Ryan Grim

Throughout the liberal media's ceaseless coverage of the impending fiscal cliff debacle, they have fixated on hiking taxes on the "rich," even though doing so would come nowhere close to solving America's fiscal woes. Whatever short term gain in revenue from tax hikes will not last the federal government for very long, and another credit downgrade is inevitable if entitlement reform continues to be ignored.

Nowhere is this 'tax the rich' and 'fair share' obsession more blatant than on MSNBC, where the Obama administration's message is amplified on a daily basis. Take Tuesday's Jansing & Co for instance. Host Chris Jansing set up Huffington Post contributor Ryan Grim to advise President Obama and Democrats on the Hill, which amounted to him reiterating that going over the fiscal cliff may not be such a bad thing after all. Democrats can appear to be the tax cutters as a result, by reinstating the Bush tax cuts on all but the top income earners. [ video below, MP3 audio here ]

Note: See Update below the fold.

It's time now to play a new political game: Who's the Liar?

In one corner we have the Huffington Post Washington bureau chief, Ryan Grim, who must be feeling very grim today because his "scoop" about the Bain Capital source of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's claim about Mitt Romney not paying taxes for 10 years has blown up on him. Grim Grim quoted Reid's spokesman, Jose Parra, as stating that Reid's Bain Capital source is a Republican. Unfortunately for grim Grim this assertion was countered by Parra's parry that he said no such thing. Since grim Grim placed Parra's supposed statement in quotes, one of them has to be lying.

First off we have this quote by grim Grim which was later contradicted by Parra's parry:

On Wednesday's edition of the Bill Press radio show, Huffington Post reporter Ryan Grim put on his best conceited act and expressed that the Supreme Court just doesn't have great brains on it, and they're not qualified to overturn Obamacare. In fact, if they overturn Obamacare, Grim warned, "people's lives are at risk and people will probably die as a result." Conservatism kills.

It's amazing that Grim would say it's the Supreme Court with the failing brains, since he originally boasted (before oral arguments) that Obamacare would be upheld 6 to 3. Now he doesn't believe that, because the Justices are too stupid to rule on it, especially Antonin Scalia: [Video and transcript below]

On MSNBC's Political Nation Friday evening, host Al Sharpton interviewed Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post.  They spoke about House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH):

GRIM: So, you`re right, the record that he is amassing is probably one of the most extreme records that a House Speaker has put up in decades.

SHARPTON: Well, based on your last statement, he being probably the most extreme Speaker we`ve seen in decades, should President Obama even bother negotiating with him?

GRIM: No, he probably shouldn`t. He should do the opposite approach.

If these guys really think Boehner is probably the most extreme speaker in recent history, they must have mighty short memories.  Does the name Nancy Pelosi sound familiar, Reverend Al?

For the second day in a row, liberal talk show host and MSNBC guest anchor Cenk Uygur pushed the outlandish notion that President Obama is a conservative. Filling in on July 7 for Dylan Ratigan on his 4 p.m. show, Uygur exclaimed, "I didn't realize we voted for a Republican president!"

Uygur preceded this statement with a rant on how ridiculous it is for Obama to express concern about the ever-growing deficit when "60 percent of Americans favor additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy." Uygur and liberal guest Ryan Grim of “The Huffington Post” could not understand President Obama's rationale for focusing on deficit concerns.

Grim argued that, "when people say they are concerned about the deficit" they are just really saying that, "they are nervous about the economy. That's all they mean. So if you solve the economic problems, you're going to solve the deficit concerns."

During the 11AM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer discussed open mic comments made by senatorial candidate Carly Fiorina with Huffington Post writer Ryan Grim and remarked that the California Republican has "the 'Mean Girls' mentality" and "comes off like that Lindsay Lohan movie 'Mean Girls.'"

Hall was referring to Fiorina making fun of Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer's hairstyle on air before a television interview on Wednesday. Grim completely agreed with Hall's assessment: "Oh yeah, absolutely. It makes her look terrible. It doesn't put her in a very good light." Though he added: "But it's not something so extreme that it's going to annihilate her."

Earlier, Grim actually observed that Fiorina "really did dodge a bullet here." He explained: "...what she said isn't going to disqualify her from election. It makes her look a little bit silly, a little bit petty, but it's not going to be something that destroys her candidacy or her career like you had with somebody like Helen Thomas a week or so ago."

On Thursday's 11AM EST hour on MSNBC, anchor Tamron Hall asked Ryan Grim of the left-wing Huffington Post about recent scandals involving the Obama White House tampering with Democratic primaries: "Darrell Issa of California...he wants the FBI involved in this....Any legs here, or is this, again, a situation that may be politicized by the other side?" [Audio available here]

Grim dismissed the idea that there was any need for an investigation: "I mean, this isn't criminal activity. This really is politics as usual." He then lamented: "...the problem for the administration is that, you know, they ran against politics as usual....they were going to move beyond all of this."

Later, Grim described the real "crime" in the Obama administration pressuring candidates like Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania and Andrew Romanoff in Colorado to end their respective primary challenges to incumbent Democratic senators: "...the real problem is that the administration didn't – wasn't willing to allow the Democratic base to choose the candidates....having these primary candidates actually pushes the senator in a more progressive direction....if there's any crime here, it's a political one, in that the administration was holding back a progressive agenda by not allowing these primaries to go forward."

In the 2PM ET hour on MSNBC on Tuesday, left-wing Huffington Post writer Ryan Grim commented on the Republican National Committee spending scandal: "You know, what Republican donors do, generally, is pretty obnoxious to the American people. What did they have to cancel? They had to cancel a polo match, some yachting, you know, trips to bondage clubs."

Grim went on to claim: "if you want to get money from rich Republicans, you're going to have to engage in some of these obnoxious activities, so they like that to happen without the entire nation watching. Now that everybody's watching, it makes it a lot harder for them to raise money from these rich Republicans."

While Grim pretended to be a journalist reporting facts, he told Hall: "I actually haven't spoken to any – any big Republican donors the last few days." He simply noted how he was "hearing" things "in general" about RNC donors. Hall even remarked at the end of the segment: "Well Ryan, for a guy who hasn't spoken to any big money donors in 24-48 hours, not bad intel there." Apparently MSNBC now sees liberal ranting against the GOP as "intel."   

Appearing in the 3PM ET hour on MSNBC on Wednesday, Huffington Post writer Ryan Grim claimed that President Obama's latest version of health care reform was actually a conservative approach: "We actually already have a Republican bill, and it's the one that Obama has proposed....It's all about choice. Everything in it is a Republican kind of free market-based idea."

Speaking to anchor David Shuster, Grim continued his bizarre argument: "The idea that this is a Democratic bill, you know, that this is some left-wing plot, some government takeover that they're going to ram through the Senate, is the part that's the problem. This is a very centrist, leaning conservative health care reform bill."

The segment also featured Sally Pipes, author of "Top 10 Myths of American Health Care," who dismantled Grim's assertions: "I disagree with Ryan that this is a conservative blueprint that the President has put forward. It's very much not what the Republicans are talking about in terms of changing the tax code, portability, reducing mandates. What this is about is getting government more involved in our health care industry."

Conservative talk radio and political blogs all jumped on Vice President Joe Biden’s claim on CNN’s Larry King Live Wednesday night that the successful resolution of the Iraq war “could be one of the great achievements of this administration.” Biden and President Obama, then both Senators, strongly opposed President Bush’s 2007 troop surge that marked the turning point in the war.

On his Thursday show, Rush Limbaugh scoffed that “I was all set to say that I think maybe Obama is dumber than Biden, until I heard that....This is worse than chutzpah, folks.  This is insulting everybody’s intelligence.”

But during the 2pm of MSNBC Live on Thursday, anchor Tamron Hall -- noting that "the Right [is] really honing in on this comment" -- sought reassurance from the Huffington Post’s “senior congressional correspondent” Ryan Grim, who insisted that Biden was correct. “If you can have 90,000 troops leave there, and if it were still a stable country, then actually leaving the country would be a great achievement,” Grim declared, adding: “And it would also, it’s worth nothing, be an achievement for the anti-war movement.” [Video at right, audio link here.]

Grim also refused to see any connection between Bush’s troop surge and the resulting drop in violence: “It’s an open question exactly what led to the decrease in violence that coincided with the surge.” And he deplored how conservatives blame Obama for the poor state of the economy, but refuse to let Obama take credit for the success in Iraq: “This is just utter nonsense.”