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I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting really tired of watching a bunch of extremely rich pundits sit around and tell the rest of us that there just hasn't been enough shared sacrifice from the working class, the elderly and the poor yet in order to solve our deficit problem. But that's exactly what the viewers are treated to day after day on MSNBC's three hour long Villager conventional wisdom regurgitation-fest called Morning Joe.

This Wednesday was no exception and immediately following the so-called "fiscal cliff" debacle coming to a conclusion, and the pundits on there didn't miss a beat with demands that President Obama had better get out there and use his bully pulpit to explain to the American people that we're all just going to have to be willing to give a little more in order for Republicans to not kill the hostage called the world's economy over this upcoming debt ceiling standoff.

This week we had Tom Brokaw going on Meet the Press and telling everyone that there's nothing wrong with raising the retirement age for Social Security and telling the lie that Americans are living longer. It's little wonder he'd have that view since he's not ever going to have to worry about his retirement security. And yes, rich people like himself are living to be older. Not so much for most of the rest of us.

If these guys want to go on the air and pontificate about how we ought to get a pound of flesh out of the working class, I think their salaries and net worth ought to be displayed right under their names in the chryon for the viewers. Maybe they'd feel a little differently about their opinions.

According to Forbes, Brokaw has an estimated net worth of $70 million.

And if the site Celebrity Networth is accurate, Scarborough's is $18 million and Brzezinski's is $8 million.

I'm not sure what some of the others who were on there this Wednesday like David Walker, Chuck Todd, Dan Senor, Richard Haas and Mark Halperin are worth, but I'm pretty sure they're all being paid really well and aren't worried about relying on Social Security for a comfortable retirement as well. But every one of them was joining in on carping about the deficit that none of them cared about it when Bush was blowing holes in it a mile wide with tax cuts and wars that weren't paid for. Deficits only matter when Democrats are elected as president.

And as far as Walker's claim that his group has gone around the country and gotten a positive response from ordinary people as they explained to them that they need to cut our social safety nets in order to balance the budget, well, that's not the experience our own Susie Madrak had when she went to one of them. As she noted:

You know what most of them wanted to do? Soak the rich -- and cut defense spending. [...]

I thought maybe it was just my table, but when they tabulated the results, it was pretty much the same throughout the crowded ballroom of several hundred attendees.

And of course absent from this conversation was any discussion about what to do to get Americans back to work. If we were at full employment and had some sort of decent economic growth in the United States, this deficit problem would take care of itself because we'd have more people paying taxes.

They also keep pretending like Social Security adds to our deficit. It doesn't and it has a surplus. And if they want to solve the problem with Medicare, we need to fix our health care costs over all. We pay way more than any other developed country with worse outcomes and putting seniors into the private insurance market doesn't solve the problem. It just shifts the costs around and drives them up. But you won't hear that discussion while they're pounding their fists about lowing the deficit.

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In some ways this is a nothing sort of clip, as Scarborough and Halperin have featured these type of discussions pretty much daily on MSNBC's Morning Joe as this election wore on. Democrats are in trouble, worried that safe states have now suddenly become competitive depending on the vagaries of some useless partisan polling by companies no one ever heard of before this election (or worse, Rasmussen). The list is endless really.

Today's installment of concern trolling about how close this election is, and how "nobody knows who will win", features tea-leaf readings about how Bill Clinton is in Minnesota today (never mind that he was in North Dakota last night helping Senate hopeful Heidi Heitkamp try to win in a red state, which she just might), and that suddenly Minnesota, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are now "in play". None of which is really true of course, but that doesn't matter to them. They're selling a narrative and are sticking to it, come hell or high water.

All of which will be over soon when this election finally and mercifully ends, and hopefully these clowns can spend the next several months wondering what the hell went wrong for Mitt Romney, when they should have been asking what ever went right to put him in the position to get elected in the first place.

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As Dave already noted here, the roof has caved in on Mitt Romney with the number of people calling him unfit to lead after his disastrous response to the murders of American diplomats. We had Peggy Noonan and Chuck Todd throwing Mittens under the bus and you can add Mrs. Greenspan to that list as well.

Romney adviser Richard Williamson appeared on Andrea Mitchell's show this Tuesday to defend his candidate's craven political response to the incidents and it was nothing but more flame throwing and being extremely condescending to Mitchell. President Obama's leading from behind. He's apologizing for America. It's the same old tripe we hear over at Fox day in and day out, but they're not having quite so much luck selling their talking points this time around.

Williamson even attacked former ambassador Nicholas Burns, trying to pretend he's a partisan because he worked for Jimmy Carter. As Mitchell pointed out, he also happened to work for Republicans as well, but never mind that. His response was basically to shrug his shoulders and say, "So what?"

The Romney campaign has been lying so much, I was wondering what it would take for him to finally start losing the media. I think we got our answer this week. When you're losing the likes of Todd, and Noonan and Mitchell, Mark Halperin and Jake Tapper, you're in trouble. They've all been carrying a lot of water for the Romney campaign thus far to put it mildly. When even they can't take the cravenness of this campaign any more, stick a fork in him. I guess we'll see if this lasts and how much pressure gets put on any of them after the fact by the Romney campaign to change their tune as the week goes on.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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In perhaps the understatement of the day, Wall Street Journal columnist and republican establishment mouthpiece Peggy Noonan voiced her disapproval with the way Mitt Romney was reacting to the death of the American diplomat in Libya.

PEGGY NOONAN: “I was thinking as he spoke, I think I belong to the old school of thinking that in times of great drama and heightened crisis, and in times when something violent has happened to your people, I always think discretion is the better way to go. When you step forward in the midst of a political environment and start giving statements on something dramatic and violent that has happened, you're always leaving yourself open to accusations that you are trying to exploit things politically. I don't feel that Mr. Romney has been doing himself any favors, say in the past few hours, perhaps since last night. Sometimes when really bad things happen, when hot things happen, cool words or no words is the way to go.”

Her comments, on Fox News of all places, carry even more weight than the more pointed and scathing criticisms from other media sources, such as Time magazine's Mark Halperin:

Unless the Romney campaign has gamed this crisis out in some manner completely invisible to the Gang of 500, his doubling down on criticism of the President for the statement coming out of Cairo is likely to be seen as one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign.

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This Friday morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough and regular Mark Halperin decided to go after President Obama for what he said on a campaign stop in Florida this week, where he talked to voters about Mitt Romney's plans to turn Medicare into a voucher system and balance the budget off of the backs of seniors rather than asking the rich to pay more in taxes.

They both tried to paint the President as unfairly attacking Romney and for not differentiating between those who are on the program today and those who would be affected by the changes. Then Halperin admits that Paul Ryan's plan, which Romney has endorsed, is indeed radical and that there very well could be changes to current seniors' benefits. Halperin also thinks Republicans deserve some credit for "at least trying more new ideas" and that Democrats had better get on board to "save" these programs. Sorry Mark, but eliminating and privatizing them is not "saving" any of our social safety nets, it's gutting and getting rid of them. And it's not "new" since Republicans have been trying to get rid of the New Deal programs since the day any of them were enacted.

It is enough to make someone's head spin watching these two attempt to play the false equivalency game here and pretend "both sides" are equally at fault on the here and that anything the President said is unfounded. As Halperin admits, Republicans do want to fundamentally change Medicare and I don't think any current seniors want to see those benefits cut for their children. And I don't believe President Obama is out there misrepresenting what the Republicans would like to do. He told voters Romney and the Republicans would like to turn Medicare into a voucher program and they don't want to raise taxes on millionaires. Those things are true. Republicans have already talked continually about how it would not affect current seniors when Paul Ryan first proposed his budget, and it didn't make their ideas any less popular.

Rough transcript below the fold.

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I can't think of anyone less qualified than the Snowbilly from Wasilla to weigh in on who Mitt Romney ought to pick for his running mate in the upcoming presidential election, but apparently Sean Hannity believes inquiring minds want to know. And of course Palin used it as an opportunity to beat up on that "liberal media" that supposedly treated her unfairly when McCain picked her as his running mate.

HANNITY: Question Governor and four years ago you were selected and you didn't know you were going to be selected, you were telling me, until what, four days until you were, you didn't know you were even being vetted four days prior, which is a pretty amazing story.

The names I hear most often are Portman in Ohio, Rubio in Florida and Paul Ryan, who will be on this program tomorrow night, from Wisconsin. Good choices?

PALIN: They are good choices. They are and I think that Gov. Romney will probably play it safe, relatively speaking in terms of finding someone who is a known commodity, so that the media doesn't do what the media did to me; making things up and kind of trashing somebody's reputation and record in order to distract from what the election really was supposed to be about.

So, those are good names. There are other great names out there being batted around and I look forward to seeing who that one is who can assist Gov. Romney in moving forward.

I hate to break it to you Sarah, but if there was some damage done to your reputation, you brought it on yourself and I think John McCain's staffers like Steve Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace who dished out the dirt for Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's book, Game Change, that HBO made into a movie did your reputation as much or more damage as anything you can blame on the so called "lamestream media" you love to bash and that you now work for. If what was represented in that movie is true, they were pretty horrified by the fact that you were not remotely qualified to be vice president or step in as president if something happened to his health not too long after McCain picked you to run with him.

Now sadly, we can all thank him for inflicting you on the American body politic and as a new member of the wingnut welfare club for years to come over at Fox noise, where propagandist and fellow right-wing flame thrower Hannity thinks you have anything of value to add to the discussion on who else should potentially be allowed to be one breath away from being our next president, that we might rightfully be terrified of, as anyone with an ounce of sense was of you.

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If anyone needed a reminder of why Mark Halperin was #1 on Salon's Hack List 2011, here you go: Time's Halperin Covers For Romney's Attack On Public-Sector Hiring:

Time magazine's Mark Halperin dismissed the very real policy differences between President Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on whether to rehire police, firefighters, and teachers and other public sector workers. In an appearance on MSNBC, Halperin claimed Romney's position against hiring more public-sector workers had no "real policy implications" and that Romney does not actually "oppose the hiring of police officers," just the spending of federal money to accomplish such hiring.

Halperin was discussing comments made by Obama and Romney on Friday about jobs and the economy. After President Obama called for federal funding to stem the tide of public-sector job losses, Romney mocked the president, claiming "he wants to add more to government." Romney continued: He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message in Iowa? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people."

States and local governments have been shedding public sector workers, which has created a drag on the economy, and Republicans are blocking the federal government from providing aid to states to rehire workers. But in an appearance on MSNBC, Mark Halperin provided cover for Gov. Romney, claiming that the Obama campaign should never have highlighted Romney's words because there are no "real policy implications" to what Romney said.

HALPERIN: If you want to take it to the level of pure politics and evaluating the two sides, I think what we've seen since Friday is both of these sides are very aggressive. Both have a lot of ways to get their message out. They have a lot of contact with their surrogates to try to flood the zone on these things, but it's absurd to have the Obama people saying what the president said, he didn't use the best words but that's not what he meant but now let's spend as much time as we can going after Mitt Romney for the exact same kind of thing.

Now again, both sides will say no, there are real policy implications what the other side said but that's just not the case, at least not as big a deal as they are making it on either side.

Read on...

Looks like Halperin is making sure he lands that next "exclusive" interview with Mittens over at Time again.

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Rep. Paul Ryan appeared on this Tuesday's Morning Joe and defended his latest terrible budget proposal which is more or less a repeat of the last one and that Republicans are apparently going to be willing to support again, despite the fact that once most Americans get a chance to take a good look at what he's proposing, reject the type of policies he's advocating for.

Think Progress has done a good deal of fact checking on this and flagged this portion of Ryan's appearance on MSNBC -- Paul Ryan’s Budget Includes $3 Trillion Giveaway To Corporations, The Rich:

The budget unveiled by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) this morning includes substantial changes to the American tax code, both for corporations and individuals. Ryan’s tax plan shrinks the number of income tax brackets from six to two, with marginal tax rates set at 10 percent and 25 percent. He repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), slices the top corporate tax rate to 25 percent, and repeals all of the health care taxes contained in the Affordable Care Act. It also repeals the repatriation tax on profits corporations earn overseas then bring back to the United States.

In all, those tax breaks amount to a $3 trillion giveaway to the richest Americans and corporations, according to the Tax Policy Center. Repealing the repatriation tax would add roughly $130 billion to that.

This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ryan insisted that the plan would generate the same amount of revenue as the government currently receives. In true Ryan form, though, he wouldn’t say how:

RYAN: We’re taking the tax system and reforming it along the way this new bipartisan compromise and consensus is showing. Get rid of the special interest loopholes, special deductions, lower everybody’s tax rates, bring in at least as much revenue to the government but grow the economy and create jobs, and get spending under control so we can pay off this debt.

SCARBOROUGH: So you say that you want to bring as much revenue into the government even with lower tax rates. There are obviously only a few ways to do that as far as eliminating tax loopholes, whether you’re talking about the home mortgage loophole, the health care loophole, or the charitable interest deductions. Which one of those do you eliminate?

RYAN: We want to do this in the light of day and in front of everybody. So the Ways and Means Committee, which is in charge of the tax system, sent us the plan here, which is a 10 and 25 percent bracket for individuals and small businesses, and then they want to have hearings and, in light of day, show how they would go about doing this.

The taxes Ryan wants to repeal all primarily impact the richest Americans and corporations. Repealing the repatriation tax, as Republicans have attempted multiple times since taking control of the House in 2011, amounts to a huge giveaway to corporations. And ending the AMT and investment taxes from the ACA while dropping the top income tax rate would give massive tax breaks to the rich. That isn’t surprising — it’s virtually identical to what Ryan attempted in last year’s budget, which he called the “Path to Prosperity.”

And here's more from their site on Ryan's budget -- The 5 Worst Things About The House GOP’s Budget:

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After watching the movie adaptation of Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's "Game Change" this weekend on HBO, the one thing I found surprising about the movie is just how big of an emotional mess Sarah Palin was almost straight from the get-go after they recruited her to run with John McCain after not being properly vetted, and the campaign started finding out all of the dirt on her that they should have known about ahead of time if they were doing their jobs.

Which led to scenes like the one above where Palin was none to happy with staffer Nicolle Wallace after her disastrous interview with Katie Couric. I'm sure we can all take a lot of what was in the movie with a grain of salt, due to the fact that a lot of what was in it came from campaign staffers stabbing each other and McCain in the back for their terrible decision to draft Palin in the first place, and other anonymous sources, but on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Wallace admitted that the scene above was "true enough" to make her squirm.

That didn't stop former Dick Cheney adviser, Mary Matalin from calling it a work of fiction, even though she wasn't there herself. Leave it to Matalin to still be carrying water for Palin since she's been one of her staunchest defenders from day one. I expect we'll be hearing more of the same type of sentiments from Republicans who still don't want to admit that McCain made a huge mistake picking her, that she was not ready for the job and that it helped to tank his candidacy, whether every detail in the book or movie are completely accurate or not. The overall theme of the movie and how she was portrayed was pretty obvious to most of us watching that campaign at the time as the events actually occurred in real time.

Full transcript below the fold.

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It seems Gov. Scott Walker is suddenly very concerned about how this recall election is going to adversely affect some of the vulnerable people in his state. Won't someone think of the children and seniors please?

Walker: The Recall Costs Money — Think Of The Children And Seniors:

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) appeared Monday on Morning Joe, discussing the upcoming recall election against him by the state Democrats and organized labor. And among other things, he said, the recall is only hurting children and seniors — by costing money.

MSNBC’s Willie Geist asked Walker: “You find yourself in the middle of this, mired in a recall election. The latest Marquette poll has you 47 approve, 47 percent disapproves, split right down the middle in the state of Wisconsin. This could be a long fight for you — a special election scheduled to take place in June, a primary in May. How distracted are you from doing the business of Wisconsin by trying to essentially win re-election in the middle of your term?” (Note: The May and June dates are not yet officially declared by state election officials, but are the likely outcome of the administrative process.)

“Well, we’re focused,” Walker responded, “but it’s a huge distraction, not just for me, for the legislature. I mean, it’s $9 million of taxpayers’ money just to run this. Think about the number of kids we could help, think of the number of seniors we could help in our state with $9 million that we didn’t have to waste on this — this frivolous recall election.

Maybe he should have thought of that first before he went on the attack of the working class and union members in his state for the benefit of his big business campaign contributors. And as TPM noted, he was also crying about the out of state money coming in from "special interests" outside of his state.

The Rev. Al Sharpton had a response to that later in the day on MSNBC, where he noted that 61 percent of the money supporting Walker is coming from outside of the state, $1 million of which is from just four donors, among them of course, the Koch brothers.

Video below the fold.

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