Free Republic

Drinking the Kool-Aid on MSNBC wasn't enough, even for CNBC's Jim Cramer, to escape the reality that Obamanomics isn't working. Back on October 12, Cramer, to his credit, knew there were some problems with the $787-billion stimulus passed earlier this year. However, he felt it was necessary to pledge his admiration for President Barack Obama, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. But, Matthews asked Cramer if there would be something tangible to back up that praise. "OK - let me ask you the question," Matthews said on MSNBC's Oct. 12 "Hardball." "Let's talk about how we...

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday night got visibly annoyed with radio host Mark Williams for daring to bring up the Hardball host’s famous assertion that Barack Obama gave him a "thrill" up his leg. After Matthews goaded Williams and suggested he didn’t know the name of the Republican leadership in Congress, Williams paraphrased, "Chris, you're making my legs tingle!" Matthews, who only seconds before had been smiling as he mocked the host, became flustered: "See, this is- this is. I’m going to- What do you mean? How is your leg? What do you mean? Your leg’s tingling? I don’t get...

Here is video of Michael Steele on MSNBC's "Hardball" telling Chris Matthews to stop "calling my people wingnuts" after Matthews kept blaming "wingnuts" for the NY-23 loss....(Video)

Does the National Journal's Hotline inhabit the same universe as the rest of us? Republicans went two-for-three in last night's big races. But in declaring Winners and Losers among non-candidates involved with the campaigns, the only Losers Hotline saw were . . . Republicans and conservatives, with nary a Dem in sight! Chris Matthews was only too happy to seize on the Hotline hitlist during his Sideshow segment on this evening's Hardball. Here were Hotline's three Losers: * Sarah Palin: for jumping into Hoffman's losing cause, whereas McDonell and Christie didn't invite her in and won. * Pete Sessions: the...

Here is video of "Tea Party Express" organizer Mark Williams telling Chris Matthews "you're making my leg tingle." He said this at about 4:40 into the video. Williams made the comment after Chris Matthews wouldn't let him speak and told him "you don't even know who you're talking about." (Video)

The Obama administration is considering an almost complete surrender in Afghanistan, if the report this weekend by the BBC's Katty Kay is accurate.Speaking as a panelist on the Chris Matthews Show, a weekend public affairs broadcast, Kay reported on the internal debate at the White House, "There are real questions being asked, I think, about whether even with a big injection of troops this is a real country, a real war that you can win."And there's a new phrase which is floating around the White House which is 'minimum security'. That we're not actually aiming for a country which is...

Finally, after two weeks of Andrew Sullivan enthusing over Obama on the weekend panel gabfest, The Chris Matthews Show, to the point that Matthews called it a “romance,” Matthews finally popped the question: MATTHEWS: Are you still a man of the right? Mr. SULLIVAN: I think of myself as a conservative, yes. And I think actually, at this point, Obama represents more conservatism than the Southern populism of the GOP. Say WHAT? Apparently, a “conservative” is whatever Andrew Sullivan is. He just can’t bring himself semantically to express what he has done romantically—admit that his love for Obama has caused...

Here is video of Michael Wolff talking with Chris Matthews about Fox News. Michael Wolff said "the truth is Fox is not very popular in this country, it may have great ratings but still we're talking under two million people, it's a really marginal somewhat extreme presence in the United States." (Video)

No amount of controversy will keep Oath Keepers from educating people about what it means to support and defend the Constitution. SNIP Started earlier this year by Las Vegas resident Stewart Rhodes, Oath Keepers is a nonprofit organization made up primarily of current and former police and military personnel who renew their oaths to the Constitution. Rhodes, a former Army paratrooper and Yale University Law School graduate, opened the conference at Texas Station with a warning that Washington politicians cannot be trusted to uphold their oaths to the Constitution. "That's why we have a civic duty to keep our oaths,"...

MSNBC host Chris Matthews may now have the honor of having said the dumbest thing in the history of television. This past Thursday Matthews unfortunately allowed an imbecilic thought to pass from his brain to his mouth on his nationally televised cable news show. Here's the moment of insanity on video: Matthews: "The group in this country that most resembles the Taliban, ironically, is the Religious Right." It is a pet peeve of mine when a cable news host drops a bomb (no Taliban pun intended) of a statement right at the end of a segment and moves on to...

He really said it, on air and they didn't bleep it out, I guess if you curse at Dick Cheney, there's no editing required at MSNBC...(Video from tonight's softball, with Democrat Hack Chris Matthews)

Matthews was to be interviewing Mike Long, the Chairman of the Conservative Party of New York. The Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, is contending against a Republican candidate who opposes the Right to Life and is an example of why the Republican Party is dying. It is an interesting race, drawing a lot of attention, and it could have been a great interview. From the beginning of this alleged interview to its end, Matthews kept a condescending grin on his face. My dear old father from Dorchester, Mass. would have called that grin something much more profane – I am...

Is Chris Matthews feeling pressure to keep up with the Olbermanns when it comes to flinging invective at conservatives? On this evening's Hardball, discussing Dick Cheney's statement—-made at a dinner at which he received an award—that Pres. Obama is dithering on Afghanistan, an apparently incensed Matthews sputtered [unexpurgated in the original]: "What G-D award . . . are they giving these guys?" View video here.

History is hard when you have a thrill running down your leg.... For a show that prides itself on its knowledge of news and history, Hardball with Chris Matthews made some embarrassing errors last night, including the fact that Ron Reagan Jr. apparently doesn't understand the Bush Doctrine. Chris and Ron, his guest "expert" on Afghanistan, came up with two historical inaccuracies within minutes of one another. When conservative guest Frank Gaffney said he hoped Afghanistan could be pacified, as Germany was after World War II, Matthews snapped: Matthews: There were no American soldiers killed after V-E Day, and...

Far Left crank Chris Matthews attacked Christians on his show yesterday. Matthews said Christians in the United States resemble the Taliban. When was the last time you read about a Christian suicide bomber in America, Chris? Chris forgot about the leftists who were arrested for planning terror attacks on the RNC and the several leftist eco-terror attacks. But, smearing Christianity is an easier argument for Matthews. Poor Chris. He must really be hurting that he wasn’t invited to the White House with fellow network hacks Olbermann and Maddow.

Separated at birth? MSNBC is neither a news network nor a ratings success, but it is good for one thing: taking the pulse of the Left. Judging by his numerous recent appearances, the Left has a new It-boy: Rep. Alan Grayson, D-FL, who made headlines by saying the Republican health care plan is for you to "die quickly." Last night’s edition of Hardball with Chris Matthews gave Grayson another opportunity to display his cultivated intellect. Asked by Matthews to respond to Dick Cheney’s criticism of Obama’s Afghanistan (non-)policy, Grayson chose to uncork some Don Rickles one-liners: Well, my response...

When we lived in West Berlin during the late 1970s, it was a common joke that if war broke out, the enemy would simply hang up POW signs. I really didn’t get the joke at the time. So my husband explained, “We are 110 miles inside communist country. All those armed guards stationed on the wall have to do is turn around and point their rifles to our side.” Until that moment, I didn’t realize that the Berlin Wall was around us—not them. My excuse for my simplistic view of the world was my youth. As a military wife living...

A petulant Chris Matthews wouldn’t talk about MSNBC’s recent ratings dip during an interview flogging his fawning essay on the late Sen. Edward Kennedy that’s in the November issue of Boston magazine. “Let’s just drop all the conversation about my network,” the “Hardball” host huffed the other day. “I’m not a media critic.” It could be that Matthews got a little hot under the collar because his left-leaning network has been losing viewers. During the recent third-quarter ratings period, Fox News averaged about 2.26 million total viewers in prime time and was up 2 percent from the same time last...

Once considered one of the more interesting conservative intellectuals, Andrew Sullivan had an emotional meltdown during the Bush years over two issues: gay marriage — Sullivan is desperate for government approval for him to play house — and the supposed “torture” of terrorists (which Sullivan emotionally argues is morally equivalent to our enemies’ slaughter of innocents.) Last year, Sullivan gave up any credentials he had for criticizing the “birthers,” or any other fringe element, when he spent about a week hysterically promoting the obvious hoax that Trig Palin was not really born to Sarah, but to his older sister, Bristol.

For Chris Matthews, it’s not progress to find out there is less racism in the country than he supposed. THAT does not put the tingle in his leg, not one bit. Last week, the Democrats’ top national pollster, Stan Greenberg, and his partner, James “The Snake” Carville put out a focus group report that essentially said race is “beside the point” for those who oppose Obama’s policies. Chris was not happy. Now this should be good news for the Left. This means their opponents are not hardened by blind hatred or prejudice, and can be reached by reason, or won...

Here is video of Al Sharpton and Pat Buchanan talking with Chris Matthews about Rush Limbaugh being dropped from the group interested in buying the St. Louis Rams. Sharpton said that Limbaugh is "trying to make this like this is some kind of wounding of American Conservatism, he was rejected by his own partners ultimately." Pat Buchanan said "this act was shabby, vindictive, petty, it is disgusting." He went on to mention Sharpton's controversial statements and his involvement in the duke lacrosse case. Amazingly Sharpton later in the interview responds to this saying "I had nothing to do with the...

Skip ahead to 2:04. I believe him, actually. The uncanny sense one has listening to Matthews is that his mouth moves faster than his brain. When you’re saddled with that handicap, you’re bound to talk your way into analogies that come out … the wrong way. Besides, I think we have to grade him on the curve. By MSNBC’s standards of violent imagery over the past 24 hours, this was pretty tame.

Good.

Here is video of Chris Matthews talking with Allen Olson a SC Tea Party organizer about Sarah Palin. Chris Matthews asked Olson "who would you like to see replace people like Lindsey Graham?" Olson answered "I believe Sarah Palin would make an awesome President." he also said Sen. Jim DeMint "would be great for Vice President." Matthews then asked Olson "you think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President of the United States, based upon her partial single term as governor of Alaska?" (Video)

Chris Matthews apologized, sort of, for comparing Rush Limbaugh to a James Bond character yesterday as he filled-in on "Morning Meeting." Here's what he said on Hardball tonight: Got some concerned e-mail today about my comparison of Rush Limbaugh to Mr. Big. Remember him? in the great James Bond movie... James Bond said, 'He always did have an inflated opinion of himself.' Well, it was a movie reference... in this political atmosphere I shouldn't have gone into such detail about Mr. Big's demise at the end of the movie, about the CO2 capsule, especially in reference to Rush. And certainly,...

Right on.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebodys going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and hes going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But well be there to watch. I think hes Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you...

Politics: Democrats say Rush Limbaugh is running the Republican Party. Better Rush than George Soros, who is running the Democrats. At least Rush believes in freedom, capitalism and letting you keep what you earn. The cover of the March 7 issue of Newsweek shows a picture of conservative icon Limbaugh with a piece of tape covering his mouth and the word "Enough!" So much for disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. Voltaire could never be a contributor to Newsweek

CHRIS MATTHEWS: You guys see Live and Let Die, the great Bond film with Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy, Mr. Big? In the end they jam a big CO2 pellet in his face and he blew up. I have to tell you, Rush Limbaugh is looking more and more like Mr. Big, and at some point somebodys going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and hes going to explode like a giant blimp. That day may come. Not yet. But well be there to watch. I think hes Mr. Big, I think Yaphet Kotto. Are you watching,...

It's an odd natural occurrence when you put MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer together, but when it happens they seem to draw some obvious conclusions - albeit nearly 10 months too late. Back in January, Cramer appeared on Matthews' show. They both expressed their concern over the $787-billion stimulus, which eventually passed and asked if it really was stimulative. When the duo appeared together again on Oct. 12, they concluded it wasn't. Cramer was on "Hardball" to promote his new book, "Jim Cramer's Getting Back to Even." Matthews observed that the stimulus bill...

What some guys won't say to get attention . . . Analogizing Rush Limbaugh to a James Bond villian, Chris Matthews today fantasized: "at some point somebody's going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he's going to explode like a giant blimp." View video here.

"I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire."--Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1927For the past 6 years, Chris Matthews has hosted a show in which guests gleefully reported the purported success of both indigenous insurgents and foreign al Qaeda fighters in Iraq. On his network, MSNBC, that became the default setting. They were the publicity arm of al Qaeda. Car bombs led the news, successful American battles, infrastructure completion, or the like were not even news. Bagdad Bob had nothing on them. Chris would evoke the worst kind of moral equivalence by constantly posing...

Here is video from MSNBC's Hardball last night, where Chris Matthews parrots the latest liberal media meme which is seeking to paint Gen. Stanley McChrystal as "insubordinate," and "not following the chain of command." This because of his remarks last week in London where he stood by his recommended strategy to win in Afghanistan, which he believes needs an additional 40,000 U.S. Troops. Matthews does everything he can to paint McChrystal as insubordinate, but his guest disagrees with him, and defends McChrystal's position! . . . (VIDEO)

Here is video of MSNBC's Chris Matthews bizarrely comparing pathetic Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson to "Martin Luther" for calling Republicans "knuckle-dragging neanderthals" who want sick people to "die quickly." Grayson is clearly becoming a hero to the Radical Left for his comments. Matthews also insulted GOP Minority Leader John Boehner by saying he always looks like a "guy who just blew a putt." Grayson said he has had 5,000 visitors to his website who gave him money, and believes that means he will not suffer in his Orlando-centered district come election day 2010. Grayson said he does not care anyway,...

Has it really come to this? Is MSNBC so in the tank for the Democratic Party that it takes far-left documentary filmmaker Michael Moore to bring up malfeasance by a leading Democrat? Moore appeared on MSNBC's Sept. 29 "Hardball" to promote his new film "Capitalism: A Love Story." With exception of "The Ed Show" fill-in host Lawrence O'Donnell noting the Senate Ethics Committee had cleared Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., of wrongdoing and only reprimanded him verbally, over the last couple of months, MSNBC's prime time shows have ignored a deal Dodd got on a mortgage with Countrywide. That is, until...

On Hardball Monday night, Chris Matthews showed he just may be losing it—or at least why he’s been steadily losing his audience for quite some time. For months, Matthews has been playing the race card at every opportunity—or creating his own, even going so far afield as a weird attempt to make Alaskan Sarah Palin some kind of modern Scarlet O’Hara. Wrapping up the show with “The Politics Fix,” with guests syndicated radio host Michael Smerconish and Dominic Carter, Senior Political Reporter from New York 1, Matthews proved there is now no situation where Republicans may have an electoral or...

Discourse: The reaction to the congressman's outburst shows what happens when you judge this president by the content of his character. In a post-racial presidency, charges of racism are the new last refuge of scoundrels.When Joe Wilson, the decorum-challenged South Carolina Republican, reacted to President Obama's assertion that there was nothing in health care legislation giving coverage to illegal aliens by shouting "You lie!" he knew, as his critics ignore, that there was nothing requiring proof of citizenship either. A nonpartisan Congressional Research Service study found that the House health care bill at that moment did not restrict illegal immigrants...

Here is video of pollster and political analyst Charlie Cook telling MSNBC's Chris Matthews that things are not looking good for Democrats. He pointed to new polling that shows on "Party Identification," Democrats now have only a 5-point advantage over Republicans, 45%-40%. That's down from a 17-point margin in January, 52%-45%. Cook said Party ID is always a "lagging indicator," meaning things have really gone sour for Obama. He also warned that Democrats face a real problem in next year's mid-term election because mid-terms are almost always dominated by older voters, whom Cook said Obama is weakest with. Matthews and...

Terry Jeffrey walked away the winner on Hardball this afternoon. Despite being double-teamed by Chris Matthews and Salon's Joan Walsh, the editor-in-chief of our sister publication CNSNews.com had the others admitting that the Obama admin has gone too far with the cult-of-personality way it's pitched the president's speech to schoolchildren. But that didn't prevent Matthews and Walsh from unsubtly accusing PBO's opponents of racism, archly claiming that the motive for the opposition to the president is his "background." View video here.

As anyone who has ever argued with leftists knows, leftists do not argue; they assault. A standard tactic of leftists, and petty people everywhere, is to attempt to crush an opponent through the use of state power or, failing that, by smearing him as racist, sexist, homophobic, or the all-purpose “mean-spirited.” David Forsmark did an excellent job reporting on former California Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter's dispatching of Chris Matthews and Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Monday's Hardball. Hunter pointed out the U.S. military waterboards trainees and asked if those two believe the armed forces are guilty of sadistically abusing...

As predicted, Chris Matthews could hardly contain himself reacting to former Vice President Dick Cheney, (or Chee-neey, as Matthew peculiarly insists on over-emphasizing with the relish pretentious liberals used to affect when saying “Nee-ah-rrrah-wah” during arguments over the Contras and the Sandinistas). Cheney’s blockbuster interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace had all the usual suspects screaming in outrage Monday, with Matthews’ reaction particularly self-revealing, thanks to California Congressman Duncan Hunter. There was plenty of the usual blather about how we should be above this, misapplications of the Geneva Conventions, whether it works, and the like (issues we will...

Here is video of Chris Matthews saying Bill Clinton's voice is "the voice of God" on Health Care, and what the Democrats ought to do. He was referring to a clip of remarks Bill Clinton made to Tennessee Democrats over the weekend in which he said that Democrats must pass some kind of Health Bill and not be seen as losing to Republicans. Matthews is worried the Left of the Democrat Party will be blamed if ObamaCare fails. . . . . (Watch Video)

Here is video of MSNBC's Chris Matthews responding to Rush Limbaugh's hammering of him yesterday for his statement earlier this week that "Barack is the last (Kennedy) brother." Matthews seems to think that is a perfectly sane statement. Matthews was talking with Jonathan Alter, and said about Limbaugh, "What's the matter with these people? Can't they take a week off? It's a funeral." Jonathan Alter weighed in by saying Ted Kennedy was "one of the great senators of our time." Rush Limbaugh "is the great blowhard of our time." . . . . . (Watch Video)

The year 2005 is ending as it began, with another successful election in Iraq and a liberal media still flapping around trying to find other controversies to submerge it. It does not matter to them that a Gallup poll found that 74 percent of Americans express confidence in their military, but only 28 percent express confidence in their newspapers or TV news outlets. The "mainstream" media excels in excoriating the performance of nearly everyone else, but acts as if nothing they do should be held up as ineffective, inaccurate or just plain absurd. That's why the Media Research Center and...

On my Comcast TV guide grid, Chris Mattews is described as “forever wired.” I assume they mean to the Washington scene as an insider, not his ultra-caffeinated personality. Matthews once patterned himself a representative of Joe Lunchbucket Democrats and independents. Now, he’s such an insider that he is clueless about what’s going on out here in -- what has become to him -- flyover country. Friday night, Matthews had a fevered discussion about former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s upcoming book, in which the incredible bombshell is dropped that Ridge “wonders” if politics was the reason he was urged to...

Here is video of MSNBC's Chris Matthews talking with Ed Schultz today about Vice-President Joe Biden's emotional remarks at the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy. Matthews said that he personally "could identify" with Biden because "he says thing's he shouldn't sometimes." Never truer words were spoken. . . . . (Watch Video)

Here is video of MSNBC's Chris Matthews this morning gushing about Sen. Ted Kennedy as being perhaps "the greatest Senator in history." Ted Kennedy died late last night from brain cancer at the age of 77. Matthews did say Kennedy's life was a "mixed bag," and he "took a while to grow up." At the end, Matthews said that Kennedy had "turned the ball over to Barack." "Barack is the last (Kennedy) brother." . . . . . (Watch Video)

Try to keep a straight face when you hear this: President Barack Obama isn't getting enough media love. That's the world view of MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews - at least when it comes to the economy. According to Matthews, there has been a plethora of positive economic news - from a stock market that has shrugged off the threat of bad liberal policy, i.e. cap-and-trade or ObamaCare, to the actions of newly reappointed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke of pumping liquidity into the economy. "What do you make of this whole thing about the good economic news out there...

Chris Matthews has used the passing of Ted Kennedy to paint opponents of Pres. Obama as a pool of potential assassins. Participating in a panel discussion on Morning Joe today, Matthews asserted that there was a hateful environment in the Dallas of 1963 in which President Kennedy was assassinated that is "like the mood we're in now." View video here.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire recently, a man carried a handgun a few blocks away from the site where President Obama was scheduled to hold a town hall a couple of hours later. Was it a danger or not? The man carrying the gun, William Kostric, even had permission to have the gun on private church property while he was protesting Obama's appearance. Everybody from the New York Times to USA Today to CBS News expressed their outrage, interpreting it as a hot head threatening the president and linking it to militias and conservative talk radio. A prominent liberal radio talk...