On Tuesday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, on the same show in which host Joe Scarborough had earlier complained about FNC’s Bill Sammon claiming that the media "hate" Sarah Palin, guest David Remnick of the New Yorker magazine -- formerly of the Washington Post--  declared that "Sarah Palin’s entire career would be eliminated" if Americans were influenced by seeing "preposterousness" on public display. Remnick’s comment came during a discussion of the Senate’s adherence to the filibuster rule that makes it easier for the minority party to block the passage of legislation. At about 8:09 a.m., Scarborough contended that he would prefer that filibuster participants be required to actually stand up and speak in televised debate so that Americans might see the "preposterousness" of the practice.

Remnick then took his shot at Palin to dismiss Scarborough’s theory that "preposterousness" could wake up the American public. Remnick: "We see a lot of preposterous things in American politics. That doesn’t seem to convince us otherwise. Sarah Palin’s entire career would be eliminated, would pass out of history if preposterousness were somehow disqualifying, but it’s not."

Below is a transcript of the relevant exchange from the Tuesday, February 9, Morning Joe on MSNBC:

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough took exception with FNC analyst Bill Sammon for using the word "hate" to describe mainstream media sentiment toward Sarah Palin, contending that "you can't just say that people ‘hate’ Sarah Palin." But, while he spent more than two minutes complaining about Sammon’s use of the word "hate," Scarborough seemed to contradict himself at one point as he ended up using the word "hated" to describe media reaction to the former Alaska governor after she was first chosen as John McCain’s running mate.

The MSNBC host went on to suggest that the media got over their initial feeling of "hate" and "tried" to "start reporting on her down the middle." Scarborough: "And, by the way, we called out the media when they attacked her without even knowing who she was. And we said they hated her in the press early on without knowing her because she was a pro-life woman. Now, did they get past that and start reporting on her down the middle? They tried. But again, they don't hate her. I don't think they under-, a lot of people don't understand somebody from Wasilla who hunts, who is pro-life. There is a cultural gap. But to just say that they hate..."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, February 9, Morning Joe on MSNBC, with critical portions in bold:

Fox News has a business strategy of seeking to "undermine" the MSM by alleging that it has a liberal bias.   That was Chuck Todd's assertion on Morning Joe today.

Todd, NBC's political director and chief White House correspondent, was reacting to Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon's statement on "Fox News Sunday" that "the mainstream media hates the tea party movement almost as much as it hates Sarah Palin."

Even though, the day after it aired on the Super Bowl broadcast, the consensus on the Focus on the Family advertisement featuring former Florida quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow was that it wasn't as bad as the left had feared, at least one person that isn't going to let it go.

On MSNBC's Feb. 8 "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough made the point that the TV spot played during the Feb. 7 game was inoffensive and painted the opponents of it as being upset about nothing.

"One other thing too, talking about the soft touch - Focus on the Family's ad with Tim Tebow was soft, it was subtle and it made all the people who criticized it over the past week look like shrill idiots," Scarborough said. "It was a mom talking about a son she loved - her take with soft music."

On Monday’s Morning Joe show on MSNBC, during a discussion of President Obama’s recent suggestions that he would be willing to talk with Republicans about health care reform, co-host Mika Brzezinski recounted Obama’s initial refusal to include the GOP, and claimed that Republicans "ARE the ones, you could argue, who wrecked the economy," which set off co-host Joe Scarborough. After Brzezinski claimed that "The last administration put us in the position that we are in," Scarborough denounced Democrats for pushing Republicans to support lending more money to people who could not pay back their mortgages.

He also brought up campaign contributions President Obama received from mortgage companies. Scarborough: "And, by the way, while I was being critical of the Republican party for allowing people to get mortgages they couldn't afford to repay, Democrats were calling Republicans racists. Barney Frank calling them racists for not giving even more mortgages they couldn't afford to pay. ... Barack Obama, the guy that got more money from Fannie and Freddie executives than anybody else on Capitol Hill doesn't exactly have clean hands here."

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Monday, February 8, Morning Joe, on MSNBC, from about 8:09 a.m., with critical portions in bold:

Scratching my head, wondering if I can remember a so-called correspondent so openly mocking a major political figure . . .

On Morning Joe, NBC "correspondent" Andrea Mitchell ridiculed Sarah Palin's use of hand notes during her Tea Party Q. and A. by displaying some hand notes of her own . . .

Joe Scarborough was surely right about one thing: he's going to take some flak . .  .

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough said that Sarah Palin has been "lowering the bar" with her public pronouncements, asserting that she hasn't done the necessary homework to permit her to speak seriously on the issues.  

Joe also claimed that while "top conservatives" are afraid to take Palin on publicly, "behind the scenes" they are angry at her for her alleged lack of preparation.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the monthly jobs report on Feb. 5, showing an "unexpected" decline in the overall unemployment rate. But the reactions from two cable news channels were markedly different.

CNN's Allan Chernoff called it "a little bit of good news," even though 20,000 more people lost their jobs in January. He said economists were actually expecting a gain of 15,000 jobs. So that estimate was off by 35,000.

Chernoff also downplayed a massive revision to the total number of jobs lost during the recession, which indicated that things during 2008 and 2009 were much worse than realized.

Only a liberal could imagine that addressing the federal deficit and creating jobs might be mutually exclusive. On MSNBC's Feb. 3 "Morning Joe," Chrystia Freeland of The Financial Times asked Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., whether she agreed with President Obama's stated intention of addressing the deficit next year.

"Senator, we've also heard from the president that next year - in his budget for next year - he is going to be focusing on deficit reduction, and he thinks its gonna be time be worried about that," Freeland said. "Is that too soon? Are you worried that the president should really be focusing right now still on stimulating the economy?"

Stabenow took the cue to launch into anti-Bush boilerplate. "Well we have to be focused on both and it's tough," she said. "I mean this president not only inherited the biggest deficit we've ever had, but the biggest deficit in jobs that we've ever had. We've got over 15 million people without jobs right now - bread winners no longer able to bring in a pay check."

Want proof low taxes work? Just take a look at the state of New Hampshire, as MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough astutely pointed out.

On the Feb. 2 broadcast of his MSNBC program, Scarborough interviewed Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. Shaheen's home state was hosting a jobs town hall put on by President Barack Obama and Scarborough used the occasion for a teachable moment.

"Now, usually none of us would celebrate unemployment rates of 7 percent," Scarborough said. "But that is not only well below the national average, but your neighbor, Rhode Island, to the south of you now sitting with a 13 percent unemployment rate. What's New Hampshire doing right?"

Historically, there are two kinds of White House reporters: those that confront officials with the strongest critique and demand a response (think ABC’s Sam Donaldson, who dogged Bill Clinton in the late 1990s just as he had Ronald Reagan in the 1980s); and those who see their job as simply repeating the White House spin of the day.

Reporting this morning on the Obama administration’s push for another $100 billion in spending, supposedly for “job growth,” NBC’s Savannah Guthrie fell into the second category. Rather than amplify the growing chorus of critics who argue that we can’t afford more massive spending when the previous “stimulus” was so expensive and ineffective, Guthrie on NBC’s Today saluted the President for making a “judgment call” that “all economists” could support:

This is a budget where the President makes a judgment call. He's asking for $100 billion to spur job growth, things like tax cuts for small business, tax breaks to increase wages. And he's doing this knowing that it will drive up the deficit, certainly even more in the short term, but all economists agree the real way to get a chunk out of the deficit is to increase hiring.

Poor Barack Obama.  In becoming president he inherited the "hollow prize" of the United States of America.  That was the astounding theory suggested this morning by Melissa Harris-Lacewell.

The Princeton professor of politics and African-American studies bemoaned the president's predicament on Morning Joe today.  Apparently this "hollow prize" theory is in vogue in certain circles, used to decry the plight of African-Americans who only rise to powerful political positions in "hollow prize" places like Detroit.

The president of NBC has officially responded to Joe Scarborough criticizing Keith Olbermann for his attacks on Scott Brown.

In a memo obtained by the Huffington Post, Phil Griffin told his on air staff: "We do not publicly criticize our colleagues. This kind of behavior is unprofessional and will not be tolerated."

Griffin was addressing comments made by MSNBC's Scarborough about Olbermann. As NewsBusters reported Monday, the "Morning Joe" host first tweeted his disapproval of the "Countdown" host's comments about Brown -- "How reckless and how sad" -- reiterating on his program Tuesday morning, "Sad and pathetic.

As a result, Griffin sent out the following memo Friday (h/t TVNewser):

When you breach the sacrosanct wall between church and state, and use religion to promote policy, bad things happen. At least, that's what the left has been telling us for years.

But Rev. Jim Wallis, editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and author of "Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street and Your Street," sees it differently. Wallis used his interpretation of religion, particularly the Bible, to play the populist card and categorize portions of the American private sector as greedy on MSNBC's Jan. 21 "Morning Joe."

"These bank bonuses, I would say, are a sin of Biblical proportions," Wallis said. "But to pick on the banks alone misses the point. It's a symptom, I think of a real erosion of societal values because new maxims have taken us over - ‘greed is good,' ‘it's all about me and I want it now.'"

A small group of liberal talking heads may be realizing that opposition to Obama is not, in fact, wholly irrational. Though it would be a bit too hasty to proclaim it a trend among the mainstream media, it has been a refreshing break from the smears usually hurled at the right by the nation's pundits.

First was Chris Matthews, who stunningly turned right and voiced his concern about an excessively large federal government, as Noel Sheppard reported this morning. NBC's David Gregory also came to his senses today, and admitted--his prior statements notwithstanding--that the Tea Party movement has been advocating the same principles that led to Scott Brown's victory yesterday (h/t Mary Katherine Ham).

Speaking on this morning's Morning Joe, Gregory characterized yesterday's special election as a sincere populist backlash against unpopular policies. The election was "about incumbency and whether government's working for you," he said. "That's what really cuts through all this is whether government is working for the people. That's what's fueling the Tea Party movement."

There are times when speaking in a stream of consciousness is a good and wholesome thing.  None occur in front of a camera, as evidenced by the public escapades of MSNBC’s Donny Deutsch.

The former ad-man took to today’s “Morning Joe” set yesterday morning to offer the following wisdom in reference to the impending Massachusetts electorate:

He is a traditional-looking middle-aged white male.  We’re going back to basics, we’ve obviously had our first African American president we’ve had the female candidates and what-not – you look at him, he looks like the candidate, the traditional view of the candidate, and is there a visceral comfort in that for people? I’m just curious from real kind of sociological point of view.

Obvious questions abound, of course.

TVNewser has a transcript par excellence, for your reading pleasure.  In sum, Mika Brzezinski has gone off the Big Media reservation again, in a good way. Let’s just say she unwittingly (?) offers praise for a cable news network with much better ratings.

In an interview for her new book, Brzezinski spoke with Julie Menin about the partisan nature of today’s American media:

BRZEZINSKI: "I've worked in the mainstream media for all the networks and I will say what people aren't saying. It's got a liberal world view. There are great people working at the networks, and they're mostly Democrats, ok? They try really hard to be objective, really hard and they do a great job at it, but the balance is not there within the objective mainstream media. It's not, it is not and I'm not sure how we fix that. I hate the polarizing extremes that we're seeing on cable where there's these sort of ‘Think my way or you’re evil’ kind of subliminal message or cartoonish type characters on the right and the left.

Interesting enough – but even more piquing is Brzezinski’s solution to the problem of a partisan media:

Not that they were BFFs before, but Joe Scarborough has now definitively de-friended Keith Olbermann . . .

As NewsBuster Noel Sheppard reported, Olbermann last night unleashed an absurdly over-the-top Special Comment at Scott Brown, calling him "an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees."

Joe Scarborough thereafter tweeted that Olbermann's Special Comment was "reckless and sad."  On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough fired similar remarks at his MSNBC colleague on live national TV . . .

In a bizarre twist of logic, on Monday’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin argued that if Democrat Martha Coakley lost the race for the Massachusetts Senate, it would improve chances of health care reform passing: “I actually think they may get health care more easily than if they win.”

While Halperin acknowledged that losing the Senate seat that once belonged to the late Ted Kennedy would be a “disaster” for Democrats, he explained the supposed upside: “...if she wins, if they hold the seat, they’re still going to have to come up with a deal and then they’re going to have to have two votes, the House and Senate. They’re going to have to go through, you know, the torture of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson deciding if they can deal with the compromised bill.” Halperin seemed convinced a Coakley loss could avoid all of that torturous democracy.

Later in the 12:00PM ET hour of live coverage on Monday, anchor Monica Novotny referred back to Halperin’s Morning Joe comments and asked guests Richard Wolffe and Larry Sabato about such an analysis of the situation: “In a discussion about this race earlier this morning on our air, the point was made that perhaps it’s better for the Democrats if they lose this seat....What do you think?”

[H/t NewsBuster P.J. Gladnick.] How panicked is the MSM at the prospect of a Scott Brown victory tomorrow? So much so that Chris Matthews has stooped to seeking to use Scott Brown's Protestant religion against him in heavily Catholic Massachusetts . . .

The Hardball host made his despicable pitch during a Morning Joe appearance today.

Joe Scarborough has expressed serious doubts as to his Republican affiliation, and made clear that House GOP whip Eric Cantor "is not my friend."  But caution to those who assume Joe has gone left: he has clarified to this NewsBuster that his critique of the GOP comes from the Ron Paul-esque right . . .

Scarborough's stunning comments came on today's Morning Joe in response to Dem Bob Shrum's taunting of Joe over his ostensible GOP membership, in the context of Pres. Obama's attempt to rescue Martha Coakley from the rubble of her campaign.

Ouch.  Joe Scarborough on today's Morning Joe:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: You understand what I'm saying.  I prefer Conan to Leno.  I prefer my dog to Leno. That's just me: well, my dog's very funny.

The irony is that--his personal preference for canine comedy notwithstanding--Joe went on to argue that from a business perspective, it makes sense to replace O'Brien with Leno . . .

Via Ed Morrisey at HotAir.com, we find out what you get when you cross a liberal, with a blonde, and a person of Polish heritage: Mika "Bubbles" Brzezinski.

Coming back from commercial this morning at the MSNBC Clown Kingdom, the bump-in video clip was one of Sarah Palin’s interview with Glenn Beck.  Palin stated that it took all of the Founders to come up with the Constitution, but that George Washington (as the leader) would necessarily rise to the top.

Mika Brzezinski took the lead-in rather hard:

Fox News on-air talent, eat your heart out - that is, when it comes to Mika Brzezinski's ideal conservative.

Brzezinski appeared at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 13 to promote her new book, "All Things at Once" along with her MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host and author of "The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise," Joe Scarborough.

Brzezinski was asked by a member of the audience why she is sometimes reluctant to be more vocal with her ideologically liberal views on their show. She explained that wasn't necessarily her role.

"There's a lot of different things going on with my role," Brzezinski said. "You know sometimes, see - and most of the time, he's taking on three Democrats at the table and I find myself more moderator, making sure the voices are all being heard and that civility prevails, which is something that is really important to us."

Does the name Jeremiah Wright ring a bell with Mika Brzezinski?

The Morning Joe co-host sought today to explain the pass Pres. Obama gave Harry "negro dialect" Reid by claiming that PBO has "worked to transcend racial issues for decades." The skeptical look on Joe Scarborough's face [see still after jump] as Mika uttered her assertion was priceless.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane with Rev. Wright [h/t Bump Shack], and consider that as far as the record shows, PBO never uttered a peep as his pastor made the following remarks, and to the contrary chose this man to wed him and Michelle and baptize his children: