Itinerant MSNBC Anchor David Shuster Oddly Amused by Specter of Major Earthquake Hitting US

"Well he went down to dinner in his Sunday best ..." -- Warren Zevon, "Excitable Boy"

Liberals are so sensitive, such beacons of emotional intelligence. Then they start talking.

Here, for example, is David Shuster speaking with fellow MSNBCer Ed Schultz on Schultz's radio show Monday about the devastating earthquake to wrack Chile.

Sounded to me like Shuster got a kick out of the possibility of a huge quake hitting the West Coast. These weren't belly laughs or guffaws, but it's difficult to imagine anything similar from Murrow or Cronkite in their heyday or Couric at her perkiest.

Rather than stating where this occurs in the transcription that follows, I've signaled each instance with the apt punctuation (!) --

(Click here for audio)

SCHULTZ: David, what have you got coming up at 3 o'clock today?

SHUSTER: We're going to take a look a little bit at, a little bit more at reconciliation. We've got a look also at with the earthquake in Chile. There were a lot of seismologists we spoke to over the weekend who say that because of how that affected the tectonic plates underneath South America, that that actually will have an impact (!) on the odds and likelihood of a major earthquake off of the Pacific coast of the United States.

So we're going to get into that and explain a little bit why without, you know, getting into the mind-numbing science, but try and make the point that (!) there is a stronger chance now of (!) a major earthquake off the West Coast and scientists say it's not going to be necessarily off of San Francisco. They're pointing at Portland and Seattle and we'll look at whether those cities are ready for it and whether the codes are up to snuff, because what happened in Chile, a lot of scientists believe, this is cyclical and a big one's coming to the United States in the next couple of years.

Just imagine what that would do for ratings (!)