Far be it from NewsBusters to support more government social-program spending. Still, my antennae went up when I heard AARP's Nancy LeaMond dismiss a half-trillion in Medicare cuts as mere "scalpel" wielding. LeaMond, AARP Exec. VP, made her blithe statement while defending her organization's endorsement of ObamaCare to Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe today.

Which made me wonder: just who is Nancy LeaMond? Click, Wikipedia, click: whaddayaknow?  Turns out that before coming to AARP, LeaMond was a senior Clinton administration appointee and a top Dem congressional staffer. Surprise, surprise!

"A test that uses a single indicator to prompt a decision."

That's how the American  Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines "litmus test" when it's used as a political metaphor (emphasis mine). 

That makes no difference to MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell and Joe Scarborough, who see a new "litmus test" for the GOP developing out of the New York 23rd Congressional District special election.

Scarborough, appearing with Mitchell on MSNBC shortly after 1:15 p.m. EST, slammed potential 2012 presidential hopeful Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) for arguing earlier today on his "Morning Joe" program that there's no room in the GOP for what may be called "Dede Scozzafava Republicans" who are far [left] afield from the Republican mainstream.

After Joe Scarborough’s intra-squad snarking of Keith Olbermann yesterday morning, one might have expected a better-behaved Brew Crew today.

No such luck for Chris Matthews – Pat Buchanan had different plans.

In a discussion of the polling data in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, Joe asked Lawrence O’Donnell why the Democrat was doing so poorly in a state that President Obama won by a large margin last year:

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Why [crosstalk] Democrats doing better in Virginia a year after Obama’s historic victory?

The technical term for the following video is “busting his chops.”

Joe Scarborough provided a wonderful satire of Keith Olbermann’s 2008 election-night bias on this morning’s edition of Morning Joe.  A partial transcript follows the video, which really must be watched for the full effect.

Attaboy, Joe. 

This sort of thing makes up for your left-of-center moments.

UPDATE--Nov. 4 6:35 AM: Mike Was Right

When Mike Allen appeared on Morning Joe today, the very first thing he did was  tweak Joe Scarborough over the 3:1 odds, described below, that Joe had offered to those wanting to bet against Doug Hoffman.  Joe responded that no one, including Allen,  had taken up the bet.  While Allen apparently didn't plunk down any dollars, it must be mentioned that at the end of the original segment, the Politico correspondent did say "we're in" on Scarborough's offer.

So let me acknowledge that in calling the race in the 23rd a toss-up, Mike Allen was right--not ridiculous.  

Looking back, my two cents say the turning point might well have been the under-reported fact that when Hoffman, who does not live in the district, was interviewed by the Watertown newspaper, he demonstrated surprising unfamiliarity with issues important to the district including a major highway proposal and changes to the St. Lawrence Seaway.  Not the kind of thing that gets national headlines, but important to people who live and work in the area.  Candidates everywhere, take note.

The results should also be a rebuke to the New York Republican establishment.  Remember that Dede Scozzafava was foisted on Republicans as their candidate by party chairmen meeting behind closed doors.  If instead there had been a primary, Republicans would almost surely have chosen someone who would have won this race.

--------------------

When you're an MSMer, you're an MSMer all the way--even when faced with facts that might make you like, well, ridiculous . . .

Mike Allen, appearing on Morning Joe, has declared the NY-23rd race a "real toss-up" despite a new poll from a respected organization showing Doug Hoffman with a 17-point lead.

The claim by Allen, Politico's chief political correspondent, was so absurd that, on the spot, host Joe Scarborough offered 3:1 odds to Allen and anyone else wanting to place a few kopeks on Dem Bill Owens.

Earlier today, the Joe Scarborough radio show, with Mika Brzezinski, aired a wide-ranging interview with this NewsBuster. 

Highlights:

• Mika justified her nanny-state proposal of a tax on fatty foods by saying eating habits are not a matter of personal choice because others must bear the health care cost.  Finkelstein's response: kill two birds with one stone by getting government out of the health care business.
• Regarding the White House war on Fox News, Finkelstein observed that the White House should know its strategy has backfired when the likes of Helen Thomas and Dan Rather have defended Fox.
• Mark complimented Mika on exposing the 99 44/100ths liberal environment she experienced at CBS, but chided her for denying that the network has an agenda.  A discussion of the MSM media bubble ensues.

Listen to audio here.

Update [Ken Shepherd, managing editor]: Scarborough responds via Twitter, insisting he was joking [see more at bottom of post]. Video embedded to the right.

Joe Biden is the "greatest Vice President of our time."

No, dear reader, I have not lost my marbles.  I'm merely citing MSNBC's token quasi-conservative Joe Scarborough, who said on this morning's edition of "Morning Joe":

We understand that Joe Biden's numbers are going down, which I think is just stupid because all he has done is – I mean, he's become, in a couple of short months, the greatest vice president of our time.

Not content to allow his credibility to go down in flames alone, Joe took the rest of the Brew Crew with him:

Mike Allen might not be a Republican political strategist, but he tried playing one on TV today, telling the GOP it was "crazy" and "suicidal" to be supporting Doug Hoffman over Dede Scozzafava in a special congressional election in northern New York.

Politico's chief political correspondent offered his unsolicited advice on today's Morning Joe.

View video here.

I rise today in defense of bacon, as well as consuming hamburgers on Independence Day.  And, most importantly, in defense of my mother's awe-inspiring pot roast.

Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe, wants the government to make these classic American foodstuffs, as well as soda, alcohol, and being overweight, cost more.  I apologize in advance for the long length of the transcript snippets – while Brzezinski is pontificating by reading the ‘New York Daily News’ editorial, the rest of the Brew Crew is making fun of her.

No, really [emphasis mine]:

BRZEZINSKI: Some people actually cares about their health, so I'm going to read that for those people. [reading] "A tax on sodas containing sugar has also been under consideration by Governor Paterson, among others."

Here's something you don't see every day: former Republican Congressman turned MSNBC personality Joe Scarborough and perilously liberal PBS host Tavis Smiley agreeing on something.

Maybe even more shocking, this odd couple was also in lock-step with former Bush administration member and current Fox News contributor Dan Senor as well the New Yorker's Jane Mayer.

Appearing together on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, the unlikely quartet not only felt the Obama administration is making a mistake going after the Fox News Channel, but also that it is tremendously benefiting the cable network.

Scarborough went so far to say that as a result of this strategy, "America's waking up in the morning, click, they turn on Fox News" (video embedded below the fold with partial transcript, relevant section at 4:30):

And you thought President Obama just didn’t like Glenn Beck. According to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, the administration’s repeated attacks on Fox News are an attempt to send a message to the rest of the news media: “Fox isn’t a real news organization, so the stories it generates aren’t real news.”

The Oct. 21 “Morning Joe” reported on an exchange yesterday (noted on Newsbusters by Noel Sheppard) between ABC Chief White House Correspondent Jake Tapper and White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs, in which Tapper asked whether it was “appropriate” for the administration to be deciding what news organizations are legitimate.

“I think Jake Tapper was onto what we got onto yesterday morning, because we’ve been having this debate: ‘Does this make sense for them to shoot down at Fox News?’” said host Joe Scarborough. “No it doesn’t if your target’s Fox News.”

Is Barack Obama turning into Spiro Agnew? The White House's attacks on the Fox News smack of the distaste for media opposition espoused by Nixon's vice president almost 40 years ago but are being met with a decidedly different reaction today by the elite media.

Pundits have wondered aloud since last week why the White House would pursue a strategy that seems to be boosting the ratings of a purported 'opposition' news network. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough posited today that the White House's attacks on Fox News are designed to prevent the mainstream media from picking up on stories damaging to the administration (video embedded below the fold, h/t to NB reader Kirk W.).

Every time Fox breaks a story on the radical connections of a White House advisor or appointee, the news is potentially damaging to the administration. But damage is only really done if the rest of the media picks up on the story, reports it, and turns it into a national news sensation, a la Van Jones.

Give Mika Brzezinski credit for candor.  She has stated that during her 10 years at CBS, every reporter, producer and anchor she knew, with one exception, was a liberal.

The Morning Joe co-host made the disclosure today in the course of discussing with Joe Scarborough the White House's attack on Fox News.

Will Mika's revelation trigger a frantic internal investigation at CBS to root out the Republican interloper?

Today, Joe Scarborough continued his feud with Rush Limbaugh, insinuating that the talk radio legend is not a true conservative.

For the second time today, I’m looking ‘round the office, wondering whether I’m being punked.

Hot on the heels of Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize – won for the stellar achievements (?) of the first ten days of his presidency –  we find out that Joe Scarborough believes himself to be the only true heir to the mantle of Reagan and Buckley – at least, among the radio talker set.  

On this morning’s edition of Morning Joe, Scarborough and the Brew Crew had the following exchange:

Update 12:35 | Lachlan Markay - DNC Communications Director likens GOP to terrorists

What a morning at Morning Joe! First, a "senior White House official" sent an email calling Joe Scarborough an "a-----e" for mocking Pres. Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. A bit later, responding to Rush Limbaugh's depiction of Scarborough as a "neutered, chickified moderate," Scarborough repeatedly claimed that Pres. George W. Bush had Rush's "testicles in a blind trust."

Scarborough and Time's Mark Halperin—whom no one would accuse of being a right-wing hack—had some good-natured fun with the Nobel news. A laughing-out-loud Scarborough suggested among other things that Marisa Tomei was more deserving of her Academy Award. But the Messiah will not be mocked, and it wasn't long before NBC's Savannah Guthrie, on the set, announced that she had received an email from "a senior White House official" telling Joe to "stop being an a------e" [spelled out in the original, according to Savannah]. Mika Brzezinski tried to soft-pedal the insult, claiming the White House was "joking." Real side-splitter! Is this the new standard of civility from Dems so offended by "you lie"?

No Peace Prize is likely to be awarded to Scarborough or Rush Limbaugh anytime soon. War has broken out between the two. Scarborough initiated hostilities by criticizing Rush for reveling in PBO's Olympic failure. Rush returned fire yesterday, calling Scarborough a "neutered, chickified moderate." This morning, Scarborough repeatedly claimed that W had Rush's "testicles in a blind trust" for eight years. Joe asserted that he had early and often warned Republicans against profligate spending during the Bush years, while others stood by in support of the president.

It isn't often that one can see two decades of history re-written in under ten minutes.  But such was the occasion on this morning's episode of Morning Joe. Max Blumenthal, author of "Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party," spent his time on the show demonstrating the combined power of cognitive dissonance, wanton ignorance, and a willingness to re-write historical fact.

Let's take it in chronological order, shall we?

First, Blumenthal is asked to present the major thesis of his book:

There he goes again. Joe Scarborough has once again taken to The Huffington Post for one of those look-at-me articles distancing himself from other conservatives: I’m so much less partisan! Our country is weakened by bitter partisanship, and I will not participate! In his article, titled "Thank You Mr. President," Scarborough takes the predictable tack of deeply thanking the Obamas for trying to bring the Olympics back to America. That’s a fine sentiment, even if you don’t have to get this treacly about it:

Nice try, President Obama. And thanks for taking time away from your young girls for the sake of your hometown and your country, Michelle. I know that's never an easy thing to do.

Scarborough lectures both sides about excessive partisanship. But wait – let’s recall how Scarborough showed his generosity to President Bush...or did he?

While Hollywood only rarely (and often by accident) produces something worthy, at least they’re always good for a laugh.

On today’s edition of Morning Joe, the pop culture guest du jour was Carole King, prolific and famous songwriter for Hollywood’s golden music days.  Now the NewsBusters readers of greater life experience may initially have a “Don’t Bring Me Down” reaction – until one gets to this quote:

I want them to learn that they’re there, and that they [wilderness in the United States] need to be protected in the future, because we have about 97 percent of our American land is developed.  And the number, that three percent keeps dwindling, dwindling.  We’ve got to keep our national parks in our minds as we go to protect new wilderness – which, new wilderness is really preserving the status quo.  It’s a new designation, same old God-given land.

The Politico’s Mike Allen appeared on Wednesday’s Morning Joe to both defend the mainstream media’s decision to ignore the ACORN controversy and agree that a double standard is at work. Commenting on a piece he wrote about the subject, the former New York Times reporter spun, "And what we heard was news executives saying that there's so much out there. Two wars, health care, a President who's struggling, that they didn't have time to focus on this."

Asserting that, somehow, Americans should appreciate the media’s efforts to spike coverage of ACORN, He cheered, "I think we should be grateful for that filter so that you go to places- NBC News, Politico, others- that you can trust and you’ll know that what is there is accurate and not speculation." Grateful? How can viewers be expected to trust a source when that outlet ignores certain inconvenient stories?

Entrapment n. In criminal law, the act of law enforcement officers or government agents inducing or encouraging a person to commit a crime when the potential criminal expresses a desire not to go ahead. The key to entrapment is whether the idea for the commission or encouragement of the criminal act originated with the police or government agents instead of with the "criminal."

It's turning into quite the morning for NBCers to defend the left on Morning Joe . . .

First, Chuck Todd flatly rejected the notion that the MSM failed to adequately report on Van Jones, suggesting coverage would have been a waste of time.  Later, Norah O'Donnell came on and suggested that the video of the ACORN employees giving advice on how to evade the tax laws in setting up a brothel with young illegal aliens "might be viewed as entrapment." [H/t FReeper mimaw.]