Cenk Uygur

In a July 9 post on www.loudobbs.com, Dobbs let fly bashing the staff at his one-time competitor for "two gems that can't be ignored."

"MSNBC guest anchor Cenk Uygur filled in for the equally insane and inane Dylan Ratigan and pushed the crazy idea that President Obama is a conservative," he wrote. The video of the segment is all there because Dobbs embedded it from the Media Research Center.

Dobbs, who still has a talk radio show, then went on to criticize Uygur's twisted logic that, Uygur's words Obama "seems to have bought into the Republican talking point on deficits."

Then he went on criticize "the old-standby, Mr. Tingle Up His Leg Chris Matthews" for saying there are only two camps in the nation - "those who want things to improve and those who want to see the country, and therefore the president, fail."

For the second day in a row, liberal talk show host and MSNBC guest anchor Cenk Uygur pushed the outlandish notion that President Obama is a conservative. Filling in on July 7 for Dylan Ratigan on his 4 p.m. show, Uygur exclaimed, "I didn't realize we voted for a Republican president!"

Uygur preceded this statement with a rant on how ridiculous it is for Obama to express concern about the ever-growing deficit when "60 percent of Americans favor additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy." Uygur and liberal guest Ryan Grim of “The Huffington Post” could not understand President Obama's rationale for focusing on deficit concerns.

Grim argued that, "when people say they are concerned about the deficit" they are just really saying that, "they are nervous about the economy. That's all they mean. So if you solve the economic problems, you're going to solve the deficit concerns."

Cenk Uygur, host of the left-wing internet talk show 'The Young Turks,' filled in for MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan during the 4PM ET hour on Wednesday and decried the nation's "shift to the Right." He lamented: "...when I started out I was a liberal Republican. No such thing exists anymore." [Audio available here]

He wondered why the media hadn't reported on the supposed radical shift in American politics and quickly came up with this explanation: "Why the media didn't challenge it is because they [conservatives] kept calling them the liberal media, and why did they call them that? Because during civil rights, they [the media] said 'yeah, black people and white people are the same' and the conservatives at the time said 'damn liberal media,' and, you know, that intimidated the media into not recognizing this trend."

Uygur's liberal guests, author Linda Monk and Wesleyen University professor Claire Potter did not disagree. In fact, Monk made sure to criticize President Eisenhower for his views on civil rights: "...let's not be too celebratory of Eisenhower. He did stand up for the desegregation decisions. He did his job as president. But privately he was known for saying that racial desegregation was social disintegration, so he perhaps wasn't as progressive on the race issue as some would interpret his actions to be."

So is President Obama more conservative than the late Ronald Reagan? MSNBC substitute anchor Cenk Uygur thinks so. Filling in yesterday for Dylan Ratigan on his 4 p.m. show, Uygur moderated a segment based on the preposition that President Obama's policies have actually been more conservative than those of President Reagan.

"That's the silliest thing I've ever heard," former Reagan White House political director Frank Donatelli said of the claims. "It's an incomplete and distorted picture of everything," he added. Uygur is a host of "The Young Turks," a left-wing internet political podcast.

In fact, both his guests disagreed with him, but the liberal radio show host wouldn't budge.

Cenk Uygur of the leftist "Young Turks" radio show wrote up a funny list of "three categories of media" for the Daily Kos, putting Fox News in the category "partisan press" with Mother Jones and National Review magazines, but putting ABC, CNN, the New York Times, and the MSNBC "News Programs" on a list called "Straight News."

He also suggested they're about as much a news organization as...Air America radio.

In a Monday blog post insisting the White House is "100% Right" to suggest Fox isn't a real news network, Uygur insisted "The Obama White House has taken on Fox News channel in an effort to point out they are not a legitimate news network. This is very important because out of all the outlets mentioned above, they are the only ones being dishonest about what category they are in." Here's the list:

It was a sight to behold. President Barack Obama reverses himself on his promise to release interrogation (now redefined as "torture") photos and the entire leftwing blogosphere erupts in an explosion of anger. It was so bad that Cenk Uygur, the leftwing host of The Young Turks radio show, claimed that Obama was cowed into caving in to Dick Cheney as you can see in his Daily Kos post:

This is an unbelievable moment. Dick Cheney's PR offensive over the last month actually worked. Barack Obama just crumbled and will follow Cheney's command to not release the new set of detainee abuse pictures.

...And to add insult to injury, we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact that Dick Cheney still runs DC no matter how unpopular and despicable he is. He still has the Democrats eating out of his hand. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

How much do reporters hate George Bush? Newsweek correspondent Michael Hirsh appeared on the left-wing Young Turks radio show and cheered on the Iraqi journalist who chucked his shoes at Bush. "They have reason to be upset with the author of this, and a shoe aimed at Bush’s head is not such a terrible expression of some of that frustration." He suggested the Bush era was a time of "mass hallucination" and Obama’s rise put an end to the madness. Hirsh wished Bush good riddance: "This guy’s about gone, and we can stop pretending that there was any kind of, you know, rational strategic motivation behind this act of war that he committed." Hirsh said Bush and his team have "blood on their hands," but will never admit they were wrong. "Bush is not going to end up in The Hague obviously, there’s not going to be any charges against him, and so, you know, a shoe shied at him by an Iraqi journalist might be the one small measure of justice that was achieved."

Hirsh’s interview with Young Turks host Cenk Uygur was posted on YouTube on Monday:

CENK UYGUR: It’s obviously not a constructive way to go.

Now that Rosie O'Donnell is out of the running as host of a prime time MSNBC show, speculation has started anew about who will be named to host the program. Among the more amusing of these speculations come from Cenk Uygur, host of an Air America morning show. Writing in the Huffington Post on November 7, Uygur scans the field of candidates for the MSNBC slot:

I would love to say that the right person for the job is one of the progressives I know either at Air America or in the liberal blogosphere. And all of these people are incredibly capable and would do a terrific job if given the opportunity (Rachel Maddow, Sam Seder, Thom Hartmann, among many others, come to mind (maybe even a non-hosts like Josh Marshall or Jane Hamsher)).

I'm also tempted to nominate Jack Cafferty as a possibility, even though he is not a progressive, because he has so clearly taken on the Bush administration in a sane and rational way for the last couple of years.