Morning Joe

Soda was demonized by the media and food police groups for years, long before New York City’s Board of Health voted Sept. 13, overwhelmingly approving Michael Bloomberg’s controversial ban on certain sizes of soda.

The act, which Bloomberg claimed “will save lives,” will prevent the “sale of sweetened drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces, smaller than the size of a common soda bottle” at certain establishments. It does not prevent people from merely buying multiple drinks if they choose, something Bloomberg admitted on MSNBC in May 2012.

It appears that even quasi-conservative Joe Scarborough won’t put up with the ridiculous statements that appear on his network anymore.  Such was the case during an interview with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday’s Morning Joe that centered on the mob attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the deadly attack by Islamists on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

McCain was asked by Scarborough whether or not Governor Romney should have waited several days to hold a press conference on Libya and Egypt, prompting the Senator to comment that he wasn't about to give Romney tactical campaign adivce and that "the fact is the United States in the Middle East is weak" under Obama and that Romney had to address "the big picture."  [See video below break.  MP3 audio here.]

Mike Barnicle has suggested that the Department of Justice consider prosecuting Florida pastor Terry Jones in the death of the American ambassador to Libya and deaths occurring during riots last year in Afghanistan. Hat tip readers Melody, Jonathan R., Ray R.

Barnicle made his suggestion on today's Morning Joe, during a discussion of the attacks on the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt and the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where the American ambassador died after an attack by a Libyan mob. Fellow panelist Donny Deutsch responded by saying he was "thinking the same thing" as Barnicle.  View the video after the jump.

Joe Scarborough has suggested that Clint Eastwood was drunk when he gave his RNC speech.

Today's Morning Joe opened with a clip of Mitt Romney telling David Gregory that it was a thrill to have  Eastwood speak on his behalf at the RNC, and that he felt Eastwood spoke "from the heart."  Scarborough came on and said that rather than speaking from the heart, Eastwood spoke more "from the bottom of a bottle."  View the video after the jump.

Comparing the RNC and DNC conventions on Friday's NBC Today, MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough declared a knockout for Democrats: "...if we're going pound for pound, round for round, this wasn't Ali versus Frasier, this was Muhammed Ali versus Chuck Wepner...It was ugly..." The liberal crowd assembled around Scarborough at a bar in Charlotte all cheered and applauded the statement. [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Scarborough's boxing reference was to a 1975 fight when Wepner went 15 rounds with the heavyweight champion Ali before losing. On the conventions, he argued that Michelle Obama, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden "all hit home runs...all hit it out of the park," while in Tampa, "you had a Republican convention that was trying to figure out how to love Mitt Romney."

MSNBC broadcasts often have a “Twilight Zone” feel to them, but seldom more so than the Sept. 7, “Morning Joe.” Joe Scarborough and friends' reaction to the “weak” August jobs report was enthusiasm.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that morning that only 96,000 jobs were created, after 120,000 jobs were expected. The BLS also revised June and July numbers downward. The unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, which might sound good until you learn that it “came primarily because the labor force participation rate fell to 63.5 percent, its worst level in more than 30 years,” according to CNBC.com. (Video below the jump)

Methinks the MSMer doth protest too much. If Mark Halperin weren't keenly aware that he was about to try to whitewash a huge vulnerability for the Democrats, why would he have prefaced his remark with the disclaimer that he and others weren't showing liberal bias by claiming it was no big deal?

But that's exactly what Halperin did this on today's Morning Joe.  The show rolled video of the DNC delegates clearly voting against putting God and Jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-Israel back in the platform from which they had been removed.  We then saw the convention chairman fraudently declare that two-thirds had in fact voted to reinsert the language.  But there was Halperin, claiming "I don't think it's liberal bias to say that the story is pretty much done." View the video after the jump.

On the occasions where MSNBC's Morning Joe actually starts to have an intelligent political debate, you can count on liberal co-host Mika Brzezinski to toss in a crude partisan comment.

The discussion this morning centered on Mitt Romney’s recent Medicare ads and whether or not they would be effective in the crucial battleground state of Florida. While the discussion offered a good punch counter-punch discussion between host Joe Scarborough and panelists John Heilemann and Sam Stein, Mika appeared particularly upset that too much time was spent discussing an Obama Super PAC ad implying that Mitt Romney was responsible for the death of a former employee’s wife instead of a Romney ad criticizing President Obama for gutting Medicare.   [Video coming soon.  MP3 audio here.]

Chris Matthews's unhinged, fuming performance on Monday's Morning Joe is a good reason why members of the GOP avoid MSNBC. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus aggressively battled the liberal cable anchor after the host unloaded on Mitt Romney for playing the "race card." [Must see video below the jump. MP3 audio here.]

Asserting that just mentioning welfare is racist, Matthews spewed, "When you start talking about work requirements, you know what game you're playing and everybody knows what game you're playing. It's a race card. " Priebus fired back at the Hardball host, dismissing, "We've gotten to a place in politics that any moment of levity is totally frowned upon by guys like you just so that you can push your brand."

On Morning Joe today, Chris Matthews exposed the ugly face of class warfare politics at its most primal.  

Matthews claimed that Paul Ryan wants to "give" money to rich people but "doesn't like" people who depend on government, and indeed, as a conservative, wants to "screw" them. As NewsBuster Brad Wilmouth earlier noted, this isn't the first time Matthews has resorted to this vulgar metaphor. View the video after the jump.

An interesting—encouraging?—comment and admission from Mark Halperin on today's Morning Joe. The MSNBC political analyst said that "almost every national political reporter knows Paul Ryan, likes Paul Ryan, more than they do Mitt Romney.  And that gives Romney a little bit of an edge that he was missing, which is pro-Obama in the press corps."

Halperin's comment came immediately after Joe Scarborough had dared Dems to demonize Ryan, saying it would only help Republicans. Halperin's statement was a bit condensed. But parsing it, he seems to be admitting that the national press corps is pro-Obama, but that they know and like Ryan, and that will be a plus for the GOP ticket as the inevitable Dem demonization of Ryan unfolds.  View the video after the jump.

What does it take to win a Pulitzer Prize or write editorials for the Washington Post?  Hard to say [though being a liberal certainly helps], but familiarity with the basic constitutional principles upon which our country was founded is apparently not required.

On today's Morning Joe, Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post editorialist Jonathan Capehart apologized to Senator Tom Coburn for being unfamiliar with Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the Enumerated Powers clause.  As you'll see from the clip, Capehart's befuddlement regarding the clause seemed to extend beyond the specific article number to the very principle that it embodies.  View the video after the jump.

It appears as though Andrea Mitchell has joined the chorus of "journalists" on MSNBC attacking Mitt Romney for his comments in Israel over the weekend. 

On Wednesday’s Morning Joe, Mitchell tried to scold Dan Senor, senior advisor to Mitt Romney, over what she described as Mitt’s ‘deeply offensive’ comments on the relationship between culture and economic success in Israel.  [Video follows page break;  MP3 audio here.]

Imagine that Fox News had run a spoof video of someone seeming to line up a leading Democrat for a high-powered rifle shot. Need we state the obvious? MSNBC and the rest of the MSM would have interrupted all normal broadcasting for at least the rest of the day to condemn the outrage.

But if a liberal late-night TV show runs a clip of Sarah Palin seeming to take such a shot at Dick Cheney?  Well, that's all in good fun.  Conan O'Brien last night ran a spoof video of Palin, reacting to Cheney's recent comment that McCain's pick of her as his running mate was a mistake, seeming to line up Dick Cheney for a shot with a high-powered rifle. Morning Joe replayed the clip this morning and guest host Mike Barnicle pronounced it "pretty good!" as a guest smiled on.  View the video after the jump.

Debuting the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll on Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, political director Chuck Todd concluded that campaign "hits seem to be taking a greater toll on Romney" and proclaimed: "Call it a likeability gap. 46% of voters told us they didn't like Romney personally. That compares to just 31% who said the same about the President." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

However, on Wednesday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, Todd admitted the poll was skewed: "...our sample was a little Democratic heavy." Hot Air examined the partisan breakdown of poll respondents and discovered just how "Democratic heavy" the survey was, with Democrats having a 12-point advantage over Republicans.

The way to Mika Brzezinski's heart is through her stomach.  Or better put, through using the power of the state to limit what we can put into our stomachs.

On Morning Joe today, Brzezinski declared her love for NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg.  Why? Because of the Nanny-in-Chief's various food prohibitions, the latest being his limit on the size of soft drinks.  Mika's view of those who support a "don't tread on me" libertarian view?  "Idiots", she declared them.  View the video after the jump.

The liberal media paranoia over Mitt Romney’s tax returns reached a new low on Wednesday's Morning Joe.  For weeks, MSNBC has been fretting over Mitt Romney’s refusal to release more than two years of taxes and has devoted days to discussing this non-issue.

Appearing as a guest on Morning Joe, journalist Carl Bernstein poured gasoline onto the liberal fire by saying Romney’s refusal to release more tax returns was a disgrace asking "how we can have a candidate for President of the United States who won't release his tax returns?"  [Video follows page break; MP3 audio here.]

In an otherwise tough interview with Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter on Tuesday's NBC Today about the negative tone of the President's re-election bid, co-host Matt Lauer failed to challenge her on the nastiest attack hurled by Democrats so far, Cutter's own charge that Mitt Romney may have committed a felony.

Lauer repeatedly grilled Cutter on President Obama abandoning the rhetoric of hope and change from the 2008 campaign: "If you think about what your candidate is out there on the campaign trail saying and compare it to what he was saying as a candidate four years ago....are you proud of the message he's out there delivering?...would you say the President has run an exceedingly positive or exceedingly negative campaign?" However, the obvious question about Cutter leading that "exceedingly negative campaign" never came.

Call it damning with pink praise . . .

On today's Morning Joe, BBC's Katty Kay, anchor of the network's American edition, said that Europeans favor the re-election of President Obama because he is more supportive of "European social-democratic values."  You know, those wonderful welfare-state policies that have worked their magic so well that Europe now enjoys . . . an 11.1% unemployment rate.  View the video after the jump.

Might the man who once said of himself "there's been nobody who's a bigger Obama supporter" vote for Mitt Romney?  Maybe.  On today's Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch—ad exec, man-about-the-Hamptons and quintessential wealthy NYC liberal—declared that his support for President Obama is "wavering."

Deutsch said that it was the bad jobs numbers of a couple weeks ago that "changed everything for me."  Reacting to Deutsch's surprising declaration, Willie Geist broke out a variation on LBJ's line about Walter Cronkite.  Said Geist: "if I've lost Donny Deutsch, I've lost Middle America."  View the video after the jump.

We've gone from "hope and change" to hoping blaming Bush will work.  As Joe Scarborough said: at least Mika Brzezinski's honest about it.  Asked whether she believed that President Obama's attempt to continue to blame George W. Bush for the country's economic woes will work as a campaign strategy, a seemingly dispirited Mika Brzezinski replied: "well, I'm hopin'".  Scarborough burst into laughter.

The Morning Joe panel was responding to a clip of President Obama from yesterday in which he analogized Republicans to people who had ordered an expensive restaurant meal, left just as Obama was sitting down to dinner, and then finding himself accused of running up the tab.  View the video after the jump.

Et tu, Tina?  Has Maureen Dowd, by her scalding column this weekend, signaled to fellow liberals that it's OK to rap President Obama?   Dowd portrayed Obama as lazy, nihilistic, removed and self-absorbed.  Now comes Brown on today's Morning Joe, calling Obama "aloof" and not "lovable."

Daily Beast editor Brown made her comments in the context of criticizing Obama's decision to stay out of Wisconsin, not deigning to come to the aid of Tom Barrett, the Dem candidate looking to unseat Republican Governor Scott Walker in today's recall election. View the video after the jump.

Those “war on women” promoters at the networks aren’t very good at follow-through. Not only are the Big Three networks skipping out on the latest sting video of Planned Parenthood on sex-selection abortions, they also ignored the House bill called the Prenatal Discrimination Act, which would ban sex-selection abortions. The House vote on Thursday was 246-168, but since it was passed under rules requiring a two-thirds majority, it failed.

But the point was to put Democrats on the record in favor of the war on baby girls, and for sentences like these: “The White House said President Obama opposed the measure because it intrudes on a woman’s right to privacy and would be hazardous for doctors who perform abortions.” It's apparently not hazardous to the unborn?

With unemployment, gas prices, and the budget deficit stubbornly high, President Obama's fans in the media are having a hard time explaining to people why the current White House resident's job performance is worthy of the reelection they're all working for.

Take former Obama car czar turned Morning Joe economic analyst Steve Rattner who said on MSNBC Tuesday, "I think in a quiet room I could convince you his record is good, but out in the sound bite world of the campaign, it's very hard to explain that record in a positive, clear, persuasive way" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

If between now and Election Day unemployment numbers improve, particularly if they dip below the 8% barrier, you know President Obama, with an MSM assist, will be out there pounding his chest about the number of jobs "he created."

But when the unemployment numbers remain weak?  Well, that's not Obama's fault.  Just ask Mike Allen of Politico.  On today's Morning Joe, trying to explain Obama's early campaign stumbles, Allen declared that certain factors, including the bleak job numbers, were "beyond the control" of Obama.  View the video after the jump.

Imagine that in one 2004 Republican primary, an opponent running to George Bush's left got 40% of the vote, and in another primary, more than 4-in-10 Republicans voted for "uncommitted" rather than support the incumbent president.  Now imagine the doom the MSM would have found that to portend for Bush.

But when a candidate running to the right of Barack Obama garners 40% of the vote in the Arkansas Dem primary, and "uncommitted" amasses an astounding 42% in Kentucky . . . crickets.  On Morning Joe today, Politico's Patrick Gavin proclaimed that PBO's embarrassing performance "doesn't matter."  View the video after the jump.

When the New York Times reported that a pro-Mitt Romney super PAC was toying with a proposal to attack President Obama by highlighting his connections to his former pastor, the controversial far-left Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the liberal media went predictably apoplectic, calling the proposed ad campaign “incendiary and racially-tinged,” ignoring of course the incendiary things Wright thundered from the pulpit for years.

That's why Time magazine's Mark Halperin's defense of Romney and his Super PAC on the May 18 Morning Joe program is striking by contrast. [Audio here. Video below the jump.]

Following President Obama’s confirmation that he does indeed support same-sex marriage, Time magazine’s Mark Halperin confirmed the media’s overwhelming support for the president on the issue.  On Thursday’s edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Halperin said despite the potential political risks Obama now faces in battleground states, the one advantage President Obama clearly has is media support on this among other issues.

“[T]he media is as divided on this issue as the Obama family. Which is to say not at all. And so he's never going to get negative coverage for this," Halperin argued. Sure, "The Republicans will say this is a flip-flop and it's wrong public policy. But when you have almost the entire media establishment on your side on an issue in a presidential campaign, it's very hard to lose politically," the veteran political journalist observed. Indeed, even some anchors on the generally conservative Fox News Channel have Obama's back on the issue, as we noted yesterday.  [Video follows page break;  MP3 audio here.]