Rachel Maddow

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday went to great pains illustrating the similarities between President Obama's Libya address to the nation and his December 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Not surprisingly, the devout dove suddenly turned hawk chose not to discuss the irony (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Somewhere the ghost of George Orwell cringes in recognition.

In her eagerness to please, Rachel Maddow occasionally collides headlong into immutable facts of economic reality. To wit, cutting taxes does not constitute new government spending, at least outside of doctrinaire Marxist analysis.

Here's MSNBC's Little Miss Sunshine giving her two-cents' worth on this Tuesday night (video below page break) --

They won't agree on much, but Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and Medea Benjamin, founder of the far-left anti-war group Code Pink, found some common ground on one fact Tuesday night: MSNBC talkers Rachel Maddow and Ed Shultz are hypocrites.

Both Schultz and Maddow defended President Obama's decision to impose a no fly zone over Libya on their respective shows. Maddow trotted out the "reluctant warrior" line, while Schultz insisted that the president "deserves the benefit of the doubt and our support."

O'Reilly asserted - and Benjamin agreed - that neither MSNBC host would have been so generous had Obama's predecessor engaged in such a conflict. "The word 'hypocrisy' comes to mind," Benjamin quipped (video and partial transcript below the break).

Not to worry, Moore promises one of those tranquil conflicts devoid of violence.

What is it about self-proclaimed peace lovers that they are so often bellicose?

Latest example -- the agitprop filmmaker's appearance on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow show last night, coming shortly after the GOP-led Wisconsin state senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of Gov. Scott Walker's proposal to curtail collective bargaining for most public employees. After Maddow introduced Moore and praised his "barnburning speech" in Madison over the weekend, Moore said this (video below page break) --

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":

If this keeps up, the shrinking number of guests on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show could dwindle even more.

For the second time this week, a Maddow invitee offered an awkward contrast to what Maddow claimed earlier in the same segment.

On her show Monday, Maddow cited three reports claiming that $61 billion in spending cuts proposed by Republicans on Capitol Hill would lead to massive job losses -- followed by economist Robert Frank telling Maddow minutes later the reductions amount to "just a drop in the bucket."

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Don't look now, that tidal wave might be a drop in the bucket instead.

On her MSNBC show Monday, Rachel Maddow cited a trio of reports warning of massive job losses if $61 billion in Republican-pushed spending cuts take effect.

The Economic Policy Institute, which Maddow described as a "liberal group," predicts the GOP budget plan "would likely result in job losses of just over 800,000. A confidential new report" from Goldman Sachs says spending cuts passed in the House "would be a drag on the economy, cutting growth by about two percent of GDP, according to Jonathan Karl at ABC News, the source cited by Maddow. The third warning along these lines came from McCain '08 campaign adviser Mark Zandi, writing at Moody's Analytics, that the Republicans' proposal "would mean some 400,000 fewer jobs created by the end of 2011 ... and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012."

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Search parties continue their wide-ranging efforts to find examples that support Maddow's claim. The dragnet is expected to continue indefinitely.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow made this apparently straight-faced assertion to media critic Howard Kurtz in a profile of Maddow he wrote for Newsweek and The Daily Beast. The specific quote from Maddow -- "I don't think I always fit the caricature of a liberal." Not surprisingly, Maddow cited no evidence -- such as an aversion to Keith Olbermann, palpable hankering for red meat, or unbridled lust to tap America's vast untapped natural resources -- that would bolster her premise.

Begs the question -- how would you know the "caricature of a liberal" if you saw one? Here's how I'd that describe that unenviable characterization as applied to any given person --

It is said that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.

Maybe this is Rachel Maddow's intention behind continually saying the following on the MSNBC show bearing her name (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The presumptive face of the most biased and propagandist television news outlet in America had some harsh words for the media organization that bests hers in ratings virtually every hour of every day.

In a piece published by the Daily Beast Sunday, Rachel Maddow hypocritically told Howard Kurtz that Fox News has "become a McCarthyite chamber of horrors… You can't really call yourself a news channel if that's what you broadcast":

The folks at MSNBC should be deeply embarrassed and ashamed of their prime time commentator Rachel Maddow.

Having been exposed by Politifact for lying last week about Wisconsin having a budget surplus, Maddow on Thursday hypocritically defended herself by playing nine cherry-picked words from the broadcast in question while disgracefully calling her critics homophobes (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For Rachel Maddow, corrections never come easy. But while the MSNBC host has at least offered corrections where she has previously gotten it wrong - granted, with the immense level of sarcasm and snark that is her hallmark - a recent flap with online watchdogs has the indignant Maddow splitting hairs in near-comedic fashion in an effort to avoid admitting she was mistaken.

But the numbers still belie her position.

The exchange began with Maddow's appearance on Leno Tuesday night. She falsely claimed that "of the top ten people donating money in [the 2010 election cycle], seven of them were giving to Republicans." In fact, as NB's Noel Sheppard pointed out, Maddow had it exactly backwards: 7 of the top 10 individual contributors gave more to Democrats than Republicans during the past cycle (and a lot more at that).

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Tuesday told a staggering amount of nonsense to "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno concerning what's going on in Wisconsin with the unions and Tea Partiers.

After some additional investigation, it turns out the juiciest whopper of all came a few minutes earlier when she totally misrepresented Republican and Democrat political contributions in the previous elections (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Last Monday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ironically asked his readers why voters are so ill-informed.

Eight days later, MSNBC's resident Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow, while chatting with the "Tonight Show's" Jay Leno about what's going on in Wisconsin, demonstrated perfectly why so many in our country have little factual knowledge of current events (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Curse those wascally Wepublicans in Wisconsin, you'll never believe what they're up to now.

Bad enough for the Badger State GOP to abet Gov. Scott Walker in his nefarious scheme to prevent public-sector unions from bankrupting the state. Worse, they are hatching even more diabolical plots while Dem state senators continue their courageous evasion of the law to avoid voting on Walker's proposal.

Here are the sordid details, as ferreted out by ace ferret-outer Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC show Monday night (video after page break) --

Normally you'd expect a left-winger like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow to do cartwheels if current-day Republicans agree with opinions held by Franklin Roosevelt during the depths of the Great Depression.

This is not one of those times, however, as we are learning during the ongoing battle in Wisconsin over public-sector unions.  

What's happening in Wisconsin, according to Maddow, is an existential threat not just to unions but to the Democratic Party. Since the Supreme Court ruling last year in Citizens United v. FEC, Maddow said on her show Friday, Republicans have increased their advantage in political donations from outside groups such as corporations, unions and advocacy groups --

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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):

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:

Next time Rachel Maddow cites a movie to bolster her argument, she might want to watch it first.

On her MSNBC show Thursday night, Maddow disparaged Fox News hosts Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Center for Security Policy founder Frank Gaffney for warning of a Middle Eastern caliphate possibly emerging in the wake of upheaval in Egypt and of Muslim Brotherhood subversion in the US.

Maddow's response? Little more than making faces and uttering mock horror. That was it -- no talking-head experts to refute the claims, no demonstrable proof of anything said being false. Doing either would have required an effort and Maddow clearly wasn't in the mood when she could resort to snark.

Then came what she intended as the coup de grace, an excerpt from original version of the film "The Manchurian Candidate," a Cold War era classic released in 1962.

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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): 

Something unusual happened on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show the other night -- a guest expressed an opinion that didn't dovetail with Maddow's. This doesn't occur often, presumably not by accident.

Here is an exchange on Monday between Maddow and former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk, now the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, over political upheaval in Egypt and the extent to which Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak is an American puppet --

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As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday got duped by a satirical website quoting from their spoof article about Sarah Palin advocating an attack on Egypt as if it was a serious commentary.

On Tuesday, proving once again that it takes a lot of rationalizations to be a liberal these days, Maddow blamed her mistake on Fox News's Glenn Beck and other prominent conservatives (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

Only ten days after her idiocy-laden appearance on HBO's "Real Time," MSNBC's resident Rhodes scholar Rachel Maddow once again made a fool of herself on national television.

In a segment bashing various conservatives for their views about the growing Egypt crisis, Maddow went after Sarah Palin loaded with quotes from a well-known satirical website urging the former Alaska governor to call for an invasion of the beleaguered Middle East nation (video follows with transcript and lots of commentary):

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):

Bill Maher has for years bragged about his love for marijuana and his desire for drugs to be legalized.

On HBO's "Real Time" Friday, the sometimes comedian linked our nation's education problems to drugs claiming, "The kids are dumbasses and their parents are dumbasses and they’re taking drugs and f--king and not learning" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Rachel Maddow's self-proclaimed "obsessive" devotion to the truth again proves fickle.

As an example of what she sees as the resurgence of wedge issues, Maddow said this on her MSNBC show last night --

The culture war era conspiracy theories about black helicopters and a one-world government secretly pursued by America's elites, that stuff is back from the culture war eras too. The new Republican head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee convened the first hearing of that committee this week. What's the topic? Get the US out of the UN!

To back up Maddow's hypercaffeinated claim (she tends to talk in italics), an article titled "House Republicans' next target: the United Nations" from Foreign Policy magazine was shown on the screen. Awkwardly absent from the actual article was any mention of what Maddow claimed.

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Some on the left have been crying foul at CNN's decision to air live Rep. Michele Bachmann's response to the president's State of the Union address Tuesday night. None have been more vocal than MSNBC libtalker Rachel Maddow.

One media critic had enough. On Thursday, the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik laid into Maddow's criticism, saying it derives from "the mentality of a lockstep party member, not a journalist." Zurawik's gripe was Maddow's insistence that because Bachmann was not officially representing a political party, her speech should not have been given comparable treatment to the president's or to Rep. Paul Ryan's Republican response.

Journalists "don't let political parties tell us who we should and shouldn't cover," Zurawik added. "I have a West Highland terrier named Bugsy who has better journalism credentials and chops than you do," he quipped.

At their website, NPR tried to add to the controversy that CNN would dare to air Rep. Michele Bachmann offering a Tea Party response to Obama's State of the Union address, despite her "history of inflammatory remarks." Reporter Corey Dade underlined that it could undermine CNN's image of neutrality, as if it wasn't a liberal network:

"I can't figure how you can partner with a political action committee and claim to be neutral," says Kelly McBride, who teaches media ethics at the Poynter Institute, a journalism training center.

So much for any scintillating future chit-chat between Rachel Maddow and Don Imus.

Imus cut loose with a withering broadside today against Maddow for what he perceived as her disloyal initial response to news of colleague and mentor Keith Olbermann's abrupt departure from MSNBC --

Having nothing to do with her politics, she is a gutless coward and I'll tell you why. Because everybody knew what the situation was with Olbermann at MSNBC. We used to work there. Tom Bowman, who's our producer, Elisha who's one of our producers, they both worked with me at MSNBC. They left there to come with me, by the way, don't look for any of Olbermann's producers to go any place with him. However, so we all know people, we still know everybody who's at MSNBC. So, everybody knew what was going on with Keith. Everybody knew what was going to happen to him. For this woman, who owed her job to him, she's live there with Bill Maher, a lot of people watch that terribly influential program, not to offer a defense of Olbermann, in spite of what you think about Olbermann, is unconscionable.

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