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While discussing Rep. Peter King's upcoming McCarthyesque hearings on the threat of terrorism from Muslim Americans, even Joe Scarborough says that King is walking a fine line here and Ezra Klein agrees with Rep. Keith Ellison that King needs to back off and is not holding a serious investigation but just trying to raise his public profile by fear mongering. Pat Buchanan of course doesn't think anyone should pre-judge what King is up to.

BUCHANAN: Look the Muslim community is particularly vulnerable to an approach from abroad to try to make... radicalize them and make them enemies of America. That's legitimate. Every politician frankly raises himself up with hearings like that. I think we ought to wait and see what Peter King does.

When asked if he thinks there is a threat of a small group Muslim being radicalized in America as we've seen in parts of Europe, Klein responds that there's no reason to think we're going to see that in the U.S. because the Muslim community here is very different here. Pat Buchanan of course disagrees and uses the example of the Fort Hood shooting and Major Hasan as an example of how Muslims are being radicalized in the United States. And of course MSNBC's favorite bigot Buchanan thinks we shouldn't be demonizing Muslims, as he proceeds to demonize all Muslims.

KLEIN: How does this not demonize Muslims doing this? (crosstalk) You gave one example here and we're talking about an investigation into an entire religious community. We've gone from the one to the whole very quickly and people need to be very careful doing that.

BUCHANAN: Who is most susceptible or vulnerable to the recruitment coming out of the radical Islam? It's American Muslims.

KLEIN: Why do you think they're so vulnerable to it? There are radicals everywhere. (crosstalk) There are neo-Nazis who claim they're Christians? (crosstalk) Is the Christian community in America so deeply vulnerable to neo-Nazism?

BUCHANAN: I think the FBI would be watching those guys if you got Hitler over here broadcasting in the Unites States?

KLEIN: Uh, but we do have those guys there and we've got seen a ton of evidence.

Update: MSNBC's Martin Bashir has a few things to say about Rep. Peter King's hearings, what it's like to be mistaken for a terrorist, and why Rep. King's hearings are something to be endured, like airport patdowns and no-fly lists.

h/t Karoli

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Former New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg joined the crew of Morning Joe and jumped all over the Huffington Post's Sam Stein when he pointed out that Social Security is solvent for the next twenty-some years. Gregg's reasoning -- it's not solvent because the taxpayers will either be asked to pay the money back they borrowed against it, or we borrow money from places like China.

So basically he thinks it's insolvent because he doesn't think the money should have to be paid back. This is coming from someone who never had a problem with deficits when George W. Bush and the Republicans were busy invading countries that weren't a threat to us and giving tax cuts to the rich which broke the bank, but now the world's going to come to an end because we're supposedly broke. Social Security is funded by our payroll taxes and does nothing to add to the deficit, but these guys can't stop lying and pretending it does.

And of course Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan -- who it appears still has a cot in the MSNBC studios since he's on there every time you turn around -- were happy to help him out ratcheting up the fear. If they want to make Social Security solvent for decades to come, all they need to do is raise the income cap. And shame on Gregg and the rest of them for wanting to balance the budget on the backs of seniors and acting like it's acceptable not to repay that trust fund.

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Joe Scarborough asked Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker if he was worried about some of the hateful rhetoric aimed at him and his family since he decided to bust the unions in Wisconsin and whether he felt threatened and apparently Walker is not worried about the local residents of Wisconsin. He's only worried about those being bused in. So I guess that means he's afraid of the Koch brothers and their "tea party" and the likes of Andrew Breitbat since those are the only groups I'm aware of being bused into his state.

He also apparently thinks that 60,000 plus non-astroturf protesters equals about 2000 Koch brother sponsored protesters since he made the ridiculous claim that the numbers coming out were equal on both sides. Apparently the state's new governor isn't very good at math, and he was allowed to get away with that by the Morning Joe crew that interviewed him. It's a good thing we've got that "liberal" network looking out for us dirty f**king hippies and our interests, isn't it?

It's not possible to recall Walker until he's served a year in office, but it is possible to recall members of the Wisconsin legislature right now. I hope to hell we see a move towards that happening and a move to get this man recalled next year. I would love to see this over reach result in a Governor Russ Feingold now that the voters in Wisconsin have had a chance to see how Walker has decided to govern and to use his position of power to enrich his friends at the expense of the working class.

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Jeffrey Sachs was actually allowed some air time on Morning Joe to make a lot of really great points about how America is spending our money in the midst of what's being called a budget crisis. I would argue that we don't have a budget crisis. We have a refusal to levy adequate taxation on those that can afford it "crisis" created by our politicians who refuse to raise taxes on the rich at at time in our history that resembles the Gilded Age with income disparity. As Sachs noted, we're going after discretionary spending which hits in is words, science, education, technology, and energy and he's exactly right on how our approach to what we should be cutting is completely wrong.

As he noted we're not going after the extreme amount of waste in our military industrial complex, we're not fixing the amount of profits going to the insurance companies that are driving up the cost of our health care, the oil industry and corporate tax evasion. Instead we're looking to cut programs that harm the working class in America and I just want to say thank you to Jeffrey Sachs for laying out there how wrong headed our economic policies in the United States have been for at least the last thirty years.

Scarborough's response of course was to say that our working class and our seniors just haven't given quite enough so the oligarchs can keep their pockets lined. Brzezinski to her credit, pointed out that her father said if this keeps up we might see people taking to the streets and that he was called crazy for saying so. She didn't lay it on her buddy Scarborough and said he might not have been the one that said it, but I have the feeling that he was exactly who she was talking about and she gave him a pass. Of course Joe thought it was a good time to go to commercial break after she pointed that out to him.

I'm wondering if they'll have Sachs on again any time soon since he dared to speak the truth on that show. I'm not holding my breath for him to get another chance to say what he did today.

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The video is actually a compilation of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) making the analogy of the recent unrest in Egypt with what is going on in Wisconsin. The links and quotes are from Heather's earlier post on Ryan.

Via TPM:

Speaking on Morning Joe Thursday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) compared the current situation in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker (R) has inspired days of protests by proposing a budget that would remove key bargaining powers for public employee unions, to the recent unrest in Egypt that toppled the 30-year authoritarian rule of Hosni Mubarak, saying it's "like Cairo has moved to Madison these days."

..and another from NBC evening news where a protester in Madison makes the same comparison, albeit from the protesters point of view. Ryan seems to be equating Republicans austerity measures with the oppression of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. And pointed out by many, including Andrew Leonard at Salon.com:

On Thursday morning Ryan topped that headscratcher with a real doozy: He compared the protests currently raging in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker's plans to crush public sector unions to the upheaval that brought down President Mubarak in Egypt. [...]

But when a Republican legislator voluntarily places his own party in the position of Mubarak, you have to wonder what's in the tea these people are drinking. Yes, yes, I know conservatives are worried that democracy in Egypt could lead to the Muslim Brotherhood taking power. But to the vast majority of people on this planet who paid attention to what happened in Egypt, the protesters were the good guys and Mubarak was the bad guy. The sight of people gathering peacefully in Tahrir Square was incredibly inspiring.

Ryan sees riots and Cairo-style destabilization in the masses who have risen up in Wisconsin. But that's not what Democrats and union members and Americans who don't share the Tea Party ethos are seeing. They're seeing the dramatic, exciting beginning of a pushback against Republican over-reach. If Paul Ryan thinks it looks like Cairo, well then, maybe he's right.

Harold Meyerson at the Washington Post quipped that Walker was the "cheesehead pharaoh of Wisconsin."

Protesters have seized on the idea as well.

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From TPM -- Paul Ryan On Wisconsin Protests: 'It's Like Cairo Has Moved To Madison' (VIDEO):

Speaking on Morning Joe Thursday morning, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) compared the current situation in Wisconsin, where Gov. Scott Walker (R) has inspired days of protests by proposing a budget that would remove key bargaining powers for public employee unions, to the recent unrest in Egypt that toppled the 30-year authoritarian rule of Hosni Mubarak, saying it's "like Cairo has moved to Madison these days."

Host Mika Brzezinski asked Ryan what he made of the protests and Walker's "stand."

"He is basically saying, state workers, which have extremely generous benefit packages relative to their private sector counterparts, they contribute next to nothing to their pensions, very, very little in their health care packages," Ryan responded "He's asking that they contribute about 12% for their health care premiums, which is about half of the private sector average, and about 5.6% to their pensions. It's not asking a lot, it's still about half of what private sector pensions do and health care packages do. So he's basically saying, I want you public workers to pay half of what our private sector counterparts are, and he's getting, you know, riots. It's like Cairo has moved to Madison these days. It's just, all of this demonstration. It's fine, people should be able to express their way, but we've got to get this deficit and debt under control in Madison, if we want to have a good business climate and job creation in Wisconsin."

Somehow Ryan forgot to mention that the Governor wants to take away the union members' collective bargaining rights. And here's more from Salon -- Paul Ryan: "It's like Cairo has come to Wisconsin":

Continue reading »

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While rehashing Bill O'Reilly's Super Bowl interview with President Obama, Joe Scarborough and his buddy Mark Halperin decided go into full-blown PUMA mode with the "Obama was never vetted during the primaries and everyone was picking on poor Hillary" game on Morning Joe this Monday.

Scarborough seems to have forgotten about those twenty some debates that they had during the Democratic primary race. They also both apparently forgot that the interview with O'Reilly before the Super Bowl this weekend was not the first one Obama had given him. He previously sat down for an even more hostile interview with Bill-O in September of 2008 when he was candidate Obama.

HALPERIN: One of the things the president said in that interview was by the time you get to be president you’ve had tough coverage and he’s used to it. Well the fact is unlike most people who get elected president, he didn’t have tough coverage and so this is on the job training for him and he’s handling it pretty well.

SCARCBOROUGH: Are you saying Obama didn’t get tough coverage?

HALPERIN: Not as a Senator or a presidential candidate.

SCARCBOROUGH: Oh, well, I mean you, if you call, I mean reporters coming up to him and feeding him grapes before asking him some questions, like A-Rod…

BREZEZINSKI: You know that is revisionist thinking.

SCARBOROUGH: That's not revisionist thinking! He was given a free pass!

Continue reading »

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Looks like someone put some piss and vinegar in Joe Scarborough's coffee this morning because he was literally up in arms at President Obama for not mentioning making changes to Social Security during his State of the Union Address. And he had lots of help fear mongering over the deficit from his fellow Villagers Pat Buchanan, Mark McKinnon, Tom Brokaw, Mark Halperin and his co-host Mika Brzezinski. I love how they are all calling for "shared sacrifice" when the only ones being asked to sacrifice anything are the working class.

Even though Paul Ryan has been calling for cuts to Social Security in his Roadmap for America, Republicans really don't want to own this. Scarborough and his panel all know it and Mark Halperin admits as much. They want the President to be the one to take the political hit and not the Republicans.

As I posted this past Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders said if the Republicans don't bring this up for a vote in the Senate, he will. I'll be curious to see if he's able to force their hand on this.

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As Steve Benen pointed out, Joe Lieberman proved he can get foreign policy and feminism wrong at the same time on Morning Joe today:

Gail Collins noted this morning the Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) has "reached a point in his public career when every single thing he does, including talking about his grandparents, is irritating."

That's true, but some things are clearly more irritating than others.

Take this morning, for example.

During an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" today, Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) continued to insist that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction even though none were ever found after the invasion of Iraq.

The senator, retiring his seat in 2012, also said that despite the enormous cost to the U.S. in blood, prestige and treasure he does not regret his vote for war and would do it all over again.

This was an astounding appearance. Lieberman insisted the "most official and comprehensive report" proved Saddam Hussein was developing WMD, and that the regime was "beginning really tactically to support the terrorist movements that had attacked us on 9/11 and today."

None of this is connected to reality in any substantive way. Every available shred of evidence makes clear that Saddam's regime had nothing to do with al Qaeda, and for Lieberman to still be suggesting otherwise is disgraceful. For that matter, the notion that even the most confused observer would still believe that Iraq was developing WMD, and that this somehow justifies the invasion, is breathtaking.

As part of the same MSNBC segment, Arianna Huffington asked Lieberman to substantiate his claim about Saddam Hussein was working on weapons of mass destruction, a claim even George W. Bush abandoned. The senator replied, "I'm basing it on the so-called Duelfer Report. Charles D-U-E-L-F-E-R conducted the most comprehensive report on behalf of our government."

When Huffington said there's nothing in the Duelfer Report to bolster Lieberman's conclusions, the senator replied, "I don't think you've read it, sweetheart."

I find it nothing short of remarkable that a United States senator in 2011 would be so condescending as to call a woman "sweetheart" on national television. In context, Huffington was calling Lieberman out on his transparent falsehoods, which no doubt irritated him, but frankly, I don't care what the context was. Huffington deserves an apology.

Agreed. And as Steve and the Huffington Post pointed out as well, Lieberman doesn't know what he's talking about -- Joe Lieberman Insists Iraq Was Developing WMDs Despite No Evidence. And good for her for saying this to Lieberman's face:

HUFFINGTON: Well, based on this completely unfounded assumption, I sincerely hope for the sake of the country that you do not become Secretary of Defense.

Amen sister.

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As Think Progress noted, Joe Scarborough probably didn't make a whole lot of right wingers happy with this segment on Morning Joe, but they left out a whole lot of caveats and false equivalencies that went along with this admission.

Scarborough On Giffords Shooting: ‘Is This Not A Time For People, Like Sarah Palin…To Apologize?’:

Conservatives and tea party activists have reacted with rage to what they view as accusations from the left that they are somehow responsible for this weekend’s massacre in Arizona that targeted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In reality, progressives are not trying to assign blame or argue that shooter Jared Lee Loughner — who seems to possess no coherent political ideology at all — is a member of any popular political movment, but rather to point out that words have consequences. Political and pundit leaders need to be aware that their words will reach the “serious and delirious alike” and that their rhetoric should not serve to inflame ignorance. [...]

Some conservatives understand this. An unnamed “senior Republican senator” told Politico yesterday that “there is a need for some reflection here — what is too far now?” And on MSNBC this morning, former GOP congressman Joe Scarbrough and conservative stalwart Pat Buchanan agreed that right-wing firebrands like former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) should “apologize” for their violent rhetoric — not to assume any culpability for the tragedy, but to simply acknowledge that “they’ve been irresponsible in their rhetoric”:

SCARBOROUGH: So Pat, is this not a time for people, like Sarah Palin, who have used violent imagery – she just has. I know some of my conservative friends and family members won’t like that reality. Or, Michele Bachmann, who said she wants Minnesotans armed and dangerous. Isn’t this an opportune time for them to apologize -– not saying that it led to anything — but just saying that they’ve been irresponsible in their rhetoric and they’re going to be more careful moving forward? […]

I am just saying though, I mean, God, you’ve worked for two presidents. Would you not be in there if you were working for Sarah Palin right now, saying, go out and say it had nothing to do with this shooting, but you understand that it was irresponsible, and you’re going to be more careful moving forward. Wouldn’t you give her that advice if you were her aide?

PAT: Well, I certainly would. I would give everybody the advice to tone down the rhetoric and get away from military and the armed metaphors and things that a lot of us have used in campaigns, especially at a time like this. You know, I sure would Joe.

I'd have thought a little more of this admission if we didn't have so much of the "all sides do it" false equivalencies nonsense. As Think Progress noted in the portion of the post I did not quote here, Michelle Malkin came out with a list of claims that liberals have been acting as badly as conservatives when it comes to the over heated rhetoric after this tragic shooting in Arizona. When that list includes Democrats in our government or leadership positions calling for their political opponents to be shot or afraid to come out of their homes, you can tell me that all sides are equal in this debate.

As to the Morning Joe interview, I'm frankly surprised Scarborough got Palin fan-boy Buchanan to admit that he'd tell his girlfriend to lay off the "armed metaphors". It's a step in the right direction for both of them, which is welcomed, but I'm quite sure it won't mean any less typical political hackery from either of them on a daily basis or the need for them to be called out for it.