Three cheers for Ryan Lizza. On "Morning Joe" on Monday morning, he refuted the conventional Beltway wisdom that "both sides" are to blame for the political gridlock in Washington.

MEACHAM: What does the White House, I should say attribute the polarization to at this point and if the identified the problems can they do something to solve them?

LIZZA: I think two things that aren't that complicated, polarization, two parties moving to the left and right, but it’s not just polarization and I think where a lot of reporters have trouble describing this phenomenon accurately. Frankly, you have one party that has gone much farther to the extreme than the other. The Republican party has been pushed much farther to the right than the Democratic Party. So we don't have polarization, we have asymmetric polarization.

SCARBOROUGH: I just want to state for the record -- let the record reflect, I disagree. Go ahead. This is your time.

LIZZA: I think there’s some pretty, if you look closely at some of the political science behind that – I think you’d have a hard time making the case that the Democrats in Congress have gone as far to the left as the Republicans have gone to the right.

Scarborough lamely tried to refute Lizza’s point by suggesting that what unnamed Democrats said about George W. Bush was just as bad as what Glenn Beck is saying today about Obama. That’s nonsense, of course – there were no elected Democrats comparing George W. Bush to Hitler on the floor of the House or calling him a racist on national television.

But political rhetoric isn’t what Lizza was talking about.

As Nate Silver demonstrated with hard data, the Democratic Party is still a party primarily of moderates, and the GOP is totally dominated by conservatives. And even that doesn’t take into account how far right the scale has been titled over the past 30 years.

Back in the '50s, an era conservatives romanticize, Dwight Eisenhower presided over a 91% marginal rate on the wealthy and launched the biggest public works project in US history -- which was paid for by tax increases.

During the '80s, another favorite decade of the right-wing, Ronald Reagan raised taxes 12 times -- including one of the largest tax increases in U.S. history -- and signed a bill that provided a path to citizenship for immigrants. Both of which would be unthinkable in today’s GOP.

Today, we live in an era in which a 35% tax on the highest earners constitutes tyranny, a $787B emergency measure to stave off a second Great Depression – over a third of which was tax cuts – is characterized as a historically unprecedented spending binge -- and the GOP's answer to immigration is to forcibly deport 12M people. Not to mention the fact that Senate Republicans have used the filibuster more than any other minority in history -- and that now it's commonplace for Republican presidential candidates to argue that the most popular programs of the New Deal and the Great Society should be eliminated.

Lizza should be applauded for getting this right. This “both sides have become equally extreme” stuff is just lazy and uninformed -- and should be throughly refuted every time it comes up.

On Thursday morning, Jim DeMint went on "Morning Joe" to pimp his new book -- Now or Never: Saving America from Slightly Higher Taxes on Rich People Economic Collapse -- and peddled a bunch of lies. All of which went completely unchallenged by the panel, of course.

It all started with Scarborough serving up a nice, fat softball to DeMint.

SCARBOROUGH: We were just saying earlier in the show one of the big problems over the past ten years has been the fact that you had a Republican president who doubled the national debt, with a Republican Congress for six years. Now you have a Democratic president who is going to double the debt again...what do we do to stop the bleeding?

DEMINT: Well, that's what the book's all about. 2012 could be our last chance to turn this thing around. The only way the Republicans in the House now can stop the bleeding is if they shut the government down.

Great plan!

And notice: there's absolutely no mention of the fact that taxes are currently at historic lows, and were cut under the previous administration before the country launched two wars, created a massive new domestic security agency -- and fell into the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

None of that has contributed to the deficit at all. Nope, it's just "spending" that's the problem. Amazing.

And it just got worse.

DEMINT: Now we've got the tension between those who want centralized power, government control of education, health care, transportation, energy -- and Republicans who I think finding their footing around their core principles of we need to devolve power out of Washington, we need to decentralize, because that's what makes America work. [...]

The Democrats are there to beat us. Every policy that they introduce is to centralize power. They are completely incapable of cutting spending because their constiuency is based on dependency on government and those who want more government.

Nice racist dogwhistle at the end there. But how many lies can DeMint cram into two paragraphs?

First, you think someone on the panel would point out to DeMint that government payrolls have dropped by 500,000 jobs under Obama. Isn't that what Teabaggers want? Smaller government?

Also, someone may have pointed out that energy companies and the health care industry are making record profits. Again, kind of an odd thing to happen under a bunch of socialists who want to nationalize everything.

Hey, Brokaw and Meacham. You call yourselves journalists? How can these two let this BS go unchallenged? Awful.

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Joe Scarborough gets an earful from CNBC Wall Street reporter Melissa Francis on the Occupy Wall Street movement.

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The right-wing talkers and Beltway Villagers have all been wringing their hands at how mean and disrespectful President Obama was by inviting Paul Ryan to sit in the front row of his speech Wednesday and then to so openly rebuke his absurd 'Path to the Poorhouse' deficit-reduction plan.

One of the more vivid examples of this was Joe Scarborough's wailing and gnashing of teeth on Thursday morning on MSNBC. He was happily joined in this by Professional Wanker Mark Halperin.

Scarborough kept repeating that Obama had "called Ryan un-American," though of course Obama had done no such thing; he had repeatedly said that the Republican plan didn't reflect any America he knew -- which is of course quite a different thing. (We on the Left know what being called "un-American" sounds like -- and that ain't it.)

Of course, we all saw Ryan's little hissy-fit afterwards, in which he declared that the president was "dramatically inaccurate" in his speech. By Joe Scarborough's logic, that's exactly the same as calling him a liar! So who's being disrespectful?

I think Mika Brzezinski had it exactly right: Obama in fact was being unusually respectful in inviting Ryan and his cohorts to hear directly what he had to say, because he doesn't believe in doing things the Republican way: Slamming people not to their faces but waiting till they're not around and can't answer.

It's just such a radical concept for Republicans that they become utterly flabbergasted when confronted with it.

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Joe Scarborough channeled tiny little tidbits of William F. Buckley this morning on his show after playing one of Glenn Beck's more bizarro clips from this week, saying he was bad for Republicans, bad for Fox News, and bad for the conservative movement.

Golly, ya think? I'm really glad Joe could take time out from his snackies to let us all know that, but I think it's going to have to be said just a little louder and a little bit more clearly for anyone to really hear it, especially when we have the likes of Michele Bachmann saying (in public, no less), that Beck could balance the budget.

The most interesting panelist reaction comes from Pat Buchanan, Mr. Racist Extraordinaire, who cannot bring himself to say it. The best he can do is to disagree with the clip Scarborough showed, but on the actual question of whether Glenn Beck is an idiot with a show, a dog whistle and an incoherent message that no one but Beck understands, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

I did appreciate Joe pointing out that his nonsense could get someone hurt or killed, but I've just gotta say, Joe, you're no William F. Buckley. That role goes to someone else to play, yet to be determined.

The fact that Scarborough ran with this at all, and did so while mentioning Karl Rove more than once exposes the deep rift within the Republican Party between the tea party contingent and the more traditional right wingers. Peter Wehner is no moderate and has been vocal more than once about his feelings when it comes to Glenn Beck. It's clear there's a subterranean power struggle inside the GOP between the wild, manic Beckian contingent led by the likes of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman and Jim DeMint, and the usual conservative but not batsh*t crazy wing led by the Karl Rove contingent. It remains to be seen who will win.

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I am so tired of the constant drumbeat of false equivalence from the likes of Joe Scarborough. Right at the top of his show this morning he jumps out with a little whine in his coffee about how mean the awful left is to him, and how hateful their signs in Wisconsin are.

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Joe's little rant follows last week's rant where he called Wisconsin teachers "sick and selfish" for standing up for their rights instead of taking their medicine like everyone else. Of course, we all now know right from Governor Walker's own lips that this isn't about the budget, but about union-busting. He's said it over and over again over the past three days. Yet no one took Scarborough to task for calling working people who want the right to collectively bargain "sick and selfish." Not a one.

About that whole civility thing, Joe. Let's talk on that for a minute, because the language of hatefulness seems to be the native tongue of the Tea Party. Let me share a few email headlines I've received over the past couple of days, sent from Tea Party leaders to the Tea Party faithful.

• President Stupid
• Run by Fools
• Obama's Incredible Shrinking America

Those are just a random sampling of headlines. The text is far worse. It's an intentional effort to keep tea party members engaged by enraging them. Those email blasts go out at least three times every day to the membership with little teases in them like this:

The socialists, from Obama on down, are spreading the word that if there is a government shutdown, the world as we know it will come to an end. There will be no military, security, air traffic control and grandma won't get her social security check.

Guess what? They are lying!

Yeah, nothing to see here, move along. Sure, the lefties send emails like this to their members every single day, working them into a lather over the tiniest, most trivial, ginned-up issues. And yeah, sure we have a 24/7 propaganda machine called Fox News out there amplifying that rage for the world to see. Sure we do, Joe.

People on the left understand that we have no mainstream media that can be considered "liberal." At best, we get Rachel Maddow's brilliance offset by Joe Scarborough's whining ways on MSNBC. Meanwhile, Fox News just grinds out the propaganda hour after hour, day after day.

So forgive me, Joe, if I don't weep big salt tears for the nasty emails you receive. I'll delete mine if you delete yours. That's about all anyone can do.

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Joe Scarborough was really on a tear this morning. This clip is about his third rant in 45 minutes about how those poor Wisconsin children aren't learning a thing because the selfish, piggish teachers are protesting at the Capitol.

All morning long, he framed the issue as a benefits issue. This is not -- I repeat, NOT -- a benefits issue. It is a question of the governor of a state spending that state's surplus in order to create a crisis for the sole purpose of breaking unions.

When it was clear he wasn't getting traction with his rants on the selfishness of teachers with regard to benefits, he ramped it up when he laid down an ultimatum: Public workers can live by the same rules as private workers or be unemployed.

Funny how Joe is so upset over workers protesting in Wisconsin, and places the blame squarely on them instead of the overreaching reactionary governor who manufactured a crisis to break unions. Back in the days of the health care town hall protests, he couldn't wait to blame President Obama, calling him "the most polarizing President in history."

Oh, I forgot to mention this, too. Joe just thinks these protests make Democrats look terrible, awful. Au contraire, Joe. It makes Democrats look like...Democrats. Which I suppose would look terrible to a conservative.

Full MSNBC transcript follows:

Do those kids in the streets really think Andrew Cuomo or Jerry brown are doing this for their health.

The teachers ought to be in classrooms today.

Children are not learning in Wisconsin today because teachers don't want to pay the same benefits -- same money for benefits that rest of Americans have to pay. How sick is that? Far less.

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Overheard conversation between a couple of 15-year olds recently:

"OMG, have you heard? No one likes him. They're all telling me what a jerk he is."

"Oh, I know. He just doesn't have a clue about anything, does he?"

That clip from Morning Joe at the top almost gets to that, with Scarborough's snide suggestion that the Senators just think President Obama is clueless. Assume the Scarborough Seven would include Ben Nelson, Max Baucus, Mark Warner, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman and who else? (By the way, I make that assumption because of the assertion that he's 'gotta get Republicans' in there...no progressive Senator would say that.)

Greg Sargent:

Sure, Scarborough could very well be exaggerating wildly or makin' it up. But you know something? Having watched Congress up close for the past two years -- the backbiting, the shortsightedness, the scheming, the elevation of individual careers over party, and the bizarre addiction some Dems have to currying favor with journalists and outlets who are openly hostile to them -- It wouldn't surprise me at all if there's some truth to it.

Assuming "all those Senators" actually said what Joey says they said, it makes sense because of the jockeying right now between BlueDogs and the rest of the Democrats. Keep the message out in the media via the one guy willing to act as megaphone in the hopes Democrats will move right at a time where they should absolutely be moving left.

Above-it-all politico Joe Scarborough whinges that judiciary scandals never seem to describe the judge involved as "Clinton-appointed". Hmmm.....wonder why that is?

I don't know, Joe. Maybe it's because the most controversial activist judges come from appointments from Republican presidents? I'm just sayin'...

Of course, Scarborough and his sycophant Jon Meacham could just be pulling facts out of their whiney asses. I quote from Heritage.org :

In Log Cabin Republicans v. United States, the Obama Administration sought to win a policy victory by losing a case. By failing to adequately defend the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) statute—a bipartisan act of Congress that provides that members of the military are subject to separation for engaging in a homosexual act, stating that he or she is a homosexual, or marrying a person of the same sex—President Obama is able to undermine or do away with a statute that he opposes. He can do so while shifting any blame for the change in policy to the courts. And a Clinton appointee, Judge Virginia Phillips, proved more than willing to accommodate the Administration, issuing an activist opinion that reads more like a press release than a legal judgment.

And from the NY Times:

The Senate on Wednesday found Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. of Federal District Court in Louisiana guilty on four articles of impeachment and removed him from the bench, the first time the Senate has ousted a federal judge in more than two decades. [..]
Mr. Porteous, 64, was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and has been suspended with pay since 2008. As a result of his removal from the bench, which took effect immediately, he will not receive his annual federal pension of $174,000.

Maybe Joe, you should focus on why there are so many judicial scandals surrounding Republican appointees next time.

There are a number of reasons I always have to chortle whenever Fox Republicans -- or for that matter, Jon Stewart -- try to portray MSNBC as a balancing counterpart to Fox News' overt display of propaganda. The first is that, regardless of the rise of liberal talk-show hosts on its broadcasts, MSNBC remains a real news organization that actually strives to be careful with facts and truthfulness, not to mention its ethical responsibilities -- something Fox long ago abandoned.

That was underlined a couple of weeks ago when the network actually suspended Keith Olbermann for having donated to political campaigns -- drawing a sharp contrast with Fox, where its anchors not only openly donate to campaigns, they actually help promote Republican candidates on-air and provide viewers fund-raising info, while News Corp. publicly donates large sums to partisan political campaigns. It's an old-fashioned standard at MSNBC, though a fairly typical one for a traditional news organization, as distinct from a propaganda operation.

The problem was with the network's dumbassery in enforcing the policy, particularly in suspending Olbermann as "punishment" for such a minor infraction. Not only was it an overreaction, it was also absurdly inconsistent, considering that other MSNBC had made similar donations -- notably Joe Scarborough, the Republican host of Morning Joe.

So now the network has just compounded the dumbassery by suspending Scarborough. From MSNBC's own account:

When Olbermann, host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," was suspended Nov. 5 for making donations to three Democratic congressional candidates, Scarborough acknowledged that two political contributions had been made in his name, but he said they had been made by his wife.

Griffin said in a statement that Scarborough informed him Friday that he had in fact made eight contributions from 2004 to 2008 to local candidates in Florida that he did not recall.

"He will be immediately suspended for two days without pay and will return to the air on Wednesday, November 24th," Griffin said. "As Joe recognizes, it is critical that we enforce our standards and policies."

In his own statement Friday, Scarborough he had "recently" been made aware of the contributions and told Griffin about them himself.

This just makes the network look amateurish. This is really all about MSNBC's corporate culture and its longtime aversion to being labeled the "liberal media" -- something it's had since its inception in the 1990s. It has always tried to blunt these accusations by hiring a number of overt right-wing ideologues, and for most of its existence its demographic strategy was geared at being "Fox Lite". Then, when it discovered that its tiny handful of liberal hosts were actually the greatest ratings successes, it shifted gears somewhat to more eagerly promote them.

This is the other reason I chortle at the MSNBC-is-the-opposite-of-Fox analogies: MSNBC has always been and always will be primarily a corporate entity and fundamentally conservative in its basic approach to broadcasting. I know this from having worked at the network for four years at its conception. It has found that liberal hosts bring it some bottom-line success, but that doesn't mean it will ever be a fundamentally -- or unapologetically -- liberal network.

So when Olbermann leaves an opening, these corporate masters will punish him to prove once again that they are NOT the "liberal biased media," as they did a couple of weeks ago. Then when its liberal audience is appropriately angered over the double standard, it tries to cover its tracks by over-punishing the conservatives who did the same.

MSNBC needs to revise its policy to allow its opinion anchors some partisan leeway, but it should maintain its usual standards for its straight-news reporters and editors. And then it needs to make the sanctions for violations reflective of the actual grievance.

But mostly, it needs to decide for itself what kind of news organization it is, set its own standards and live by them, and not get bullied by right-wing blowhards trying to work the refs. Or don't they ever notice how Fox deals with the accusations that it has a right-wing bias? It blows them off. MSNBC could use a little of that spine.