MSNBC

It seems as though MSNBC’s liberal agenda doesn't concern itself simply with secular politics. They want the Catholic Church to "lean forward" into fundamentally changing themselves to reflect liberal values. In service of this pulpit-pounding, MSNBC's Jansing & Co. program brought on two liberal Catholic women over two days. At no point did she turn to a traditionalist, orthodox Catholic to defend the church's traditional teachings.

On February 14, fill-in host Richard Lui interviewed Sister Louise Akers, of the Sisters of Charity to rail against the Church, in what she views as, “the last bastion of sexism.” Lui began the segment with the liberal nun by noting:

For daring to oppose Chuck Hagel's nomination to be Secretary of Defense, Chris Matthews on Thursday snarled that Ted Cruz is the new Joe McCarthy. Comparing the Republican senator from Texas to liberalism's highest villain, Matthews ranted, "You know, I don't often say it, and I rarely say it, but there was echoes of Joe McCarthy there. Really strong echoes." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

The Hardball anchor came to this conclusion after playing a clip of Cruz pointing out that the "government of Iran [is] formally and publicly praising" Hagel's nomination. Matthews's guest, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, unsurprisingly agreed: "It was absolutely McCarthy-like!" Matthews's claim that he "rarely" compares people to McCarthy is just wrong. He's done it a number of times. 

MSNBC's Martin Bashir made a bit of a fool of himself Thursday surprisingly with the assistance of NBC News's Kelly O'Donnell.

When Bashir claimed the just-ended failed cloture vote on Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary was "an example of the fractures in the Republican Party because at the beginning of the day we didn't think that Harry Reid would get any Republican votes," O'Donnell responded, "Actually, not a surprise, not a surprise" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC, for the second time on Thursday, smeared the National Rifle Association as racist, trashing the gun group's president as appealing to bigotry. Now host Alex Wagner read from an op-ed by Wayne LaPierre in which he argues that owning a gun is the only real protection from crime, looting and riots. Specifically, LaPierre mentioned the aftermath to Hurricane Sandy and looting in Brooklyn.

Wagner quoted LaPierre: "Hurricanes, tornadoes, riots, terrorists, gangs, lone criminals, these are the perils we are sure to face. Not just maybe. It's not paranoia to buy a gun. It's survival." She then sneered, "There's also a lot of racial– racism imbedded in that full statement." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Novelist and guest Kurt Andersen mocked, "There were, not only not looters in south Brooklyn. Everybody was out helping everybody else...It was the opposite of that description." Except that there was looting in Brooklyn during Hurricane Sandy.

Following President Obama’s call to raise the federal minimum wage to $9/hour in Tuesday's State of the Union address, MSNBC has been eagerly pushing the president’s new-found support for the hike.

Speaking on February 14, host Thomas Roberts conducted a one-sided interview with liberal contributor Goldie Taylor on the supposed need to jack up the minimum wage.  As most of Roberts’ segments are, not one guest was brought on to challenge Taylor’s liberal motives, with Roberts introducing the segment as such:

Regular viewers of MSNBC know that network's anchors have an almost superhuman ability to find racism in any statement uttered from a conservative or Republican's mouth. Joe Scarborough showed off that talent, on Thursday's Morning Joe, when he claimed a recent op-ed by Wayne LaPierre was "laced with racial overtones" because the NRA president suggested Brooklynites should have the right to defend themselves from Hurricane Sandy looters and border state residents needed protection from violent gangs.

After reciting an excerpt from the LaPierre op-ed, Scarborough ranted: "Wayne LaPierre is suggesting if you are against Americans being able to own assault weapons with 30-round high-capacity magazines, that somehow you're going to-- and he said Hispanic drug gangs are coming to America, and those terrible people in Brooklyn, don't go out after dark. I mean, this is so laced with racial overtones." (video after the jump)

What world does Chris Matthews live in? The MSNBC anchor on Wednesday saw nothing liberal in Barack Obama's State of the Union. Talking to Chuck Todd, the Hardball anchor puzzled, "There's nothing lefty in here. What's the left-wing part? Objectively, was there a left wing piece to this speech last night? I mean, truly left? I didn't see it." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

This was the same speech in which Obama lobbied for gun control, higher taxes, increasing the minimum wage and left-wing immigration reform. According to Matthews, "these weren't Hail Mary passes." The anchor described this as "I mean, basically, he was moving the ball maybe one foot to the left of the midfield." 

Once again, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews showed his over-eager liberal partisanship and Obama puffery following Marco Rubio’s response to the State of the Union on February 13.  Speaking on Tuesday night with the rest of the liberal MSNBC panel, Matthews slammed Rubio’s speech as “primitive” and “tinker toys.”

Following Rachel Maddow’s liberal critique of Senator Rubio’s speech, which she said was, “a claws out kind of aggressive speech”, Matthews offered no such restraints in slamming Rubio, snarking that Rubio’s speech was, “something you would hear on a high school debating team.”  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

In just 58 seconds, Joe Scarborough has managed to render an imagined response to last night's SOTU that demolishes President Obama's failed economic record.

Delivered on today's Morning Joe, Scarborough scalded PBO's pitiful performance on the economy.  Highlights from the Hall of Shame: four million more Americans out of work today than when Barack Obama became President; average income down 5% since the end of the recession.  View the video after the jump.

Moments before Tuesday's State of the Union address, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow made a huge announcement.

As she introduced former Barack Obama senior campaign adviser/press secretary Robert Gibbs, she said, "I am for the first time tonight able to introduce you as an MSNBC contributor. Congratulations on that" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Liberal host Chris Matthews on Tuesday anchored live coverage of a cop killer on the run, making bizarre and offensive comments about the situation. Talking to Los Angeles Times journalist Andrew Blankstein, Matthews agonized about being fair to Chris Dorner, the man who has allegedly murdered three people and wounded several others: "How do you write a story like this that's objective for the big metropolitan paper, the Los Angeles Times?" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

He continued, "Are there people in your newsroom, editors who are saying, 'We have to be careful here. It's not simple. This man may have a complaint.'" He may have a complaint? Matthews did not allow Tea Partiers, who, it should be pointed out, haven't slaughtered people, the same considerations. No, the MSNBC host would foam about  racism and compare them to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent on Tuesday seemed shocked that Joe Scarborough, who he paints as the voice of moderation, agrees more with Democrats on deficit issues than Republicans. On the subject of fiscal problems and the debt, the MSNBC host told Sargent, "I don’t expect to be cheering House Republicans anytime soon."

The left-leaning Post writer asked if, on deficit issues, Scarborough's "views are indeed more in line with Dems than with Republicans." The cable host replied, "yes." He then went on to attack Barack Obama from the left: "I don’t see the Democrats focusing seriously on Entitlements or cuts. The president is even scared to cut defense."

My review of previous NewsBusters posts relating to "Bill Nye the Science Guy" indicates that he's an atheist who doesn't think creationism should be taught in schools and, more pertinent at the moment, such an avid believer in "global warming" aka "climate change" that he believes those who doubt it or that it's caused by human activity are "unpatriotic."

Nye's belief in what I prefer to call "globaloney" appears to be based far more on faith than sound meteorological knowledge, given the alarming ignorance he expressed recently on MSNBC about the origins of the past week's snowstorms in the Northeast. Washington Post Weather Editor Jason Samenow ripped into Nye at the paper's "Capital Weather Gang" blog yesterday (HT Yid With Lid via Instapundit; links are in original; bolds are mine):

It’s been four years since President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney left the White House, but MSNBC’s Chris Matthews can’t miss an opportunity to trash the former vice president every chance he has. After playing a recent soundbite of Matthews's favorite bete noir, Matthews asked Howard Fineman, the editorial director of the Huffington Post, “Where do you learn to be that evil?”

Speaking to his all-liberal panel, which included Joan Walsh of Salon.com, Matthews went on a bender against Cheney from everything from the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame -- he blamed the wrong person for it, by the way -- to the decision to go to war with Iraq.  Matthews began his spittle-laced rant:

Ronald Reagan: RINO?  Cokie Roberts and Joe Scarborough have suggested the Gipper might be viewed that way by the modern-day Republican party, making him unelectable within GOP ranks.

After Joe Scarborough said that it was Reagan who rounded up Republican support for the assault weapon ban in 1984, Roberts exclaimed "I'm not sure Reagan could get elected within the Republican party today."  Scarborough concurred: "I don't know that he could." View the video after the jump.

Discussing the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI on the February 11 edition of MSNBC's "The Cycle," co-host Krystal Ball praised the retiring pontiff for being a "real advocate for addressing climate change" and for joining Twitter, but lamented that he was "outspoken in keeping women from being ordained" and "went after the largest group of nuns in America for basically spending too much time focused on the poor and not enough on abortion and gay marriage."

But as we at NewsBusters have noted time and again, the nuns who were corrected by the Vatican were NOT attacked for their good social work and most certainly were not denounced for being too busy caring for the poor to deal with the politics of abortion or gay marriage. No, the Vatican's rebuke -- which was tenderly-worded and pastoral in nature, by the way -- was largely centered on questions of Catholic doctrine and ecclesiology, as my colleague Paul Wilson explained in an April 2012 post addressing a similar gripe by the Washington Post's Melinda Henneberger (emphases mine):

In today's "Can Someone Help Me Get My Foot Out of My Mouth" segment, the astonishingly pompous and self-righteous MSNBC regular Julian Epstein made an absolutely delicious faux pas Monday while excoriating the character and accomplishments of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

In an appearance on the Martin Bashir Show, Epstein derisively described Cheney as "a guy who failed to get Osama bin Laden in Bora Bora" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Early this morning, Pope Benedict XVI announced that he’d abdicate the papal throne at the end of the month, which is the first time a pontiff will have stepped down in seven centuries.  Such breaking news was bound to set off rampant media speculation about next month's meeting of the College of Cardinals --which will decide Benedict's successor -- and talk in the media about the outgoing bishop of Rome's legacy.

All that is well and good, but on MSNBC, it was the perfect excuse for the liberal network to feature liberal Catholics Chris Matthews and E.J. Dionne scolding the Church as out of touch with modernity on issues of sexuality and women as priests. And that was on top of laughingly treating the election of a new pope as though it were some presidential primary where candidates work feverishly to line up enough delegates to win nomination. Read the relevant transcript below the page break:

A daily feature of MSNBC host Chris Jansing's 10 a.m. Eastern program Jansing & Co. is the "Tweet of the Day." Given the astonishing breaking news about Pope Benedict XVI's decision to abdicate the papacy at the end of the month, it was almost certain the tweet highlighted would have to do with this development.

But given that this is the "Lean Forward" network, Jansing highlighted the call of a liberal columnist for a pope who would accept contraception and women priests:

Filling in for host Chuck Todd on Friday's MSNBC Daily Rundown, The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza gushed over the popularity of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: "Hillary Clinton is just day's removed from public office, but a new poll finds her public image soaring. Time to put another log on the 2016 speculation fire....Look, I can't get enough of Hillary Clinton, I'll just admit it. I'm just fascinated by the story." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Comparing Clinton to a list of other potential 2016 presidential candidates, both Democrats and Republicans, Cillizza proclaimed: "She's more popular than anyone else on this list....These numbers are not terribly surprising, I mean, she just spent four years as our top diplomat."

Suppose our enemies declared war on us—and we didn't show up? In a variation on the pacifist line from the 60s, that's essentially what Chris Hayes has proposed as American policy.

On his MSNBC show this morning, the hopelessly naive Hayes suggested that rather than debating "big war"—boots on ground—versus "small war"—targeted strikes—we go for a third option "no war."  In Hayes's fantasy-land, America declares the war on terror over and "declares itself at peace." View the video after the jump.

Martin Bashir once again demonstrates that he represents the bottom of the admittedly deep MSNBC barrel . . .

On his MSNBC show this afternoon, Bashir suggested to a female guest that by his questioning at the Senate confirmation hearing of John Brennan, Senator Marco Rubio sought to demonstrate that he had "very strong testicles."  Bashir elicited nervous laughter and a duck of the head from guest Karen Finney.  View the video after the jump.

During a panel discussion on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports on Friday, Meet the Press moderator David Gregory touted President Obama's swagger leading up to Tuesday's State of the Union address: "He's coming at this with a very ambitious agenda at a time when he's feeling pretty confident...You come into the start of your second term, you say, 'Okay, I'm going to walk with a bit more strength in my gate here.'" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Host Andrea Mitchell imagined Obama declaring: "I'm the big sheriff in town." The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza gushed: "Well, I mean, look, this is – if there's ever a time where you can say, 'I have been validated'....It's sort of like, 'I won, deal with this reality, and let's move forward.'"

Complaining about Senate Republicans being dissatisfied with former senator Chuck Hagel's refusal to turn over information related to speeches he delivered that were financed by foreign sources, MSNBC's Tamron Hall this afternoon took a conservative blogger out of context to suggest that even conservatives were frustrated with how the Senate GOP -- which, by the way, is the minority party in the Senate and lacks the votes to thwart a Hagel confirmation -- was handling the confirmation process.

In a February 8 NewsNation segment entitled "Hagel Holdup," Hall lamented that Republican "senators are also demanding that Hagel give them copies of every speech he's made in the past five years. It's a process Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin says, quote, 'could be the most inept and disorganized confirmation effort in recent memory.'" While Rubin did write that Friday morning, the Post blogger was referring to the Obama administration and Mr. Hagel, not Republicans. From "A critical weekend for the Hagel nomination" (video follows page break; MP3 audio here):

Politico media writer Dylan Byers reported that Ed Schultz viewers on MSNBC are bigger Obama fans than Schultz fans. While Schultz asserted on Thursday night that "many Americans want to know how the United States can order the killings of American citizens without due process," a phone survey during the hour of his show found
78 percent said they agreed with "the policy of targeted killing of American citizens." Only 22 percent stuck with Ed.

Byers wrote, "These results may have come as a surprise to Schultz -- neither he nor MSNBC PR immediately responded to a request for his reaction -- because the results of his viewer surveys almost always align with his own progressive worldview."

Sure, you might be cool with Barack Obama calling up a drone strike on an American citizen.  But don't forget: a Republican [shudder!] could become President!

That was the Washington Post editorialist Jonathan Capehart's warning to Donny Deutsch when the ad-man-turned-pundit proclaimed he had no problem with the president, under desperate circumstances, ordering a drone strike against an American.  View the video after the jump.

Nowadays, our nation's capital is in such ill-repute that if George Washington were around, he might sue to have his name taken off it. But never fear: restoring Washington's good name is just a few trillion dollars away!

So Chris Matthews assures us in an MSNBC "Lean Forward" promo that is currently airing.  After ticking off a number of big-government programs initated under past presidents, Matthews continues: "we got to get back to that, and then Washington will have a good name again." View the promo after the jump.

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.

With this afternoon's Senate confirmation hearings for CIA director nominee John Brennan in view, the February 7 broadcast of Now with Alex Wagner devoted significant attention to the Obama administration's use of armed drones and the recently-leaked DOJ White Paper defending the legitimacy of drone strikes that explicitly targeted American civilians overseas. 

For her part, host Alex Wagner failed to mention Anwar al-Awlaki’s activities as a terrorist operative affiliated with al-Qaeda.  The Now host merely tagged al-Awlaki as an American-born cleric, even though he served as a talent recruiter within the organization and inspired Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hassan.  Al-Awlaki also had contact with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the terrorist who attempted to blow up a passenger airliner on Christmas Day of 2009.  None of that was mentioned on the show. 

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"  Time for Joe Scarborough to brush up on the Sermon on the Mount?

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough gloated at length over survey results indicating that the public's trust in Fox News has declined and that PBS is the only network that more people trust than distrust. But he conveniently failed to mention that Fox News remains the network that more people trust than any other . . . and that his own MSNBC trails way—way!—behind Fox News in public trust.  View the video after the jump.