Hapless Guessing

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for Friday April 18th, 2014


Observations:

A seasoned MJ cast at the 7am Eastern block attempted to dissect the Bundy Militia story, and forgot or misrepresented about half of it, but still felt strongly enough to draw conclusions on all fronts.  

Harry Reid labeled the groups that showed up heavily armed to the media saturated melee as ‘domestic terrorists’, and Nicole Wallace was put in the difficult position of toeing the GOP line of apologizing for them and attacking Reid’s assertion.  If you were to take Wallace’s factual analysis to its core precepts, you have to accept that the federal government showed up suddenly with a one million dollar land use bill, and then began armed enforcement action, and that there is a segment of society that has a serious disdain for federalism, to the point of denying its viability as the ultimate governing authority of the United States as imposed by it’s citizens and constitution.  OK, she didn’t put those high minded buzz cornerstones in her descriptives, but that's just it, you have to fall short and live in vagaries, otherwise illogic beams down on you.  You can say they have a ‘deep distrust’ of ‘all things federal’, and that it’s OK to bear arms in this situation because ‘the government was armed’, but it simply belies the principles of organized society.

Of course John Heilemann attacked the armed civilian response analysis, which is entirely accurate, but no one could move the conversation one dimensional analysis further, as it pertained to Wallace’s tenuous platform defense.  

Barnicle smartly read a definition of terrorism, but two well respected journalists took unbelievably placebic opposition.  

David Gregory, still smarting from an awkward back story about Pulitzer Prizes being awarded to people he thought should be charged for espionage, said calling the militia response ‘terrorism’ probably needed to be thought out more.  ‘Thought out more’ is actually what happened.  Missing fact number one that the panel simply could not rise to in analysis: the President directly ordered the de-escalation.  This is in step with his foreign policy pattern in similar decisions not to strike Syria or send arms to Ukraine (more on this later).  The President and his team including the FBI and ATF, groups immeasurably harmed by the Branch Davidian disaster, have showed an evolution in response: stand down and take good notes.  It is a dare, the President to the militias, as indicated by Harry Reid, ‘we are going to enforce the law, and now we are better prepared to quietly interdict all incoming armed militia response before it can dangerously assemble’.  The rule of law will preside, and the likelihood for a first response cataclysm has been for the time being averted.

Eugene Robinson, similarly missing the integral analysis of this event, called it a civil matter that the courts could decide as is prevalent in our higher order society.  Hey Gene, the 5 o’clock train left at 5, and it’s 7.  The civil matter was decided long ago, and this is more like Ruby Ridge than we’re allowing.  The civil matter, and this speaks to Nicole’s fundamental misrepresentation, has been decided appropriately (admittedly, that’s a guess given the asymmetry of the current judiciary) over a long amount of time.  The rancher Bundy refused to acknowledge the existence of a federal government, that million dollar accumulation of land use charges accrued over 20 years and was always billed. Bundy attempted to make the payments to the county he resides in, in keeping with his anti-federalist views, but the county couldn't accept the money on the federal government's behalf, in hindsight, I believe our President would ask for a more clever adaptation at this spot in the future, although that’s plausibly unrealistic, and/or, coddling a misanthrope. To attempt to label the current events as a civil matter is to grant some level of immunity to 20 years of willful violation of court orders and that’s not a civil matter.  What good is civil law if it’s not enforceable?

Nicole Wallace, when she tries to paint a picture of a sudden one million dollar bill, is being mischievous.  If I we’re a representative of the GOP, that is the last thing I would ever want to do as it stands on the very last tethers of credibility, driven into the margins by marginal belief sets treated as absolutes and defended with mischievous semantics across all topics.

This discussion imploded at this point and never recovered.  Wallace: ‘It’s not like he was getting monthly bills”, Truth: yes he was.  Wallace:  ‘I don’t see any guns’, Video: guns.  Barnicle: ‘there is a very disturbing segment of the population’, Truth: that was also on the 5 o’clock train you and Gene missed, those people have been around forever, but they seem to really bubble up when there’s a Democratic President.

The ultimate 5 facts short conclusion was attempted by Gregory as he trotted out the right versus left analysis to try and sum up the differences exasperated in this situation.  These warring parties are both margins on the right.  The militias are obvious, but what we aren’t talking about is that the agencies participating in the enforcement.  That conglomerate, both local federal agents and local law enforcement, is by no means some Obama ‘hope and change’ army.  Those people are the law enforcement right.  The US Attorney for the State of Nevada is a Republican.  If Nicole is the person representing the right in this discussion, the bickering parties are in essence two of her small toes ready to fight each other with guns.  The Democrats are at best in a position to referee the event, and Harry Reid is right in calling out the militia as ‘domestic terrorists’ and portraying the situation as a ridiculous escalation of gun toting immatures aggravated by not getting their way.  These are the people who blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City.  The administration knows this and is positioning itself to regulate this and any ensuing action to the fullest of it’s abilities.

We are simultaneously monitoring the Ukraine, and in a stunning parallel, its a story with separatists with guns at odds with their government.  Lots of differences to be sure, but the US has to handle its domestic efforts in manner that allows it credibility at the table of that international affair with a ton of similar elements.

Having complex arguments on the fly is the recipe for Morning Joe.  Unfortunately the tendency towards unprepared analysis is prevalent.  Hard to say if anyone could do it better than these highly qualified people, but I suspect that both John Heilemann and Eugene Robinson wish for a more effective presentation of the whole situation in retrospect.  I clearly have the advantage of DVR multiple viewing playback and prepared response, so it’s not a fair counterpoint, except that the truth has to be advanced. John and Gene would want that.

A Fork In The Road

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for February 19th, 2011

Observations:

I haven’t really missed much of the show since I was last posting consistently, but the motivation to challenge the cast to evolve their show just seems to be falling off of the priority food chain to a spot normally reserved for chasing seagulls at the beach. All the winning stuff about the show is right there, right there, and for the most part goes underutilized or unused. In fact, the move of repeating the top of the show at the top of the 8am hour shows this production is running away from it’s competitive advantage in a counter logical way, and it hurts to view that new abbreviation each day it happens.

What do you think the threshold is for the repeat or not decision point? There has been no shortage of history these last 5 months, but apparently unless it’s an exclusive with Oprah or Bill Clinton, it’s just easier to, well, not work.

The other really disturbing trend is the guest programming. Now, I have some pretty solid personal experience with how this works, and it’s entirely possible that they aren’t keeping their lineup of guests really tight like a Phil Jackson playoff run, but likely there has been some chasm in their guest getting process where those likely to feel like they wouldn’t get a fair reflection point for their take on things looked for more civil discourse. This show didn’t start that way, it’s not overtly altruistic like Bill O’Reilly, but it’s overtly altruistic like the next best example of altruism to this rightward slant hiding behind many smokescreens of balance. Let’s use one of my very favorites on these matters Matt Taibbi, whose arguably in the top 5, like Zbigniew Brzeznski top 5, in the world in effectively communicating whats happening in said world in the most crystallizing form. Ever see him? Does he not call them, or do they not call him? Does it stem from Scarborough not being on set a couple times when his slot came up? Why the attrition? Is it money?

Does Gene Robinson just show up for the money? I really don’t think so but you have to ask the question. Robinson’s scathing ‘Reagan showed America how to forget the unfortunate in our country and let them find a new low of social support’ was arguably one of the finest takes in a tough situation that we will hear all year. But was this solid, winning debate on a decidedly pro Reagan everything television show a paid commentary accident?

Joe Scarborough seems like Colonel Kurtz at this point. There is a slouch, there is a bubble, there is an almost Beck-like ‘is there anyone else in the room or is it just me?’ absolution as the guy banters on circularly in a sphere normally reserved for a discussion over an 8 ball of cocaine between two self medicating experts. It’s been going that way from the outset, but really slowly, so you could watch even a year ago and still expect the show would take an evolutionary turn that would make the average politically interested subscriber say ‘I can count on them’ about their coverage. But the host of the show basically had a look on his face this past Friday that said he was ready to gas those who didn’t agree with his take on Wisconsin. It appears to the viewer that there was some kind of an off camera intervention and they tried later in the show to back pedal from the beach head they were pounding at 6 am.

The constant attack on entitlements and even the Pentagon attack that Morning Joe marches upon constitutes an enthusiastic proof of what I’ve been saying all along: we are being sold algebra when a more complex polynomial exists. The ‘math is simple’ and ‘we can’t afford it’ are two phrases on obscene overdrive on the show. But what most people really find offensive is whats left out of that simple equation that makes it so unrealistic.

Sorry about Social Security, we simply can’t afford it (should be part of a polynomial that includes) but these people have to be taken care of so we can’t afford not to do it, lest we complete Eugene Robinson’s earlier Reagan vision by adding a significant part of our burgeoning elderly class to the forgotten part of society currently not housing our mentally ill and homeless.

And

Sorry about Medicaid/Medicare, the math is simple (should be compliant in a long equation that conforms with) while we really should be creating a baseline for coverage for all Americans, something to replace the rapidly diminishing group health insurance plan, instead we want to lose the best scenario for said baseline coverage without acknowledging that most people who don’t have group health coverage don’t really have any significant health insurance, are being sold nearly worthless catastrophic policies, and are in effect going right along with the elderly to Ronald Reagan avenue into a long line of destitute former working professionals and their dependents who simply got sick and lost everything for a lack of a basic medical support system.

And

We can’t afford to skip the Pentagon in budget cutting, the math is simple (should be subservient to the higher order economic phenomenon) that while fraught with waste Pentagon houses the largest return on investment driver known on the planet. I’m bundling NASA into this, but most of the innovations that have made our largest industries thrive were simply shoplifted from funded research and development paid for under the guise of long term weapon system creation. These industries have been soaking the defense budget for 70 years getting rich but being a form of national economic growth that will go down in history as a highest attainable level. We spend 20 times what other superpowers spend on defense. It isn’t a pariah like most people are led to believe, it really has been our backbone through the greatest economic period imaginable, and before people with two dimensional math skills are allowed to turn this into a metal scrap heap resemblant of Detroit’s auto belt, we ought to really try and organize this into a proper complex vision where the military can drive the economy in a best returns fashion but lose the pointless German tank command outposts.

It’s probably time for Morning Joe to have a hard talk about what it’s doing and where it’s going as an entity. It’s turned into a bit of a Robert Redford romantic comedy (in reverse) and needs to NPR itself on one side and Paul Wolfowitz itself on the other. Isn’t it on anybody else’s radar that Wolfowitz should be running around cable news like Donald Trump with his neo-con architecture getting some real love right about now? It’s interesting to me, but I’m afraid our friends on our show are in too much of a rut to be on top of that right now, and sameness prevails.

There’s a fork in the road ahead, and we can all tell you will be turning right, right?

That’s all for now, see you soon.

Nice Job Morning Joe You Helped Steal An Election

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for Election Day, 2010


Observations:


1) I guess I should have known when there was a managed media blackout on Morning Joe suppressing coverage of the gulf oil spill, that the show was doing a bit of a dry run in preparation to be that outpost on MSNBC that emulates Fox News’ efforts to suppress the progressive vote.


On the surface, it all seems so reasonable, Joe is a right leaning guy, his henchmen Halperin and Buchanan have a vested interest in the outcome, so why all the surprise that they would perform a service to the ruling class by convincing voters that they need no longer participate in the democratic process, for it is a foregone conclusion that the 78% unfavorable Republicans will be handed the halls of the nation’s legislature.


The demonization of progress, the irrationality of scapegoating the wrong guy for all the job losses, and the indescribably logic free notion that further enriching the ultra rich is the way out of the economic downturn caused by the net effect of the last wealth transfer is stunning for it's myopic effectiveness.


Joe Scarborough is guilty for terming the next step of the disintegration of the middle class necessary progress, and that step is this pre-ordained Republican victory. You can’t waste your days hoping Ed Schultz will bust on the set and beat Scarborough’s ass (you know he wants to), you just have to know what is happening around you and figure out your next step.


2) This notion of voter suppression is so irrational that it may be a greater mystery than what causes cancer.


We all know that the final margin in the Reagan – Carter presidential was drastically affected by the media coverage handing the country to Reagan before anyone from Colorado to the Pacific Ocean had voted. The margin of victory was significantly widened when those states that amalgamate to a huge progressive voting block, became suddenly disaffected voters. The undercard elections in those states swung mercilessly right and outcomes throughout the west were distorted by unprecedented leaps, resulting in permanent damage.


This phenomenon has driven strict media rules that for the most part don’t help at all, because of the nature of new media, and it’s ability to move information around any attempt to suppress.


So here we are today and the lessons, not the constructive ones that had us trying to curb election steering by showing the eastern state's results, but the diabolical ones about how a person stays home if you convince him it’s a lost cause, are now part and parcel to modern political science. The election process of buying media advertisements and debating is an expensive stalemate process. The new needle mover is voter suppression, and the historic turnout in 2008 is the greatest threat to future Republican power holds, the simple fact being the return on investment is greater in this arena than the traditional campaign tactics.


The evidence is as simple as looking at what mandated voting would look like. There would be two drastic effects: a devaluation of the white vote, and an end to the effectiveness of gerrymandering. Oh there would be one other effect, a Democratic super majority for the foreseeable future, and an end to the current corporate control of the nation’s capital. If you’re a Republican, a white person interested in retaining control of the politics of the United States, or a chamber of commerce, voter suppression is vital to your survival.


3) Social Media could produce the next step necessary in modern politics. For lack of a better descriptive, Facebook or its nextgen could be the architecture for a form of a witch-hunt that could use its loose interpretation of privacy to build a virtual inventory of the voter base. Add in one sprinkle of Google maps or Zillow real estate chronicling, and there could be an available tracking of who is voting and who is not, and pressure could be applied to those submitting to voter suppression to endear upon them the patriotic loss that goes with their missing vote.


That’s right, I said it, I have extreme disdain for the 60% who will hand power elsewhere today. It’s on my list of national crises and I want answers from those people. I had a very good chance this election cycle when Meg Whitman suddenly wanted to control the California governor’s office despite here disinterest in voting until the age of 46. That kind of hypocrisy is a punishable event, and 150 million dollars is a good riddance deserved.


But as an equal opportunist in this realm, I have equal disdain for people who attend protests, there aren’t enough recent examples if you’ve noticed, but who have an imperfect record of participating in the voting process. The last time there was a solid protest schedule was in the run up to the Iraq war. I felt then and I feel now that those protests were hollow because of how many of the participants didn’t vote. I irrationally think people who did not vote should be arrested if they attend a protest for their hypocrisy. The net effect is the protests ran out of gas, and protest have become more and more diluted and easily policed in this country.


Largely disintegrated by our lack of a Democratic credibility, we Americans can only watch with confused admiration while French and Greek citizens keep their governments in exponentially more effective check. The reason is so simple, yet today we risk a dangerous repeat of our irrational path. The reason is we think its OK to hand the government to agents of our demise via voter attrition to the tune of 60%.


Various elements of the corporate interest have actually broken away from the indirect suppressive effort and tried to run ads that simply told people who weren’t going to vote in their favor to not vote. Those ads never made it to the airwaves but you would never know it given the coverage they received from the media. It’s a modern phenomenon that you can run this stuff knowing that it won’t actually be televised on a paid basis, but you will have a publicity effect for your message because it’s so extreme that it can be called news, despite it’s blatant marketing composition. Was the media duped? No, they consider this stuff tools to their ultimate goal.


Joe Scarborough has been projecting wishful thinking since 1994. This is his most successful year. It is much easier to effect the country from a commercial pulpit, and he is really ready to cement his will on the nation from here for a long time. It’s evident that he became interested in his electability late last year, and got his answer: stay in media. No background checks, deserved or not, and no fact checks. You can go on forever in this environment, that is unless any of the changes that need to happen see the light of day: campaign finance reform, disassociation of lobby interests from congress, and a comprehensive study on the process of steering our politics via formerly objective journalism.


4) How can I make these outlandish claims? In the 3 hours of Morning Joe directly adjacent to the mid term election, there were Pulitzer Prize winning left leaning journalists, there was the DNC chair, and there was Scarborough going after any Republican that claims to be ready to solve any problems as having no credibility.


To me, the left elements of the show were pure capitulation, lead by Mika Brzezinski, in one of her finest Alan Colmes moments. Eugene Robinson seemed forlorn, and Tim Kaine seemed just as delusional as when he began the malpractice he calls his tenure at the top of the Democratic Party.


John Stewart captured the same delusional moment from DCCC chair Van Hollen. Stewart then called it delusional. Shock, he called a spade a spade.


It all seems so credible when presented on the show, but as Zbigniew Brzezinski has indicated conclusively, Morning Joe is the most extreme example of superficial objectivity currently being televised. At least Fox makes no illusion of really being fair and balanced. The roots of the superficiality are the extreme talent of Joe Scarborough at taking distorted anecdote and turning it into a mantra for governing, no matter how falsely based.


Wow, and you are going to fall for it.

The Elements Of Disintegration

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for September 3rd, 2010


Observations:


1) What should have been a ho-hum Friday filler with vacation coverage casting turned into a 9 way labyrinth of economic upheaval. Chris Jansing was quoting Anne Kornbluth, and Willie Geist was Eddie Haskell-ing his way through Pulitzer prizers and wunderkind like it was easy.


I’m not so sure that Carl Bernstein is right in his pessimism for the future, and actually Matt Lewis made the most salient point to counter said pessimism by encouraging all parties to not fear the shared power version of government. So what if the Republicans own some part of the legislative body? Won’t it just draw them out into actually having to govern as opposed to the convenient cover they have right now to not actually having to do anything, and the gain they make as a minority via obstruction?


You may not like Republican obstruction, or negative campaign ads. But it is now doctrine that both practices are highly effective. There are only two ways to end the obstruction, share power or bury the Republican Senate below 40 votes during a Democratic House. The only option that is in our future is the former, and embracing it isn’t such a bad thing. In fact, if you are pro government effectiveness, you have to see the shared power scenario as more useful than if the Democrats squeak out two victories.


I really take issue with the fact that we have to give up the House to the Republicans, when it is the Senate that is the most compromised away from effective government. It would actually be far better for America in a shared power environment if the Senate went Republican and the House stayed Democrat. That makes the Republicans responsible for the filibuster nonsense, removes the Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson corruption, and leaves subpoena power in the vault where it belongs.


2) The news surrounding the on air debate was fair cause for Bernstein’s depression. The Obama administration coming out and saying no second stimulus is a very bad optic showing that administration as hapless. That message should have been ‘we will do whatever it takes’. Instead the message is we are hamstrung by the political will of Washington and Congress.


The point above about Matt Lewis noting the effective possibilities in a shared power environment was even more shocking given that he made an idiot out of himself trotting out Bush era fallacy economics, which was torn apart by 4 other guests like a zebra on the Serengeti Plain. But listening to the Carl Bernstein part of the tear down was particularly poignant because it hit the Obama headwind right on the head. Obama can’t win with logic because the Republicans have succeeded in making a nonsensical economic theorem stick in the voter psyche. The ideology that serves the Republican theorem is not made to make the economy better or life better for the middle class, it is to arrange words in any order possible to say you are making the economy better while actually pilfering the tax base, cutting services and entitlements to the middle class, and privatizing government via sweetheart deals that enrich enablers. All this and then Lewis finishes by proving the double speak mantra with the unemployment number.


The unemployment number ticks down but the rate ticks up because of the good news, and the brutally honest Matt Lewis take is if Republicans parade the negative optics of the rate around then the voter won’t ever see the positive fine print number that carries it. That is Lord Of The Flies stuff, up is down, down is up, make the negative louder, making sense be damned.


3) Then, with a very long base of information feeding it, Eugene Robinson comes on and uses unfortunate words to describe the phenomenon of voter irrationality. The voter isn’t irrational because they suddenly became selfish or ‘spoiled brats’. They were taught. Taught by the Republican Party that says no taxation is ever safe on their watch. Taught by the Democratic Party that includes corrupt expenditures masked as provision in its spending plans.


Voters were more accustomed to an employer who provided many of the services other countries rely on their government for. As those employers turn the page on honestly providing job security, health care and pensions, that voter has been forced into an irrational position of having to go back to the government looking for those services.


The ultimate genesis of this voter irrationality, at least on my radar, was California proposition 13. A promise was made to find ways other than property taxes to pay for the Rolls Royce educational system and local governments in California, but those governments were no longer going to have the power to stay solvent via property taxes. This morphed over 35 years to become the mainstay public persona of the Republican party. The problem was whenever it was time to discuss solvency, the promise to remain solvent was broken, and deficit governments emerged everywhere. The California education and services systems are fatally wounded at this point, and the voter base doesn’t find it convenient to look at solutions. They have been taught when the dirty little secret of solvency shows up, you can turn your head the other way.


35 years ago, 99.9% of people never considered that they would be propped up by unemployment insurance, or that privatized health care would be afforded monopoly power and allowed to consume 32 cents of every health care dollar spent on ‘administration’, or that United Airlines would be allowed to use bankruptcy to void pensions and tell retired mechanics to go drive a truck to live out their days on this planet because their pension was gone. There was no such thing as a 401k 35 years ago.


No you have taught the voter that government can get real small just by cutting off the tax revenue spigot, but you conveniently left out the fact that your new sevices partner is the unwilling potpourri of for profit banks, for profit health care companies, for profit colleges and student lenders, and for profit security firms. They don’t want to be taxed, they lobby the government into a hapless quivering mass, and they consider the middle class to be useless eaters unless they have a dollar left to spend.


The only thing left in the hands of the voter is the voter booth. But even that ‘vote the bums out’ ability seems to be operating in a manageable range. The Democrats have been forced to lie about their accomplishments, calling them ‘health care reform’ and ‘financial regulatory reform’ and ‘the end of combat operations’ when what’s left of the objective journalists in the country uniformly state that each of those descriptions is a misnomer.


It’s not a temper tantrum, Mr. Robinson. When that plane crashed into Rockaway Beach, the FAA figured out that the pilot, while trying to regain control, thrust the rudder all the way left then all the way right so many times that he eventually broke the tail of the plane off causing disintegration.


The voters are right there, right now.

Does Joe Think This Is A Win?

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 23rd, 2010


Observations:


1) Can loud guy Joe Scarborough win a single debate today? These guys just lined up and crowned him. Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan, and a cast of others also tried to take to the airwaves to keep the kill & repeal camp energized on a devastating day. But it was Scarborough that had the toughest job. He had a weird technical advantage that the shouty man thing works kind’ve well on the Atlanta remote monitor. But three hours is a long time and overall, Donnie, Chris Hayes, Eugene, Lawrence, Chuck, and even Mika were just teeing up batting practice.


Scarborough felt like if he could just talk about what was sinister about the process he could plant the seed of buyers remorse. That remorse lost out to euphoria time and time again.


Donnie: looking back is not an effective message


Scarborough: you don’t know what you’re talking about


Umm?


Scarborough: So Eugene, do you feel good about this bad bill?


Eugene: Well, yes


Lawrence: You’ve never voted on a pure bill, and you would never initiate a health care coverage as a legislator


Scarborough: {nothing}


Ill give it to the guy. He is a happy loser. He really thinks this thing is all part of God’s plan and that time will serve his position well. That kind’ve personal content on a day like this is tough to achieve.


As he was getting battered, whether it was at 6 or at 9 AM, he had a smile on his face not unlike a zealot who feels his time will come. Maybe, but let the record show, this is real systemic change, not via this originating substantive bill, but by virtue of a genesis step. You don’t have this in your game, you can’t recognize its novel achievement, and you don’t seem to comprehend the battle ahead for your party.


Your party is most defined spiritually as wishing to return to a simpler time. Some call that a version of being reactionary. When an independent voter compares and contrast two messages in a bicameral system and one says we have to go back to not caring about 47 million people and the unfunded mandate not managing that situation creates, while the other says this process is difficult, the first step makes us even question ourselves, but status quo is by far a worse option, that comparison does not favor you.


2) I’ll never be done analyzing the mechanics of what’s coming in November. I’m listening to Joe Scarborough parade a platform of 'make the Democrats bathe in their unfortunate decisions', and I can’t tell you how much I hope that happens.


I’m starting to listen to others that said head fake is Obama’s perpetual strategy. We don’t know what his strategy to hold the House and the Senate is this fall. But think about the stakes. The stakes are ‘yes we can’ all over again.


Naysayers have piled on. I have been at times the most disillusioned person in the world. But that’s simply more evidence on the value of winning. Winning is contagious. The advantages of winning include going back to your base and saying look, who has a better chance of adding to our victory? Us, or those ‘no’ clowns? The same message plays with independents. Dear Mr. Independent voter, welcome to the first real progress of your lifetime, if you would like to continue press A, and welcome back. There’s a cave over there where all the guys who still believe we can go back to the Reagan days, that there is some other thing we can give away without consequence all live, and you can press B and join them if that’s your mission.


There is no denying the mathematical hardship the health care law will place on our horrible budget. But that kind’ve pressure is simply the right pressure. Lets get services back in front, and lets start killing off things like Medicare Advantage, ethanol subsidies, whatever non consequential military program Senator Shelby thinks he deserves, and every other budget busting piece of nonsense. I want that this is expensive, because its expensive in an arena the federal government should be growing, and will force shrinkage in parts of the government that I really would like to see smaller or go away entirely.


3) I think my favorite thing on the Morning Joe show is just how idiotic Rudy Giuliani looks trying to portray the health care bill as ‘terrible’. The thing I like about his appearance is the time warp factor. Will someone wake this guy up and tell him he is the poster child for fighting the last war? People openly mock his inability to convey reality on the ground in terms other than 9/11. For him to be the talking point generator for old guard is a disaster.


Six months ago I asked Joe Scarborough to say what he is for. He has marginally accommodated that request by talking about the things he would like to see be part of health care reform. As we have said repeatedly, he just has trouble convincing anyone he would actually make those changes. Why? Because of people like Rudy Giuliani. When it is the Republicans turn to run things, the dialog just shifts away from the entire subject, and you can tell this on a day like today, when a guy like Rudy is forced to talk. You can tell full well if Rudy Giuliani had become President and by some miracle a moderate member of the Republican party started to initiate a health care bill, Rudy would call that ‘terrible’ too.


Joe Scarborough seems to have forgotten the things we were talking about when we were looking at George and Dick’s regime. We were talking about how to provide nothing on a service basis, how to arrest more illegal immigrants, send troops to our borders, bomb Iran, empower Halliburton. The progressive agenda in the Republican party is not how to help more people, it’s how to kill more enemies.


Compare and contrast on your way to November, friend.



That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.

Partner Perkins Tries To Help Us Forget

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 19th, 2010


Observations:


1) There was no reason to rush into this column, because Friday had the same twists and turns as the previous 2 days, and I happen to be in Austin at South By Southwest. You do the math. If Peggy Noonan, Joe Scarborough and Eugene Robinson were indeed inventing the wheel on Friday, I would have asked Bill Murray to hold up a sec, and written something, but we all know that didn’t need to happen.


I try very hard not to come at this from the unfair perspective of all of the news that transpires between 9 AM eastern on a shows airing date and when I get around to talking about it. But David Gregory talked about the votes that they were short. Peggy Noonan talked about Obama not making history. The reason the rule is in place is that this stuff looks like blind monkeys did it in retrospect for the opposite happened a short while later.


2) The biggest beef to be had with the Friday show is the continued negative dogma where Joe Scarborough says on the merits this is a bad bill and that it’s a giveaway to the insurers and pharma. It is, but that’s still a false argument. The truth of the matter is that our congress is so compromised that we have to have what looks to the naked eye like a Trojan horse just to get a bill past insurmountable influence to kill it.


If anything, Scarborough should be mad at his own party for having made skeleton keys to the chambers of congress and handing them out to the chamber of commerce. It’s fair to say some of the real nastiness that we have faced in this battle has Billy Tauzin’s signature on it. That the horrific framework of the Bush prescription drug bill was the way of doing business that confronted this congress with the status quo forces all the more entrenched and empowered because of it.


This Scarborough argument seem disingenuous because like the ‘we can’t afford’ it or ‘we should start over’ talking points of the opposition, this argument pretends to be an alternative path where out the gate legislation with an antiseptic regard to special interest is readily available as an option. Joe knows that’s not the case, yet he portrays that it is, thus engaging in truthiness.


3) But thank god the Morning Joe show took a second to beat the living daylights out of State Senator Perkins. This person will now be closeted in focus groups for the foreseeable future to see if there was an angle from which he did not seem like a tool for anti progress. We know I have an issue with the real effect of the small amount of money found to be influencing Senator Perkins, but he did himself zero favors by coming off as delusional as Michelle Bachmann in his segment.


It was nearly a turkey shoot save the restraint from the cast of the show. There was a real danger of piling on. It’s like we always say when it’s a person in over their head, just let them talk. And with each reason, it seemed a more shameful obstruction than before Perkins had ever appeared. As if he was making the case for the other side: “yes I am stopping this great program and looking for falsehoods to challenge it with’.


The debate turned out to be a non event though as it became like arguing with a 5 year old, you risk losing if you try and use the facts or rationality in the face of none. The end note of ‘let’s partner to solve this problem’ is a laughable way to conclude a contest that was really too one sided to move forward from.


Now that this person has been exposed, can’t we just force him to the side and move on? I’m sure his publicist and campaign manager would like that.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.

Helpless, Helpless, Helpless

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for February 16th, 2010


Observations:


1) I’m so motivated with Al Franken, that if there is even a remote chance that John Cougar can be the next Democratic senator from Indiana and join the usurpation caucus, then we win. No offense Evan Bayh, but you are an obstructionist more closely aligned with Joe Lieberman than Chuck Schumer.


In fact, the way that Evan Bayh is going out is the ultimate Lieberman like act of obstruction based politics. Block the fire exit while you get out. All I heard was hypocrisy, complaining about the things he was equally responsible for. You can’t claim the deficit commission was the final straw when you were taking the same stance on issues of war and health care, modest support until vote time. Yea, any of the spineless middle would’ve voted for that gutted mass called Senate health care reform, that’s not brave, that’s Bayh.


Those pictures that Morning Joe was pasting up as Democratically endorsed triage candidates in Indiana had all of the momentum of the off green wall paint in your junior high school cafeteria. Good luck with that if that’s your strategy.


2) That branding point made today by Melissa Harris-Lacewell is an important one that will be explored by historians for some time in regard to the failures of 2009. If the marketing message “People First, Health Insurers Last” had been evoked in March of 2009 it would’ve trumped “Death Panels” as it would’ve associated that as snake oil from special interests instead of rightful fear of government abuse from Chuck Grassley.


The fact that ‘Main Steet, Not Wall Street’ was out there but ineffective is another stinging indictment of where the Obama administration was throughout 2009. The Goldman cabinet will not endear you to Main Street. It’s an interesting but consistent aside that both sides of the slogan have new vitriol for the administration.


And lastly, the ‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs’ high ground was ceded because the Democrats consistently pointed to the stimulus and health care as them saying yes, when Main Street was left asking ‘Where’s The Beef”? The conversation today about how China spent their stimulus with 40 high speed railroads OPENING next year versus us still with 67% of ours unaccounted for in the economy is all the answer you need as to what bedeviled our brand. Please note, that as much as Joe Scarborough used the China example today, he certainly railed against any sort of similar domestic action 12 months ago.


3) But the answer, the answer to the question that Gene Robinson asked and no one could answer: What is the central reason for the huge political shift? Not just anti incumbent. Not just health instead of jobs. Not because Republicans are so great or offered any alternative. Not because of message wars lost. The answer is mismanagement. The branch of government that Obama was elected to lead? The executive branch. I don’t need a Latin class to figure out that leading and execution are hallmarks of this position.


Even though it’s his watch and he gets the blame. The administration has some absolutely key failures that lead one to think about that career ascension conundrum: you ascend in your career until you get a job you’re not qualified for in too quick a timetable to effectively retrain or adjust and you tread water for a second until reality rushes failure over your head with the certainty of a 12 hour tide.


That failure is the departure of Howard Dean right at the administration outset, with Tim Kaine invisible for 14 months. That failure is Axelrod and Emmanuel using ‘Entourage’ mentality in a time of historic crisis where there should’ve been a Secretary Gates or Secretary Clinton at every post.


This vacuum of leadership that we’ve so consistently talked about, the missing branch of government needed to overcome huge obstacles in broken facets of BOTH other branches of government, simply misses the scale of necessity of the times. We could all learn something from George W. Bush.


Late in his Presidency, he came to power. He consulted with his dad and brought in Gates to shore up his power throughout government and turn the Iraq war while he still could. He got smart and realized the agendas of his closest advisers were divergent with his own. He seemed so lonely at the end, but often the correct path is the loneliest. No lobby money, no George Will, not a poll number in sight.


Obama has this moment in the 14th month. The template is there, erect the super squad and get to work.


That's all for today, see you tomorrow.

Morning A' La Carte

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for December 5th, 2010


Observations


1) As much as I’m critical about the Morning Joe show missing key elements of a story, I have to admit that I caught the Cuba flight list item yesterday, but either ran out of room to talk about it or just didn’t. I’m happy that the show and it’s longtime reality measuring guest Eugene Robinson tackled the prima facie of the matter today.


But the missing dimension is that if anything, it’s a good sign for Cuba that the administration is considering them among these 14 nations. It must be read that the administration is preparing for the eventuality of a normal relationship with Cuba and the good and bad that come with it. We have a prison there. We have listened to cautionary takes for a long time that if that base were domestic it would be a terrorism target. We must adjust that if we were to allow domestic bound flights from Cuba, it must carry with it the possibility of pass through terrorism from persons relating themselves to Guantanamo inmates. So as a potential conduit, it’s smartly on the list.


Eugene’s take has another problem in that it reads as a tit for tat from the side of the far left. Ever talk to Chris Matthews about Cuba? He still wants to nuke them for assassinating JFK. We have established the MJR lucidity test, and of these two far left takes, Eugene Robinson’s fails, and Chris Matthews’ irrational outburst passes. Crazy.


2) But any day that David Ignatius is on the show is a great day for lucidity. He in fact has come off of the Harrison Ford perch for a second to tackle the very subject. As Joe Scarborough butcher para-titled: the “Californication of American Government”. JS has for a long time considered California ungovernable. But in typical fashion it’s a talking point that mysteriously has lacked any detail or substance ever in the history of the show, allocating it to the mile high pile of negative broadstrokes that define his and the shows greatest challenge.


Ignatius eloquently put his finding in a paragraph. The state started with a 60 billion dollar budget imbalance, wound up with a 21 billion dollar one, and is running around telling itself it did its job governing. It bodes grimly for the whole union in that it is a microcosm for the fundamental inability of the legislative and executive branches, as designed by our forefathers, to make a difficult people first decision, instead deciding based on lobby, campaign, earmark, and commerce.


Mort Zuckerman quickly paralleled the health care process where a three word ideal took 2600 pages in congress just to pay everyone off but the American citizen.


What I found striking is that Joe Scarborough conveniently missed an opportunity to defend his take that the cloture rule “softens” legislation as a necessary stabilizing force in good governments. We have invented another test here at MJR called the scoreboard test, and you fail that test friend, there are no results of good government anywhere in sight, just deliberative bodies instead deciding based on lobby, campaign, earmark, and commerce.


3) Another great missed opportunity was the fantastic dichotomy of Ignatius’ point and the earlier Erick Erickson interview. Believe it or not, there is some merit in Erickson’ take if you could pick and choose. But you know the problem, we all know the problem, it’s the purity test.


If the next great political party is purple, guys like Erickson unfairly bind the voter into platforms unassociated with each other. You can’t be purple if you can’t take each item a' la carte.


Being an independent to me is fiscal responsibility, mixed with privacy protections that keep the government out of my social life. What it means to another demographic can be polar opposite, and they are equally invited. It’s the lack of a connectivity to the unrelated agenda items that is key to being in the middle.


Erickson has a great take about commerce (mentioned above) being a disaster to government as displayed in supernova fashion in the health care debate. But because I think that health care is a public good, we apparently can never be friends.


Until the show can create a lucid dialogue between the Erickson take and the Ignatius take on its same show, it fails the third test we are unveiling here on Morning Joe Rebuttal: the connect the dots in real time test. You can’t idolize ideology at 6 and damn ideology at 8


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.