You've Been Karzai'd!

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for April 6th, 2010


Observations:


1. So in a science experiment I decided to let a couple weeks pass and then view the shows in a combined time-lapse 1/10 sequence animation. The combined shows ran for the same three or so hours. The results were hilarious. Even at that time shifted kilter, the words ‘I’m going to have to stop you there, because you’re wrong about every single thing” we’re as clear as when they were shouted at Tina Brown in real time.


Even in time lapse the only real noticeable differences were there was some sort’ve kerfuffle in Florida where public education was defined as a public good necessitating strong government action, and then Joe Scarborough disappeared for either 90 minutes or a week and a half, so he didn’t have to extend the same logic to health care.


It was like a dream sequence, with a lot of inordinately important people in the Florida thing, then Willie Geist ran the network for like 6 months until I woke up.



2) Cut to today and give me a break. That Afghanistan conversation, apparently grounded because conservatives and progressives alike agree, was still mired in more one-dimensional mud than a viewer should be asked to tolerate. Yea, you can say you’re on Biden’s team when it’s convenient, you can say Karzai was another example of a failure about to happen that could be seen from space, but when you try and put it together you just cement your role as falling for whatever the opposition is selling on a news cycle basis.


Has Morning Joe ever gone into the blinders policy of the opium crop in Afghanistan? It was as if when the words ‘drug problem’ were uttered a single time and then the subject was evacuated like an Irwin Allen movie in an attempt to keep the conversation simple, where an Ozzie and Harriet consensus could be achieved without a nap or a headache. I have a long history claiming the vacuum of critical thought that permeates the Afghanistan discussion on Morning Joe is a disservice, to put it kindly. And that analysis stayed true today. Look, when one thing like the Karzai situation goes predictably south, maybe try and follow your own advice and stay calm and move along rather than pull out a Chicken Little routine out of convenience.


In Afghanistan today, the Americans are letting the Afghans have a safe haven in their opium trade, they are taking the lowlands by a surge of military force because it will be more plausible they could retain control there, and they have adopted a Biden strategy in the mountains, where the New York Times just wrote about a climate of no safe haven on either side of the border. This is a complex strategy that deserves to be shown in the context of equally complex strategies in Iran and Pakistan and then, and only then, can your algebraic arguments find any solvency test. Otherwise, you’re just speaking in political code, in an attempt to sway the argument more on a popularity basis than a basis of any real wisdom.


I’m not saying you’re resultant consensus is right or wrong, or that you’re misreading the 10% of the facts you’re acknowledging, it just sounds like Mr. Ed talking with his hoof when there is so much more out there and you know it.


3) Rudy Giuliani in real time or Maria Bartiromo in time lapse, it’s all the same. These people are eroding their credibility with every appearance. In my dream the White House listened to Maria riff on the stimulus for about 45 minutes then intervened. In real time Rudy Giuliani had a perfect opportunity to get somewhere today when Arianna Huffington just lost her mind and cheapened every solid argument she had made in the last 5 years with grade school insults that would get her arrested in Massachusetts. But instead of making any critical establishment of a way forward, his mind was again exposed for the binary mechanism of catastrophe it has become: shoot Karzai, Rubio because of old sandbox scraps with Crist, and I saved New York and the World so I think I know the menace of a social democracy coming when I see it.


If I was mad last August when Obama was having that Mighty Ducks ‘give the bad guys a huge lead’ moment, I just can’t imagine being the guy behind the guy, behind the guy, behind the guy who was behind Michael Steele who was just fired. Those guys are likely pitch-forking each other in a scene out of Lord Of The Flies at this point, pointing to the screen as a former presidential candidate is going on national television with the sole purpose of showing the wide divide within the Republican party. Could that be farther from a message? Rove and Orwell are pissed.


You’ve heard of eating your young, now you’ve seen it.


That’s all for today, see you soon!