Steve Rattner

Oh those racist Republicans.  Did you know that they're hostile to Colin Powell because he's black? Yup, just ask former Obama car czar Steve Rattner.  The Morning Joe regular today claimed that poor Powell "feels this hostility toward him from the rest of the party in part because he's a minority." Really?  Colin Powell feels hostility from "the rest of the party" because he's a minority? …

For those who want the short answer to the question in this post's title, the answer is almost definitely "no." But in a New York Times op-ed piece in mid-September, former Obama "car czar" Steven Rattner effectively said that the so-called "fact-check" site known as PolitiFact should make amends to former Alaska Governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. In December 2009,…

Certain events in the 2012 campaign make you ask how would the media respond if a particular story was about Mitt Romney rather than President Obama.  Take this past Friday, when President Obama was introduced at an Ohio rally by a man accused to stealing trade secrets from his former employer.  According to a local CBS affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, Daniel Potkanowicz has been ordered to pay…

With unemployment, gas prices, and the budget deficit stubbornly high, President Obama's fans in the media are having a hard time explaining to people why the current White House resident's job performance is worthy of the reelection they're all working for. Take former Obama car czar turned Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Rattner who said on MSNBC Tuesday, "I think in a quiet room I could…

If Herman Cain has been harshly criticized for his 9-9-9 plan, which includes a 9% national sales tax, should we expect Robert Frank to come under fire? After all, on Morning Joe today, the Cornell University professor proposed a progressive consumption tax that could go to . . . 100% on the rich. Frank's notion is that the very high rates would discourage the rich from building "mansions" […

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) set off a liberal firestorm when he called Standard and Poor's U.S. credit rating change the "Tea Party Downgrade." On Monday's "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough told "terminally stupid ideologues" that "really don't understand" anything because they're "so dogmatic [they] can't think for [themselves]" to "stop using the Tea Party…

As NewsBusters previously reported, former Obama administration car czar Steve Rattner last month called Tea Partiers terrorists on national television. On Sunday's "This Week," George Will took Rattner on for making such an inflammatory statement (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough on Tuesday mourned the "absolutely dreadful" behavior of journalists and politicians who have compared Tea Party Republicans to "terrorists," among other things. But as NewsBusters previously reported, the "Morning Joe" co-host repeatedly ignored such transgressions when they occurred on his own show. [Video follows page break]

A trend is emerging on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," whereby guests make inflammatory statements likening conservatives to terrorists, and none of the co-hosts insist on a more elevated level of dialogue. Following in the footsteps of Newsweek's Tina Brown and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), two MSNBC analysts called conservatives in Congress "economic terrorists" and "crazy" on Friday, yet none of the…

Imagine, if you will, that in 2003 Fox News brought on a disgraced Bush administration official who had been barred from Wall Street trading to talk up the president's economic policies. Imagine also that the anchor doing the interview failed to disclose that fact to viewers. Well, that's pretty much what happened in the 2 p.m. Eastern hour of MSNBC coverage today, when anchor Thomas Roberts…

As I've noted previously, the Washington Post has repeatedly buried stories about Steven Rattner's late legal woes with the SEC and then-N.Y. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The former Obama's "car czar," was accused last year of bribing "a political consultant to win business from New York's pension fund for his former investment firm." The liberal Democratic financier subsequently worked out…

If a conservative or Republican uttered the nonsense to be revealed shortly, we'd justifiably never hear the end of it on the late-night comedy shows and elsewhere. As it is, former car czar Steve Rattner's "creative" term for fibbing has and probably will continue to get little coverage outside of Detroit. Rattner's risible rendition of reality spewed forth before he spoke at a Federal…

You can't make this stuff up. The titled quote comes from a Bloomberg story today about new GM Chairman Ed Whitacre. You also can't make up most of the media's calm acceptance of yet another person heavily involved with running General Motors, aka Government Motors, who knows next to nothing about cars except as a consumer who drives them. At least it's refreshing that this guy has…