Hardball

[UPDATE: Fineman apologized. For more, go here.] MSNBC contributor and Huffington Post editor Howard Fineman on Monday smeared Grover Norquist as "ayatollah"-like for his opposition to higher taxes. Talking to Hardball's Chris Matthews, Fineman fumed, "...A long time before the Tea Party existed or had a name, Grover Norquist, the famous anti-tax lobbyist in Washington, was running around beginning to enforce, ayatollah-style, his edict about taxes." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

According to Fineman, this Middle Eastern-style pledge "has really become the core identity of the modern conservative Republican party." Anchor Matthews ludicrously described GOP fidelity to Norquist as "human bondage."

One was a self-educated rail-splitter and circuit lawyer in humble frontier towns. The other is an Ivy League-educated radical who only ventured out from his comfortable Hyde Park digs for some day work stirring up trouble as a “community organizer.” But to watch MSNBC is to learn that Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama have so much in common.

In the run-up to Obama’s re-election and in the weeks since, as the movie “Lincoln,” opened, the media have hyped similarities between the two presidents. It’s helpful to them that the film is a product of high-profile liberal Steven Spielberg and associated with Participant Media, the same lefty company that produced Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Chris Matthews' detractors have for years alleged that he's sometimes drunk when he does his program on MSNBC.

His gas attack on Friday's Hardball will certainly add to this speculation, especially as it ended with the host actually saying, "Excuse me - I'm burping here" (video follows with commentary).

"There were moments where you were slightly objective."

So marvelously said former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele to MSNBC's Chris Matthews concerning his reporting of the just concluded presidential campaign (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In an exchange with MSNBC Harball host Chris Matthews on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie pondered the possibility that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice lied about Benghazi: "...should she have been more direct that the information she was providing to the American people was at that point, not just preliminary, but incomplete? I guess the bottom line is, did she mislead?"

Matthews replied by wondering: "...was she a flack...just out there mouthing the words that somebody told you, or is she a thoughtful cabinet minister – to be a potential cabinet minister?" He then laid the blame entirely on the intelligence: "But from what I'm told, she got the facts directly unchanged, unspun by the White House, nobody changed anything. If anybody's at fault here, it's the intelligence community, for giving her incomplete information for their own purposes."

As the media push Republicans to raise taxes, anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist has been taking a pounding.

This may have reached a high point Tuesday when MSNBC's Chris Matthews and former Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY.) actually joked about Norquist drowning (video follows with transcript and commentary):

[UPDATE: See bottom of post] Chris Matthews on Monday disgustingly connected conservatives unhappy with the 2012 election to Hitler and the 1936 Olympics. After Huffington Post journalist Howard Fineman mocked the GOP for supposedly considering the African American and Hispanic vote to be "extraterrestrial," Matthews spewed, "The last guy to refer to the black auxiliary was Hitler." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews, known for his verbal gaffes, prefaced the Nazi comparison by rambling, "...And these references are always dangerous, but I'll take it anyway." Trying to explain his smear, the Hardball anchor expanded, "During the '36 Olympics, we had Jesse Owens and a couple other guys winning the Olympics and they [the Nazis] were saying, "Well, they had their auxiliary out there." As if this made his comments all go away, Matthews added that his comments have "no bearing on the Republican Party."

Former top Newsweek journalist and current MSNBC.com editor Richard Wolffe on Monday smeared Senator John McCain as a racist. According to Wolffe, there's no legitimate reason for the Republican to oppose Susan Rice's confirmation for Secretary of State. Appearing on Hardball, the journalist sneered that it was "outrageous" the way McCain was acting, raging against "this witch hunt going on the right about these people of color, let's face it, around this president. Eric Holder, Valerie Jarrett, now Susan Rice." [See video below.]

Such a charge seemed to shock even Chris Matthews. He sputtered, "McCain, who had his own daughter attacked, was accused of having an illegitimate child when, in fact, he adopted a young girl from South Asia. You're saying that McCain's being driven by racial prejudice here?" Wolffe confirmed, "There is no other way to look at this..." Of course, McCain opposes Rice's nomination because of her dissembling on the issue of the terrorist attack in Libya.

It should come as no surprise to most people that MSNBC is a liberal network, but it appears as though they are now actively campaigning for the Democratic Party.  For several years, MSNBC has produced their own ads featuring numerous on-air personalities promoting different liberal causes.

 MSNBC’s latest ad, however, goes well beyond promotion of liberalism and has shifted into outright DNC promotion.  Narrated by ultra-liberal primetime host Rachel Maddow, the commercial is a litany of Democratic “achievements” essentially a mirror-image of the DNC platform.   [See video below page break.  MP3 audio here.] 

Jay Leno took a humorous swipe at MSNBC's Chris Matthews Friday.

After introducing the Hardball host to NBC's Tonight Show, Leno said to his guest, “Well, Obama was re-elected. You must be orgasmic" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The list of words MSNBC's Chris Matthews believes are racist if uttered by a conservative got longer on Wednesday.

You can now add "urban" which offended Matthews when Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) said it during an interview Monday, but didn't bother the Hardball host in the slightest when Salon's Joan Walsh said it on his own program two days later (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Note to Chris Matthews: when seeking to slam Republicans for their supposed ignorance of science, try not to expose your own.   On Tuesday's Hardball, Matthews—mocking the Republican congressmen vying for the chairmanship of the House Science Committee— committed this whopper: "As we all learned in grammar school—young people watching—trees absorb carbon monoxide."

As even an MSNBC host might know, carbon monoxide is a toxic gas produced when there is insufficient oxygen to permit complete oxidation. Think running car in closed garage. The greenhouse gas to which Matthews was presumably referring—and which trees are famous for absorbing—is carbon dioxide.  Perhaps it was just a slip of the overworked Matthews' tongue, but when it comes to a guy who likes to jump down any available Republican throat, turnabout is fair play. View the video after the jump.

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, in response to Barack Obama's re-election victory, said Tuesday, "I'm so glad we had that storm last week."

Fox News's Bret Baier covered Matthews' pathetic comment on Special Report Wednesday while quoting NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On the same night he apologized for making a horribly inappropriate comment about Hurricane Sandy, Chris Matthews on Wednesday had Bill Maher on Hardball to compare Karl Rove and Republicans to Nazis. After Matthews wondered about Rove's erroneous predictions, the liberal comic mocked, "It was a little Hitler's bunker, wasn't it? I wanted to rush in with a cyanide capsule there. I thought he was going to say, 'I don't want to live in a world without national socialism.'" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews himself got into the act, comparing Rove to Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, a former propaganda henchman for Saddam Hussein: "Is [Rove] the Baghdad Bob of the 2012 election, the last guy to admit something's new and something bad is happening?" Again, this is the same program in which the MSNBC anchor apologized for his "terrible"  election night comment: "I'm so glad we had that storm last week."

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, in response to Barack Obama's re-election victory, said Tuesday, "I'm so glad we had that storm last week."

On Wednesday, the Hardball host led off his program with a heartfelt apology (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews in a special Sunday night Hardball slammed the south as racist and insisted that quoting Barack Obama is bigoted. An incredulous Matthews explained, "And topping it off, we heard Romney himself out here in Ohio today tying all this trash talk together, the President is bent on, get this, revenge." Of course, while talking to voters last week, the President actually said, "Voting is the best revenge."

In another appearance, on Sunday's Last Word, Matthews appeared totally unaware of the context "Well, where did this revenge come from? Where did that line come from?" [See video below.] On Hardball, Matthews insisted to Howard Fineman that most of the country would vote for Obama: "Well, what do you make of the geography, Howard?...The fact that the north, the west, the Midwest will all support Obama, but the south intensely dislikes him?"

Phil Griffin, the President of MSNBC, apologized Thursday for Chris Matthews calling the Koch brothers “pigs,” but Matthews has refused and MSNBC won’t require him to do so.

As NewsBusters reported, this disgusting incident took place on Tuesday’s Hardball as Matthews talked to Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) about Hurricane Sandy’s connection to global warming.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday lashed out at Rush Limbaugh and his criticism of Chris Christie, deriding the conservative radio host as "the guy from Deliverance." Matthews played a clip of Limbaugh joking, "New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided to play the role of a Greek column today for President Obama."

Matthews fumed, "He reminds me more of the guy from Deliverance– 'Squeal like a pig,'" a reference to the sodomy scene in the 1972 film. Matthews followed up, "...It just seems like he's squealing like a pig essentially here."

MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday called the Koch brothers "pigs."

In a Hardball segment about the connection between global warming and Hurricane Sandy, Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) for some reason took the conversation in a decidely disgusting direction (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Like ambulance-chasing lawyers, the heavy-handed liberal activists who populate much of the media raced to exploit Hurricane Sandy even as the storm was lashing the East Coast last night, citing it as proof of “climate change” and a reason to oppose Mitt Romney.

Yesterday afternoon, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir started a panel discussion by claiming that “people are wondering today if the current hurricane has anything to do with global change, climate change, global warming,” and then mentioned the “right-wing nut jobs” supporting Romney.

For at least 24 hours, the mainstream media have been trying to figure out a way to make Hurricane Sandy an aid to Barack Obama's re-election.

On Monday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews had a related concern asking guest John Nichols of the Nation magazine, "How long do you think it’ll take for Donald Trump to take a crack at the President for engineering this?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The Media Research Center is out with the latest edition of our Notable Quotables newsletter, a compilation of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes from the liberal meda. This week's lowlights: Liberal pundits insist that the unfolding details of Obama's incompetent handling of the September 11 attack in Benghazi is an "utterly contrived" story, an "October Mirage."

The ever-wacky Chris Matthews is even sticking with Team Obama's now discredited first response: "Everybody knows it's about the video. It's all about the video."

This week's best quotes are after the jump; you can read the entire issue at www.MRC.org:

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.]

A shrieking Chris Matthews on Thursday smeared the Republican Party, comparing the abortion stances of candidates such as Paul Ryan and Richard Mourdock to those found under Sharia law. The hyperbolic Hardball anchor snarled, "I don't like to comparing anything to Sharia, but there's something about this theocratic notion that we're going to apply all our philosophical beliefs, our metaphysics, our religious training and turn it into law and turn it into criminalization."  [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews continued, "And it's not quite like stoning, but it has that same sort of impulse which is we're going to punish women." Terry O'Neil, the president of the National Organization for Women appeared on the show and screeched, "I think that it's kind of the creeping Talibanization of American policy." Speaking of Mitt Romney, she insisted that the Republican is in the "thick of this very fringe but very dangerous line of thought."

It appears as though MSNBC has gone into overdrive covering up for the Obama administration over the terrorist attack on our consulate in Libya.  Following emails uncovered by CBS News late Tuesday evening showing the White House knew within two hours that the attack was terrorist related, MSNBC has run a grand total of two stories on these shocking developments. 

Unlike yesterday, NBC's Today did provide a news brief on the emails Thursday morning as well as a story during Wednesday night’s Nightly News, but their sister cable network MSNBC has only covered the story once today, on The Daily Rundown at 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday said Sarah Palin's recent "shuck and jive" comments about Barack Obama's ever-changing story on the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, were a racist "dog whistle."

Palin responded on Facebook Wednesday evening:

Liberal cable anchor Chris Matthews, who in 2010 used the phrase "shuck and jive," on Wednesday assailed Sarah Palin as racist for using the phrase "shuck and jive." Referring to a Facebook post the former Alaska governor wrote about Obama and Libya, Matthews ranted, "You know, a dog whistle is a dog whistle...A trumpet call is another."

The MSNBC host insisted that "shuck and jive" has "a particular ethnic connection" and "to throw it at the president as an ethnic shot is pretty blatant." On July 7, 2010, Matthews, while talking to Rachel Maddow about her visit to Afghanistan, wondered, "What has it been like, as you shuck and jive, hang out with the men over there, the women over there, in uniform risking their lives every day?" The late Tim Russert also used the term on July 18, 2003.

In an article for the November Philadelphia Style magazine, a cocky Chris Matthews wistfully recounted a considered 2010 run for Senate, bragging at how incredible he would have been: "I'm not dreaming here. I would be one of the stars of the Democratic Party—there aren’t that many."

The liberal MSNBC anchor flirted with, but ultimately decided against, running in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Perhaps wondering what might have been, he lamented, "I know this: If I had run and won and beaten [Senator Pat] Toomey, I would be one of the Democrats people talk about today." The Hardball host also took some disgruntled shots at Barack Obama.

Talking to two fellow liberals on Monday, an unhinged Chris Matthews trashed conservatives and Republicans who opposes Barack Obama's birth control policies as "Nazis." Matthews smeared, "Is it in society's interests for [a young woman's] boss to be able to be the birth control Nazi to decide who gets it and who doesn't?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Matthews has previously railed against calling one's political opponents Nazis. On April 28, 2010, the liberal host ranted, "But let's agree, can we, to drop the Nazi stuff?" On Monday, Matthews invented a hypothetical woman: "A young woman who works in her 20s or 30s and is not ready to have a child, that's her decision, I think we all agree on that. She wants birth control. Isn't it in society's interest for her to get that as part of her health care?"

In a bit of light-hearted segment on Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor, FNC’s Megyn Kelly described a recent run-in she had with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. 

Kelly described her encounter the following way:

When he saw me in the airport, he had no idea who I was. So I said it is Megyn Kelly with Fox News. And then he said, oh I didn't recognize you with your stringy hair.  [See video below.  MP3 audio here.]