On Tuesday night’s Hardball, the scales finally fell from Chris Matthews’ eyes about the bogus enthusiasm on the left for the war in Afghanistan.

Matthews: ‘I believe that what Barack Obama, who I support generally, did in this campaign… was back into this policy. I think he wanted to say he was for some aggressive action against the enemy because he wasn’t for the Iraq war.’

Bang on, Chris. You’ve just admitted your hero committed himself to a war he didn’t believe in just to make himself look tough. What are you going to do about it?

Here’s the video. Matthews’ guilty confession comes right at the end.

Chuck Todd kicks off the presidential assessment on Morning Joe this morning. 

More importantly, Mika looks sensational with her hair up.

Remember how much fun it was when we had elections to watch? I’m even getting nostalgic for the Georgia run-off.

Next week we addicts get another fix when the House seat vacated by Hillary’s replacement in the Senate, Kirsten Gillebrand, is contested.

MSNBC brings us an update. They reckon it’s natural GOP territory and there’ll be much wailing and gnashing of teeth if the Republicans lose this.

The Jim Cramer story continues to rumble. Joe Scarborough isn’t impressed with the Daily Show’s choice of target these days either.

Read the Politico report then see the whole Morning Joe interview with Cramer here. Mika’s doing that thing she always does when Scarborough starts off on a rant she doesn’t agree with, staring at the floor and occasionally looking up to say “Well . . .”

Two always worth listening to – Pat Buchanan and Bob Shrum – debated the Limbaugh mess last night on Hardball.

A sideshow to last night’s main event was Bobby Jindal’s reply for the GOP, which interestingly has had an icy reception in parts of the conservative blogosphere.

But the main talking point was the sotto voce “Oh God” that could be heard on MSNBC as Jindal appeared. Olbermann, who has form for this (”Jesus, Joe…”), was immediately the prime suspect.

Real Clear Politics has the Oh God video here and this is Jindal’s whole 12 minutes.

Watch CBS Videos Online

UPDATE Chris Matthews was the guilty party according to Michael Calderone at Politico. And as I suspected, it was a reaction to Jindal’s entrance, which appeared to mimick the White House arrangement. Politico has video.

He’s Mika’s dad and was Jimmy Carter’s hard-line, cold warrior national security chief, the counterpoint to the mushy-as-they-come secretary of state Cy Vance.

He’s well to the left on Israel though.

It’s Christmas Eve and can you be bothered to take a proper look at the Obama team’s internal report on the Blagojevich affair?

Me neither. Which was the whole point of releasing it last night presumably.

Fortunately with Mike Barnicle from the Morning Joe stable sitting in for Matthews last night, Hardball had a good discussion on it.

Our Morning Joe favourite Mika Brzezinski was mugged this morning outside her hotel while waiting for a car to pick her up.

Joe Scarborough was furious with the hotel desk for not keeping an eye on what was happening outside their door. See the video (of the show, not the mugging) here.

As of November 6, Chris Matthews, scourge of the administration, impugner supreme of politicians’ motives, says his job is ‘to make this new presidency work’ and scolds Joe Scarborough for questioning the behaviour of Rahm Emanuel, saying ‘the worst thing you can do in journalism is try and figure out motive’.

Watch the whole six minutes and note how Matthews is completely unembarrassed by his about-turn (as apparently is MSNBC, otherwise this exchange wouldn’t be available on their website).