Cenk Goes The Fuck Off On "Morning Joe"

I would add one more thing to this beautiful rant. President Obama announced at his last address to a joint session of Congress that he would get tort reform into the health care reform bill as a concession to Republicans and they STILL gave him their ass to kiss.

MSNBC's Blatantly Dishonest Editing Of President Obama

This morning whilst watching Morning Joe I happened to catch a clip of President Obama's townhall yesterday. Curiously the actual clip that they played never actually made it into the cutups of the show that are available online but they DID include the discussion that followed the clip.

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Now since the clip itself wasn't included I will just do my best to explain it to you as it was run on MSNBC several times throughout the day. First you see an audience member talking about how FEMA has not been forthcoming in paying to rebuild certain important elements of New Orleans after Katrina, in particular a hospital that there is a big dispute about. In the clip after the man asks his question President Obama is seen saying, and I am paraphrasing here, that he wishes he could just write a check and the questioner responds I guess something to the effect of "Why can't you?" and then, in a moment of levity President Obama says "Well there is this whole thing about the Constitution and Congress..." And you can actually hear the audience members laugh. But you saw from the clip that Joe Scarborough and crew decided that this was beyond the pale to "make fun" of this guy's legitimate concern. Well you know what, I agree. If that WAS President Obama's response then that pretty much would have been a legitimate gaffe.

But of course it wasn't. Here is the full exchange filmed by someone in the crowd.



I am used to cable networks doing some shady editing but this shit went wayyyyyyyyy beyond the pale. And I am sure that is probably why you can't even find that edited clip on any part of MSNBC's site. Hell if people are rushing to apologize to Rush Limbaugh for misquoting him then the whole Morning Joe panel should have to apologize to President Obama for totally misrepresenting what he said in New Orleans.

Taibbi Breaks Out The Whupping Stick

Matt Taibbi went on the attack today on the set of Morning Joe over health care reform. He unloaded pulled out his can of whup ass on the whole crew but in particular he turned his sights on fellow guest Maria Bartiromo. As she continued to try to interject herself into the conversation with nothing better than fact free sloganeering just cluelessly repeating right wing lies and he just kept slapping her down again and again with hard facts. No wonder they only had him on for one segment lol.

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Scarborough Calls Out Sister Sarah

You know Pat Buchanan hated to hear Joe Scarborough tell the truth about Sarah Palin today. But somebody had to do it!

Clueless

And by clueless I mean totally fucking clueless. Thats an apt description of Mika Brzezinski's attempt to talk bout the Skip Gates arrest story this morning. Notice how in her world "look at all sides" means reading from the police report.

What a joke.

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Don't Let The Smooth Taste Fool You

I missed Harold Ford Jr on "Morning Joe" today but Ta Nehisi Coates posted the video of him talking about Skip Gates' arrest. I have to say that he handled his business today for a change.

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Now Coates has some thoughts on why he believes Harold Ford Jr is more animated on this subject than usual. I think that he is partly right that class has something to do with it. But I also grew up in Memphis just a couple of years behind Ford Jr. and my folks were all big time supporters of his dad. The truth is the dude grew up priveleged yes, but his family is mad gully. His uncle, John Ford, of course has made the most news for getting caught up in two different corruption probes at the same time. But many of his other relatives both in and out of politics have also been on the wrong side of the law. His father, Harold Ford Sr. was even charged with some federal crimes back in the day but got off. And his dad also famously referred to east memphis which was overwhelming predominantly white at the time as a place where the "devils" lived after he won reelection in 1994. So the guy isn't somebody who has been shielded from the realities of being a black man in America.

And the truth is the reason WHY I am usually so hard on Harold Ford Jr is because I am used to him representing like he did today or being even more passionate on everyday issues. But since he has been appearing on Morning Joe its like he is just a lap dog for Joe Scarborough. So for me it always seemed like he was selling out so he could keep coming on the show. Now the thing of it is today just so happened to be a day when Scarborough wasn't there so I have to wonder if that factored in to why he spoke more freely. But what I really hope is that we see more of this from him from this point forward.

Love Letters

Jon Stewart gets a lil X Rated with the emails sent from "journalists" to Gov. Mark Sanford practically begging him to come on their show during the "hiking the Appalachian Trail" controversy.

To Sir, With Love

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Painful To Watch

This what happens when you go on TV armed with only a few talking points and someone asks you even mildly tough questions.



Keep in mind that Joe Scarborough is a definite shill for the GOP. But even he can't put up with Michael Steele's bull. If it would have been an adversarial questioner they may have asked Steele if he planned on handing out unicorns with his health care plan too since it seems like the GOP's mythical plan gives everybody, everything and costs negative 100 trillion dollars. Every time I see Steele on TV circus music just starts going off in my head.

What a clown.

Can We Stop Calling Mika Brzezinski A Liberal Now?

Seriously, this chick has been brainwashed at this point and there wasn't much brain there to begin with. I haven't heard her articulate even one policy position that could be credibly described as liberal nor progressive. I am hoping that very soon she pulls a Sarah Palin and quits as well.

Activist Judges

Chuck Todd throws the conservative talking points right back at Joe Scarborough.

Priceless.

"Are We Gonna Get It Done Or Are We Going To Pussy Foot?"

Again Chris Matthews turns in a masterful performance today on Morning Joe. What he did to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski was just the epitome of Awesome Sauce! And he makes the point I have been making about Joe Scarborough and all of the rest of the undercover wingnuts. They want to come up with what sounds like a reasonable opposition to healthcare reform just to obscure the fact that they are really against it and don't want it to pass. That's what it boils down to. If you really want healthcare reform you don't go looking for problems that will stop you from getting it done. Its all a game that they hope to rope people into so that they can turn them against reform by fear mongering over something like the deficit or "Washington beauracrats". Its the same flavor of crazy but with a little more sugar. And I damn near stood up cheering when Tweety called them out for it.

And when he calls Stolkholm Mika out for pussyfooting that was the BEST!!! lol.

We can't afford to allow these people to play these types of games anymore. Its time to put them on the spot and make them justify their opposition and or expose them for the frauds that they are. Looks like Tweety might just be the one out their leading the pack on this issue.

Source Materials

In the Morning Joe segment I posted about earlier today, Joe Scarborough tried to discredit the findings of a New York Times poll that found overwhelming support for a public plan. Of course as usual Scarborough tried to ask as if he had some kind of state secret that nobody else knew about so he couldn't reveal his reasoning trashing the poll. Well I think this post from ThinkProgress about a simlar line of wankery from Senator John Cornyn has solved the puzzle.

The conservative blog Powerline immediately took issue with the poll, arguing (wrongly) that the sample was skewed because 48 percent of respondents reported voting for President Obama last fall, while just 25 percent of respondents reported voting for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Powerline compared the NYT/CBS figures to the actual election results in which Obama won 53 percent of the vote and McCain won 46 percent.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), apparently convinced by Powerline’s argument, cited the blog in two cable news appearances this afternoon to deny that there was any significant public support for the creation of a public health insurance option. “With all due respect to the New York Times and CBS, this polling sample was skewed,” he told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Similarly, on Fox News Cornyn said, “I think there’s been some particularly good blog coverage like Powerline blog talking how that sample was so skewed as to be meaningless.”

snip

Unfortunately for Cornyn, Powerline is wrong to conclude the sample is skewed based on the data they cited. As Slate’s Christopher Beam explained last week, the disparity between last fall’s actual vote tallies and the results reported by NYT/CBS yesterday comes down to respondents being too embarrassed to admit that they didn’t vote:

The main explanation for the gap, say pollsters, is people who didn’t vote at all saying they did. These people tend to say they picked the winning candidate. Just look at the Times and Journal polls, where about 80 percent of respondents said they voted in the 2008 election. In fact, turnout was about 61 percent. (A 20 percent gap is pretty standard.) Pollsters attribute the disparity to the social discomfort of having to admit, even to a stranger on the phone, that you didn’t vote.

snip

To buttress their claim that the NYT/CBS poll was inaccurate, Powerline linked to a recent Rasmussen poll that found comparatively little support for the creation of a public health insurance option, with just 41 percent of Americans supporting such a move. But as Nate Silver documented last week, it is the Rasmussen poll — not the NYT/CBS poll — that falls outside typical levels of support for a public health insurance found in other recent surveys

Evidently Scarborough and Cornyn have been drinking from the same cup of kool aid and that just adds to the point I made earlier about Scar trying to hide his real agenda. He tries to make it seem as if he isn't a mouth piece for Republicans, but he is definitely repeating their talking points. And thats what I hate the most about him. Hell if you are going to be a wingnut don't be half assed about it or try to hide it, go all the way. Don't try to sell the people a fraudulent image of yourself.

Exposed Yet Again.

This back and forth between Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough illustrates yet again why I just can't quit Tweety. The guy is uninformed many times, uninterested at others but about once a week he exposes and idiot as being....and idiot.

Joe Scarborough has been doing his dead level best to try to obscure how much of a right wing ideologue he is lately on his show. He still opposes just about everything the rest of the wingnuts oppose but he finds different more plausible reasons for opposing them. But with healthcare reform for instance he really doesn't want it to go through because he knows it will help Democrats. So he spins it as a deficit problem to make it seem like he opposes it because he is a fiscal scold.

But Tweety just owns him on the discussion of the politics of the situation. Scarborough is totally wrong in just about every aspect of his argument. But instead of conceeding it he just kept on talking through the break because he hates it when a guest shows him for who he is and what his positions are. And to his credit Tweety just kept busting him in the mouth with the truth. I doubt if Chris Matthews will be invited back any time soon.

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Classic.

Somethings Been Missing On Morning Joe

I have a love hate relationship with Morning Joe and no matter how frustrating it is to watch I still find myself watching it every weekday morning. Well the last two days it has been very apparent that Joe Scarborough and his yes men and women have gone out of their way to not talk about the assassination of Dr George Tiller by a crazy right to lifer. I thought it was pretty cowardly for them not to talk about it but I just chalked it up to the yellow streak in Scarborough's nature.

Turns out there is more to the story.

Maddow actually led with a headshot of Michael Griffin, the first abortion-doctor murderer, who killed Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola, Florida in 1993. She then moved on to copycat Shelley Shannon, who wrote letters of support for Griffin shortly before she shot George Tiller in both arms, an ominous foreboding of his murder 16 years later.Maddow could have called on a colleague with first-hand knowledge of the Griffin case -- Joe Scarborough, the folksy host of the network's Morning Joe and Griffin's pro-bono lawyer in 1993. A Voice cover story in 2008 examined in great detail Scarborough's role in the case, as well as the singular impact his exploitation of the abortion issue had in Scarborough's 1994 initial election to Congress. So what might his colleagues have learned about defending abortion-doc killers from Morning Joe?

Well....

Scarborough's hometown of Pensacola -- where his show once frequently originated -- was the site of the first two abortion murders, the second also occurring during his first run for Congress in 1994. A raw 30-year-old, Scarborough's surprising Republican win was principally funded by anti-abortion groups and he immediately went to Washington and voted against bills to protect abortion clinics, including one version sponsored by a Republican congressmen.

Griffin handwrote the Voice two long letters last year after we contacted him in prison, describing in depth his relationship with Scarborough. While Scarborough tried to minimize his ties in an interview, claiming he was merely doing "a favor for a friend" and briefly searching for a lawyer who'd take the case to trial, Griffin detailed Scarborough's efforts to stay on the case and work with the trail attorney.

So Scarborough himself has first hand experience with representing domestic terrorists, and for free no less. Of topic but I would say representing a cold blooded killer because he is a family friend is worse to me than "palling around" with Bill Ayers.

So the question is will any guest who goes on Morning Joe this week push the issue and bring up the murder or will they do like most of them always do and kiss Scarborough's ass?

Name One

What do you want to bet Joe Scarborough doesn't invite Ed Schultz on his show again any time soon? See thats what happens when you challenge a jack ass to back up their rhetoric. When Ed tells Joe to "name one" just check out the look on his face as he tries to bluff and bluster away from the question of which imaginary Democrats are worried about Nancy Pelosi. I only wish more guests on "Morning Joe" would challenge him the same way.

A Translation

Today on Morning Joe they showed the clip of Jesse Ventura PWNING Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the View yesterday. To save you the trouble of watching what the chickenhawk Joe Scarborough said about Jesse Ventura's appearance, I will just give you the shorter version.

"I just can't understand why all of these people who have actually BEEN waterboarded keep calling it torture"

You stay classy Joe!

Rusbo Apology Watch

The clock is now on Representative Tom Price.

Barry Goldwater And The CIA

If you go over to the "Morning Joe" website and look at the clips for today you wouldn't know that Lawrence O'Donnell was even on the show today. The reason why might be the fact that O'Donnell pointed out that Barry Goldwater, like Pelosi did yesterday, said the CIA lied to him back in 1984. Because Joe Scarborough and the rest of his yes men and women had spent all morning trying to convince the world that the CIA NEVER lies this was probably an inconvenient truth for them.

Thank God for MediaMatters




Now notice that in order to support torture Joe Scarborough is willing to defame one of the major players in the conservative movement, Barry Goldwater, by saying he was crazy. That is the state of Republicans and wingnuts today. They will throw anybody, even their most revered icons, under the bus in order to protect the Republican brand. Disgusting.

Fixt

There Go Dat Man

Lawrence O'Donnell strikes again. This time on Morning Joe. With just one question he exposed Republican Representative John Shaddeg, who Joe Scarborough had been slobbering over, as a global warming denying hack akin to Rush Limbaugh.



The best part was Scarborough trying to step in and warn Shaddeg about O'Donnell only to have him get PWNED anyway. How long before MSNBC announces that he is going to get his own show?

They Got Nothing

When even Joe Scarborough is calling the GOP out for not having any alternatives you know they have hit rock bottom.