Dylan Ratigan

NewsBusters reported moments ago that MSNBC contributor Julian Epstein strongly suggested President Obama being interrupted during a press conference in the White House Rose Garden Friday was because he was African-American.

About an hour later, MSNBC's Touré took it a step further saying definitively, "This disrespect of this human being cannot be disconnected from the fact that he’s black” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

Brian Stelter at The New York Times reports MSNBC's 4 pm host, Dylan Ratigan, is quitting as of June 22, and his hour will be taken over by Martin Bashir. Staff on the Bashir show will try to create a new 3 pm template. "The channel may try out an ensemble of hosts and contributors at that hour." An ensemble...together...like a ripoff of The Five? After all, that started as a place-holder.

“Once you’ve said your piece, you can either keep saying it — and then it’s a job, good job, pays well, everybody knows your name, it’s great — or you can decide what you’re going to do about it,” Ratigan said. “And the answer is, I don’t know. But I do know, in order to figure it out, I have to dismount.”

Author and Hoover Institution research fellow Peter Schweizer took on a gaggle of liberals on MSNBC Friday and demonstrated that no matter how outnumbered a conservative is, he’ll likely win the debate.

Of greater consequence, regardless of substitute host Matt Miller’s numerous attempts to keep liberal contributors Krystal Ball and Touré on the topic of reining in excesses on Wall Street, they just wanted to attack their conservative opponent (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary).

MSNBC analyst David Goodfriend appeared on Tuesday's Dylan Ratigan Show to slime the National Rifle Association as having "blood on its hands." Goodfriend, who was only identified as a Democratic strategist in an onscreen graphic, accused the pro-Second Amendment group of killing people via legislation: "Americans are dead because of what the NRA has done."

Goodfriend's diatribe was labeled an editorial "rant" by MSNBC, but typical of the network's hateful tone. Goodfriend's proof? He cited the anti-gun, liberal Brady Center and shilled for donations: "Folks, please go to www.BradyCenter.org. You'll see a picture of George Zimmerman and a quote: 'I am the NRA.' Just above that, you'll see a donate button. Do it!" [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Next week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, but if the media were the judges, the Court would rule 9-0 in favor of it. During its coverage of the health care debate, the liberal press never permitted questions about ObamaCare’s legality to interfere with their dream of a government takeover of the health care sector.

Starting even before Barack Obama became President, the press has been campaigning hard for passage of the most liberal version of health care reform as a cure-all elixir to all of America’s health problems. First, they pitched the public on the desperate need to, as ABC’s Dr. Tim Johnson demanded, fix America’s “national shame” of no universal coverage. (Worst of the Worst quote compiliation with videos after the jump)

At the end of Martin Bashir’s show Friday, Dylan Ratigan called Martin out for his failure to call Democrats charlatans and hypocrites.  During what is normally a cheerful banter between the two colleagues, Ratigan said Bashir loves to criticize Republicans on policies he disagrees with but never takes critical aim at Democrats.  

Ratigan pointed out Bashir’s failure to ever point out the serious fallacies in his show by never bringing up Democrats’ blunders with health care reform or the financial markets and instead only focusing on Republicans.  Bashir was left speechless, as you can see by the video embedded after the page break.  [See video below.  MP3 audio here]

If you needed any more evidence of what a joke MSNBC is as a so-called "news" network, consider what happened on Wednesday's Dylan Ratigan Show during a lengthy segment about a "free tuition competition" being held at the University of New Haven's College of Business.

Some genius at the "Lean Forward" network actually spelled "tuition" wrong in two different on-screen graphics (video follows with commentary):

Hip-hop millionaire Russell Simmons and MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan aren't only outspoken supporters of the Occupy movement.

On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the pair published an article at the Huffington Post claiming that our decades-old war on drugs is a racist conspiracy designed to unfairly incarcerate blacks to profit government agencies and corporate America:

That wasn't a television appearance, that was a cry for help.

Dylan Ratigan was a guest on MSNBC colleague Rachel Maddow's show last night, ostensibly to plug his new book, "Greedy Bastards! How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires From Sucking America Dry" and to condemn Mitt Romney as a free-market predator.  (video clip after page break)

Talking to MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry portrayed one of Mitt Romney's strength's as a weakness: "How vulnerable do you think Mitt Romney could be in highlighting his business background, given this sort of anti-Wall Street Occupy climate we're in?"

Ratigan seized on the opportunity and ranted: "Mitt Romney's liabilities as an American businessman are among the highest of any businessman in this country.....there is a second class of business person that was invented in the past 30 years of this country who literally exploits their ability to borrow money at the risk to this nation....and then taking other people's jobs away to do so is not capitalism. It is, in effect, an exploitation."

Curry followed up: "So you're saying this could hurt Mitt Romney?" Ratigan replied: "100%."

Perhaps this will make things a bit clearer for Ed Schultz.

On his radio show Wednesday, Schultz lashed out at Fox commentator Eric Bolling for saying on "The Five" earlier this week that he had bumped into Schultz at a Manhattan steakhouse, bought him a drink and a chintzy Schultz did not reciprocate (audio) --

In a report filed at the Los Angeles Times's Politics Now blog earlier today, Washington Bureau reporter James Oliphant relayed a number of whoppers delivered by Vice President Joe Biden without anything resembling a challenge. In Part 1, I noted how Biden, who in August described Tea Party sympathizers as "terrorists" and in September as "barbarians," today spoke in complimentary terms of how much the Occupy Wall Street crowd has in common with them. In Part 2, I dealt with the Veep's hit at financially struggling Bank of America for having the nerve to try to recover some of what the Dodd-Frank "financial reform" legislation took away by charging some customers a $5 monthly fee for debit-card use.

This final part will deal with Biden's rendition of how the "bank bailout" portion of TARP operated, which is quite different from the reality. The relevant excerpt from Oliphant, which necessarily overlaps the first two parts, follows (bolds are mine throughout):

MSNBC ranter extraordinaire Dylan Ratigan is no fan of "crony capitalism" -- when businessmen get government to help them socialize the risk of their ventures through government subsidies or bailouts, leaving taxpayers on the hook for failure while reaping the benefits of government largesse.

The Obama administration's handling of solar energy firm Solyndra is a perfect example of same.

Yet this week, Ratigan's been strangely silent on the Solyndra congressional investigation this week, even as it's been covered in major newspaper outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post.

Ratigan likes to present himself as one who marches to the beat of his own drum, but on this matter, he seems to be following the silence of the rest of the MSNBC choir.

On the August 15 "Dylan Ratigan Show," MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan and the Washington Examiner's Tim Carney sparred over the extent to which Big Labor impacts the political process relative to other industries.

Ratigan, who has made a career out of bemoaning the influence that the energy, banking, health care, defense, telecom, and agriculture sectors exert on politics, omitted organized labor from his exhaustive (exhausting?) list. After Carney pointed out that labor unions collectively direct more campaign contributions to political candidates than any other industry in the country, Ratigan sternly corrected him: "That's not right. You can't invent facts...that's a great distortion of facts to make it look like labor controls the government."

So who's right?

Dylan Ratigan joined Andrea Mitchell Monday on the list of MSNBC anchors who appear to be losing faith in President Barack Obama's leadership.

Discussing the type of president required to lead the country in times of crisis, Ratigan remarked, "Wouldn't anybody who wrote a memoir before the age of 50 be rather screwed up anyway?"

[Video follows page break]

New York Times food writer and junk food sin-tax advocate Mark Bittman took to the August 2 edition of MSNBC’s “Dylan Ratigan” show as part of his promotional tour for “Bad Food? Tax It.” He found a receptive, uncritical audience in the former CNBC business reporter.

“It’s like, do you want to use taxes to help people or do you want to use taxes to hurt people? It seems to me right now we’re doing just about everything wrong, at least when it comes to food,” Bittman complained, adding "we’re subsidizing, we’re directly subsidizing the crops that produce junk food, bad meat, hyper-processed food, and we’re not subsidizing the foods that we know make us healthy.”

[video embedded after page break]

During a roundtable discussion on the debt ceiling deadlock on his July 26 program, MSNBC host Dylan Ratigan, egged on by a former Durbin and Biden staffer-turned-lobbyist, argued that the bulk of the national debt was run up prior to the time President Barack Obama entered office, by Republicans:

In a discussion with The Atlantic last week about "What I Read," Dylan Ratigan claimed he's unfairly typecast as a lefty just because he's on MSNBC:

One of my great frustrations with working in cable news is that the entire cable news infrastructure has been branded through partisan political lenses and so people assume that if you're on MSNBC you're left and if you're on Fox News you're right. There's no question that I'm painted as left because of the network I'm on. The branding precedes the talent in cable networking. Since when is it my job to be a Democrat or Republican? I recognize that both political parties are bought by six industries: energy, banking, health care, defense, agribusiness and communications.

Unfortunately for Dylan Ratigan, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

The MSNBC anchor nearly stumbled onto a valid point on Thursday's "Dylan Ratigan Show" – reporting that California's new Internet sales tax could cost thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue – until he proposed solving this dilemma with a national Internet sales tax.

If you had any questions as to why Dylan Ratigan belongs on MSNBC rather than CNBC they were all answered Friday night.

Appearing on HBO's "Real Time," Ratigan presented himself as a far-left commentator telling the audience of devout liberals, "This entire rhetoric machine from the Republican Party is predicated on an abandonment of arithmetic and fact" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Something rather shocking happened on MSNBC Wednesday.

Not only was a compliment given to a Republican, but on the "Dylan Ratigan Show," it was said by a Washington Post columnist about a GOPer that is actually admired by conservatives (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In our ongoing quest to answer Paul Krugman's ironic question "How can voters be so ill informed [sic]," NewsBusters offers an exquisitely ignorant budgetary concern posed by Dylan Ratigan Wednesday.

On the MSNBC program bearing his name, the host actually said that one of America's biggest problems is a "multitrillion dollar defense budget" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Civility was in short supply yesterday on "The Dylan Ratigan Show," as the MSNBC anchor after which the show is named used words and phrases such as "moronic" and "dog's ass" to demagogue the GOP's proposal to trim the federal budget.

"How can you be serious about cutting spending when your spending proposals are truly a flea on a dog's ass?" howled Ratigan, who went on to demonize Republicans as "nasty" frauds who want to "get rid of all the food for poor people."

Ratigan's spurious logic that cutting federal subsidies for food stamps is akin to letting poor people starve to death on the streets is reminiscent of Alan Grayon's mischaracterization of the GOP health care plan, which the former Florida congressman said was to "die quickly."

[Video embedded after the page break.]

On his Wednesday 4PM ET show on MSNBC, host Dylan Ratigan denounced the fact that the recent Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), convened to detail the causes of the 2008 economic collapse, only had a budget of $8 million, while back in 1998, the "Clinton-Lewinsky blowjob investigation" had a $40 million budget. He was apparently referring to special prosecutor Ken Starr investigating perjury charges against the former president.

The report from the FCIC was highly partisan, with the six Democrats on the commission claiming that primary reason for the financial crisis was the lack of government regulation in the private sector. As a result, the four Republican commissioner refused to sign on to the findings and released their own dissenting report.

Ed Schultz on Tuesday spent a great deal of time blaming the crisis in Egypt on rising food prices tying commodity inflation to former President George H.W. Bush and Wall Street speculators.

Not once in over fifteen minutes of air time were the name Bill Clinton or the two bills he signed into law that deregulated the financial services and commodity futures industries mentioned (videos follow with partial transcripts and commentary):

Every so often, MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan goes on a rhetorical bender that stupefies his guests and defies logic.

On his eponymous program today, Ratigan latched onto conflicting reports concerning the treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested under suspicion of illegally downloading classified military documents and funneling them to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, to assert that the American justice system is akin to that of the Communist Chinese.

"Think about that in the context of 243 days in confinement, 23 hour-a-day lockdown, sleep deprivation," bemoaned Ratigan. "And you think China's bad?"

Ratigan also made repeated references to Guantanamo Bay, implying that Manning is being treated like an enemy combatant.

[Video embedded after the page break.]

Tamron Hall was joined by her MSNBC colleague Dylan Ratigan on Wednesday's edition of "News Nation" in condemning some members of corporate America for the way they have "demonized" the Obama administration. That slight of American businesses came during a dicussion of President Hu Jintao's U.S visit, in which Ratigan remarked that President Obama's greatest challenge will not be dealing with China, but American businesses who have invested heavily in China.

For Chrystia Freeland, the thought of only taxing wealthy estates 35 percent is "destructive to the fabric of America." The Reuters global editor-at-large went on a ear-piercing tear this afternoon on MSNBC's "Dylan Ratigan Show," stoking the flames of class warfare.

"[The wealthy] were just born–it's the lucky sperm club, right?" screeched Freeland. "I don't think American wealth should be determined by that."

Politics Daily contributor Matt Lewis, for his part, tried to maintain a civil discourse, but Freeland repeatedly interrupted him to interject her inflammatory rhetoric.

"I thought the philosophy was against a landed gentry," asserted an indignant Freeland. "I thought the philosophy was against an aristocracy. I thought the American way was you build it yourself and everyone was born equal."

[Video embedded after page break.]

Think that liberals are slippery when disagreeing with a conservative? They're just as bad during an exchange with another liberal. One didn't have to wait long for examples of this during Rachel Maddow's interview with Jon Stewart on her MSNBC show Nov. 11.

Here's Maddow in the first segment of the interview attempting to draw a distinction between "direct-action activists" such as members of Code Pink and the tea party members who disrupted town hall meetings on health care in August 2009 (video below page break) --