Foreign Policy

It was 16 degrees warmer in my upstate New York town this morning than it was in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.  If any further portent of the apocalypse is necessary, consider that on his MSNBC show this evening, Cenk Uygur compared Barack Obama to Ronald Reagan . . . and clearly came down on the side of Ronaldus Maximus. The subject was Egypt.  Uygur played the clip of Reagan's immortal "tear…

Last week, in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama was adamant about freezing U.S. government domestic spending over the next five years. But why not do the same for U.S. spending abroad? The president said: "So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. Now, this would reduce the deficit by more than $400…

On Monday's "Morning Joe," MSNBC co-host Joe Scarborough hinted that President Obama may have been a major catalyst of the current protests against the authoritarian Mubarak regime in Egypt. Scarborough referred to the president's 2009 Cairo speech and wondered if it inspired the present protests. "Barack Obama, he goes to Cairo, he gives a speech, and he inspires – perhaps he's the one who…

The Daily Beast contributor who once insisted that there's "no such thing as sharia law" is at it again, dismissing the threat of radical Islam presented by the political instability in Egypt. In a January 30 post at Washington Post/Newsweek's "On Faith" feature yesterday, Reza Aslan dismissed fears that the Muslim Brotherhood is a radical group that could take Egypt in a theocratic direction…

Chris Matthews on Friday asked the panelists on the syndicated program bearing his name two questions about the crisis in Egypt that must have made his liberal viewers gasp. Moments after surprisingly asking NBC's Andrea Mitchell if "neo-conservatives who believe in really trying to push democracy" were right all along, Matthews asked David Sanger of the New York Times if George W. Bush was "…

ABC News prominently featured the anti-American television network Al Jazeera on "This Week" Sunday. Not only was the network's Washington bureau chief afforded a good amount of time during the Roundtable segment to sing Al Jazeera's praises, but as the show neared its conclusion, Sam Donaldson actually thanked the organization (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's a metaphysical certitude that whenever anything happens in the Middle East, the media will quickly blame former President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq. Not missing the opportunity to do so, Chris Matthews began the 5PM installment of "Hardball" Friday connecting the riots in Egypt to a man that has been out of office for two years (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For general discussion and debate about all things relating to politics, the economy, and sports. Possible talking point: Egypt. How serious is the situation in Egypt? Will this result in a full-scale revolution that topples Mubarak? If so, will this become religious leading to some kind of new Islamic government such as in Iran? Or will Mubarak get control of the situation?

Every so often, MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan goes on a rhetorical bender that stupefies his guests and defies logic. On his eponymous program today, Ratigan latched onto conflicting reports concerning the treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was arrested under suspicion of illegally downloading classified military documents and funneling them to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, to assert…

Rachel Maddow had a very tough evening Friday. Before telling a 100 percent falsehood about Reaganomics on HBO's "Real Time," the MSNBC commentator said the Strategic Defense Initiative would never work because you can't shoot a missile out of the sky with another missile (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Just when Joe-mentum was building for Lieberman-Huffington '12! Say this for Arianna Huffington: she didn't stab Joe Lieberman in the back.  On Morning Joe today, the HuffPo founder went for the full frontal assault, telling the outgoing senator to his face "I sincerely hope for the sake of the country that you do not become Secretary of Defense." Lieberman was not defenseless, at one…

How much does NBC hate Guantanamo Bay? On Tuesday, the network brought a former inmate on air, let him rail against U.S. foreign policy, insist he was tortured, and proclaim his innocence, all without a single dissenting voice, and without even mentioning the massive amounts of evidence against him. It's not that the evidence isn't available. Indeed, you can get enough information online to…

Tamron Hall was joined by her MSNBC colleague Dylan Ratigan on Wednesday's edition of "News Nation" in condemning some members of corporate America for the way they have "demonized" the Obama administration. That slight of American businesses came during a dicussion of President Hu Jintao's U.S visit, in which Ratigan remarked that President Obama's greatest challenge will not be dealing with…

It's one thing for my favorite political podcaster, the National Review's John Derbyshire, to assert, as he is often wont to do, that multi-culturalism doesn't work.  But George Clooney? Yet that was the point the actor seemed to make, appearing on Morning Joe today to discuss the recent referendum in which the people of southern Sudan voted overwhelmingly to secede from the north. View…