Ever feel that you’re trapped inside a lunatic asylum, where all the normal rules of logic and discourse have been turned on their heads, and screaming nutbags roam the halls, hurling imprecations at imaginary enemies?  A place where up is down, black is white and left is right? Welcome to MSNBC, whose daily lineup has become a who’s who of strutting Napoleons, fantasy Christs and various Emperors of Cloud Cuckoo-Land.

Look!  Here’s Dylan Ratigan now, in his memorable, nearly career-ending exchange with Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Which may explain why Ratigan (who, like MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch, has a claim to punditry fame based on… what, again?), and his antagonistic show Morning Meeting vanished from the low-rated cable network in December, to be replaced by the kiddie corps of Chuck “Horse Race” Todd and the utterly unintelligble Savannah Guthrie (as Henry Higgins might ask: why can’t young American women learn to speak?).

So you’ll be pleased to know that, for some recondite reason, the pride of Saranac Lake is now back on the air weekday afternoons as host of The Dylan Ratigan Show.  Whence comes this great moment in television: (more…)

What do Jake Tapper, Alan Colmes, Rich Shapiro, John Cook and Mike Potemra all have in common?  All of them reported that reliable media punching bag, Pat Robertson, blamed the devastating earthquakes in Haiti on a “pact with the Devil.”  But did Robertson really do that?

Did the former Republican presidential candidate really state on his national TV program, The 700 Club, “that the earthquakes were the Haitians own fault”?

First, readers can listen to Robertson, then form their own conclusions. The video is below.

At no point do I hear Robertson actually blame the earthquake on “a pact to the Devil.”  Whether you agree with Robertson or not about the “why,” he was also correct about the long-time suffering of the Haitian people.  And he asks for his viewers to contribute generously to his relief fund.

So, what could have caused so many to get this item so wrong? (more…)