ABC This Week viewers on Sunday were treated to a classic socio-economic debate between liberals and a lone conservative.
With the issue at hand being Detroit's announced bankruptcy and whether the federal government should bail it out, the liberal view was championed by the Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel and MSNBC's Steve Rattner. On the right was George Will who clearly won the scrum despite being tag-teamed (video follows with transcript and commentary):
A new Gallup poll released on Monday found more Americans approve of former President George W. Bush than disapprove, for the first time since 2005. MSNBC’s weekday lunchtime anchor Alex Wagner just couldn’t stand the news.
The left-wing host expressed her dismay with the new poll on Wednesday’s Now, huffing that the “46 percent of Americans [who disapprove of Bush] apparently still have their memory intact.” Wagner has made it a tradition on her show to berate President Bush, even five years after he left office. Just two weeks ago, you may recall, she used a report on Bush’s bike ride with wounded veterans to mock the former president’s intelligence and decision-making – with barely a mention of the bike ride itself.
It seems as though The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel should take her own advice in saying that tragic events like the terrorist attack in Boston on April 15 should not be politicized. Appearing on MSNBC’s Now w/ Alex Wagner on April 16, Ms. vanden Heuvel managed to contradict herself within mere seconds.
Speaking with liberal host Alex Wagner and TheGrio.com’s Joy-Ann Reid, the left-wing commentator appeared to at first make a reasoned call for patience in the aftermath of the terrorist attack, insisting that:
Greta Van Susteren on ABC's This Week Sunday took exception with a cheap shot at Fox News from Nation magazine's Katrina vanden Heuvel.
This came after vanden Heuvel said of former CIA director David Petraeus, "Don't forget that over at your network at Fox, he was your candidate for a while" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
There was a truly delicious moment on ABC's This Week Sunday that should be mandatory viewing for all liberal media members.
After the perilously liberal editor of The Nation magazine, along with Obama's former domestic policy adviser, blamed all the nation's problems on Republican obstruction in Congress, the Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot struck back saying, "The first two years [Obama] had open field, Democratic, vast Democratic majorities. You got what you wanted. You got a huge expansion of federal government. How is that working out?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
National Review's Reihan Salam on Sunday proved once again that liberal media members no matter what their number are no match for one well-informed conservative.
On CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Salam took on the host, Time magazine's Joe Klein, and the Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel on a far-ranging discussion about how both sides of the aisle view taxes, the Tea Party, and social change with the conservative ending up looking like the only knowledgeable person in the room (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Sure, there is really "no way, theoretically or otherwise" that yesterday's school shooting in Chardon, Ohio, could have been prevented, self-confessed Second Amendment opponent MSNBC's Alex Wagner noted in a closing commentary on her eponymous program this afternoon. She then immediately delving into a gripe that America's fruited plain is riddled with incredibly lax gun laws thanks to that most evil of evil bogeymen, the "gun lobby" :
George Will on ABC's This Week Sunday had a truly epic smack down on the perilously liberal editor of the perilously liberal magazine The Nation.
After Katrina vanden Heuvel waxed rhapsodic about President Obama at next week's State of the Union address laying out "a vision for a different economy, one that is not about crony capitalism, but is about a democratic capitalism that lifts all boats," Will struck back, "His slogan will be, what, 'No More Solyndras?'" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Sure, your heart is in that lovely liberal place. Even so, you'd like to get away from the "Occupy" hoi-poloi soiling the streets. No problem! Just join the luxury-liner liberals of The Nation magazine on their upcoming Caribbean cruise--assuming you have up several thousand bucks [alcohol not included] for you and the lefty you love to share a cabin!
Was watching MSNBC last night, when up popped a Nation commercial. After the standard stuff ragging on the "toxic nonsense from the right," suddenly a cruise commercial broke out. Yes, you can sail with Katrina vanden Heuvel, Van Jones and other leftist luminaries aboard a luxury Holland America liner! Video and more luxury details after the jump!
NPR’s Talk of the Nation devoted a segment on Tuesday afternoon to the question “What Happened to the Political Left?” For answers, host Neal Conan brought on the leftist professor Michael Kazin and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine. It didn’t get hilarious until Kazin made the claim that nowhere in Flyover Country -- in Iowa or Nebraska, for example -- can you hear a left-winger on the radio.
Somehow they all forgot that NPR stations are taking our tax dollars and insuring these left-wing voices are on the radio, including Iowa Public Radio and Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) Radio.
As you've watched and read media reports concerning the debt ceiling, have you gotten the feeling the press have given Republicans a pass for standing strong in their pledge to not raise taxes?
CNN's Howard Kurtz thinks they have, and said so quite often on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
On Morning Joe, Major Garrett, formerly of Fox News, now with the National Journal, claimed to be "militantly non-partisan" . . . then proceeded to offer a passionate defense of President Obama's Libya policy.
As an hors d'oeuvre during the discussion of the need for the media to acknowledge their leanings, Katrina vanden Heuvel risibly refused to admit that her Nation magazine is left-wing.
View video after the jump.