It also gives us more chance to see Julianne Moore’s take on Sarah Palin. I compared the teaser’s approach to the character to that of Jaws‘ treatment of the shark, but here we really get to see the performance. We get to see her trying on clothes, we get to see her infamous “I can see Russia” moment, and you even see her have what one character calls “a complete mental meltdown.” We’re assuming he doesn’t mean the fun kind like Kristen Bell. And, when the trailer ended with Palin whispering through gritted teeth, “We have to win this, I really don’t want to go back to Alaska,” I had to agree with I’m With Kanye in suggesting that Moore can clear off the Emmy space on her mantle now.

Seriously, for anyone who hates Palin, it’s clear that HBO has made the perfect piece of horror/comedy/porn for you.

Watch the trailer from HBO below:

January 23 is also the birthday of Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who, it should be noted, only won that one morning, and perhaps most fittingly, late Battleship Potemkin director Sergei Eisenstein. Most DC media types will tell you that they’ve never met a Politico reporter who wouldn’t push a baby down the stairs to get a story.

The nearly six minute video includes roastimonials from the likes of David Gregory, Bob Schieffer, Donald Trump,  Katie Couric, Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, Willie Geist, Diane Sawyer, Tom Brokaw, Candy Crowley, Luke Russert, Greta Van Susteren, Chris Matthews, Jonathan Karl, Andrea Mitchell, Steve Scully, Jamal Simmons, Norah O’Donnell, Erin Burnett, Alex Wagner, Dan Rather, Al Sharpton, Mark Halperin, Dylan Ratigan and Arianna Huffington. FishbowlDC‘s Betsy Rothstein collects some of the funnier quotes:

Politico is “truly a news organization that acts its age: a petulant five-year-old concerned with only trivial matters,” host of “MTP” David Gregory says with a smile.

With a few repeats and some intensive listening, Arianna Huffington can be understood as saying, “Just as I was sitting down to write this, I saw that Mike Allen had already broken what I was going to say.”

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Willie Geist remarks, “I’ve gotta recuse myself because I don’t care for Politico, inside the Beltway gossipy garbage. And CBS “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer cracks, “The next thing you know, you’ll be getting your driver’s license.”

I don’t know that I can top any of them, but I will add this: Why did the Politico reporter cross the road? I don’t know, but give it 5 minutes, and FishbowlDC will have a plog post about it. Probably without a photo.

Even though we don’t go for this kind of self-promotion, the video is fun, and Politico has earned every second of it. Happy Birthday, Politico.

“Let me explain to the group here,” Mike Barnicle said, noting the “B” grade Halperin gave Mitt Romney. “Mark’s grading system is geared to sucking up to the candidate most likely to win.”

After fielding another question from Donny Deutsch, Halperin set them up for the most high-profile Booey Bomb possibly in television history:

“Hey I got one more thing to say… Baba Booey.”

“Get him off,” an unamused Mika Brzezinski said. “We’ve got enough stupidity here.”

RELATED: C-SPAN Getting Hammered With Prank Calls About Mitt Romney’s Penis

Watch Halperin’s Booey Bomb below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Mark Halperin then said 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.”

RELATED: Chris Christie Defends Mitt Romney’s Lack Of Stage Presence On Morning Joe

“I will tell you this. I know this sounds crazy, but if I’m just looking at the field right now: keep your head down, don’t blow yourself up in Iowa, because there’s going to be a lot of teeth gnashing and weeping after the guy that’s got a 24% ceiling wins Iowa and the conservatives split,” Scarborough added. “Cause everybody’s going to start looking and saying OK, who is the conservative? We are not going to allow a guy that has the 24% of the moderates in the Republican party voting for him, while this conservative party pushes another, let’s say, Gerald Ford to the finish line. By the way, I need to explain this. This isn’t necessarily what I feel. I need to explain this. I’m telling you, as I predicted, crazy never wins in the Republican party, and it doesn’t.”

Watch Scarborough’s predictions for the Republican race below via MSNBC:

(h/t NewsBusters)

Seriously, the only way this thing could be more on the nose would be if they played a record scratch right before she started talking and showed a dog reaction shot right after. Seriously, Woody Harrelson even gets in a “Spielberg face” look of awed horror when he glimpses the candidate.

I mean, we’re still gonna watch the hell out of this thing when it comes out but you’d think HBO would try to make it just a little less obvious who the audience for this is.

Watch the video from HBO below:

(h/t The Hollywood Reporter)

RELATED: Ann Coulter Gets Bleeped Out By MSNBC Censors On Morning Joe

The Headline News censors were merciful this time to Coulter, so we now know for sure what she said to McCain (she had also tweeted her statement earlier to clarify). She told Behar tonight that it was not meant to be frivolous, either: “I was making a very important point, I might add.” Noting that the discussion was centering around a lack of consistency in the records of Republican candidates, “I was just making the point that I don’t think consistency is the most important value,” she explained. “Look at John McCain, he was consistently a dickweed.”

Behar laughed and noted that Coulter was not the first person to be profane on Morning Joe– Mark Halperin had gotten in trouble for calling the President a “dick” on the network, too. “If they have to bleep that,” Coulter joked, “they won’t be able to use the 2012 campaign slogan ‘Obama: He’s Kind of a Dick.’”

As Coulter had been a frequent guest on Behar’s program, now winding down, Coulter noted how sad she was to see the show go, as it was her sanctuary from the Casey Anthony trial on the network. “For eight months your show was the only one I could watch and avoid hearing anything about that white trash bimbo who apparently… was acquitted of killing her child” (Coulter later clarified that she was not universally disparaging poor people– “there are many lovely people who are white, black, Latino, who are poor”).

RELATED: Joe Scarborough Tweets Ann Coulter Damage Control About Ted Kennedy And John McCain

The full interview airs tonight on HLN at 10PM– the excerpts on Anthony and Morning Joe below:

The Union Leader endorsement is the big political news of the day, and not just because it comes after a dead holiday weekend. The conservative paper’s stamp of approval is being portrayed as a game-changer for Gingrich, much as it seems to have been for John McCain during the 2008 race for the GOP nod.

As game-changers go, though, the endorsement itself was some weak, tepid tea, citing Gingrich accomplishments that have the nostalgia quotient of a Roxette concert, and noted that while Gingrich is “by no means the perfect candidate,” he is “worthy of your support on January 10.”

Co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough basically took turns basting Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in their own juices all morning, but it was Scarborough who effectively composed the Romney campaign’s next attack ad for them by rattling off a litany of Gingrich heresy.

“The Manchester Union Leader must have gone on and said that the principle, the conservative principle he stood on was calling Paul Ryan’s budget plan radical right-wing social engineering,” Scarborough began, but he wasn’t done by a damn sight.

Scarborough went on to list Gingrich’s support for the unfunded $7 trillion Medicare D program, “amnesty for illegals,” and mandatory health insurance (with an assist from Mark Halperin). He ticked off Gingrich’s ties to Freddie Mac, his anti-global warming commercial with Nancy Pelosi, and finished with a two-fer, saying that Gingrich “flip-flops more than Mitt Romney. Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney should have a contest. I’m so dizzy.”

There are probably a lot of conservatives who will dismiss Scarborough as a RINO, as they often do when they want to protect whatever delusion they’re nursing, but they’re not really the key audience for this, anyway. Joe Scarborough wields considerable influence in Washington, DC, both with the media and within the political bubble. He may be telling conservatives things that they don’t want to hear, but you can bet the other candidates are listening, and taking notes.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

The other panelists were not as forgiving as Halperin, saying the moment fatally wounded Perry’s chances at the nomination and would haunt the Texas Governor for the rest of his life.

NY Magazine‘s John Heilemann said there were two problems with Perry’s epic gaffe. “The first is this builds on all the established narrative. He has made these mistakes in debates, not performed well. The scrutiny on his debate performance is higher, he’s got to do better than average, instead, he did this thing that confirmed everybody’s worst caricature of him. The second problem is that in this age of YouTube, this clip will live forever and it’s like the way that Katie Couric mockery by Tina Fey of Sarah Palin lives forever. It will be played forever on an endless loop. This defines him, reinforcing the stereotype, and it is timeless, never goes away.”

“I think it ends his candidacy as a serious candidate for president,” Mike Barnicle said bluntly.

Watch Mark Halperin and the Morning Joe crew’s take on Rick Perry’s epic gaffe:

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?

I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—

Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

But you’ve seen his.

I don’t know. Have I?

You don’t believe what’s been released?

I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

And?

That came up.

And he said?

He doesn’t think it’s real.

And you said?

I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

Halperin seems torn as to whether the interviewer was a woman or not, and Geist does a creditable Rick Perry impression, but the real treat here is Scarborough’s reactions. The host keyed in on one particularly absurd comment of Perry’s, saying, “There is one bizarre moment when the interviewer asked Perry, how does he not know that he’s from the US? He has seen the birth certificate. He said, ‘He has never seen my birth certificate.’”

Scarborough also asked if “distractive” is even a word (it is), and said, “I have no defense for this.”

He also anticipated the knee-jerk “RINO” conservative reaction to his criticism, but Scarborough summed this crop of GOP candidates perfectly. “This is lunacy,” he said. “This is the sort of thing that, not so many years from now, people will look back at the candidates and say ‘What idiots. What total idiots.’”

“I suspect we will do what Republicans do,” he continued, “and there will be a shake down, and the idiots will be thrown overboard, and we will elect a boring John McCain type, and get Mitt Romney, and maybe lose.”

From Scarborough’s lips to Reagan’s ears.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

“Mitt Romney? John Huntsman,” Scarborough chimed in.

“One of the other prominent candidates in the field,” offered Halperin.

“It’s Herman Cain himself,” said Mika, with a laugh. “Idiots.”

In the age of the bottomless internet memory tubes, stories about political reversals are particularly attractive, especially if there’s audio or video to go with it. However, as Michele Bachmann recently said of the 9-9-9 plan, the devil is often in the details. While it’s true that Cain argued against a national sales tax in November of 2009, as the quotes Brzezinski pulls make clear, Cain’s opposition was predicated on the rest of the tax code remaining intact. That would be like calling a doctor who decided to treat one patient medically “anti-surgery.”

The fact that Cain used the same slippery slope argument that his opponents now use against him is superficially persuasive, but not when you realize that he explicitly endorsed a national sales tax in that same op-ed, as part of a radical restructuring of the tax code.

More legitimately, the group went on to discuss Cain’s revisitation of deadly immigration countermeasures. In his book, Cain talked about a border fence with an alligator-filled moat, and this weekend, told a crowd that he’d construct a 20-foot electrified fence with barbed wire, and a sign that says ”it can kill you!”

He told Meet The Press‘ David Gregory that he was joking, but later, told reporters that he still believed in a fence, “”and it might be electrified.”

So, I guess the “joke” part was the voltage only?

The Cain fence episode sent Scarborough off on a rant. “What’s wrong with a political party that Michelle Bachmann takes the lead, and Herman Cain takes the lead, and we can go through all the other people that have taken the lead,” Scarborough said. “What is wrong with a group of people in a political party that reward this type of behavior that has nothing to do with ideology?”

He concluded by going all Shakespeare on their behinds, saying, “It’s all sort of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Scarborough is probably correct in his assessment that Mitt Romney will be the last man standing, although Rick Perry’s fundraising haul might earn him a second look. Even Republicans who are somewhat in the thrall of Herman Cain’s charms will likely have to succumb to the reality that the steady stream of unelectability that comes out of his mouth make him a poor bet to beat Barack Obama, no matteer how much they love Cain.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

The conversation was pegged to former President Bill Clinton‘s appearance yesterday on CBS Face The Nation in which he was asked about a comment made by former VP Dick Cheney regarding Hillary Clinton’s political viability in challenging Obama in the Democratic primary. Clinton dismissed Cheney’s comment in the most laudatory and respectful way, which earned praise from the Morning Joe crew.

Halperin pointed out that Obama is a very competitive individual whose presidency is an incredibly historical one. Scarborough suggested that no one in the White House seems to be excited about the re-election campaign with what appears to be flailing messaging efforts. And while it seems incredibly unlikely that Obama would step down and not run for a second term, the fact that they typically reasonable Scarborough would even suggest such a scenario is an indication of how deep the public perception hole reelection efforts now find themselves trying to dig out from under.

Watch the clip below courtesy of MSNBC:

“They seem to be running a race that would do fairly well in the panhandle of Texas,” Scarborough argued. “But not on a national stage, not even in a Republican primary, not even in a Republican primary where the Tea Party has a disproportionate impact.”

“Not only is this not going to help you win swing states in the general election,” Scarborough added. “This is going to beat you in a Republican primary.”

Halperin responded that Perry had strong national advisors which allowed for him to get into the race so late and surmised that had he been running against a stronger front runner, his comments on Social Security and Ben Bernanke would be disqualifying. “He’s lucky there’s another debate right around the corner, he can clean these things up. But he’s never going to change. He’s always going to be West Texas.”

Halperin noted that in his successful 2000 Presidential run, George W. Bush tried to play the Texas part down, and focused primarily on his record. “Perry will never do that,” Halperin said. “He’s pure Texas.”

Watch the segment below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Ingraham had Rove on to assess the 2012 Republican race on the eve of tomorrow’s debate in California, which he contended was mostly up for grabs between Rep. Michele Bachmann, Perry, and Mitt Romney. Arguing that her listeners would let her have it on the radio tomorrow if she didn’t ask, Ingraham put the question out there: “What is it with you and Rick Perry? Is this some old animosity? Is it some Texas thing?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy!” Rove responded, adding that Perry “has been nothing but very kind to me,” and that their relationship was so deep and long-lasting that “I was one of the two guys that sat him in a room and convinced him to be a Republican.” Ingraham then asked whether Rove considered Perry ungrateful to the Bush camp for kickstarting his political career, to which Rove responded that “all I’ve seen between the two men is graciousness.” He then cited an article in Time by Mark Halperin that claimed “the two men have never been close.” “I know that not to be true– they’re very close!” he declared emphatically,” chiding the sources used in the piece for what he seemed to consider an attempt to hurt Perry: “I don’t know why they’re doing this.”

The segment via Fox News below:

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

According to ABC News, Perry was asked, Monday night, if the President loves America, and responded with a Pound Puppy™-cute answer:

At a Republican Party event Monday night, a reporter asked Perry whether he was suggesting that President Obama does not love America.

“You need to ask him,” Perry responded. “I’m saying, you’re a good reporter, go ask him”

Perry went on to call President Obama the “greatest threat to our country,” presumably because Obama killed the previous title-holder.

If all of this sounds familiar to you, that’s because it is. Gibbs was quick to point out that Perry’s position as judge of America-lovingness is Perry-lous, at best, given his repeated flirtations with secession from it. “Just two years ago, the Governor of Texas talked openly about leading Texas out of the United States of America, and now, this campaign has caused him to profess his love for the United States. I think it’s a remarkable turnaround.”

He went on to reference another golden oldie, saying, “Any day now, Rick Perry will ask to see the President’s birth certificate.”

I asked Gibbs if he believed Perry’s turnaround was sincere, and he really does love America now, or is this a political calculation? He responded, “You need to ask him. I’m saying, you’re a good reporter, go ask him.”

Elsewhere in the clip, Gibbs faced friendlier fire from former McCain adviser Nicolle Wallace, who accused Gibbs of doing some recycling of his own. Gibbs presented the 2012 election as a “choice,” a verbatim copy of his framing of the 2010 mid-terms. Wallace accused the President of trying to run against Bush again, and Gibbs conceded that the current GOP’s plan to voucherize Medicare is something new, that Bush never tried.

Here’s the clip, from MSNBC:

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.”

Not the most outrageous of statements, one might argue. But wait. We forgot the rest of it: “Grover Norquist was Newt Gingrich‘s butt buddy.” Williams also described Norquist as a “petty criminal.”

The term–which is urban slang–has reminded some of the recent incident involving Mark Halperin, suspended from the network for using tasteless slang in reference to the President.

Watch it here, from MSNBC:

(h/t Breitbart TV via @Suthernboy100)

Given the sturm und drang with which many on the right often like to portray MSNBC and its executives, Griffin cuts a relatable, if not humble, countenance. Yes, he has six flat panel televisions on the wall facing his desk so that he can keep an eye on his own channel, his competitors, and even the ongoing action during the British Open. The image on his computer desktop, however, is no different than probably half of the American fathers from around the nation: an image of his son at bat during a little league baseball game.

Griffin isn’t short on confidence; his charisma and firm handshake have that Norman Vincent Peale quality that makes you glad you’re not in the market for a new car. The Griffin of mythology had the body of a lion and the head of an eagle, but it takes a different combination of qualities to battle monsters like the microscopic news cycle, a Hydra-headed raft of competitors, and a cable news Prometheus like Keith Olbermann trying to steal your fire.

There were certain ground rules for the conversation – certain topics on which he was unable to speak freely due to what one can only assume was a contractual non-disclosure agreement that enabled Olbermann’s relatively seamless departure. Still, the departed Countdown host’s presence is embedded in the subtext of many of Griffin’s responses.

What really shines through, though, is Griffin’s pride in the network’s current lineup, and the identity it forms. Phil Griffin has been with MSNBC since its 1996 launch, which enabled us to speak not only about the network’s current (no pun intended) successes, but also their place in the network’s history.

Mediaite: In the last six months you’ve been through a lot…you endured a new owner in Comcast, some significant executive departures, and the relatively drama-less divorce between MSNBC and Olbermann. All things considered, MSNBC seem to be doing really well. What is it that’s working for you, that has your network firmly ahead of CNN?

Phil Griffin: Three words. A passionate audience. I really believe MSNBC now has established itself a very loyal following. It’s a brand that we’ve started, we’ve really established ourselves in prime-time and in the early morning.

Mediaite: Regarding your current and new programming slate, what is specifically working for you?

Griffin: We are nothing without Rachel Maddow, we are nothing without Ed [Schultz] and Lawrence [O'Donnell] and Chris Matthews. They have created this platform that’s really strong. I can’t say enough about Rachel. She soared over the last six months, and I think that she’s on a total upward traction. The sum is greater than the parts.

We’re niche. We exist on a media landscape where you can get so much. We’ve carved out an area that’s smart, that’s really thoughtful, that really wants depth, not breadth, and wants original thinking, and nobody has all those qualities more than Rachel Maddow. If you said to me, especially in cable ten years ago, that we’re going to begin a show with a 20-minute essay, I’d go, “Really?” But we’ve evolved. And that’s the beauty of what’s happened. We’ve really evolved, where this is what the viewers want.

>>>>NEXT – The transition at 8PM and reliability of MSNBC’s current lineup<<<<

Matthews’ larger point is hard to argue with, and despite obvious differences from the Halperin incident (Matthews’ show airs in the late afternoon; the verb form of “dick” is arguably less offensive; he wasn’t referring to a person or persons, but to an activity that’s pretty hard to defend), Newsbusters editor Noel Sheppard‘s conclusion is essentially correct:

This came a day after numerous F-bombs were broadcast during MSNBC’s Independence Day coverage of the Casey Anthony trial.

Speaking of F-bombs, MSNBC intentionally aired one during last Monday’s “The Last Word.”

Yet the only MSNBCer to be suspended or disciplined in any way so far was been Halperin.

It sure seems vulgarity is quite acceptable on this so-called “news” network – as long as it’s not directed at the President, that is.

Given their mission statement, though, it appears that Newsbusters sees this as evidence of liberal media bias. This assertion ignores the fact that Halperin made his statement on the one and only MSNBC program that features a conservative host. The move to suspend Halperin had little to do with profanity, as Sheppard ably illustrates, and everything to do with protecting the prestige and influence of Morning Joe. At best, it was purely a business decision, but if there was a partisan aim, it was to protect a center-right program.

While the panel mostly agreed the suspension was unfair, the consensus was that MSNBC “had no choice,” but also pointed to the network’s “murky” suspension policies: (video from CNN’s Reliable Sources)

What’s missing from this discussion is the fact that Halperin’s suspension wasn’t about punishing him, or about profanity (as the segment pointed out, Scarborough himself dropped an f-bomb on the air, precipitating the delay), but about protecting the Morning Joe brand. Scarborough’s daily helping of gabbuccino isn’t a huge success because of how many people are watching, but because of who’s watching.

Morning Joe is the only thing you’ll see on TV sets every morning within the beltway, the kind of influence that money can’t buy. While the chatter can be loose and irreverent, at times, it generally doesn’t veer far from the middle of the road, politically. Halperin’s remark, and the swift reaction from the White House, attest to the show’s influence, and to the desire to protect it.

Another bone to pick is the notion that this is a one-time aberration for Halperin, which also goes to the criticism that Halperin is superficial. As the blog Inside Cable News pointed out quickly, Halperin has covered both ends of the genitalial spectrum where Obama is concerned, and was forced to apologize for surmising that then-candidate John Edwards thought then-Sen. Obama was “a pussy.”

Halperin’s apology had a familiar ring to it:

I’m sorry. In a live radio interview this week, I used a word I shouldn’t have. The fact that I was conveying other people’s words is no excuse for my lapse in judgment. It won’t happen again.

Having covered the sexual hardware, let’s not forget Halperin’s figurative money shot, a photoshop of Sen. Mary Landrieu sporting the infamous joy jelly-assisted hairdo from There’s Something about Mary.

The common problem here isn’t the crudity, or the “edginess,” but rather, the contrived attempts to be edgy. Nothing exposes Halperin’s game  quite as effectively as his meek probing of Scarborough about his show’s bleeping policy. Did you ever see Lenny Bruce consulting his audiences about their local obscenity ordinances?

It is contrivances like these, or his White Man’s Burden non sequitur from awhile back, which lead some to conclude that his political knowledge is as superficial as his faux-edgy antics.

In the end, Halperin’s remark should have little long-term effect. He’s firmly entrenched in the mainstream media, and weaknessesin his commentary notwithstanding, he’s well-respected for his workhorse reporting. If it helps, he has a decent case to make that MSNBC reneged on a verbal contract that Scarborough made with him on the air.

He also discussed his love of “deedling” little old ladies. No, that doesn’t mean what you think it does.

“So lets take a look here. The word ‘dick,’ inappropriate. But ‘The Republicans will hurt disabled kids’ is totally permissible. ‘The Republicans will hurt college kids,’ the Republicans will take food out of old people’s mouths,’ totally appropriate. ‘Republicans want to take Social Security checks away from old people,’ totally appropriate. ‘Paul Ryan will push your grandmother to her death over a cliff in a wheelchair,’ totally appropriate. ‘The rich are selfish, mean spirited racists,’ totally appropriate to say. ‘Conservatives are racist, sexist, bigot homophobes,’ totally appropriate to say. It is totally appropriate to make up quotes I never said and attribute them to me. It’s totally appropriate for left-wing sports writers to invent things I never said, that’s totally appropriate. The word ‘dick?’ That’s inappropriate.”

Limbaugh also gave a lesson in broadcasting, explaining why his show had a 40-second delay. Part of the reason was that he liked to have fun with it, bleeping out kindly old ladies who said nothing wrong. Of course, the conversation was a little confusing considering that Limbaugh chose to use the word “deedling” instead of “bleeping” or “censoring.” Even the host had to admit that some listeners with sick minds might be getting the wrong idea.

Watch the clip below:

The only thing more comical than the attacks that have been leveled at Barack Obama by Republicans is the way everyone gets the vapors as soon as his heart rate gets above 80. Was it kind of a dick move to compare congressional Republicans (unfavorably) to ‘tweenage girls? Maybe, but it was awesome. After years of Republicans calling him everything from a mau-mau to just plain Mao, and rejecting their own ideas as soon as the President signs on to them, and heckling him during a joint session of Congress, this hardly seems to indicate that Mr. Obama needs to “take a Valium and calm down.”

Every time President Obama displays even the slightest deviation from Vulcan form, the media take their cues from Republicans, and freak out. While candidates like John Kerry were gulled into keeping all of their anger confined to the pillows they shouted into, and all of their messaging “positive” (and ineefectual), President Obama is just naturally calm, reasonable, and not nearly dickish enough.

Unfortunately, the highlights of the Obama presidency, at least for this liberal, all have significant doses of phallitude™ in common. Perhaps the best example of this was President Obama’s visit to the Republican House Issues Conference in 2010.

The thing you have to understand is that these weren’t just any Republicans, they were House Republicans. The House of Representatives, regardless of party, is like that crazy girl you could barely keep up with before you settled down and got married to the Senate. It wasn’t just the lion’s den, it was the lion’s den, living room and kitchen.

For over an hour, the President fielded the very worst the Republicans could muster, and he kicked ass. By the time it was over, he had taken their best talking points and left them shredded on the floor. While it didn’t necessarily convert his detractors, the President’s performance left no doubt as to who was and was not serious about solving the country’s problems. If you were a Republican, this was a dick move that rivaled spring cleaning day at the John Holmes Museum.

Then, there was his complete decimation of the Birthers, and Donald Trump, with the longest rope-a-dope in history. After years of letting the Birthers punch themselves out, and marrying many mainstream Republicans to the cause in the process, years of keeping that long-form birth certificate locked up like the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, all of a sudden, BAM!

He produces the long-form on the eve of the White House Correspondents Dinner, delivers a withering routine at the dinner that almost made me feel sorry for Trump, all while having just pushed the button on the operation to kill Osama bin Laden. There was only one way Republicans could respond, at least inwardly:

There have been many moments during the Obama presidency that have been more significant than these, of course, but have had their aura of triumph marred in one way or another. The passage of health care reform, for example, was marked by the ditching of the public option, and while the squeaker of a finish was amazing, it was only necessitated by a grisly Democratic failure in the Massachusetts Senate special election.

Whatever you think about deficit reduction, the full faith and credit of the US government shouldn’t be permitted to be held hostage, even to good ideas, let alone bad ones. The American people are fed up with all of this talk about shared sacrifice, because we’ve already eaten more than our fair share of sacrifice. The public is overwhelmingly certain of where that sacrifice should come from. So, Mr. President, please, do be a dick about it.

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.

Now, long time viewers of Morning Joe know that there is always some healthy tension between on-air talent and those in the control room, which is a tried and true comedic device that Scarborough and Brzesinski often use to great effect. And this instance isn’t all that different from nearly every other instance of the chiding that the viewer typically sees. There is a bit more to the story, however.

Morning Joe has a new Executive Producer, Alex Korson, who has been with the show for some time, but recently replaced long time show runner Chris Licht, who left in May for an executive position at CBS. This is not to suggest that Korson has raised the ire of the show’s hosts, but given the negative attention the show received yesterday, in large part due to miscommunication between control room and on-air talent over a “delay button” not being pressed, I would imagine that the whole Morning Joe crew are very much looking forward to the holiday weekend.

Watch the clip below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Thanks to the magic of late-night basic cable, Stewart was able to play the entire clip, and while he found it fascinating, he noted that “what’s interesting to me about what he did is not what he did, it’s what happened after they came back from the commercial.” He then played Halperin’s apology, which, for some reason, was not filmed as a shot of only him, but featured Geist sitting beside him, frowning disappointedly. While Stewart asserted that it was totally obvious Halperin would apologize, but “what you didn’t know was that his apology would be chaperoned by show regular Willie Geist’s disapproving glare.”

Stewart’s first impression of Geist just sitting there was to be completely spooked, but the more he thought about it, the more he liked it. He quickly did a 180º on his presence: “This guy, Willie Geist, should be included in all our apologies!” Stewart then went on to demonstrate several famous apologies adorned by the presence of Willie Geist and, yes, Geist would pop up later on during the show whenever Stewart said something inappropriate, which is often.

The segment via Comedy Central below:

“Did he jump or was he pushed?” Spitzer asked after playing the ~30 second clip of Halperin suggesting that the word he was about to use for President Obama required the seven-second delay, and hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski pushing him to say something controversial, without knowing what it was he was about to say. Abrams noted that “sure he’s being encouraged,” and that on a show like Morning Joe, “you want to be as provocative and interesting as possible.” That doesn’t justify, he argued, the harsh language used against the President– and especially the President. “If he called Joe Scarborough that word,” Abrams argued, “I don’t think it would’ve been that big of a deal.”

Spitzer expressed some hesitation at the immediacy of the suspension on freedom of speech grounds, noting that “we’re so hesitant” in expressing themselves on television and that stifling certain words because of the nature of them without the civility argument. Abrams disagreed with this tension– “when you’re on television, when you’re on a news network, what you say matters.” He added that “when you pick a word like that to talk about any President of the United States, you’re going to get yourself into trouble… It’s not about civility.”

The segment via CNN below:

In today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney revealed his thoughts on Halperin’s comment and what action he himself took on behalf of the President:

“The comment that was made was inappropriate. It would be inappropriate to say that about any President of either party. On behalf of the White House I expressed that sentiment to executives at the network. I have no comment on whatever action that network – any network, any newspaper, whatever might take because that’s not for us to decide.”

Some laughed at how quick MSNBC and Halperin were falling over themselves to apologize, and Carney’s admission that he spoke to MSNBC executives is likely not to go unnoticed by critics of the Obama administration who already like to frequently label the President as “thin-skinned.”

Watch the clip from C-SPAN below:

(h/t Politico)

Rush suggested Halperin shouldn’t be too embarrassed by his description of the President, since “everybody’s thinking it.” Yet Rush was annoyed by what he perceived to be a double standard in the reaction to Halperin’s slip-up:

“If Mark Halperin had said this about say George W. Bush, would they be falling all over themselves to apologize? Nope he would be, my guess is [the media would say] ‘new ground had been broken.’ ‘Finally’ they would say ‘a reporter has had the courage and the guts to tell the nation just exactly the kind of President we have. A gutsy move. It might have been over the line. It might have been a little bit risky.’”

Rush said everyone in the media called certain Republicans “dick” all the time and there was never any outcry. Although the two examples Rush sarcastically chose were Richard Nixon and, well, Dick Cheney. And for Rush, apparently “now it’s dick Obama. We got Joe Bite Me, we got dick Obama.” And in case you didn’t get your share of “dick” jokes for the day, Rush caps it off with possibly the best one yet as he randomly decides to switch gears and discuss how Anthony Weiner is in intense “dick rehab” right now.

Yet Rush’s larger point isn’t entirely worth laughing off, and makes one wonder whether Halperin’s infraction here truly deserved the harsh penalty of “indefinite” suspension?

Listen to the clip from The Rush Limbaugh Show:

(h/t Daily Rushbo)

A rough transcript of the exchange (via TVeyes):

Joe Scarborough: Mark Halperin, What was the president’s strategy? We are coming up on a deadline and the president decided to please his base, push back against the Republicans.I guess the question is, we know a deal has to be done. Is this showmanship? A lot of times you go up there and both sides and they act tough so their base will be appeased, then they quietly work the deal behind the scenes.

Mark Halperin: Are we on the seven second delay?

Mika Brzezinski: Lordy.

Halperin: I wanted to characterize how the president behaved.

Scarborough: We have it. We can use it. Go for it. Let’s see what happens.

Brzezinski: We’re behind you, you fall down and we catch you.

Halperin: I thought he was a dick yesterday.

Scarborough: Delay that. delay that. what are you doing? i can’t believe — Iwas joking. Don’t do that. Did we delay that?

Halperin: I said it. I hope it worked.

Scarborough: My mom is watching! We’ll know whether it worked or not.

Shortly after the incident, a chagrined Halperin apologized to the audience and later expressed a similar sentiment via his Twitter feed:

Update: MSNBC has issued the following statements:

Mark Halperin’s comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. 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.

Statement from Mark Halperin:

I completely agree with everything in MSNBC’s statement about my remark. I believe that the step they are taking in response is totally appropriate. Again, I want to offer a heartfelt and profound apology to the President, to my MSNBC colleagues, and to the viewers. My remark was unacceptable, and I deeply regret it.

Watch the video below, courtesy of MSNBC:

“I think I saw this guy on Broadway,” Scarborough joked after a clip of Perry at the RLC played, alluding jokingly to the Will Ferrell show You’re Welcome, America, an impression of the former president Scarborough thought was about as authentic as Perry’s speech. Brzezinski, meanwhile, mostly shook her head at the idea that Perry could be popular, while the two were enthusiastically challenged by Mark Halperin, who argued several times that, while “my gut tells me he’s not going to run, there’s room for him in this race.” Halperin noted three factors about Perry that could make him dangerous to other Republican candidates: he’s a Southerner, a Tea Partier, and a social conservative– and Texas created more jobs than any other state in this rough economy.

While it is noted that the latter point is somewhat diminished by the fact that rising oil prices disproportionately help states like Texas with their job markets, Halperin stood by his defense of the governor, to which a bemused Scarborough merely shook his head at the prospect, adding “I don’t get it,” while Brzezinski rushed to change the subject.

The segment via MSNBC below:

What followed was a smart if not brief conversation about the GOP debate last night as well as broad field of candidates that participated. Halperin points out that two of the potential front runners were not involved, then cited Texas Governor Rick Perry as well as former Utah Governor and US Ambassador to China Jon Hunstman, but not Sarah Palin. Interesante!

Watch the clip below, courtesy of MSNBC:

Yes, hindsight is 20/20, and while anyone can be suddenly find themselves rubbernecking at an accident on the side of the road, one would like to believe that the political experts who get paid lots of money to opine on cable news would have a better bullshit detector. So let’s take a trip down memory lane and see who was wrong and who was right about Trump’s presidential run:

>>>>NEXT: Find Out Which Political Pundits Got It Wrong And Right<<<<

Joe Scarborough Got it Wrong! (1 of 10)

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Scarborough's role in L'affaire du Trump has been overlooked by many, but he was among the very first to claim that The Donald was "very seriously" considering a run for President back on October 10th. But he outdid himself in a column he wrote for Politico in which he compared Trump's rhetoric with Ronald Reagan. Yes, that really happened.

Where Halperin might be wrong is in saying that the raid is “controversial,” at least to people who aren’t compulsive rabble-rouser Michael Moore. If it somehow becomes controversial, then we obviously aren’t doing our jobs, and Brzezinski’s question perfectly illustrates that:

Early in the segment, NBC Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski presented the most up-to-date official timeline of the raid, taking care to note that even the unarmed subjects could very well have been been concealing explosives. Throughout the discussion, the panelists (including Halperin) were careful to note that their questioning of the official story should in no way be seen as diminishing the actions of that SEAL team. Halperin even suggests that this should not be cause to question the patriotism of journalists.

Harold Ford, Jr, points out that, intentions aside, the swirl of questions and contradictions does “cast a shadow” over the operation, and while much of the blame for that is being placed (somewhat fairly) at The White House’s feet, the length and breadth of that shadow will depend largely on how the media handles it.

Part of the problem for people like Michael Moore (aside from an innate skepticism of the military that, in the right measure, is healthy) is that our news media is ill-equipped to counter the impression that “unarmed man” headlines give, that this is somehow analogous to a hinky police shooting. It is difficult to convey the proper context in a headline, or to lay out the differences between the civilian frame of reference, and the specific challenges of a military raid on a target predisposed to blowing himself up along with his would-be captors. Whether bin Laden was “reaching” or not, he posed a danger, especially if he didn’t immediately enter the correct surrender posture.

Halperin is right, there is absolutely nothing wrong with asking questions, and the White House could definitely have given better answers, but we have a duty to present those answers in proper context. If we do that, then this will only be “controversial” to the willfully ignorant, like Michael Moore. Calling the bin Laden shooting an “execution,” based on zero evidence, is a smear on the men who conducted the raid, and on President Obama.