Last month, when HBO debuted the teaser trailer for their adaptation of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s best seller Game Change, it became clear why they chose to cut out about two thirds of the book and only focus on the McCain/Palin half of the campaign. Clearly they decided that they’d rather do a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little known Governor into the limelight instead of the epic battle of wills that made up the book’s Obama vs. Clinton sections. The full trailer, released today, continues the same theme and gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the “monster” they’ve created.

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Online political media giant Politico turns five years old today, and to celebrate, the site posted a video roast by some quotable notables in the political media world. While the site has arguably earned the right to toot its own horn at least once every half-decade, did they really have to overshadow the birthday of Saved By The Bell actress Tiffani-Amber Thiessen?

TIME magazine political analyst Mark Halperin called in to Morning Joe Tuesday morning to discuss his grades for Monday night’s Republican debate on Fox News. He was promptly hammered for previous grade inflation and being too kind to the frontrunner.

On Monday’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough surmised there will be backlash amongst Republicans if Mitt Romney is seen easily cruising to victory. “Anybody who thinks it’s going to be over after Iowa and New Hampshire, if Romney wins, does not understand the conservative base,” Scarborough opined. “”There will be blood if Mitt Romney seems like the guy who’s going to walk away with it.” Mark Halperin anticipated that nobody was going to drop out after the Iowa caucuses. “I think even Michele Bachmann will go, try to fight on in South Carolina,” Halperin predicted. “It’s perfect for Mitt Romney to have a crowded field in South Carolina.”

When HBO first announced their movie adaptation of John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s best seller Game Change about the 2008 election, many were puzzled. The movie would apparently only follow the John McCain/Sarah Palin side of the campaign which really only made up a third of the book. Everyone could imagine what the reason was. As fascinating as the Barack Obama vs. the Clintons side was, people just love them some Palin impressions. Well, now a teaser trailer has been released and that was clearly HBO’s thinking too. The clip is edited to treat Julianne Moore’s Palin basically like the shark in Jaws.

Ann Coulter made a rare appearance on MSNBC today, and, well, the insults were rolling fast and loose, and not escaping the censors. Coulter visited Joy Behar tonight to review her experience there and clarify what exactly she called Sen. John McCain that merited bleeping: “I said ‘dickweed,’ I thought you could say that!”

The news that Newt Gingrich has secured the endorsement of New Hampshire’s Manchester Union Leader seems to have prompted something of a feeding frenzy over at Morning Joe, which spent a large portion of this morning’s episode alternately chomping on the candidacies of endorsee Newt Gingrich and snub-ee Mitt Romney. While tough to narrow down, host Joe Scarborough‘s litany of Gingrich’s “conservative principles” probably cut deepest.

On Thursday’s Morning Joe, Mark Halperin defended Rick Perry‘s presidential chances in the fallout over his embarrassingly epic gaffe. “There’s no Romney alternative right now. Perry’s probably the only one in this race who would have a good chance of beating Romney if he got him one-on-one. He still has money in the bank. I’m not saying he’s got a good chance anymore, but I don’t make it zero.”

The biggest problem with yesterday’s revelation that Texas Gov. Rick Perry has reopened the President’s birth certificate as a campaign issue was the fact that there was no audio or video of Perry’s interview with Parade Magazine. Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough remedied that situation, somewhat, this morning, when he drafted Willie Geist and Mark Halperin into a dramatic reenactment of the beleaguered former frontrunner’s absurd interview, in which he expresses doubt about the President’s birthplace.

On Monday, we reported on a new, false narrative that current Republican presidential frontrunner Herman Cain wrote an op-ed piece in November that was at odds with his currently hot (and hotly debated) “9-9-9 plan.” On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough and friends took up the story with gusto, saying that Cain might be “the biggest opponent of the 9-9-9 plan,” even while quoting sections of Cain’s Daily Caller piece that cut against the flip-flop idea.

In the weird game of media messaging and political news narratives, sometimes asking a an untoward question of a candidate’s political viability is just as damaging as the response. Such was the case this morning when Joe Scarborough raised the notion of President Obama stepping down after one term in office if his approval numbers continue to stay so low. While Mark Halperin quickly dismissed the notion, the fact that it was even being discussed on MSNBC’s Morning Joe is not a positive sign for the White House reelection efforts.

On Thursday’s edition of Morning Joe, in a discussion with Mark Halperin on who performed strongest in last night’s debate, Joe Scarborough questioned Rick Perry‘s strategists’ decision to run what he deemed a “West Texas Campaign”. “They seem to be running a race that would do fairly well in the panhandle of Texas,” Scarborough argued. [...]

The rumored tension between Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry and the the last man to hold both titles simultaneously, President George W. Bush, has made for plenty of headlines– a tension around with many in the Bush camp have been implicated. Hosting The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Laura Ingraham got to speak to one of those in the Bush camp, Karl Rove, and drilled him on the relationship between two of his former candidates. Rove was not too happy to be addressing the rumors.

Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs‘ appearance on Tuesday’s Morning Joe evoked a strong sense of déjà vu. Time‘s Mark Halperin asked Gibbs about a familiar line of attack on President Obama, noting that GOP hopeful Rick Perry (R-TX) responded to a reporter who asked him if the President loved America by saying, “You need to ask him.”

Gibbs called Perry’s “passion” for America a “remarkable turnaround” from his not-so-distant talk of secession from the United States.

And Cenk Uygur said MSNBC wanted things “toned down.” Not hardly–at least not on Dylan Ratigan‘s show of late. As we’ve reported, MSNBC political commentator Jimmy Williams argued on Ratigan’s show this week that “anybody that thinks the Tea Party exists is smoking crack cocaine in America.” Well, turns out that wasn’t the only gem Williams had to offer, saying on the program that “one person is controlling the agenda of the United States of America right now, and his name is Grover Norquist.”

MSNBC president Phil Griffin recently sat down with Mediaite and discussed the reasons for the network’s success, which included the unrepentant assertion that MSNBC’s coverage comes from a progressive stance. We also discussed the successful navigation through some rocky waters over the last six months (the departure of Keith Olbermann and successful transition to a new prime time lineup), with little effect on its overall ratings.

On the overblown heels of “Dickgate,” which saw Time Magazine‘s Mark Halperin suspended from MSNBC for calling President Obama the wrong kind of “cocky,” conservative media watchdog Newsbusters has taken it upon itself to choke every verbal chicken that comes out of an MSNBC personality’s mouth. The latest culprit is Chris Matthews, who opined that the sight of US lawmakers “dickin’ around” over the debt ceiling is not inspiring confidence among world markets.

On Sunday morning’s Reliable Sources, host Howard Kurtz and panelists Michelle Cottle, Matthew Continetti, and A.B. Stoddard tossed around Mark Halperin’s ill-advised phallic non-bon mot, and made some key observations. In Halperin’s favor, he was assured, even “egged on” by Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski to go weapons free, but also that Halperin clearly premeditated the remark. It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission, as the saying goes. Halperin weirdly did both.

Today on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh gave his thoughts on the indefinite suspension of MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin who said President Obama was acting like “kind of a dick” on Morning Joe yesterday. Limbaugh used his old standby argument that no one would have cared if someone called President Bush that word but then went on to wonder why it’s inappropriate to say that but not at all a problem to lie about Republicans and their policies.

Lost in the din surrounding Mark Halperin‘s suspension from MSNBC over his remark that President Obama was “kind of a dick” during his Wednesday press conference is the fact that, Halperin’s intentions aside, the crack was not necessarily an insult. Liberals everywhere will point out that Republicans are the biggest bunch of dicks since the [...]

The Morning Joe crew opened today’s show as normal, with nary a mention of the Mark Halperin flap from yesterday. You know, it’s the classic story in which a morning show contributor notoriously calls the sitting president a “dick”; quickly apologizes, then gets suspended immediately? That one. Two minutes into the show, however, a slight miscue in the control room appeared to reveal some frustrations that hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski might be having with the show’s producers.

The most outrageous statement in the cable news cycle today happened little after dawn, and by the end of the day, Mark Halperin had found no support for his statement on Morning Joe that President Obama was a “dick”– no support, that is, except for that of Jon Stewart, who was quick to call his statement “one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen,” and go on to praise fellow panelist Willie Geist for his classic “disapproving glare.”

Mark Halperin received universal criticism today after calling President Obama “kind of a d*ck” on Morning Joe today, and so far has found little sympathy for his comments from the media. On tonight’s In the Arena host Eliot Spitzer discussed his suspension with Mediaite founder Dan Abrams, who had no problem with Halperin’s sentiment but objected to the language: “there’s another way to say it.”

This morning MSNBC’s Mark Halperin let it slip that he thought President Obama acted like a “dick” yesterday, and rather immediately MSNBC announced the decision to suspend Halperin “indefinitely.” Now some additional details are being revealed regarding what may have motivated such a quick decision.

Rush Limbaugh had a field day today reviewing Mark Halperin‘s explicit description of what he thought about President Obama’s press conference performance. Rush couldn’t stop laughing as he followed Halperin’s lead and referred to the President as “Dick” Hussein Obama. Then he humorously described the fact that today the stock market is booming solely because of Halperin’s comment.