American corporate news culture is so boringly predictable that it never ceases to amaze me. To run the same repetitive schtick day in, day out, all year, is a testament to the industry's limitless capacity for inanity. The financial pay off is obviously worth it though, and ...read more
Glenn Greenwald thrives on being an asshole. Trolling the dreaded Establishment is how he's convinced millions of progressives that he's on their side even as he undermines everything they care about. For the latest example of this, look to NYMag.com's profile of Greenwald in ...read more
Prior to and during my podcast on Tuesday, I was feeling beaten down by the brain-scattering impact of the frenetic avalanche of news that's accompanied both the 2016 presidential campaign and, naturally, the Trump presidency. It's been a harrowing time to be a political writer ...read more
Well, I guess we’re going at it again, folks. The circular firing squad of the Democratic primary has restarted with an astonishingly dishonest excerpt from interim DNC chair Donna Brazile’s new book, Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-Ins and Breakdowns that Put Donald Trump ...read more
Just for a few seconds, set aside your disagreements with Hillary Clinton when it comes to policy, or her 2016 campaign strategy, or whether you simply don't like her as a person. There ought to be one thing most Americans can agree about, and it's the fact -- and I do mean fact ...read more
With this week's bombshell reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times revealing Felix Sater's efforts in 2015 and 2016 to help Donald Trump build a Trump Tower in Moscow, a simple question needs answering: Where was the media when it came to covering Sater and his ...read more
Rachel Maddow mentioned this story two nights in a row, but she hasn't gone the extra step to say out loud what the possible conclusion is. That's not to suggest she's unaware of what the story could ultimately mean, it's just that she doesn't have enough information yet for her ...read more
You. Yes, you over there with the anti-Trump t-shirt: Put down the champagne and turn off the celebration music. I know you're excited that Donald Trump Jr. was stupid enough to save an email explicitly detailing criminal activity. I know this proves the Trump campaign did, in ...read more
Edward R. Murrow spoke truth to power when, in 1954, he attacked Senator Joe McCarthy on his program, See It Now. For too long, McCarthy had gone unchecked by the media as he attacked the foundations of our democracy. Murrow is rightly lionized for his crusade against the ...read more
Glenn Greenwald's ostensibly liberal "The Intercept" is still hard at work trying to convince the world that the mountain of evidence piling up that Donald Trump is a puppet ("No puppet! No puppet!") of Vladimir Putin is fake news. Their latest target is, incredibly, Rachel ...read more
There is an emerging story about an unopened Trump hotel in Azerbaijan that has, as Adam Davidson in the New Yorker has uncovered, been linked to corrupt officials who support the Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is potentially a huge scandal that should have the ...read more
Last night, Rachel Maddow did a short segment about just how ignorant Trump and his transition team is about even staffing the White House, much less running the country. It started off with Trump's son-in-law asking how many of the people who work in the West Wing would be ...read more
Get ready to get uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. Kellyanne Conway, the latest Donald Trump campaign manager in his ever changing team, spoke with Rachel Maddow about a whole host of topics last night, including Donald Trump's tax returns. Trump is continuing to peddle ...read more
What I love about Bernie Sanders, part two, begins every time I hear some self-hating mainstream liberal thoughtfully holding a panel discussion on how important it is to have a strong Republican Party, and so shouldn't we all hope they stop shitting themselves. That's the ...read more
As the war rages on between Bill O'Reilly and reality (or 'guttersnipes' and 'far left zealots' as O'Reilly likes to call them), the American news media is coming under greater scrutiny for its role in informing the public. Can we trust the media? Do they have an agenda, and is ...read more
The slow-motion train wreck that has been the Brian Williams RPG attack scandal (RPGate?) came to a head Tuesday night when NBC News announced that Williams will be suspended for six months without pay, at which point he will presumably return (hopefully, my dog Emma will also ...read more
If the allegations surrounding former Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-Va.) and his wife are true, then they seem to be two petty, tacky people who deserve each other, but the hostility being directed toward Mrs. McDonnell, as exemplified by Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough, is telling of the ...read more
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) threw a hissy fit on MSNBC's The Cycle Wednesday afternoon over coverage of his 2010 remarks about the Civil Rights Act, and the inflammation was still raging hours later when he spoke to a group of young libertarians about how the "cranks and hacks" at ...read more
Joseph Rudolph Wood III began the end of his life on August 7, 1989, when he walked into an auto body shop and killed his 29 year-old ex-girlfriend Debbie Dietz, and her 55 year-old father Gene Dietz, with a .38 caliber revolver. Police shot Wood several times when he picked up ...read more
Rachel Maddow is a national treasure -- and last night she proved why. While we spent a good part of yesterday either dissecting Dick Cheney's almost unimaginably audacious op-ed on Iraq or simply suggesting that he take his thoughts on the matter and shove them up his ass, ...read more
President Obama held a surprise presser in the White House briefing room on Thursday, and in his opening remarks, announced the stunning news that Obamacare enrollments have surpassed 8 million, blowing away the 7 million target that they were never supposed to reach, and that ...read more
I'll make this quick because it's Friday and I have no desire to work late tonight. MSNBC's heading faster and faster down a dangerous road and it needs to put the brakes on. Now. For a couple of years now the network has been fielding accusations of being the liberal ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: As evidenced by the one above this piece, it's never a good idea to trust a headline. Often, what you see in the headline of a piece of journalism isn't a fair descriptor of what you're going to get inside the story itself. That's because, often, headlines ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Last week, Michael Calderone of The Huffington Postpublished an extensive item on MSNBC's alleged pro-Obama, pro-Democratic Party bias, as well as network president Phil Griffin's defensiveness about the conventional wisdom's perception of his programming. I ...read more
Welcome to this week's edition of The Daily Banter Mailbag! Today, Bob, Ben and Chez discuss the party balance in Congress, which food products to vote for, and retribution for a forced viewing of Honey Boo Boo. The questions: Rachel Maddow had an interesting piece on her ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: Well, that didn't take long. Following a week that saw President Obama publicly throw his weight behind same-sex marriage -- leading Newsweek to publish a for-shock-value-only cover declaring him "The First Gay President" -- his mortal enemies within the ...read more
Welcome to this week's edition of The Daily Banter Mail Bag where Bob, Ben and Chez answer readers questions!! Today, we discuss President Obama's announcement that he supports gay marriage, Joe Biden's extraordinary ability to put his foot in his mouth at every given ...read more
By Chez Pazienza: In case you missed it, Rachel Maddow handed Alex Castellanos his ass this past Sunday morning. It happened on Meet the Press during a debate over whether the Republicans are currently engaged in a legislative "war" on America's women. While I'm not a big fan ...read more
By Bob Cesca: Republicans are hilarious. No, not like that. They make me laugh just about every day, but it's not because they're naturally funny with killer senses of humor. They simply, and unintentionally, do stupid things that make me laugh out loud. And that's a good ...read more
Bob Cesca brilliantly takes down the corporate press and its poisonous effect on the political system: The cable news media has gone from simply cracking gaming and sports metaphors to actually becoming a game, with politicians as the contestants and a rotating guest panel of ...read more
by Ben Cohen In a brilliant segment, Rachel Maddow essentially destroys whatever credibility Pat Buchanan had left, running through a litany of falsehoods the Right Wing commentator had uttered in a previous debate on her show. Buchanan had asserted that affirmative action was ...read more
Awesome. [flv:/files/maddow-jindal.flv 320 240] ...read more
