Ed Schultz

Never let it be said that Ed Schultz isn't fair. Why, just yesterday he was putting in a good word for German national socialism.

Schultz, who has yet to encounter an infrastructure project that didn't make him swoon (an infatuation he shares with fellow MSNBCer Rachel Maddow), had this to say on his radio show with sidekick James Holm while complaining about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker rejecting a passenger rail line between Milwaukee and Madison (audio here) --

Remember during the peak of Bush Derangement Syndrome in the previous decade when it seemed that liberal media members had forgotten all of our nation's history prior to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003?

On Monday's "The Ed Show," the host went into a tirade about Wisconsin governor Scott Walker with seemingly no recollection of last year's healthcare battle (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's certainly not surprising that the New York Times would publish a hit piece on Glenn Beck, but coming hours after CNN's Howard Kurtz spent almost ten minutes bashing the Fox News commentator makes me smell a rat.

Add to this the increased pressure Beck has come up against from MSNBC personalities since Keith Olbermann surprisingly left America's most liberal television news network in January, and one has to wonder what Times author David Carr had in mind with his Monday piece "The Fading Power of Beck’s Alarms":

Free speech? Fuggedaboutit!

Liberal radio host and reined-in MSNBC flamethrower Ed Schultz has provided another example of his erratic reverence for the Constitution, specifically that pesky First Amendment.

On his radio show Wednesday, Schultz harkened back to halcyon days of yore involving "old Democrats" made singular by their intolerance for discussion of that most sacred cow, Social Security (audio here) --

MSNBC's Ed Schultz on Thursday called Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's newly-proposed budget "racist."

Not surprisingly, Schultz believes allocating more funds to school vouchers picks on poor inner-city kids (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Four of MSNBC's extended prime time hosts on Tuesday cherry-picked something Mike Huckabee said on Steve Malzberg's radio show in order to depict the possible Republican presidential candidate as a birther.

Before getting to their highly unprofessional snippets, implications, and conclusions, here's what the former Arkansas governor actually said Monday (videos follow with transcripts and commentary):

Ed Schultz is a firm believer in the law. Most of the time.

On his radio show yesterday, Schultz demonstrated how he's willing to be flexible when it comes to legalities, especially if it helps those sharing his politics.

Schultz was talking with Democratic state senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the so-called "Wisconsin 14" who have fled the state to avoid voting on what they consider union-busting measures in Gov. Scott Walker's proposed budget. After Schultz asked how the absent lawmakers were covering their expenses and Erpenbach said they were paying out of pocket, Schultz suggested this (audio here) --

  Twice this week on the Ed Show, MSNBC host Ed Schultz has paid attention to FNC’s Shepard Smith for not approaching the Wisconsin labor union controversy from the right, and also added in FNC’s Greta Van Susteren on Thursday. On Wednesday, the MSNBC host began his regular "Takedown" segment:

Tonight, in the "Takedown" segment, how about Shepard Smith? I’ll tell you what, he's bucking the Fox News Republican agenda by actually telling the truth about what's happening in Wisconsin. But first, Bill O'Reilly made a big admission on his show last night while reading viewer mail about George Soros and fairness and Fox News.

After responding to a clip of Bill O’Reilly enumerating some of FNC’s hosts and calling them "fair," Schultz went after Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade for misreporting a poll on the public’s attitude toward the Wisconsin situation. After gloating over Kilmeade getting the poll results wrong, Schultz eventually admitted to MSNBC viewers that Kilmeade had, in fact, already corrected the mistake.

Looks like yet another left-winger missed the meme on the New Civility.

Attorney and "Ring of Fire" radio show co-host Mike Papantonio, guest-hosting on Ed Schultz's radio program yesterday, revealed two things -- he hates old people and wants tea party retirees to hurry up and die.

Don't take my word for it, listen to Papantonio's remarks after a caller said he saw "one of these baggers" push a woman during dueling protests over the weekend in Madison, Wisc. (audio here)-

New York Times columnist David Brooks published a truly must-read piece Tuesday about what's going on in Wisconsin.

Unfortunately, out of some odd desire to appear balanced, Brooks advanced the totally erroneous liberal meme that Governor Walker's budget repair plan exempted cops and firefighters because they typically support Republicans:

MSNBC's Ed Schultz was in Madison, Wisconsin, last week predictably showing solidarity with protesting public employees.

On Friday, the "Ed Show" host badly misrepresented Governor Scott Walker's budget repair plan in order to bash conservative talk radio star Rush Limbaugh at one point asking, "Hey, Rush, why don’t you wrap your fat ass in the flag?" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, Rachel Maddow wasn't the only MSNBC commentator last week that lied to viewers about the budget battle in Wisconsin.

Having misrepresented the same nonsense as Maddow about the Badger State having a surplus instead of a deficit Friday, Ed Schultz was exposed by Politifact for dramatically exaggerating how much Gov. Scott Walker's repair plan would cost public employees (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Ed Schultz is not completely happy with his new 10 pm Eastern time slot. On his radio show Friday, he said to his Ed-heads: "Where is Ed Friday night? Well they’ve always run the prison junk on Friday night. You, you wouldn’t -- I’m telling you straight, that beats Fox News. Okay, that Lockup and that Jerry Behind Bars, or I don’t know, all that stuff. There is amazing amazing intrigue with prisons."

As usual, when Ed talks about ratings and Fox, he's not exactly right. The Friday night numbers from TV Newser shows that MSNBC's Lockup beat FNC's On the Record among viewers 25 to 54, by 329,000 to 239,000. But among overall viewers, Fox crushed MSNBC: Greta van Susteren drew 1.34 million, while Lockup only had 586,000 viewers.

Whether it's the departure of Keith Olbermann or the weakness of the new prime time lineup, the ratings at MSNBC are collapsing.

Take a look at how this so-called news network fared Thursday:

Do you think you're paying less in federal income taxes than you ever have in your entire life?

If you watched Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, or Cenk Uygur on MSNBC Tuesday, you might believe that (video follows with transcripts and lots of commentary):

MSNBC's Ed Schultz began his show Monday railing against American corporations sitting on trillions of dollars of cash while refusing to exhibit "economic patriotism" by using those funds to add to their payrolls.

In a demonstration of classic liberal hypocrisy, the host of the "Ed Show" finished his program calling AOL's purchase of the Huffington Post "a big f-in deal" while not once asking the website's editor Roy Sekoff if any new jobs would be created with the $315 million the owners are receiving or if all the writers would finally be paid for their contributions (videos follow with transcripts and commentary):

Even though Ed Schultz has been told by MSNBC to refrain from further "Psycho Talk" segments, no such restraint is evident on his radio show, one of the top rated for liberals in the country.

On Wednesday, for example, Schultz criticized former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for signing a bill into law in 2006 that includes an individual mandate for Bay State residents to buy health insurance, a provision also included in last year's health bill passed by Congress and signed by President Obama.

Schultz played two clips of Romney, from 2009 and earlier this week on "Good Morning America," talking about the individual mandate, followed by Schultz's criticism (audio) --

Jon Stewart on Thursday marvelously lampooned Keith Olbermann and all his former colleagues that can't fill the "Olbermann-shaped hole" his departure has left at MSNBC.

The "Daily Show" host began the segment (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): 

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):

Last fall, Richard Dreyfuss launched a civics education program called the Dreyfuss Initiative that promised among other things to look at "a purposeful diverse variety of websites representing disparate political opinions... to foster a discussion related to the future of America." But the Academy Award-winning actor apparently thinks civil political discourse includes left-wing radio hosts wishing for Dick Cheney's death.

At a January 25 press conference at the National Press Club, CNSNews.com's* Nicholas Ballasy asked Dreyfuss about comments that liberal MSNBC host Ed Schultz had made on his March 11, 2009 radio program wherein he wished that "enemy of the country" former Vice President Dick Cheney would be taken by God to "the Promised Land."

"No, that’s not uncivil. That’s actually kind of a beautifully phrased way of saying something that could be uncivil," Dreyfuss told Ballasy.

[For the full video, click play on the embed that follows after the page break]

Howard Kurtz on Sunday pointed out a delicious irony involving MSNBC and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.).

After complaining about CNN's decision to air the Congresswoman's response to President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday, MSNBC spent the next several days giving far more attention to her than to the official GOP respondent (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Not to worry, Ed Schultz told his radio listeners on Jan. 11 -- the bellicose "Psycho Talk" segment of his MSNBC program would remain on the show.

Here's a clip of Schultz claiming that in the wake of the Tucson shooting, with liberals blaming an amorphous "climate of hate" for triggering the bloodshed, "Psycho Talk" would endure (audio) --

Let me just start it right out today, I am not toning it down. Because according to the conservatives, what Sarah Palin did and what Michele Bachmann says, that didn't have anything to do with what happened on Saturday, right? You know, this may be the biggest lie that Fox News has ever told. Roger Ailes says the network will tone down fiery rhetoric. And they defend Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin's now the victim, did you know that? Well, isn't her silence deafening? Why is Sarah Palin so silent? Is she feeling guilty these days? Why is it that she kept those crosshairs up there for months on end until the shooting? No guilt there at all, is there? Folks, let me tell you something, I'm making this announcement right away. We are not changing "The Ed Show" on MSNBC. As long as they open their mouths over there on the right, we will continue to have the segment called "Psycho Talk," because that's exactly what it is. And as soon as they say that they're not going to vote to repeal health care, then I'll make some changes.

"News is about stories," Rachel Maddow intones in this MSNBC "Lean Forward" promo. "It's about finding all the disparate facts and then finding their coherence. Doing this right takes rigor and a devotion to facts that borders on obsessive. ... At the end of the day, though, this is about what's true in the world."

Just as the purpose of this promo is to convince MSNBC viewers and advertisers that Maddow is so nobly inclined, despite a never-ending supply of inconvenient facts to the contrary.

On her show Monday night, for example, Maddow talked about Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin being selected to provide the Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union speech and Ryan as author of "A Roadmap for America's Future," his detailed legislative proposal for reducing federal debt, when she said this: [Video and audio clips after page break]

Just how ignorant of politics and recent history is MSNBC's Ed Schultz?

Well, on Friday, he attacked Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) for giving a competing response to the upcoming State of the Union address even though presidential candidate Barack Obama did the same thing in 2008 (video follows with transcript and commentary):

During his (in)famous "Psycho Talk" segment of his Thursday evening MSNBC show, host Ed Schultz played the clip of Rick Santorum's interview with Terry Jeffrey of CNSNews.com where Santorum challenged President Obama's plea of ignorance on the question of when a person receives the right to life. Schultz, himself a loud-mouth liberal radio talk show host prone to crazy talk branded Santorum's comments as "psycho talk."

Rick Santorum said the following about Barack Obama and abortion in the interview: "The question is--and this is what Barack Obama didn't want to answer--is that human life a person under the Constitution? And Barack Obama says no. Well, if that person, human life, is not a person, then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say, no, we are going to decide who are people and who are not people."

He later followed up his comments with a statement comparing abortion with slavery, and said he is "disappointed that President Obama, who rightfully fights for civil rights, refuses to recognize the civil rights of the unborn in this country."
 

On MSNBC's Ed Show on Thursday, despite initially regretting his comparison of Republicans to Nazis, Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen later doubled down: "[Indiana Congressman] Mike Pence talked about government takeover of health care....he wants to be concise, careful, and consistent. Well, that's somebody...who lived in a previous century who worked for bad people, that's what he did." [Audio available here]

Host Ed Schultz offered no challenge to that statement as he wrapped up the segment, simply replying, "sure." In the question that preceded Cohen's attack on Pence, Schultz even tried to defend the Tennessee Congressman's Tuesday outburst on the House floor in which he claimed Republicans were using Nazi propaganda tactics in their opposition to ObamaCare: "I think a lot of liberals in this country admire you for calling them [Republicans] liars because the numbers are what they are....you're talking about a messaging machine that they definitely have followed to get their point across about health care, which you think is having an effect."

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