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There are a lot of reasons I'd like to see Chuck Todd off of the air at MSNBC, but this incident on Morning Joe this Wednesday when Todd thought he was off camera, is not one of them. Apparently he caused a bit of a dust up with the latest feigned outrage for the day as our web developer at C&L, Jamie noted earlier today:

Chuck Todd Flips The Bird On National Television, Triggering The Apocalypse:

Here comes today's outrage from the right wingers. During a lead in, in which Chuck Todd thought the cameras were off, he get's caught flipping that notorious middle finger.

This was captured by the wingnut site NewsBusters and has this added commentary:

Will there be repercussions for Todd? Stay tuned.

Even on the YouTube NewsBusters posted you have a bunch of wingnuts calling for Todd to be fired and now Fox has picked up on it.

But certainly a Republican would NEVER do something like this - would they? Read on...

This isn't the first time someone on Morning Joe got themselves into trouble for profanity on the air. Mark Halperin was suspended from MSNBC back in June for calling President Obama a dick on Morning Joe. And Scarborough dropped the f-bomb back in November of last year.

Chuck Todd did apologize for the incident on Twitter.

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I'm not wild about this payroll tax holiday for the same reasons Sen. Bernie Sanders is not, which is my concern that it could undermine funding the Social Security trust fund. Personally, I'd rather see them permanently lower the rate and lift the cap, or do something to make it a less regressive tax but also ensure the trust fund remains solvent. That said, this latest debate out of Washington on whether to extend the payroll tax holiday is showing Republicans for what they are when it comes to their hypocrisy on tax cuts.

They only like them when they benefit the wealthiest 1 percent. If it's a tax break for the working class, well, that's a bad thing. On this Wednesday's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was exhibit one with the kind of double-speak we've seen coming from Republicans when it comes to tax cuts and job creation.

As Media Matters noted, here's why Scarborough's arguments that the payroll tax cut would do nothing to create jobs, but the Keystone pipeline project that Republicans inserted into this latest bill as a poison pill they voted on in the House, would create jobs, is exactly backwards.

Conservative Media Mock Obama For Pointing Out That Payroll Tax Cuts And Unemployment Benefits Will Create Jobs:

Right-wing media figures are attacking President Obama for claiming that extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut will create more jobs than the Keystone XL pipeline. In fact, economists say that unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts will put money in people's pockets and therefore lead to job creation and economic growth, while the pipeline would create at most a few thousand temporary jobs and could actually destroy more jobs than it creates. Read on...

Lots more there in their post, so go read the rest. Scarborough got worse with yelling over Brzezinski as the show went on. There are days when I manage to catch some of Morning Joe when I think she would have the right to go to their HR department at MSNBC and complain about a hostile work environment just for having to sit next to Scarborough when he's having his days where he thinks whoever yells the loudest wins the argument. This Wednesday's show was one of them and this clip wasn't the worst of it by far.

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Joe Scarborough ordered MSNBC's control room to censor conservative columnist Ann Coulter Tuesday after she called 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain (R-AZ) a "douchebag."

Coulter was explaining why Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were superior to John McCain when her mic was cut.

"I don't think consistency is such a great value," she said. "John McCain was consistent."

"What did I say? Douchebag?" Coulter asked as the audio briefly returned.

"Just blur it all out," Scarborough told the control room.

"OK, well they got the general drift of that," Coulter continued. "Consistency is not a great thing, and especially someone like John McCain who consistently annoyed conservatives, bragged about annoying conservatives, and would claim he was courageous by attacking conservatives and getting good press in The New York Times."

Coulter is backing Romney, who she says is now a true conservative because "he's flopped to my positions."

"I think Romney is conservative now," she opined. "[W]hat do [Republican voters] not understand about 'Massachusetts most liberal state in the union, he ran against Teddy Kennedy'? I mean, you're flipping from positions you held when you came within five points of taking out that human pestilence."

While Scarborough was not offended enough by the "human pestilence" slur to order Coulter bleeped, guest Mike Barnicle did object.

"We miss him in Massachusetts, and I think the country, and especially the Senate," Barnicle said. "[I]f Ted Kennedy had been alive, that health care debate would have lasted about five months."

MSNBC's Morning Joe has a history with not bleeping dirty words. In 2008, Scarborough didn't even notice at first that he had used the word "f*ck" on the air himself. And earlier this year, the network suspended Time's Mark Halperin after he called President Barack Obama a "dick."

The FCC doesn't regulate cable channels like MSNBC, and even if they did, "douche bag" is a word that is heard regularly on the public airwaves.

It's not clear why MSNBC would choose to censor "douchebag," yet let "f*ck" and "d*ck" make it on the air.

But McCain's daughter, Meghan McCain, who just began working as a commentator for MSNBC last week, probably appreciates the gesture.

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While the Gingrich campaign might be very happy that they received the endorsement of the editorial board of the New Hampshire Union Leader, the same can't be said for Joe Scarborough or the panel on Morning Joe this Monday morning.

Scarborough blasted the paper for this statement, saying he'd like to know what conservative principles they thought Newt Gingrich stood for:

Newt Gingrich is by no means the perfect candidate. But Republican primary voters too often make the mistake of preferring an unattainable ideal to the best candidate who is actually running. In this incredibly important election, that candidate is Newt Gingrich. He has the experience, the leadership qualities and the vision to lead this country in these trying times.

Scarborough praised Mitt Romney as the GOP's best chance to beat President Obama in the general election, but he went after him for his flip flopping almost as hard as he did Gingrich during this segment. Scarborough also admitted that the conservative base hates Mitt Romney.

I'm ready to break the popcorn out if we actually see Newt Gingrich win a couple of the early primary races.

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I don't know if anyone else is as sick of the Tom Brokaw/Chris Matthews consecutive book tours that we've got going on at MSNBC along with a couple of other networks, but this bit from Tuesday's Morning Joe where Brokaw was pushing his book along with some Villager conventional wisdom about what needs to be done to cure our country's ails left me feeling even more disgusted than I was with him after his appearance on Meet the Press this past Sunday.

The amount of cognitive dissonance necessary for either Tom Brokaw to make these statements in the first place, or the viewers that he thinks should be buying into his clap-trap here is really quite astounding.

After being asked by Willie Geist about American's “incredible levels of cynicism in government” and our Congress' nine percent approval level rating, and how some faith is potentially restored in our government, Brokaw responds this way.

BROKAW: Well again, it really requires the citizenry from the ground up to get involved in reclaiming their government. I've used this almost everywhere I go as an example. However you feel about the tea party, they got angry. Then they got organized. Then they got to Washington and they stayed disciplined and they were having an affect, out of proportion to their numbers, frankly, in the Republican debate.

But that's a demonstration of organization and power. And the other things is that I think both parties have to look at the enormous impact of big money on politics. K Street and the lobbyists and they're in there all day, every day.

Brokaw is apparently either completely detached from the reality, or just doesn't mind lying to the viewers since he's willing to ignore the fact that the “tea party” AstroTurf movement has been organized and co-opted by... lobbyists. Dick Armey... lobbyist. Matt Kibbe... lobbyist. Tim Phillips... lobbyist. And there are a lot more there where I could go on and on with who's pumping money into this “tea party”, another of which is one we've covered here extensively, the Koch brothers.

If Tom Brokaw honestly thinks that lobbyists have too much influence on our government, then the last thing he should be doing is trying to paint the “tea party” as grass roots and a cure for getting the influence of money out of politics.

After poo-pooing agriculture subsidies as one of the problems we have with lobbying groups having too much influence, which I do not disagree with by the way, Brokaw went on to champion our government having more “public/private partnerships” and used examples such as privatizing our schools, roads and water districts.

So Brokaw thinks we need to get rid of the influence of lobbyists in our government, but doesn't seem to mind so much the commons and institutions that should belong to the taxpayers being sold off to private industry so they can make a profit off of them.

This was followed by him talking to billionaire Mort Zuckerman who was touting his usual lines about how Washington is broken and complaints that there's not enough upward mobility in the United States any more, of course ignoring the fact that trickle-down economics, a race to the bottom on wages and labor protections due to globalization, lack of regulation of the financial industry among a host of other issues are what brought us to where we are now.

Nothing like MSNBC getting the opinion of one of the “little guys” like Zuckerman to let everyone know what the opinion of the one percent is so they can have a “fair and balanced” discussion on Morning Joe. So much for that "liberal" MSNBC. A lot of MSNBC's programming is really horrid but if there was ever one show anyone could consider pre-packaged for Fox and ready to move directly over there, Morning Joe definitely qualifies.

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I had the unfortunate circumstance of catching this segment first thing in the morning from MSNBC's Morning Joe where Meet the Press host David Gregory made an appearance and decided to do a little Republican messaging to smooth over the extreme amount of obstruction we've seen from the Senate since President Obama got elected.

Mediaite's Tommy Christopher did a nice job of summing up just what's wrong with just about everything that came out of Gregory's mouth here -- David Gregory Cites ‘Resonant’ Mitch McConnell: Obama ‘Got Everything He Wanted and It Didn’t Work’.

Here's part the transcript via Newsbusters, who they linked over at Mediaite, and who humorously also think it's some kind of rare occasion for David Gregory to repeat Republican talking points on the air:

WILLIE GEIST: Hey David, it's Willie. I want to ask you a fundamental question we've been talking a lot about around this table. The argument from the White House and from many on the left is that the president can't get anything done because he has a party of "no" working against him. Is that a fair characterization based on the evidence we've seen over the last two-and-a-half, almost three, years now, of the way Republicans have handled themselves? Are they out to see the president fail, or are they just standing up for their core beliefs?

DAVID GREGORY: Well, I think it's both. I think it depends how you want to cast it. I think liberals and defenders of the president will say this is the party of "no." I think conservatives would say this is the party of "we're going to stop him from doing more; stop him from hurting the economy further." I mean, the president--Mitch McConnell said something several weeks ago that I think really resonated, which is: the president got everything that he wanted and it didn't work. He got a big stimulus. He got health care reform, he got financial reform. The economy hasn't moved.

Here's more from Christopher:

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This Monday morning we got treated to another example of the crew over at Morning Joe telling their viewers that they had better get used to the idea of some "reforms" to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, this time with former Gov. George Pataki and Joe Scarborough leading the way with their claims that Americans will just love anyone currently running in the GOP primary race if they show some real "leadership" and embrace Paul Ryan's push to privatize Medicare.

The one voice of sanity on there was Howard Dean who reminded them that yes, Americans do want leadership, but not if that leadership is pushing for crazy ideas. It's too bad it's not considered a "crazy idea" that we allow insurance companies to profit off of the sick and that we aren't regulating them in the same manner utility companies in this country are regulated, or heaven forbid that we don't have Medicare for all where the government is the insurance provider for all of us, instead of just covering the sickest and the eldest among us as they do now.

I have to say I agree with Howard Dean here on the fact that it's insanity if anyone in the Republican Party thinks latching on to Ryan's budget plan is a good idea. But if they want to listen to the advise of Pataki and Scarborough here, I say go ahead and good luck. You're going to need it. I'd be more than happy to see Paul Ryan and his budget plan be turned into the poster boy for the Republican Party and made a major issue during the upcoming election.

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While discussing The Huffington Post's new hub for baby boomers on Morning Joe, the panel of Mika Brzezinski, Joe Scarborough, Arianna Huffington, Rita Wilson and Mike Barnicle basically turned the conversation into one big sales pitch for raising the retirement age to infinity.

While I think it's wonderful that Brzezinski is lucky enough to have both parents still apparently, happily working well into their eighties and that Wilson's mother who's approaching ninety is still doing well and independent, listening to all of them talk here left little doubt in my mind that all of them are certainly living in a different world than your average American out there who is doing any kind of physical labor for a living.

And I'm sorry but using the example of Andy Rooney who just retired from his one day a week gig at 60 Minutes giving a few minute opinion piece at the end of the show as an example of someone who's still “working” into their nineties is just ridiculous. Most Americans would consider what Rooney got paid to do for a living or what Brzezinski's father does jetting around the world more like a vacation than anything you could rightfully describe as “work.”

If Scarborough and Brzezinski think working into your old age is so great, I'd welcome her to come spend a little time along with her parents waiting on a few tables, or spending some time on a factory floor on an off shift, or maybe out digging some ditches with a construction crew, or perhaps answering an emergency call-out for some hot, filthy job at 3am in the morning. I have a feeling they'd reconsider their position after an hour or so if they lasted that long.

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Katrina vanden Heuvel has a terrific op-ed out this week, calling for an end to the attacks and scapegoating we've seen of government employees, blaming them as being responsible for America's economic woes, and naturally that's exactly what we got more of when MSNBC's resident bigot-in-chief Pat Buchanan got to take his turn asking her questions about the article on this Tuesday's Morning Joe.

Buchanan trots out the tired "the government's too big" talking point and it was nice to see some push back against these ridiculous analogies, as she did here, for once. It's just too bad she didn't hit him for conflating what our politicians, their staffers and lobbyists are making who live around Washington D.C. and your average government worker across the country that vanden Heuvel was writing about in her column, like teachers, firefighters and policemen. They're not making the kind of salaries that Buchanan ridiculously pulled out of his hat in an attempt to try to paint all government workers as being overpaid.

Once vanden Heuvel started making some good points on our tax burden on the rich being too low and crony capitalism, Scarborough was more than happy to change the topic and put an end to the segment.

Rough transcript:

BUCHANAN: I want to ask my friend Katrina about government workers, because I grew up in D.C. … in D.C. now federal employees now make twice as much on average as the average American. D.C.'s unemployment level is five or six percent. Fairfax and Montgomery County, two of the richest counties in the United States. We now have twice as many government workers in America as manufacturing workers.

The country can't go on like that Katrina.

VANDEN HEUVEL: Well, you're talking about a race to the bottom Pat. I'm talking about a race to the top. We should have more manufacturing workers. We should have more workers in the private sector. Why take down government workers? And why not uplift... lift all boats should be lifted Pat. And I think the inequality in this country is an inequality that needs to be addressed in the total sense because this country is not broke.

It is the debate and the establishment consensus in this country that the economy is, that is broke. And in what you just said to me, is a broken idea... we need to bring down government workers in order to lift up the economy. We need to boost demand by doing (crosstalk).

BUCHANAN: It's too big Katrina.

VANDEN HEUVEL: What's too big?

BUCHANAN: The government is too large. It's gotten gigantic. It's why Europe is going under...

VANDEN HEUVEL: That is not...

BUCHANAN: …and it's why the United States is going under.

VANDEN HEUVEL: You know, what is not too big is that the tax burden of the very, very richest is the lowest it has been in maybe eight decades Pat. I think we need a radical rethinking, re-shifting of this country. Crony capitalism is not what this country is supposed to be about.

BUCHANAN: More money from the private sector to build up government? The government's too big Katrina.

VANDEN HEUVEL: I think you need both lifted up and both as we were talking about work hand in hand.

You can read Katrina's op-ed they were discussing here -- Stop bashing government workers.

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From this past Friday's Morning Joe and as Dave Dayden noted in his Weekly Roundup for August 26, 2011, I sincerely hope that Elijah Cummings didn’t just figure this out as well. The Republicans have done nothing but obstruct and as Cummings noted during this interview, even to the detriment of their own constituents if it means they're successful in taking down President Obama.

Cummings was hopeful that President Obama is going to come out with some bold plan in the coming weeks to finally push back at Republicans for their unwillingness to put Americans back to work and draw some contrast on what he'd like to get done even if they continue to block him. I hope that's true because I don't think he's going to be reelected if he doesn't.

Here's more from The Hill on Cummings' interview this past Friday -- Dem lawmaker: GOPers don't want Obama to accomplish anything:

Republicans don't want President Obama to achieve anything while he's in office, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said.

Cummings said he hoped that the president would unveil a bold plan for job creation when Congress reconvenes from recess, which includes new spending. He predicted Republicans will shoot down such a plan.

"I think the president needs to come out with a bold plan, a very rational plan and then we must present that to the nation, he must present that to the nation too and then have the Republicans say why they can't do it," Cummings said Friday on MSNBC.

"Now, understand, I don't think that the Republicans want this president to achieve hardly anything. I think the president is right, they are much more concerned about the next election than the next generation, and sometimes their own constituents," Cummings continued.

That's something that's been obvious to a lot of us for a long time now. When President Obama quits pretending that there's any hope of compromising with these people and instead starts beating them over the head politically for their obstruction is another matter.