Setting aside any pretense of objectivity, MSNBC host Martin Bashir and guests ferociously attacked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney during a segment of Thursday's program.  In a discussion with Professors James Peterson and Michael Eric Dyson, Bashir bemoaned the pernicious impact of money in politics, particularly money raised by Romney. (video here)

Bashir: Professor Dyson, isn't that the problem that you have here a vacuous candidate who doesn't have any principles, who is surrounded by cash from individuals who have an agenda?

Naturally, Dyson was more than pleased to pile on, warning of a plutocracy representing "the vapidity and vacuity of an empty suit whose ideological perspective is shaped by the cash that flows into him."  To lend intellectual strength to his contention, Dyson quoted from the hip hop song "Cash Rules Everything Around Me."

Gee, imagine that. Political candidates take money from people with money.  Not only that, but those contributors have - gasp! - an agenda.  And if I were an Obamabot, as these guys obviously are, I'd take it easy with those "empty suit" references.

No mention was made of Barack Obama setting records scarfing up cash and who would do even better if that darn day job didn't occasionally interfere with his bagman duties.  Emotions are already running high at MSNBC.  If someone there doesn't have an an apoplectic fit by Election Day, I'll be surprised.  

On MSNBC's Political Nation Friday evening, host Al Sharpton interviewed Ryan Grim, Washington bureau chief for The Huffington Post.  They spoke about House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH):

GRIM: So, you`re right, the record that he is amassing is probably one of the most extreme records that a House Speaker has put up in decades.

SHARPTON: Well, based on your last statement, he being probably the most extreme Speaker we`ve seen in decades, should President Obama even bother negotiating with him?

GRIM: No, he probably shouldn`t. He should do the opposite approach.

If these guys really think Boehner is probably the most extreme speaker in recent history, they must have mighty short memories.  Does the name Nancy Pelosi sound familiar, Reverend Al?

She served as speaker from 2007 to 20011.  Before the election that brought her to power, she said she didn’t “really consider ourselves at war” with terrorism.  That may partially explain her votes as the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.  In the years prior to 9/11, despite her having inside knowledge of the threats confronting the U.S., she regularly voted against intelligence funding.

Dependably pro illegal immigrant, pro abortion on demand, and pro big labor bosses, Pelosi voted more liberal on social policy issues than 96 percent of her colleagues, according to the nonpartisan National Journal.  Her grade from the National Taxpayers Union for the year before Democrats took control of the House was an F, as it had been for the entire previous decade.

Her extremism even extended to for the Boy Scouts.  The president of the U.S. serves as honorary president of that organization.  In 2000, she and ten other members of Congress wrote to President Clinton, requesting he resign from the Boy Scouts because of the organization’s “unacceptable” policy of banning homosexuals from leadership positions.  Out of over 200 House Democrats, fewer than a dozen Democrats signed the letter.  Pelosi was one of them.

As speaker, she shoved through ObamaCare, about which she remarked, "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it."  She pushed Obama's stimulus.  These are but two of the many reasons why the national debt increased from $8.7 trillion to just under $14 trillion during her term as speaker.

In light of all this, John Boehner is probably the most extreme speaker we've seen in decades.  The Rev and Grim should take their comedy routine on the road.  They'd probably have a bigger audience.

But that wasn't good enough for MSNBC. While broadcasting an Obama speech during Andrea Mitchell Reports, the screen crawl reported "NEW JOBLESS CLAIMS DECLINE BY OVER 200,000."

OK, mistakes happen.  But my guess is that if the error reflected poorly on the Obama administration, someone would have caught the error pronto.  An hour later, MSNBC Live anchored by Tamron Hall was still featuring the same mistake.  The following hour, anchor Chris Jansing took over and new jobless claims still had dropped by more than 200,000.           

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Sunday that ideological conservatives, particularly radio commentator Rush Limbaugh, have gained a hold over the Republican Party that risks driving the GOP into an extended exile from power.

Powell cast his warnings in unusually personal terms as he answered recent charges from two champions of the Republican right -- Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney -- that he was no longer a Republican.

"Rush will not get his wish, and Mr. Cheney was misinformed," said Powell, whose resume includes work as military adviser to President Ronald Reagan, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush's Cabinet. "I am still a Republican."

Obviously, the "far right voices" referenced in the piece's headline are those of Limbaugh and Cheney.

If Rush Limbaugh is on the far right, surely MSNBC's Rachel Maddow qualifies to be characterized as far left.  Yet only last month, the Tribune carried an article from the Los Angeles Times (another Tribune newspaper) that asked this burning question about Maddow:

Politics, not to mention television, thrives on conflict, but how much of that will there be with a left-leaning host in a time of a left-leaning president?

So Maddow and Obama are merely left-leaning.  That was also used in a June, 2007 Chicago Tribune article titled "Carefully crafting the Barack Obama 'brand.'"  Describing how Obama went about writing "The Audacity of Hope," it notes:

In keeping with the original game plan, staff members spent nights and weekends scouring the chapters as they rolled in, looking for potential political pitfalls -- a vetting committee Obama didn't have when he published his earlier, more provocative memoir.

For instance, when Obama was seeking to name someone as the epitome of left-leaning politics, an aide urged him to use a House member instead of a Senate colleague. So the book names now-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), though Obama's voting record is similar to hers.

Clearly, "left leaning" is the description of choice when it comes to liberal extremists.  In a short blurb that appeared last September 12, the Tribune reported:

MSNBC dumped high-maintenance and allegedly left-leaning yakkers Keith Olbermann  and Chris Matthews  from election anchor duties. Some of their critics cheer as they tune back to "Fair and Balanced" Fox News.

Allegedly left-leaning yakkers?  Who does it take, you may ask, to drop the allegedly, Fidel Castro?  As it turns out, not necessarily.  On November 2, the paper's television critic wrote:

In another skit, (actor Ben) Affleck played a scarily intense version of the left-leaning Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."       

And all this time I've considered the real Olbermann to be the scarily intense version.

So now we've been instructed that Obama, Pelosi, Olbermann, Matthews and Maddow aren't liberal extremists as many of us have thought.  They aren't far left voices.  They're just left leaning.  Sort of like the Chicago Tribune.