Trumpeting Yesterday's News

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for December 2nd, 2009

Observations:

1) Let’s face it, this was a show of the year candidate. There was a significant national story that begged an avalanche of post prescription debate. The extent to which that debate was constructed and played out on Morning Joe displays its obvious practical advantage in being a 3-hour program devoted to issues of this sort. The cast was basically the most credible elements of foreign policy and left leaning constructs with a noticeable gap only as it pertained to the right. The questions raised around the table we’re the kind of cut through measures most useful to carry a developing consensus forward.

The superstar guests Dr. Zbigniew Brzeninski, General David Petraeus, and Sen. Bernie Sanders were the absolute pinnacle of gets to put a complex issue that tested a well studied President’s acumen into what a viewer needs to know terms.

2) Someone has to police these polls. This wrong direction on Afghanistan poll is in context the darkest moments before national policy had a light shone on it. It really was out of context and it’s a distortion of the current events to talk about how a nation was feeling last week without saying it in those terms.

3) You police the right, and leave the left to me. Ariana Huffington has chosen to base her dissatisfaction with not getting a drawdown on a lack of trust on the timetable given. This goes back to the violation of a nation’s trust we spoke of yesterday regarding Dick Cheney. If Ariana Huffington has a trust issue with Barack Obama, she is in deep trouble, because who is left for her? She has to not be still fighting the Iraq war with her take. Each new candidate and mandate has to be delivered with a fresh national trust and Ariana is misplacing her old Bush era demons on this new situation.

4) If Senator Bernie Sanders has a problem with the policy laid out yesterday, the very best, most constructive thing he can do is get his far reaching version of health care reform to the President. That is the most patriotic version of dissent there can be, and I hope all of the protests find this as an appropriate outlet.

5) What is it about Illinois that allows its representatives to vote present? Sen. Dick Durbin taking a “no comment” pass on this policy is the definition of short sighted. It was a courageous vote on the Iraq war that created separation for this President in his landmark campaign. If Sen. Durban was there then, and chose support then, then why would he choose this moment to show his courage or lack thereof?

6) The left leaning citizens of the United States need to find solace in the new place possessed by the United States on the world’s stage. For decades, our CIA and State Department have had the reputation of in your face when its in the best interest of the US, yet the quickest to depart when the political or situational winds shifted, leaving its former partners, operatives and a swath of obliged citizens to suffer in abandonment. To make a wind down decision now without a finish the job mandate would be this Democratic President making that same mistake we have endured upon the world each of the last 5 generations. We are in Afghanistan because of our own vacuum of post Soviet abandonment. Pakistan is one of the greatest threats to peace on earth and refuses to be the operative we need to get Osama Bin Ladin because they suspect if they don’t hold that leverage, we will leave them to deal with a Taliban crisis on one side and a (mania-based) India crisis on the other, thus status quo is key to their security. Iran has a similar issue with US involvement dating back to the Shah and the US backed Iraq in their catastrophic war of the 1980's. I could go on, but suffice it to say if you want to be greeted anywhere in the Muslim world anytime in your lifetime, it’s key to quit exploitation as a national currency.