E.J. Dionne

On Thursday's The Last Word show on MSNBC, host Lawrence O'Donnell and MSNBC contributor Joy Reid asserted that Republicans who oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants are "haters of" and "don't like" Hispanics as the panel discussed the concerns expressed by Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh about  increasing the number of immigrants in the U.S. by tens of millions.

After coining the term "Limbaugh cohort" to refer to those who oppose amnesty, Reid asserted:

For a second night on Thursday, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell on his The Last Word show tried to blame NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre for inspiring the ricin-tainted letters recently sent to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President Barack Obama. The MSNBC host teased the show:

Eager to reset the political discussion away from scandal and in a manner that promotes Barack Obama as an almost apolitical statesman, MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning turned to a liberal Washington Post columnist who praised the president as a “middle-of-the-road liberal" dominated by Republican who have “gone way to the right” of their own party historically.

E.J. Dionne was brought on the Tuesday edition of MSNBC's morning show to defend his argument in Sunday's Washington Post op-ed that the president “wants to invite the nation to reason together with him.” Defending the president's scandal-ridden administration, Dionne absurdly pouted that:

On Friday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton lambasted House Republicans for repeatedly voting to repeal ObamaCare, calling it a "scandal" and an "outrage," as he seemed to cite a questionable study from a left-wing source from 2009 claiming that 45,000 people a year die because they lack health insurance. Sharpton began the segment:

Last Friday’s All Things Considered segment on NPR was a real treat because David Brooks was absent, and therefore, couldn’t be his squishy self alongside liberal columnist E.J. Dionne.  National Review’s Mona Charen, a real conservative, filled in for the New York Times pseudo-Republican, and effectively countered Dionne’s Obama cheerleading.

The two were asked by host Robert Siegel to analyze the president’s State of the Union address last week, and to no one’s surprise – that Dionne was fawning over the speech, while Charen took a more pragmatic approach.

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:

During Friday’s broadcasts of the PBS's NewsHour and NPR’s All Things Considered, liberals continued with their narrative about the fiscal cliff, and how it’s not all that bad.  Previously, Mark Shields and E.J. Dionne agreed with New York Times-style Republican David Brooks that they would go off the cliff.   The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne equated it with the “will of the people.”

But now, the Post’s Ruth Marcus and E.J. Dionne insist that the cliff isn’t a cliff.  It’s actually a well-defined “slope." But in the words of Joe Biden, “this is a big f***ing deal.”

Last Friday, in his first post-election remarks on PBS and NPR, New York Times columnist David Brooks downplayed his usual bash- conservatives  narrative, and actually castigated liberals for wanting to go over the looming fiscal cliff.  He said that liberals are more organized, they’ve won the election, and will get most of what they yearn for if we do go over the waterfall: increased revenue, tax hikes, and cuts to defense spending.   

Strangely, his liberal colleagues, Mark Shields on PBS and E.J. Dionne on NPR, seemed to agree with this claim – undercutting the notion that this "cliff" is dangerous to both parties.

Meet the Press viewers got to see a classic Left-Right debate Sunday.

In a discussion about which presidential candidate is the most trustworthy, New York Times columnist David Brooks surprisingly teamed up with former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to school the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (video follows with NBCNews.com transcript and commentary):

Ted Cruz, Texas's Tea Party candidate for Senate, gave a rather embarrassing education to the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday regarding President Obama's budget proposal.

When Dionne had the audacity to call it "a serious plan," Cruz marvelously replied, "It got zero votes. Not a Democrat in the Senate voted for it. Not a one" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MRC president L. Brent Bozell III had his Letter to the Editor published in Saturday's Washington Post. He objected to liberal Post columnist E.J. Dionne trying to make a mountain out of the molehill of one liberal bishop granting an interview to one liberal Catholic magazine. Dionne did not note that this same bishop, so nervous about the bishops being used by political partisans "far to the right," delighted liberals by attacking the Paul Ryan budget.

Dionne wrote the conservative bishops who are "eagerly picking fights with President Obama....have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a 'Catholic spring' to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right." So now the Catholic hierarchy is like Arab dictators? Brent wrote in reply:

Something shocking happened on Friday night on NPR's All Things Considered. "Conservative" pundit David Brooks took the anti-Washington Post position on the Mitt Romney high-school "scoop." Obviously, Post columnist E.J. Dionne stuck with his paper and his liberal guns, insisting more and more stories just like this are going to come out, whether that's a threat or a promise.

Anchor Melissa Block would not use the word "alleged" to describe the Post story which "details incidents of bullying by Romney when he was a senior at the tony Cranbrook boys prep school in Michigan. Five former classmates spoke about an incident when Romney led a posse that targeted a student with long bleached-blond hair, tackled him, pinned him to the ground and hacked off his hair as he cried and screamed for help." Brooks cried it was illegitimate "gotcha" journalism:

Yet more evidence of pathologies that roil the liberal, uh, mind.

MSNBC, America's closest approximation yet to Pravda (though not for lacking of trying, New York Times), did something curious but characteristic Wednesday night during the hour-long hyperventilation known as "The Ed Show." (video after page break)

On Friday night's All Things Considered, the Week in Politics segment could have been titled "Another Horrible Week for Republicans." Helping out enthusiastically was New York Times columnist David Brooks, who is billed as the conservative half of the political analyst team with ultraliberal Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. But the two end up agreeing so much you can't tell which one is the liberal.

When anchor Robert Siegel asked if this week marked the "beginning of the end of the Cain phenomenon," Brooks sneered that Cain was a "TV show that lasted a little while," and Dionne naturally agreed. Then Brooks turned to Romney and insisted he drops the emotional temperature of the room to chilling lows -- and of course, Dionne agreed.

For the second time this month, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has taken on the extreme liberal bias of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.

On Thursday's "Morning Joe," after Mika Brzezinski read part of Dionne's pathetic "Why Conservatives Hate Warren Buffett," her co-host replied, "I like E.J., but he changes every couple of years depending on who’s in the White House" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Having read E.J. Dionne's Wednesday column in the Washington Post (HT Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web), I am sooooo comforted -- not. Dionne assures his readers that "Al-Qaeda is a dangerous enemy. But our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies." Thus, the last 10 years of the "war on terrorism" (lowercase letters and quote marks are his) have apparently largely been a waste of time and treasure, which is why, on the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Dionne asserts that "we need to leave the day behind," and relegate it to "a simple day of remembrance."

Dionne is of course entitled to his opinions but not his facts. In addition to dangerously underestimating global jihad's devastating potential, Dionne overestimated what he must believe is a "lost decade" media meme, and completely misinterpreted the meaning of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. What follows are excerptes from Dionne's column (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

I sure hope Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne as well as other unapologetic Obama-loving media members were watching MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday.

After Mika Brzezinski read a snippet of Dionne's "Obama's Paradox Problem" wherein he basically blamed all that ails the nation on GOP obstruction, Joe Scarborough accurately noted, "the President owned – OWNED! – Washington, D.C., in 2009 and 2010" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Right-leaning New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was thrown into the David Brooks chair on the weekly political roundatable on NPR's All Things Considered Friday. NPR anchor Robert Siegel insisted Rick Perry had a whole set of strange and anti-scientific statements that suggest he's "too far right" to be electable. Notice how NPR just rolls up everything they disagree with and loads it into one question for the "conservative" panelist:

"Conservative" PBS/NPR analyst David Brooks was typical on the NewsHour Friday night, insisting strangely that "neither party" has a "growth agenda" and insisting that spending any second of your life talking about Sarah Palin is "temporary euthanasia."

JIM LEHRER: Yes, but, then why is she doing this bus tour?

DAVID BROOKS: She's in the media business. She's in our business, except for she has a bus.So -- and so, you know, I see no evidence she's going to run. I think every second we spend on her is a second of our lives we will never have back. So, it's sort of temporary euthanasia.

After accusing presidential candidate Newt Gingrich of racism during an interview on Sunday's Meet the Press, NBC host David Gregory later posed this question to the show's political panel: "Do you think he [Gingrich] dialed back the reputation as...a flamethrower?...I mean, talking about Obama and anti-colonial views, about anti-Americanism."

The mostly liberal panelists used the opportunity to bash Gingrich and the Republican 2012 field in general. Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin remarked that "the animating force in the Republican Party today is be in Barack Obama's face, be aggressive, be out to destroy his presidency."

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne is calling for the media to hold the newly-sworn in Republican House majority accountable for their "expansive rhetoric" as well as "how their ideas translate into policies that affect actual human beings."

Such a charge seems laughable almost 24 months after the Obama-loving press disgracefully gushed and swooned over every word uttered by the nation's 44th President before and after he took the oath of office:

What kind of an idiot must you be to believe that tax cuts have an equal dollar for dollar negative impact on a government budget as spending increases do?

The most obvious answer given the charge of this website is a liberal media member, and the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne nicely proved this point with his column Monday:

The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne said Sunday that NPR is one of the best news organizations in the world and challenged anyone to find evidence the radio network is the slightest bit liberally biased.

To prove his claim, Dionne hysterically pointed out to his fellow "Meet the Press" panelists that whenever he's on NPR, he's often countered by "conservatives" - like New York Times columnist David Brooks (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Erin Burnett, one of CNBC's famed "money honeys," exaggerated the relative strength of the economy Sunday in order to boost the success of President Obama's stimulus plan.

Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," Burnett several times characterized this economic recovery as not only far stronger than any of the indicators suggest, but also "faster" than those in the recent past.

"Our recovery started more quickly than after any other recession in the past 25 years," the CNBCer told David Gregory and his panel.

Burnett later elaborated on this preposterous claim as fellow panelist Rich Lowry of the National Review shook his head on screen (video follows with transcript and commentary):

National Review's Rich Lowry on Sunday had a classic debate with Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne about whether or not the tax cuts implemented by former President George W. Bush should be allowed to expire.

Dionne agrees with President Obama that they should only be extended for folks making less than $250,000 a year; Lowry thinks that raising anyone's taxes right now could send the country back into recession.

With this in mind, NBC's David Gregory opened the panel segment of "Meet the Press" with a discussion about the current state of the economy and how this issue might impact the upcoming midterm elections.

As he tossed the baton to Lowry and Dionne, one got the feeling Gregory was intentionally lighting a fuse he knew would result in some entertaining fireworks (videos follow with transcripts and commentary):