Ed Schultz

You gotta love ol’ Ed Schultz. A recent demotion at the Lean Forward network hasn’t stopped the bombastic MSNBC host from sputtering over Republican opposition to ObamaCare, despite the fact that Schultz himself admits he doesn’t really know what’s in the bill.

Schultz was recently moved from his weeknight, primetime spot in MSNBC’s über-progressive lineup to weekends, a move sources at the network said would make space for “new talent.” The liberal host has since transformed his new weekend show into an hour-long advertisement for ObamaCare, gushing on Saturday’s The Ed Show that the law is “a great step forward to get us to universal health care some day.” [Yes, Ed, who owns a Canadian fishing lodge, is pining for Canada-style “single-payer” care.]

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)

New day and time, same old liberal slop.  Ed Schultz returned to MSNBC yesterday in his new, relegated-to-the-ratings-desert slot of weekend afternoons.  

One of the topics was the targeting by the IRS of conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status.  Predictably, Schultz & Co. did all they could to sweep the scandal under the carpet.  Schultz suggested the IRS had nothing to apologize for, while the ever-prolix Michael Eric Dyson actually claimed it was "much ado about nothing,"  and was even willing to diss President Obama's power, saying he lacked the "juice" to have ordered the IRS targeting. View the video after the jump.

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)

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)

Nearly three weeks after MSNBC announced that Chris Hayes would replace Ed Schultz at 8 p.m. weeknights and that Schultz would host late-afternoon weekend versions of "The Ed Show," the network has still not given a start date for the weekend show.

This has led to speculation on Twitter that Schultz is being eased out at MSNBC, to the point that Schultz addressed the rumors on his radio show yesterday. (audio clips after page break)

So much of liberalism hinges on the willingness of liberals to engage in collective amnesia. Fortunately, many conservatives prefer to remember.

Ever since the sequester's cuts took effect, Ed Schultz has railed about their impact to the economy, particularly air travel. Since he frequently flies his own plane from Minnesota to work in New York City and to a fishing lodge he bought in Canada (did I mention how Schultz often urges others to "Buy American"?) , Schultz fancies himself an expert on aviation. (audio clip after page break)

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)

New host, same loopy logic. Ed Schultz is gone from his weekday MSNBC slot, but the show's name lives on until Chris Hayes comes on board next month. Sitting in for Schultz tonight was the never-at-a-loss-for-words Michael Eric Dyson.  

Discussing Elizabeth Warren's latest Senate hearing stunt, on the minimum wage, Dyson gushed "wouldn't that be great" if the minimum wage were raised to $22 per hour?  Yeah, great . . . if you'd like unemployment to soar into the stratosphere, as lower-skilled workers were priced out of the market.  African-Americans would be particularly hard hit.  View the video after the jump.

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)

Scott Prouty is the man behind the now infamous “47 percent” video that the media hyped to bring down Mitt Romney’s presidential bid.  It’s unbearably stale news at this point, but MSNBC’s Ed Schultz found a fresh hook for resurrecting it recently on his soon-to-be-defunct weeknight program. Prouty insisted that Romney’s invitation to speak at CPAC prompted him to come out of hiding and in the Schultz interview, he insisted he was not really that political a guy when he tended bar at a Romney fundraiser last year, when he surreptitiously recorded the video.

But Schultz, who owns a Canadian fishing lodge, apparently let Prouty on air to tell a fish tale. Today's Washington Post highlighted information in Prouty's background that seems to offer another explanation for why Prouty never came out in the open during the campaign, including evidence from social media postings that he is a committed liberal Democrat.

Golly, what an upbeat guy MSNBC’s Ed Schultz is! If anyone else in broadcast “journalism” had just been handed a one-way ticket from primetime to Siberia, he’d probably be distraught. But not the roly-poly Schultz.

He used the waning seconds of his last weekday-at-8:00 appearance not to wax nostalgic and thank loyal viewers but to say this:

MSNBC "pushed out" Ed Schultz in order to "make way for new talent," according to Politico on Thursday. This would contradict Schultz, who insisted the decision was voluntary and a great step forward for his "brand." What is that brand, exactly? Sneering at "bastard," "slut," "dirthole" conservatives who want to see Barack Obama murdered. [See below for a video montage. Audio here.]

Schultz's show is being moved to weekends, home of MSNBC's prison specials and To Catch a Predator marathons. Schultz insisted this change will allow him to "produce and focus stories I care about and I know are terribly important to American families." Presumably, examples of this include when he asked his radio audience about Hadassah Lieberman: "Does the word 'whore' apply?" On May 24, 2011, he sneered at Laura Ingraham: "Like this right-wing slut, what’s her name, Laura Ingraham? Yeah, she’s a talk slut."

On Thursday's NBC Today, White House correspondent Peter Alexander promoted the first public comments from Scott Prouty, the bartender who secretly recorded Mitt Romney's 47% comments during the 2012 presidential race: "Even today some political observers insist without that 47% tape, we might actually be talking about President Mitt Romney these days. Instead, the infamous comments marked what was really a campaign game-changer. And now months later, the man behind that tape has finally come forward." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

In the report that followed, Alexander highlighted portions of a Prouty's interview with MSNBC host Ed Schultz on Wednesday's The Ed Show and whitewashed the bartender's obvious left-wing ideology made apparent in the exchange: "Speaking publicly for the first time Wednesday, Prouty, who says he's a registered independent...[said] he arrived at the dinner that night with an open mind."

NewsBusters reported Wednesday that MSNBC's Ed Schultz was leaving his 8 PM time slot to appear instead on weekends.

According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, Schultz's replacement is Chris Hayes:

In a shocking announcement on March 13, Ed Schultz announced that his nightly show The Ed Show on MSNBC will be ending in April.  Schultz will move from 8:00 p.m. Monday-Friday to a Saturday-Sunday show from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

In his reasoning for the switch, Schultz tried to spin his move as a "big opportunity:"

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)

Time for Ed Schultz to hire someone to vet what he says to make sure it doesn't embarrass him when juxtaposed with something he's previously said.

On a segment during MSNBC's "The Ed Show" last week, Schultz angrily condemned several examples of Republicans engaged in voter fraud over the last few years. (audio clip 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)

Confession: I yell at my TV while watching The Ed Show and Morning Joe because Twitter spambots are also boosting those programs.

Apparently the use of spambots to boost Rachel Maddow's show which was revealed here on Saturday now includes at least two other MSNBC programs: The Ed Show and Morning Joe. This revelation was made by liberal blogger Paul Bibeau at the Goblinbooks blog. First he establishes his liberal bonafides in no uncertain terms before presenting his Twitter spam case against those programs:

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)

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)

Somewhere the ghost of George Orwell groans in recognition.

Remember during last year's campaign how President Obama harped on "millionaires and billionaires" not paying what they should in taxes? For the sake of fairness, Obama insisted, tax rates signed into law by George W. Bush a decade ago should increase on the wealthy while the remaining "98 percent" of taxpayers, those earning less than $250,000 annually, should not see their taxes go up. (audio clip after page break)