Al Sharpton

Joe Scarborough has clearly been hanging around the liberals at MSNBC too long.

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, the host actually called for the draft to be implemented and those not wanting to enter the military to be required at age eighteen to perform community service for two years (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

"This is the ugly, intolerant face of the radical left that's taken over liberalism today," declared NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell on Thursday's Hannity program, reacting to charges by MSNBC's Al Sharpton and Mike Barnicle that conservatives up in arms over Mike Bloomberg's proposed soda ban are animated by anti-Semitism. Bozell appeared on the March 28 program with guest host Eric Bolling for the popular weekly "Media Mash" segment.

"You can't have an [honest] conversation with these radicals" at MSNBC, the Media Research Center founder complained. "I pine for the days of George McGovern... I pine for the days of Joe Lieberman, where are you when I need you? Because you could have a serious conversation, serious disagreements, but you weren't attacked personally for them," Bozell noted. "This is the radical left that goes for character assassination anytime it's faced with a debate" against conservatives. [watch the full Mash segment below the page break; special thanks to my colleague Scott Whitlock for the video]

According to contemporary reports, as here and here, Egyptian protesters who pelted the motorcade of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with tomatoes during her visit to Egypt last July were chanting "Monica! Monica!"  

So who did Al Sharpton, on his MSNBC show this evening, blame for the tomato pelting? Why, Glenn Beck and Michele Bachmann, of course!  According to the Reverend Al, it was the raising by Beck and Bachmann of the possible connection of Hillary's top aide, Huma Abedin, to the Muslim Brotherhood that outraged the Egyptian horde. Sharpton says "there is absolutely nothing" to back the claims of Abedin family ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. That is simply false, as this National Review item documents. View the video after the jump.

There's been plenty of serious analysis of the the gay marriage cases before the Supreme Court.  Maybe it's time for some comic relief . .  .

Appearing on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening, MSNBC contributor Jimmy Williams took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia's musing whether if states can't prohibit gay marriage, they can ban bestiality.  Describing himself as "a certified, organic homosexual," Williams declared "I have a dog, but I've never had sex with my dog." View the video after the jump.

Don't tell us that Al Sharpton and MSNBC are hypocrites?  Noooo!!  The Reverend Al opened his show by praising President Obama's efforts to promote tougher gun control laws.  But 28 minutes into the show, a commercial appeared for, of all things  . . . Henry Repeating Rifles.  

Go to Henry Rifle's website and you'll find one rifle described as "big, brutal and beautiful" and noting that it fires ammunition "said to have killed more game, big and small, and more men, good and bad, than any other in existence."  Another model offered for sale, the AR-7, is based on a military rifle, Henry emphasizing that given its lightweight design "you can carry a large quantity of ammunition."  Oh the horror!  View the video after the jump.

On Morning Joe today, the Reverend Al Sharpton agreed with Mike Barnicle  that anti-Semitism explains the opposition to Mike Bloomberg in his gun control campaign. H/t NB reader cobokat.

If ever there were an expert on anti-Semitism in America, it could be Al Sharpton, he of Freddie's Fashion Mart and Crown Heights riot infamy. The spectacle of Sharpton lamenting the supposed anti-Semitism of others was ironic, if not repulsive.  Note that Dan Senor, who might also know something about anti-Semitism, being Jewish and having attended university in Israel, rejected the notion.  View the video after the jump.

On Wednesday night’s edition of “PoliticsNation,” MSNBC host Al Sharpton and “The Cycle” host Touré Neblett claimed Fox News president Roger Ailes used racist “dog whistle” language when he called President Obama “lazy” in a newly released biography.

Sharpton started by reading a portion of the quote in the book.

Gee, why would anyone get the impression -- GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, for example -- that Harvard Law School is fertile wetlands for left-wing politics?

In Cruz's case, his suspicions are well-founded -- the man graduated from the school in the mid-1990s. For those of us who aren't Harvard alum, its faculty members often supply evidence to bolster that perception. (audio clip after page break)

Turns out today is the 159th anniversary of the founding of the Republican party.  So who did Al Sharpton have on his MSNBC this evening to discuss it supposedly from the GOP point of view? "Republican" Abby Huntsman, daughter of Jon.

After somehow divining that if Abe Lincoln were around today he would want a "conversation" on immigration and gay marriage, Abby described today's Republican party as populated by people who want "absolutely no government."  View the video after the jump.

The liberal hosts on MSNBC  just couldn't get enough of watching U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reach for a glass of water and take a sip during his rebuttal of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, airing the snippet a staggering 155 times during the Wednesday broadcast schedule, according to a tally by the Daily Caller.

Other cable news networks showed the footage far less often. CNN aired it 34 times, and Fox News Channel played it just 12 times -- all of which took place on “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity” while the hosts discussed the media's obsession with the Florida Republican's “watergate” incident.

What's with Barney Frank and his odd obsession with a Henny Youngman line that—had virtually any other politician used it—would result in him being accused of the worst kind of misogyny?

Back in 2011, I noted that, appearing on Morning Joe, Frank had quoted the hoary Henny line: "How's your wife? Compared to what?" Yet there was Barney again this evening, this time on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show, breaking out the identical line.  Really: what gives?  And imagine the feminist outrage if, say, Mitt Romney had dared use the line during his presidential campaign.  View the video after the jump.

Have a look at the image of President Obama that Al Sharpton repeatedly displayed during a segment of his MSNBC show this evening on the theme that the Obama agenda on immigration and gun control is gaining traction.

It shows a stern-faced President Obama superimposed against the backdrop of a massive crowd.  At one point, Sharpton displayed a graphic reading "Taking Control." More after the jump.

In a new Lean Forward promo spot for MSNBC, Politics Nation host the Rev. Al Sharpton invoked the language of the Pledge of Allegiance, sans the term "under God." In the spot, Sharpton rattled off a laundry list of pet issues that MSNBC obsessed over in 2012 as he dreamed of a "nation that is really living up to the creed of one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." [MP3 audio here; Watch the video below the page break; Transcript follows page break]

Joseph Berger's long tribute to the late, legendary former New York City mayor Ed Koch made the front of the New York Times Sunday Metro section -- "So, How'd He Do?"

But Berger stained Koch's memory by citing the irresponsible, inflammatory voices of Rev. Calvin Butts and Al Sharpton and bizarrely suggesting Koch's rhetoric played a part in racist assaults against blacks: "Despite his condemnation of the mob beatings, it was hard to tamp down a sense among blacks that his public rhetoric -- in the 1988 presidential campaign, for example, he said Jews would be 'crazy' to vote for Jesse Jackson because of his 'Hymietown' slur about New York and his support for a Palestinian homeland -- may have helped foster an atmosphere in which some young whites felt emboldened to commit such assaults."

If you’ve ever watched MSNBC’s Politics Nation w/ Al Sharpton, you know that it is a bizarre hour-long program disguised as serious political analysis.  Host Reverend Al Sharpton, who hammed it up last year with his ‘Revvie Awards’ aimed at trashing GOP politicians, has a new segment entitled "Science Lab" where he criticizes Republicans as supposedly anti-science.

Sharpton began the January 23 segment by lumping in skepticism about manmade global warming with the likes of disgraced Congressman Todd Akin as a way to demonize conservatives.  Sharpton hilariously opened his segment by saying:

Ah, that obsessive devotion to facts remains rigorous and unshakable.

Anchoring her network's coverage of President Obama's second inauguration, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow describes an aspect of the event that few people notice, aside from keen observers like her. (video clip after page break)

If you're wondering what MSNBC hosts and regulars are up to, look no further than Al Sharpton's "Revvie Awards" where Democrats were honored and Republicans skewered for an hour on Wednesday night..

The "Blueberry Pie Lifetime Achievement" award was the highlight of the evening, going to MSNBC villain Karl Rove.  Rove also picked up the coveted "Lost Their Shirt" Award, which the MSNBC judges were ecstatic about.  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]  

Ever since Reverend Al Sharpton was given his own MSNBC show, PoliticsNation, many have questioned if a prominent liberal activist should even be allowed to promote his liberal causes under the guise of cable news.

Take Sharpton’s latest advocacy efforts on gun control, for example. As MSNBC's Thomas Roberts reported on Thursday: "MSNBC’s Reverend Al Sharpton joined NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly in signing the New York Daily News’ petition to ban assault weapons."  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

There has been no shortage of deceptive ads, factually-distorted statements, and outright fabrications from the political left over the campaign year to choose from, but leave it to the Tampa Bay Times's PolitiFact to give its "Lie of the Year" award to the Romney campaign. The now infamous "falsehood" in question was Romney's claim that Jeep was planning on moving production of some of its vehicles to China. This was in fact technically true, but PolitiFact trademarked it as its "Lie of the Year."

In a fit of glee, multiple left-leaning news outlets have promoted the proclamation, including of course, MSNBC. [video below, MP3 audio here ]:

During an appearance on the program of MSNBC’s race-baiter-in-chief Al Sharpton, entertainer Harry Belafonte lashed out at Republicans, saying that their continued presence in Washington, DC constituted an “infection” of sorts. He also told his host that the only thing left for Obama to do with opposition figures who continue to disagree with him was to “Work like a Third World dictator and just put all these guys in jail.”

Belafonte’s totalitarian prescription elicited a laugh rather than horror from Sharpton. View video below the jump.

Is wanting workers to have the right to choose if they're going to join a union racist?

Apparently it is according to MSNBC commentator Al Sharpton who concluded a Huffington Post rant about Michigan's newly enacted right to work laws Wednesday, "People should think twice before they invite Gov. Snyder to a King Day celebration in three weeks."

If this don't beat all.

On Tuesday, President Obama met with liberals including MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, and Al Sharpton to "discuss importance of extending the Bush middle-class tax cut."

If  former Baptist minister turned former presidential candidate turned Fox News Channel host Mike Huckabee ran a non-profit organization that was a) deeply in debt b) owed Uncle Sam years in back taxes and c) was in dispute with a conservative trade organization in D.C. over unpaid rent, it's hard to imagine Huck's competitors at MSNBC wouldn't gleefully note those financial woes from time to time.

Fox News, however, will most certainly restrain their schadenfreude at the latest news regarding MSNBC's resident Baptist minister turned presidential candidate turned bloviating host. Today's Washington Post reports that the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials (COMTO) is upset with Sharpton's National Action Network (NAN) for failing to pay months of back rent as well as failing to tender payment for rented office furniture:

Princeton University professor Cornel West had some harsh words for MSNBC's Al Sharpton, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Michael Eric Dyson Friday.

Speaking with Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman, West said, "They have sold their souls for a mess of Obama pottage" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Over the past several months, MSNBC has been on a tirade criticizing attempts by mostly Republican state legislatures to ensure voting integrity by requiring a photo ID in order to vote. 

As NewsBusters has documented, one of the leaders of the anti-ID movement is none other than the host of the 6 p.m. Eastern program Politics Nation, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who on numerous occasions has suggested that such laws are thinly-veiled, racially animated attempts to depress minorities of their right to vote.  [See video below break.]

In case anyone is in doubt that Liberal Talk Radio-land can display the tendency to all hit the same talking points, many liberal hosts all hit the same post-debate theme on Thursday: Mitt Romney only won because he shamelessly lied his face off. (They find it charming when Clinton does.)

Al Sharpton was outraged, as if he never lied as he was callously spreading the Tawana Brawley racial hoax: “I think there is nothing admirable and applaud-able [?] about a man standing up 90 minutes and making his case by distortion and lies."

The New York media has a nasty habit of producing puff pieces about rabble-rousing Rev. Al Sharpton. The latest came from Daniel D’Addario at The New York Observer. It was headlined “A Reasonable Man: How Track-Suited Firebrand Al Sharpton Became the Most Thoughtful Voice on Cable.”

“He’s controversial,” MSNBC president Phil Griffin told The Observer. “But a lot of people only know him from a few things. You don’t understand that he’s a good person. He’s fair. You don’t want to be judged for just a few things in your life, do you?”

On September 14 at Andrews Air Force Base just outside the Washington Beltway, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton welcomed home the remains of four Americans killed at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya. It was a moment of national mourning. The president was presidential; Mrs. Clinton dignified. But for some journalists, it was, quite strangely and inappropriately, something to view only through the tacky lens of politics.

On “Hardball,” Chris Matthews was tingling away. It was an “amazing ceremony,” he insisted.  After an Obama clip, he said “there was a moment in American history right there. Last week, when Obama spoke at the Democratic National Committee down in Charlotte, he said, 'I am the president.' Well, this week, he showed what it means to be president.”

Rev. Al Sharpton became infamous as someone whose hot racial rhetoric caused riots and violence, not calmed them down. But on his radio show Keepin' It Real on Thursday, Sharpton accused Mitt Romney of cynically and opportunistically speaking out a bad time. (Takes one to know one?)

"We have a situation now that is ugly in the Middle East. You have a dead U.S. Ambassador, three others that are dead. You have a clearly anti-Islamic film that is all over the Islamic world that again depicts this country as anti-Islam. You have protests in Egypt as well as Yemen now and an investigation going on in Libya," Sharpton said. "Is this a time for American political figures to be taking shots at each other and playing politics?"