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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.

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Another day, another morning where MSNBC's resident bigot-in-chief Pat Buchanan showed that he just can't help himself when it comes to going after the poor with some not so thinly veiled racism as we saw from him again on this Tuesday's edition of Morning Joe.

After Wes Moore reminded the viewers that the food stamp program falls under the Department of Agriculture and that there is a report that was just released showing that one in seven Americans are now on food stamps, Moore asked Sec. of Agriculture Tom Vilsack what is being done by his department to address poverty in the light of that recent news.

VILSACK: Well, obviously, it’s putting people to work. Which is why we’re going to have some interesting things in the course of the forum this morning. Later this morning, we’re going have a press conference with myself and Secretary Mavis and Secretary Chu to announce something that’s never happened in this country which we think is exciting in terms of job growth.

But, I should point out, when you talk about the SNAP program or the food stamp program, you have to recognize that it’s also an economic stimulus. Every dollar of SNAP benefits generates $1.84 in the economy in terms of economic activity. If people are able to buy a little bit more in the grocery store, then someone's got to stock it, shelve it, package it, process it, ship it; all of those are jobs. It's the most direct stimulus you can get into the economy during tough times.

Vilsack also explained that the reasons some of the numbers have gone up with the number of people using the program is his department has been doing a better job of working with the states in getting the word out about the program so more people who are eligible for it actually sign up for it and help stimulate their local economies.

Enter Pat Buchanan who of course tries to paint the program as a being one of the causes for our “exploding budget deficit.” Never mind those wars Bush started or the tax cuts for the rich. We can't be wasting any money on those poor slackers who just want to live off the government teet since that's the real cause of our problems in Buchanan-Upside-Down-World.

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Apparently MSNBC's resident bigot, Pat Buchanan, wasn't terribly thrilled with Warren Buffett's op-ed in the New York Times that John wrote about here earlier today -- Warren Buffett tells US Gov't: 'Stop Coddling The Super-Rich'. It seems Buchanan has a little bit of trouble understanding why taxes should not be voluntary and that just Warren Buffett and a few other willing billionaires sending some more money to the government out of the goodness of their hearts isn't going to solve our budget problems.

BUCHANAN: No, I’m writing a note to Warren Buffett. But look, I’m a little fed up with these people who come on, you know, their big op-eds, all these admonitions. Why doesn’t he set an example and send a check for $5 billion to the federal government? He’s got about $40 billion. You know, you had a plan up there, I talked to Howie Carr in Boston where the super-rich could contribute an extra amount. It was something like one-tenth of one percent did it. You get all this noise from these big rich folks. Let them send checks and set an example instead of writing op-eds. What do you think of that partner?

This isn't the first time I've heard conservatives spout this kind of nonsense. It's just a way to take a cheap shot at Buffett by pretending he doesn't care about the problem if he doesn't voluntarily send the government some more money on his own instead of urging lawmakers to actually fix the problem.

I also found it amusing to listen to Buchanan and his buddies Willie Geist, Mark Halperin and Mike Barnicle follow up talking about "tax reform" which is just code for lowering the rates on the rich even further and pretending they'll ever agree to close the loopholes that the Republicans stubbornly defended during this entire debt ceiling debacle.

Buchanan also said he thinks if the President did work with Republicans on "tax reform" and follow that with saying "now we're going to have some pain on entitlements" that the "tea party" would support him, even though his base would hate it (because there's nothing our beltway Villagers love more than some good old hippie-punching to make their day) and that if he did those two things "I'm convinced the President could put together a package that would make him a dramatic leader and to get him reelected."

Because I'm sure Pat Buchanan just has the best interests of President Obama and his reelection efforts at heart. It's time for MSNBC to retire this relic or this whole show for that matter. Morning Joe is as bad as some of the worst that airs on Fox every day, but the rest of our corporate media wants to pretend the network is "liberal."

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It seems that the majority of the panel on Fox's so-called media watchdog show, Fox News Watch were terribly upset that MSNBC suspended Mark Halperin after calling President Obama a dick on live television on Morning Joe.

Personally I think if they were going to get rid of Halperin, it should have been for a lot of other reasons than what happened on Morning Joe that day. What's humorous about this exchange is that the panel of course equates what Halperin said on the air to a lot of the things Keith Olbermann said about George W. Bush which they thought he should have been suspended for. Hyperbolic or not, at least Olbermann didn't come on the air night after night and lie to his audience the way Fox does on the air every day.

The panel also painted the suspension being due to MSNBC's supposed "liberal bias" where they don't want anyone saying something bad about a Democratic president on the air, ignoring of course that Morning Joe could just as easily fit quite nicely into Fox's daily programming with the kind of right wing hackery we get from Joe Scarborough and his regular panel members and guests every morning.

And Jim Pinkerton called Halperin a “brilliant reporter.” I guess in Fox-World, Halperin would be considered that. Alan Colmes tried to point out the things that right wing radio hosts say on the air day after day about President Obama that go unpunished, ignoring of course some of the things said on his own network by the likes of the now canceled Glenn Beck and Eric Bolling as a couple of the worst examples.

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Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) was allowed to come on MSNBC's Morning Joe and pretend like the Republican astroturf rebranding effort called the "tea party" which is primarily made up of the extreme right wing of their party is not a "Republican movement". When pressed on whether or not on whether the "tea party" is primarily made up of Republicans, DeMint insisted that if they don't do what the voters want, you'll see a third party form down the road, like that's ever going to happen.

What little there was that anyone called the tea party that anyone might have considered grass roots has long ago been highjacked by a bunch of corporate lobbyists and Republican insiders and big monied interests like the Koch brothers and the chances of them forming a third party probably ranges from about slim to none. What's pitiful is that they've been allowed to take over the Republican Party and push them even further to the right.

About the only good thing about this little lie-fest that DeMint was allowed to have where he was doing some more hostage taking and posturing on what Republicans are or are not going to agree to on these debt ceiling talks is that he was called out for his hypocrisy on spending and paying for our debt by Mike Barnicle. If Barnicle had maybe done an ounce of follow up, I might have gained an ounce of respect for him, but of course he didn't.

Barnicle asked him if it was irresponsible to go to war in Iraq without paying for it and DeMint agreed that it was, but his reply basically amounted to "I'm a recovering earmarker now" and we've got to do things differently.

So in other words, don't dare ask my rich campaign donors to pay for my previous actions and allowing the United States to go invading countries that were never a threat to us. And now it's fine to take it out of the hides of the middle class and the poor after we gave the rich all of those tax breaks at the same time. They're the "job creators" even though they're not creating any jobs. Man I'm tired of this ridiculous spin going unchallenged day after day.

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Howard Kurtz and his panel on CNN's Reliable Sources had high praise for Mark Halperin Sunday, but they did not endorse his use of an expletive to describe President Barack Obama.

"Having seen the clip, I'm struck by the fact, if I'm Mark Halperin sitting there, I think the hosts are telling me to speak my mind," The Weekly Standard's Matthew Continetti told Kurtz. "I didn't see any sarcasm in Mika or Joe... I'm on Mark Halperin's side here. They were egging him on."

"Now the indictment is being expanded to saying Mark Halperin is the epitome superficial theater criticism and, you know, empty beltway conventional wisdom," Kurtz noted.

"Mark Halperin has earned his reputation as a serious journalist," The Hill's A.B. Stoddard insisted. "I worked with him at ABC News. He is tireless. He's devoted and he's also as a commentator, I always find him quite measured and cautious. So, it is a surprising episode but I don't think there's anything to criticize in Mark's past."

"Halperin had been on this program a number of times," Kurtz said. "He's a substantive guy. The show that he was on, Morning Joe, three hours a day of guests sitting around talking about policy and politics may be the most substantive show on cable news so it seems to me this indictment that -- yes, they do the theater of politics like everybody does, like we do here on CNN -- but it seems to me that he is now the poster boy for superficiality strikes me as a bit unfair."

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After Time's Mark Halperin referred to the President of the United States as a "dick" Thursday, MSNBC's Joe Scarborough made it clear that he helped orchestrate the incident.

Scarborough set Halperin up by asking him about yesterday's press conference where President Barack Obama "scolded" Republicans for not raising the debt ceiling.

"Are we on the seven-second delay?" Halperin asked.

"Yeah, sure," Scarborough said. "Come on. Take a chance."

"I thought he was kind of a dick yesterday," Halperin announced with smile.

Following the commercial break, Scarborough admitted he was complicit in the stunt.

"I'm sorry. It was a joke," he confessed. "We made the joke before the show about the seven-second delay and we were going to try it out."

"Joking aside, this is not a pro forma apology, it's an absolute apology, heartfelt to the president and the viewers," Halperin said. "I became part of the joke, but that's no excuse. I made a mistake and I'm sorry and I shouldn't have said it. As I said, I apologize to the president and to the viewers who heard me say that."

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen noted that the Morning Joe crew was probably upset that Obama didn't appear "docile and conciliatory" towards Republicans in Congress.

"Halperin’s credibility as an objective observer of political events has long been dubious, at best, but this morning’s little stunt should remove all doubt," Benen wrote.

Update: MSNBC has suspended Halperin indefinitely.

"Mark Halperin's comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable," MSNBC said in a statement. "We apologize to the president, the White House and all of our views. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst."

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The reaction on Morning Joe to Chris Wallace's "flake" comment is, naturally, to play the victim card. Liberals and the "liberal media" have a horrible bias against Republicans, who are portrayed oh-so-falsely as being stupid.

True to the gospel of conservative punditry, Scarborough obeys their third commandment: "Nothing shalt have happened after the Reagan Administration." Joe uses examples of Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and Reagan himself as victims of this "stupid Republican" media bias.

Because who would want to add George W. Bush or Sarah Palin, or the extreme anti-intellectualism of the leader of the GOP, Rush Limbaugh, to the argument?

Scarborough's so-called "argument" falls apart at the mention of anti-intellectualism. Republicans promote candidates who are aw-shucks plain folks to run the free world. Remember that the argument FOR voting for George W. Bush was that you wanted to have a beer with him. Sarah Palin's complete disinterest in....how shall I put this? ...READING... is a charming attribute to her politically illiterate and sometimes functionally illiterate following.

As Heather said to me in an email: "The other thing that kills me watching the coverage of Bachmann today is the media already has their talking points on her. She's now officially declared "serious" because she managed to respond to Wallace without looking like a complete idiot. And now that she's played the victim card like Palin and mean old Chris Wallace treated her unfairly, no one else in the media is allowed to ask that same question of her. So they've declared her now insulated. Unfriggin' believable."

The beltway punditry that passes for journalism in this country is now fawning over Michele Bachmann because she paid big bucks to a political consultant -- Ed Rollins -- and is doing what her handler tells her to do.

We've got serious problems and hard times ahead in the United States and the world. Bachmann's answers to those problems include defunding "Obamacare" without a single idea to replace it, except voting for the Ryan Budget to turn Medicare into a private insurance voucher program. Then when it became obvious (even to her) that the Ryan vote was a political disaster, she put an "asterisk" on her vote.

Perhaps she can put an asterisk on her comparison of taxing the young to the Holocaust. And another asterisk on the tireless efforts of the founding fathers to end slavery.

The Beltway is erasing all memory of Bachmann's crazy statements because those were made before Ed Rollins put his magic collar on her. Remember when Karl Rove was Bush's Brain? Ed Rollins, who also worked for stellar candidates Ross Perot and Katherine Harris (before he quit), is now Bachmann's Brain. Why? Because in the anti-intellectual cloister that is today's Republican Party, a hired brain is the best you can do? When is the Republican Party going to admit you need a brain of your own to be qualified to run for President?

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I don't think either Andrea Mitchell or David Gregory watched Lawrence O'Donnell's show last night, or they would not be citing either Sarah Palin's bus tour, showing up at a biker rally, or her "fire in the belly" as reasons to think that she is potentially going to run for president in 2012.

Even though they both admit it's not likely that she's going to get in, they both seem to have fallen for her latest publicity stunt to get her name back in the headlines.

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Apparently Paul Ryan needed a place to come lick his wounds after the Republicans' loss in New York's 26th District special election loss last night, and the crew over at Morning Joe was more than happy to help him mend his bruised ego.

Given Scarborough's screaming tirade yesterday about greedy seniors who want to keep their Medicare being just like someone who wants to eat steak and chocolate cake every day, along with the months on end of fawning coverage of him he's received on this show, Ryan had no doubt he was coming into friendly territory this morning.

When asked about the loss, Ryan of course did not accept any of the blame for the Republicans' loss there. It's the Democrats' fault for "demagoguing" the issue and of course on the independent "Tea Party" candidate being in the race -- it had nothing to do with anger over the Republicans voting to voucherize Medicare. So don't blame him, it was those horrible scary, untrue ads the Democrats ran that they all felt were just terribly unfair.

They also gave him the full segment to lie about how people feel about his plan. According to Ryan, the voters are alright with his plan if they're just given enough time to understand what it does. He also continued to pretend that it does not end Medicare as we know it. It privatizes it and all the happy talk in the world out of Ryan or this bunch isn't going to change that. And Ryan's claim -- that since Medicare would still administer the program, it wouldn't be drastically altered -- is ridiculous.

They showed the ad the Democrats ran showing a Ryan lookalike throwing grandma off of a cliff, which they laughed off as ridiculous since Ryan's plan doesn't affect those over 55 years of age, as though anyone under the age of 55 is not one day going to be that senior, or that those over the age of 55 don't care what happens to their children and grandchildren.

And of course what was missing from this segment? The largest drivers of our debt, which is those Bush tax cuts and our military spending. Heaven forbid we can't talk about either of those. No, the elderly and the poor must be asked to sacrifice instead.

Ryan and the crew on Morning Joe can continue to laugh off and dismiss what happened in yesterday's special election. Let's hope the voters in Wisconsin give them one less reason to keep laughing when they hold their recall elections this summer.