On Tuesday's Crossfire (HT commenter Gary Hall), liberal Democratic guest Bill Burton tried to impress the show's hostesses and guest David Limbaugh when he said of President Obama: "More people have jobs than they did when he took office."
Wow. That's about the most unimpressive statement I've heard in years, and it would be beyond pathetic but for the performance of one state. Let's look at the facts:
On Tuesday, I published an article gleefully applauding the poor ratings CNN’s new Crossfire received in its first week back on the air.
After some reflection, I realize such sentiments went counter to my goal of having a truly fair and balanced media.
CNN has been hyping the return of Crossfire for months, but given the ratings the first week, it seems the public wasn't buying it.
Quite the contrary, numbers reported by The Wrap Monday show this not so new venture by the supposedly most trusted name in news is a bomb of epic proportions.
The four panelists of MSNBC’s The Cycle each weighed in on yesterday's nationwide fast food workers’ strike on Thursday’s show. All four of them voiced their support for the strikers, including the supposedly conservative member of the panel, Abby Huntsman.
Huntsman claimed the strike was “bigger than the minimum wage. This is about making enough to live.” She groused that the average minimum wage employee in Missouri was only bringing home about $10,000 a year. “I mean, people deserve higher-paying jobs,” she complained. “I think this speaks to a much bigger problem. It's jobs across the board where people aren't getting paid enough to live.”
After more than eight years since the cancellation of “Crossfire” in June of 2005, the once-popular debate program returned to the Cable News Network on Wednesday as a segment of that evening's “Piers Morgan Live” with a spirited debate about the U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding California's Proposition 8 and the dismissal of part of the Defense of Marriage Act.
The first new debate between conservatives and liberals featured Republican Newt Gingrich stating that the eight million voters who approved the proposition “have a pretty good reason to feel a little more alienated from Washington than they were yesterday.”
MSNBC’s S.E. Cupp is used to being the only conservative on a show. Every day she co-hosts The Cycle where she spars with her three ultra-liberal co-hosts, so her appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher on May 18 was nothing new for Ms. Cupp.
Appearing on Friday night, S.E. confronted ultra-liberal host Bill Maher and his two liberal guests, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times over her objection to a national gun registry, which she summed up as simply a means to “be able to track me.” [See video afer jump.]
Bill Maher on Friday once again exposed himself as a total hypocrite.
Minutes after telling his HBO Real Time panel "the Second Amendment is bulls--t," he admitted having two firearms in his house - "one upstairs and one down" - claiming, "As long as we live in the gun country, I ain’t giving up my gun" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Ever since MSNBC finally chose to cover the murder trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell, the majority of MSNBC hosts have used the case as a disgusting opportunity to slam conservatives who want to regulate abortion clinics. Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough was the first MSNBCer to actually mention the case, expressing disgust and outrage over the abortionist's practices.
Today, which marks the 6th day since the jury entered deliberations, the network’s only other conservative, S.E. Cupp, finally used her daily platform to express similar outrage over the case involving Gosnell. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
The recent murders of local prosecutors in a north Texas county -- possibly at the hands of white supremacists -- was the news hook for MSNBC's The Cycle to bring Heidi Beirich of the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on to the April 2 program. In introducing the guest and justifying her expertise, co-host Ari Melber merely described the SPLC as "a group that documents that state of hate groups in America."
It fell to token conservative co-host S.E. Cupp to remind viewers that SPLC leans to the left and has been criticized by conservatives for "smearing religious and far-right groups and ignoring far-left hate groups." "Shouldn't people be aware of your ideological biases before they take seriously [SPLC's] claims of who they should be afraid of?" Cupp argued. A bemused Beirich insisted she had to "dispute the notion of the question on its premise," adding that:
Updated | Ever since becoming a full-time employee of MSNBC, conservative columnist and pundit S.E. Cupp has seemed to take it upon herself to rebuke the conservative movement from time to time on air, for which, of course, she is rewarded with applause by her liberal colleagues.
Earlier this week on her program The Cycle, Cupp said that she will no longer speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) due to their policy refusing gay groups GOProud and Log Cabin Republicans from sponsoring the conservative gathering. Cupp had earlier accepted a speaking invitation (see screencapture below page break) for the 2013 event, and Cupp had no such objection last year, when she both spoke at and held a book signing at the conference. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
Ten years ago, then-Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) held together a Democratic filibuster of President Bush's nomination of Miguel Estrada to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Tom Curry of NBCNews.com notes that Republicans tried to end debate and proceed to an up-or-down vote seven times before eventually giving up. Frustrated with Daschle's obstructionism, President Bush called for filibuster reform, which Daschle dismissed out of hand, insisting,"The Senate is always going to be the Senate."
Fast forward to February 19, 2013. Appearing on MSNBC's The Cycle in part to promote his new book about the U.S. Senate, co-host Krystal Ball dutifully read back to Daschle a line from his new tome about the filibuster being abused. At no point, however, did Ball or anyone else on the panel, including token conservative S.E. Cupp, point out the Center for American Progress fellow’s hypocrisy.
To give you an idea of how much you have to be in the tank for President Obama in order to be the typical host on an MSNBC program, on Tuesday, Krystal Ball and Toure Neblett - two far, far-left commentators! - actually came out in support of the just-released Justice Department memo that made the legal case for drone strikes against Americans.
Be sure to strap yourselves in tightly before you enter the bumpy ride in this bizarre parallel universe (video follows with transcript and commentary):