaw: a Michael Moore kind of millionaire?  We haven't seen him getting down with the Occupy kids like the documentary-maker recently did.  But there was Brokaw--who has amassed a reported $70 million and owns a 4000-acre "mountain retreat" in Montana--on Morning Joe today preaching the virtues of the simple life . . . for others. Video after the jump.

"This is the biggest single Twitter controversy of the campaign.  48,000 mentions!"

That was Mike Allen doing his best "look--a squirrel!" dodge on today's Morning Joe.  Pressed by Joe Scarborough as to whether Politico had any more details beyond its story's vague allegation that Herman Cain had made gestures "that were not overtly sexual but that made women uncomfortable," Allen's telling first instinct was to point to the story's popularity on a social networking site. Video after the jump.

Herman Cain has been taking heat for his response to questions about Politico's story on alleged sexual harassment.  But today on Morning Joe, it was Politico's own Jonathan Martin, lead author of the story, who was being evasive about the details of the allegations against Cain.

Incredibly, when Willie Geist asked him to describe specifically what Politico is accusing Cain of having done, Martin hemmed, hawed then ultimately said "we're just not going to get into the details of exactly what happened with these women," beyond the sketchy generalities in the Politico story.  Video after the jump.

If not an unmitigated frozen-flying-pig-in-Hades moment, then certainly something noteworthy for its rarity, coming from the lips of David Gregory . . .

On today's Morning Joe, the Meet The Press moderator, in one surprising swoop, managed to praise a statement from Mitch McConnell while simultaneously seeming to acknowledge that President Obama's economic program has failed. Video after the jump.

Today, some members of the Morning Joe panel piously preached the importance of not jumping to conclusions regarding the clash between "Occupy" demonstrators and police in Oakland, California that left one man seriously injured.

But that didn't prevent Mike Barnicle from describing the event as a "police riot" or Joe Scarborough from speaking of police "brutality." H/t NB reader Ray R. Interestingly, Mika Brzezinski was the voice of reason, declining to condemn the police, saying she'd "hold back" and "wait"--presumably to get all the facts.  Video after the jump.

Q. Faced with President Obama's difficult re-election prospects, is there any depth to which the desperate liberal media won't sink? A. Apparently not.

Take Thursday evening's Ed Show.  Schultz accused Rep. Paul Ryan of "inciting civil war" and suggested Republicans might "want violence to take place in our society." Not to be outdone, thankfully former Florida congressman Alan Grayson called Ryan and Republicans "the real killers," akin to O.J. Simpson. Video after the jump.

Sure way to stay schnockered between now and presidential Election Day: sling a shot every time a liberal plays the race card.  

Latest example: on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening, Bill Press ascribed Republican reluctance to give President Obama credit on Iraq to the fact that "the Republican party is like some of the banks down South. They refuse to give a black man credit." Video after the jump.

A notable moment on Morning Joe today, as Joe Scarborough called out Mika Brzezinski on her double standard when it comes to criticizing politicians for their over-the-top remarks.

Setting Scarborough off was Brzezinski's defense of Joe Biden's allegation that crime, including rape, would increase if Republicans don't vote for President Obama's latest tax-raising stimulus plan.  Joe claimed Mika would surely condemn a Republican, such as Michelle Bachmann, employing similar fear-mongering tactics.  Video after the jump.

Sometimes, a show's guest list is enough to illuminate its liberal bias. Take today's Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough has previously spoken of the show's prevailing 10:1 ratio of liberal to conservative guests.   But Morning Joe took matters that silly millimeter longer today, with a lineup utterly devoid of any Republican or conservative guests, to wit:

Serious question: if he ever had it, has Ed Schultz totally lost it?  There's lots to be said about the Occupy Wall Street movement.  But of all the cockamamie comments, of all the nutty non sequiturs, surely Ed Schultz's takes the crazy cake.

On his MSNBC show tonight, Schultz claimed that what lies behind Republican criticism of Occupy is . . . racism.  In a beyond-bizarre analogy, Schultz somehow said that there's "no difference" between GOP congressman Peter King's criticism of Occupy Wall Street and Trent Lott's 2002 birthday-party praise for Strom Thurmond. Video after the jump.
 

Thanks, Reverend Al. Really.  Sure, we know that the left is all about the redistribution of wealth rather than its generation.  Still, it's instructive to hear a leading lefty say it in such stark terms.  As clear a statement of the manifesto since candidate Obama told Joe The Plumber that "spread the wealth around" is the way to go.  

On his MSNBC show this evening, Sharpton declared that his view of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that it should be about "really, how we distribute the wealth in this country." View video after the jump.
 

Yeah, Herman Cain won the Florida straw poll, crushing Mitt Romney and Rick Perry.  And OK, a CBS poll recently found him tied with Romney among likely Republican primary voters. Sure, he also scored a resounding victory in another straw poll this weekend.  And Rasmussen just today released the finding that 56% of GOP voters like Cain's 9-9-9 plan.  

So is that enough to make the Associated Press consider Cain a first-tier candidate? Nah.   On MSNBC's Daily Rundown this morning, AP's political editor, Liz Sidoti, sniffed "we still consider him a second-tier candidate."  Video after the jump.
 

Politico's "Daily Digest" is an email the blog blasts out in the morning, touting the day's top stories.  As a subscriber, this NewsBuster was struck by the left-friendly lean of five out this morning's six featured stories.

To be sure, "Post-recession income falls" is not good for President Obama, reporting as it does that Americans' incomes have fallen faster during his presidency than they did even in the depths of the recession.  But every other story would surely be welcome at the White House.  Here are the stories, in the order they appear in the email:
 

It was literally a show stopper.  

At the end of his "60 Minutes" interview with Lesley Stahl this evening, GE CEO Jeff Immelt asked her: "I don't know why you don't" root for GE, and by extension for American business, the way company employees do?  Did Immelt leave Stahl speechless? Rather than providing an answer, 60 Minutes could only cut to its tick-tick-tick stopwatch.  View video after the jump.

Trust him--he might be young, but he's a "professional sociologist."  So did Harrison Schultz, an organizer of the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, describe himself to Al Sharpton on MSNBC this evening.  And he wants Al and us to know that "a lot of the people that are here are in fact anarchists, are in fact revolutionaries.  . . . We don't really want to fix [the problems]. It's revolution, not reform."

There are also some amusing factoids about Harrison.  When he's not out fomenting revolution, Schultz is an . . . analyst for a marketing firm. Oh yeah, and in his oh-so-bourgeois LinkedIn profile, Harrison wants people to know he worked at Bank of America providing "assistance for several investment bankers." Oh, the horror! Video after the jump.

As noted here yesterday, former Obama car czar Steve Rattner, in a Politico piece, lashed out at Ron Suskind, depicting Suskind's book on bad times in the Obama White House as a "drive-by shooting" of President Obama and his staff. That hardly seemed in the spirit of President Obama's pious call, in his much-touted Tucson memorial speech, for people to speak in a way "that heals, not wounds" .

Joe Scarborough called Rattner out on the matter on today's Morning Joe.  But Rattner blithely batted away Scarborough's depiction of "drive-by" as "harsh" and "rhetorically inflammatory."  Video after the jump.
 

Did David Gregory realize just how much he was letting down the mask and revealing his liberal bias?   On today's "Meet The Press,"  Gregory stated as a simple declarative fact that Republicans have a "harsh stance" on immigration reform.

Did Gregory simply forget the "some say" fig leaf so favored by the MSM?  Or is the MTP moderator so lost in the liberal media cocoon that he can't imagine anyone disagreeing with his assertion that the GOP view is "harsh"?  View the video after the jump.

"It's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we're talking with each other in a way that -- that heals, not in a way that wounds." -- President Obama, speech at Tuscon memorial service, January 12, 2011.

"The [Suskind] book amounts to a drive-by shooting of a president and his key economic advisers who deserve encomiums, not unfounded second guessing and inaccurate revisionist history." -- Former Obama car czar Steve Rattner, writing at the Politico, October 2, 2011 [emphasis added].
 

Where have you gone, President Hope-and-Change? Less than nine months after President Obama pronounced pious words about talking "in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds," the Obama White House sends out a designated hitter to accuse a respected author of a "drive-by shooting" of the president and his advisers.  Nice. [Via Mike Allen's Politico Playbook.]
 

Is Michael Kinsley sure he wants to go down this path?

In a Bloomberg View column and then in a clip run on "Good Morning America" today, the liberal pundit claims Chris Christie is "just too fat" to be president.  According to Kinsley, Christie's weight is evidence of a lack of the self-control necessary to be an effective president.

If self-control is a key requirement for the presidency, I wonder how Kinsley would apply that standard to other recent occupants of the White House?  GMA video after the jump.