Rachel Maddow

Exploiting 9/11: "Conservative" politics in the 9/11 era

By Anonymous - 9/10/10 - 12:34 pm

By threatening to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, Terry Jones is holding the world hostage to his insane hatred, threatening to unleash intold violence. He is, in effect, a terrorist. He seeks to intimidate and coerce through the threat of violence and the generation of hatred and fear. And, as Rachel Maddow explains below, he is only able to do this because of a climate of hatred and fear that's been deliberately created over the years by a number of extremist political figures, most notably, Newt Gingrich.

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World Cup Lacrosse Championship host nation Great Britain kicks Iroquois Nation to the curb

By Anonymous - 7/21/10 - 3:00 am

Photo credit CBC Sports 2006

That the Iroquois Nation could not get a visa to travel to the FIL Lacrosse World Cup in Manchester, England is clearly a great failure of the Great Britian's consulate. And it's too bad the US State Department and Canada could not do more to pave the way: Don't they know sports can be a path to mutual respect and cooperation? Not for nothing but don't they know American Indians invented the frigging game?

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Maddow to Scott Brown: Stop Lying. Stop It. Stop Lying.

By rsiasoco - 3/31/10 - 7:55 am

By now, we've all read the full-page ad by Rachel Maddow in The Boston Globe this past week. We know that Senator Scott Brown created the rumor that Maddow was planning to run against him. We know that Brown has stirred the pot, repeating the fictional story to conservative talk shows, campaign stops, newspapers like The Boston Herald, and his most important audience: potential donors.

He's lying. He continues to lie.

"You dragged me into this," Maddow reports. "You made up something that's not true. You have such a lack of respect for your conservative donor base around the country that you don't care if what you say is true or not."

It's troubling to witness this news story (can it even be called news? perhaps just a rumor turned into publicity--and sensationalist publicity at that?). Even more troubling is the perpetuation by Senator Brown and his staff of the rumor, after Maddow has told the truth over and over (and over) again.

For seven minutes, Maddow adeptly calls out Brown's falsehood:

* "You shouldn't get to flat out lie in the conduct of your business as U.S. Senator and get away with it."
* "Politics is more than just about politicians. Politics is about our country."
* "I don't concede that the only thing we can expect from politics is for them to lie to us, and for us to not care, because we don't expect anything better."

What's admirable in Maddow's report is her rhetorical skills. Her words may fall on the deaf ears of the Brown campaign, but the acute journalist repeats the words "lie," "lying," "liar," dozens of time in this clip to hit home her critique of the senator. Calls to mind the great speeches of MLK and President Obama, persuasive orators who utilize carefully-chosen rhetoric to convey meaning.

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How Scott Brown is helping the Globe stay afloat

By adamg - 3/26/10 - 9:40 am

By giving Rachel Maddow a reason to buy a full-page ad in the paper.

Rachel Maddow: Not running for Senate, so there, Scott

By adamg - 3/23/10 - 10:09 pm

Declares her non-intentions in an exclusive interview on, um, her own show; says Draft Maddow page on Facebook likely a joke by a friend of hers:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Earlier:
Scott Brown uses UH post to scare up new campaign funds.

Walshgate: How come top Mass. Dem couldn't hook up with Rachel Maddow by more traditional means?

By adamg - 3/5/10 - 6:47 pm

UPDATE: Maddow declares she isn't running; appreciates a good joke as much as anyone.

OK, so it was kind of interesting this morning that some people had set up a Facebook page to try to convince MSNBC talent and Northampton resident Rachel Maddow to run against Scott Brown in 2012 (they're now 5.2% of the way toward their goal of getting 10,000 people to sign up). It got even funner this afternoon when John Walsh, chairman of the Democratic State Committee, got wind of the boomlet and posted what sure seemed like it was meant to be a private message on the Tweety:

Some are talking about you running vs Scott Brown in '12. I'm Chair of MA Dem Party. My email is johnewalsh@Comcast.net cell-617-650-9311

Apparently I'm not the only one disappointed to learn that politicians don't have instant access to everybody's phone numbers (you know how losing candidates always call the winning candidate on election night - where do they get their phone numbers from?) - there's now a Twitter discussion on #walshgate. And please, for goodness sake, don't go calling Walsh and asking if his refrigerator is running.

Amy Derjue, who has some familiarity with Twitter issues, provides this thought:

#walshgate is like clicking "reply to all" in Outlook. But to the whole internet. Cue overwhelming paranoia whenever DMing from now on.