Martin Bashir is clearly trying to become MSNBC's new Keith Olbermann.
During a discussion with Tamron Hall on News Nation Tuesday, Bashir actually said that if Paul Ryan's budget ever passed, "many Americans would end up in soup kitchens" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
In a pathetic attempt to smear Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan ahead of Tuesday's second presidential debate, NBC's Today seized on a story in Monday's Washington Post accusing Ryan and his family of washing already clean pots and pans at a soup kitchen in Ohio for a photo-op. Co-host Matt Lauer wondered: "Would a campaign do that? We're gonna talk about it." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]
Following a report on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking responsibility for security failures in the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd actually treated the supposed dishwashing incident as if it were a scandal: "Paul Ryan is dealing with some fallout from that weekend photo-op....something that – that the campaign is a little nervous about because they're trying to get through this idea of whether they're in touch or out of touch."
Smoking-gun evidence that ABC's Martha Raddatz was a biased moderator in the vice presidential debate -- Rachel Maddow is gushing about her.
On her MSNBC show Friday night, Maddow went so far as to suggest that Raddatz was worthy of the presidency (video after page break) --
The vice presidential debate isn't the only place you've seen that bizarre mix of jocular bellicosity displayed by Joe Biden. It's on MSNBC every weeknight in the form of "The Ed Show."
Not surprisingly, its host Ed Schultz is taking credit for Biden conducting himself in a manner all the more unsettling when one considers that Biden is a heartbeat from the nuclear launch codes. (audio clips after page break)
In 2008, the YouTube video "Crush on Obama" introducing "Obama Girl" swept the nation with astonishing speed and media attention.
On Saturday, a new video hit YouTube called "Let's Get Fiscal" featuring Maredith Walker as "Ryan Girl" singing and aerobicizing to a reworked version of Olivia Newton John's 1980s hit "Let's Get Physical" (video follows with lyrics and commentary):
NBC’s Saturday Night Live began its program last night with a vulgarity that although bleeped was as obvious as the nose on Jimmy Durante’s face.
In the opening segment spoofing Thursday’s vice presidential debate, Kate McKinnon playing ABC’s Martha Raddatz channeled Samuel L. Jackson in the movie "Pulp Fiction" telling the contestants, “Don’t try to f—k me like I’m Jim Lehrer” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
Jay Leno spent nearly three minutes of his opening monologue Friday trashing Vice President Joe Biden for his performance during Thursday's debate.
Although the Tonight Show host did poke some fun at Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin, the bulk of his jokes targeted Biden including him saying it was "really smart" of moderator Martha Raddatz "to cut Joe off after that third scotch and soda" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
No one was more over the top in praising ABC's Martha Raddatz as debate moderator than her colleagues at ABC. Former ABC News president David Westin -- the man so deeply biased to the left that he declared a journalist can't judge if the Pentagon is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack -- honored Raddatz on The Huffington Post with an article titled "Why and How Martha Won the Debate -- Over Media Bias."
He said the public reaction was "overwhelmingly favorable," and then guess who he quoted? "I vote for Martha Raddatz to moderate all the debates," from Roger Ebert. "Everyone seems to agree that @martharaddatz is the star of this debate," from Charlie Rose. Liberal opinion equals public opinion?
On this morning’s edition of CNN’s Starting Point, host Soledad O’ Brien praised vice presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz for her “commanding” performance last night. A performance that demonstrated that she too is in the running for the Vice Presidency of the United States. It took O’Brien less than five minutes to compliment Raddatz’s “ perfect pitch,” despite Vice President Biden’s pervasive interrupting, which muddied the debate and prevented a clear and cogent dissemination of the Ryan’s views. Furthermore, CNN correspondent Dana Bash trivialized the vice president petulance by saying that is “who he is.”
Ten days ago, Politico staffer-turned Debbie Wasserman Schultz flak-turned Politico staffer Jon Allen published a laughably-headlined story in "Joe Biden: Sex symbol?" So naturally, Allen was the perfect choice for the liberally-slanted MSNBC's The Cycle to bring on its Friday program to review the previous night's vice presidential debate.
While Allen refused to be as gaga over Joe Biden as liberal co-host Krystal Ball was, he failed to do any fact-checking of the vice president and suggested that Biden won on the substance of the debate:
The Biden-Ryan vice-presidential debate Thursday night brought out the media's "fact check" squads, including the New York Times, which had a squad of reporters evaluating the statements of Joe Biden and Paul Ryan online during the debate. Still, with perhaps 15 reporters on the job Thursday night, the paper still had to out-source a crucial Biden misstatement on Libya to the one-man fact-check machine at the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, the next morning.
The Times boiled down a few of its findings for Friday's print edition under "Check Point" on topics including Medicare, the stimulus, and the deadly assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
James Taranto has written at Opinion Journal that this new-style media "fact checking" is "overwhelmingly biased toward the left" and "gives journalists much freer rein to express their opinions by allowing them to pretend to be rendering authoritative judgments about the facts." The Times's debate product doesn't refute Taranto's argument. Reporter Michael Cooper had the top "Check Point" item and per usual found the Republican at fault:
In her analysis of the vice presidential debate on the October 12 edition of Morning Joe, co-host Mika Brzezinski showed disdain for Paul Ryan and utter adulation for Joe Biden's performance. She was alone in her wildly pro-Joe assessment.
As far as she was concerned, Biden utterly thrashed Ryan, and the liberal MSNBC co-host loved every minute of it: [ video below, MP3 audio available here ]