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Let he who is without a Y chromosome cast the first stone . . . Today's Morning Joe afforded viewers a study in hypocrisy: the all-male makeup of a panel at yesterday's House hearing on contraception was bashed by the show's panel consisting entirely of, yes, men. With Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough having the day off, Willie Geist and Mike Barnicle took guest-hosting turns. Barnicle introduced the subject, harrumphing about the "absurd picture we just saw of, it basically looks like an all-male locker room at a golf club." Lawrence O'Donnell and Dem congressman Elijah Cummings joined in the...

Those imagining Mika Brzezinski as a straight-down-the-line liberal will be surprised by her comments on today's Morning Joe. Brzezinski didn't demur after Joe Scarborough described her as a Catholic who is "more conservative than many" on social issues. She proceeded to prove Scarborough's point by defending Rick Santorum's stance on contraception. The show had played two clips of Santorum in which he had called contraception "harmful to women" and said that contraception "is not OK." View the video here.

Check out the video of the opening of today's Morning Joe. In just over two minutes, the show ran clips of Knicks player Jeremy Lin hitting a three-point buzzer beater last night . . . no fewer than 10 times. But Morning Joe was far from finished. I counted a total of 28 Lin clips during the course of the show. Donnie Deutsch opined that "this is one of the few things where the 1% and the 99% can agree." Mike Barnicle later expressed a similar sentiment. Clearly the Lin story is moving America. But query how long he will...

There was a surprisingly positive consensus about Rick Santorum on today's Morning Joe. Most remarkable was the observation by Obama fan Mika Brzezinski, who said "I don't agree with anything he says, but I like the guy." H/t to NewsBusters reader D.B. for audio assistance. Joe Scarborough and Willie Geist were also upbeat on Santorum, Scarborough astutely observing that "90% of Americans don't obsess on social issues," so that what some would cast as controversial past statements by Santorum won't hurt him nearly as much as might be imagined. View the video here.

Christopher Hitchens, RIP, would have loved the rough-and-tumble of today's Morning Joe. The first half-hour was a jolting fix for political junkies. If the goring of Newt Gingrich was predictable, there was much that was not. Michelle Bachmann's debate performance was roundly praised. Lefty Jeff Sachs put himself to Ron Paul's right on the Iranian threat. Joe Scarborough and Donny Deutsch reported that normally-Dem New York CEOs have deserted Obama en masse. View the video here.

Philosophically, you'd think Rudy Giuliani might align more closely with Mitt Romney than with Newt Gingrich. So what's behind Rudy's recent statement that Gingrich could be the stronger candidate? And why did Giuliani go on Morning Joe today to trash Romney as "elitist" and "a man without a core, a man without a substance"? Well, Rudy also reminded viewers that "I ran against him in '07, '08." And as Rich Lowry has observed, "in 2008, the other Republican candidates hated Romney." Just this morning, John Podhoretz tweeted: "Re: Rudy's attacks on Romney today. Remember: SOMETHING kept Rudy out of NH...

Was someone asleep at the switch of Morning Joe's vaunted seven-second delay? On Morning Joe today, Chuck Todd was seen flipping the bird as the show went to break and he waited to come onto the set. Hat tip reader Ray R. In defense of the NBC political director, he might well have been operating under the assumption that his off-set antics would not be televised. View the screengrab and video here.

Pelosi: GOP tax bill ‘doesn't have a shot’By Mike Lillis - 12/09/11 01:01 PM ET Republican "extremism" is the only thing stopping Congress from finalizing an extension of the payroll tax cut and getting out of town for the holidays, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi charged Friday. The California Democrat hammered the tax package from House Republicans, warning that the addition of "poison pill" riders — particularly language expediting approval of the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline — means the bill is dead on arrival. "Their proposal doesn't have a shot," Pelosi said during a brief press event in the...

Zbigniew Brzezinki's indictment of the United States was so harsh—calling America "one of the most socially unjust societies in the world"—that even his own daughter Mika was taken aback, asking her father to explain himself. But that didn't stop Andrea Mitchell from emphatically agreeing with Zbigniew Brzezinki's condemnation of the USA. In the course of doing so, Mitchell called the Tea Party and resistance to ObamaCare "exaggerated forms" of protest, while praising Occupy Wall Street as "a real movement" with "real passion and anger." View the video here.

Remember the notorious Herman Cain commercial in which his campaign chief of staff concludes his talk by taking a puff on a cigarette? It wasn't long before the crew on the Morning Joe show good naturedly mocked that commercial. Today Joe Scarborough is no longer mocking that commercial. His show is emulating it in what is perhaps the most bizarre promo ever aired for a supposed news and commentary show.

NBC's Chuck Todd on "Morning Joe" today: "Apparently the Republican base is going to get dragged, kicking and screaming to come to the conclusion that they're going to have to support Romney at the end of the day. I mean, it is amazing to me to watch this. "This is a candidate in Gingrich. He is now, the anti-establishment candidate. A former Speaker of the House whose businesses actually have addresses on K Street in Washington, D.C. It's not just -- it's symbolically right there on K Street. "That to me tells you how much energy there is against Mitt...

Newt Gingrich’s comment about Occupy Wall Street protesters and personal hygiene during the Family Leader “Thanksgiving Family Forum” sent MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski into a tailspin this morning. She called Gingrich’s statement to protesters (”get a job, right after you take a bath”) arrogant and disgusting. Brzezinski was so disturbed by his quip that she said she was “sickened” and that it made her skin crawl. Adding to what can only be described as disheveled and scattered commentary, fellow “Morning Joe” cast member Willie Geist then handed some belts to Brzezinski in the middle of her rant. She then paused to...

Was this sober political analysis, or merely an MSMer pining for the good old days of Speaker Pelosi? On Morning Joe today, touting a Politico Pelosi puff piece about her "golden touch," Mike Allen claimed it was "very possible" that Democrats would retake the House majority in 2012. View the video here.

Ever been watching Morning Joe, and wished you could stop the steady stream of liberal blather? Simple. Say the magic word—Solyndra—and watch the gabby guests fall suddenly silent. Today's show offered a prime example of the phenomenon. For the first ten minutes, the panel had a great old time gabbing and joking on the theme that the Republican presidential field is a mass of morons. They laughed at the mere mention of Herman Cain, likened the GOP field to a vaudeville show, dragged out the shopworn "bar in Star Wars" simile, and called the Republican candidates "jokes," "clowns" and "stupid."...

Herman Cain has been taking heat for his response to questions about Politico's story on alleged sexual harassment. But today on Morning Joe, it was Politico's own Jonathan Martin, lead author of the story, who was being evasive about the details of the allegations against Cain. Incredibly, when Willie Geist asked him to describe specifically what Politico is accusing Cain of having done, Martin hemmed, hawed then ultimately said "we're just not going to get into the details of exactly what happened with these women," beyond the sketchy generalities in the Politico story. View the video here.

As reported on Thursday by Newsbusters' Mark Finkelstein, Joe Scarborough and some members of his MSNBC Morning Joe crew shot their mouths off about what Mike Barnicle described as a  "police riot" at the Occupy Oakland protests before waiting for all the facts. And now it appears that the Morning Joe folks have shot themselves in the foot as well since reports from the scene show that it was the police who were clearly provoked by the Occupy Oakland demonstrators. So were these reports from the usual "rightwing" suspects? Nope. The reports confirming the provocations from the demonstrators came from...

If not an unmitigated frozen-flying-pig-in-Hades moment, it was certainly something noteworthy for its rarity, coming from the lips of David Gregory . . . On today's Morning Joe, the Meet The Press moderator, in one surprising swoop, managed to praise a statement from Mitch McConnell while simultaneously seeming to acknowledge that President Obama's economic program has failed. View the video here.

Today, some members of the Morning Joe panel piously preached the importance of not jumping to conclusions regarding the clash between "Occupy" demonstrators and police in Oakland, California yesterday that left one man seriously injured. But that didn't prevent Mike Barnicle from describing the event as a "police riot" or Joe Scarborough from speaking of police "brutality." H/t NB reader Ray R. Interestingly, Mika Brzezinski was the voice of reason, declining to condemn the police, saying "I'd wait"--presumably to get all the facts. View the video here.

...ATR’s Ryan Ellis articulated it best in his initial response to Cowen: Would a grand bargain with $10 in promised spending cuts for $1 in tax hikes be a good deal for conservatives? No. We have been through this before. In 1982, President Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush was promised $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes. In each case, all the tax hikes went through, since that's a matter of a single, affirmative tax law change. The spending cuts never materialized. It...

If Herman Cain has been harshly criticized for his 9-9-9 plan, which includes a 9% national sales tax, should we expect Robert Frank to come under fire? After all, on Morning Joe today, the Cornell University professor proposed a progressive consumption tax that could go to . . . 100% on the rich. Frank's notion is that the very high rates would discourage the rich from building "mansions" [a term he used multiple times during his appearance]. And the taxes thus collected could go for things he thinks we need. For example, Frank incredibly claimed that in the US, "we...

Sometimes, a show's guest list is enough to illuminate its liberal bias. Take today's Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough has previously spoken of the show's prevailing 10:1 ratio of liberal to conservative guests. But the show took matters that silly millimeter longer today, with a lineup utterly devoid of any Republican or conservative guests, to wit: Katty Kay--BBC John Heilemann--New York magazine Mike Barnicle--former Kennedy-clan aide Carl Bernstein --Vanity Fair, formerly of Washington Post Eugene Robinson--Washington Post David Gregory--NBC host, Meet the Press Al Sharpton--MSNBC host, activist Touré --MSNBC contributor, truther Video and more here.

A lively GOP debate dissection on today's Morning Joe. Mika really liked Romney's performance, saying among other things that he was "fabulous." She also had surprising praise for Michelle Bachmann. There was consensus that 9-9-9 was "deboned" and that Herman Cain hurt himself badly with his pre-debate answer on releasing terrorists from Gitmo. Michael Steele had a striking way of saying that Perry's aggressiveness backfired. Video and more here.

Barely a week ago, we noted that the Morning Joe crew was blowing off the Solyndra scandal. "There's no there, there," they sniffed. But facts are pesky things. A devastating email proving that top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett was warned about Solyndra's possibly impending bankruptcy before PBO made his photo-op visit to the company compelled Joe Scarborough & Co. today to acknowledge that there is a there there. Perhaps even more significant was a clip Morning Joe played of President Obama defending his administration's decision to fund the soon-to-go-belly-up solar panel maker. In stating his case, Obama revealed his fundamentally...

If Ken Burns ever decides to stop making documentaries, he could always go into comedy . . . On today's Morning Joe, Burns claimed he was non-political, despite repeatedly attempting to draw parallels between Prohibition, the subject of his current film, and themes in current conservatism, particularly immigration. At the same time, Burns ignored the modern-day prohibitionist sitting right across the table from him--Mika Brzezinski--the neo-Carrie Nation who would ban everything from cigarettes to soft drinks, transfats to fast food. View the video here.

What a curiously incurious Morning Joe bunch! Joe Scarborough says Solyndra "is just not a story I have focused on" and John Heilemann similarly admits to not having "drilled down" on the matter. Meanwhile, Harold Ford, Jr. assures us that when it comes to any potential Solyndra scandal, "there's no there, there" and that no one "has done anything illicit here at all." A blasé Joe Scarborough grudgingly introduced "this Solyndra thing," citing those pesky "conservatives on Twitter" who keep raising it. The show deigned to devote under two minutes to the story, with nary a mention of the facts...

A skirmish broke out on Morning Joe today as Tavis Smiley claimed President George W. Bush "lied" the USA into the war in Iraq. Joe Scarborough and--surprisingly--Jon Meacham forcefully refuted Smiley's slur. Scarborough unwittingly provoked the incident when, commenting on yesterday's 9-11 observances, he called for a Kumbaya moment in which Americans would put aside politics and thank presidents Bush and Obama for keeping the country safe. That set Smiley off: "the reality is that one of those guys lied to the American people"--and the fight was on. View video here.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address? FDR's day of infamy and nothing to fear but fear itself? JFK's ask not? Reagan's Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall? Meh. Not bad I suppose, but nothing compared with Barack Obama's immortal rhetoric, such as when he proclaimed, uh, like, when he intoned, that is . . . On today's Morning Joe, the unctuous Harold Ford, Jr. went into sycophantic overdrive, telling White House press secretary Jay Carney that President Obama is "the greatest orator that the office has ever known." View the video here.

Remember "What's The Matter With Kansas?" That was liberal native Kansan Thomas Frank's extended kvetch over the refusal of average Jayhawkers to engage in class warfare by supporting soak-the-rich policies. The same mindset was on display on Morning Joe today. HuffPo's Sam Stein asserted that the failure of many less-than-rich Americans to support tax increases on the rich amounts to voting "against their own self interest." View video here.

Pat Buchanan regularly serves as Morning Joe's lone conservative in the show's self-described 10:1 ratio of lib to conservative guests. But Buchanan this morning demonstrated that he is anything but a Republican partisan. Sounding more like Barney Frank after a bad night's sleep, Buchanan blasted President George W. Bush, claiming 43 "broke the Republican party and frankly he broke the United States as a superpower." View the video here.

It's enough to make you scream . . . On Morning Joe today, Howard Dean rapped Mitt Romney for calling on the Libyan rebels to turn Gaddafi over to the US for trial. According to Dean, Romney's suggestion made "no sense" and exposed his lack of foreign policy experience. There was just one little problem with Howie's hypothesis. Romney never called for the rebels to turn Gaddafi over to the US. As was clear from both Romney's words in the clip Morning Joe aired of his Fox News interview with Neil Cavuto, and in the graphics at the bottom of...

Want incisive news analysis and perspicacious probing of the people and events of the day? Then Mike Barnicle is your man—not. On today's Morning Joe, reacting to Jon Huntsman's criticism of Republicans who reputedly reject science, the former Boston Globe columnist inanely asked former RNC Chairman Michael Steele: "what percentage of Republican delegates who go to the convention do you figure are total nutcases?" Video after the jump.

Barney Frank has to be the biggest sourpuss in Congress. The liberal representative from Massachusetts has made an art form out of ripping off his mike and abruptly ending an interview. This testy feller could pick a fight in a phone booth. So Frank would be the last person you'd expect, in commenting on the debt ceiling deal, to break out a classic line from comedian Henny Youngman. Yet that's exactly what Barney did on Morning Joe today, in explaining why he was supporting a deal that contained much he didn't like. View video here.

You mean, like the Americans who made president someone who two years before had been a state senator and ran on "hope and change"? Seriously, just who did Zbigniew Brzezinski have in mind when he said this: "We have a large public that is very ignorant about world affairs, very susceptible to simplistic slogans by candidates who appear out of nowhere, have no track record, but mouth appealing slogans." View video here.

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." View video here.

MSNBC senior political analyst Mark Halperin was suspended on Thursday by the cable network after he called President Obama “a dick” on a popular morning show and then quickly apologized. “I thought he was a dick yesterday,” Halperin, who also is an editor-at large for Time, said on Morning Joe, referring to the President’s conduct during his press conference. Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/58098.html#ixzz1QlyB21p0

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 here.

Mike Barnicle has greeted Newt Gingrich's announcement of his presidential candidacy with a sneer, calling the former Speaker of the House "a delusional loser." The former Kennedy-clan retainer and Boston Globe columnist seasoned his attack with some snobbery, disparaging Gingrich's educational background. Barnicle spewed his bile on today's Morning Joe. View video here.

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. FDR's "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Meh. Not bad, but nothing compared with Barack Obama's announcement last night of the killing of Osama Bin Laden . . . at least, apparently, in the eyes of Donny Deutsch. Appearing on Morning Joe today, Deutsch said of President Obama's remarks "I have never seen a more commanding Commander-in-Chief." View video here.

Just when the media adulation of Barack Obama might have been showing signs of waning, along comes the killing of Osama Bin Laden to drive it to new sycophantic heights. In the genre, it will be hard to outdo the schoolgirl-crushiness of Margaret Carlson. On today's Morning Joe, Carlson characterized the operation against Osama Bin Laden as the moment when "Professor Obama turned into General Obama and ran this incredible raid." View video here.

Call him a NOW-hawk . . . Of all the reasons to send our people to fight and die in Afghanistan, spending $2 billion per week in the process, Howard Dean has managed to come up with perhaps the worst: feminism. On today's Morning Joe, Dean explained that "the whole reason" he used to support President Obama's waging of the Afghanistan war was that leaving the country would plunge its women back into "the Stone Age." But now that Afghan President Karzai has showed insufficient support for women's right in Dean's eyes, it's time to get out. View video here.

Mika Brzenszki has recently lamented the gap between the earnings of men and women, and has pointed out that the top 30 CEO's count just one woman among them. I'd like to know where Mika's compensation stands relative to her "peers". Considering her commitment to a forthright and honest discussion, let's invite her to defend her own compensation.

On Morning Joe today, ad man Donny Deutsch called Glenn Beck a "despicable putz." For good measure, Deutsch also described Beck as "a disgusting human being." Deutsch was reacting to a clip of Beck from yesterday confirming that he was indeed leaving his Fox News show. Deutsch was clearly proud of his epithet, regretting that Pat Buchanan didn't respond to it in his subsequent comments. View video here.

Are you old enough to remember the polio-era line: "funny as an iron lung"? After all, what kind of person would find funny the notion of someone fighting to breathe? Answer: Mika Brzezinski. Today's Morning Joe played a Letterman clip of a faux-promo for an imaginary TV show called "The Dick Cheney Story." As the title song from the Mary Tyler Moore Show plays merrily in the background, we're treated to images of Cheney wielding a gun, in a wheelchair and undergoing open-heart surgery. The clip closes with video of Cheney fighting to get a breath of air. Cut to...

No wonder he left Fox News . . . On Morning Joe, Major Garrett, formerly of Fox News, now with the National Journal, claimed to be "militantly non-partisan" . . . then proceeded to offer a passionate defense of Pres. Obama's Libya policy. As an hors d'oeuvre during the discussion of the need for the media to acknowledge their leanings, Katrina vanden Heuvel risibly refused to admit that her Nation magazine is left-wing. View video here.

Mika Brzezinski might be horrified by a hand-tossed pizza, but she's completely unfazed by the 2012 Republican presidential field. The Morning Joe co-host today disdainfully dismissed the GOP White House hopefuls, categorically stating "they can't win." Mika made her triumphal declaration during a panel discussion of Republican primary prospects. Pat Buchanan countered with the '92 historical analogy. View video here.

Is a pizza about to push Mika Brzezinski over the edge? Seriously. Her frantic reaction to finding her daughter and friends sharing a Domino's has me worried about Mika's state of mind. Regular Morning Joe viewers know that Mika's dream job would be as Kommissar of the Food Police. Her concern about obesity, particularly of the childhood variety, is commendable. But her solutions--heavy-handed government intervention of the sort Mayor Bloomberg has made infamous--would flout individual liberties. Things came to a deep-fried denouement this morning, as a quasi-hysterical Brzezinski described her horror at discovering girls . . . eating pizza. View...

For some time now, Pres. Obama and his camp have taken malicious glee in praising the health care plan Mitt Romney put together as governor of Massachusetts. The Dems well know that their accolades amount to a millstone around Mitt's GOP primary neck. David Axelrod took the art form to another level on Morning Joe today. After some light-hearted banter on the subject, Axelrod went out of his way to solemnly state for the record that RomneyCare "quite seriously, really was a template" for ObamaCare. All this came much to the amusement of the Morning Joe crowd. View video and...

All you have to know about why conservatives were dissatisfied with Kathleen Parker as the supposedly conservative counterweight to Eliot Spitzer on the pair's recently-canned CNN show was crystallized on Morning Joe today. The panel unleashed an absolute gush-a-thon over Parker, Mika Brzezinski declaring her "one of my favorite people" and Willie Geist describing her as "a great writer." For good measure, the MSNBC folks delighted in swiping at rival CNN. Mike Barnicle took top trash-talking honors, claiming Parker had been "brutalized" at the network. View video here.

Shades of bitter-clingers! Chuck Todd has developed an interesting device to delegitimize support for Gov. Scott Walker, depicting his backers as uneducated, frustrated, blue-collar people who are willing to "lash out at government workers." Yup, there's no respectable basis to support Walker and his call for reforms on a collective bargaining system that have nearly wrecked Wisconsin and many other states. No, there's just the irrational reaction of the embittered, ignorant masses. View video here.

Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and Newsweek columnist, rained on the Morning Joe parade this morning by arguing President Obama blew it in Egypt and has now left the country in a fragile state potentially susceptible to domination by the Muslim Brotherhood. Prior to hearing Ferguson, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough thought Obama did pretty well with the situation, however Ferguson passionately attempted to convince them otherwise. Brzezinski claimed “looking at all the different reports coming in, and the pictures, and the peacefulness on the streets of Cairo, so far so good it actually seems like it went pretty damn well.”...