A common occurrence on MSNBC's The Ed Show is the liberal host venting all the bluster he can muster against someone who disagrees with him. However, on Thursday's edition of the afternoon program, Ed Schultz didn't try to hammer conservative Republicans, his usual targets. Instead, his vitriol was aimed at Barack Obama.
While interviewing Bernie Sanders, a far-left senator from Vermont, Schultz abruptly cut away to a video of the president criticizing the liberal network.
As NewsBusters has often reported, MSNBC's line-up has led the cable news channel to a freefall in the ratings, with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik blasting the schedule as “unwatchable” and “24 hours a day of mess.”
In an article posted on Thursday, Politico columnist Dylan Byers reported that the channel's daytime year-to-date viewership “is down 21 percent overall and 41 percent in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.”
This week has been a busy time for conservative icon Glenn Beck. During his Monday program, Beck admitted to his audience at TheBlaze.com that he had been suffering from a rare neurological disease for five years, but after undergoing hormone therapy, electric stimulation and other treatments -- not to mention relying on his faith in God -- the disease has been reversed, and he's on his way to an almost total recovery.
Then on Tuesday, MSNBC's Ed Schultz stated that Beck had “access and opportunity” to get the best treatment possible and declared: “I hope that his story motivates those who think that ObamaCare is bad, that maybe they will rethink” their opposition to the Affordable Care Act.
Politico's current front-page headline characterizes Detroit as "The Right's Perfect Piñata."
In the actual story, one expects at least a feeble attempt by writer Hadas Gold to come up with a tangible reason as to why Detroit doesn't deserve its status as an perfect-storm exemplar of the failures of liberalism, public-sector unions, a race-based political model the elites once praised, and corruption. Instead, the objections Gold cites are vague. Because of that, apparently contrary to the headline's apparent intent, we're left with a pretty strong compilation of valid criticisms relating to the Motor City's fall from riches to rags. Excerpted after the jump are primarily the pathetic attempts at leftist defense saved for the final story's three paragraphs (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
