Mark Halperin

Joe Scarborough had a jocular way this morning of pointing out the pro-Dem bias in ABC/Washington Post polls.

On Morning Joe, after Mark Halperin cited a new poll from the conglomerate with many findings favorable to President Obama, Scarborough facetiously asked "does Axelrod poll for ABC?" He went on to detail the way the polling combine consistently puts its fat left thumb of the scales for Dems. Video after the jump.

The "moral argument" of the Occupy movement have been unfairly tarnished by violence and as well as frittered away by the group's lack of Tea Party-like political mobilization. That's the consensus of the liberal panelists on today's edition of MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner.

The Nation magazine contributor Ari Melber kicked things off by blaming the recent violence and vandalism of the Occupy Oakland demonstrators on the "system" as it were, blaming police for excessive force against the well-meaning masses. [MP3 audio here; video coming shortly]

Appearing on Saturday's NBC Today, Time magazine and MSNBC political analyst Mark Halperin chatted with co-host Amy Robach about how thrilled the Obama White House has been with the Republican presidential race: "I think the White House is loving this. They've said all year the chaos in the Republican race is good."

That proclamation was prompted by Robach wondering if during the ongoing GOP primary season, "the Obama White House sitting back and enjoying the view?" Halperin asserted: "The President's State of the Union is coming up this week, I think that'll be a good moment for him...the contrast between a guy who is working...versus what's going on, on the Republican side..."

One year ago, America's media were shouting from the rooftops about the need for more civil political discourse following the tragic shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

Less than three days after the anniversary of that horrible event, the gang at MSNBC's Morning Joe gleefully discussed how Mitt Romney is going to "kill" any of his Republican presidential opponents that try to attack him (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

It's hard to imagine the media rooting, even "cheering" for a social conservative like Rick Santorum.  But two certified MSMers claim that Santorum does have the potential to attract such unlikely support.

On today's Morning Joe, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, co-authors of the best-selling Game Change about the 2008 election, both opined that Santorum, given his appealing blue-collar background—and if he can avoid getting prickly with the press—could indeed find the media rooting for him.  Video after the jump.

Some are sanguine about Mitt Romney's chances of wrapping up the nomination if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire—but Joe Scarborough's  prediction in such case was nothing short of sanguinary.  

On Morning Joe today, Scarborough predicted "there will be blood" among conservatives if they see Romney cruising to the nomination.  Video after the jump.

If the liberal media were allowed to select the Republican presidential nominee, there's little doubt who he'd be: come on up, Jon Huntsman!

On today's Morning Joe, Mark Halperin claimed Huntsman "has as good a chance as any of the other candidates to test Mitt Romney" in New Hampshire.  Mika Brzezinski took the Huntsman-love a large step farther, flatly proclaiming that Huntsman "has all the goods."  Vexed by Huntsman's nearly-invisible primary polling numbers, Mika admitted: "I don't get your party."  Video after the jump.

For the second day in a row, the lone so-called conservative anchor on MSNBC supported Politico's hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

After saying Cain "made a fool of himself" with his inconsistent response to the allegations Monday, Scarborough said that if there were another viable conservative candidate in the race, "Rush Limbaugh would be making fun of Herman Cain today" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough continued his almost relentless attacks on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain Monday this time also throwing an unnecessary barb at former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

When the "Morning Joe" discussion turned to what the Cain campaign is doing in Iowa to prepare for the upcoming caucuses, the supposedly conservative co-host said to Time magazine's Mark Halperin, "You may want to tell him next time you see him to read Foreign Affairs and the New York Times" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

While media gush and fawn over the Occupy Wall Street protests wondering how President Obama can take advantage of the sentiments being expressed, they're conveniently ignoring a crucial detail.

As MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said on Tuesday's Morning Joe, "He got more money from Wall Street than any candidate in the history of U.S. politics" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Monday, Newsweek featured an in-depth look at Fox News and chairman Roger Ailes in its most recent installment.

When this subject came up on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Tuesday, after the guests predictably carped and whined about FNC's conservative leanings, host Joe Scarborough observed, "People are shocked and stunned at the blurred lines when Roger Ailes and Fox does it, not so shocked and stunned when Democratic establishment figures have been doing it over the past three decades" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Even Chuck Todd thinks President Obama's new tax plan is a joke.

When asked on MSNBC Monday if the White House believes "tax reform in the context of the Super Committee is a realistic goal," NBC's chief White House correspondent broke out laughing followed by the entire "Morning Joe" panel (video follows with transcript and commentary):

You really have to wonder what debate Mark Halperin was watching Thursday evening.

Appearing on Friday's "Morning Joe," the Time magazine and MSNBC political analyst declared former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney the winner of the Republican presidential debate in Iowa, and actually gave former House Speaker Newt Gingrich - who many thought stole the show - only a C+ (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):

If you noticed something different on Wednesday's "Morning Joe," it was shamed MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin back from roughly a one month suspension after he called the President a D-word back on June 30.

Not everyone was happy about this judging from Alex Pareene's piece at the Obama-loving Salon:

 On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, as the panel discussed MSNBC’s double standard in suspending Time’s Mark Halperin for calling President Obama by a vulgar word on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program, even after the network tolerated former host Keith Olbermann’s numerous examples of harsh language about President Bush, liberal FNC contributor Alan Colmes was obsessed with inserting Rush Limbaugh into the discussion as he spent most of the segment missing the point about the Halperin/Olbermann comparison.

When Colmes finally noticed that the other panel members were concerned about MSNBC’s internal double standard, the liberal commentator contradicted himself from his earlier efforts to insert some of Limbaugh’s alleged name-calling against liberals into the discussion.

In the wake of Mark Halperin's suspension by MSNBC for calling President Obama the D-word, there have been numerous vulgarities aired on the network further proving his offense wasn't what he said but who he said it about.

After MSNBC allowed numerous F-bombs during its Independence Day coverage of the Casey Anthony trial, Matthews uttered a D-word of his own on Tuesday's "Hardball" (video follows with transcript and commentary, vulgarity warning):

CNN's Howard Kurtz began Sunday's "Reliable Sources" talking about Mark Halperin's infamous D-word said of Barack Obama on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday.

Rather hypocritically, there was absolutely no mention of the following F-bomb dropped during prime time on MSNBC's "The Last Word" just three days prior (video follows with partial transcript and commentary, vulgarity warning):

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh had more fun Friday with what Mark Halperin said on "Morning Joe" the previous day.

In Limbaugh's view, you can't call Obama the D-word on MSNBC, but you can debase conservatives however you want including saying they're "racist, sexist, bigot homophobes" (video follows with transcript and commentary, minor vulgarity warning):

Jay Carney admits calling MSNBC yesterday to complain about Mark Halperin's crack [that we were first to report] that the President, at his Wednesday press conference, acted like a "d--k."  Did the White House press secretary take the opportunity of his call to pressure the show to bring on more pro-Obama flacks?

The question arises because on today's show, Mika Brzezinski revealed that "we're getting hit a lot lately for not bringing on people who speak on behalf of the White House and really stick up for the President."

Markos Moulitsas, the founder and publisher of the Daily Kos, demonstrated that he can locate a vast right-wing conspiracy just like the rest of the Kosmonauts. Mark Halperin's suspension, for him, proved once again that Halperin is a right-wing fellow traveler with Joe Scarborough, who's the "real president" of MSNBC:

I think it's wonderful that Halperin betrayed his full feelings about Obama on the air. It's tiresome seeing people pretend that he's some sort of neutral political arbitrer [sic], when he's engaged in a long-running jihad against the truth.

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, MSNBC has put Mark Halperin on indefinite suspension for making an intemperate remark about President Obama on "Morning Joe."

Just a few hours later, conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh told his audience the network's response would have been much different if Halperin had said this about George W. Bush when he was president (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On MSNBC you can call a sitting president a "murderous" "fascist" even muse about putting the President on trial for war crimes, so long as that president is a Republican. But if you dare call a Democratic president a "d–ck," as MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin did this morning it's grounds for indefinite suspension.

While calling any president the D-word is probably not showing the proper respect for the office, it has to be asked where does it rank compared to essentially accusing a president of mass murder and war crimes?

Via TV Newser, we learn that MSNBC has "suspended indefinitely" its senior political analyst Mark Halperin for stating on Morning Joe that President Obama was "kind of a [male appendage]." This is not exactly what the "No Labels" crowd at Morning Joe were expecting. The official MSNBC statement:

Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air.  Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.

When Mark Halperin asked if the seven-second delay was working prior to offering his observation on President Obama's performance at his press conference of yesterday, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski seemed to assume he was joking, and invited the normally mild-mannered pundit to proceed. 

But it immediately became obvious that the joke was on the Morning Joe hosts, because when he spoke, Halperin said of Obama "I think he was kind of a d--k yesterday."  As evidenced in the screengrab, Mika and Joe reacted with shocked amusement.

View video after the jump.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews has for months been bashing potential GOP presidential candidates for not getting into the race to challenge Barack Obama for the White House.

Now that people are throwing their hats into the ring, the "Hardball" host has ripped virtually all of them including the not-yet-announced Texas governor Rick Perry who Matthews vociferously attacked as a phony and a puppet Monday because of hand gestures he made during his speech to the Republican Leadership Conference (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the wake of the release of 24,000 emails from the office former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, the media’s obsession with the former Vice Presidential candidate has reached such a fever pitch that even Morning Joe can no longer stand it.“Did you see the obsessive countdown to Sarah Palin's e-mails being released? Did they not make themselves look like fools and - and just prove - and again we have been harshly critical of Sarah Palin, but did the media not prove how biased , over the top biased they’ve been every step of the way on Sarah Palin?” host Joe Scarborough said this morning.

(video after the break)

Congrats to NB's Tim Graham for writing up a post ("Are Time and Mark Halperin Racist? Herman Cain Omitted Twice in GOP Oddsmaking") linked by Matt Drudge (headlined "Time Magazine Ignores Black Candidate in Race") pointing to an egregious and arguably deliberate omission of Herman Cain's name in Mark Halperin's coverage of the race for the GOP presidential nomination at Time Magazine. Tim noted that Halperin has handicapped the race twice (May 23 and June 6), but has left Cain out each time.

Tim pointed out that Cain's omission is hard to forgive, given that Cain, whose background includes extensive business turnaround experience, a stint as Chairman of the Board of the Federal Reserve in Kansas City, and a number of years as President of the National Restaurant Association, as well as more current involvements with talk radio and Tea Party activism, "participated in the first presidential debate on May 5 to high praise and formally announced on May 21."

There are two additional items which especially make Halperin's second exclusion of Cain appear virtually smoking-gun deliberate:

Twice in the last two weeks has Time magazine devoted a page to Mark Halperin's oddsmaking on who will be the Republican nominee -- the May 23 issue (page 35) and the June 6 issue (page 16). Twice, there's been no mention of Herman Cain. The GOP cast of contenders is lily-white. This seems odd, since Cain participated in the first presidential debate on May 5 to high praise and formally announced on May 21. Are Time and Halperin racists? They can't say they're unaware that Cain is running.

They can't say that Cain is too much of a long shot. In the first set of odds, Halperin put Michele Bachmann at 1,000-to-1. (The best odds in order were to Romney, Huckabee, Daniels, Pawlenty, Huntsman, Gingrich, and Palin, second to last at 60 to 1.) In the second set, Huckabee and Daniels were removed from the list, and Santorum (at 500 to 1) and Ron Paul (at 2,000 to 1) were added. Bachmann was still at 1,000 to 1.  Halperin also added "Mystery Candidate" -- but named those (Rick Perry, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan, and Jeb Bush.)