Radio

Hard to believe there are people who think along these lines, but that's left-wing radio for you.

One of its ditziest inhabitants, the habitually juvenile Randi Rhodes, resents that she's far less talented and influential than Fox's Bill O'Reilly, so she responds with insipid analysis. (Audio after the break)

The signs keep accumulating that the IRS scandal is worse than liberals are willing to concede.

On Bill Press's radio show yesterday, a reporter with left-leaning Politico told Press that the Internal Revenue Service dragging its feet on applications for tax-exempt status from tea party groups probably affected the outcome of last year's election. (Video after the jump)

Ah, seems like old times.

Way back when, it was Congressman Jim McDermott's apologia for Saddam Hussein that earned McDermott the enduring nickname "Baghdad Jim." (Audio after page break)

When Lyndon Johnson lost CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite during the Vietnam War, or so the legend goes, he knew his days in the White House were numbered.

If President Obama hears what previously stalwart liberal ally Ed Schultz said on his radio show yesterday, he may feel a similar chill down his spine. (Audio after page break)

Leave it to Ed Schultz to conjure up the most deranged spin yet in response to the Internal Revenue Service admitting to undue scrutiny of tea party groups.

While many liberals have been critical of the Obama administration in the wake of the hardly surprising revelation, Schultz on his radio show yesterday was full-throated in his defense of the IRS -- even to the point of making the absurd claim that it showed how conservatives should support President Obama's plan to "simplify" the tax code. (Audio clips after page break)

NPR's Scott Horsley filed an unashamedly slanted report on Thursday's Morning Edition about the former national field director for Obama's reelection campaign trying to boost voter turnout among Hispanics in Texas as a means of helping Democratic candidates. The only talking heads that Horsley featured during the segment were the former Obama campaign official, Jeremy Bird, and a fellow of the left-wing Center for American Progress.

The correspondent mentioned only in passing that "some Texas Republicans are skeptical that Democrats will be competitive in their state anytime soon."

Never let it be said that Ed Schultz isn't bravely willing to thrust his finger high in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.

Schultz did this on his radio show yesterday, citing a new Gallup poll as justification for Democrats to end their obsession for more gun laws in the six months since the Sandy Hook massacre and focus instead on the economy. (Audio clip after page break)

Yes, MSNBC has booted Ed Schultz from its primetime lineup to the the penal colony that is the network's weekend schedule.

Now MSNBC wants to show you how popular Schultz is -- and what better way to do that than record the first weekend broadcast of "The Ed Show" before a live audience of rowdy liberals in Madison, Wisc., one of the most left-wing towns in the country. While MSNBC viewers will be none the wiser, everyone else will see through the ruse. (Audio clips after page break)

The leftists at Mother Jones are brandishing another secret tape. Pollster Frank Luntz, denounced as too conservative by liberals when he turns up on liberal networks, told a group of college students at the University of Pennsylvania this week that Rush Limbaugh and right-wing talk radio are "problematic" for the GOP and that he and Mark Levin were “killing” Marco Rubio for his immigration proposals.

Democrats have “got every other source of news on their side. And so that is a lot of what's driving it. If you take—Marco Rubio's getting his ass kicked. Who's my Rubio fan here? We talked about it. He's getting destroyed! By Mark Levin, by Rush Limbaugh, and a few others.” This might be a surprise to anyone who's listened to Rubio's actual interviews on conservative talk radio.

Add liberal host Bill Press to the list of liberals who want the sequester to hurt Americans in order to prove a political point. On Tuesday morning’s Full Court Press, his radio talk show simulcast on Current TV, Press predicted that the FAA furloughs that went into effect Sunday will be just the tip of the big, bad sequester iceberg:

“[Y]ou know what, it’s gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse and at some point, Americans are gonna be down on their knees saying please get rid of this sequester. It’s gotta happen; you cannot do these across-the-board mindless cuts without having impacts like we started to see yesterday.” But Press didn't stop there, insisting that he "hoped" such delays continued and that they become "un-freaking bearable in every way." [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

On Thursday’s “Keepin’ It Real” radio show, the Rev. Al Sharpton was unhappy with CNN reporter John King wrongly claiming a suspect in custody for the Boston bombings was a “dark-skinned male.”

Sharpton insisted he wasn’t the divider, he was the uniter: “tweeters say ‘oh Rev. Al you’re being divisive.’ No, he’s divisive when he brings up dark-skinned. I’m exposing the divisiveness. Don’t get confused.” He was getting cocky:

That month-long hiatus enjoyed by Ed Schultz since MSNBC put "The Ed Show" on hold has made him unusually perceptive, if only momentarily.

On his radio show Friday, Schultz made a suggestion about handling the crisis on the Korean peninsula that will have many liberals spitting up their decaffeinated double lattes. (Audio clip after page break)

The mayor of Fargo, N.D., sure knows what he's talking about.

Dennis Walaker was one of three city and school officials quoted in a Forum of Fargo-Moorhead newspaper story rebuking liberal radio host Ed Schultz for his churlish criticism of local eighth-graders being recruited for sandbagging to help stem spring floods. (Audio clip after page break)

"Teach your children well," sang Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in a syrupy overplayed hippie anthem from 1970. (Not to worry, I won't link).

Teach them to say "screw you" to their community, Ed Schultz instructs the children now. While he waits and waits and waits for "The Ed Show" to make its transition from primetime to the penal colony that is MSNBC weekends, Schultz continues spewing his trademark buffoonery through his radio show. (audio clip after page break)

Rare is the "pro-choice" liberal who admits that abortion kills an unborn human being.

The Rev. Al Sharpton made this seldom-witnessed acknowledgement -- or as close as he's likely to get -- on his radio show while drawing an analogy to his views on the Defense of Marriage Act.  (audio clip after page break) --

If we're going to have our tax dollars spent on NPR covering political news, can't we at least insist that they report the news accurately?

On Friday's All Things Considered, co-Host Audie Cornish opened an eight-minute segment by saying, “the gay marriage debate arrived at the Supreme Court, and White House efforts to tighten the nation's gun laws ran into serious Republican opposition.” Granted, the Tea Party caucus in the Senate is planning on a filibuster of the anti-gun bill that’s making its way to the floor, but the “serious” opposition comes from within the Democratic Party, as no less a partisan Democrat than Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid noted a few weeks ago.

On March 19, Ed O’Keefe and Philip Rucker of the Washington Post reported that Sen. Feinstein’s assault weapons ban amendment to the gun control bill had, in the words of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “using the most optimistic numbers, has less than 40 votes.”

This has already gotten ugly, even by Chicago standards.

Fifty-four public schools in the Windy City are closing due to a $1 billion budget shortfall and the president of the Chicago Teachers Union is putting the blame squarely on Mayor Rahm Emanuel. (audio clip after page break)

Late last month, math-challenged Ed Schultz took a cue from the Chicken Little hysterics streaming from the White House to claim that sequestration will slash federal spending by "damn near a third."

Much the same capacity for delusion takes hold in Schultz's radio show guests, as shown yesterday with an equally unlikely claim from Democrat congressman Jim McDermott. (audio clip after page break)

Looks like this could be a rocky transition for Ed Schultz and MSNBC.

Ever since Politico reported "The Ed Show" would move from primetime weeknights on MSNBC to the network's barren weekends, bumping up against scarcely watched programming that consists mainly of reality shows set in prison, Schultz has insisted the shift is not a demotion. (Audio clips after page break)

Two months after President Obama whacked the wealthy with higher taxes, Ed Schultz is flip-flopping on his previous denial that this occurred.

Back in late February, Schultz resorted to accounting gimmickry to bolster his insistent claim that Obama had not increased taxes on well-heeled Americans. (audio clips after page break)

Ed Schultz touts his radio program as the place "where America comes to talk" -- providing that "America" agrees with Schultz.

Good example of the habitually acerbic Schultz's response to criticism was heard on the show yesterday when a caller questioned the basis for Schultz's support of President Obama's use of drones to kill suspected terrorists. (audio clip after page break)

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)

I haven't heard Ed Schultz this apologetic since he maligned Laura Ingraham as a slut and was booted off MSNBC for a week.

On his radio show yesterday, Schultz was talking with Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State and a deeply spiritual man indeed, about Pope Benedict's resignation as the sex abuse scandal continues to roil the church. (audio clip after page break)

I assume no one expected that Bob Woodward would be found to be the first and only ordinarily Democrat-friendly recipient of threats from White House officials over what he has written and said.

Another such person has come forward in the name of Lanny Davis, who among other things was a completely insufferable defender of the indefensible during the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky-impeachment saga in 1998 and 1999. The morning, on Washington radio station WMAL (audio is at the link), Davis said that his editor at the Washington Times received a threat as a result of what Davis was writing there:

Just when you thought the pathology from Mike Malloy couldn't get more alarming, the man outdoes himself again.

A left-winger so beyond the pale he was once fired by the ardent redistributionists at Air America Radio, Malloy has carved out a niche for himself as the radio host most likely to self-immolate from his own bile. (audio clip after page break)

On her radio show Monday, liberal host Randi Rhodes had an extended rant against Republicans and their policy advice of tax reductions for job creators.

“I mean, we're going crazy with this thing about corporations are more important than humans. Corporations more important than educating a kid. Corporations are more important than border security. Corporations are more important than, you know, flying safely. Really?” No, not really.  Then she complained the Republicans are “meth heads”:

Ed Schultz's radio show is long overdue for a laugh track, seeing how the hilarity just keeps coming.

Fresh on the heels of his delusional claim that a tax hike isn't actually a tax hike, Schultz on his radio show yesterday insisted that sequestration due to start March 1 will gut federal spending by "damn near a third" when in fact the impact is around ... 2 percent. (audio clip after page break)