150 Minutes

The Opposition Rebuttal to Morning Joe for August 17, 2010


Observations:


1) I made a statement a while back that we were headed towards a proxy war with Israel doing our bidding versus an Iran with unbounded nuclear aspirations. As a new blogger of political events, I decided I knew everything and could even tell you the approximate date of said conflagration. That’s like every sports better you know feeling like just taking the Colts isn’t fair enough that it has to be the Colts and the over. Never again. I knew this thing with Israel was serious, but had no basis to predetermine the date.


Now the front pages of big respected magazines are covering this story with the effect of the pre-war march on Iraq. They are talking about strategies: overfly Iraq? Special forces on the ground to be sure? This is advanced stuff.


The component to this story added by Morning Joe was the Zbigniew Brzezinski take that no one really comprehends the devastation to our current energy infrastructure in a conflict involving two fairly paired adversaries if it breaks out. A conflict where no one has real air supremacy. Additionally, Mr. Brzezinski cautioned that the conflict would act to bolster the Iranian Republican Guard and disassemble any of the current segments of the population working towards regime change.


So we are again on the precipice of a big ugly situation, and we have the smartest guy anyone can think of saying what a bad idea it is, and what does the show muse here? “I wonder if they will overfly Iraq”. Ridiculous.


Where is the sense of priority at Morning Joe? It’s like you tired yourself out screaming about minutia and when a crisis showed up you were spent.


2) Secretary Gates probably is mad about Israel. In the ‘all I need’ category of a guy trying to get the war drums silenced in our lifetime, or at least in his lifetime so that he can go back to his retirement life on a yacht in the Gulf (of Mexico). He is in the process of setting a deadline of his own with his retirement slated for ‘somewhere in 2011’. Sound familiar?


Gates stated in an interview that he wanted his successor to be named in a non election cycle to prevent …. political pyromania. Yup, I got to use it already.


I think we all forget a little bit about the context of Gates’ recruitment. George W. Bush got some spine in the lame duck period of his presidency and started saying no to Dick Cheney. Next thing you know Rumsfeld got fired, a surge switched our fortunes in Iraq, and I’ve never seen Raytheon Corporation so mad.


But with that moment, Gates was Bush crying uncle, that he could not trust anyone near him and had to go outside of his administration for a veteran technician. Gates was seen as a Cy Young relief pitcher and his confirmation was never more than studious. An air traffic controller would face tougher scrutiny. It was obvious we needed to do some governing, those were the days.


Now he has survived in 2 administrations, is seen as non partisan, and is talking seriously about helping Barney Frank and Ron Paul get the scalpel out on the US defense expenditure.


What needs to be said, is that our Defense Secretary needs to be like our Supreme Court Justices right now, that we can’t expect to finish our wars and have military play its part in re aligning it’s budget with our ability and relative parity with the world. That is exactly what won’t happen one wonk later, or in 2012. You can set your watch to it. Raytheon is a buy in 2012, when they get a fish back in the Defense Department.


Thank god for small favors, as we got 5 minutes on the story and interviewed Fred Kaplan who had just interviewed the Secretary. We got something where there could have been a lot more.


3) But that was because Morning Joe decided to toss a full 150 minutes at the mosque story. Look, I know people get caught up in stuff, but the team effort that produces this show needs to grip in to how mono-functional an effort like today is. To the point of tedium, you have turned the effectiveness of your program to that of a 30 minute show capable of only 3 short segments. Even Mike Barnicle ran out of things to say, seeming nickelodeon in his canned take on the 4th repeat.


There is consensus, but because no one will come on the show to take the other side, that consensus is not effective. I don’t think its outlandish to politely request that you try and display the variety you’re capable of given that you are 180 minutes of completely variable programming. Droning for 150 minutes is malpractice.


We get it, you don’t like the Republicans using the mosque story. We think they are all using it to hide the fact that ground zero is still a hole in the ground.


Great… next!