I don’t regularly watch MSNBC, but curiosity got the better of me tonight. For no special reason, I found myself wondering what THE Place for Politics—I can’t bring myself to use the network’s new slogan—would say about the midterm elections the day after. So I tuned into The Rachel Maddow Show.

Let me first acknowledge that the puckish Ms. Maddow is has a certain insouciant charisma and seems quite comfortable on air–a natural.

Nevertheless, by the end of the hour, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the lass. If tonight’s menu is representative of the content and style of Maddow’s eponymous program, it was disappointing to see her obvious talent wasted on the wholesaling of bitter schadenfreude and age-old class-warfare.

Why do I say this?

In the show’s first segment, while positing that the newly House-dominant Republican party would be unwilling to compromise with President Obama on anything (a curious prejudgment), Maddow managed to work the recent BP oil spill into her monologue, ostensibly referring to inevitable upcoming House-Senate negotiations on energy legislation. (more…)

From the Associated Press:

The federal government hired a New Orleans man for $18,000 to appraise whether news stories about its actions in the Gulf oil spill were positive or negative for the Obama administration, which was keenly sensitive to comparisons between its response and former President George W. Bush’s much-maligned reaction to Hurricane Katrina.

The government also spent $10,000 for just over three minutes of video showing a routine offshore rig inspection for news organizations but couldn’t say whether any ran the footage. And it awarded a $216,625 no-bid contract for a survey of seabirds to an environmental group that has criticized what it calls the “extreme anti-conservation record” of Sarah Palin, a possible 2012 rival to President Barack Obama.

The contracts were among hundreds reviewed by The Associated Press as the government begins to provide an early glimpse at federal spending since the Gulf disaster in April. While most of the contracts don’t raise alarms, some could provide ammunition for critics of government waste. (more…)

Newspapers and television stations reaped a financial windfall from the BP oil spill — and continue to benefit as the company spends millions on advertising to repair its battered image following the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP spent $93.4 million on ads between April 1 and July 31, according to Politico. That’s triple the amount from the same period one year ago. The information was included in a letter from House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Fla.) to Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.).

BP began its flurry of ads shortly after the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20 and has continued to target national and local outlets seven weeks after the well was capped. Newspapers and TV stations have been the biggest beneficiaries. (more…)

WJLA-TV, a Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate, suspended reporter Doug McKelway following his alleged “partisan” comments at a liberal rally on Capitol Hill marking the three-month anniversary of the Gulf oil spill. Video of the broadcast tells a different story:

Apparently facts are now “partisan.”

McKelway stuck to the truth about BP’s political contributions and pending cap-and-trade legislation, newsworthy subjects given that the event’s organizers were lobbying to “pass legislation to end America’s addiction to oil and urged lawmakers to donate campaign money raised from the oil industry to the clean-up efforts in the Gulf.”

According to the Washington Post, it was McKelway’s supposedly controversial comments on July 20 that led to his suspension. Anonymous sources at the station are now accusing him of “insubordination” in an apparent attempt to fire him. (more…)

Announcer:  Live, from the Lincoln Bedroom, the Executive Broadcasting System presents the EBS Nightly News with Robert Gibbs.

ROBERT GIBBS:  Good evening.  On our broadcast tonight: New Osama tape — bin Laden vows to avenge Muslim pensioners hurt by BP disaster. Rumors flying — Rahm Emanuel out; new Chief of Staff to be named.  It’s Ludacris says a top administration official. Noises off – Vuvuzela ban at 2012 Republican National Convention labeled racist by MoveOn.org. And finally, the National Park Service announces plans to convert the National Mall into a par 3 Chief Executive course.  We’ll preview the layout. Those stories and more later.  But first, we talk live with the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden.  Welcome, Mr. Biden.  It’s an effin’ pleasure to have you on.

BIDEN:  Thanks, Bob.  I’m always glad to [cell rings] . . . wait a sec [answers phone].  Hey, Tim.  Whoa.  No kidding.  Cavuto said that?  OK, I’ll clean out my 401k and buy gold.  Thanks for the tip.  No, of course I won’t mention this conversation to anyone. [hangs up]

GIBBS:  Uh, Mr. Biden, the President said he’d come on tonight, but reneged.  Do you know why?

BIDEN:  Two reasons.  He doesn’t trust you anymore, Bob.  Said you always seem to be hanging out with reporters, and you know what he thinks about the press.  Second, he’s flying down to the Gulf as we speak.  Claimed an angel appeared in a dream and told him to dive down to the leak and pinch the pipe closed between his finger and thumb. After that New Yorker cover, he really does think he walks on water. (more…)

All you need to know:

(more…)

The childish, feminized fantasy world in which the left dwells was never more in evidence than in this lunatic rant by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, in which the Rhodes Scholar plays president for a few minutes and gives the speech she wishes Obama had given the other night.

It’s a speech that basically boils down to an uniformed, juvenile cri de coeur against BP, filled with the “shoulds” and “woulds” the left habitually uses in demanding that mommy and daddy protect them from things that go bump in the night. As usual, there’s not a single thought devoted to practicalities, alternatives or the larger issues of why and how, just the standard search for a villain and the demand for punishment. What a desperately miserable world these people live in; no wonder they’re all nuts.

“Enjoy:”

Yes, it’s true: the most famous graduate of Cornell Cow College has picked up his marbles and is leaving the Daily Kos liberal lunatic asylum/playpen, hurt feelings trailing in his wake.

It seems that, in the aftermath of his less-than-enthusiastic reception of President Obama’s widely panned speech about the Gulf oil spill, the Kossacks took serious issue with him. You can read the gruesome, sorrowing details here from Politico:

Keith Olbermann announced Wednesday night that he will cease blogging for the liberal Daily Kos over a comment directed at the MSNBC host’s coverage.

Olbermann and some of his MSNBC colleagues surprised their left-leaning fans on Tuesday with eviscerating critiques of President Barack Obama’s Oval Office address on the oil spill spewing off the Gulf Coast.

“It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days,” Olbermann said of the president’s remarks, echoing similarly negative comments from fellow MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow.

(more…)

Carpe BP?  – That seems to be a theme heard all across the MSM when it comes to what should be done with British Petroleum.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has called for the temporary takeover of the oil giant – at least until we have the situation under control.  Could you have a vaguer timeline, Mr. Reich?  “Under control” means a lot of things to a lot of people.  Some folks in Alaska believe that the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound is not yet under control.

And then we have the great global wisdom of satellite radio star Rosie O’Donnell who told her audience that she didn’t care if you “call it socialism, call it communism, call it anything you want” but she wanted BP’s assets seized by the government: (more…)

KATIE COURIC:  I appreciate your coming on, Mr. Vice President.

JOE BIDEN:  No problem, Katie.  Loved you on American Idol, by the way.  We’re off the record, right?

COURIC:  Um, no, sir.

BIDEN:  Whatever. Hit me with your best shot.

COURIC:  Is our government broken, sir?

BIDEN:  No, Katie.  The country’s in bad shape, yes, but the federal government hasn’t been this hale and hearty since I became a senator in ’73.

COURIC:  Can you list some accomplishments of the Obama administration? (more…)

You can’t accuse E.J. Dionne of not trying. In this Washington Post article he does quite a Cirque du Soleil contortionist routine in his effort to convince us that “big” government is to be trusted and that the Tea Party members, bless their naïve suspicious hearts, have it all wrong. Aiming squarely at Ronald Reagan’s famous “Government is the problem” bon mot, Dionne writes:

Rarely has the news of the day run so counter to the spin on the news of the day.  It’s hard to argue that the difficulties we confront were caused by an excessively powerful “big” government. Rather, most of them arose from the government’s failure to do its job in the first place.

Dionne cites four recent examples of how the government should have protected—or did actually protect—us from danger: (1) the BP oil spill; (2) the tragic West Virginia coal mine explosion; (3) the financial meltdown of 2007-2008; and (4) last week’s Times Square failed bomb attack.

Here are those four examples as Dionne presents them: (more…)