As NewsBusters has often reported, MSNBC's line-up has led the cable news channel to a freefall in the ratings, with Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik blasting the schedule as “unwatchable” and “24 hours a day of mess.”

In an article posted on Thursday, Politico columnist Dylan Byers reported that the channel's daytime year-to-date viewership “is down 21 percent overall and 41 percent in the coveted 25- to 54-year-old demographic.”

It's different when the MSM puts a Republican inside a bullseye, because, uh . . . Remember when in 2011 voices on the left from Keith Olbermann to Paul Krugman to the Huffington Post among many others suggested that Sarah Palin was at least partially to blame for the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords because Palin had put out a map of House seats with bullseyes depicting districts, including Giffords',  that Republicans were targeting?  Krugman for example wrung his hands over the "climate of hate" that Palin and others on the right were supposedly fomenting, and predicted growing political violence in the years ahead.

Will those same leftists condemn the Daily Beast, which today featured a photo of Rand Paul inside a big red bullseye over a story headlined "Rand Paul = Democrats’ Enemy #1."  Enemy #1?  Bullseye?  Oh, the humanity! View the photo after the jump.

The Democratic National Committee has accused the MSNBC cable channel of having "a pretty big double standard" regarding its “confusing policy” of forbidding some anchors from attending political fundraising events while others are allowed to speak at similar programs, according to a letter written to Phil Griffin, president of the liberal television network.

Mo Elleithee, the DNC's communications director, indicated that channel executives prevented Ed Schultz -- host of the weekday afternoon program The Ed Show – from appearing at a Democratic Unity Dinner in Broward County, Fla., on March 15, while Joe Scarborough, a co-host of the weekday Morning Joe program, is slated to give the keynote address at next month's Cheshire County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner in New Hampshire.

The notion that MSNBC is now the most controversial gaffe-a-minute cable news network has been ratified by the Associated Press. AP media reporter David Bauder wrote a story headlined “Loose lips give ammunition to MSNBC foes.”

“Since MSNBC is in the political ring, its opponents are always on the lookout for things to attack,” Bauder wrote. “Lately, NBC's left-leaning cable news sister has offered plenty of ammunition.”

On the cover of the latest Esquire magazine is this quote from ESPN  host Keith Olbermann: "I’ve never fought the word genius when people have said that about me." In a "What I've Learned" interview, Olbermann added, "But what it is is instinct and a set of skills that are working so fast you don’t know they’re working."

Keith also declared "I have a leafy brain, according to the theory of the leafy brain. I associate things that many people never put together." This sounds like someone's brain on leaves...and a lighter.