As a blogger, I subscribe to the email lists of some organizations whose goals I do not, shall we say,  necessarily embrace.  Among them is Organizing For Action, the successor to the 2012 Obama campaign.  As you can imagine, although I read OFA's messages with interest, I don't succumb to its frequent appeals for funds.

You might think OFA might let me loaf along in peace, but no.  Just now arrived an email I'd call kind of creepy.  Start with the subject line [emphasis added throughout]: "Mark: Not an OFA donor".  Whoah: so this is more than just a generic pitch to all freeloaders: they're calling me out by name! The body of the message informs me that "according to the records associated with this exact email address," I haven't donated.  "Exact email address"? Yikes!  They've got me nailed dead to rights!  More after the jump.

To imitate the inimitable James Taranto: HA HA HA HA. Politico has cleared MSNBC host Alex Wagner of any conflict of interest stemming from her impending marriage to Sam Kaas, the Executive Director of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let’s Move!" initiative.

According to Politico's Dylan Byers [emphasis added], "We won't call this a conflict of interest because who doesn't love a man who can cook, and really, the White House Chef and Let's Move! role is arguably rather apolitical. Many a White House chef has served multiple administrations from either side of the spectrum."  Uh, yeah, but Kaas is a former White House chef.  He now works directly for the First Lady on her signature initiative.  Is there anyone out there naive enough to believe that Wagner won't be even less apt than previously to criticize anything relating to her husband's boss—or her husband's boss's husband?  More after the jump.

Pundits and politicians are normally so slick that they can weasel their way out of even the most glaring of contradictions. "Depends on what the meaning of is, is," anyone?  So it's particularly delicious, to use Noel Sheppard's trademark phrase, to see a talking head left absolutely cornered, babbling without response, when caught in the hypocrisy of a double-standard.

On today's Morning Joe, former Obama car czar Steve Rattner passed along the Obama admin line that negotiating with Republicans over raising the debt ceiling "is like negotiating with terrorists."  With catlike quickness, Joe Scarborough pounced: "so you're saying Barack Obama was a terrorist in 2006 when he said he refused to raise the debt ceiling?"  The cornered Rattner had no comeback, actually asking Mika Brzezinski of all people to "help me out here," then resorting to the lame "it's complicated" line. View the amusing video after the jump.

A Morning Joe kind of Republican?  With Joe Scarborough absent today, was Nicolle Wallace assuming the role of the Republican who gets more satisfaction from ripping fellow members of her party than in criticizing Democrats? 

Wallace mocked congressional Republicans who are trying to defund ObamaCare, analogizing them to two-year olds on scooters racing into traffic against a red light.  She suggested that the "adults" in the party need to restrain them.  View the video after the jump.

Imagine that George W. Bush had decided to proceed with a harsh, partisan speech attacking Democrats for "hurting people," despite a scene of mass murder unfolding just 3.5 miles away.  On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough imagined just such a scenario, and came to the inescapable conclusion: his own MSNBC network and the MSM at large would be "killing" W for his insensitivity and poor judgment.

Panelist John Heilemann of New York magazine grudgingly agreed that Scarborough's assessement was "kinda fair."  But Mika Brzezinski empathized with our poor president: he was in a "horrible position."  View the video after the jump.

How do you know when an MSM member is pushing pro-Obama spin to the absurd?  When even the most partisan of Dems, in the person of James Carville, can't stomach it.

On today's Morning Joe, Andrea Mitchell, claiming that the world was "coalescing" around Obama's position on Syria, said that there was "a lot of optimism" surrounding the Obama team's negotiations with the Russians.  Mitchell said she had seen this kind of thing before back in the 80s, when the US negotiated arms control with the Soviet Union.  "It starts slowly but things happen," comforted Mitchell.  All this was too much for Carville, who forsaw a future in which the negotiations went on and on and led nowhere. Said Serpent Head: "I love Andrea and she's optimistic. God love her, I hope she's right. Count me a little more pessimistic." View the video after the jump.

When did Howard Dean peel the "Question Authority" bumper sticker off his Volvo?  On Syria, we've already seen the likes of Nancy Pelosi making like George Patton.  Now of all people comes mega-dove Dean, credulously claiming that we should support President Obama's decision to attack Syria . . . because he knows more about the situation than we do.

Dean's astounding assertion came during a clash with Joe Scarborough on today's Morning Joe.  Scarborough hit Howard where it hurts, telling him he sounded like Paul Wolfowitz defending President Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq.  View the video after the jump.

It's something we've been saying at NewsBusters for some time: living in his MSM/political bubble has turned Joe Scarborough—once a conservative congressman representing the Florida panhandle—soft.

So it was refreshing to hear someone who travels in the same circles as Scarborough make the same observation.  On today's Morning Joe, man-about-Manhattan-and-the-Hamptons Donny Deutsch told Scarborough that "your liberal friends are making you soft." The particular issue at hand was Deutsch's support and Scarborough's opposition to the New York City Police Department's program of spying on potential terrorist organizations, including mosques. But the point is of general application.  View the video after the jump.

Presidential historian Jon Meacham did his best on Morning Joe this morning to lower the bar for President Obama's speech today commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.  "The country has put an enormous amount of expectation on him . . . since he first came on the stage in 2004 . . . we sometimes have-often have--unrealistic expectations of the office," empathized Meacham.

Nice try.  But wasn't it Barack Obama himself who raised expectations to absurd heights?  Does this phrase ring a bell, Mr. Meacham?: "I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when . . the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." View the video after the jump.