Be The Gauntlet

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 12th, 2010


Observations:


1) Joe Scarborough asked Donald Trump a long state of the union question that mainly was a position paper indicting the President for the 86% disapproval of Washington, and when Trump answered the question, it ascended so far beyond the question, it’s as if it wasn’t there. The most amazing thing in the answer was rather than framing the reasons for the nations troubles on an ineffective Washington, Trump framed it on the Morning Joe shows inability to get obvious hardships prioritized on it’s show with it’s guests.


That my friends is the learning moment for the month. Morning Joe is a show about analysis, and we will talk about some of that analysis later, but fundamentally it’s a fair point to ask what can we do as opposed to what are they doing wrong. Maybe what we can do is demand a contract from a candidate, rather than complain about buyers remorse. Maybe what we do is move our money. Maybe what we do is demand natural gas powered cars and homes with dollar votes.


A funny thing happens when we as citizens revolt over the price of oil. The price goes down. A funny thing happens when Wal Mart wants to move into towns now. The town complains about the net effect of gross importation of cheap Chinese products, a de leveraging of wage support and benefits support, and a displacement of a community’s downtown district of locally based and produced goods and services.


We have learned over a 30 year span on both the China and oil fronts that the rules of Economics are a two way street. We can in the short term be seduced by single market pricing, but 30 years is enough for the average American to add in the social cost of some of these transactions as they happen.


At some point, and it may be upon us, the American people will realize they have two votes in this world, the one in November, and the one they do every day with their pocketbook.


2) Lawrence O’Donnell has been absent from this debate for some time. And today, he re emerged touting the same healthy skepticism that we have witnessed from him the entire time. ‘I don’t know how they do it’ is and has been Lawrence saying the voices of no will always trump the needs of progress. I think it’s a point of weakness for those of us who are on the side of progress to say ‘gosh, I hope we can prevail’. In fact, I think that ‘hope’ concept was actually the mistake made in the Obama campaign as opposed to the ‘change’ part. I don’t want to hope for anything.


The arcane set of circumstances that propel Lawrence’s doubts have nothing to do with the real world. They are parliamentary procedures. Rather than hope that we can somehow navigate these obstacles no one knows or cares about but the less than 2000 people who have spent a significant amount of time working in the senate in the last 10 years, I say, treat them as irrelevant, go forth as you have indicated and hit a new part on the map like Omaha beach.


The opponents of health care are citing cataclysmic verbiage like ‘nuclear option’ and employing any of the last vestiges of their fear arsenal at a frequency previously unseen. Their panic seems no longer to incite panic, now the majority of people realize its show business, and look at the panic as the old generation reluctantly ceding control. That is a badge of honor. That is progress.


Lawrence may deep down want progress, but his body language is reluctance to stray away from status quo. We can’t live that way, afraid defeat might be imminent thus we should circle the wagons. We have tried that, Lawrence has tried that. That is self defeat.


I find it remarkable that through all of the superiority granted to Mr. O’Donnell on this matter, warranted yes, it has allowed the Morning Joe show to again tout as the best inside knowledge a take with a fundamental flaw. Lawrence has for some unknown reason left out that the administration has a parliamentary trump card.


The Vice President is the ultimate authority on parliamentary procedure. Read it again. The Vice President is the ultimate authority on parliamentary procedure.


You can make fun of the Republicans for their blowing it on taxes as a defense, although I would argue that is another hollow hardship, because the ‘we cant afford to do it’ camps and the ‘we cant afford not to do it’ camps cancel each other out.


But you have to at some point stop listening to naysayers if your objective is otherwise, and hit the gas pedal to blow through the gauntlet, or you’ll never get off of the beach.



3) Joe Scarborough has this 53% don’t want health care thing out now, replacing the 75%, replacing whatever number he had before. And it’s still as useless now as it ever was.


Name an unpopular major governmental change that got this far? C'mon. You're from the south. Go get some civil rights poll numbers. Go get some Medicaid poll numbers. This is the silliest logic yet, but wait there’s more.


Tantrum prone Republicans, now exposed for short sighted obstruction as a platform, are now saying that ‘immigration reform is dead if health care passes’. Immigration reform is not very popular, but it will get done. Why? Because the change, while not popular, needs to happen to fix whats broken today in our civilization. Systematic denial that some part of our population belongs here, exists, adds to society, or is part of the solution going forward.


George Bush decided in his defeat on the matter to go the East Germany route and build a really big wall and go after the southern border like a giant piece of electoral red meat, when you know that he felt nearly the opposite. How’s the construction of that wall going? You have federal officers in Yuma, AZ spending their time allowing Arizona border cities to small town profiteer from the differences in laws regarding possession of minute amounts of marijuana, under the guise of border enforcement. Wellton, AZ gets 87 $400 convictions for single joints every Tuesday, keeping the $34,000 for itself, while the federal government spends $345,000 a week performing the traffic stops.


Yes, tangent, but yes, anytime you go with the over enforcement option, you forget that most of the snared are off duty minutemen. May be popular now, but the bills continue to come in.

Thats all for today, see you Monday.