Joe Takes Flight

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for July 16th, 2010


Observations


1) I don’t know why but the bottom has fallen out of the debate on Morning Joe. We have previously expressed our disdain for the PPP polling system, but there it was as today’s top news.


The BP oil spill being capped is not news. It is a reminder that the nearly impossible task of cleaning up a mega disaster is at least a finite chore if all things hold as they are now.


And Barack Obama went on vacation, wait, he has been on a form of vacation since inauguration.


Yup, those were your news items. Small wonder Wall Street looked at this pitiful display and tanked 261 points.


2) Then there was the stuff that didn’t get covered. It’s a long list and even I will leave 80% of it out, but it shows the lack of conviction from which the show currently debates.


Elizabeth Warren’s potential role as the head of the Consumer Protection Agency is being opposed by Tim Geithner. What is that? If you didn’t already know the financial wing of the administration was in the tank for Wall Street, who reward them back with abandonment, now you do. The senselessness of all of this is a real “Brazil” moment. Round and round we go, we get nothing for our own dilution, but our dilution and those who want to make us whole are ostracized. It amazes the senses.


Obama told a joke about Boehner wanting to repeal Financial Reform, then Senator Shelby actually called for it’s repeal. There were already optics police calling the Boehner joke ‘misplaced anger for a leader’, then when it happened in real life, we all just stood there, tased by the ‘Monty Python’ moment we had just been a part of.


Dick Cheney got a pump put in his heart as part of his Obamacare. People have died waiting for this procedure under the rationing of services incurred via private insurers. It’s not realistic to assume that Dick Cheney or Pablo Escobar or any other known tribal leader would likely get favorable service, but the equation still bears illumination.


I mean, it’s right there, often on your ticker, and you’re agenda spent that time talking about John Daly’s pants?


3) Joe Scarborough mumbled under his breath ‘this is going nowhere’ at 7 AM and left the set. He probably went to talk to his agent about ‘a shorter option’.


And in came Zbig.


We were pretty hard on the smartest guy in any room last time through, but only out of a ‘while you're busy shining his shoes, careful you don’t lose sight of his Starbucks passive aggressive despot side” concern. Fair enough.


But today he was back in full origami mode. He beat up that young whippersnapper Pat Buchanan then helped the wayward youth to his feet and said ‘I hope we’re still friends’.


I don’t think Buchanan is used to the woodshed. He normally can just roll out a forgotten scandal or political entity (Adlai Stevenson) and hit that ‘Buchanan octave’ and the young Turks disperse in horror.


But Mr. Brzezinski made simple math of Buchanan’s saber rattling about Libya and added in a real human touch, having been on a Korean Air flight in the past week. Buchanan was reduced to a pointless bully and seemed like he found a short circuit surrounding the word ‘morality’.


If you backed off when the Soviets did it, but you want to invade Libya, aren’t you only choosing fights where you can seem superior? I believe the quote was "If the country's immoral and weak you go after it, but if the country's immoral and strong you accommodate, now is that morality?"


I love Buchanan, and here’s hoping for a speedy recovery. For the Show.


That’s all for today, see you Monday.