Here is the latest episode of NewsBusters’ Notables Quotables show, featuring the liberal media’s most outrageous sound bites.

In this week’s episode we have Chris Matthews wondering what’s wrong with a quick phone call to terrorists, Matt Lauer worried about America getting a big head, and Actor Scott Wolf revealing the inspiration behind his role as a sell-out journalist in a new TV series.

Enjoy the show and to see current and past episodes in a larger format, visit the ‘Notable Quotables Show’ channel on the Media Research Center’s video sharing website, Eyeblast.

Chris Matthews, on Monday's Hardball, claimed the GOP is purging moderates from the party like it was 1930s Russia, and Newsweek's Howard Fineman said the dumping of RINOs like Dede Scozzafava in New York was leading to "the crack cocaine of reduced Republicanism." Yes indeed it was, as Fineman noted, a night of "wild comparisons," on Hardball but after making the "purge" metaphor, Matthews actually had the nerve to call Rush Limbaugh's play-on-words joke that Scozzafava "screwed every RINO in the country," a "metaphor from Hell."

The following exchanges were aired on the November 2 edition of Hardball:

Last fall, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel remarked, "Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." 

That quote has become part of a rallying cry for conservatives, that those currently in power are trying to create the perception of a crisis to force things through the legislative process that couldn't be done otherwise. That has been dismissed by those on the left as fear-mongering and the party in power is acting in good faith based on what their constituents want.

But on MSNBC's Oct. 14 "Countdown," Newsweek senior Washington correspondent Howard Fineman found fault with President Barack Obama's administration for not living up to Emanuel's expectations. On Oct. 14, the Senate Judiciary Committee toyed with the idea of stripping health insurance providers of their antitrust exemption and "Countdown" Keith Olbermann suggested members of Congress hold that exemption over insurance companies' heads to force them to go along with the Senate's idea of health insurance reform.

How do you know when an extraordinarily liberal politician is failing badly?

When extraordinarily liberal journalists like Newsweek's Howard Fineman not only notice, but are willing to write about it AND get their critiques published.

Adding insult to injury, in Fineman's most recent column, he expressed concern that "[u]nless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected."

Ouch. But there was much more in Fineman's, "The Limits of Charisma: Mr. President, Please Stay Off TV":

So what if his network is drawing a larger audience than its combined competition? So what if one of his newest shows has drawn unprecedented numbers for a start-up that airs at 5 p.m.? According to Newsweek's Howard Fineman, Fox News President Roger Ailes is tarnishing his own personal reputation.

It could just be sour grapes for Fineman, who is affiliated with rival network MSNBC and was appearing on that network's "Countdown" with fill-in host David Shuster, but he attacked Fox host Glenn Beck and the 9/12 protestors he helped inspire.

"Well, he can - he can pretend to cry all he wants on the stage and call himself a televangelist," Fineman said of Beck on MSNBC's Sept. 14 "Countdown." "He is not into uniting the country, from everything I've seen. He is making a boatload of money dividing the country. When you say with no real evidence whatsoever that the president of the United States hates white people, you aren't behaving in the spirit of 9/12, you're behaving in a spirit that we thought we've gotten rid of at the end of the civil war and the end of the second civil rights movement. So, you know, he can cry the crocodile tears all he wants. That doesn't seem to be what he's actually doing."

NBC's Norah O'Donnell, guest hosting for Chris Matthews over the weekend, repeatedly questioned her "Chris Matthews Show" panelists why there was "So much hate," and "venom," directed at Barack Obama at town hall events.

Time's Joe Klein responded it was all Rush Limbaugh's fault as he depicted opponents of Obama as racists that are "being egged on by the demagogues in, in the Republican Party, by Boss Rush Limbaugh. And I call him the boss because there isn't a single Republican elected official who's willing to call him out on his lies." [audio available here]

Law of averages being what it is, only a matter of time before a moment of candor eluded the thought police on left-wing radio.

Appearing on Ed Schultz's top-rated liberal radio show this past Monday, Newsweek chief political correspondent Howard Fineman provided an example of this when he traced Obama's difficulties in overhauling health care to his vague promises about reform during the '08 campaign (click here for audio) --

SCHULTZ: What do you make of the president's leadership so far on this? Should the Democrats be this divided at this point on some of these major issues in health care reform and what responsibility does the White House bear for that?

On the syndicated "The Chris Matthews Show," over the weekend, Chris Matthews and his panel linked Rush Limbaugh and the GOP to the birthers movement and accused them of playing racial politics. After showing clips of Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin, Matthews and his panel argued that the GOP and conservatives were trying to capitalize on a "dark undercurrent" in America, as Matthews charged: "Are, are the Republicans using this to sort of build the undercurrent of passion against this president? They may not admit it, but are they using it?" 

NBC's Norah O'Donnell responded, "Yes I think I do. There is a sense that there are forces out there that are doing harm to this country and so people are looking for a way to de-legitimize Barack Obama. And so whether they can do it by aligning his race or his birth, even though he was born in America, they are a way to de-legitimize him and I think it, it's this dark undercurrent in America. And the thing that concerns me is that rather than focusing on things that unite us, that people are concentrating on things that divide us." [audio available here]

For his part Newsweek's Howard Fineman accused the GOP of using the "anger" to win in 2010. 

Newsweek senior Washington correspondent Howard Fineman isn’t hiding his disdain toward Newt Gingrich in his latest column for the magazine, headlined: "How lost are the Republicans? They're looking to Newt for answers."

Fineman wrote that Republicans have an affinity for "disgraded or discarded" leaders, and Gingrich and his "ruthless" caricaturing of liberals represent the "old-school insult" in stark contrast to the new, somehow nonpartisan cool of Obama:

At the dawn of the Obama era, Gingrich has remade himself as the anti-Obama. He is arguably the GOP's most influential strategist and cheerleader, and a provocative scold of the administration. Where Obama exudes the new Washington equanimity, Gingrich exalts in the old-school insult. He is ruthless in caricaturing anyone who gets in his way as a "pagan" or "statist" or "socialist" or "racist" – all words Newt has hurled in recent days.

This is pretty rich territory for a man who’s a regular guest of Keith Olbermann’s. It continued:

After playing a clip of Rush Limbaugh charging Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with bigotry and racism, Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's "Hardball," implied Limbaugh was the racist as he asked a guest panelist Jeanne Cummings of the Politico, "Is this the pot calling the kettle black?" To which Cummings responded that the radio talk show host was going to "chase," all the Hispanics away from the GOP:

Well all I know is it's the worst nightmare for the Republicans, I mean they're trying to calculate whether they should vote against her, how aggressively they should try to sort through her record and challenge her during hearings. And with things like that, and all that calculation to try to keep Hispanic support, even as small as it's gotten for Republicans. Rush Limbaugh can chase ‘em all away in an afternoon with that kind of talk." [audio available here]

The following is the full segment as it was aired on the May 27 edition of "Hardball":

Chris Matthews, on the syndicated "The Chris Matthews Show" over the weekend, likened Dick Cheney's recent media appearances, to defend the Bush administration and to criticize Obama on national security policy, to Glenn Close's stalker character from the 1987 film "Fatal Attraction." Before playing a clip of the movie Matthews made the cinematic comparison: "Well some say Cheney's refusal to move on reminds them of Groundhog Day but you could also say it's like that more frighteningly relentless Glenn Close in 'Fatal Attraction.' Like Cheney she was not gonna be ignored." After playing the clip in which the Close character utters the famous quote, "I'm not gonna be ignored, Dan." Matthews then threw it to Newsweek's Howard Fineman:

MATTHEWS: Howard what do you think? Cheney? "Fatal Attraction?" What do make? Will not be ignored, this guy.

HOWARD FINEMAN, NEWSWEEK: Ha, ha. Yeah, yeah I don't think he's going to boil the rabbit. Let's put it that way.

MATTHEWS: Or come out of that bathtub like that other scene in that movie! Everybody is gonna go see Fatal Attraction again.

The following is the full exchange as it was aired on the May 17 edition of "The Chris Matthews Show":

Chris Matthews asked his panel of reporters, on this weekend's syndicated "The Chris Matthews Show," to offer their prescriptions on how the GOP, in the wake of the Arlen Specter departure, can regain its popularity to which most of the liberal reporters like Joe Klein and Howard Fineman suggested they needed to abandon their "cut taxes, shrink government," message and some of their "trollish"spokesmen like Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich because they're turning off families, women and "people who think that caring matters."[audio available here]

First up Time magazine's Joe Klein suggested the GOP should moderate on health care because it would finally make them, "look sane!" and "bring them into...the mainstream of American politics." Then Newsweek's Fineman charged it was the conservative message of "cut taxes, shrink," government that was the problem: "But it doesn't sell with, with people outside of their base demographic which are white males. There's something about that message that turns off families, that turns off women, that turns off people who think that caring matters about other-, I know that this sounds silly, but caring about other people." And finally Matthews went further saying it's not just the GOP's message but it's messengers who are the problem: "Can you, can you, can they get past the cacophony of Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich? These are sort of trollish figures. These aren't the caring people, are they?"

The following exchange occurred on the May 3 edition of "The Chris Matthews Show":

The Dick Cheney-obsessed Chris Matthews opened Tuesday's "Hardball," by taking umbrage with the former Vice President's criticism of Obama declassifying CIA interrogation memos, as the MSNBC host compared Cheney to "The Empire," in Star Wars and called him "The Bush administration's tail gunner, manning his burp gun with that same nasty look we recall from the war comics." Matthews went on to wonder if Cheney's outspokenness was a good thing for the GOP as he questioned, "If the Republican Party really wants to be branded right now as the party of tax cuts and torture?"

Matthews didn't waste any time getting to the Cheney bashing as seen in the following intro to the April 21 edition of "Hardball":

CHRIS MATTHEWS: The Empire Strikes Back! Let's play "Hardball!" Good evening, I'm Chris Matthews. Leading off tonight. Clash of civilizations. Two different views of the universe out there right now. That's what's at war in Washington today. The dark view of Dick Cheney that sees no shame in brutal interrogations. Indeed refuses to blame America for anything. That against the new view of Barack Obama that America does best in the world when it upholds a moral standard and admits past failings.

If you watch MSNBC's "Hardball," you really have to scratch your head and wonder what host Chris Matthews is thinking when he opens his mouth sometimes.

On the March 30 broadcast of "Hardball," Matthews, MSNBC political analyst Pat Buchanan and Newsweek's Howard Fineman were discussing what they perceived to be a rift between former GOP vice-presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her running mate, former GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. based on McCain's unwillingness to commit to supporting Palin as a presidential candidate in 2012. (h/t Breitbart.tv)

On MSNBC on Monday, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue anchor David Shuster decried a lack of "standards" on Fox News: "The inflammatory rhetoric from the wing nuts, is it merely entertaining or seriously dangerous?....Shouldn't there be some standards at some of these other networks? I mean, that's a problem, isn't it? There's no standards."

But David Shuster really should have looked in the mirror first at the March 12 edition of Countdown, where Keith Olbermann spread the cock-eyed conspiracy theory that there was a Dick Cheney-led "executive assassination ring" in the White House, according to radical-left journalist Seymour Hersh. Sadly, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman only helped Olbermann sell this underbaked, unsubstantiated right-wing death-squad story.

Acting as if he's been living in alternate media reality for the past year NBC's Matt Lauer, interviewing Howard Fineman, on Thursday's "Today" show made the very odd assertion, that the "establishment," of "Washington insiders," and the "New York-based media," didn't help put Barack Obama "in the Oval Office." Lauer, made the head-scratching point, after reading a portion of Fineman's most recent column to the Newsweek editor:

MATT LAUER: Let, let me read something. You wrote a column for Newsweek.com this week, and you said, that although President Obama still enjoys that high approval rating, he's starting to lose, what you call, the establishment, Washington insiders, the New York-based media and corporate America. When it comes down to it, those people didn't put him in the Oval Office. Doesn't he in some ways benefit by not catering to those people?

HOWARD FINEMAN: Well, not only did they not put him in the Oval Office, they're largely responsible for the mess we're in now. So, I think that's one reason why he remains very, very popular with the American public. But as I said, everybody's looking to take his measure, and he's got to not only be a popular president, but a powerful one and make his will fact in Washington. He really hasn't done that in the details yet.

The following is the full transcript of the segment as it was aired on the March 12, "Today" show:

Throughout last year's presidential campaign, NewsBusters routinely reported that without the unprofessional and unconditional support of an adoring media, Barack Obama would never have gotten past the Iowa caucuses let alone John McCain.

One of his staunchest fans was Newsweek's Howard Fineman who right after Election Day said: “Obama's changing everything as he moves. His victory speech last night in Grant Park...was so memorable on so many levels.”

Well, like many so-called journalists who sycophantically gushed and fawned so much last year that they sent an inexperienced, unqualified junior senator who had never written one signficant piece of legislation straight to the most powerful office in the land, Fineman is now having second thoughts (file photo):

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and his frequent guest, Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman, spoke Saturday at a fundraising gala for the New York chapter of the Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest gay-left lobby and a major constituency group of the Democratic Party. All the other major speakers were New York or New Jersey Democrats. Olbermann was given HRC’s "Ally for Equality" Award for his MSNBC commentaries against California’s Proposition 8, which drew a standing ovation at the dinner.

Fineman introduced Olbermann in glowing terms: "He's not a liberal. What Keith is is an anti-establishment character who doesn't want people in power to get away with things." He added, "He rediscovered the role of journalism and that role is deeply informed judgment about people in power and about the morality of our country."

Former President George W. Bush reinstated a policy in 2001 that restricted foreign countries using American dollars for abortions. CBS political consultant Craig Crawford called the action "red meat to the Bible Belt conservatives."

Just three days after taking office, President Barack Obama rescinded the Mexico City Policy, a policy set into place by Ronald Reagan that prohibited American funding for foreign abortions. Have the media called it red meat for liberals? No. They've mostly been silent.

Catching up with something from Saturday I just came across, Newsweek's Howard Fineman pointed out on MSNBC just before 6 PM EST, as the Obama-Biden train arrived at Washington, DC's Union Station, that he was reading “the pool reports that have been filed by reporters on the train and they refer to Barack Obama as PEBO, which is short for 'President-elect Barack Obama.'” Fineman felt that illustrated how “there's an intimacy and a familiarity on that train,” presumably between the journalists and Obama, one shared by Fineman who hailed Obama's “many gifts” and saw “a down-home folksiness that belies the tremendous hopes that not only the country, but the whole world, have for him.”

Full quote, which matches an MP3 audio clip (160 Kb, 26 secs):

I've been reading the pool reports that have been filed by reporters on the train and they refer to Barack Obama as PEBO, which is short for “President-elect Barack Obama” and there's an intimacy and a familiarity on that train, a down-home folksiness, that belies the tremendous hopes that not only the country, but the whole world, have for him.