Early Friday morning, when Sarah Palin's name was floated as a possible VP pick, Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough couldn't have been any more against it: Scarborough compares Palin to Harriet Miers, saying it would be "condescending" towards women and a huge "political faux pas," while Pat Buchanan says the pick could be spell potential "disaster."

"I will say this, and let's just be really blunt about it, if John McCain's campaign thinks that by simply appointing a woman they are going to get Hillary Clinton's voters, that is condescending and insulting to women and it is a terrible terrible political faux pas. This will be a mistake." [...]

"You know, it sounds, and I know I'm going to get blasted for this, it sounds like a Harriet Miers decision, 'let's get a woman, whether she's experienced or not'..."

Well, John McCain did make the irresponsible choice of Palin for VP, and in the second half of this mashup Heather so graciously put together, Pat Buchanan makes a complete reversal and begins to extoll the virtues of a Palin vice-presidency, going so far as to even proclaim that she and her husband were members of the "Buchanan Brigade," something the McCain campaign, for obvious reasons, vehemently denies.

We're still awaiting Scarborough's flip flop. I can't be too far off.

(h/t Heather)

If you thought Joe Scarborough sending his court jester Willie Geist to ask Big Tent bloggers if they eat Cheetos and blog from their mother's basement was a d*ck move, watch how he treats David Shuster in this clip from "Morning Joe." Has there ever been anyone more petty and condescending as he is here? I have to give props to Shuster; I would have gotten up and decked Joe if he ever talked to me like that.

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SCARBOROUGH: What about your party? What’s your party? David Shuster, David, what’s your party?

SHUSTER: I have no party. I’m a complete independent.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, you’re independent. Just like all..

SHUSTER: I’ll show you my voting card. I’ll show you how I’m registered later.

SCARBOROUGH: Oh...I feel so comforted by the fact that you’re an Independent. I bet everyone at MSNBC has “independent” on their voting cards. “Oh, we’re down the middle now.” Go ahead, David. No, no, go ahead. You’re an Independent David. Go ahead. Talk about my party. Go ahead.

Ummm, you served in Congress as a Republican, Joe. So, yes, your party is the Republican Party.

Transcript below the fold:

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An open mic caught Keith Olbermann last night telling Joe Scarborough to get a shovel and dig himself out of the horse crap he was dropping all over the airwaves about how confident the McCain campaign must feel right now. And thus a classic moment in live political news coverage was born.

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Let the transcript speak for itself:

SCARBOROUGH: Is the media turning against him? Is the media going to start seizing on things like this to prove that they're not in the tank for Barack Obama?

HALPERIN: There's been a little bit of the paradigm shift. I think that McCain web video might have had the same effect as the Saturday Night Live parody that...on the Clinton/Obama race. I think some reporters recognize going forward if we replicate the way the coverage has been, the imbalance, the unfair pro-Obama coverage going forward, it would do a disservice in the general election. This...whenever I go on TV and say, ‘this election is about a referendum on Obama, that's the whole thing,' those guys with the Cheetos on the end of their fingers...

BRZEZINSKI: [laughs] Exactly...

HALPERIN: ...attack me and say, ‘that's just some dodge, it's about McCain too'. McCain deserves scrutiny and he'll get some. But I think Barack Obama has to find the right balance between this seeming presidential, getting people comfortable with him, and this kind of stuff, the presidential seal, the faux seal, the kind of quote that The Washington Post has. I think that's stuff is dangerous. I think that's the one way he can lose the election.

SCARBOROUGH: People don't understand the dynamics of this race, the landscape, the battlefield, the political battlefield. And it is this: Republicans have had power for 8 years. We've gotten in trouble in Iraq. We've gotten in trouble in Afghanistan. We're going to have a $500 billion deficit. The President's approval rating below 30. He's in Jimmy Carter territory. Right Track/Wrong Track-81% of Americans think we're on the wrong track. There is...so when we say it's not about John McCain, we're saying you could put a Pet Rock, you know, in the position John McCain is, if it were a Republican Pet Rock, it would have all of these problems. It is about Obama, because like Jimmy Carter in '76, a Democrat should win.

First of all, Halperin, bite me with the dismissive Cheetos snark. I'll match not only my diet but my bona fides against yours any day and we'll see just who has the Cheetos stains. You get attacked because you literally can not recognize your posterior from your elbow. You really want us to believe this ridiculous "librul media" bias meme you've been pushing for years? Um, hello...reality to Halperin. Maybe if you weren't so busy eating the doughnuts and BBQ with which McCain is only too happy to keep you supplicated, you'd see that.

As much as I'd hate to agree with the Scar -- and believe me, it's killing me -- the Democrats winning this election should be a foregone conclusion considering just how badly the GOP has screwed up in their 25 years of either Legislative or Executive control. The fact that Obama doesn't have a 25-30 point margin has more to do with hacks like Halperin who will never report honestly on McCain's dizzying number of flip flops, his bad temper, his constant factual errors but will focus endlessly on hard hitting items like unproven, unchallenged and fact-free slurs.

This election is not a referendum on Barack Obama, you hack. It's to the detriment of the entire country that we can't have an referendum on the damage done to democracy by the likes of Mark Halperin. Put that on a Cheetos and eat it.

UPDATE: MoveOn has sent out a political action to its members asking them to contact Halperin and ask him to stop repeating right wing talking points. You may email him at mark_halperin@timemagazine.com and then let MoveOn know your response.

On "Morning Joe," seemingly in response to this C&L post, Joe Scarborough denies he was talking about his colleague Keith Olbermann when he referred to a pundit who "ignorantly" reported on McCain's Anbar gaffe, and then goes on a hysterical little rant about the "Cheetos Brigade" without mentioning who he was talking about.

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"I was talking about someone on another network. [...] But again, you know the problem is when you're in the basement and you're blogging and you're eating Cheetos, sometimes the Cheetos dust goes up, ya know, and you get two choices: You can either keep typing, or you can stop for a second and wipe the Cheetos off your chest, clear out your ears and take a closer listen. But they don't do that. And therein lies the problem with the 'Cheetos Brigade.'"

What other cable news host reported on the story Tuesday night that Joe could have been talking about? Was it Andersen Cooper? We'll probably never know because although Joe may not be a keyboard-carrying member of the "Cheeto Brigade," he sure doesn't have the courage to name names.

Maybe Joe can lament about the evil bloggers with Brian Williams at the next DC cocktail party. I can just picture them yukking it up about guys named Vinny with "Cheetos-stained" shirts in their pathetic "efficiency apartments." Maybe our pads would be a little nicer, Joe, if we were handsomely rewarded for being wrong about everything like you are. Then again, I'll take my snack food, modest housing and clean conscience over your mansion and war-cheerleading record any day of the week.

Be back in a minute....my fingers are orange and the bag is empty. [Blue Gal has a Cheetos message for Joe, too]

(h/t Heather)

Barack Obama's Senior Foreign Policy Advisor Susan Rice appeared on Friday's Morning Joe to discuss foreign policy, and more specifically North Korea's destruction of a long-defunct nuclear cooling tower yesterday. The Scar thought this was a huge diplomatic victory for George Bush, but Rice sets him straight, reminding him that North Korea's nuclear program expanded by leaps and bounds under Bush's watch and that if he would have opened negotiations years earlier, much of this could have been avoided in the first place.

Joe pretends to be a middle of the road kind of guy, but when he gets punked, especially by a Democrat, it drives him crazy and his true, far-right colors always come through. As Rice goes down the laundry list of Bush failures, Joe gets snippy with her, and even stoops so low as to hurl an insult at Jimmy Carter in the process. NBC's David Gregory chimes in at the end of the segment and drops a question on Rice that was pulled directly from Karl Rove's playbook:

Gregory: "Hello, Susan. While we are talking about the prospect of nuclear terrorism, which is what is behind the concerns of North Korea and Iran. I have a broader question for you and really for Senator Obama. Why is it, does he believe that America has not been attacked in this country by terrorists since 9/11? And does George W. Bush, President Bush deserve credit for that?"

Rice: "I think what we have to acknowledge, David, that we haven't been attacked but we are nonetheless less safe as a sequence of the policies of this administration has pursued. Our standing in the world is at an all-time low. Al Qaeda is more dangerous now in Afghanistan and Pakistan than it has been. Our intelligence community is warning they are reconstituting and more deadly to U.S. forces than Iraq."

Of course, Gregory is incorrect, there HAS been a deadly terrorist attack in the U.S. since 9/11 -- the anthrax attacks that killed 5 Americans ring a bell to you? It's interesting that so many seem to forget this factoid. Speaking of anthrax and Bush failures, you'll be happy to learn that $5.8 million of your tax dollars were just awarded to Steven Hatfill in his lawsuit against the Bush Justice Department. Hatfill is an Army scientist who was deemed a "Person of Interest" in the anthrax attacks, but was eventually ruled out as a suspect in the Bush administration's botched investigation. Hatfill's lawyer placed partial blame on the media for not questioning the Bush administration's motives in targeting him and for reporting leaked disinformation they could not substantiate.

Well, well, well. I hate to say I told you so to all the bloggers that praised him, but in the blink of an eye the Villagers have turned on MoveOn. For all those that thought Chuck Todd was so cool---guess what? He's going to stick with the Villagers every time. I'm not saying that he's wrong all the time, but in the end, you'll wind up with this. And the right wing doesn't even have to engage them in the MoveOn ad because the Chuck Todd's will never need any convincing to attack the left. They will instinctively do it to appease the right wing and demonstrate to them that "I'm not part of that crowd." That's why I focus on the media so much.

Geist: It might be fair, it might be effective, I just opposed dangling babies. <corrected>

Todd: I think it was a borderline shameless ad, using a baby like that. It just seemed like a sledge hammer on the message...

I'm sorry, but there was nothing wrong about MoveOn's ad and if the Republicans had done a similar one the same Villagers would be praising it as making a cutting edge ad that makes liberals look weak. John McCain saying he'll stay in Iraq for 100 years is OK to criticism him with. The DNC made an ad about it. Just because the RNC cried about it and McCain has flip flopped his position on it doesn't excuse his words and actions on the Iraq war. Mika defends McCain's refuting his horrible position. Even The Scar said it was fair game.

Mika: At this point it looks like a cheap shot. That line has almost practically been revoked by John McCain. Or at least clarified.

The Scar...that being said, if you say things like that, it's going to come back and you're going to hear time and time again in the campaign.

Here are a few more posts on this subject:

John McCain: Let’s Stay In Iraq For “100 Years”!

The Media’s defense of McCain’s 100-years in Iraq comment

McCain’s century-long problem

Open Left says:

I didn't notice any outcry from NBC when Progress for America aired this ad - one of the largest political TV ad purchases in 2004 - exploiting American deaths on 9/11 to promote Bush's reelection.

Do you still want Chuck Todd to be the host of Meet the Press?

After the shocking death of NBC's Tim Russert on Friday that stunned the political world, NBC News' signature show is now without an anchor. The LA Times says they have heard that the network is considering three hosts already under contract.

Speculation on possible successors centers on three on-air personalities already under contract to NBC: David Gregory, the former White House correspondent recently given his own MSNBC show, "Race for the White House"; Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's long-running "Hardball"; and Joe Scarborough, the former congressman and host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, according to talent representatives who declined to speak on the record for fear of jeopardizing relationships with network management...read on

I would say that Gregory will be the fill-in host for the time being, but in my mind, he's not strong enough to take over the show full time. Scott Collins writes that Olbermann is considered an ideologue, so he's out of the running too, but if that's the case, then The Scar should also not be a real possibility. If NBC had ever considered Chris as a viable candidate for the job, then he would have hosted MTP already as a fill-in for Russert when he took time off from the show in the past. Matthews never had a shot there and since he barely reads the tele-prompter, so I'd say he's got no shot either. NBC might give him a few shows anyway, but I don't see him as a realistic choice. I think NBC has to either promote some local talent that we haven't had a chance to see yet or look outside their circle and find a strong personality to take over the reigns of the number one Sunday talk show that brings in at least fifty million dollars a year. Chuck Todd is not the answer either so, who do you think should take over the show?

There has been a lot of talk with the pundits and wingnuts over this very issue. Well this morning Erin Burnett tried to answer that on Morning Joe with an interview she had with Mohamed Ali Alabbar, one of the most powerful business men in the Middle East.

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His answer is what I have always suspected - they don't care. They have enough problems of their own that they don't need to sit around and worry about us.

It also reminded me of the countless times there would be an Iraq debate in Congress and the Republicans would take the floor and start going on about "our enemies hear this and think it's retreat". The world don't care what is happening in Congress or who becomes President, just so long as the next President isn't George W. Bush.

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I'm not sure if Republican presidential candidate was speaking from Las Vegas--you know the make-up artists there are used to working on showgirls--but it's pretty bad when Joe Scarborough likens your make-up job to David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust. I don't know though, Ziggy Stardust is so avant garde for Rudy. Given his proclivities for dress up, I thought he resembled another 'made' man. I'm just sayin'...