A government shutdown over federal funding for Syrian refugees and Planned Parenthood is unlikely, albeit slightly, Congressman John Yarmuth assured Ed Schultz.

But if this occurs, Yarmuth added, Republicans will get blamed for it -- regardless of whether they are actually responsible. And Yarmuth apparently doesn't have a problem with this bizarre, cynical scenario, nor does Schultz.
 

In addition to his hours-long Twitter tirade on Wednesday attacking God-fearing people for offering their “thoughts and prayers” in reaction to the San Bernardino, Think Progress contributing editor Igor Volsky capped off his day on the 11:00 p.m. Eastern edition of MSNBC’s All In where host Chris Hayes gave him the floor to pontificate about how “all we hear from these people is thoughts and prayers” and no action against the NRA.

During NBC’s live breaking news coverage of the mass shooting in San Bernardino, California on Wednesday, correspondent Ron Allen reported from the White House on President Obama’s push for gun control: “We well know that the President is very concerned about this issue of gun violence in the United States....And we have heard from him and his staff that they are still trying to find ways that the President can use his executive authority to try and make changes to the gun control legislation in this country.”

If frontrunner Donald Trump or currently surging Ted Cruz gets the 2016 Republican presidential nod, it may have a strange sort of bipartisan effect, according to Tomasky, who in a Wednesday column asserted that GOP bigwigs “despise” both Cruz and Trump to the extent that they’d “actually prefer” presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to win the general election.

“No one’s ever going to say that publicly,” acknowledged Tomasky. “But half a lifetime of covering these people has taught me a few things about how they think…Intra-party personal hatred is much more visceral than inter-party personal hatred. The prospect of someone they hate in their own party having more power than they have is like the bitterest, foulest bowl of hemlock these people can drink.”

On Tuesday's New Day on CNN, as co-host Chris Cuomo debated Republican Rep. Steve King on whether Syrian refugees should be allowed into the U.S., the CNN host absurdly suggested that barring refugees might "help ISIS" because it would be "playing into ISIS's hands" by "showing that you are against these people who are desperate."

As he closed the interview for breaking news, he also got in a last-minute dig as he suggested that opponents of bringing refugees to America were "blaming the victims."