The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

The MSNBC Agenda

Posted on | July 8, 2014 | 25 Comments

This morning I woke up early and switched the TV onto MSNBC — I Watch MSNBC So You Don’t Have To™ — where the Morning Joe crew then proceeded to spend 10 minutes talking about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. You probably missed the minor bit of local news that was the “hook” for this otherwise pointless discussion:

Gov. Chris Christie said [Monday] that he declined to meet with parents of first graders who were killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting last week because he had already decided to veto the controversial gun bill.
Christie defended his decision to recently veto the bill to reduce the permitted size of ammunition magazines from 15 rounds to 10 and said he declined to discuss the bill with parents of slain children because the conditional veto was already signed by the time they requested a meeting. . . .
The comments from the potential Republican presidential contender in 2016 came less than a week after two of the parents — Nicole Hockley and Mark Barden — visited Christie’s office in Trenton last week to present more than 55,000 petitions supporting the bill to limit the size of magazines.
The parents contended that more lives would have been saved during the mass shooting — 20 children and six adults were slain at the school in Newtown, Conn. — if the gunman had taken more time to reload his weapon.
After the parents left the New Jersey Statehouse, Christie’s office released the conditional veto, which was received with harsh criticism by the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
The parents sharply criticized Christie’s refusal to meet as “a cowardly political move.”

And that’s really all there was to it: Basically, the Newtown shooting is being exploited on a national basis to promote new laws infringing the rights of gun owners, with the parents being enlisted as celebrity spokespeople, flown around the country to show up and issue public statements denouncing Republicans who oppose this Bloomberg-funded left-wing anti-Second Amendment agenda.

Except this isn’t what Morning Joe viewers were told. Instead, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinksi treated this transparent publicity stunt by the gun-control lobby as if it were legitimate  news story of national consequence, as if this New Jersey legislation would have made any significant impact on violent crime, and as if Christie’s veto of the bill were evidence of politically motivated intransigence. Such a presentation is absurdly false.

As noted, New Jersey already has a law that limits magazine size to 15 rounds, making it one of the most restrictive states in the country, and the speculative value of further restricting magazine capacity is negligible. What percentage of homicides, attempted homicides or aggravated assault cases in New Jersey involve firearms with high-capacity magazines? Unless you can show that magazine capacity has some meaningful correlation to crime, discussion of new restrictions is just political posturing, and the people at MSNBC should be ashamed of themselves for wasting their viewers’ time on this idiocy. Here are the cable news ratings for July 1:

Fox & Friends ………….. 1,040,000 (56%)
MSNBC Morning Joe ……. 288,000 (15%)
CNN New Day …………….. 266,000 (14%)
HLN Morning Express …. 170,000 (9%)
CNBC Squawk Box …………. 99,000 (5%)

So, out of a combined cable news audience of 1.9 million for the morning shows, Fox & Friends gets more than half, while fewer than 1-in-6 watch Morning Joe, which barely outpaces CNN’s anemic ratings. Morning Joe is a failure in the ratings because its producers have made a choice: Rather than reporting and discussing actual news, their program is instead devoted to promoting the narrow partisan agenda — gun control, “climate change,” abortion, gay rights, etc. — of the Democrat Party.

But what else can we expect from a network that wastes valuable airtime on the notorious idiot Chris Matthews?





 

Category: MSNBC, Uncategorized

Comments

25 Responses to “The MSNBC Agenda”

  1. Rule 5 Television Reporting: Reporter Anna Gilligan sent out to investigate a New Jersey water park | Batshit Crazy News
    July 8th, 2014 @ 10:15 am

    […] Fox knows the power of Rule 5: Anchor Greg Kelly is especially into this story…But here is more Anna Gilligan, asking about “dirty moves” FMJRA Update: TOM: Watching MSNBC so you don’t have to… […]

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 8th, 2014 @ 10:17 am

    Beyond reporting the news there are other reasons to watch Fox…

  3. William_Teach
    July 8th, 2014 @ 11:06 am

    “The parents contended that more lives would have been saved during the
    mass shooting — 20 children and six adults were slain at the school in
    Newtown, Conn. — if the gunman had taken more time to reload his weapon.”

    So, why didn’t these parents push for that type of law beforehand if they were so concerned?

  4. Escher's House
    July 8th, 2014 @ 11:18 am

    The odd thing was that, at one time, Christie was considered a good friend of the show. And Joe himself seemed quite favorably disposed toward him. Indeed, he seemed exactly the kind of Republican Joe professes to love and support. But as soon as any Republican appears a threat to continued Dem hegemony in Washington, out come the long knives.

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 8th, 2014 @ 11:22 am

    It is partly that. Liberal friends of mine really thought Christie was a threat (and never got it and looked at me with puzzled expressions when I laughed when they said so). It is also partly Kris Kristiekreme is low hanging fruit (yeah, he is weighing down the branch) and Scarborough and Mika are not very bright. This story is also intended to distract MSNBC viewers from the real news (which is disturbing to them to watch right now).

  6. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 8th, 2014 @ 11:26 am

    My heart goes out to those parents, but whether he used a handgun, AR-15, or shotgun, there was plenty of time for him to load and reload. Shooting 26 people does not take very long.

  7. Escher's House
    July 8th, 2014 @ 11:44 am

    Sharp points all.

  8. M. Thompson
    July 8th, 2014 @ 12:03 pm

    Yep, it’s the SQUIRREL effect here.

  9. guinspen
    July 8th, 2014 @ 12:05 pm

    ****The parents contended that more lives would have been saved during the mass shooting — 20 children and six adults were slain at the school in Newtown, Conn. — if the gunman had taken more time to reload his weapon.****

    And how many more lives would’ve been saved if all school employees were required to be trained shooters?

  10. Dana
    July 8th, 2014 @ 12:21 pm

    Our host watches MSNBC so that we don’t have to, but he’d be happier if he watched all of the leggy blondes in short skirts on Fox. Heck, even CNN and the Weather Channel are on the short skirt kick, but Mr McCain watches MSNBC?

  11. Dana
    July 8th, 2014 @ 12:23 pm

    And as the parents continue to make a stink about this, and the media continue to broadcast it, what they are doing is persuading the next nut out there considering spectacular suicide that yeah, they’ll remember him when he’s gone.

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 8th, 2014 @ 12:47 pm

    See the link I did above…

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    July 8th, 2014 @ 12:49 pm

    Excellent point. The effective way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun. The faster the better.

  14. Sally Kohn and the ‘I’ Word | Regular Right Guy
    July 8th, 2014 @ 2:24 pm

    […] The MSNBC Agenda […]

  15. On Voting Republicans Out Of Office - Page 480
    July 8th, 2014 @ 3:52 pm

    […] see a lot of people are getting another side of the issues. Not just progressive excuses and lies. http://kxm.209.mwp.accessdomain.com/2014/07/08/the-msnbc-agenda/ 0 Replies   […]

  16. Pablo
    July 8th, 2014 @ 5:14 pm

    He was using 30 round mags, but he wasn’t emptying them. He loaded new mags between rooms, dropping whatever was still in the current one.

    Like a gamer, not a shooter.

  17. bruce lorraine
    July 8th, 2014 @ 5:15 pm

    As a former fan of Fox I had to turn them off after this past year or so Ailes has steered the network a couple of steps to the left. And the fact that he sold a big stake of shares in the parent company, News Corp. to a member of the Saudi Royal Family making him the number two shareholder.

    WASHINGTON—Accuracy in Media (AIM) is urging a full inquiry into a report that a Saudi billionaire caused the Fox News Channel (FNC) to dramatically alter its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he called the network to complain. The Saudi billionaire, Al-waleed bin Talal, is a friend of News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and controls an influential number of voting shares in the company.

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/29/what-americans-should-know-about-ramadan/

  18. bruce lorraine
    July 8th, 2014 @ 5:24 pm

    And…..
    What Americans should know about ramadan….
    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/06/29/what-americans-should-know-about-ramadan/
    Fox has decidedly gone soft on islam.

  19. The MSNBC Agenda | That Mr. G Guy's Blog
    July 8th, 2014 @ 7:30 pm

    […] The MSNBC Agenda. Insane mass shooter Adam Lanza had a pocketful of full magazines and he reloaded several of them before they were empty. So, in essence, magazine capacity had nothing to do with the number of people shot. […]

  20. Bob Belvedere
    July 8th, 2014 @ 7:55 pm

    My heart no longer goes out to those parents who are in favor of this useless and despotic kind of law.

    Enough is enough.

  21. DeadMessenger
    July 8th, 2014 @ 9:15 pm

    First they came for the 15 round magazines and I said nothing…

  22. cmdr358
    July 8th, 2014 @ 9:28 pm

    I’m disappointed in you.
    Upon clicking your link posted above I fully expected to see photos of Juliet Huddy.
    :'(

  23. Adjoran
    July 9th, 2014 @ 2:00 am

    I too try to tolerate such things from those stricken with grief. But there is a limit to that, grief cannot excuse them forever. When mourning morphs into pure futile stupidity, I’m bailing out.

  24. Adjoran
    July 9th, 2014 @ 2:05 am

    There is an absolute public heath emergency and immigration crisis on the border, a full-scale war in Syria and Iraq, Iran’s Ayatollah calls for more enrichment of uranium, and corporate earnings are turning lackluster at best (another economic omen).

    Yet these dimwits at MSNBC find time to highlight anti-gun nuts whining about Christie vetoing the bill?

    I hereby absolve you of any responsibility to watch MSNBC so I don’t have to. I don’t care what they say, they are leftist idiots.

    Really, I don’t give the first Flying Fugalari what they talk about.

  25. Adjoran
    July 9th, 2014 @ 2:11 am

    One of the “heroes” who got an award for his quick response was off-duty cop Matthew Bell. He was two towns away when he heard the radio call and sped to the school. He arrived and found a panicked crowd of parents and first responders (ambulances). He entered the building, apparently the first law enforcement on the scene, but found it over and the shooter dead.

    The difference a 10-round magazine would have made is negligible. It’s ridiculous, and these people need to wake up and smell the freaking coffee.