Morning Joe

Mike Barnicle just wrapped up the Obama Parrot of the Week.  That's the award I hand out on my local TV show to the MSMer doing his sycophantic best to parrot the Obama party line.  Barnicle gave his award-winning performance on today's Morning Joe, in the course of tossing two super-softballs to David Axelrod.

Barnicle's first lob bemoaned the difficulties of governing in this hyper-partisan, cable-TV age.  His second softball chastised Republicans for their announced intention to oppose Pres. Obama's Supreme Court nominee.  Which raises the question: do the names Robert Bork—or Clarence Thomas—mean anything to Mike Barnicle?

MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell on Friday went too far for even her colleagues at the liberal cable channel, receiving mockery for her allegation that comments Newt Gingrich made about Barack Obama were racially-charged. At the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, Thursday, the former House Speaker commented that “shooting three-point shots may be clever, but it doesn’t put anybody to work.”

Speaking of the President’s basketball skills, Gingrich continued: "What we need is a President, not an athlete. We need somebody who actually focuses on getting people back to work.” After the clip was played, O'Donnell, the guest host on the April 9 Morning Joe, lobbed her accusation at Gingrich:

But I’m not sure what he means by this particular soundbite and I think it’s open to some criticism because it suggests that the President is an athlete and some people may suggest, you  know, because all black people are good athletes. I mean that’s what it sort of sounds like to me.

Everyone is still looking for a scapegoat for the financial crisis that precipitated the current economic malaise. And one of the popular targets has been former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Greenspan recently testified on Capitol Hill and was pressed about how he may have contributed to the financial crisis. According to Suze Orman, host of CNBC's "The Suze Orman Show," some of the blame should go to Greenspan for a 2004 speech he made to the Credit Union National Association.

Greenspan had said some might have "saved tens of thousands of dollars had they held adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate mortgages during the past decade," but he did preface it by saying that wouldn't have been the case if rates adjusted upwards as they did. But Orman, appearing on MSNBC's April 8 "Morning Joe" contended he shouldn't have commented on those mortgages at all.

One of Barack Obama's biggest media cheerleaders on Tuesday said that Vice President Joe Biden's idea concerning managing the war in Afghanistan was better than the President's.

"I thought that the minimalist strategy that, that Joe Biden was, was apparently propounding, the anti-terror strategy as opposed to what we're effectively doing which is basically nation-building, I thought that Biden had a better idea," Washington Post columnist and former assistant managing editor Eugene Robinson said on yesterday's "Morning Joe."

"The President had different, you know, went a different way, and this is something he's going to have to work through Karzai if it's possible to work this through," he continued.

"I'm not sure this is going to end well" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo): 

Arianna Huffington stuck her foot in her mouth during Tuesday's "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, and ended up being totally humiliated by host Joe Scarborough and guests Rudy Giuliani and Mort Zuckerman.

As the subject of Florida's Senate race was broached, Huffington decided to attack the former Mayor of New York City rather than address the qualifications of Republican candidates Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio.

"Your judgment in people has not been stellar -- Bernard Kerik, anybody, so the fact that you're supporting Rubio now, I don't know exactly how seriously we should take it," irrelevantly spouted the liberal publisher.

Marvelously, some of the gentlemen on the panel didn't appreciate the cheap shot including Giuliani himself who finally said, "I come on here just to talk about Marco Rubio, you're attacking me on Bernie Kerik, you're attacking me on how I ran my presidential race. I imagine you're going to attack me on what I did in the Little League when I was a child" (video follows with partial transcript, h/t NB reader Pam): 

Was Gayle King kvetching about polls when candidate, then President, Obama and the Dems were riding high?  Doubt it.  But now that tide has turned, King pooh-poohs polls, and even asked Mika Brzezinski not to read one on the air.  But never fear, "every time he speaks I get inspired all over again" proclaimed the editor of Oprah Winfrey's O magazine.

King's hear-no-evil moment went down on today's Morning Joe, as Mika was about to read a poll showing a preference for Republicans in the generic congressional ballot.

Put up or shut up, Barnicle . . .

Mike Barnicle has accused "talk radio" of serving as "allies" and a "megaphone" for the worst fringe elements on the right.   That's how the former Boston Globe columnist justified the MSM's focus on the right-wing fringe while downplaying that of the left. [H/t reader Ray R.]

Barnicle floated his defense of the MSM on today's Morning Joe.  To their credit, Mika Brzezinski and Andrew Ross Sorkin of the NY Times argued that the fringe left has historically received a pass from the MSM.

How quick is Norah O'Donnell to come to Pres. Obama's defense?  When on Morning Joe today fellow O'Donnell Kelly gently ribbed PBO over his wearing of a macho, faux-military leather jacket while addressing US troops in Afghanistan yesterday, Norah immediately piped up to point out that "Sarah Palin wears a leather jacket, too."

So there!

Of course, neither O'Donnell described the gaping chasm, discussed here, between PBO's swaggering "America doesn't quit" rhetoric to the troops and his 2007 call for America to immediately quit Iraq, at which time he said "there is no military solution in Iraq and there never was."

"The United States of America does not quit once it starts on something.  You don't quit, the American armed services does not quit.  We keep at it.  We persevere." -- Pres. Obama to US troops in Afghanistan, March 28, 2010

"Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq, with the pullout being completed by the end of next year. 'Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was,' Obama said." -- Obama calls for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, AP, Sep. 12, 2007 [emphasis added]

There are lies, damned lies, and then the kind of brazen rewriting of what a man stands for that Barack Obama engaged in yesterday.

If you've tuned on the news, specifically MSNBC, you don't have to watch for very long to see the network views focusing on fringe elements of the right as a newsworthy endeavor.

However, as MSNBC "Morning Joe" co-host Mika Brzezinski suggested, discretion should be exercised with the amount of attention given to these radical components of the opposition to President Barack Obama's health care reform endeavors.

"Yeah, call it out but also I think we have to be careful along the way," Brzezinski said on the March 26 broadcast. "I think this happened during the campaign. I think this happened during the final hours of the health care debate where certain fringe, really minute members of it were highlighted."

Don't blame Mika—she was just obeying White House orders . . .

When Joe Scarborough tried this morning to comment on Pres. Obama's latest ObamaCare oration, Mika Brzezinski unleashed a series of seemingly serious kicks at his ankles.  Having successfully silenced her sidekick, Mika proceeded to read off her Blackberry a statement extolling the glories of what PBO has vouchsafed onto a grateful people.

At one point, Mika said "I have some talking points from the White House."  Being the naive and trusting person I am, I assumed Mika was kidding. Except that, upon a bit of Googling, it appears that she wasn't . . . [H/t reader Pam M.]

New York Times columnist Charles Blow and MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle traded liberal talking points like Topps baseball cards on today’s “Morning Joe.” Confident the American people care more about eliminating preexisting conditions and expanding health insurance entitlements than the $569.2 billion tax increase and the $1.2 trillion price tag, the journalists failed to substantiate their claims with anything more than their liberal impulses.

“Most people want what they have in this bill or more,” insisted Blow. “We cannot let Republicans take over that talking point, which is that most people don’t want this bill somehow because it is too liberal. That’s just a lie. That is just a lie.”

Really? The American people don’t think the largest tax increase in American history is too liberal? The American people don’t think an unprecedented expansion of government control in the health insurance industry is too liberal? Blow’s failure to back up his assertion renders it laughable.

Then Barnicle chimed in, echoing Blow:

Nancy Pelosi: you lie! Chris Hayes didn't take to the floor of the House to call the Speaker out. But the Washington editor of The Nation did "totally agree" when Joe Scarborough described as "a lie" Pelosi's claims that insurance companies hate ObamaCare. Added Hayes: "I think that's a completely disingenuous statement by Nancy Pelosi."

The pair were reacting to a clip of Pelosi's interview yesterday with Diane Sawyer in which the Speaker said of House Minority Leader John Boehner that "some people will do anything for the insurance companies."  Pelosi cast the bill as tough regulation of the insurance industry.

Scarborough's point, in which Hayes concurred, was that far from punishing insurance companies, the bill that Pelosi piloted through Congress gave them the biggest prize of all: a law forcing all Americans to buy their product.

View video here.

Update 9:35 AM: Larry O'Donnell "stunned" Stahl doesn't realize ObamaCare raises taxes.  See O'Donnell video after the jump.

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What kind of correspondents do they have at 60 Minutes?  The kind who can't tell that the biggest tax increase in history is a tax increase at all.  The kind who complain that even if it is a tax increase, Americans should be willing to pay it because ObamaCare is "really important."

Exhibit A: Lesley Stahl.  On Morning Joe today, Stahl--her 40 years or so as a reporter notwithstanding--said she "can't tell" if ObamaCare raises taxes and that her "head is hurting" from trying to figure it out.  But so what if it does?  Stahl had a sudden bout of nostalgia for the good old days when people didn't mind paying "a little more" for "something really important in return."

View video here.

As conservatives rally opposition to ObamaCare in the waning hours of the health care debate, MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough didn't seem to think the upcoming health care vote is such a big deal. On his show this morning, Scarborough concluded that the outcome of the health care overhaul vote will not have a significant impact on the American health care system.

“People just need to take a deep breath,” insisted Scarborough. “We’re going to be fine. Whichever way it goes, we’re going to be fine.”

Scarborough employed hyperbole to mischaracterize those who argue that ObamaCare is fiscally reckless and a step toward a single-payer health care system.

ObamaCare constitutes the largest tax increase in American history and shatters the previous record, admitted self-described socialist and MSNBC political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell yesterday.

When MSNBC anchor Joe Scarborough asked O’Donnell about the overhaul bill on his radio show, O’Donnell said ObamaCare raises taxes by almost $500 billion.

Obama’s historic tax increase nearly doubles the previous record-setting tax that O’Donnell helped craft as Democratic Chief of Staff to the Senate Finance Committee during the Clinton administration.

New conservative spectator sport: watching MSM liberals lock horns over ObamaCare . . .

Today's Morning Joe offered a hugely-entertaining example.  Larry O'Donnell, speaking from the Olympian heights of his omniscience of the legislative process, mercilessly condescended to Donny Deutsch.  Ad-man Deutsch had earlier twice "guaranteed" that ObamaCare would pass.  When O'Donnell appeared, he in so many words said Deutsch was so blissfully ignorant of the process that he didn't understand just what trouble the bill is in.

When O'Donnell later ostensibly "apologized" to Deutsch, he wound up pouring salt in the wound.  Larry patronizingly portrayed himself as having "so much information" about the situation that he just doesn't see it "the same way that people with less information" do.

Ouch!

Don Imus, for one, is not surprised by Tom Hanks' recent comments calling WWII and the War on Terrorism racist crusades undertaken by the United States.

First brought to his attention by "Imus in the Morning" producer Bernard McGuirk on the show, the remarks were news to the host - just not shocking news.

"Oh darn, what a surprise. We have another panty-wearing liberal dickweed from Hollywood - of course!" Imus told McGuirk.

McGuirk dubbed Hanks "Tehran Tom" for remarks the actor made March 5 on-set of MSNBC to promote "The Pacific," the HBO mini-series he helped produce.

So much for the MSM refrain about Republicans having previously used reconciliation just as Dems are proposing to do now on ObamaCare . . .

Larry O'Donnell has emphatically proclaimed that the way Dems intend to use reconciliation is "unprecedented" and has "never, never, never" been so used before. O'Donnell's many off-his-meds rants notwithstanding [recent example here], he actually does understand the legislative process, having served as Dem Chief of Staff of the Senate Committee on Finance back in the HillaryCare day.

O'Donnell also criticized the MSM "group think" to the effect that Dems were obliged to pass some kind of health care legislation this year.  Larry's uncharacteristically lucid observations came during his Morning Joe appearance today. [H/t reader Mike K.]

 

How much of a pickle is Pelosi potentially in?  Enough that Dem loyalist Charles Blow had to resort to some truly twisted reasoning to explain away her delay in responding to allegations against Eric Massa.

Of all things, the New York Times columnist tried to excuse Pelosi's failure to act by blaming . . . "our crazy misogynistic culture."  Huh?

Blow offered his odd opinion on today's Morning Joe . . .

Compliments sometimes come from strange places, but you'll take them where you can get them, no?

It seems that Fox News' March 10 "Glenn Beck" program, in which host Glenn Beck interviewed former Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., captured the attention of both the left and the right. And it may have even put to rest some of the misconceptions about Beck, which are mostly generated by outfits that operate with just out-of-context sound bites.

"Let me tell you something," "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough said on his March 11 program. "[Beck] was not on his heels. He just - he played straight-man and Donny Deutsch, he was - he did it very, very well.

Bill O'Reilly fired back at Tom Hanks on Friday after the Oscar-winning star mocked Fox News on MSNBC earlier in the day.

As NewsBusters previously reported, Hanks was on "Morning Joe" yesterday attacking Fox News, Ann Coulter, and Tea Partiers.

"[H]e goes to a very low rated, left-wing network, where he poses as a producer playing off a video that showed a fight in an Italian TV newsroom," said O'Reilly.

"Now, that doesn't diminish his talent, which is major, but it does make him kind of a mindless partisan" (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

Perhaps President Barack Obama might have preferred New York Times columnist Tom Friedman to reserve these comments for their golf outings together, but has Friedman recognized this path toward a larger government is unsustainable?

On MSNBC's March 5 "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough recounted his childhood in the early 1970s and the poor economy. He explained there was a different focus - that his family was hoping for the economy to turn around and could have cared less about the other issues of the day - Vietnam, Watergate, etc. It was all about the economy.

"You know Tom Friedman, I remember in the early '70s, my dad worked for Lockheed, got laid off and he was without a job for 18 months," Scarborough said. "This is in the middle of Watergate was blowing up on TV and in the middle of Vietnam, as it was grinding to a very bloody, messy ending. And my family, we just cared about one thing. When we watched Walter Cronkite at night, we wanted to know if the economy was turning around. And we didn't understand what was going on in the college campuses."

On Friday's Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy picked up an item reported on by NewsBusters on Wednesday about MSNBC cropping President George W. Bush's face out of the latest Newsweek cover. As Doocy explained: "...on MSNBC...They have cropped all of President Bush's face out. So why does the mainstream media have so much trouble giving him credit?"

Doocy discussed the issue with a political panel that included Democratic strategist Doug Schoen, who acknowledged: "What MSNBC did makes no sense." He later added: "...that makes no sense at all. Because to do that is just plain mean-spirited and wrong." Another panelist, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Karen Hunter, later admitted: "perhaps cropping him out completely may not be too fair."

On Wednesday's Morning Joe program on MSNBC a picture of the Newsweek cover was shown, but with only President Bush's arm visible, his face had been completely cut out of the original image.

OK, it was kind of funny, but . . .

Of all the networks Tom Hanks might have mocked during a little stunt on Morning Joe today, he just happened to settle on Fox. For good measure, he worked Tea Partiers and Ann Coulter into his mix. [H/t reader Ray R.]

Morning Joe had just aired a clip of an actual fistfight that broke out live-on-camera between two TV producers at an Italian TV station. Cut to Hanks in the Morning Joe control room, pretending to produce . . .

Update: Enhanced video.

Throughout the day on Thursday, MSNBC hosts repeatedly slammed the Republican Party over an RNC fundraising memo that poked fun at Democrats and their left-wing agenda.

Clearly those at the network only needed one Teleprompter to read off of, given that all their attacks were almost identical for over nines hours of live programming.

 

 

Someone submit the Morning Joe java to Henry Waxman for analysis.  There seems to be something in it causing top Dems to experience serious delusions . . .

On today's show, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius claimed that the people of her home state of Kansas are "wildly supportive" of the substance of ObamaCare.  Unfortunately, suggested Sebelius, they're just too ignorant to know what's in the blessed bill.

Later, DNC Chairman Tim Kaine didn't deny that the Obama admin had engaged in two sleazy patronage deals, involving Joe Sestak and Scott Matheson.  Instead, the DNC Chairman laughed off the cynical, and possibly illegal, arrangements.  "Life is life," smirked Kaine.

To Morning Joe's credit, the patronage deals and the Charlie Rangel situation were discussed throughout the show.  The withdrawal of Dem Rep. Eric Massa from his re-election race, amidst allegations he sexually harrassed a male staffer, was also discussed, though not raised with Kaine.  Would an RNC Chairman appearing on the show the day after the Mark Foley affair erupted have gotten a similar pass?

Conservative radio host Steve Malzberg on Wednesday laid into MSNBC and Joe Scarborough for cropping George W. Bush out of the cover of Newsweek.

As NewsBusters reported, "Morning Joe" earlier that day showed a picture of the Newsweek cover altered to omit former President Bush's face from the shot.

"Big conservative Joe Scarborough. Big conservative my butt," said an angry Malzberg.

"They know no shame," he continued. "Good thing Obama keeps having those hosts over to the White House for little private meetings" (audio available here, transcript below the fold):

UPDATE: MSNBC responds (read below).

On Wednesday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, host Joe Scarborough pointed out the cover of the latest edition of Newsweek magazine, which proclaimed "Victory At Last; The Emergence of A Democratic Iraq" and featured a picture of President George W. Bush walking the deck of an aircraft carrier. However, the image of Newsweek that appeared on screen cropped out President Bush's face entirely (h/t George Miller).

The magazine cover showed Bush on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in 2003, after making his "Mission Accomplished" speech following the successful invasion of Iraq. While Newsweek cropped the picture to include half of Bush's body and face, MSNBC further cropped the image to leave only the arm of the former president visible (See original Newsweek cover below).

One of Scarborough's guests, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass, reacted to Newsweek's declaration of victory in Iraq: "Too positive....For sure. We're going to take months to see a new government formed and we don't know how well the new government's going to operate....Too soon to take out the champagne, if ever." Show co-host Mika Brzezinski added: "Still a lot of controversy as to why we went in."

What good is the liberal media's "truth squadding" or "fact-checking" when it doesn't reveal any facts and is completely divorced from the truth?

MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell gave a stark answer to that question this morning, when she appeared on "Morning Joe" to discuss yesterday's health care summit. O'Donnell heaped praise on the President for being "in command of some of the facts", like the "fact" that premiums would decline 10-13 percent under his plan. If she had actually looked at the CBO report she was citing, however, she would know that the plan is expected to raise, not lower, premiums for individuals by 10-13 percent.

So for all her "truth-squadding" and "fact-checking", O'Donnell is still confused about the difference between up and down. Either that, or she didn't truth-squad or fact-check anything, but simply said what she wanted to believe. Maybe she should spend less time devising her awkward hyphenated verbs , and more actually examining the facts.