History Or Quagmire

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for June 15th, 2010


Observations:


1) What is more of a lark? The confusing happenings in South Carolina or the role Joe Scarborough has played in tempting Barack Obama down yet another untenable road. It seems to me that Joe Scarborough 100% means what he says when he asks our President to make ‘the Sputnik speech’ tonight from the oval office. But between Mark Halperin and Mike Pence and John Boehner, there is so much elation that this President will embark on yet another long, indefensible slog, it is impossible to imagine Scarborough is as pure of intention as he seems.


People are all idealist and realist simultaneously. David Remnick, I’m sure was on the realist side of the equation when confronting whatever lark Paul Wolfowitz idealized 8 years ago, but is firmly on the other side of todays equation, at one point shouting “we’re pathetic” at the notion of consensus looking grimly at the calculus of the legislative road ahead. Halperin just echoed ‘the votes aren’t there’ on demand for 3 hours.


Whatever Joe Scarborough's intent, he is long term right and short term suicidal. The last thing I need is any momentum given to John Boehner for any reason. I am happy with him right where he is, seeming like he is lost on the golf course, and having people like Willie Geist muse: “Isn’t that the assistant principal from ‘Breakfast Club’?”


2) I of course have path-ed idealistically for months about abandoning oil, not as a fuel source, but as an economic oligarch. I put the Sempra, and coal types in the same category.


From my electric fleet idea even 2 days ago, now I’m advancing towards a fuel agnostic mantra. There is an aftermarket company in Pasadena that can make your Prius a plug in hybrid right now, shooting your mileage over 100 and giving you the option to use gas or not. The trick is if you go all electric, then Sempra and big coal will have the same economic monopoly that you just took from big oil. You want to have a multitude of options, and you want the enemy to be the grid, any grid. The grid of Chevron stations, the grid of common electrical distribution, and oddly enough, the role Time Warner plays in preventing wireless contectivity over whole communities.


There was a 60 Minutes segment on a man who has invented a power cube to power your home away from the grid. There was a PBS segment on a Scottish company that made personal electrical generators that were wind powered and inexpensive. There are a multitude of ways to brew biodiesel and make cars that are happy with that as a fuel source. You can get off of the grid, and become believers in a free market system that the consumer uses to his advantage through choice, dollar votes, and options.

You want to know how to finally solve the gas prices go up, elections get lost puzzle? Get out of grid monopoly. This solution might finally allow for capture of carbon tax and social costs as well.


3) OK, so the show did a little bit of a look at Afghanistan today, which more or less just took the place of Israel. It’s as if we can only comprehend one and one half hard news items a day. Afghanistan is a mess, and the take of the Morning Joe show that the generals are sabotaging the mission as ordered in order to redefine the mission into a ‘winnable war’ strategy, is consistent from the show and disturbing.


If I understand that right, Joe Scarborough thinks the generals are deliberately missing objectives on the ground in order to delay the overall campaign, because they believe that they can do better to outlast their enemy, and every day they stall a magic bullet is more likely to appear and solve the situation as they see it now.


Further, David Patraeus is complicit in this program to the extent that he is out of sight, and has been for recent memory.


The real answer is part of the above and part that we just have zero idea what’s going on over there. We know there are corrupt deals everywhere, where the CIA tries to recreate their success in Anbar and are more or less seen like a retarded ATM by locals who feel like they have history on their side. We know that every report by 60 Minutes or Richard Engel shows an army not trying to win, but trying to play out their personal calendar before paying a terrible cost in the name of futility. We know that the conflict minerals discovered during the conflict are being exploited by the Chinese while we are their mercenary defense without compensation. But wait, there’s a bad side.


In the face of a story without any trace of positivity, we are additionally facing lining up at Bargram and leaving to let the elements that hosted the trouble in 2001 retake the entire landscape. The money and blood left behind will be for naught. We will likely replace the troops with predators, and we will seem like the bad guys in Terminator to the Muslim world until Pakistan sells the Taliban the technology to defeat the predator, or a nuclear device, which the Taliban justifies using against us because of the predator.


I’m ready to read the epilogue on this disaster at anytime. I feel for the President if the Scarborough take has any merit. It’s more of the same winner versus loser Machiavellian motions we have seen since 1949, and we ultimately do not know who controls our fate and security at this time.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.