Heavens to Murgatroyd! Chris Matthews has reduced Hillary Clinton to a cartoon character. Snagglepuss to be precise. "Exit stage left" was one of the Hanna-Barbera animation's catchphrases, and Matthews used it to wonder whether Hillary was prepared to leave the presidential race, given her flagging political fortunes. Here's how Matthews put it at the top of today's Hardball:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Meanwhile, listen carefully. That sound you hear is the slow falling of electoral delegates, of superdelegates, to Barack Obama. Seven more came aboard today. So with Obama way ahead in elected delegates, now trails Hillary Clinton by only four-and-a-half superdelegates. It didn't help Clinton when her long-time supporter and U.S. congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois called Obama today "the presumptive nominee" of his party.

As Snagglepuss flashed on the screen, Matthews wondered out loud: "does Hillary have an exit strategy at this point?"

View video here.

Gas prices got you down? Ride a horse, says MSNBC.

On a "MSNBC Live," report on "sky high gas prices" anchor Tamron Hall relayed the story of one man who is using a horse rather than a vehicle, but did not explain some important reasons why prices have soared.

"The high prices have led ... one Tennessee man to find a more fuel efficient way to get around town in Bradley County: The guy is riding a horse," Hall said on the May 9 broadcast. "It is cheaper to maintain a horse than it is to fill up a gas tank. He says that it costs $150 to $200 a month to ride and feed that pony."

Four years before Barack Obama gave Chris Matthews a "thrill" up his leg, the senator produced a "chill" in the MSNBC host's leg. On July 27, 2004, during coverage of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Matthews reacted to Obama's prime-time address by rhapsodizing, "I have to tell ya, a little chill in my, in my legs now." [audio available here]

On February 12, 2008, following primary results in Virginia and Maryland, the "Hardball" host again gushed over Obama, this time after a victory speech. Speaking of the Democratic candidate, he fawned, "I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don't have that too often." So, first there was the "chill." Four years later, Obama produced a "thrill." One can only imagine what feelings the likely presidential nominee will create for Chris Matthews's appendages at the 2008 Democratic convention.

Here's something you probably never thought in your wildest dreams you'd hear a Democrat say about MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews:

Do I think he is shamelessly biased and doesn’t care about being biased? Absolutely.

Be still my heart.

As I'm sure you're in as much disbelief as I, and must hear it from the horse's mouth so to speak, the following was reported by The Hill Monday, and somehow slipped underneath the radar until NB member Par for the Course made me aware of it moments ago (emphasis added):

Is it the province of a "correspondent" of an ostensibly objective network to proclaim the tactics of a presidential candidate "inappropriate"? Apparently so, when the network is MSNBC and the correspondent David Shuster. The frequent sidekick to Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann got into it with Pat Buchanan on today's Morning Joe.

Shuster spoke out against Hillary's rough-'n-tumble end-game tactics, while a feisty Buchanan defended Clinton's right to go down swinging. Shuster sounded less the reporter and more the DNC member concerned about damage to the party's presumptive presidential candidate. When Mike Barnicle got into the act, he wanted to be sure not to be seen as insulting the Clintons.

View video here.

DAVID SHUSTER: What is the plausible scenario for what she's doing now, and do you agree, the only plausible scenario is that she's just trying to permanently damage Barack Obama?

MIKE BARNICLE: What about this one, David? What about the fact that, listen, not speaking ill of either former President Clinton or Senator Clinton [God forbid!], but this is all they've ever done in their lives. They've never worked at a private job, they've never worked in corporate America [Rose law firm?], they've been public people for 30 years. All they know is running! That's all they know: that's who they are.

Was it Hardball—or the World Series of Poker? Interviewing Hillary's Howard Wolfson today, Chris Matthews accused the Clinton campaign of playing the white race card. Just minutes later, when Wolfson suggested Matthews might be discriminating against Puerto Rican voters, Chris protested "don't play that card on me."

View video here.

Matthews began the showdown by rolling tape of Hillary repeatedly telling USA Today that she had stronger support than Obama among "white" voters.

"Thrill up my leg"? Forget about it. Chris Matthews's famous description of the excitement he gets from Barack is nothing compared to the tumescent terms in which MSNBC senior campaign correspondent Tucker Carlson has depicted the intensity of the MSM's love affair with Obama. Tucker appeared on today's Morning Joe.

TUCKER CARLSON: It's gonna be such a great election; it has been so far.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Especially when you have the media loving one candidate as much as they love Barack Obama.

CARLSON: But it's more than love. I mean, it's the kind of love that anybody who's been a 9th-grade boy understands this species of love. Do you know what I mean?

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Wow.

SCARBOROUGH: No, it's the truth. It's all-consuming.

CARLSON: It's red-in-the-face, I-think-about-you-when-I-go-to-bed, too embarrassed to stand up, it's sealed-with-a-kiss love. I mean, it's real, it's palpable.

Are "Totally in the Tank for Obama" media members focusing on Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" in order to force Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton out of the race?

Consider if you will all of the attention Limbaugh's months-old plan to keep the Democrat nomination process going as long as possible got Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning following Hillary's tough night in North Carolina and Indiana.

Critical update at end of post: El Rushbo sends NewsBusters German article on this subject!

For instance, ABC's Jake Tapper reported the following at his blog late Tuesday evening in a piece called "Is Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos Working?" (emphasis added, picture courtesy Rush Limbaugh.com):

During Tuesday's coverage of the Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina on MSNBC, co-anchor Keith Olbermann dismissed the importance of the finding that approximately half of primary voters considered Barack Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright was an important factor in their decision, including some who apparently admired the way Obama reacted to the story. And, without naming Fox News, the MSNBC host seemed to accuse FNC of having "done nothing but broadcast this story since it first broke, with the wildest exaggerations and the broadest of interpretations possible." He further expressed relief that, in his view, Wright had not been a strong factor against Obama in the election: "It really does, thank goodness, prove, I think, some of the limitations of the media and of negative campaigning."

Below is a transcript of the relevant comments from Olbermann, which aired about 9:37 p.m. on Tuesday May 6 on MSNBC:

Rush Limbaugh's “Operation Chaos,” the effort to urge conservatives and Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in order to prolong the Democratic nomination battle, certainly annoys MSNBC's Chris Matthews who, during primary coverage Tuesday night, denounced the “mischief-making” by “a talk jock.” In the 11:30 PM EDT half hour, Matthews offered a “Keith [Olbermann]-style special comment” about how “anyone who voted to screw up the political system of this country with the purpose of mischief should carry that with them the rest their lives.” He called it “a ridiculous way to use the vote for which people fought and died,” sarcastically remarking: “I hope you're proud of yourself.” The rant from Matthews:

I have to offer a Keith-style special comment on that. Anyone who voted to screw up the political system of this country with the purpose of mischief should carry that with them the rest their lives. What a ridiculous way to use the vote for which people fought and died, to use that vote to make mischief. I hope you're proud of yourself. [20-second MP3 audio of this comment]

That followed the contention of guest Michelle Bernard, of the Independent Women's Forum, that Limbaugh did “something positive” which helped Barack Obama “because he's said to African-Americans, ask the Democratic Party 'what have they done for you lately?'” and encouraged African-Americans to force “Republicans and Democrats to compete for the black vote.” For that, she concluded, “I say to Rush Limbaugh: good job.”

On Friday's Countdown show, MSNBC analyst Jonathan Alter, also of Newsweek, suggested that voters who support Hillary Clinton's call for a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax are "stupid" as he contended that the Clinton campaign team are "assuming that people are too stupid to realize that this is a bad idea that won't save them any money at the pump." Alter later argued that the tax cut strategy may end up succeeding politically for Clinton because "there are a lot of what are called 'low information' voters" who are "not reading the unanimous, unanimous newspaper editorials against this. They're not talking to the environmentalists, the economists, everybody who unanimously believes this is a bad idea. They're, you know, understandably struggling, and at the pump, they're paying a lot for gas, and they want some relief." (Transcript follows)

Want to see how the mainstream media views Fox News? Look no further than Newsweek's Howard Fineman and the way he thinks the Bush administration uses the network.

Fineman, who is Newsweek magazine's senior Washington correspondent and a regular on MSNBC, told an audience at the Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington, D.C. on May 1 that if you want to know what the Bush administration has in store for Iran, keep your eye on Fox News.

"Now about Iran," Fineman said. "I think there's no doubt they're [the Bush administration] looking to see what can be done there and I would recommend Fox News to you. I can' believe I'm saying this, but if you want to know what's being thrown out there, what balloons are being floated - that's the place to look, okay. That's why you've got to scan all the media."

Though she leavened it with considerable levity, there's no escaping the bottom line: Mika Brzezinski sees Pat Buchanan as a nut. An affable one, to be sure. Even one with interesting things to say. But at heart, a nut. A "crazy uncle" fit for the same crate of cracked pots as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The prelude was Mika's reading of an excerpt from a brilliant essay by Charles Krauthammer in today's WaPo. Writing of Obama's recent attempt to definitively hurl Rev. Wright under the Greyhound, Krauthammer observed:

It's hard to think of an act more blatantly expedient than renouncing Wright when his show, once done from the press club instead of the pulpit, could no longer be "contextualized" as something whites could not understand and only Obama could explain in all its complexity.

Turns out the Wright show was not that complex after all. Everyone understands it now. Even Obama.

That prompted this exchange.

View video here.

It appears MSNBC's Dan Abrams is shamefully mimicking colleague Keith Olbermann's somewhat successful strategy to bring in viewers by belittling his competition.

Think of it as the largely unwatched liberal media member's "If you can't beat 'em, bash 'em" motif.

Despite how pathetic it is, it's certainly worked for Olbermann, whose incessant invective aimed at Bill O'Reilly -- interspersed, of course, between vitriolic rants against any politician with an "R" after his or her name, especially if it ends with "Bush" -- has nearly doubled the "Countdown" host's audience to almost a cool million.

Now, the man that used to be Olbermann's boss -- mired in his own viewership slump as he continually gets trounced in his time slot by "Hannity & Colmes" to the tune of four to one! -- has decided to adopt the former sportcaster's strategy as evidenced by the following partial transcript of Wednesday's "Verdict" (video available here):

Perception is everything, facts are trivial to April Ryan, judging from two recent comments from American Urban Radio Network's White House correspondent. [audio available here]

At the April 29 Rose Garden press conference, Ryan asked President Bush the following question about the economy:

I talked to [Rep.] James Clyburn [D-S.C.] before this press conference. He said, "As a man thinketh, so are we." And Americans believe we are in a recession. What will it take for you to say those words, that we are in a recession?

Of course the following day, data from the federal government show the U.S. economy in slow economic growth, but far from the six months of negative growth needed for a recession. No matter to Ryan, who today went from applying the "as a man thinketh" logic to a 5-year old liberal media meme about the war in Iraq. Appearing shortly after 11:30 a.m. EDT on MSNBC to discuss the 2008 presidential race, Ryan parroted liberal talking points on the Iraq war:

Aren't southern gentlemen supposedly chivalrous? Yet Joe Scarborough, son of the Florida Panhandle, today exploited Mika Brzezinski's less-than-encyclopedic knowledge of sports to lure his Morning Joe colleague into agreeing that the famous former coach of the Indiana University basketball team was none other than . . . Bear Bryant.

The jumping-off point was Joe's wearing of a red sweater today, which as a running gag he claimed was in solidarity with the workers of the world on this, May Day. But when Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, a Hillary supporter, came on toward the end of the show, Scarborough pressed the sweater into double duty.

Dittoheads, you've been dissed. Chris Matthews has dismissed you as "manipulable"— mind-numbed robots, you might say. CNBC's John Harwood seconded the snub. It happened on this evening's Hardball as Matthews mused about the potential impact of Operation Chaos on the upcoming primaries.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: How much of a move do you hear, John Harwood, the so-called Operation Chaos is going to play next Tuesday in Indianapolis [sic], the effort by Rush Limbaugh, the lovable Rush Limbaugh, I must say, to encourage Republicans, registered Republicans, to go vote for Hillary just to cause chaos and perhaps get her the nomination? How big a role will that be?

JOHN HARWOOD: My suspicion, Chris, is that's a lot more talk than action. I think there aren't that many voters who can be manipulated in that way to go make trouble in a primary election. And one of the things that's striking--

MATTHEWS: But when you call yourself a "dittohead," it seems to me you've already defined yourself as someone who is, uh, let's put it this way—manipulable.