On last night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Ed Show, Milwaukee Mayor and Potential Governor of Wisconsin Tom Barrrett targets incumbent Governor Scott Walker for the John Doe investigation and calls out the NRA smears against him.
As President Obama prepares to sit down with ABC’s Robin Roberts this afternoon just hours after voters in North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions, political reporters are predicting that he may finally complete his evolution and endorse the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian people.
“Every expectation that we will, within the next hour, be in a different world, where we will have a President of the United States who supports the legalization of gay marriage,” Mark Halperin said this afternoon during an appearance on MSNBC.
Obama has long spoken out in favor of equal rights for gay and lesbian people, but stopped short of calling for full marriage equality. In October of 2010, Obama told blogger Joe Sudbay, “attitudes evolve [on marriage equality] including mine.” For a full timeline of Obama’s positions on the issue, click here.
Arne Duncan, President Obama’s Secretary of Education, endorsed marriage equality during an appearance on Morning Joe on Monday following Vice President Joe Biden’s support for the issue. “Yes, I do,” Duncan said in response to a question from Mark Halperin, noting that he had never been publicly asked his opinion on marriage equality.
h/t: Think Progress LGBT
Democratic Illinois Governor Pat Quinn appeared Wednesday evening on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” with host Ed Schultz to discuss Wisconsin’s disappointing job outlook since controversial Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker took office last year.
“Wisconsin’s dead last at job growth. Don’t listen to Scott Walker if you want to get jobs in your state. We sure haven’t listened to him,” Quinn told Schultz of Walker, whom the Democratic governor described as “an ideologue.”
“You have to honor the workers of our country, whether they work in the private sector or public sector. They’re the heart and soul of America and ‘made in America’ are my favorite words,” the governor later said, despite the fact that Quinn himself has faced heat from labor unions over his recently proposed reforms to state worker pension program.
Quinn jabbed back in a statement last week that “one would wonder what a governor with a terrible economic record could have to say about jobs and economic growth.”
Meanwhile, on his own future gubernatorial prospects, Quinn said this week that he plans to run for a second term and that he expects to win.
h/t: Huffington Post
Sean Hannity spent an hour on the radio today continuing to deny the many hardships faced by poor Americans — including hunger — by pointing in part to the prevalence of modern appliances and the abundance of cheap foods found on a health website to support his point. At one point he gave this advice to poor households, “Quit drinking soda and drink water.”
This was after spending the majority of his time attacking Media Matters and MSNBC for publicizing his original comments on the issue, when he insisted that “this idea that Americans are going to bed hungry” is not true because “you can survive” off such cheap food staples as rice and beans.
Hannity stated that MSNBC and host Ed Schultz were “lazy” for relying on a Media Matters item that highlighted Hannity’s comments to debunk his claim that millions of Americans aren’t going to bed hungry.
Fellow conservative talk radio host Mark Levin also called in to defend Hannity from criticism by similarly attacking Schultz. Levin stated: “First of all, Mr. Ed, that you call Ed Schultz, that guy looks like he eats for about three and a half people, doesn’t he?” Hannity replied: “Now, be nice. It doesn’t look like he missed a meal, I’ll say that.”
In reality, the poor in America face hardships in areas that deeply affect their lives, such as health, education, housing, and access to healthy food and legal services — regardless of their ability to purchase a microwave oven.
Sean HandTitty is an out-of-touch doofus!
H/T: MMFA
On yesterday’s edition of The Dana Show on KFTK 97.1 FM, CNN “Contributor” and racist xenophobe Dana Loesch told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir to “get out of this country, and if want to cover politics and celebrities, do it back in your home country.”
From the 04.19.2012 edition of KFTK’s The Dana Show:
Loesch is an arschloch (or asshole).
Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz took to MSNBC Friday to once again distance the party from the comments of CNN contributor Hilary Rosen about Ann Romney – and also to dismiss the “war on moms” meme those comments have created among Republicans.
“She’s my frien and I’m happy to say that she is, but Hilary Rosen would be the first to say that she’s a big girl,” Wasserman Schultz said when asked about the criticism Rosen is taking from Democrats. “She has a thick skin. You know, she like me has grown the skin of an alligator and this is politics on a national stage, and when you make an unfortunate comment, which she acknowledged she made, sometimes it’s going to come back to bite you and you’re going to have to do some backpedaling.”
But when it came to the so-called War On Moms Republicans have turned Rosen’s comments into in fundraising emails and on TV chat shows, Wasserman Schultz was dismissive and said the real candidate out of touch with the lives of mothers is Mitt Romney.
After Current TV fired Keith Olbermann last week, the combative host vowed he’d sue his (most recent) former network. Olbermann and his lawyers filed suit in California yesterday, and their allegationsmake for quite the read. Olbermann’s complaints with his former employer range from the social to the technical. Here are the ten most serious—and funniest—charges Olbermann makes against Current TV and its executives in the order they appear in the lawsuit:
1. Current co-founder Joel Hyatt was kind of socially awkward: A thread running through Olbermann’s lawsuit is that Current tried to distance him from his representation, sometimes to disadvantage him in negotiations. But in this case, Olbermann makes a more personal allegation, that “Hyatt also attempted to isolate Olbermann from his professional representatives in an awkward attempt to form a close personal friendship with his new star.”
2. Current underinvested in its web presence, to the detriment of its audience base: Sometime, these charges are an opportunity for snark, as when the suit alleges “Stunningly, Al Gore’s network was not interested in establishing a strong internet presence.” But the suit also suggests that the network was slow to build out its web presence and wouldn’t allow Olbermann’s show to stream online, a hook that might have helped viewers who didn’t have Current or weren’t sure where to find the network on their channel lineups, continue to watch the program. “Current even refused Olbermann’s request and contractual right, to stream segments of the Program and additional web-only content over the Program Website. It is both sad and ironic that a channel owned and founded by Al Gore, for the stated purpose of creating an independent perspective, free from the control of large corporate interests, restricted the rights of its most celebrated commentator and Chief News Officer to fully broadcast his opinions over, of all things, the internet.”
3. Current’s facilities were a mess: This has been one of the most commonly reported points of dissension between Current and Olbermann, particularly after an electrical failure while the program was on-air led Olbermann to bring a candle on set. The lawsuit alleges that “Current President David Bohrman admitted ‘the 33rd St. facility is never going to be a professional facility. We need to move to HD, and a better location.’ He further admitted in that same e-mail ‘We are paying for a Porsche and getting a Yugo.’”
4. Hyatt behavior threatened Olbermann’s staff: “Hyatt’s leadership was highly erratic. Just days before the premiere of the Program, Hyatt even threatened to fire Olbermann and the loyal staff members who had followed him from MSNBC to Current. Hyatt behaved as if he had just paid Olbermann to become his puppet instead of the Chief News Officer of the network.”
5. Hyatt and Current were moustache-twirling blackmailers: “Hyatt blackmailed Olbermann into agreeing to put himself in a position that no other major talent in the entertainment or news industries has been forced into in decades: fending for himself without the benefit of hire advisors. Olbermann gave in to Hyatt’s blackmail for the purposes of saving the premiere of the Program and the jobs of those who worked on it. Olbermann left the meeting devastated at having discovered that he was working for a blackmailer.”
6. Hyatt doesn’t know how the television ratings system works: “The very success of the Program was compromised when Hyatt, displaying his utter lack of industry knowledge, ordered incorrect ratings data and then disseminated it to the media. In essence, Hyatt took what could have been a victory and turned it into an unrecoverable defeat. A show only has one opportunity to be launched. In reality, the Program’s premiere had higher ratings than both CNN and MSNBC in the key demographic for advertisers. The incorrect ratings purchased and disseminated by Hyatt, because they did not contain statistics for same day viewing through DVRs and other such methods, did not reveal that the Program had outrated MSNBC. Because Hyatt did not know that there were two types of ratings and ordered the cheaper ones, the Program missed out on its lone opportunity to tout its success.”
8. Olbermann didn’t think the network should hire Jennifer Granholm or Cenk Uygur, but he really doesn’t like Uygur: “Hyatt and Bohrman asked Olbermann about the possibility of hiring Cenk Uygur. Olbermann told them that he did not believe Uygur would be a good choice. Olbermann opined to Bohrman that Uygur had difficulting separating facts from things he wanted to be true…It was, therefore, reasonable for Olbermann to decline to be associated with a host with a questionable journalistic standard and a show that was not up to the standards expected by the ‘Countdown’ audience.”
