Talk about taking one step forward and two steps back. Chris Matthews, on Wednesday's Hardball, opened the show by offering an apology to members of the military and their families for his infamous West Point is the "enemy camp," quote made during coverage of Obama's Afghanistan speech, as caught by the MRC's Jeff Poor, but immediately after that went to an interview with John Murtha, who himself got in trouble with servicemen and women for falsely accusing Marines of killing innocent civilians in Iraq.

There's something about these big events that cause MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews to go off script and say something seemingly ridiculous.

Matthews has publicly admitted President Barack Obama has given him a thrill up his leg after a campaign speech in Feb. 2008, and uttered "oh God," earlier this year after an Obama address to Congress, prior to the Republican response from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal earlier this year. And on Dec. 1, he referred to West Point as "the enemy camp" in coverage following a speech from Obama announcing his intentions to increase troops in Afghanistan. And, later that night - Matthews took a shot at former Vice President Dick Cheney (emphasis added).

"The president said tonight that we're fighting in Afghanistan because al Qaeda is in Pakistan," Matthews said. "Is that what this is all about? Is that why we're fighting and some are dying in Afghanistan? To deliver the message to the government over in Pakistan to fight harder against al Qaeda. It sounds more Rube Goldberg than ‘Remember the Alamo.' Also try tonight to workout whether the president's goals in Afghanistan are achievable. Are they? And of course, there's always Dick Cheney who jumped it from under his bridge to bite the president's ankle even before he made the speech tonight."

Either MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews let one slip tonight, or it was an extremely poor choice of words.

Following President Barack Obama's Dec. 1 speech, which he announced his intentions for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, MSNBC followed with wrap-up coverage of his speech with arguably three of their most prominent on-air personalities - "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann, "The Rachel Maddow Show" host Rachel Maddow and Matthews.

Matthews referred to a scene from "Gone with the Wind" about the American Civil War as an example of "excitement" going into a war. He said that was lacking in the room during Obama's speech.

If you're curious to see how the mainstream Washington, D.C. press views the global warming debate, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift may have tipped off the public off.

On the Nov. 29 edition of "The McLaughlin Group," host John McLaughlin asked about the prospects of a Copenhagen climate change treaty and its possible impact on the U.S. economy. MSNBC and "The McLaughlin Group" regular Pat Buchanan gave some spot-on analysis on global warming alarmist about former Vice President Al Gore and how it pertains to the climate change issue.

"Well, I don't think it's going to have any impact, John, because I don't think it's going to get through the United States Senate," Buchanan said. "And there's a reason for that John, and that's Al Gore's moment has come and gone. The truth is they're changing the name to climate change rather than global warming for a reason."

Former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura says that MSNBC canceled his cable program "Jesse Ventura's America" back in 2003 because he was opposed to the Iraq war.

According to the former professional wrestler, the network continued to pay his salary despite his termination in order to prevent him from speaking his antiwar views elsewhere.

Such was reported by the Los Angeles Times in an interview with Ventura published Sunday (h/t Ed Morrissey):

The global warming alarmists are beginning to lose the PR battle, at least that is what a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll is indicating. But this has the usual purveyors of climate change doom-and-gloom trying to rationalize the shift in public opinion.

 The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin, who regularly has her objectivity called into question on the issue of anthropogenic global warming, attributed this to nothing more than political polarization. Eilperin, a former contributor for the left-of-center Huffington Post and wife of the liberal Center for American Progress' so-called "climate specialist" Andrew Light, appeared on MSNBC on Nov. 28 and offered that explanation.

"What you're seeing is increasing political polarization," Eilperin said. "What we've seen is from since three-and-a-half years ago where there was kind of an all-time high in terms of people believing in it. You've seen the biggest drop among Republicans by about something like 22 points, and then independents dropped less than that and then with Democrats, it was a much smaller drop - just about 6 points."

Have you ever been in an argument with a liberal and got so frustrated by the non sequiturs being uttered that you wanted to ask, "Are you literate? Do you own a newspaper?"

Well, on Wednesday, conservative talk radio host Michael Graham did exactly that to liberal talker Laura Flanders.

Appearing on MSNBC's "The Ed Show," the pair were contentiously debating the need for healthcare reform when Flanders said, "We are seeing a handful of naysayers basically derail our whole process. Americans voted for change."

This was all Graham could stands, cuz he couldn't stands no more (video embedded below the fold with transcript, h/t HotAirPundit):

Twice in the past week, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has on his Countdown show tried to dismiss the popularity of Sarah Palin’s book Going Rogue by mentioning discounts like Newsmax’s promotion that offers the book for $4.97 to new subscribers. Olbermann first raised the issue on the Thursday, November 19, show, as he mentioned rumors of high sales numbers. Olbermann: "Publishing industry rumors, first week sales more than half a million. No idea if any of them were not at these 50 to 75 percent discounts."

On Monday’s show, during a discussion with MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe, Olbermann again tried to credit the popularity of Palin’s book to discounts after Wolffe commented that she would soon have millions of dollars:

KEITH OLBERMANN: Millions, she got it upfront, right? Because she's not going to get millions if they're selling this book at Newsmax for $4.97. You and I, as authors, understand: Get it upfront, right?

RICHARD WOLFFE: We would hope that Bob Barnett did his job in that way. But look, you know, she is turning out the crowds. This book is selling, and let's hope people are reading it.

OLBERMANN: It's $4.97! If we sold books for $4.97, they'd be stacked up out here and people would be taking them as they went home.

Also on the November 19 show, the Countdown host suggested there was "tackiness" in Palin’s plan to visit Fort Hood and donate book proceeds to victims of the massacre there, and quoted a Palin critic who compared her to the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, as Olbermann called the comparison "apt." Olbermann:

Want to understand the liberal mind?  Check out Daily Kos creator Markos Moulitsas on this evening's Schultz show . .

Why does Kos say he hates the Taliban?  Because they aided and abetted Osama Bin Laden in the murder of thousands of Americans?  Nope.  That they are actively engaged in killing American troops in Afghanistan? Guess again.  No, the Taliban's real crime—the only complaint Kos mentions— is that . . . they're not PC.  Not feminist. Not gay-friendly. Hell, they might even be opposed to stem cell research.

Oh, and for good measure, Kos calls conservative Republicans like Michelle Bachmann "the American Taliban."  What was that about dissent being patriotic?

"For the record, our third story is neither ridiculing nor disputing [Sarah Palin's] religious beliefs. It is purely an attempt to discern exactly what those beliefs constitute, so that the voters of 2012 know exactly what they`re getting."

Such was amazingly uttered by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann Tuesday night.

Bear in mind that we are almost three years away from Election Day 2012, and most political analysts on both sides of the aisle don't believe former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is going to run for President then.

Regardless, the "Countdown" host actually spent over five minutes examining -- and, contrary to his assertion -- ridiculing her religious beliefs.

In fact, the disparagement began right from the get-go with how Olbermann described the object of his disaffection (video embedded below the fold with full transcript, h/t Story Balloon):

Life was hell under Bush.  But hang in there: things'll get better under Obama.

Class dismissed: that's really all you need to know about the latest Time cover story—The Decade From Hell And Why The Next One Will Be Better.  But just to drive home the Manichean message, Time editor Rick Stengel and Andy Serwer [of Time stable-mate Fortune], who wrote the cover story, appeared on Morning Joe today.

Of course there's the inconvenient detail about Barack Obama having been elected in this decade.  But not to worry.  Serwer suggests we "see Barack Obama being elected as the beginning of the next decade."

Excerpts from the pro-Obama babble . . .

FNC host Glenn Beck on Tuesday cited a NewsBusters article in his attack on all the television news outlets that have boycotted the growing ClimateGate scandal.

As NewsBusters reported earlier in the day, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC have completely ignored last week's bombshell story about controversial e-mail messages between some of the world's leading global warming alarmists.

By contrast, Fox has been all over this issue.

With this in mind, Beck used the NewsBusters piece to demonstrate that much as in their boycott of the ACORN scandal and green jobs czar Van Jones's peculiar associations, the television press are once again hiding important information from the public hoping it will all just go away (video embedded below the fold with transcript):

Apparently MSNBC's Chris Matthews doesn't want Catholics involved in the political process at all - especially when it comes to abortion. Earlier this month the "Hardball" host declared "The clergy should stay off Capitol Hill." Last night, he accused Thomas Tobin, bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, of "telling public officials how to set public policy," "stepping beyond moral teaching," and "basically assuming an authority" because the bishop requested that Rhode Island Democrat Rep. Patrick Kennedy not take communion due to his support for abortion.

Matthews' based his accusations on a portion of a speech on religion delivered by then Sen. John F. Kennedy in which he stated:

I believe in an America that is official neither Catholic, Protestant, nor Jewish, where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches, or any other ecclesiastical source, where no religious body seeks to impose its will, directly or indirectly, upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials.

Bishop Tobin briefly responded that the Church does not want to "dictate what the public policy should be in the United States from a purely Catholic doctrinal point of view," but "what [it] is trying to do, most of all, is instill good human values but also have Catholics who are in political office be faithful to the dictates of the Church and the dictates of their conscience and the teachings of the Church."

Take a sneak peak at the next episode of the Notable Quotables comedy show.

Apparently MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has a very interesting perspective on race relations.

Enjoy the show and have a Happy Thanksgiving.            

To see current and past episodes in a larger format, check out the NQ Show channel on Eyeblast.tv.

The Obama administration has another reason to hate Fox: it appears to be the only national television news outlet in America interested in the growing ClimateGate scandal.

Despite last Friday morning's bombshell that hacked e-mail messages from a British university suggested a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists -- many with direct ties to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- to manipulate temperature data, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC through Monday evening have completely ignored the subject.

LexisNexis searches indicate that NPR appears to also be part of this news boycott.

By contrast, here are some of the stories news organizations apparently favored by the Obama adminstration have covered since ClimateGate broke:

Tina Brown is the very avatar of elite MSM opinion.  So when the Daily Beast creator, late of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, derides Sarah Palin as ignorant, it's safe to assume she's expressing a view harbored in many a liberal media breast.

On today's Morning Joe, while admitting a grudging regard for her appeal, Brown claimed Palin's confidence is based on "total ignorance."

Hosts Joe Scarborough [who last week took his own shot at Sarah's smarts] and Mika Brzezinski, if not precisely leaping to Palin's defense, did respond with some skepticism.

Leave it to Larry to fan the flames . . .

On today's Morning Joe, Larry O'Donnell called the Roman Catholic bishop who barred Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) from taking communion a "political hack."

Interestingly, Mika Brzezinski had a totally different take, arguing the controversy was not about the Church but about Kennedy publicizing the matter in a play to his base. Though Bishop Thomas Tobin sent his letter to Kennedy more than two years ago, its contents didn't come to light until Kennedy recently revealed them to a Rhode Island newspaper.

A major charitable event is happening in Little Rock, Arkansas, Saturday, and former Bill Clinton apparently will not be in attendance because MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has politicized it on his "Countdown" program.

As Arkansas News reported hours ago, "Nine hundred people or more will get free medical attention from noon to 7 p.m. at the Statehouse Convention Center."

Unfortunately, according to the liberal website FireDogLake, Clinton has decided not to attend as a result of some of the things Olbermann has done on his program related to this event (h/t Hot Air):

You could call it progress in media bias. For years, liberal journalists have blamed Team Bush for the death of hundreds in Hurricane Katrina. The major media found that theme of fatal incompetence simply irresistible. Time’s Michael Grunwald, who has written in-depth articles and a book about the Army Corps of Engineers, is bringing the focus back to long-standing government policies over decades.

But even Grunwald is using harsh language that Time magazine would usually disparage as talk-radio bluster. He said "Hurricane Katrina was a man-made disaster. And some of us have been screaming about that for several years...those of us who have followed this -- you know, we‘re angry about the Army Corps killing 1,000 people."

The occasion to revisit Katrina came from federal District Judge Stanwood Duval, who ruled in favor of plaintiffs who sued the federal government for compensation over hurricane damage. Duval charged the Army Corps with "monumental negligence" in its maintenance of a man-made shipping channel called the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet:

At the top of Friday’s Hardball on MSNBC, host Chris Matthews discovered the reason for President Obama’s political difficulties in recent months: “President Obama has his chin out on just about every hot issue out there....He’s exposed and vulnerable. His poll numbers are dropping. Is he just too darned intellectual? Too much the egg head?”

Later in the show, Matthews talked to Atlantic Media’s Ron Brownstein and USA Today’s Susan Page about Obama’s great flaw. He began by wondering: “I’m not attacking intellectuals because I do appreciate their contribution – but when politicians begin to get a little too intellectual, they lose connection with the American people....I begin to think this administration’s getting almost like one that you would imagine Adlai Stevenson running. Highly ethereal, highly intellectual, egg head. Not connected to real people and their emotional gut feelings about things.”    

Page agreed and pointed out: “...there are many strengths to the Obama administration, but they’ve got an awful lot of people who went to Ivy League schools, which is great, but you also need some people who went to big state colleges.” Luckily, Page found an ‘average Joe’ in the administration: “Vice President Biden’s been the target of some fun, he is maybe the only voice in that inner circle that reflects that kind of big state school mentality.”