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On Morning Joe Thursday morning, NBC anchor Brian Williams stopped by to discuss the different stories that the media covered during 2010 and he had the temerity to blame the media’s lack of coverage of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster once the gusher was capped in the Gulf on the public losing interest in the topic.

WILLIAMS: And in between for those of us that have a love affair the state of Louisiana, with the southern portion of the coastline in the United States, the one story I think that’s been forgotten, because it’s cognitive dissonance looking at that live camera, of that spewing oil. We as Americans certainly like to pick ourselves up and recover and move on. And you can go down there to Venice Louisiana and not see too much in the way of pick up and clean up crews.

I’m happy to read that the Chevy Volt is being made of 100,000 pounds of plastic body parts that are a product of 100 miles of oil soaked boom. That’s what happened to all that stuff. They transported it and they’re churning it up and melting it down and making plastic body parts for the Chevy Volt. […]

So something good came out of this awful year. But I don’t think, I think we’ve all moved on and forgot what it was like to wake up on this broadcast and others every morning… let’s go to the live picture and just the helplessness that we watched.

So that’s what I’m going to remember this year for because that area already meant so much to me and I might add a person here at this table, the only one who represented it in Congress.

Yeah, it’s a good thing all that oil just magically disappeared now that there’s no more ambulance for the media to chase in the form of that gusher of oil. Good grief. Somehow I doubt anyone who’s still living with the oil on their shores and the dispersants or anyone that wonders if seafood from the Gulf will ever be safe to eat again feels the same way. Hey Brian, there’s still a story to cover if you and your cohorts would get off your butts and go down there and do some follow up. The public didn’t lose interest in the story. The media just refuses to cover it now that it will actually take some investigative journalism to do so and bucking the establishment they love to suck up to.

h/t to Fran for bringing this up in their podcast this week. I'd almost forgotten I sent the tip on this to the team via email until she and Driftie brought it up there.

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Joe Scarborough apparently wasn't too happy with Chris Van Hollen's op-ed in the Washington Post -- First, fix the estate tax giveaway:

House Democrats think this trade-off should be debated and voted on in the light of day. With Washington Republicans sharpening their budget knives to cut spending on national priorities such as education, border security and public safety, it is hard to believe they think it's wise to give a windfall to heirs such as Paris Hilton. Let's find out if Republicans really want to jeopardize income tax, payroll tax and estate tax relief for every American in order to provide a budget-busting bonanza to the country's richest estates.

Scarborough didn't like Van Hollen pointing out that it is primarily people who don't work for a living, who just happened to get lucky by being born into the right family that will be benefiting from lowering that rate. Instead, as Media Matters pointed out, he joined the Fox yappers who have been demonizing the estate tax and pushing the family farm myth.

Hey Joe... you can't pay any taxes if you're, you know... dead. The children of those who are passing that money on didn't "earn" that money, they inherited it. So they haven't already been taxed on it.

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Mike Pence apparently decided that Rep. John Shadegg shouldn't be the only Republican coming on Morning Joe this week and showing the American public just whose interests his party is looking out for.

Rep. Pence: The Best Thing For The Unemployed Is Tax Cuts For Millionaires:

Unemployment benefits expired for millions of jobless Americans at midnight, marking the first time in four decades that Congress has failed to provide benefits with so many Americans out of work. Republican lawmakers who blocked an extension of benefits maintain that the country simply cannot afford to spend $12 billion on the unemployed, even as they fight to secure permanent tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans, which will heap hundreds of billions on to the deficit.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe today, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) said that while he is "deeply sympathetic" to the plight of the unemployed, "we've got to make the cuts necessary to offset those costs." During the interview, Pence claimed that Republicans are "anxious to support" struggling Americans, "particularly in the holiday season." However, asked whether he would accept a compromise that paid for unemployment benefits by allowing tax cuts to expire only on income over $1 million, Pence insisted that the jobless are better off swallowing tax cuts for the very rich than receiving immediate relief.

Pressed further on his priorities by Time's Mark Halperin, Pence awkwardly joked that he's "not good at chess," before falling back on his talking points. "I think the minimum that we have to do right now for Americans that are struggling in unemployment in this economy is make sure that no American sees a tax increase," he said.

HALPERIN: If your leaders came to you and said, "We have a deal with the White House. We're going to extend unemployment benefits, but the tax cuts for the people making over a million dollars a year will not be extended, but that helps to pay for it," would you take deal? Would you vote for that package?

PENCE: Look, I think the worst thing you could do for people that are struggling in this economy and looking for a job is raising taxes on any American. We don't wanna help with one hand and take away with another.

HALPERIN: Would you rather extend the tax cuts for every American, including those making over a million, or have the unemployment benefits extended if that's the choice?

PENCE: [Laughs] Yeah, good. This isn't a corner, but I feel the paint. You know? I'm good, nice move. I played chess with my son the other day and I lost, so, you know, I'm not good at this chess thing. [Laughs] Let me tell you, I think the minimum that we have to do right now for Americans that are struggling in unemployment in this economy is make sure that no American sees a tax increase.

And as Steve Benen pointed out after watching this exchange:

To fully appreciate the stupidity of the display, it's worth watching the video. The printed words just don't do it justice.

Watching this morning's exchange, I'm reminded of something Matt Yglesias wrote last year about the Indiana congressman. "Mike Pence is a moron, and any movement that would hold the guy up as a hero is bankrupt," Matt explained, adding, "I would refer you to this post from September about the earth-shattering ignorance and stupidity of Mike Pence.... [I]t's really staggering. In my admittedly brief experience talking to him, his inability to grasp the basic contours of policy question was obvious and overwhelming."

Remember, Pence is not only thinking about a presidential campaign, in September, he won the Family Research Council's Values Voter presidential straw poll.

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Apparently I'm not the only one that caught this segment with Rep. John Shadegg on Morning Joe and was completely appalled. With unemployment benefits set to expire for hundreds of thousands of Americans, we get this joker coming on the air and claiming that unemployment benefits aren't stimulative to the economy and those Bush tax cuts for the rich are.

Republicans really are determined to completely destroy the US economy. Tax cuts for the rich and the rest of you can eat cake.

Rep. Shadegg Scoffs At The Fact That Jobless Benefits Are A Benefit To The Economy: ‘No, They’re Not!’:

According to calculations by the Congressional Budget Office, Moody’s Economy, and myriad other economists, unemployment benefits are the single best way to pump money into the economy and generate economic activity, as the unemployed are very likely to spend all of the benefits they receive (thus moving money into local businesses). But during an interview with MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle today, Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) scoffed at the notion that unemployment benefits help the economy. “Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that,” Shadegg jeered:

BARNICLE: What about the fact that unemployment benefits pumped into the economy are an immediate benefit to the economy? Immediate…

SHADEGG: No, they’re not! Unemployed people hire people? Really? I didn’t know that.

BARNICLE: Unemployed people spend money Congressman, ’cause they have no money.

SHADEGG: Aha! So your answer is it’s the spending of money that drives the economy and I don’t think that’s right. It’s the creation of jobs that drives the economy…Actually, the truth is the unemployed will spend as little of that money as they possibly can. Job creators create jobs.

BARNICLE: Have you ever been unemployed? Have you ever been unemployed?

SHADEGG: Yes, I have.

BARNICLE: What did you do with the money? Save it?

Go read the rest of the post for more from Think Progress on why Shadegg is just dead wrong here and on the damage not extending unemployment benefits is going to do to our economy. And as they also noted, Shadegg saying he's going to be unemployed soon is likely of little consequence to him.

And while Shadegg joked that he will be unemployed come January since he is retiring from Congress, next year he will be eligible for a federal pension (if he opted for one), as he is turning 62 and served on Capitol Hill for more than five years.

Given his resume, I would imagine some Republican lobby shop has got a cushy job waiting in the wings for him as well.

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Biden tries to give a diplomatic response but just can't. And his hosts can't contain their laughter either. From this morning on Morning Joe.

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This had to be one of the more irritating segments I've had the unfortunate circumstance of watching on Morning Joe in a while. First they went about trashing the students protesting tuition fee hikes in London and those silly Socialists in Europe who are all just used to sucking off of the government teet. Then they proceeded to trashing anyone who's dared to speak out against the early report released by the president's Catfood Commission co-chairs Bowles and Simpson.

How dare those reactionaries Nancy Pelosi, Paul Krugman and Richard Trumka speak out against those good reasonable adults who want to raise the retirement age and balance the budget off of the backs of the elderly, the middle class and the poor. The nerve of them!

Update: And just one last word on this panel discussion as an afterthought. Did anyone else feel like they were watching a bunch of high school kids debate policy when it came to their reaction on the protests in London? Yeah Mika, destroying the social safety net and the government's former position that education matters beyond high school if you want to retain a middle class and those students being angry that the government has decided that doesn't matter any more and protesting is just like your brother pulling a stunt where he imitated a cop and got in trouble for it. That's exactly the same thing and just kids being kids who need to be disciplined for their bad behavior. Jebus these people make my head hurt.

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More hackery from the set of Morning Joe. Dan Bartlett thinks that the release of Bush's memoir is going to make most Americans, except for those silly leftists of course, remember why they loved Bush so much. Yeah, sure Dan. If that's true why didn't your party roll his sorry ass out right before the mid-term elections so they could all remember just how much they loved him right before they voted?

SCARBOROUGH: Dan Bartlett, what do you think the result of this book is going to be? I suspect like you and you touched on it, people have turned George Bush almost into a cartoon character, suggesting that he didn't give a damn about anything, that he was just a cowboy shooting from the hip all the time. Do you think because expectations are so low and because he's been turned into such a two dimensional character that this book will actually help his standing a great deal with Americans?

BARTLETT: Well like most things in our politics it probably depends on your political perspective. For a lot of people on the left this will probably just reignite a lot of old emotions and give them frustrated all over, but I think for most Americans this will give them an opportunity to say “Okay, well now I know a little bit more about the guy and what he was thinking at the time.”

Sometimes with these big historic moments in our... in the country's history and how he was grappling with it, how he was doing it and seeing a little more of the character of the man; the big controversies like the war and those things, that will take history to settle. But I think this marker that he puts down in this book, I think will give people a better insight to what he is as a person and why people liked him so much when he first ran for president.

SCARBOROUGH: And Dan, let me ask you what happened when he stopped being president. What is it about the Bush's that they have the grace to keep their mouths shut when a new guy gets into the office and let them be President of the United States without hen pecking them for two years.

BARTLETT: That's a good question and a good point to make and I think it has to do with the example that was set by his father and he (inaudible) and we also were on the receiving end when we were in the White House and having presidents taking pot shots was never funny. He always said when we were there he goes “I'm not going to be like that. I know when I'm off the big dance floor it's somebody else's time to be in the Klieg lights and I'm going to go back to have as normal a life as I can.” And I'm happy to report that he's doing a pretty good job of that.

Scarborough seems to forget that he didn't need to go out there and "hen peck" anyone. He had his minion Cheney and his daughter to do the dirty work for him. And don't even get me started on Donny Deustch and two-wrongs-make-a-right Dan Senor.

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Here we go again. It seems Governor Goodhair just can't get enough of the secession talk.

From TPM -- Rick Perry: Let States Secede From Social Security:

Freshly reelected Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) just isn't ready to give up on the secession talk that made him a topic of conversation last year. Taking a national victory lap after his election to an unprecedented third term this week, Perry is out talking up his new plan to break up the union, kind of: It's time, he says, to let states opt out of Social Security.

Last April, Perry told some Austin tea partiers that though "there's absolutely no reason to dissolve" the union the state of Texas has been a part of for about 160 years, "if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that." Texas, he suggested, could lead the charge.

His new suggestion is not to split Texas from the other 49 states, but rather to give it the option to secede from the national pension program that has defined retirement in the country for 75 years.

"When you look at social security, it's broke," Perry told the hosts of MSNBC's Morning Joe this morning. "My kids, 27 and 24, they know this is a Ponzi scheme."

One way out of this mess, in Perry's mind? Just abandon Social Security altogether and let the states handle it. Texas (of course) has already fixed Social Security's problem, Perry says, so why should it be saddled with paying the Ponzi debts of every other sucker?

"Why is the federal government even in the pension program or the health care delivery program?" Perry asked. "Let the states do it." Read on...

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Fox News wants to maintain an ideological divide within the media for marketing reasons, says a senior reporter that recently left the network.

Appearing on MSNBC's Morning Joe Monday, Major Garrett explained that his former employer has a vested interest in making sure the media is as polarized as possible.

NPR fired longtime analyst Juan Williams last week after he expressed fear of Muslims in airports.

"Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot," Williams told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. "You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

"NPR was increasingly unhappy with him," Garrett told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough Monday.

"[NPR] was getting blowback from listeners about seeing Juan so often on Fox. That speaks to a problem that neither Fox nor NPR can solve -- they don't want to solve, which is the polarization of American media," Garrett said.

"For a certain amount of marketing points of view, Fox wants to keep that polarization saying, 'Look, we are different. We're dramatically different. You can see how we are different. If you like that difference, you better come over here and you better stay here.'"

"That is an embedded part of the marketing that surrounds what happens in the news division at Fox," he said.

Continue reading »

Time for your weekly podcast with The Professional Left, our own Driftglass and Bluegal. Have a great weekend everybody and enjoy the podcast.

You can listen to the archives or make a donation if you'd like to help keep these podcasts going at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/. And I've included a bonus video to go with the podcast since Fran mentioned it during their discussion. I watched this the other morning and told the Crooks and Liars team about it but didn't get around to posting it. Some Villager conventional wisdom from Chuck Todd on Morning Stupid.

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