Rachel Maddow Show

This keeps up, I won't feel so guilty watching reruns of  "The West Wing."

Lawrence O'Donnell made a pointed observation on his cable show Thursday night that came across as helpfully illuminating -- and more than a tad passive-aggressive when juxtaposed with what MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow said only an hour earlier. (video after page break)

Rachel Maddow is so awash in self-esteem, it's all she can do to contain her modesty.

There she was on her MSNBC show, enthusing about her appearance on "Today" that morning to defend President Obama's mandate that employers' health insurance cover birth control and contraceptives virtually across the board. (video after page break) --

If $1.1 trillion owned by Americans to China is no big deal, as MSNBC weekend host Chris Hayes would have you believe, at what point does it become one -- five trillion? Ten? Ever?

Hayes, filling in as guest host on "The Rachel Maddow Show" Feb. 6, was criticizing GOP Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra's "Debbie Spend It Now" ad against incumbent Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow. (video after page break)

Liberals hate it when conservative politicians talk about their religion. Except when they don't. They hate that too.

Damned if they do, damned if they don't. (video after page break)

Once again, this is a problem only when a conservative does it.

When it's a liberal, fire away -- with relish! (video after page break)

Thanks for sharing, Rachel, and confirming what we already knew.

The oh-so bright light in MSNBC's nightly firmament could barely contain her revulsion after Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels cited a familiar metaphor for America, that of the shining city on a hill, while delivering the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union address. (video after page break)

Liberals love substituting the word "choice" for abortion in their futile attempt to render it bloodless.

Liberals despise when those they consider allies "choose" to reconsider their enthusiasm for abortion. (video clip after page break)

Agreed, the (apparent) wig worn by the woman in that GOP parody bore little resemblance to Rachel Maddow's actual hair. But the parody's skewering of Maddow's hypocrisy was right on target.

MSNBC's ever-chirpy Maddow responded last night to a National Republican Congressional Committee ad mocking the MSNBC "Lean Forward" promo featuring a hardhat-adorned Maddow at the Hoover Dam. (video after page break)

I haven't been this surprised since that gal turned out to be a guy in "The Crying Game."

MSNBC resident schoolsmarm Rachel Maddow is full of surprises, isn't she? Just the other night, she said something that surely had Americans across the nation spitting out burgers, beverages and baby food (video clip after page break)

MSNBC resident Victorian gent Rachel Maddow must have felt so dutiful for correcting an inaccurate statement by one of her guests.

Which made it all the more amusing that Maddow during the same show perpetuated a hoary media myth created two decades ago. (video after page break)

That wasn't a television appearance, that was a cry for help.

Dylan Ratigan was a guest on MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow's show last night, ostensibly to plug his new book, "Greedy Bastards! How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires From Sucking America Dry" and to condemn Mitt Romney as a free-market predator.  (video clip after page break)

Warning: Frequent guest appearances on MSNBC can render a person predictable and disingenuous. Exhibit A: Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.

There was Robinson schmoozing with guest host Melissa Harris-Perry on the Rachel Maddow show Friday about the looming Iowa caucuses. (video after page break)

Not just fuzzy math, shabby too.

Chris Hayes, guest hosting on "The Rachel Maddow Show" Thursday, opened a segment with the words, "From the Department of Shameless Schadenfraude." Department of Feeble Attempts at Moral Equivalence would be more accurate. (video after page break)

Those working at MSNBC probably believe they are providing a valuable public service. The network might actually have a chance of doing that if its executives hired an ombudsdman.

Should this unlikely scenario ever occur, the person hired for the job would inevitably focus on Rachel Maddow. (audio clip after page break)

A much-trumpeted "innovation" from Occupy footstompers is the so-called "human mic" whereby people in a crowd parrot the words of a designated non-leader to amplify his or her message.

Examples of this creepy phenomenon abound, including this one helpfully provided by Occupy cultist Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show last night (video clip after page break) --

With the usual self-satisfied smirk, as she karate-chopped the air in front of the word "SHAMPAIGN," MSNBC host Rachel Maddow mocked the idea of a Newt Gingrich surge by picking up on her fellow gay activist Dan Savage's smear of Rick Santorum: the one which insures that a Google search of Santorum leads to Savage's comparison of the religious conservative to semen and fecal matter. Don't ever let them tell you MSNBC is classy.

"They’ve gone through this with Donald Trump now and Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry, and Herman Cain. We sort of expect them to do this with everybody in the field -- I mean, except for Rick Santorum. Nobody’s going to vote for Rick Santorum, come on," Maddow sneered. "But the idea of a Newt Gingrich surge is almost as absurd as people – uh, you know, Googling Rick Santorum and saying, 'I like what I found here, I`m going to vote for this guy.'" Then came the Springtime for Hitler references.

Listening to liberal talk radio is sometimes like just listening to the world being turned upside down. Liberal hosts make claims that are demonstrably ridiculous, and expect listeners to lap it up.

Case in point: Thom Hartmann praised the Occupy Wall Street protesters for changing the media conversation. He claimed that ever since Reagan was elected, the media has forbidden any discussion of the maldistribution of wealth, as if the words "Decade of Greed" weren't a media favorite, as if the "three million homeless" weren't routinely on the lips of liberal media personalities:

It has now been nine weeks since stimulus-funded solar company Solyndra declared bankruptcy.

Yet despite Thursday's vote by the House Energy and Commerce Committee panel to subpoena internal White House communications concerning the company, MSNBC's prime time hosts Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ed Schultz, and Al Sharpton still haven't said one word about this scandal:

Schlockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore said Thursday that the violence occurring at various Occupy events including Oakland is likely being incited by Department of Homeland Security officials or cops.

Such was disgracefully uttered on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show (videos follow with transcript, vulgarity warning in Oakland riot footage):

Rachel Maddow's "devotion" to the facts "borders on obsessive" proclaimed an MSNBC promo last winter that could have been produced by The Onion.

A dubious Maddow claim that didn't quite reach that level of obsession has caught the attention of PolitiFact Texas, part of a fact-checking project that originated with the St. Petersburg Times and won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. (video after page break)

Sarah Silverman, that goofy exemplar of comedy so dry it is barren, possesses a steep threshold for hypocrisy.

Silverman finds it repugnant that the family of GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry in the 1980s began renting a hunting camp in Texas with the word "Niggerhead" written on a rock at an entrance to the property. That the word was painted over years ago, according to Perry, does little to assuage Silverman's indignation. (video after page break)

NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel is my favorite frequent guest on "The Rachel Maddow Show" -- who knows what he might say. Certainly not Maddow.

Engel didn't disappoint in his last appearance on her program Oct. 20, subtly calling Maddow out for a conspicuous omission in her recounting of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi renouncing his weapons of mass destruction. (video after page break)

Nice to see Rachel Maddow isn't letting all those years wishing she worked at Pravda go to waste.

The earnest barbershop tenor in MSNBC's nightly quartet gave an eerily similar version of how the house organ of Soviet communists would have covered the arrests of two dozen Wall Street protesters at a Citibank branch in Manhattan. (video after page break)

Wednesday marked the six week anniversary of solar company Solyndra declaring bankruptcy.

Despite this, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ed Schultz, and Al Sharpton have yet to report one single word about this growing scandal on their respective prime time programs.

It appears Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow have now totally forgotten the new civility edict issued after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' (D-Ariz.) was shot this past January.

On The Rachel Maddow Show Tuesday, Maher said of the protesters demonstrating near the homes of some New York millionaires earlier in the day, "If a brick came through Rupert Murdoch’s apartment, yes, I have a feeling Fox News would be a lot more gentle on the Wall Street people." Maddow thought that was funny (video follows with transcript and commentary):

I've never met Herman Cain, but he comes across as epitomizing confidence and competence -- such that he can probably campaign and chew gum at the same time.

Not only that, Cain undoubtedly possesses the ability to campaign and go on a book tour simultaneously, though MSNBC's Rachel Maddow doubts such a thing is possible, at least for Cain. (video after page break)

It is now five weeks since the solar company Solyndra declared bankruptcy.

Despite the Obama administration lending this failed company $535 million dollars, and a growing scandal involving the White House, MSNBC's prime time hosts Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ed Schultz, and Al Sharpton have yet to say one word on the subject.

Simple rule of thumb for Rachel Maddow -- the more emphatic she is, the more likely she is to be wrong.

Latest example -- Maddow's strenuous, Elizabeth Warrenesque arm-waving claim that a proposed amendment to the Mississippi constitution to define life starting at conception would outlaw the Pill. (video after page break)

While the “nonfiction” writers have clearly sharpened their knives for Sarah Palin (and put “writers” in quotes if we’re talking Levi Johnston), the liberal media also can’t help but publicize smear-fiction of Palin. Case in point: Nicolle Wallace, the Palin-hating McCain aide, whose new novel smears Palin with a plot about a vice president who isn’t vetted well who’s exposed after the election as mentally ill. 

Wallace, who plays a Republican on TV, was featured and touted on two editions of the Rachel Maddow show (Tuesday and Wednesday). Maddow especially liked and reran Wallace suggesting with a smile, “Look, you know, I was inspired by her to write a book about someone who was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. So don’t ask me.”