By Mark Finkelstein | December 18, 2015 | 8:20 AM EST

The polls might currently be suggesting something else, but Mika Brzezinski's view on which Republican has the best shot at beating Hillary Clinton might surprise you.

On today's Morning Joe, Mika said "If you want someone to beat Hillary Clinton, it would be Donald Trump. Because he will do things that none of those candidates will do . . . The Democratic party has a problem if Trump wins the nomination." Mika's comments came after Chuck Todd suggested that for now, Republican voters are looking for "bold colors" [i.e. Trump], but later might become more pragmatic and turn to someone with a better chance of winning.

By Tom Blumer | December 18, 2015 | 1:22 AM EST

The people who run Cosmopolitan Magazine's Twitter account really stepped in it today — and they're so utterly clueless that they doubled and tripled down on their ignorance.

Cosmo's tweeters have thrown themselves behind legislation drafted by Missouri State Representative Stacey Newman. Newman, a Democrat, actually believes that it is more difficult to get an abortion in the Show Me State than it is to buy a gun; her legislation would supposedly remedy this horrible situation. Cosmo is on board with horribly unhinged proposed legislation. The good folks at Twitchy pointed that out this afternoon, but that didn't stop Cosmo from doubling and tripling down on their ignorance (original tweets here, here and here) in the past 10 hours:

By Mark Finkelstein | December 17, 2015 | 8:47 AM EST

A modern-day variation on "better red than dead" . . .  Joe Scarborough says that Haley Barbour and many Republican leaders would "much rather" have Hillary be president than to let Trump win and represent the GOP.

On today's Morning Joe, Scarborough said that if it looks like Trump will win the nomination, something Scarborough sees as very plausible, he envisions Mitt Romney or Michael Bloomberg jumping into the race as a third-party candidate. Not really with the goal of winning, but rather to "take a bullet," splitting the vote and denying Trump the White House.

By Mark Finkelstein | December 16, 2015 | 8:42 AM EST

When tagging items at NewsBusters, one of our Media Bias sub-categories is "Sudden Respect." The notion is that to win the affection of the MSM, all a Republican or conservative needs to do is turn against members or positions of his party. A great illustration of the phenomenon comes from today's Morning Joe. During last night's undercard debate, Lindsey Graham repeatedly ripped fellow Republicans for their rhetoric on Muslims, at one point even apologizing to Muslims for Donald Trump's comments.

And that of course caused what Rush might call a GrahamGasm by the Morning Joe crew. Mike Barnicle called Graham "fantastic," Nicolle Wallace said "I adore Lindsey Graham." Most amazing was Mika Brzezinski, who beyond praising him as "incredible" actually declared, sounding like she was choking up, "I feel a connection with Lindsey Graham," causing Joe Scarborough to claim [we presume facetiously] that Mika said "where has he been all my life?" Not to be outdone, Joe called on President Obama to award Graham the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Barnicle summed up the panel's sentiment by saying "thank God for Lindsey Graham."

By Tom Blumer | December 15, 2015 | 10:44 PM EST

The Chicago Public Schools system, from which came Arne Duncan, perhaps the nation's most execrable Education Secretary, is in serious financial trouble. So is the State of Illinois. Having already borrowed against next year's property tax collections, CPS somehow expects the state to bail out its underfunded pensions to the tune of $500 million. Though it has subsequently been narrowed, MRC-TV, in covering the district CEO's resignation over a federal no-bid contract investigation, reported in June that the district was facing "a $1 billion budget deficit" for fiscal 2016.

In the midst of all of this, the district's teachers union has overwhelmingly authorized a strike. In searching several current articles on the topic, the hardest things to find were answers to two questions any reasonable person would ask: 1) How much do teachers currently make? and 2) What are their contract demands?

By Tom Blumer | December 15, 2015 | 3:00 PM EST

The year isn't even over, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Time's 2015 Person of the Year, has begun to act against the primary reason why the magazine chose her.

To refresh from a NewsBusters post last week, Time's Nancy Gibbs cited three reasons for the choice. The clearly most important one, from their perspective, was Merkel's virtually unilateral decision that Germany "would welcome refugees as casualties of radical Islamist savagery, not carriers of it" without apparent restriction. Now Merkel has, as described by a writer at Time Inc. sister publication Fortune, "backpedaled" from that stance.

By Mark Finkelstein | December 15, 2015 | 7:18 AM EST

UPDATE: Scarborough just discussed blooper on air, mentioning NB and this NewsBusters. Video clip below!
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Ted Cruz: MSNBC's modern-day version of Nikolai Yezhov! Yezhov was the head of Stalin's secret police who fell into disfavor and was executed during a purge. A photo of him standing next to Stalin was famously airbrushed to remove his image.

And so we come to today's Morning Joe, which displayed an image of tonight's Vegas debate stage. Photos of all the candidates appear at their assigned slots. With one exception. Ted Cruz is nowhere to be found! Simple mistake . . . or diabolical left-wing media plot to purge the #2 Republican contender?  The truth is out there!

By Tom Blumer | December 14, 2015 | 6:07 PM EST

One hesitates to give attention to Jesse A. Myerson. But it's probably worth it, if for no other reason to contend that many of his beliefs are likely shared by the mindless lemmings disguised as "journalists" who wildly cheered on Saturday when an obviously orchestrated "climate change" agreement designed ultimately to redistribute massive amounts of wealth from developed to underdeveloped countries — which would virtually guarantee that they will stay undeveloped — was announced in Paris.

Almost two years ago, Myerson, whose experience includes "the Media and Labor Outreach committees at Occupy Wall Street," identified of "Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For" in a Rolling Stone column. A week ago at The Nation, he vacuously attempted to elaborate on one of those five ideas, namely: "Let’s get rid of private housing."

By Tom Blumer | December 14, 2015 | 2:42 PM EST

Imagine a Republican or conservative governor boasting of his or her use of "the coercive power of government" to accomplish center-right policy goals. The political and media backlash would be furious — and justified.

Such statist rhetoric is becoming ever more commonplace on the left, and is rising to ever higher political levels. The establishment press is mostly ignoring this development, and usually omits related inflammatory assertions from its coverage. Statements relating to "climate change" have especially been reinforcing David Horowitz's old adage that "Inside every liberal is a totalitarian screaming to get out" for several months. Last week in Paris, California Governor Jerry Brown let his inner totalitarian out several times. A video of one such example follows the jump.

By Mark Finkelstein | December 14, 2015 | 7:58 AM EST

Joe Scarborough prefaced his remarks this morning by saying "this is the sort of thing that right-wing bloggers get very angry about."  So let's oblige him . . . 

On Morning Joe, Scarborough said "I am shocked by how many Republicans, that have always voted Republican, that have said they're going to vote for Hillary if it's Cruz or Trump running against Hillary. I'm talking Deep South, Southern Baptist. I asked people who I expect to say yes, Cruz, go "hell no. No. I will never vote for Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. I will vote for Hillary Clinton."

By Tom Blumer | December 14, 2015 | 1:40 AM EST

Apparently a generation of "journalists" has been raised to believe that the matter of human-caused global warming is "settled science," and that anyone who doubts the agenda-driven, redistributionist "climate change" movement is an enemy of civilization. Additionally, these people clearly don't understand the orchestrated, false-drama nature of diplomatic gatherings such as the one in Paris which just concluded with yet another "breakthrough" but non-binding "agreement" to reduce carbon emissions.

Thus, it's disconcerting, but not at all hard to believe, that these ignorant, gullible children disguised as discerning adults wildly cheered the announcement of the aforementioned agreement as if an athlete on one of their favorite teams just delivered a last-second victory:

By Tom Blumer | December 13, 2015 | 11:24 PM EST

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Thursday that Joshua Williams "was sentenced ... to eight years in prison for starting a fire at a QuikTrip in Berkeley (a St. Louis suburb) after an officer-involved shooting there." The Dispatch apparently didn't think it important to tell readers that the crime spree which occurred after that shooting took place despite the fact that the suspect had pulled a gun on that officer.

I noted in a NewsBusters post a year ago that Williams' arrest on charges of "1st degree arson, 2nd degree burglary and misdemeanor theft," and his confession "to setting fires at the store in a videotaped interview" constituted a major establishment press embarrassment. You see, until then, outfits like the New York Times, MSNBC and others had, in the words of Ryan Lovelace at National Review, "depicted him as a hero of the summer protests" in Ferguson, Missouri.