One more sign the Age of Civility is over: an MSNBC host urging Dems to be more "vicious" toward Republicans. Oh, and to engage in more "name-calling."
Apparently writing off any career ambitions of succeeding to the Miss Manners slot, Cenk Uygur issued his recommendations last night in the course of disagreeing with a Dem congressman who was insufficiently coarse for Cenk's taste.
View video after the jump.
Cenk Uygur
By Mark Finkelstein | April 27, 2011 | 11:33 AM EDT
Pat Buchanan Tells MSNBC Host: 'You’ve Got to Learn Supply and Demand as Obama Never Did in That Saul Alinsky Outfit'
By Noel Sheppard | April 25, 2011 | 9:29 PM EDT MSNBC's token conservative Pat Buchanan has really been having a lot of fun lately taking on the liberals at the so-called news network he contributes to.
On Monday's "MSNBC Live," Buchanan in the middle of a discussion about oil prices and subsidies told the host, "You’ve got to learn a little bit about supply and demand as Barack Obama never did when he was out there in that Saul Alinsky outfit in Chicago" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
By Mark Finkelstein | April 15, 2011 | 8:10 PM EDT
Q. How does a liberal describe giving seniors choice over their health care coverage?
A. Murder.
On Cenk Uygur's MSNBC show this evening, Jonathan Alter claimed that in proposing to issue Medicare vouchers, Republicans voted "to throw granny into the snow."
For good measure, Cenk came out in favor of the "Robin Hood" approach to taxation--robbing from the rich and giving to the poor.
View video after the jump.
By Mark Finkelstein | April 14, 2011 | 9:03 PM EDT
Cenk Uygur can't figure out why accused Army leaker Bradley Manning isn't being treated like a "hero". Seriously.
Uygur's guest on his MSNBC show this evening was P.J. Crowley, the former State Department spokesman who was forced out of his post for publicly criticizing the treatment of Manning while in detention awaiting trial.
Cenk whined as to why Manning isn't being accorded the "hero" treatment that Daniel Ellsberg received from some for his leak of the Pentagon Papers back in the Vietnam day. But P.J. presumably surprised Cenk, strongly supporting the prosecution of Manning, saying he "caused damage to the United States and our interests around that world," and that his "prosecution is quite necessary."
View video after the jump.
By Mark Finkelstein | April 12, 2011 | 10:24 PM EDT
There's an old saw that every time a senator looks in the mirror, he sees a president. Could the same be true of MSNBC hosts?
Twice tonight on his TV show, Cenk Uygur fantasized himself as president. The muy macho MSNBCer naturally imagined he'd be much tougher with Republicans than President Obama.
View video after the jump.
By Matt Philbin | April 11, 2011 | 10:55 AM EDT
MSNBC’s new slogan may be “Lean Forward,” but the brazenly left-wing cable network does a lot of looking back – to the 1860s.
April 12, 2011, will mark the 150th anniversary of the bombardment of Ft. Sumter in South Carolina – the beginning of the American Civil War. As Americans observe this milestone, they’ll hear a lot of words they only vaguely remember from U.S. History class – terms like “secession,” “states rights,” “nullification,” “contraband,” or “Dred Scott.”
Not MSNBC viewers. To them the language of the Civil War is remarkably familiar, since the network’s liberal hosts and guests never miss an opportunity to associate today’s conservative movement with the Confederacy, secession, slavery and racism.
By Mark Finkelstein | April 9, 2011 | 9:02 AM EDT
It's a favorite liberal parlor game: basking in the belief that they are smarter and more sophisticated than conservatives. Cenk Uygur couldn't have chosen a more inapt moment to play the game than last night. But like a moose to a flame . . .
On his MSNBC show last evening, Uygur had on a co-host of his Young Turks radio show to tout a study claiming to find anatomical differences between conservative and liberal brains. Liberal noggins are allegedly larger in the area that helps process conflicting information. Conservative brains, in contrast, supposedly have larger amygdalas--the area that recognizes threats or fear.
Cenk jumped on the study to claim it explains why conservatives tend to "campaign on fear." Oy, Ugyur. Someone should check the part of his brain dealing with memory. Cenk apparently couldn't recall that Dems spent the last week . . . fear-mongering the Republican budget proposal. Cenk, does Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's immortal "death trap" phrase mean anything to you?
View video after the jump.
By Mark Finkelstein | April 4, 2011 | 9:32 PM EDT
Bernie, put down the bong!
On Cenk Uygur's MSNBC show this evening, Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont who caucuses with the Dems, claimed that rich Americans "have not contributed one nickel to deficit reduction."
Cenk of course failed to challenge Sander's certifiably silly assertion.
View video after the jump.
By Mark Finkelstein | March 31, 2011 | 10:24 PM EDT
When it comes to marijuana, I'm a libertarian. That said, Cenk Uygur has made possibly the worst argument ever in favor of legalizing it. On his MSNBC show this evening, Uygur advocated the decriminalization of marijuana since, 74 years after the feds made loco weed illegal, people continue to smoke it, or as Cenk put it, the War on Drugs is unwinnable.
Yo, Cenk: Cain killed Abel more than 5,000 years ago. Murder has been illegal ever since, and yet people continue to commit it. By that logic, since the War on Homicide is also unwinnable, should we decriminalize murder?
Be sure to view the video after the jump. Not only will you hear Cenk make his nonsensical argument, you'll see Dem Rep. Jared Polis. On the one hand, the congressman went on to make a number of better arguments in favor of decriminalization. On the other, not to be unkind, but the man from Colorado looks like he's been on a few Rocky Mountain highs himself.
By Mark Finkelstein | March 24, 2011 | 10:36 PM EDT
Q. When did liberals rip those 'Dissent Is Patriotic' bumper stickers off their Priuses?
A. January 20, 2009
Latest evidence: on his MSNBC show this evening, Cenk Uygur suggested that opposition to President Obama's Libya policy is "unpatriotic." For good measure, Dem congressman Gary Ackerman stated that opposing the president is "cheering for the wrong team."
View video after the jump.
By Mark Finkelstein | March 22, 2011 | 10:14 PM EDT
Do people's politics color their views on the issues, even on life-and-death ones like war? Yeah. Happens on all sides. But for Cenk Uygur to rip Republicans for having supported President Bush on Iraq while criticizing President Obama on Libya is nothing short of grotesque . . . given that Uygur now supports Obama on Libya, while when it came to Iraq and its aftermath he wanted Bush . . . imprisoned for at least ten years.
Adding fuel to the bonfire of Uygur's hypocrisy is his failure to mention that as a senator-cum-presidential-candidate, Obama himself laid out a doctrine condemning precisely the kind of military action without congressional approval in which Obama-as-president now engages.
View video after the jump.
Carl Bernstein, Cenk Uygur Team Up to Thrash Muslim-American Hearings as 'Un-American,' 'Coliseum-like Atmosphere'
By Matt Hadro | March 10, 2011 | 6:18 PM EST
MSNBC's "panel" on today's hearings about radicalization of Muslim-Americans featured liberals Carl Bernstein and Cenk Uygur – with MSNBC's Richard Lui moderating. With no substantial conservative counterpoints to be offered, the two guests sounded their condemnations of the hearings as "cultural warfare" and bigotry.
Bernstein slammed the House inquiry as a joke and as a "debating society for cultural warfare." Referencing the institution's past for producing McCarthy-ite investigations, he compared the current hearings with the gladiatorial combat of the Roman coliseum.
"Now we have this question which is part of this coliseum-like atmosphere of cultural warfare," Bernstein spat.
Cenk Uygur turned up the invective knob to 11 when it was his turn to speak. He questioned whether Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, is a "real American."