30 Seconds To Mars And Back

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for February 8th, 2010


Observations:


1) The Morning Joe show and its long list of esteemed guest are equally terrified of Sarah Palin. The anxiety comes from that sinking feeling that the cast, like everyone else, can’t figure it out. I’ll try and provide a public service here so we can suspend our collective Palinioa.


Sarah Palin is the missing link between Rush Limbaugh, the Roger Ailes consortium of tail gunners, and the headless horseman that is the Republican party. Because the base can’t be seen publicly looking towards Rush or Beck as it’s leader, Palin is as close as the establishment can come to a figurehead currently. The real leadership centers around Mitt Romney, but his personality is as amorphous the bad guy on Terminator, so strategically, the party needs a den mother to placate the base. With their focus on a red herring billboard like Palin, the party can move behind the scenes to get off the mat and set up their 2012 move.


Palin is in need of something that Peggy Noonan hit on today. She needs to be an identical player to George W. Bush, an enabler friendly Manchurian. There is no doubt that even with as much Palin bashing as is going on, Bush and Palin are intellectual equivalents. But the Steve Schmidt interactions prove that she will spend the Romney years being taught to work within the enabler machine while coddling the base that is perpetually scared to death by Ailes, Beck and Limbaugh.


2) Why debate Steve Forbes? Joe Scarborough has always brought in the dangerous politicization of the deficit, the economy, the stimulus, the issues that needed to be in the hands of economic surgeons. So Forbes is preaching to the choir in his segment looking at JS and Peggy Noonan. No one in the audience thought for even one second that three Reagan-ites were going to cite Paul Krugman or Keynsian principle to give that conversation depth. In the same hour you had Matthew Bishop and Michael Green arguing that side of things, albeit with the telegenics of a soap dish. But the show needs to do a better job of connecting the dots lest it perpetuates playing to both sides blindly and thus being an engine of voter irrationality.


What is the voter irrationality? A population that simultaneously supports and vilifies deficits, stimulus, healthcare, Afghanistan, and a pro life advertisement to an impossible 60th percentile. Where do they get that from? ‘Stop printing money’ at 8:11 and take rational long term steps like attacking joblessness and rebuilding infrastructure at 8:43 will always manufacture irrationality.


An interesting article came out over the weekend showing that we are as a voting body slapping our own face irrationally by swinging from right to left and back wildly. One of the specific things talked about is how necessary deficits during the managing of an economic recovery face unfair and debilitating headwinds by the aforementioned politicization. Joe Scarborough, although agreeable enough, just can’t help himself when attacking deficit spending to this end, and it’s debatable whether his altruism on the subject isn’t actually a significant part of the problem.


3) This year for Christmas I got a Phillip Rivers no. 17 jersey. No doubt Rivers is an elite quarterback and his team is in that tough soul searching part where they figure out how to get a Super Bowl ring. A position that Peyton Manning was in for years before getting his single ring.


I never wore that jersey. I never had a chance to. The Jets came and that was it. But rolling around all season long and at every game I went to in the last 6 years was the powder blue no. 9 Brees jersey from his stint as a Charger.


Brees was the beginning of the current Chargers ‘win way more then they lose’ era. It had a difficult end, and in fact the Chargers made the right decision at the time when they let him exit via free agency. The mechanics of the injury that Brees had made his recovery either questionable at all, or left him as a highly paid assistant coach waiting for 100% to recur. Not to mention that the injury occurred in a meaningless spot at the end of a meaningless game ending a meaningless season. Marty Schottenheimer left Drew Brees in that week 17 game versus the Denver Broncos because he knew that Brees was gone even before the injury and it was more important not to risk injury in that setting to the heir apparent Phillip Rivers.


But via the miracle that happens every once in a while, Brees didn’t just rehabilitate, he came back better. In repairing his shoulder and rehabbing, it is unquestionable that Drew Brees can throw the ball 20 yards further than he ever could, and with 50% better strength, and all that alongside a character that just seems superhuman to the naked eye. Character that would have gone a long way in the Chargers locker room 3 weeks ago.


I think I’ll trot that no. 9 jersey out this offseason for a 6 month victory lap. It will help lessen the sting of a huge missed opportunity for the Chargers knowing when we get there, Brees will have been part of that story too.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.