With Russia poised to seize control of Ukraine, Rachel Maddow might be among the few remaining fans of voluntary nuclear disarmament -- as is Russian president Vladimir Putin, specifically for former Soviet republics that have gotten too uppity for their own good.
How will Maddow handle this one, I wondered, after the Russian military took control of the Crimea. Sure enough, in her first show after the crisis began, Maddow addressed the awkward fact that Ukraine relinquished control of its nuclear weapons to Russia twenty years ago. But typical of Maddow, she couldn't bring herself to ask the blindingly obvious question -- did Ukraine's fateful decision to disarm in the mid-1990s leave it vulnerable to future Russian aggression? (Video after the jump)
Rachel Maddow Show
Can MSNBC's Rachel Maddow go a single day without descending into laughable hackdom?
Any previous doubts about this were erased by her show last night. Mere seconds after she was introduced by colleague Chris Hayes, and after Maddow offered a chirpy "happy snow day" to viewers (this during one of the most brutal winters in memory), Maddow began her show with this -- "The administration of Republican North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory has just been subpoenaed in conjunction with a federal criminal investigation." (Video after the jump)
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow briefly departed from her Ahabesque obsession with Bridgegate last night to mention two relatively picayune matters -- a potentially "catastrophic" storm bearing down on the East Coast and two mayors getting convicted on corruption charges.
Anyone familiar with MSNBC's modus operandi knows what to expect from its, uh, "reporting" on political corruption -- if the politician is a Democrat, a viewer will wait in vain for any mention of party affiliation, while if said corrupt pol is a Republican, the affiliation will be cited repeatedly in the first sentence. (Video after the jump)
At 4:57 on Monday afternoon, MSNBC’s Alex Wagner hyped “Breaking news from the Treasury Department. The White House has announced a second delay to part of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate. Details on that are next.” But the next “details” did not come for 12 and a half hours at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday morning during MSNBC’s Way Too Early broadcast.
In between, MSNBC ran 9 full stories on Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) and the “Bridgegate” scandal surrounding his administration. Rachel Maddow, devoted nearly half of her broadcast, 29 minutes to the Christie scandal. The rest of her primetime colleagues similarly couldn’t be bothered to inform their viewers of the latest ObamaCare delay, despite Wagner’s promise: “details on that are next.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, the Koch brothers on Monday accused MSNBC's Rachel Maddow of misrepresenting their political contributions to falsely claim that they have been pushing for the drug testing of welfare recipients.
On Thursday, fact-checking website PolitiFact largely agreed with the Kochs - and NewsBusters - rating Maddow's assertions "Mostly False":
As NewsBusters has reported for years, the conservative-leaning Koch brothers are a routine target of the liberal media for their contributions to causes that don’t fit the left’s agenda.
On Monday, Koch Industries accused MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow of misrepresenting its donations to falsely assert the billionaire brothers are supporting laws in Florida to drug test welfare recipients.
In researching this accusation, NewsBusters has discovered that neither Maddow nor anyone at MSNBC bothered to contact the organization the Kochs are alleged to be connected to.
Maybe even worse, Maddow didn't bother informing viewers that Comcast, the media conglomerate that owns NBC Universal which includes MSNBC, is actually a contributor to the same alleged conduit the Kochs are.
It is quite possible that no American company has received more criticism from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow than Exxon Mobil.
Despite this, at the beginning of a commercial break of her program Wednesday, an unidentified announcer said, "The Rachel Maddow Show is brought to you by Exxon Mobil" (video follows with commentary):
Boy, that didn't take long, did it?
The Washington Post announced Wednesday that MSNBC's Rachel Maddow would be writing a column for the paper once a month, and on Thursday, there was her first piece.
Any guesses on the topic?
Bashing George. W. Bush, of course. What would you expect from this unapologetic liberal shill?
"The journalistic bond between The Post and MSNBC just grew a bit stronger, as the paper’s opinion section announced that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow will be writing a monthly column."
So began Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple's announcement Wednesday concerning the addition of the perilously liberal Maddow to the Post opinion page.
Anyone doubting Roger Ailes' eye for talent needs to go somewhere else besides his shuffling of Fox News's weekday evening lineup, especially but not exclusively his decision to move Megyn Kelly into the 9 p.m. time slot.
Variety's Brian Steinberg reports that Kelly has put even more distance between Fox and its so-called competitors at CNN, MSNBC, and HLN, while Greta Van Susteren and Sean Hannity have both grown their respective time slots (HT Johnny Dollar's Place; bolds are mine):
In the wake of the disgusting comments MSNBC's Martin Bashir made about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin Friday, conservative talk radio host Mark Levin had some important observations regarding the incident Monday.
"MSNBC, ladies and gentlemen, is a hateful, vile, character assassinating outlet" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
It’s good to see the left finally upset about treasonous threats to the United States. Never really able to get worked up about communist spies, domestic terrorists or radical mosques, lefties – at least the ones at MSNBC – are sounding the alarm over … The Confederacy.
Everywhere the hosts and guests of MSNBC look they see gray and butternut – secessionists and white supremacists, wild-eyed states’ rights absolutists and grim Confederate holdouts plotting to dissolve the Union. Driven by racism and distrust of Washington, they form a “confederacy of hate.”