MS NOW Reports (formerly MSNBC Live/MSNBC Reports)

On MSNBC Friday, anchor John Harwood spoke with New York Times Week in Review editor Sam Tanenhaus about the health care debate, wondering: "...you know an awful lot about the patron saint of modern conservatism William F. Buckley. What do you suppose Bill Buckley would think of the nature of the arguments that are being made against the Obama health care plan right now, death panels and all the…

Update below the fold.This is just a small entry, a blog-lette, if you will.  Because I happened to have seen this bit of broadcast flapdoodle live, which you now have before you at right (with the audio available here).On this morning's MSNBC News Live, co-host Angela Burt-Murray - the Editor-in-Chief of Essence magazine -uncorks this absolutely wild pitch to Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md):…

MSNBC’s graphics department on Monday provided some visually obnoxious examples of media bias, fretting about "unhinged" conservatives and "health care hysteria." Throughout the morning, the left-leaning cable network featured on-screen texts promoting the Democratic agenda. At 11:35am, MSNBC News Live host Carlos Watson anchored a piece urging liberals to get tough in supporting universal health…

At the top of the 4:00PM ET hour on MSNBC Friday, fill-in co-anchor Monica Novotny issued a dire warning about protests at health care town hall meetings: "The town hall confrontations are turning violent....Where is all of this heading? New fears for the safety of America’s first African-American president." [Audio/video (0:33): Mp3 | WMV]In a later segment, co-anchor David Shuster interviewed…

During the 2PM ET hour on MSNBC, anchor Contessa Brewer wondered: "Is a poster of the President as the Joker racist? The posters in Los Angeles and elsewhere show the President as ‘The Dark Knight’ version of the Joker above the word ‘socialism.’" She then cited an article from Thursday’s Washington Post making the accusation.Brewer spoke with the author of the article, Phillip Kennicott, and…

It's been a long time since MSNBC could pretend to be anything but a shill for liberal politicians, policies and causes. Any remaining doubts about that can be dispelled by surveying the network's recent coverage of the controversy over gays in the military. Cable news' self-described "place for politics" covered the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" administrative policy six different…

MSNBC News Live substitute host Donny Deutsch frothed about "right-wing racism" on Thursday and trashed Rush Limbaugh as a both a "moron" and a "putz" and Glenn Beck as a "super moron." The former CNBC anchor talked with liberal journalist Joan Walsh about her Salon.com column and quoted her asserting that "Limbaugh and Beck continue to ratchet up their alarming and increasingly racist hatred for…

Are liberals less racist and/or more knowledgeable about racism than others?  Donny Deutsch evidently thinks so.  On MSNBC this afternoon, Deutsch asked a black academic to give him an example of racism he'd encountered because "as liberal as I am, I can't understand because I've never walked in your shoes."Prof. James Peterson of Bucknell was a guest in MSNBC's 4 PM EDT hour, during which…

It worked for President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, when he took tax cuts - a conservative issue - and made it his own. Now, liberals are employing a similar tactic in promoting their health care agenda. But Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., isn't having it. He called out Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the left wing The Nation magazine and MSNBC guest co-host, for attempting it in…

On Friday, MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall exclaimed: "Harsh political discourse against [President Obama] really amped up and people started to push the boundaries of what might be considered decency. From talk radio to those tea parties that we saw with some pretty offensive signs folks were holding, even in the presence of children. The anger has certainly intensified."As evidence of the supposed…

MSNBC host David Shuster on Thursday relied on the liberal group Media Matters to help him as he tried to "sift through the spin and get at the truth" of a Republican-created chart purporting to show government-run health care as a confusing maze of bureaucracy. Shuster began by complaining, "Is the conservative media deliberately trying to avoid any fact-checking when it comes to Republican…

On Thursday, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer reported on Meghan McCain calling Joe the Plumber a "dumb ass" for his views on homosexuality and remarked: "Is that name calling? Or, you know, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck. Just asking, folks. I'm just asking." [audio available here] In the brief report, during the 2:00PM ET hour, Brewer explained: Let's go to…

MSNBC hosts Tamron Hall and David Shuster on Tuesday repeatedly grumbled at the tough questions Senator Lindsey Graham posed to Sonia Sotomayor over the judge's ability to keep her feelings in check. At one point during live coverage, Shuster derided the lawmaker's remarks as "patronizing" and fretted that "the blogs are already going crazy over this." Hall saw the statements as insinuating the…