Rachel Burnett's blog

During Morning Joe on Thursday, MSNBC's Chuck Todd appeared baffled by a discussion of negative feelings directed towards Barack Obama from Wall Street. The confused journalist wondered, "Look, at the end of the day, he has not done that much when it comes to business stuff."  

Mad Money host Jim Cramer relayed to Todd that Wall Street is upset because, "Most of the people on Wall Street are behind the scenes guys" and the President is demagoging the issue and demonizing them.  Todd argued that, regardless of what the President does, "He is getting trapped and hit from both sides, but it isn't just that, this is how sour the American public is."

To understand why Wall Street and the American public might be "sour," one needs to look no further than the cap and trade energy proposal, health care, the financial reform bill, the stimulus, or the nationalization of the automobile and student loan sectors.

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough on Wednesday again decided to slam the Republican Party (Scarborough is a former-GOP Congressman). He chided, "My party. What happened to my party?" Democrat Co-host Mika Brzezinski made sure to notify Scarborough that, "Your party is over!"

Scarborough was astounded that some Senate Republicans are calling for hearings on the 14th Amendment regarding birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.

Instead of examining the indictment or even giving a conservative viewpoint, Scarborough denounced his colleagues saying, "Instead of tearing up the Constitution of the United States, why don't we just enforce the immigration laws that are on the books right now?"

On the July 30th edition of Bloomberg's "Political Capital," former Time magazine reporter Margaret Carlson made every rationalization for the federal government to continue to not enforce federal immigration law.

First, Carlson spouted off the notion that Americans are only upset with illegal immigration because, "there is an economic downturn and during that period you find somebody to blame, they are blaming immigrants." Carlson seems to disregard history and the fact that former President George W. Bush was faced with this same problem in 2006, before the recession.

Second, Carlson alludes to unsubstantiated statistical evidence citing that, "Crime has dropped," "Illegal immigration has dropped dramatically" and that "Phoenix is one of the four safest cities in America." Several searches of Internet databases showed no reference to a study naming Phoenix as the fourth safest city. However, a 2010 report done by Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) concluded that, "Arizona's violent crime rate ranks 13th highest in the U.S. and Phoenix has the second highest kidnapping rate in the world behind Mexico City."

The Arizona immigration law on Thursday was the repeated subject of snide and belittling remarks by MSNBC’s “Morning Joe" panel. So, naturally, while discussing Wednesday's federal court ruling, New York Time's columnist Gail Collins continued the narrative.

Collins championed the federal government and sneered "You do not want state legislatures ruling these things," because basically, "They're horrible. They're all gerrymandered. They never get thrown out of office. They are all nuts!"

On Thursday July 29th, President Barack Obama will appear on "The View." This appearance will mark the first time in history that a sitting president will be on a daytime talk show.

However this is great for the President, according to "Morning Joe" co-host Mike Barnicle who pronounced, "You know, I would be willing to bet you, I would be willing to bet you that he might get tougher questions asked of him on The View than he would at a White House press conference."

Barnicle and fellow co-host Mika Brzezinski enthused that "The View" will probe President Obama with "pertinent" and "real" questions that "resonate more with the way people live in this country."

Apparently not grasping the public's growing unease with Barack Obama's big government/big debt approach to the economy, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer on Thursday touted as admirable how the President and Democrats in Congress have "passed job extension benefits again and again. They passed a big health care reform bill that's gonna lower health care costs."

Highlighting the passage of the Democratic agenda, she continued, "They’ve had stimulus spending. They have sent more money to small community banks." Fretting about polls showing declining support for Obama, she demanded to know: "What else do people want the President and Congress to do?"

"Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski began Monday's show by gushing over Joe Biden, enthusing that the Vice President is "our guy." She also rhapsodized, "I love him" [MP3 audio available here]. The MSNBC anchor's comments came in the wake of an appearance Biden made on Sunday where he declared Democrats would retain the House and the Senate.

Brzezinski, who makes no effort to hide her affiliation with the current administration, just cannot seem to get enough of Joe. At one point, she touted, "I got to tell you, I have got a great deal of respect for him and his ability to get the point across."

For the second day in a row, liberal talk show host and MSNBC guest anchor Cenk Uygur pushed the outlandish notion that President Obama is a conservative. Filling in on July 7 for Dylan Ratigan on his 4 p.m. show, Uygur exclaimed, "I didn't realize we voted for a Republican president!"

Uygur preceded this statement with a rant on how ridiculous it is for Obama to express concern about the ever-growing deficit when "60 percent of Americans favor additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy." Uygur and liberal guest Ryan Grim of “The Huffington Post” could not understand President Obama's rationale for focusing on deficit concerns.

Grim argued that, "when people say they are concerned about the deficit" they are just really saying that, "they are nervous about the economy. That's all they mean. So if you solve the economic problems, you're going to solve the deficit concerns."

During the July 2 edition of Bloomberg Television’s Political Capital, Bloomberg News columnist Margaret Carlson exalted Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. Carlson stated she would vote for Kagan "twice" because "It has been so long since I saw someone in public life joyful about being there." [audio available here]

The gushing didn't stop there for Carlson who continued to adorn Kagan for her impeccable "intellectual ability" and "temperament," despite admitting that there was little substance known about Kagan. This however was not important to Carlson who then proceeded to fawn over Kagan's joke that "brought the house down."

On Tuesday's edition of "Morning Joe," Joe Scarborough and his panel discussed the 2010 midterm elections and trashed Republican candidate Sharron Angle as a "mental patient" and a "jackass."

The conversation, which included Chris Matthews and Mike Barnicle, began with MSNBC contributor Mike Halperin claiming Angle is "vulnerable" in the race because "she has extreme positions that are out of step with the mainstream."

On day 72 of the continued Gulf of Mexico oil spill, "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough decided to open the show by continuing to bash Minority Leader John Boehner's work ethic. This assault comes just ten days after his assertion that he wants Barack Obama to have a "happy place to go to" and there is no problem with, "the president golfing every Sunday."

The former Republican congressman, who quit his job, ridiculed Boehner, saying "everybody on Capitol Hill knows about John Boehner, he's not exactly the hardest worker in the world. He's a guy that likes golf, and he's a guy that likes, you know, socializing."

Scarborough made sure to address that even though he doesn't know John Boehner personally, he was just "reporting" what he heard on the Hill. To Scarborough this analysis was imperative because, "If you're going to bend history, if you're going to pick up 40, 45 seats, it's a 24/7 job."

Joe Scarborough on Monday continued to spin for Barack Obama, this time defending the President’s war strategy in Afghanistan and placing blame on the American people. Citing a New York Times columnist, the Morning Joe host complained, "And as Frank Rich said, the President's best political ally on Afghanistan is apathy. Americans don't care that their sons and daughters are going off to fight and die for a war that really has no end game."

Co-host Mika Brzezinski agreed. She derided, "Maybe if most Americans actually cared beyond the ones that have to go and serve we would have different outcomes.”

While Scarborough reacted with some criticism, he was empathetic with the President because, “If Barack Obama takes the troops out and does what I'm saying he should do, Republicans will kill him. Every time a poppy is grown in Afghanistan, they will blame Barack Obama. Every time a woman is tortured in Afghanistan, they will blame Barack Obama. Every time anything goes wrong, they will blame Barack Obama."

While MSNBC's Joe Scarborough has repeatedly defended President Obama's handling of the oil spill, he used his show on Thursday to trash Republican Joe Barton and focus on getting the Congressman removed from his position on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Scarborough is supposedly the "voice of the right" on the Morning Joe panel, but he conducted a 10-minute, one-sided rant against  Barton and GOP members of Congress.

Scarborough quizzed Representative Eric Cantor, "Why is Joe Barton allowed to keep his job when Joe Barton apologized to a corporation that is destroying my hometown and its economy and destroying the environment across the Gulf Coast?"

Another leg tingle is on the way for MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews. Wednesday on "Andrea Mitchell Reports," Chris Matthews asserted that the President's image had been tainted because "BP has been the front institution, not the United States government, in this whole horror down in the gulf."

Yet, the White House no longer needs to worry, because to Matthews, the releasing of General McChrystal benefits the President's image of handling the oil spill by creating a "chance for him and somewhat in a way or somewhat in a personnel manner to insist on his role as Commander in Chief."

During Tuesday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough called for the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. He boldly exclaimed that this discharge should not come from the Commander-in-Chief because “Democrats have to treat generals differently from Republicans.”

He goes even further and states, “Were this a Republican, were it George W. Bush, McChrystal would have been fired yesterday,” and “the press would have understood it.” Of course, because during the last administration, the media was noted for giving former President George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt, especially with military decisions.

Interestingly enough, a flashback to January 31, 2006, tells a different tale.

The oil is out of the well. Once again, MSNBC's "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough's Republican viewpoint is anti-Republican. One could even say the host is hostile and abusive to any Republicans left in his audience. On the June 17th show, the panel was discussing the President's new escrow account for the victims of the BP oil spill and how criticism has come out from both sides.

Scarborough briefly commented that on one hand, the "far left" does not think that the administration is allocating enough money to the victims. However, when he mentions critics on the "far right," he arrogantly mocked them at length. He practically accused them of preparing for a violent insurrection: "I mean seriously how many times can freedom die, in one quarter? Because if you listen to the Republicans, they send out press releases every day, saying freedom has died tonight! Get your muskets out!"[MP3 Audio available here]

At this point, it may be safe to say that “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough is no more Republican than Arlen Specter. After all, the show’s “conservative” host takes almost every opportunity to defend the current administration and dismiss Obama's critics.

On June 9, the panelists were reviewing the Obama administration’s response to the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.  Scarborough asserted, “A poll yesterday shows that more people think that the government is mishandling this than Katrina, which is just, I think, ridiculous.” 

Fellow MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell agreed, and noted that the president and his team have been down in the Gulf working hard. And then Mitchell asserted that Obama could have diminished criticism if a week earlier, he had "gone down there and stayed and had a meal with the people, eaten some shrimp.” [MP3 audio avaiable here]

The roundtable panel for today's Morning Joe took a stab at President Obama's frustration with the media for being critical of his BP oil spill response. The segment began with a clip of President Obama's testy, self-defensive comment to NBC's Matt Lauer, wherein the commander-in-chief  blustered that he was determined to learn "whose ass to kick" for the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Time magazine political analyst Mark Halperin found the President's anger at the media "ironic" because, "no one in the modern era has ever gotten into the Oval office with the press as glowing as Barack Obama did. For him, this is a new experience." [WMV video available here; MP3 audio available here]

Host Joe Scarborough seemed to share Halperin's sentiments and argued that the President needed to "grow a layer of skin" because: "If you're a Republican politician and a member of the press doesn't come up and like slap you in the face when you come to Washington, you're grateful. You're like a beaten dog. You'll take whatever crumbs they throw you. This guy gets adulation for years, years, and he hates the press. I just don't get it."

What's really staggering is that while some in the mainstream media are starting to realize how much the press have gone easy on Obama, they're announcing these revelations with a sense of detachment from the problem, as though it’s merely an observation, not an indictment.

The following exchange was aired during the June 8 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe:

On the Wednesday edition of “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough attacked Republican political strategist Karl Rove for his critique of the Obama administration’s delayed response to the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Scarborough was irate at the “hypocrisy” of the statement because during his time in New Orleans in the middle of Katrina, he recalled, “a lot of people keeping their mouths shut because they didn't want to criticize President Bush.” [MP3 audio available here; WMV video for download here]

This outburst was in response to Karl Rove’s statement on Fox News that, “The president and his people are in charge of this under the Oil Spill Liability Act and they don’t have a plan.” Scarborough then hastily asserted, “Just keep your mouth shut. I'm not saying don't criticize the president, but if you were involved in Katrina, keep your mouth shut.”

Of course, during a post-Katrina interview with “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams, Scarborough felt no compulsion to keep his mouth shut in deference to the president. At the time, Scarborough asked if Williams found it an "ironic choice" to report “from a major American city where young children died of dehydration out on sidewalks, and now you've got the President of the United States delivering a speech to the nation from Jackson Square, an area largely untouched by Katrina's devastation.”

On Thursday's edition of "The View," Joy Behar and her mostly left-wing co-hosts attempted to associate a strong, independent woman with liberalism. The occasion, actress Rachel Weisz appeared on the program to promote her new role in the upcoming movie "Agora."

The film is set in Roman Egypt during the fourth century and focuses on the life of Hypatia, a female philosopher and scholar. Behar insisted the character must have been a "liberal."

During the exchange, Weisz began discussing her role as Hypatia and how her character, “believed in having the people from different backgrounds with different political views, rather like you ladies sitting here.” Immediately following this assertion, Joy Behar announced, “Oh, so she was liberal” and “bipartisan.”