Air America

Alas, lamented lefty pundit Rachel Maddow of Air America Radio and MSNBC, President-elect Obama may pursue a 9/11 commission-type inquiry into alleged crimes of the Bush administration instead of full-blown show trials.

Maddow also demonstrated her odd predilection toward condemning Bush officials as guilty who've yet been charged with anything, much less convicted, while wringing her hands over the fate of horribly misunderstood terrorists such as Salim Hamdan, bin Laden's "driver."

Here's what Maddow said on her radio show Monday, initially referring to the death of a high-level al Qaeda operative in Pakistan --

Now that the government has assumed the role of economic planner with various bailout packages and stimulus plans, experts are predicting a federal budget deficit of $1 trillion.

That much money may be difficult to comprehend, but former President Ronald Reagan put it in perspective with a 1981 analogy describing the federal debt: "And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you'd be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high."

But the huge number doesn't worry Mark Green, the president of the liberal talk radio network Air America. Green dismissed concerns about deficit spending in an interview on MSNBC's "Hardball" Nov. 25.

Did you know that not a single American soldier was killed in combat last month in Iraq?

(Updated with correction: October marked the first month since the battle of Baghdad in April 2003 in which an American soldier was not killed in combat in the Iraqi capital).

I didn't, at least not until last week, what with the mainstream media's post-surge interest in Iraq dwindling in proportion to the prospect of a US debacle.

Yet even with conditions in Iraq improving by the month, some observers on the Left can't refrain from invoking apocalyptic outcomes for the conflict.

Here's what one of them, Rachel Maddow of Air America Radio and MSNBC, said on her radio show Thursday about the proposed status of forces agreement between the US and Iraq that would allow an ongoing presence for American troops after a UN mandate expires Dec. 31 (click here for audio) --

Douglas Turner of the Buffalo News wants conservative radio talkers silenced. He calls them "virulent," "violent" and "coarse" and hopes that starting January 1 the "work of flushing" them will begin. Turner fills his little anti-free speech screed with claims and a few examples of how rotten he thinks righty talkers are and how they need to be shut down, yet can't seem to find a single cross word to say about the "coarseness" of lefty talkers. In other words, it is plain that "coarseness" or "one-sided" radio isn't really a concern of his. Only eliminating the free speech of the right is his goal not any leveling of the playing field.

Naturally, his is filled with prosaic generalizations. Turner assumes that all conservative talk show hosts "were fond" of addressing Obama as "Hussein," his middle name. Yet, Turner offers no list of those that did. He says righty talkers are "violent" but does not offer a single example to prove the allegation. It also seems that Turner can't understand why radio hosts that call themselves conservative would be "one-sided." Curiously, he didn't excoriate Alan Colmes, Randi Rhodes, or Al Franken for being "one-sided." (I know... Imagine that, huh?)

By the second half of Rachel Maddow's interview with Barack Obama last night on MSNBC, the question Maddow kept avoiding became conspicious.

Surely the earnest MSNBC cable host would ask Obama something, anything about Iraq.

After all, Iraq is the main reason Obama became the Democrats' candidate for president and not Clinton, not Biden, Edwards or Kerry. They all voted for the war and later tried in vain to explain it away. Angry McGovernites who regained control of the party would have none of it and wasted little time anointing Obama presumptive nominee right out of the gate in Iowa.

Take Iraq out of the equation and Obama's just a freshman senator still summoning the nerve to ask McCain the time of day.

How about that, some foreigners are apparently less equal than others when it comes to their preferences in the US presidential campaign.

That's the smarmy impression conveyed by Air America Radio host Rachel Maddow, who could barely contain her mirth in response to a "Global Electoral College" survey at The Economist on how other countries would vote in the election.

Here's how Maddow described it on her radio show Friday:

I'm sure the McCain campaign doesn't find this embarrassing at all, but for me the most embarrassing McCain news today on the election is what you can discern by looking at the map that was posted by the Economist magazine today on what would happen if the world could vote in the US election.

Conservatives love this, they love to say, oh yeah, foreign countries would love for you to elect a Democrat 'cause Democrats are good for foreign countries but not for America or somethin'.

Air America Radio host Rachel Maddow condemned a McCain ad critical of Obama while refusing to play the ad -- lest any of her listeners conclude it wasn't as offensive as Maddow claimed.

Here's what Maddow said about the ad on her Air America radio show Friday while referring to a "litany of super-embarrassing things" from the McCain campaign --

The first thing they did to embarrass themselves was put out probably the worst campaign ad I have ever seen in presidential politics, I think, on level with the Daisy ad in terms of its offensiveness and its disregard for the civic health of the United States in favor of political gain. And that is the ad in which they essentially say that there will be a terrorist attack on the United States if Barack Obama is elected and there won't be if John McCain is elected. So intellectually dishonest that it's not even worth playing it or debunking it. It's just disgusting.

Describing John McCain's alleged rationale for not mentioning '60s radical William Ayers in the second presidential debate, rising liberal media darling Rachel Maddow recently attributed a dubious quote to McCain -- "I didn't have the guts."

Wow -- McCain said that?  Well, not exactly.

Maddow, making the assertion during a broadcast of her Air America Radio show, cited politicalwire.com as her source. Here's how it was reported at politicalwire.com on Oct. 14 in a brief post titled, "McCain Pledges to Bring Up Ayers in Debate" --

It appears Sen. John McCain will take Sen. Barack Obama up on his challenge.

In an interview on a St. Louis radio station, McCain said Obama's comments that "I didn't have the guts" to talk about William Ayers in the last presidential debate have "probably ensured" that the former 1960s radical will come up in Wednesday's debate.

In other words, McCain stated the words, "I didn't have the guts," at least according to politicalwire.com -- but McCain was quoting Obama saying this about him, McCain.

I have my issues with Pat Buchanan.  Anyone who writes a book arguing we should have found a modus vivendi with Hitler isn't necessarily high on my list. Still, when it comes to spot-on analysis of the political scene, Pat is without peer. But when Buchanan—his own opposition to the Iraq war notwithstanding—argued on this evening's Hardball that McCain's support for the surge is a winning issue for him, it drove Chris Matthews into such a frenzy he was reduced to a reality-defying scream that the surge isn't working.

Air America's Mark Green was along for the bumpy ride.  An extended clip was rolled of McCain at a town hall in New Mexico saying that he knows how to win wars, that Obama was wrong to oppose the surge, and that he McCain will build on the Iraq experience to lead us to success in Afghanistan.

Then all hell broke loose.

View video here.

New chapter in the lack-of-love fest between Joe Scarborough and Rachel Maddow.  As noted here and here, the pair have clashed in the past. The GOP-congressman-turned-MSNBC-host and the Air America personality got into it again on last evening's Race for the White House, with Joe [guest-hosting for David Gregory] eventually accusing Rachel of perfectly capturing the Clinton cackle.

View video here.

The point of departure was Maddow's insistence against all evidence that Obama hasn't softened his out-of-Iraq-in-16-months position.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: The exact quote here, Rachel, and again, Rachel, you are obviously the only person here that did not hear this quote from the campaign manager, quote: "we will be --

Cut to Maddow, laughing heartily.

SCARBOROUGH: -- out of Iraq at 16 months, at the most." And then [Obama] went ahead and said yes, "because I'm the Commander-in-Chief, but I will still listen" --

Back to Maddow, literally doubling over in laughter.

SCARBOROUGH: -- "to the generals when it comes to tactics." It would strike me as funny, too, if I had no response to that.

And a bit later . . .

Charlie Crist, Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney better hope John McCain isn't banking on Tony Blankley for guidance on his Veep pick. Newt's former press secretary is blah—at best—on all three.

Blankley, also the former editorial page editor of the Washington Times and who continues to write a column there, made his remarks on MSNBC's "Race for the White House" this evening as part of a panel reacting to the news that McCain has invited the three governors—past and present—to meet with him over the Memorial Day weekend.

ON CRIST

DAVID GREGORY: What would Governor Crist bring to McCain's ticket?

TONY BLANKLEY: I don't think he brings much. I think if McCain can't carry Florida on his own, he's not going to carry it. He needs to carry something else. I doubt, I don't think he brings much to the ticket.

View video here.

Air America Radio may have tried and failed to use washed-up comedians like Janeane Garofalo and Al Franken to make liberal talk radio work, but their rule seems to be that if first you don't succeed, flop, flop again. When wacky radical Randi Rhodes resigned over a nasty and profane denunciation of Hillary Clinton, Air America replaced her in afternoon drive time with... Roseanne Barr.

And in no time flat Roseanne behaved like Roseanne. On April 28 she suggested leftists should ignite riots at the Democratic convention in Denver. "We should, a bunch of us, go there and repeat the Democratic Convention from Chicago. Like, let's just cause a bunch of trouble!" There's even a leftist group called "Recreate 68" building up the rioting nostalgia.

"Recreate 68" is no joke. It is trying to draw a raucous crowd: "Join us in the streets of Denver as we resist a two-party system that allows imperialism and racism to continue unrestrained." These troublemakers live to get arrested.

I'm beginning to see Joe Scarborough's skirmishes with Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe as mere batting practice for the much more serious battles he undertakes in the evening with Rachel Maddow on Race for the White House.

As Noel Sheppard documented, Maddow and Scarborough tangled on April 17th, with Joe possibly having exited the set in the end. The pair were back at it on this evening's "Race," the Air America host this time accusing Scarborough of "tying Barack Obama to Hitler."

Maddow's theme throughout the show was that the media has devoted too much coverage to the Rev. Wright matter. David Shuster, subbing for host David Gregory, lit the fuse.

View video here.

Who said leftists are opposed to the death penalty? It's just a question of whose neck's in the noose . . .

Many might wax nostalgic for the America immortalized in Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post cover drawings. Not Keith Olbermann. He longs for the good old days when people like Rush Limbaugh . . . could be strung up. Here's the Countdown host tonight, speaking with Air America's Rachel Maddow:

KEITH OLBERMANN: Legally, we've come a very long way since the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886 when we wound up hanging some anarchist writers, who were not even in the state, as murderers by proxy. And legally there is this question of "temporal remoteness" [separation in time between the statement and the act]. You say this now on the radio, it happens in August. It's not like yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater; it is protected speech. But do you think that Limbaugh has any idea that were he to repeat what he said on the air, say the day before the convention, or during it, he might actually be morally or legally responsible for incitement to riot?

View video here.

See that green thing over there? It's MSNBC's fig leaf. The network has decided to take it all off and admit what everyone knew was obvious: that it's trying to become the far-left's cable channel of choice.

That's really about all you can say after learning the news that the MSNBC show "Race for the White House" will now be simulcast live at 6pm ET on Air America, the low-rated radio network for liberals.

"Race" is a nightly show about the 2008 campaign hosted by liberal NBC reporter David Gregory and prominently features Air America host Rachel Maddow as a panelist. The simulcast move is just one of the latest in a long series of leftward moves made by MSNBC since it determined that pandering to the nutroots left could rescue it from the ratings cellar.

For those that are luckily unfamiliar, Rachel Maddow is one of the darlings of the extreme-left in this country. A regular on MSNBC's "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann, the Air America Radio host is also a panel member on that network's "Race for the White House" with David Gregory.

Another panel member is Joe Scarborough, and those that have watched this program since its inception know that he holds Maddow in as low esteem as any self-respecting conservative would -- or any sane American, for that matter.

With that as pretext, on Thursday's show, Scarborough apparently had enough of this liberal antagonist; during the following exchange, he unhooked his microphone, walked off the set, and didn't return (video embedded upper right):

Editor's Note: Video below the fold. And the Best of Randi Rhodes

To reassign the estimable Bill Cosby's Fat Albert assessment, Air America's Randi Rhodes is reminiscent of school on Saturday -- no class.

Captured is a five-plus minute video (here below the fold) in which Rhodes -- utilizing language and manner more sailor than lady-like -- excoriates both the junior Senator from New York and former Vice Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro at length as the "W" word (not "Woman"). She also touches on the Governor Eliot Spitzer story, commenting a bit on his "W" and her over-pricedness, and finds a little time to slam "Dina McGreevey", wife of disgraced former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey.

Rhodes was so gracefully serving as an emissary for the liberal radio network for the alleged benefit of one of its affiliates. So appreciative and proud was Air America that they suspended her - an apparently rare (in fact unprecedented -- big time h/t to The Radio Equalizer) disciplinary move by the network.

What is decidedly less exceptional are similar invective-laden screeds from the hack broadcaster whose show and network have fewer listeners than the number of people who read their VCR operator's manuals.

Leave it to liberals to pile on Sen. John McCain with cheap shots about his age, and we're not talking making jokes about him serving in the Civil War or what not. Mocking John McCain's age, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann imagined that the senator could easily segue from talking about foreign policy or the economy to talking about "buying more Depends or something like that." (h/t Conservative Punk)

"You can dissassociate yourself from that remark if you wish," Olbermann immediately added in his exchange with Rachel Maddow of the liberal Air America radio network.

Yesterday NewsBusters noted a liberal blogger who took a cheap shot at McCain's false teeth. McCain's teeth were bashed out by North Vietnamese tormentors during his time as a POW.

Ask an obvious question . . .

Amy Robach this morning asked the most rhetorical question in contemporary media: does the MSM have a thing for Barack Obama?

The weekend Today co-anchor didn't need guests Pat Buchanan or Rachel Maddow for the answer. She could have kept things in-house with NBC's own Lee Cowan, who has acknowledged “it's almost hard to remain objective” about Obama.

But pose the question Robach did, and Pat Buchanan gave her a colorful answer.

Brian Maloney at Radio Equalizer has a shocking story to tell. On her Air America radio show on Super Tuesday, Randi Rhodes ran a commercial parody in which Mitt Romney supporters suggest they're going to go on a "killing rampage" if John McCain wins. He has audio, and the transcript:

ANNOUNCER: The following is a paid advertisement from Republicans for Mitt Romney, or mass suicide. If John McCain is the Republican Presidential nominee, it will destroy the Republican Party. We’re Romney supporters and we know. Cause, if you vote for John McCain, we’re going to go on a killing rampage. Hey, better dead then moderate.

REPUBLICAN CHARACTER VOICE: "Look, I for one don’t want to die in a hail of gun fire from crazed Mitt Romney supporters, but it’s better then nominating a man who opposed the Bush tax cuts. Hell, John McCain spent years in a North Vietnamese prison. A prison? That doesn’t make him a hero. That makes him an ex-con.

Fred Barnes has a new article out in The Weekly Standard on the origins of the surge in Iraq, but controversy has erupted in left-wing circles over an aside: "Rather than a turning point, the events of June prompted a fleeting moment of optimism. The week before Camp David, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, had been killed. (Cheney has a piece of the house where Zarqawi died on display at his residence.)"

On Wednesday night, mad-dog radio host Mike Malloy referred to the Standard article by "truly certifiable maniac" Fred Barnes. "This guy is beyond crazy," charged Malloy."I'm sure he eats children's arms and legs for afternoon snacks. This guy is insane." As he described the Barnes passage that that Cheney has a Zarqawi-house souvenir, Malloy added: "I'm surprised that Cheney doesn't have a piece of Zarqawi's body."

The woman who got her big break on network TV thanks to the firing of Don Imus now apparently wants another host to lose his job over some tasteless remarks.

Morning Joe is the show that took over MSNBC's early-morning time slot after Imus was bounced for his offensive observations about the Rutgers women's basketball team. Mika Brzezinski, a regular member of the Morning Joe crew, has now left little doubt she would like to see John Gibson fired for the callous comments about the death of actor Heath Ledger the Fox News host made on his radio show.

View video.

Some Martin Luther King birthday events happened this week (the real birthday is January 15), and the official ones take place Monday. But on the 14th, wacky leftist radio host Mike Malloy charged that King was murdered by the government (then headed by Lyndon Johnson):

"The argument has been made that one of the reasons that the US government assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. was because of his speech at Riverside Church in New York, I think it was Riverside Church, where he came out fully against the war in southeast Asia and fully against the policies that were being perpetuated against the American people in general. He left his little safe niche of, oh, well, he's a spokesman for the Negroes, and stepped outside that and started taking on greater issues and so the United States government said, well, it's time to get rid of this guy."

The Air America artist known as "Lionel" reacted badly on his radio show Thursday when he discovered MRC president Brent Bozell wrote a column blasting his celebration of the San Francisco zoo tiger that killed a 17-year-old boy. He wasn’t apologizing: "Whenever the animals fight back and win, I don't know, I just like it somehow...it's fair."

Did anyone tell him they shot the tiger? He also tried to extend his remarks on rooting for the death of Steve Irwin, TV’s "Crocodile Hunter":

"This fellow that I hated, and it's tragic that he died, Steve Irwin...and that weird, bad-seed daughter of his, Bindi, that weird-looking kid...Remember when he held his baby, and there was a crocodile? I'm thinking, 'What are you doing?' and I'm saying, 'Come on, croc, get him, get him, get him.' Quit playing with these things....

At what point, exactly, did we come to hate humans for having the arrogance to assume they are wiser than beasts?

The "we" in that equation belongs squarely to the camp of the loony radical left, which now broadcasts that hatred for humans on the Air America radio network. How low can this disgraceful failure of a radio venture go? One of their newest hosts goes by the radio name "Lionel." (His real name is Michael LeBron.) "Lionel" unfurled a rather unique take on the tragic incident at the San Francisco Zoo, where a tiger mauled a teenager to death.

He cheered for the tiger.

Then he cheered the death of Steve Irwin, the beloved "Crocodile Hunter" of TV fame.

The talk-radio host known simply as "Lionel" joined the Air America team in May, and he has demonstrated he belongs on the exotic fringe with the rest of the network. Most people don’t take sides when a zoo tiger mauls a teenager to death. "Lionel" favored the tiger. His blog declared: "If you shoot a tiger with a sling-shot, you deserve to get mauled. That’s just how it works." The New York Post reported several teenagers that were victimized by the tiger had slingshots, but that has not been confirmed by San Francisco zoo officials. On his show Wednesday, "Lionel" was even more explicit:

Call me wacky, but hurray for the tiger that killed the kid who was...taunting him. Now, I know this is not right...but let's hear it for the wild...I loathe zoos. I'm still cheering the fact that some stingray whacked that Aussie pain-in-the-ass Steve Irwin.

In the musty but hallowed halls of the Old Media, the first item for target practice is often the New Media, the ones formed and made popular by the atrocious biases of their predecessors. The Old Media continue watching their numbers bleed away; continue to paint themselves as fair and balanced, despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary; and continue to smear the New Media, especially talk radio, as the divisive haters and fact-manglers ruining civil discourse in America.

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw is on the publicity tour for his new book "Boom!" about the 1960s. On the November 26 Laura Ingraham show, when he was challenged with his soundbite broadsiding talk radio as "instantly jingoistic and savagely critical" of war protesters, Brokaw quickly put his anti-radio rant back into rotation.

He suggested incivility was a "big cancer" on America, and talk radio is the number one tumor. Front and center in Brokaw’s pathology was Limbaugh: "My problem with the whole spectrum is there is not -- you know what Rush’s, what his whole drill is. He doesn’t want to hear another point of view. Except his."

Fresh off her recent assault in which many suspect the culprit to have been 14 Bloody Marys, Air America radio talk host Randi Rhodes has now wandered into Moonbat conspiracy territory with her suggestion that Blackwater was the the cause of the current wildfires in California. Here is a partial transcript (audio available here) of what Randi said on the air on Wednesday:

I started just doing Google searches to try and figure out. You know, arson, arson, it was like crazy trying to figure out why is that being downplayed? Why is that, you know, just a small part of the story? And you know, every time I look for it what comes up, believe it or not, is that Blackwater wants to move to San Diego and build this giant complex in San Diego right where most of the evacuations are taking place and you know.

You just know wherever there is fire, this administration will be out there doing what it does best and that is fanning the flames, you know. It just spooks me, I can’t explain to you how creepy this whole thing is that you know, you’ve got these fires. Some of them are thought to be the work of arsonists and in the same breath you’ve got a community that’s on fire that just recently protested Blackwater West. Just recently said no to Blackwater and apparently you don’t do that.

It is no secret that Air America is a favorite of most if not all the liberal denizens of many newsrooms. In Austin today, Austin Statesman reporter W. Gardner Selby cemented that reputation in his/her publicity piece on Air America's demise in Austin, Texas. Wrote Selby,

Air America seeks another home in Central Texas, but nothing is imminent, Kaufman said. He'd welcome tips at dkaufman@airamerica.com. "If someone can point me in the direction of someone more amenable to picking up our format, I'll take all the help I can get," Kaufman said.

I am aware that the liberal media will do virtually anything to try to counteract the conservative dominance of talk radio, but for a supposedly neutral reporter to publish the liberal talk radio's contact information along with a barely-disguised plea for someone to add Air America to their radio lineup strikes me as somehow beyond the pale.

In a bigtime case of the pot calling the kettle black, liberal talk radio host Ed Schultz is attacking the credibility of Air America radio host Randi Rhodes concerning her highly dubious story about her non-mugging last Sunday outside an Irish bar in New York. Brian Maloney of the Radio Equalizer has been on top of this Randi Rhodes "mugging" story from the beginning. Maloney yesterday highlighted the credibility problems of Rhodes' lame explanation on the air Thursday of her non-mugging: