Joe Conason

Salon columnist Joe Conason appeared on Monday's Hardball to excoriate former Vice President Dick Cheney: "...You would almost think that Cheney was actually an agent of the nation's enemies..." Host Chris Matthews did not disagree or contest this charge.

Conason and Matthews were discussing the war in Iraq and Cheney's continual defense of it. Playing off the Salon.com's columnist's comments, Matthews compared the ex-VP: "That's what they said, by the way, of Joe McCarthy. You couldn't be a better friend to the communist, in effect, than Joe McCarthy."

Crazy? I'll give you crazy . . .

Last Friday Mika Brzezinski and Morning Joe engaged in some strange and possibly unprecedented TV "journalism."  They invited Terry Jones—the potentially Koran-burning pastor—on the show via live feed, gave former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham the chance to lecture him about Christianity and implore him not to proceed with his plan . . . then summarily cut the feed without giving Jones the chance to say word one in response.

"We don't really need to hear anything else" declared Mika, as she shut down the pastor's microphone.

A number of bloggers, including NB's own Matt Hadro and me, noted and criticized Mika's bizarre move.  But there was Joe Scarborough on the show today, mockingly writing off Mika's critics as "crazy people."

Can anyone think of an angrier group of writers in political punditry than the ones currently published at Salon.com?

Throughout the Elena Kagan hearings, both Joan Walsh and Joe Conason have written anti-Republican screeds accusing GOP lawmakers of all sorts of unsavory things to score political points despite what's likely be a certain confirmation.

However, this disposition goes beyond just the SCOTUS hearings.

On MSNBC's June 30 "Morning Joe," Conason went after Harvard Professor Jeffrey Miron, who appeared to promote his book "Libertarianism, from A to Z." Apparently what drew the indignation from Conason was the theory that government can actually make things worse in an economy: 

You want to know what caused all those earthquake deaths in Haiti as compared to Chile? A Tea Party mental disorder. That is the laughable premise put forward by Joe Conason in a supreme stretch.

If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life — while right-wing ideology may kill you someday.

For those of us unfamiliar with geological terminology, it may come as a shock that the Chilean quake, rated 8.8 on the Richter scale, was roughly 500 times more powerful than the Haitian quake in January, which rated 7.0. Yet in Haiti, probably more than 200,000 lives were lost; in Chile, the number of dead is estimated at about 800. While that is still a terrible tragedy, the Chilean death toll is far less than 1 percent of that in Haiti.

On Thursday's Morning Joe on MSNBC, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo appeared as a guest and recounted some of President Obama's anti-business, anti-wealthy stands as she informed host Joe Scarborough and the panel why some see Obama as anti-business despite his support of bailouts on Wall Street. Responding to Scarborough's declaration that "there has been a redistribution of wealth since Barack Obama has ... been President, it’s the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of mankind, but it’s gone from main street to Wall Street. If I were a Wall Street banker, I’d love this guy," Bartiromo responded:

No, I mean, I don’t see it that way. ... I think that at the end of the day, there has been a feeling out there that he’s anti-business, that there are higher taxes on business and they’re coming, even higher taxes are coming on business and on the wealthiest individuals and the highest earners, so that hasn’t changed.

After Scarborough persisted, Bartimoro added:

Joe Conason's column should be as chilling to conservatives as it is meant to be comforting to liberals.  His message: don't be distracted by the centrist-seeming appointments Pres.-elect Obama has made to his economic team.  He remains as committed as ever to his radical agenda.

Conason's commentary appears this morning at Rasmussen Reports.  Key lines [emphasis added]:

[W]hen liberals point to Summers and other members of the Obama team, crying betrayal, they misunderstand the strategy behind those appointments. The most important thing to remember about the president-elect as he prepares to govern is that he takes the long view -- and that he knows how to make a reasonable case for radical change. He has not taken one step back from the commitments he articulated during his campaign.