The Morning Joe Rebuttal for September 9th, 2010
Observations:
1) Morning Joe did a great job of presenting a diverse news program today and avoiding Koran-gate as an overwhelming force. It did get some high altitude observations here and there, but Mika made some pretty stringent requirements for how the show was not going to get sucked into a self perpetuating publicity stunt as a unwitting enabler.
They get it, I wish they would’ve gotten it during their plagues that overwhelmed them previously like Professor Gates, Reverend Wright, the ground zero muslim center, or the other 25 cover up assisting noise makers that Morning Joe helped blow completely out of proportion. The golden rule is if you talk about it, you might as well be burning a Koran yourself.
Mika seems to have circled in on this logic without fully realizing why. Here’s hoping that she will connect the dots and be the person to discover how to filter stunts from news. The amount of good that can be done by the program if it could properly filter out white noise and junk would be exponentially higher.
2) It’s not lost on anyone that Joe Scarborough ducked a major embarrassment today when he did not engage Ezra Klein on Social Security. Ezra is not alone in his finding that the real demagoguery belongs to those who call Social Security a doomed entitlement that needs to be stopped in the interest of America’s solvency.
The demagoguery claim is really simple, and Ezra Klein made it, and the Washington Post printed it: going after Social Security is the path of preying on the weakest amongst us because the antagonist himself is in fact too weak, or is motivated otherwise, to go after the segments of the government’s fiscal problems that need it more. You need to fix Medicare more, and you need to understand that Medicare is an entitlement whose subscriber base is going to grow whether the country adopts single payer or continues the horrific systemic disassembly into chaos it paths to currently. Same for the $700 billion defense budget. Same for the $2 billion a week wars. Same for the amalgamated subsidies, earmarks and sweetheart contracts that came in with teaser coverages but now at maturity cost the taxpayer a premium for less service whether its $578 million dollar schools, sugar and corn subsidies, or tax credits for business engaged in outsourcing our economy.
The problem is that there is collectively zero spine in our current form of government to fight those necessary battles, so what’s left of that group just goes after the weakest among us like a bad episode of Survivor. Joe Scarborough, promised to have Ezra Klein back at some point to have that discussion, probably on a day that is hosted by Willie Geist.
Just to finish the thought on the growth of the Medicare subscriber base. Sure in the hypothetical world of single payer in America it will grow. That is not what I’m talking about. Sooner or later the 50 million Americans that are currently uninsured will all grow into some form of qualification for Medicare. You may believe that the new Health Care reform will insure more Americans, but the morass of remaining fiefdoms like the state monopolies and the wrist slap punitives of not insuring people with preexisting conditions will continue to allow maneuvers that create uninsured citizens everywhere. And those people will walk into hospitals, and hospitals will find way to get Medicare reimbursement for them. Its similar to a back door draft in our wars. The private health insurers are still motivated to not insure the same 50 million citizens they didn’t insure last year, and you can bet they are quick at work finding ways to not cover them.
It’s something the Republicans simply don’t understand. You don’t have the option to not provide health care to people. I know it’s a deep concept, but until you start the conversation ready to admit that 100% of the population is going to get medical care if they seek it, you continue to throw useless histrionics at the problem.
The only real conversation you can have about Medicare is cost control. The industry paid you dearly to not have that conversation, so you opportuned elsewhere. Can anyone tell me the pro Social Security lobby budget? I know AARP will be up in arms when Social Security gets demagogued, but financially they are a flea in comparison to the combined forces of the health care interests.
So go ahead Joe Scarborough, tell us all how you want seniors to cut their entitlements first and those other problems can go on. I can’t wait.
3) One thing that Scarborough got right: Phil Griffin is panicking right now because he gave Lawrence O’Donnell his own show. That performance today was nearly on par with Joaquin Phoenix’s rap movie.
That dress down of Richard Trumpka was disgusting. The guy who has previously gone jugular on Marc Thiessen, Paul Cantor, Phil Musser and a cast of others can’t wait to have everyone whom he feels needs a good screaming at on his own show. The new show should be titled:
“When Crazy Larry Attacks”
I really am a fan of the in control version of Lawrence. His ability to find saliency on complex political issues leads the way whenever he is on Morning Joe. He is less effective in his various fill-in hosting jobs because the structure leads him to the bent version of himself that stops all debate and starts heaping vitriol.
That in control version comes from the framework of being a moderate foil to the combination of Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan. Those guys need a moderate foil. Especially Joe Scarborough due to his penchant for projecting wishful thinking on the likelihood of outcomes.
Take today, Boehner is too much of an unknown to be targeted in the Obama speech in Ohio. Pat Buchanan: “Targeting Downward” , Joe Scarborough “no national traction”. But wait Ezra Klein “it was in Boehner’s home state”, Tina Brown “Obama should call these do nothings out and forcefully” John Heilman “ditto on the ‘good to see Obama fighting” and Chuck Todd “they do need a target for their message” and O’Donnell: well, O’Donnell didn’t have a take because it was the Crazy Larry version and he was busy doing the Joaquin thing. But only Buchanan and Scarborough roped off the negative critique and presented it as obvious doctrine.
I am pretty sure it’s incumbent on the Obama administration to point out the cast of nobodies voters are about to put in charge of the legislature. I understand voter anger about the economy, about alienation of the white middle of America viewing a leadership that includes an African American, a woman, and Harry Reid. But as they go the other way with a tidal wave force they have to know these guys they’re putting in are known shoplifters and they are about to finish the pilfering they started under George W. Bush.
There’s a reason why there is no visible leader of the Republican party: no one wants to be the mug shot when their disingenuity is found out. That’s why John Boehner seems like Roland Burris right now. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime for Boehner who’s career path should’ve topped out a long time ago.
But don’t expect Pat or Joe to figure that out for you, they’re busy trying to sell a script.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Showing posts with label Lawrence O'Donnell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lawrence O'Donnell. Show all posts
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Where Is The Howitzer?
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for July 6th, 2010
Observations:
1) Opportunism is the art of taking anything that impacts the middle class and making it some sort of ‘call to action’ to make that middle class vote in a way that benefits the barons of the status quo.
While it was Afghanistan today, it was also Wall Street and the donation revolt. It has also been the dearth of coverage of the oil spill so as not to upset the corporate advertising base of NBC. It has also been the health care debate.
In each case there was a back room talk. It was a coaching of how to frame a discussion where you’re the good guy, and the other guy is the bad guy, out of things that should be apolitical unless you have a genuine take. This is how a leech finds nutrients for life, not how a leader defines a national role.
First off, Michael Steel is nearing the status of Dan Quayle, the biggest idiot anyone could name who got a job way above god’s pay grade for him. Second, whether Steele has a point or not is beside the point, he wasn’t trying to teach a point, he was trying to teach opportunism. Those on the show who were trying to find the merit in Steele’s original argument, Pat Buchanan, were actually abandoned by Steele himself, because knowing he was just trying to teach how to profit from any political point, but not make a political point, Steele had already backtracked.
2) I am not as obsessed with the human cost of war in Afghanistan as Mike Barnicle. The armed forces are there by choice. In your life’s journey you decide at some point whether you would like to be a warrior and you pursue that path. It’s what you want to do. It is not a free choice. The risk of being a warrior is the honorable death of a warrior. These American kids in middle Asia are not victims. They are attempting to ascend to a level of enlightenment that they chose. If we had a draft, it would be different, these kids that were there because they had sworn to bear arms for their nation, but had not chosen the path of a warrior, would be victims.
I don’t want to get into victims of what, that discussion has been made by this column perpetually. But the size of the force we employ is indicative of the fact that there are many in this great land that heed a calling unto themselves to be our Army.
We might be doing some disservice to this segment of the population by not equipping them with all of the weapons and political will that they deserve, but overall, and especially in Iraq, they were given the ultimate chance to turn the campaign into a victory rather than have disinterested parties extract them for the opportunism mentioned in #1 above.
In Afghanistan, the disproportionate nature of the campaign is disconcerting, but at the end of the day, I am more concerned that the political will that handcuffs the soldier in the field is costing us the chance to finally solve an enormous global problem. No one wants to colonize Afghanistan, we just want the region to stop being a vacuum of lawlessness that exports tragedy and suffering to the rest of the planet.
Our guys on the ground want to be there, they want to finish the job, they want to prove the pundits irrelevant, and we owe them latitude towards accomplishment.
3) It’s a light week, the holiday shortened week, the forced vacation foisted upon Joe Scarborough, the innocuous repeat segments, we’re not gonna solve any problems in the next four days. Unfortunately, the problems are surrounding us, and we have to be equipped to connect them with solutions even when the lights are barely on.
Mika and Mike are perfectly qualified to make that connection, but just watching today, there will need to be an infusion of will. What are you going to do to make the powers feel forced to respond? It’s certainly not with a 3 hour long roast of Michael Steel.
I think the show needs a fire-breather to helm during the Scarborough vacation days. Not a pundit, not someone at great odds with Scarborough’s version of things, but someone who can make a credible statement on current events that antagonizes it’s subject to the point of engagement.
Whether it’s Buchanan’s niche, Halperin’s understated style, Mika’s prioritization issues, Mike’s resistance to engagement, none of the cast put into this had enough fight to bring the nation’s issues to the nation the way the Morning Joe subscriber has grown accustomed.
Lawrence O’Donnell got his own show on MSNBC recently, Spitzer went to CNN, and Hayes or Stein rep another brand. Oh I miss Lawrence, although he has lost it, an act Joe Conason just channeled last week, enough to wonder if he could last through a morning without a ray gun. But in the absence of any of the solutions that starts with the show’s absent host, and continues through a complete absence of lucid conservative moderates, you have to understand that it’s a light news week in part because your big gun is out of commission.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Opportunism is the art of taking anything that impacts the middle class and making it some sort of ‘call to action’ to make that middle class vote in a way that benefits the barons of the status quo.
While it was Afghanistan today, it was also Wall Street and the donation revolt. It has also been the dearth of coverage of the oil spill so as not to upset the corporate advertising base of NBC. It has also been the health care debate.
In each case there was a back room talk. It was a coaching of how to frame a discussion where you’re the good guy, and the other guy is the bad guy, out of things that should be apolitical unless you have a genuine take. This is how a leech finds nutrients for life, not how a leader defines a national role.
First off, Michael Steel is nearing the status of Dan Quayle, the biggest idiot anyone could name who got a job way above god’s pay grade for him. Second, whether Steele has a point or not is beside the point, he wasn’t trying to teach a point, he was trying to teach opportunism. Those on the show who were trying to find the merit in Steele’s original argument, Pat Buchanan, were actually abandoned by Steele himself, because knowing he was just trying to teach how to profit from any political point, but not make a political point, Steele had already backtracked.
2) I am not as obsessed with the human cost of war in Afghanistan as Mike Barnicle. The armed forces are there by choice. In your life’s journey you decide at some point whether you would like to be a warrior and you pursue that path. It’s what you want to do. It is not a free choice. The risk of being a warrior is the honorable death of a warrior. These American kids in middle Asia are not victims. They are attempting to ascend to a level of enlightenment that they chose. If we had a draft, it would be different, these kids that were there because they had sworn to bear arms for their nation, but had not chosen the path of a warrior, would be victims.
I don’t want to get into victims of what, that discussion has been made by this column perpetually. But the size of the force we employ is indicative of the fact that there are many in this great land that heed a calling unto themselves to be our Army.
We might be doing some disservice to this segment of the population by not equipping them with all of the weapons and political will that they deserve, but overall, and especially in Iraq, they were given the ultimate chance to turn the campaign into a victory rather than have disinterested parties extract them for the opportunism mentioned in #1 above.
In Afghanistan, the disproportionate nature of the campaign is disconcerting, but at the end of the day, I am more concerned that the political will that handcuffs the soldier in the field is costing us the chance to finally solve an enormous global problem. No one wants to colonize Afghanistan, we just want the region to stop being a vacuum of lawlessness that exports tragedy and suffering to the rest of the planet.
Our guys on the ground want to be there, they want to finish the job, they want to prove the pundits irrelevant, and we owe them latitude towards accomplishment.
3) It’s a light week, the holiday shortened week, the forced vacation foisted upon Joe Scarborough, the innocuous repeat segments, we’re not gonna solve any problems in the next four days. Unfortunately, the problems are surrounding us, and we have to be equipped to connect them with solutions even when the lights are barely on.
Mika and Mike are perfectly qualified to make that connection, but just watching today, there will need to be an infusion of will. What are you going to do to make the powers feel forced to respond? It’s certainly not with a 3 hour long roast of Michael Steel.
I think the show needs a fire-breather to helm during the Scarborough vacation days. Not a pundit, not someone at great odds with Scarborough’s version of things, but someone who can make a credible statement on current events that antagonizes it’s subject to the point of engagement.
Whether it’s Buchanan’s niche, Halperin’s understated style, Mika’s prioritization issues, Mike’s resistance to engagement, none of the cast put into this had enough fight to bring the nation’s issues to the nation the way the Morning Joe subscriber has grown accustomed.
Lawrence O’Donnell got his own show on MSNBC recently, Spitzer went to CNN, and Hayes or Stein rep another brand. Oh I miss Lawrence, although he has lost it, an act Joe Conason just channeled last week, enough to wonder if he could last through a morning without a ray gun. But in the absence of any of the solutions that starts with the show’s absent host, and continues through a complete absence of lucid conservative moderates, you have to understand that it’s a light news week in part because your big gun is out of commission.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Myth Of The Republican Genesis
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 22rd, 2010
Observations:
1) When a prediction goes awry, the best defense is to move quickly to the next prediction. Several predictions were unveiled on the Morning Joe show the morning after health care passed Congress, and the combining fixes were sent to the Senate to make a once and for all genesis path for health care reform a reality.
The first prediction is that John Cornyn says that the Senate will further attempt to disrupt the eventual passage, which at this point seems like hapless channeling of the tan face of defeat, Mr. Boehner. The second is that the November elections are a plank walk for Democrats. The last and maybe most significant is that Americans will see the passage as a giant loss for freedom.
No one knows if the Republicans in the Senate will have the will to continue a clear loser strategy of obstruction until the imminent defeat is had. But if they do, this is one prediction that will only profit the other side. Republicans have willingly gone the obstruction route for some time. There were times it worked, times it benefited elections, times it seemed like ‘party of no’ was a selling point. But this is a large leap of faith given the signs of a citizenry with an eroded patience, and the law of diminishing return setting in. The real cost of the obstruction is that it’s a sunk cost that just seems ridiculous when the opposite occurrence happens anyway, and seemingly the whole world could’ve predicted the end result. It seems like charades, does that help a party’s relevance?
The elections this coming November could have all looked like the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts. The Republicans could’ve pointed to a case of denial by the Obama administration where the Dems fought the futile fight inefficiently and took the voter for granted in absolute denial of the people’s will to focus on jobs. Now, the Democrats have the giant progress achievement, and it’s the Republicans who seem like the inefficient managers of the message war.
Lawrence O’Donnell has been screaming at the lack of a tax increase messages in the Republican resistance, yet all that has emanated from that resistance is ‘start over’, ‘Americans don’t want it’, and ‘Government takeover’. The days of ‘mission accomplished’ sloganism resonating with a public now forced to take a calculator to any claim from any party are over for now. You need to put math in front of them that they can self verify. Republicans and slogans is an equation about shelf life, sounds good for 90 days, seems to accomplish nothing after, and a distrust of the marketing process has ensued. Not talking about taxes is a gaffe of supernova proportions for the Republican party.
The elections will make the Republicans seem like dime store hoods facing the American public with yet another round of doublespeak hiding their true intent of dissolving the middle class for profit. Running against that health care accomplishment by the Dems is that fake hug scene in Jerry MaGuire. Good luck with that.
So, that leaves freedom. I know the freedom they’re talking about, the freedom to not acquire health insurance if you don’t want to, to pay cash for medical services so that you don’t have to pay into something you don’t use or aren’t interested in. The mandate is troubling, but you have to explain to me which side of the free enterprise system that you’re on. Because taking this argument appears to be playing both sides.
In the free market solution, you are providing a public good via a private mechanism. We learned in the car insurance business, that the uninsured driver is a byproduct of the lack of government involvement in the market, where it’s understood that an individual must be liable for his actions as a driver and automobile owner. So our registrations and police enforcements have enforced a mandate, and allowed the private insurers to work at an efficiency previously unseen.
So were you free when you could not pay for your liability to an emergency rooms mandate to treat you, or were you free when you were forced to cover yourself for that liability, and made the cost of that treatment 1/10th of the first scenario? And would you be more or less free if the undeniable fact that you will eventually need health care was simply transferred to the tax side of the equation and single payer was the law of the land. All the talk of freedom just sounds like the freedom to live in denial of your eventual need for health care.
Three predictions, three new losers, go team wrong!
2) I don’t understand how its not part of the news that the stand alone public option is following this bill along and has 80 sponsors. Alan Grayson has put together the antithesis of all that has gone into the health care bill just passed. Grayson’s plan is all of four pages, accomplishes its goal not of universal coverage but universal extension, and takes an existing system that has a 97% flow through and put its efficiency to work.
The reason I find it so confusing, is that it wouldn’t end private insurance, it would accomplish all of the Republicans goals of strengthening competition. Health care insurers would have to relinquish status quo monopolies and lack of free choice rules, and stateline rules just to be in this game. Most importantly, health insurers would have to come up with some private industry pressure on the cost side of things to compete. Otherwise their business goes away.
5 years after the Grayson bill would become law, the reality on the ground is that the private market would show it’s comparative superiority by providing health care at a cost of around 80% of that offered by the Medicare extension, because they would have to.
Conventional wisdom seems to be you can’t embrace this stuff until it gets enough momentum that you won’t seem like an outlier pointing to it. Morning Joe should be opposite of conventional wisdom on this issue.
3) Lawrence O’Donnell has officially made the genesis point, that Republicans would never initiate health care if they were in control of government. Lawrence included Joe Scarborough specifically. This was not a pleasant moment for Joe Scarborough. It is the simplest logic, and something we have been screaming at the television since before Morning Joe existed. In fact come November, you will be hearing this point a lot.
The Republicans have no idea how to govern anymore. Their idea of governing is to perpetually lower taxes and hope that a nation of bubble driven faux rich people are dumbed down enough to forget that should the sky fall there will be zero support structure. Further they seem like patsies to Wall Street, allowing their apparent allies to drive the economy off of a cliff on their watch. Republicans: Wall Street are not your allies, it’s a relationship of convenience between two liars.
The Democrats are far from innocent in this phenomenon. The deals agreed to in order to pass health care are embarrassing. But the incremental point is a powerful one: we are mature enough to know that while we want more in the direction of governing and providing services, we have to start here and whittle away at the mirage driven denial of our opponents.
Joe Scarborough, you would never as a governor initiate health care coverage, salvage social security, sufficiently tax a population to preserve and improve schooling, or balance any budget based on a baseline of necessity versus a baseline of revenue. You are completely limited to Reagan commercial growth for your ability to run an economy, and thus own the crises you complain about. That makes the complaints you make about the ‘bad bills’ the Democrats used for stimulus and health care part of the party of no. Stop with the mirages, and let’s see some 4 page solutions from you.
Way to go Lawrence, I guess it took a day like today.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) When a prediction goes awry, the best defense is to move quickly to the next prediction. Several predictions were unveiled on the Morning Joe show the morning after health care passed Congress, and the combining fixes were sent to the Senate to make a once and for all genesis path for health care reform a reality.
The first prediction is that John Cornyn says that the Senate will further attempt to disrupt the eventual passage, which at this point seems like hapless channeling of the tan face of defeat, Mr. Boehner. The second is that the November elections are a plank walk for Democrats. The last and maybe most significant is that Americans will see the passage as a giant loss for freedom.
No one knows if the Republicans in the Senate will have the will to continue a clear loser strategy of obstruction until the imminent defeat is had. But if they do, this is one prediction that will only profit the other side. Republicans have willingly gone the obstruction route for some time. There were times it worked, times it benefited elections, times it seemed like ‘party of no’ was a selling point. But this is a large leap of faith given the signs of a citizenry with an eroded patience, and the law of diminishing return setting in. The real cost of the obstruction is that it’s a sunk cost that just seems ridiculous when the opposite occurrence happens anyway, and seemingly the whole world could’ve predicted the end result. It seems like charades, does that help a party’s relevance?
The elections this coming November could have all looked like the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts. The Republicans could’ve pointed to a case of denial by the Obama administration where the Dems fought the futile fight inefficiently and took the voter for granted in absolute denial of the people’s will to focus on jobs. Now, the Democrats have the giant progress achievement, and it’s the Republicans who seem like the inefficient managers of the message war.
Lawrence O’Donnell has been screaming at the lack of a tax increase messages in the Republican resistance, yet all that has emanated from that resistance is ‘start over’, ‘Americans don’t want it’, and ‘Government takeover’. The days of ‘mission accomplished’ sloganism resonating with a public now forced to take a calculator to any claim from any party are over for now. You need to put math in front of them that they can self verify. Republicans and slogans is an equation about shelf life, sounds good for 90 days, seems to accomplish nothing after, and a distrust of the marketing process has ensued. Not talking about taxes is a gaffe of supernova proportions for the Republican party.
The elections will make the Republicans seem like dime store hoods facing the American public with yet another round of doublespeak hiding their true intent of dissolving the middle class for profit. Running against that health care accomplishment by the Dems is that fake hug scene in Jerry MaGuire. Good luck with that.
So, that leaves freedom. I know the freedom they’re talking about, the freedom to not acquire health insurance if you don’t want to, to pay cash for medical services so that you don’t have to pay into something you don’t use or aren’t interested in. The mandate is troubling, but you have to explain to me which side of the free enterprise system that you’re on. Because taking this argument appears to be playing both sides.
In the free market solution, you are providing a public good via a private mechanism. We learned in the car insurance business, that the uninsured driver is a byproduct of the lack of government involvement in the market, where it’s understood that an individual must be liable for his actions as a driver and automobile owner. So our registrations and police enforcements have enforced a mandate, and allowed the private insurers to work at an efficiency previously unseen.
So were you free when you could not pay for your liability to an emergency rooms mandate to treat you, or were you free when you were forced to cover yourself for that liability, and made the cost of that treatment 1/10th of the first scenario? And would you be more or less free if the undeniable fact that you will eventually need health care was simply transferred to the tax side of the equation and single payer was the law of the land. All the talk of freedom just sounds like the freedom to live in denial of your eventual need for health care.
Three predictions, three new losers, go team wrong!
2) I don’t understand how its not part of the news that the stand alone public option is following this bill along and has 80 sponsors. Alan Grayson has put together the antithesis of all that has gone into the health care bill just passed. Grayson’s plan is all of four pages, accomplishes its goal not of universal coverage but universal extension, and takes an existing system that has a 97% flow through and put its efficiency to work.
The reason I find it so confusing, is that it wouldn’t end private insurance, it would accomplish all of the Republicans goals of strengthening competition. Health care insurers would have to relinquish status quo monopolies and lack of free choice rules, and stateline rules just to be in this game. Most importantly, health insurers would have to come up with some private industry pressure on the cost side of things to compete. Otherwise their business goes away.
5 years after the Grayson bill would become law, the reality on the ground is that the private market would show it’s comparative superiority by providing health care at a cost of around 80% of that offered by the Medicare extension, because they would have to.
Conventional wisdom seems to be you can’t embrace this stuff until it gets enough momentum that you won’t seem like an outlier pointing to it. Morning Joe should be opposite of conventional wisdom on this issue.
3) Lawrence O’Donnell has officially made the genesis point, that Republicans would never initiate health care if they were in control of government. Lawrence included Joe Scarborough specifically. This was not a pleasant moment for Joe Scarborough. It is the simplest logic, and something we have been screaming at the television since before Morning Joe existed. In fact come November, you will be hearing this point a lot.
The Republicans have no idea how to govern anymore. Their idea of governing is to perpetually lower taxes and hope that a nation of bubble driven faux rich people are dumbed down enough to forget that should the sky fall there will be zero support structure. Further they seem like patsies to Wall Street, allowing their apparent allies to drive the economy off of a cliff on their watch. Republicans: Wall Street are not your allies, it’s a relationship of convenience between two liars.
The Democrats are far from innocent in this phenomenon. The deals agreed to in order to pass health care are embarrassing. But the incremental point is a powerful one: we are mature enough to know that while we want more in the direction of governing and providing services, we have to start here and whittle away at the mirage driven denial of our opponents.
Joe Scarborough, you would never as a governor initiate health care coverage, salvage social security, sufficiently tax a population to preserve and improve schooling, or balance any budget based on a baseline of necessity versus a baseline of revenue. You are completely limited to Reagan commercial growth for your ability to run an economy, and thus own the crises you complain about. That makes the complaints you make about the ‘bad bills’ the Democrats used for stimulus and health care part of the party of no. Stop with the mirages, and let’s see some 4 page solutions from you.
Way to go Lawrence, I guess it took a day like today.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Lucidity On 3 Fronts
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 16th, 2010
Observations:
1) On the ‘casino gambling with a taxpayer backstop’ theory who was first: Dylan Ratigan, Matt Taibbi or Micheal Lewis? I’m admittedly a bandwagoner here. I got into this game on the basis of ‘Dick Cheney is bad for America’ and have had to add health care, polling and financial crises to my elements of focus, and that time line does not allow me to answer the true source question. In fact, I remember the Michael Lewis ‘The Blind Side’ interview, only after Joe Scarborough reminded viewers it was the same guy, and remember the fateful question ‘so what’s your next project’. I remember Lewis talking about how he wanted to dissect the financial crisis and I remember thinking hasn’t that been covered?
I declare Taibbi as the entity that pioneered the concept that over 95% of Wall Street participants were either dumb as rocks or perpetrating a fraud for me. I declare Dylan Ratigan who has courageously kept this populist anger at incompetence and outright fraud on the front burner, despite lukewarm reception by the mainstream. But I wonder if Lewis, the author of Crash, is the genesis of both of those other movements. If you know, tell me. These people are important to me, and I would like to know for posterity’s sake.
2) Lawrence O’Donnell proved yesterday’s central thesis that the right idea is unelectable. He is the first person to come on to the Morning Joe show and declare that private insurance crosses an important line in cases like catastrophic illness where it should never be the provider of record. My record is clear here, although O’Donnell does not say the words, that the line is the definition we all, including Joe Scarborough, learned in economics 101: the public good. As with all economics, there’s word play here so lets redefine to prevent smart people mis-defining out of convenience. A public good is a product or service that cannot be efficiently produced in the private sector, thus is the role of government. Fire departments, schools and national defense are 3 others.
Lawrence has had the benefit of some really tough interviews and circumstances in the last week, and as much yelling for sport that the guy does, he is proving capable of the right kind of humanity. Scarborough had a similar occurrence a few weeks back on torture, unexpectedly facing a victim just after party lining the ‘get them before they get us’ histrionics, but didn’t seem to feel the conundrum he faced with an equal amount of human compassion. But O’Donnell, covering for Olbermann while his father passes, spending time with Michael Moore (did you hear JS groan at the mere mention?) and doing this interview with the leukemia victim highlighted by the president yesterday in Ohio, humanized quite differently.
As a fan of lucidity, you live for the one brief second, when an expert tells you the unelectable truth. We don’t have a choice. We have to embrace single payer medical in our lifetime or the entire system will only be available to 20% of the population in as soon as 10 years.
All of this bluster in the 3000 pages (and growing) of how to prop up the dying current system is hopefully a very short term incremental band aid. But we have to start talking openly not about how to get to single payer, but how to make all the real solutions electable.
We have to pass this bill, not because it’s a short term win for the insurers, but because the real solution will never ever occur without first this intermediate step.
Probably the same with finance.
3) Deem and pass is the right method if available in the eyes of the population that’s sick of waiting for the inevitable. Even opponents of health care would rather that if it’s going to happen, we should probably try and get off floor of the legislature so that they can go back to work elsewhere.
Why would you want to vote 3 times on the same process? Why wouldn’t a vote for the fixes be the net effect of a post conference reconfirmation? Historians, Republicans, obstructionists, and alarmists the world over risk being seen as requiring an insurmountable standard here, and hypocritically so. Remember, you may think you have the high ground because some manual somewhere on parliamentary procedure tells you so, but you would be reading that rule book to the skeptical voter for their first time. So ‘they broke the rules you never heard of’ and ‘the rules seemed designed to fail’ will fight to the death, and only the passed bill and the will to get it there will remain.
Lucid thought number 3, and you heard it here first.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) On the ‘casino gambling with a taxpayer backstop’ theory who was first: Dylan Ratigan, Matt Taibbi or Micheal Lewis? I’m admittedly a bandwagoner here. I got into this game on the basis of ‘Dick Cheney is bad for America’ and have had to add health care, polling and financial crises to my elements of focus, and that time line does not allow me to answer the true source question. In fact, I remember the Michael Lewis ‘The Blind Side’ interview, only after Joe Scarborough reminded viewers it was the same guy, and remember the fateful question ‘so what’s your next project’. I remember Lewis talking about how he wanted to dissect the financial crisis and I remember thinking hasn’t that been covered?
I declare Taibbi as the entity that pioneered the concept that over 95% of Wall Street participants were either dumb as rocks or perpetrating a fraud for me. I declare Dylan Ratigan who has courageously kept this populist anger at incompetence and outright fraud on the front burner, despite lukewarm reception by the mainstream. But I wonder if Lewis, the author of Crash, is the genesis of both of those other movements. If you know, tell me. These people are important to me, and I would like to know for posterity’s sake.
2) Lawrence O’Donnell proved yesterday’s central thesis that the right idea is unelectable. He is the first person to come on to the Morning Joe show and declare that private insurance crosses an important line in cases like catastrophic illness where it should never be the provider of record. My record is clear here, although O’Donnell does not say the words, that the line is the definition we all, including Joe Scarborough, learned in economics 101: the public good. As with all economics, there’s word play here so lets redefine to prevent smart people mis-defining out of convenience. A public good is a product or service that cannot be efficiently produced in the private sector, thus is the role of government. Fire departments, schools and national defense are 3 others.
Lawrence has had the benefit of some really tough interviews and circumstances in the last week, and as much yelling for sport that the guy does, he is proving capable of the right kind of humanity. Scarborough had a similar occurrence a few weeks back on torture, unexpectedly facing a victim just after party lining the ‘get them before they get us’ histrionics, but didn’t seem to feel the conundrum he faced with an equal amount of human compassion. But O’Donnell, covering for Olbermann while his father passes, spending time with Michael Moore (did you hear JS groan at the mere mention?) and doing this interview with the leukemia victim highlighted by the president yesterday in Ohio, humanized quite differently.
As a fan of lucidity, you live for the one brief second, when an expert tells you the unelectable truth. We don’t have a choice. We have to embrace single payer medical in our lifetime or the entire system will only be available to 20% of the population in as soon as 10 years.
All of this bluster in the 3000 pages (and growing) of how to prop up the dying current system is hopefully a very short term incremental band aid. But we have to start talking openly not about how to get to single payer, but how to make all the real solutions electable.
We have to pass this bill, not because it’s a short term win for the insurers, but because the real solution will never ever occur without first this intermediate step.
Probably the same with finance.
3) Deem and pass is the right method if available in the eyes of the population that’s sick of waiting for the inevitable. Even opponents of health care would rather that if it’s going to happen, we should probably try and get off floor of the legislature so that they can go back to work elsewhere.
Why would you want to vote 3 times on the same process? Why wouldn’t a vote for the fixes be the net effect of a post conference reconfirmation? Historians, Republicans, obstructionists, and alarmists the world over risk being seen as requiring an insurmountable standard here, and hypocritically so. Remember, you may think you have the high ground because some manual somewhere on parliamentary procedure tells you so, but you would be reading that rule book to the skeptical voter for their first time. So ‘they broke the rules you never heard of’ and ‘the rules seemed designed to fail’ will fight to the death, and only the passed bill and the will to get it there will remain.
Lucid thought number 3, and you heard it here first.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Monday, March 15, 2010
What’s Fun About Failure?
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 15, 2010
Observations:
1) Tina Brown thinks that the elected officials about to fail regulating banks and medical care fail because the are incompetent. Not in an insulting way where they are stupid, just that the level of complexity and comprehension required to see that simplicity is the real answer is not readily available as a commodity to the pool of electable politicians.
In this scenario, the people we should be putting in charge are in fact unelectable. Imagine for a second Elizabeth Warren dressed up as Kay Bailey Hutchinson, or Dylan Ratigan trying to make nice with Wall Street donors. Imagine for a second Howard Dean, well, wait, that one doesn’t work.
As we path down the road towards fecklessness, this concept becomes even more important, as the newscaster-ization part of political candidates removes the people most likely to govern. In fact, in many local governments, this was realized and thus came the concept of the city manager, a guy who had less demands of kissing babies and more demands of the sewers working.
Dylan Ratigan thinks there will be a voter revolt. I’m not so sure. What would result? Some more Kucinich’s and Sanders’? The hybrid of the shared concept that the job is beyond the employed in our legislature, as shared between Dylan and Tina, is more the newest evolution of the Morning Joe consensus rather than either of their distinct theories.
There is also the distraction principle that Joe Scarborough brought up a few weeks back. You will never know if there is a Paul Volker level competency in your candidate if you spend 50% or more of the vetting process talking about purity tests and seceding from the union.
2) Nancy Pelosi ceded the public option in between today’s and last Friday’s show, and her opponent John Boehner did nothing to warrant the action. In fact, Boehner is really peaking in his appearance as the bent on obstruction do nothing that represents the people we all voted against in 2008. Like Romney, all we really have to do is give that guy a microphone to find out just how few ideas he has.
A Republican party that can’t be trusted to shrink government in a country that is already undertaxed to historic levels is in fact a non-entity. So who killed the public option? Was it really conservative people? Not really, in fact the Stupak’s and ultra conservative southern Democratic house representatives are more finding their lockstep as a result of election climates in their districts. They are Democrats, but no one ever counted on them for any whip count for this bill.
Someone at some point will have to be accountable for this. All indications continue to point that if the move doesn’t match the whip count, the fix is in. The fix likely comes from the administration. And the strategy is to create the false public perception that the ‘votes’ weren’t there, when we know otherwise.
So a year later, we are back to the ‘we tried hard’ charade.
Are you listening Mr. Obama? Trust is an issue amongst your most ardent 2008 and 2010 supporters. We voted for you to avoid the ‘insider’ feel of a Hillary Clinton regime, but you are actually governing as an ‘insider’ to a greater degree than we would have expected from her, in absolute defiance of your 18 months of self description otherwise prior to your election.
3) The eight o’clock panel was the best and brightest that we have, and that conversation could not have occurred with Joe Scarborough in the room. The fact that they don’t agree on the mechanics, the reality on the ground, not just divided by 2 but divided by 3, is astounding. Scarborough would have been a 4th division, mainly on platform grounds, and we would have had to sit through ‘we can’t afford it’ and ‘% of people don’t want this bill’, both of which when gone from the conversation point to their own obsolescence in the real debate.
Deutsch believes that Ratigan is unrealistic in any expectation of a voter revolt while he agrees that the fixes in the bill are bleedingly inefficient. Deutsch wants the bill to pass to be a basis of incremental reform, a strategy I support given the options, and explains it just that way. Ratigan is correct that the bleeding inefficiencies are present and instead of accepting, he wants to see the bill go down so that the government is forced into real reform. And O’Donnell is convinced that neither road is certain currently and that we are getting ahead of ourselves in having a postgame conversation about feckless when the outcome is still in great turmoil.
All three agree that the current outcome is diluted most towards outright failure by the interference of campaign finance on behalf of commercial interests.
Which bill are we talking about?
Every bill since 1982.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Tina Brown thinks that the elected officials about to fail regulating banks and medical care fail because the are incompetent. Not in an insulting way where they are stupid, just that the level of complexity and comprehension required to see that simplicity is the real answer is not readily available as a commodity to the pool of electable politicians.
In this scenario, the people we should be putting in charge are in fact unelectable. Imagine for a second Elizabeth Warren dressed up as Kay Bailey Hutchinson, or Dylan Ratigan trying to make nice with Wall Street donors. Imagine for a second Howard Dean, well, wait, that one doesn’t work.
As we path down the road towards fecklessness, this concept becomes even more important, as the newscaster-ization part of political candidates removes the people most likely to govern. In fact, in many local governments, this was realized and thus came the concept of the city manager, a guy who had less demands of kissing babies and more demands of the sewers working.
Dylan Ratigan thinks there will be a voter revolt. I’m not so sure. What would result? Some more Kucinich’s and Sanders’? The hybrid of the shared concept that the job is beyond the employed in our legislature, as shared between Dylan and Tina, is more the newest evolution of the Morning Joe consensus rather than either of their distinct theories.
There is also the distraction principle that Joe Scarborough brought up a few weeks back. You will never know if there is a Paul Volker level competency in your candidate if you spend 50% or more of the vetting process talking about purity tests and seceding from the union.
2) Nancy Pelosi ceded the public option in between today’s and last Friday’s show, and her opponent John Boehner did nothing to warrant the action. In fact, Boehner is really peaking in his appearance as the bent on obstruction do nothing that represents the people we all voted against in 2008. Like Romney, all we really have to do is give that guy a microphone to find out just how few ideas he has.
A Republican party that can’t be trusted to shrink government in a country that is already undertaxed to historic levels is in fact a non-entity. So who killed the public option? Was it really conservative people? Not really, in fact the Stupak’s and ultra conservative southern Democratic house representatives are more finding their lockstep as a result of election climates in their districts. They are Democrats, but no one ever counted on them for any whip count for this bill.
Someone at some point will have to be accountable for this. All indications continue to point that if the move doesn’t match the whip count, the fix is in. The fix likely comes from the administration. And the strategy is to create the false public perception that the ‘votes’ weren’t there, when we know otherwise.
So a year later, we are back to the ‘we tried hard’ charade.
Are you listening Mr. Obama? Trust is an issue amongst your most ardent 2008 and 2010 supporters. We voted for you to avoid the ‘insider’ feel of a Hillary Clinton regime, but you are actually governing as an ‘insider’ to a greater degree than we would have expected from her, in absolute defiance of your 18 months of self description otherwise prior to your election.
3) The eight o’clock panel was the best and brightest that we have, and that conversation could not have occurred with Joe Scarborough in the room. The fact that they don’t agree on the mechanics, the reality on the ground, not just divided by 2 but divided by 3, is astounding. Scarborough would have been a 4th division, mainly on platform grounds, and we would have had to sit through ‘we can’t afford it’ and ‘% of people don’t want this bill’, both of which when gone from the conversation point to their own obsolescence in the real debate.
Deutsch believes that Ratigan is unrealistic in any expectation of a voter revolt while he agrees that the fixes in the bill are bleedingly inefficient. Deutsch wants the bill to pass to be a basis of incremental reform, a strategy I support given the options, and explains it just that way. Ratigan is correct that the bleeding inefficiencies are present and instead of accepting, he wants to see the bill go down so that the government is forced into real reform. And O’Donnell is convinced that neither road is certain currently and that we are getting ahead of ourselves in having a postgame conversation about feckless when the outcome is still in great turmoil.
All three agree that the current outcome is diluted most towards outright failure by the interference of campaign finance on behalf of commercial interests.
Which bill are we talking about?
Every bill since 1982.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Be The Gauntlet
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 12th, 2010
Observations:
1) Joe Scarborough asked Donald Trump a long state of the union question that mainly was a position paper indicting the President for the 86% disapproval of Washington, and when Trump answered the question, it ascended so far beyond the question, it’s as if it wasn’t there. The most amazing thing in the answer was rather than framing the reasons for the nations troubles on an ineffective Washington, Trump framed it on the Morning Joe shows inability to get obvious hardships prioritized on it’s show with it’s guests.
That my friends is the learning moment for the month. Morning Joe is a show about analysis, and we will talk about some of that analysis later, but fundamentally it’s a fair point to ask what can we do as opposed to what are they doing wrong. Maybe what we can do is demand a contract from a candidate, rather than complain about buyers remorse. Maybe what we do is move our money. Maybe what we do is demand natural gas powered cars and homes with dollar votes.
A funny thing happens when we as citizens revolt over the price of oil. The price goes down. A funny thing happens when Wal Mart wants to move into towns now. The town complains about the net effect of gross importation of cheap Chinese products, a de leveraging of wage support and benefits support, and a displacement of a community’s downtown district of locally based and produced goods and services.
We have learned over a 30 year span on both the China and oil fronts that the rules of Economics are a two way street. We can in the short term be seduced by single market pricing, but 30 years is enough for the average American to add in the social cost of some of these transactions as they happen.
At some point, and it may be upon us, the American people will realize they have two votes in this world, the one in November, and the one they do every day with their pocketbook.
2) Lawrence O’Donnell has been absent from this debate for some time. And today, he re emerged touting the same healthy skepticism that we have witnessed from him the entire time. ‘I don’t know how they do it’ is and has been Lawrence saying the voices of no will always trump the needs of progress. I think it’s a point of weakness for those of us who are on the side of progress to say ‘gosh, I hope we can prevail’. In fact, I think that ‘hope’ concept was actually the mistake made in the Obama campaign as opposed to the ‘change’ part. I don’t want to hope for anything.
The arcane set of circumstances that propel Lawrence’s doubts have nothing to do with the real world. They are parliamentary procedures. Rather than hope that we can somehow navigate these obstacles no one knows or cares about but the less than 2000 people who have spent a significant amount of time working in the senate in the last 10 years, I say, treat them as irrelevant, go forth as you have indicated and hit a new part on the map like Omaha beach.
The opponents of health care are citing cataclysmic verbiage like ‘nuclear option’ and employing any of the last vestiges of their fear arsenal at a frequency previously unseen. Their panic seems no longer to incite panic, now the majority of people realize its show business, and look at the panic as the old generation reluctantly ceding control. That is a badge of honor. That is progress.
Lawrence may deep down want progress, but his body language is reluctance to stray away from status quo. We can’t live that way, afraid defeat might be imminent thus we should circle the wagons. We have tried that, Lawrence has tried that. That is self defeat.
I find it remarkable that through all of the superiority granted to Mr. O’Donnell on this matter, warranted yes, it has allowed the Morning Joe show to again tout as the best inside knowledge a take with a fundamental flaw. Lawrence has for some unknown reason left out that the administration has a parliamentary trump card.
The Vice President is the ultimate authority on parliamentary procedure. Read it again. The Vice President is the ultimate authority on parliamentary procedure.
You can make fun of the Republicans for their blowing it on taxes as a defense, although I would argue that is another hollow hardship, because the ‘we cant afford to do it’ camps and the ‘we cant afford not to do it’ camps cancel each other out.
But you have to at some point stop listening to naysayers if your objective is otherwise, and hit the gas pedal to blow through the gauntlet, or you’ll never get off of the beach.
3) Joe Scarborough has this 53% don’t want health care thing out now, replacing the 75%, replacing whatever number he had before. And it’s still as useless now as it ever was.
Name an unpopular major governmental change that got this far? C'mon. You're from the south. Go get some civil rights poll numbers. Go get some Medicaid poll numbers. This is the silliest logic yet, but wait there’s more.
Tantrum prone Republicans, now exposed for short sighted obstruction as a platform, are now saying that ‘immigration reform is dead if health care passes’. Immigration reform is not very popular, but it will get done. Why? Because the change, while not popular, needs to happen to fix whats broken today in our civilization. Systematic denial that some part of our population belongs here, exists, adds to society, or is part of the solution going forward.
George Bush decided in his defeat on the matter to go the East Germany route and build a really big wall and go after the southern border like a giant piece of electoral red meat, when you know that he felt nearly the opposite. How’s the construction of that wall going? You have federal officers in Yuma, AZ spending their time allowing Arizona border cities to small town profiteer from the differences in laws regarding possession of minute amounts of marijuana, under the guise of border enforcement. Wellton, AZ gets 87 $400 convictions for single joints every Tuesday, keeping the $34,000 for itself, while the federal government spends $345,000 a week performing the traffic stops.
Yes, tangent, but yes, anytime you go with the over enforcement option, you forget that most of the snared are off duty minutemen. May be popular now, but the bills continue to come in.
Thats all for today, see you Monday.
Observations:
1) Joe Scarborough asked Donald Trump a long state of the union question that mainly was a position paper indicting the President for the 86% disapproval of Washington, and when Trump answered the question, it ascended so far beyond the question, it’s as if it wasn’t there. The most amazing thing in the answer was rather than framing the reasons for the nations troubles on an ineffective Washington, Trump framed it on the Morning Joe shows inability to get obvious hardships prioritized on it’s show with it’s guests.
That my friends is the learning moment for the month. Morning Joe is a show about analysis, and we will talk about some of that analysis later, but fundamentally it’s a fair point to ask what can we do as opposed to what are they doing wrong. Maybe what we can do is demand a contract from a candidate, rather than complain about buyers remorse. Maybe what we do is move our money. Maybe what we do is demand natural gas powered cars and homes with dollar votes.
A funny thing happens when we as citizens revolt over the price of oil. The price goes down. A funny thing happens when Wal Mart wants to move into towns now. The town complains about the net effect of gross importation of cheap Chinese products, a de leveraging of wage support and benefits support, and a displacement of a community’s downtown district of locally based and produced goods and services.
We have learned over a 30 year span on both the China and oil fronts that the rules of Economics are a two way street. We can in the short term be seduced by single market pricing, but 30 years is enough for the average American to add in the social cost of some of these transactions as they happen.
At some point, and it may be upon us, the American people will realize they have two votes in this world, the one in November, and the one they do every day with their pocketbook.
2) Lawrence O’Donnell has been absent from this debate for some time. And today, he re emerged touting the same healthy skepticism that we have witnessed from him the entire time. ‘I don’t know how they do it’ is and has been Lawrence saying the voices of no will always trump the needs of progress. I think it’s a point of weakness for those of us who are on the side of progress to say ‘gosh, I hope we can prevail’. In fact, I think that ‘hope’ concept was actually the mistake made in the Obama campaign as opposed to the ‘change’ part. I don’t want to hope for anything.
The arcane set of circumstances that propel Lawrence’s doubts have nothing to do with the real world. They are parliamentary procedures. Rather than hope that we can somehow navigate these obstacles no one knows or cares about but the less than 2000 people who have spent a significant amount of time working in the senate in the last 10 years, I say, treat them as irrelevant, go forth as you have indicated and hit a new part on the map like Omaha beach.
The opponents of health care are citing cataclysmic verbiage like ‘nuclear option’ and employing any of the last vestiges of their fear arsenal at a frequency previously unseen. Their panic seems no longer to incite panic, now the majority of people realize its show business, and look at the panic as the old generation reluctantly ceding control. That is a badge of honor. That is progress.
Lawrence may deep down want progress, but his body language is reluctance to stray away from status quo. We can’t live that way, afraid defeat might be imminent thus we should circle the wagons. We have tried that, Lawrence has tried that. That is self defeat.
I find it remarkable that through all of the superiority granted to Mr. O’Donnell on this matter, warranted yes, it has allowed the Morning Joe show to again tout as the best inside knowledge a take with a fundamental flaw. Lawrence has for some unknown reason left out that the administration has a parliamentary trump card.
The Vice President is the ultimate authority on parliamentary procedure. Read it again. The Vice President is the ultimate authority on parliamentary procedure.
You can make fun of the Republicans for their blowing it on taxes as a defense, although I would argue that is another hollow hardship, because the ‘we cant afford to do it’ camps and the ‘we cant afford not to do it’ camps cancel each other out.
But you have to at some point stop listening to naysayers if your objective is otherwise, and hit the gas pedal to blow through the gauntlet, or you’ll never get off of the beach.
3) Joe Scarborough has this 53% don’t want health care thing out now, replacing the 75%, replacing whatever number he had before. And it’s still as useless now as it ever was.
Name an unpopular major governmental change that got this far? C'mon. You're from the south. Go get some civil rights poll numbers. Go get some Medicaid poll numbers. This is the silliest logic yet, but wait there’s more.
Tantrum prone Republicans, now exposed for short sighted obstruction as a platform, are now saying that ‘immigration reform is dead if health care passes’. Immigration reform is not very popular, but it will get done. Why? Because the change, while not popular, needs to happen to fix whats broken today in our civilization. Systematic denial that some part of our population belongs here, exists, adds to society, or is part of the solution going forward.
George Bush decided in his defeat on the matter to go the East Germany route and build a really big wall and go after the southern border like a giant piece of electoral red meat, when you know that he felt nearly the opposite. How’s the construction of that wall going? You have federal officers in Yuma, AZ spending their time allowing Arizona border cities to small town profiteer from the differences in laws regarding possession of minute amounts of marijuana, under the guise of border enforcement. Wellton, AZ gets 87 $400 convictions for single joints every Tuesday, keeping the $34,000 for itself, while the federal government spends $345,000 a week performing the traffic stops.
Yes, tangent, but yes, anytime you go with the over enforcement option, you forget that most of the snared are off duty minutemen. May be popular now, but the bills continue to come in.
Thats all for today, see you Monday.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Morning Low
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for January 11th, 2010
Observations:
1) This is the very worst showing for Joe Scarborough since the show began. I agree often with the intellectual basis and strategy musings of Mr. Scarborough on Morning Joe and that continued even today. I was completely disappointed by his inability to control his petty glee. The quote “Negro Dialect” was uttered by JS 36 times. Again, I made that number up but stand by the larger point that his repetition was damaging to his long term credibility. Further, if you’re going to make a point of how destructive it is to give a peek at back room insight with a single contextually unclear quote…
… then you may not want to have a mock back room agreement with yourself, Andy Card, and Pat Buchanan where you wave an African-American genius like Jonathan Capehart off in a “let the men talk” manner, and then have a judge, jury, and executioner passage of judgment regardless of any of the other viewpoints that resultantly favors your minority standing as to what needs to prevail.
This is tantamount to protesting the murder of a single victim by murdering 36 more victims to show how bad murder is, then going to Simi Valley to find a jury of your peers.
2) But look, in that 36 repeat coda, the repeats fell off just enough in the second ninety minutes as the credible guests began lining up to try and repair context on your show. The shift moved to the book that appears to be a nuclear news generator. As a fan of what goes on behind the scenes, I’m riveted by all the stuff flying off of this phenomenon. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin make it clear that there is still a legion of background to learn as to how President Barack Obama happened. Is this a positively ending version of the Oliver Stone JFK style of event reading by either bugging or pretending to know what happened in the back room along the way?
I think the insinuation that Bill Clinton has a mistress while his wife is running for President, that he still thinks Barack Obama is an intern (the coffee quote has zero race in it, despite the shows mistaken consensus) is a news item that will have more legs going forward than anything else I've heard. The back room of the Democratic party definitely believed it, and thus shoved Hillary aside and made Barack president for the sake of the party’s survival. Wow.
3) We are going to have to examine the vacuum effect when a story like this grabs 99% of your three hours on the air. Howard Dean’s frustration was correct of intent but was useless in the face of the gravity of the Reid story. We saw Erin Burnett bumped, we saw health care shut out, we saw drone attacks uncovered, we saw the biggest story of the day, the bonus handout commencement, unmentioned. This country needs to hand out pitchforks and head to New York, yet the show followed the Harry Reid story exclusively like a trout after a spinner.
The bonus situation is so frustrating, because we are already saying a clawback 4-5 years in retroactive duration needs to occur, but we are allowing the another round of illegitimate redistribution of the nation’s wealth. The Wall Street firms are not just unapologetic, they are running around saying “get used to it”.
4) There is another darker examination of the Reid story that turns the Morning Joe show into a dupe. What if this is a Democratic back room strategy to make Harry Reid’s swan song be the health care vote, followed by a retirement, followed by Chuck Schumer as leader, followed by a healthier candidate showing themselves in Nevada that, like JS alluded to, had a Chris Dodd 'bad news on the singular issue made good news on five others' result. If Harry Reid’s goose is cooked prior to the story, what does the story accomplish that already wasn’t baked in? Mister X says follow the money.
This possibility means we are going to need Lawrence O’Donnell going forward, and without taking sides, if it's even questionable where Joe Scarborough’s work wound up today on the credibility map, shooting critics would be a major setback.
It’s just Monday people, take a breath and focus.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) This is the very worst showing for Joe Scarborough since the show began. I agree often with the intellectual basis and strategy musings of Mr. Scarborough on Morning Joe and that continued even today. I was completely disappointed by his inability to control his petty glee. The quote “Negro Dialect” was uttered by JS 36 times. Again, I made that number up but stand by the larger point that his repetition was damaging to his long term credibility. Further, if you’re going to make a point of how destructive it is to give a peek at back room insight with a single contextually unclear quote…
… then you may not want to have a mock back room agreement with yourself, Andy Card, and Pat Buchanan where you wave an African-American genius like Jonathan Capehart off in a “let the men talk” manner, and then have a judge, jury, and executioner passage of judgment regardless of any of the other viewpoints that resultantly favors your minority standing as to what needs to prevail.
This is tantamount to protesting the murder of a single victim by murdering 36 more victims to show how bad murder is, then going to Simi Valley to find a jury of your peers.
2) But look, in that 36 repeat coda, the repeats fell off just enough in the second ninety minutes as the credible guests began lining up to try and repair context on your show. The shift moved to the book that appears to be a nuclear news generator. As a fan of what goes on behind the scenes, I’m riveted by all the stuff flying off of this phenomenon. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin make it clear that there is still a legion of background to learn as to how President Barack Obama happened. Is this a positively ending version of the Oliver Stone JFK style of event reading by either bugging or pretending to know what happened in the back room along the way?
I think the insinuation that Bill Clinton has a mistress while his wife is running for President, that he still thinks Barack Obama is an intern (the coffee quote has zero race in it, despite the shows mistaken consensus) is a news item that will have more legs going forward than anything else I've heard. The back room of the Democratic party definitely believed it, and thus shoved Hillary aside and made Barack president for the sake of the party’s survival. Wow.
3) We are going to have to examine the vacuum effect when a story like this grabs 99% of your three hours on the air. Howard Dean’s frustration was correct of intent but was useless in the face of the gravity of the Reid story. We saw Erin Burnett bumped, we saw health care shut out, we saw drone attacks uncovered, we saw the biggest story of the day, the bonus handout commencement, unmentioned. This country needs to hand out pitchforks and head to New York, yet the show followed the Harry Reid story exclusively like a trout after a spinner.
The bonus situation is so frustrating, because we are already saying a clawback 4-5 years in retroactive duration needs to occur, but we are allowing the another round of illegitimate redistribution of the nation’s wealth. The Wall Street firms are not just unapologetic, they are running around saying “get used to it”.
4) There is another darker examination of the Reid story that turns the Morning Joe show into a dupe. What if this is a Democratic back room strategy to make Harry Reid’s swan song be the health care vote, followed by a retirement, followed by Chuck Schumer as leader, followed by a healthier candidate showing themselves in Nevada that, like JS alluded to, had a Chris Dodd 'bad news on the singular issue made good news on five others' result. If Harry Reid’s goose is cooked prior to the story, what does the story accomplish that already wasn’t baked in? Mister X says follow the money.
This possibility means we are going to need Lawrence O’Donnell going forward, and without taking sides, if it's even questionable where Joe Scarborough’s work wound up today on the credibility map, shooting critics would be a major setback.
It’s just Monday people, take a breath and focus.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Grounded
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for December 22nd, 2009
Observations:
1) While the cat’s away, the show makes quick work of repaying constituents defiled during said cat’s tenure. Lawrence is emerging as the show’s defacto 2nd in command and while he knows that it would be different had Scarborough been on the air, without him a great deal of time was spent crediting Harry Reid and by implication Nancy Pelosi. It is direct contrast to how the show would have gone without the involvement of Delta Airlines.
My only hope was that MSNBC was on the small LCD screen directly in front of JS on his flight. Not to get all food fight, but it’s a great fantasy to think that Joe would have been forced to watch as the vehicle bearing his name countermanded his core principle that the character of Harry Reid should be assassinated at every turn.
2) This show proves you can expect standout work, even given the absence of its star. Credit the above theory that Lawrence is a solution to the drift that often occurs when the cast is limited to Mika and Mike Barnicle (or Pat Buchanan, or similar). There was however not a single Republican interviewed in it’s journey through an important news day, and that was a drift of another sort.
What can happen as a result of only hearing the sales pitch of the left is the building of false hope. Hope that conference will bring some meaningful change, that the rules of cloture will somehow take a holiday, or that the five holdouts on the far right of the Democratic party will start acting like Democrats. They won’t. What you’ve got now is what you’re going to get. Lawrence again is the measure of certainty, not allowing any false scenario to seem likely.
This is not at all at the expense of Mika. She had a strong go at it today leading with some biting questions and playing gritty commentary from Michael Steele to leading Democratic Senators throughout the show, while saying she actually agreed in principle to Steele’s logic despite his typically reckless manner. It might at some level seem sexist to point to Lawrence as a leader when the co-anchor is present. I can only assess by results of shows both current and past. The recent strength by Mika of holding her own in shout downs from her own partner, in returning the show from the features abyss with some of the iciest stare in the business and by showing up today in a big way is undeniable. I think the nod to Lawrence has more to do with who has the best ability to make a credible case for what happens next. While Mika is channeling outrage in a Bernie Sanders interview, who between her and Lawrence knew in advance that in it’s current state the Senate had 5 votes for single payer?
3) Ahh the airlines. It’s a snowstorm destroying the Christmas travel plans of a nation, with airlines holding a show’s own star hostage, and being slapped with new rules to prevent them from acting like plantation masters to their customers. Dollar votes mean a lot, but apparently not enough. Each of the last many years the major airlines have lost multiple billions of dollars, they have made egregious errors in their attempts to find more revenue, and have lost the message war so completely that you will not find one member of the media or political establishment not camped adversarially against them.
Southwest Airlines, and, to a lesser extent but still near, Jet Blue and Virgin America are the only airlines left domestically that deserve a red cent. The American consumer has concocted every scheme known to man to ensure no financial certainty to the negative outliers United and US Air. And close relatives Delta, American, Continental and Northwest know they are on red alert with all customers, and have policies that can only be defined in a word as alienating.
Competition can turn a once proud industry leader like United Airlines into a wounded monolith bent on eating it’s young, apparently. They still play that song in their ads, but what do you think it means to alienated consumers or former employees who’ve had their pensions voided by corporate greed. I like that other song better anyway, “Bags fly free”, by their competitor.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) While the cat’s away, the show makes quick work of repaying constituents defiled during said cat’s tenure. Lawrence is emerging as the show’s defacto 2nd in command and while he knows that it would be different had Scarborough been on the air, without him a great deal of time was spent crediting Harry Reid and by implication Nancy Pelosi. It is direct contrast to how the show would have gone without the involvement of Delta Airlines.
My only hope was that MSNBC was on the small LCD screen directly in front of JS on his flight. Not to get all food fight, but it’s a great fantasy to think that Joe would have been forced to watch as the vehicle bearing his name countermanded his core principle that the character of Harry Reid should be assassinated at every turn.
2) This show proves you can expect standout work, even given the absence of its star. Credit the above theory that Lawrence is a solution to the drift that often occurs when the cast is limited to Mika and Mike Barnicle (or Pat Buchanan, or similar). There was however not a single Republican interviewed in it’s journey through an important news day, and that was a drift of another sort.
What can happen as a result of only hearing the sales pitch of the left is the building of false hope. Hope that conference will bring some meaningful change, that the rules of cloture will somehow take a holiday, or that the five holdouts on the far right of the Democratic party will start acting like Democrats. They won’t. What you’ve got now is what you’re going to get. Lawrence again is the measure of certainty, not allowing any false scenario to seem likely.
This is not at all at the expense of Mika. She had a strong go at it today leading with some biting questions and playing gritty commentary from Michael Steele to leading Democratic Senators throughout the show, while saying she actually agreed in principle to Steele’s logic despite his typically reckless manner. It might at some level seem sexist to point to Lawrence as a leader when the co-anchor is present. I can only assess by results of shows both current and past. The recent strength by Mika of holding her own in shout downs from her own partner, in returning the show from the features abyss with some of the iciest stare in the business and by showing up today in a big way is undeniable. I think the nod to Lawrence has more to do with who has the best ability to make a credible case for what happens next. While Mika is channeling outrage in a Bernie Sanders interview, who between her and Lawrence knew in advance that in it’s current state the Senate had 5 votes for single payer?
3) Ahh the airlines. It’s a snowstorm destroying the Christmas travel plans of a nation, with airlines holding a show’s own star hostage, and being slapped with new rules to prevent them from acting like plantation masters to their customers. Dollar votes mean a lot, but apparently not enough. Each of the last many years the major airlines have lost multiple billions of dollars, they have made egregious errors in their attempts to find more revenue, and have lost the message war so completely that you will not find one member of the media or political establishment not camped adversarially against them.
Southwest Airlines, and, to a lesser extent but still near, Jet Blue and Virgin America are the only airlines left domestically that deserve a red cent. The American consumer has concocted every scheme known to man to ensure no financial certainty to the negative outliers United and US Air. And close relatives Delta, American, Continental and Northwest know they are on red alert with all customers, and have policies that can only be defined in a word as alienating.
Competition can turn a once proud industry leader like United Airlines into a wounded monolith bent on eating it’s young, apparently. They still play that song in their ads, but what do you think it means to alienated consumers or former employees who’ve had their pensions voided by corporate greed. I like that other song better anyway, “Bags fly free”, by their competitor.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Morning Hijinks
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for December 18th, 2009
Observations:
1) The missing political roundtable from yesterday was basically today’s entire show. The subscriber needed closure on the caravan of disparate thought flying around like the Karamazov brothers yesterday, and the show neatened things up today by taking a very deliberate tempo and making every attempt to sound out what’s out there. Remember the discussion of yesterday’s missing roundtable likely would’ve been ‘what’s next, given current events’.
Lawrence O’Donnell continues to be the best guest for the what’s next conversation, and it’s disturbing that his answer is I don’t see the end game clearly. It’s an honest appraisal given that when it was his playoff march in 1994 he was already showered and done with a loss in the books and starting the post game analysis, so he doesn’t really know the look and feel of completion. It’s not inevitable that we’re at a point of completion, we don’t know, the nation doesn’t know, and the uncertainty is killing us. But at least by having the closest thing to experience in your cast you can appropriately show the stakes and mechanics of the outcome.
One key misinterpretation is the shoehorning of the Howard Dean position as a kill the bill and start over analysis from Joe Scarborough. I agree Dean might’ve said those exact words on television and made a sound bite error that has given John McCain some new material, but it’s not the Dean position. Dean wants the process to play out in conference, he would prefer that the Senate strip out a lot of what’s in its bill and just take the things that don’t qualify for reconciliation. Care centers, no pre-existing cancellations or bans, and the like stay in. He then would hold out hope that the post-conference bill is closer to either reform or a two step process involving reconciliation.
It’s a flawed strategy for the simple reason of double cloture. If you put any of the Lieberman antagonizing hallmarks back in or allude to a two step strategy, he gets to double Lieberman you. As humiliating as it is, at least we know that cloture is going to go the way of the dodo bird in our lifetimes now that a real news cycle has been forced to bear witness to its tendency to favor obstruction in a nations time of need for reform and need to move on and govern elsewhere. The nation spoke by putting 60 in the democratic caucus, but to be told that that’s not enough and that it would take 65 to be able to disregard the holdouts in their own party, is shocking.
So there it is, the bill will have to pass and stay fairly tame, maybe some architecture could be adjusted to make it more defensible to the fiscal scalpel in future budget battles, but become a juggernaut that over time whittles it’s way to a single payer system.
I would not be surprised to see Dean come around to this in the next day or so, now that he is re-established himself to be the equivalent of Elizabeth Warren in this forum: the guy telling you the lucid truth now that both sides have gone robotic.
2) It’s polling that is the hijinks I refer to. There were how many guests on your show today? 15? Of the guests and hosts, how many used the phrased “the polling shows” in a sentence? The answer is 3: the hosts and Chuck Todd. What does that tell you: one monumental weakness on the show is it’s credit bestowed on polling. I know that in some cases the science of politicking includes the use of polling, but those cases normally center around a project or campaign with assets being deployed and measured for effectiveness. No one is doing that in regards to health care, financial reform or Afghanistan. The polls seeking sentiment on all of these current events are deemed useless by so many of the people your looking at for consensus, you should really be taking it as a sign.
Let’s look at it another way: (hypothetical) “in the latest Fox News Poll, that terrorist fist bump we showed you between Barack and Michelle Obama was troubling to 64% of you and 36% only felt he should be deported”. OK, first the use of the word terrorist was a distortion limiting the ability of the audience to be measured on a factual basis, and the polling no matter how widely sampled still suffers from a preaching to the choir segmentation because non Fox subscribers just hang up on the survey, and lastly the questions are never a complete set of outcomes.
Now bring it home: the weakness of today's poll on health care was specifically the lack of a factual basis amongst the sample. There is no requirement that the sample be able to define the debate in at minimum consensus terms and likely many still think the Senate is voting on single payer. Further how many feel that if they say yes to the poll they will be stripped of their employer based coverage? And lastly, how old is the 75% number that Joe Scarborough referred to five times today, (like 3 months?) and it too was a daily tracking number during the death panel campaign. I think your subscribers want more than that.
Sure, these pollsters that your show uses are respectable bunch of meaningful prognosticators. But in any poll if there is little connectivity between the results and what 12 of your guests are deeming the predictable future or real sentiment. I continue to attribute what I’m seeing en masse from polling as a darkest before the dawn phenomenon, but if you borrow science from the closest cousin of the poll, the stock market, Mark Haynes wouldn’t touch anything short of a 200 day weighted moving average. This makes what you do with polling a denigration to the conversation you’re trying to have. Stop taking static results as a sign of anything and try harder to understand the real weight of momentum and the psychology of cycles. Therein lies an answer that will separate you from the pack going forward.
3) Copenhagen is an unneeded distraction. I really had a hard time even watching the speech, and was really pleased it was short. In my line of work, if the world had been betrayed at this level previously and even Barack Obama came promising to make good, I would require full prepayment prior to signing anything further. The argument they are having is a tired futile attempt to shame all the nations into compliance.
I really think the debate amongst nations has no bearing on the debate the show should be having. I think the micro economic debate is where it all is heading. The kind of equations like leaving an incandescent light bulb on overnight costs one bucket of coal. If we are 50% coal in this country and coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, it seems fair game to make every transaction in a person’s typical day, week, or month a transaction on that basis to emphasize conservation. You spend so much, and what do you do to neutralize what you spend? Plant a tree a week? It’s the micro economics that would bring this home.
A funny side effect is with the decentralization of employment, Tina Brown refers to it as gigs rather than jobs, a micro economic discussion is a very pertinent shortcut in the formation of green jobs and industry because if you have a problem like neutralizing your own personal carbon footprint being pondered worldwide, you have a lot more entrepreneurs. In Scotland there is a personal electric windmill company that sells a garage top windmill that generates enough electricity to offset that bucket of coal we talked about. That would sell here, but I can’t buy one in this country yet. Do you think that a machinist in Detroit could use that information?
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Observations:
1) The missing political roundtable from yesterday was basically today’s entire show. The subscriber needed closure on the caravan of disparate thought flying around like the Karamazov brothers yesterday, and the show neatened things up today by taking a very deliberate tempo and making every attempt to sound out what’s out there. Remember the discussion of yesterday’s missing roundtable likely would’ve been ‘what’s next, given current events’.
Lawrence O’Donnell continues to be the best guest for the what’s next conversation, and it’s disturbing that his answer is I don’t see the end game clearly. It’s an honest appraisal given that when it was his playoff march in 1994 he was already showered and done with a loss in the books and starting the post game analysis, so he doesn’t really know the look and feel of completion. It’s not inevitable that we’re at a point of completion, we don’t know, the nation doesn’t know, and the uncertainty is killing us. But at least by having the closest thing to experience in your cast you can appropriately show the stakes and mechanics of the outcome.
One key misinterpretation is the shoehorning of the Howard Dean position as a kill the bill and start over analysis from Joe Scarborough. I agree Dean might’ve said those exact words on television and made a sound bite error that has given John McCain some new material, but it’s not the Dean position. Dean wants the process to play out in conference, he would prefer that the Senate strip out a lot of what’s in its bill and just take the things that don’t qualify for reconciliation. Care centers, no pre-existing cancellations or bans, and the like stay in. He then would hold out hope that the post-conference bill is closer to either reform or a two step process involving reconciliation.
It’s a flawed strategy for the simple reason of double cloture. If you put any of the Lieberman antagonizing hallmarks back in or allude to a two step strategy, he gets to double Lieberman you. As humiliating as it is, at least we know that cloture is going to go the way of the dodo bird in our lifetimes now that a real news cycle has been forced to bear witness to its tendency to favor obstruction in a nations time of need for reform and need to move on and govern elsewhere. The nation spoke by putting 60 in the democratic caucus, but to be told that that’s not enough and that it would take 65 to be able to disregard the holdouts in their own party, is shocking.
So there it is, the bill will have to pass and stay fairly tame, maybe some architecture could be adjusted to make it more defensible to the fiscal scalpel in future budget battles, but become a juggernaut that over time whittles it’s way to a single payer system.
I would not be surprised to see Dean come around to this in the next day or so, now that he is re-established himself to be the equivalent of Elizabeth Warren in this forum: the guy telling you the lucid truth now that both sides have gone robotic.
2) It’s polling that is the hijinks I refer to. There were how many guests on your show today? 15? Of the guests and hosts, how many used the phrased “the polling shows” in a sentence? The answer is 3: the hosts and Chuck Todd. What does that tell you: one monumental weakness on the show is it’s credit bestowed on polling. I know that in some cases the science of politicking includes the use of polling, but those cases normally center around a project or campaign with assets being deployed and measured for effectiveness. No one is doing that in regards to health care, financial reform or Afghanistan. The polls seeking sentiment on all of these current events are deemed useless by so many of the people your looking at for consensus, you should really be taking it as a sign.
Let’s look at it another way: (hypothetical) “in the latest Fox News Poll, that terrorist fist bump we showed you between Barack and Michelle Obama was troubling to 64% of you and 36% only felt he should be deported”. OK, first the use of the word terrorist was a distortion limiting the ability of the audience to be measured on a factual basis, and the polling no matter how widely sampled still suffers from a preaching to the choir segmentation because non Fox subscribers just hang up on the survey, and lastly the questions are never a complete set of outcomes.
Now bring it home: the weakness of today's poll on health care was specifically the lack of a factual basis amongst the sample. There is no requirement that the sample be able to define the debate in at minimum consensus terms and likely many still think the Senate is voting on single payer. Further how many feel that if they say yes to the poll they will be stripped of their employer based coverage? And lastly, how old is the 75% number that Joe Scarborough referred to five times today, (like 3 months?) and it too was a daily tracking number during the death panel campaign. I think your subscribers want more than that.
Sure, these pollsters that your show uses are respectable bunch of meaningful prognosticators. But in any poll if there is little connectivity between the results and what 12 of your guests are deeming the predictable future or real sentiment. I continue to attribute what I’m seeing en masse from polling as a darkest before the dawn phenomenon, but if you borrow science from the closest cousin of the poll, the stock market, Mark Haynes wouldn’t touch anything short of a 200 day weighted moving average. This makes what you do with polling a denigration to the conversation you’re trying to have. Stop taking static results as a sign of anything and try harder to understand the real weight of momentum and the psychology of cycles. Therein lies an answer that will separate you from the pack going forward.
3) Copenhagen is an unneeded distraction. I really had a hard time even watching the speech, and was really pleased it was short. In my line of work, if the world had been betrayed at this level previously and even Barack Obama came promising to make good, I would require full prepayment prior to signing anything further. The argument they are having is a tired futile attempt to shame all the nations into compliance.
I really think the debate amongst nations has no bearing on the debate the show should be having. I think the micro economic debate is where it all is heading. The kind of equations like leaving an incandescent light bulb on overnight costs one bucket of coal. If we are 50% coal in this country and coal is the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, it seems fair game to make every transaction in a person’s typical day, week, or month a transaction on that basis to emphasize conservation. You spend so much, and what do you do to neutralize what you spend? Plant a tree a week? It’s the micro economics that would bring this home.
A funny side effect is with the decentralization of employment, Tina Brown refers to it as gigs rather than jobs, a micro economic discussion is a very pertinent shortcut in the formation of green jobs and industry because if you have a problem like neutralizing your own personal carbon footprint being pondered worldwide, you have a lot more entrepreneurs. In Scotland there is a personal electric windmill company that sells a garage top windmill that generates enough electricity to offset that bucket of coal we talked about. That would sell here, but I can’t buy one in this country yet. Do you think that a machinist in Detroit could use that information?
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Trigger Is Joe Scarborough's Latest Dog Whistle
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 23rd, 2009
Observations
1) Imagine the horror amongst subscribers to have JS and Lawrence O’Donnell giving each other credit for “having it right” for the last several months. The revisionist history that it takes to convince one’s self that your frequent projection of failures have not time and time again been countered by the forward marching of health care have made you officially in denial.
Obviously I’m on Lawrence’s side on political matters, but he has the air of a gatekeeper, of a doorman at the Mondrian that tells you that even though you’re a democrat your expectations of success are naïve. It’s apparently empowering as he lines up false failures and explains away the extremely tough but seemingly routine procedural success we’re witnessing.
The latest in “having it right” from Joe Scarborough is that this series of events lines up for the use of the trigger version of the public option. It takes a village of people willing to vote yes on a thing to get a thing, and because JS is aligned with the 39 no votes, a viewer is forced to assume this is the latest in a long line of soon to be debunked wishful thinkings. But like only dogs hear a dog whistle, only Joe Scarborough is convinced that he is predicting the future, and will be revising his historical stance sometime soon to claim he was right about this wrong as well.
2) Thankfully , there was a wide range of guests today and you can point two things out that make the message coming out of the show very well rounded. Joe Conason described the trigger as a way of not providing a public option at all and stated that history shows no trigger has ever, well, triggered in our nation’s history.
That scenario I was asking for last Thursday with Lawrence and one other realist on a panel found the result I had anticipated, albeit on a different front. The spending is out of control and we need to focus on jobs conundrums were reconciled as a “false choice” by Lawrence and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Just to be clear, ARS asked Joe Scarborough for his plan on jobs {thank you!} and it was all about public works, ARS reconciled immediately that that was stimulus and that Joe had to back off of an anti Stimulus position if he wanted public works, and furthered that stimulus is a requirement of a jobs initiative, but because that would require a deficit expenditure, it was a false choice for the shows platform to try and have it both ways. Music to my ears.
If we had made a tourism friendly transit system in Los Angeles a priority with some portion of the stimulus money and stopped greeting European and Japanese tourists with bus maps and dangerous layovers out in the open at Slauson and La Brea, you might argue that you fixed two problems with jobs and revenue in Southern California that will never be able to be fixed at the state or local level. That’s a reconciled stimulus opportunity and I’m sure it exists in all 50 states.
3) Mike Barnicle continues to be confused. How can the oldest soul on the show wake up and suddenly cry foul at an earmark for vote scenario? What have you been covering all of your life, the Philippines? I love the Will Rogers populist take that Mike brings to things, but beyond some point it only accomplishes the preaching of discontent and uncertainty. Guest after guest described the Louisiana earmark scenario as having been played out since the 1920’s as a method for getting a tough bill done. What I wish I would have heard from Mike is the “A-ha” of just why Joe Lieberman is running around with his hat out. But, they’re friends so I guess Joe gets a pass.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations
1) Imagine the horror amongst subscribers to have JS and Lawrence O’Donnell giving each other credit for “having it right” for the last several months. The revisionist history that it takes to convince one’s self that your frequent projection of failures have not time and time again been countered by the forward marching of health care have made you officially in denial.
Obviously I’m on Lawrence’s side on political matters, but he has the air of a gatekeeper, of a doorman at the Mondrian that tells you that even though you’re a democrat your expectations of success are naïve. It’s apparently empowering as he lines up false failures and explains away the extremely tough but seemingly routine procedural success we’re witnessing.
The latest in “having it right” from Joe Scarborough is that this series of events lines up for the use of the trigger version of the public option. It takes a village of people willing to vote yes on a thing to get a thing, and because JS is aligned with the 39 no votes, a viewer is forced to assume this is the latest in a long line of soon to be debunked wishful thinkings. But like only dogs hear a dog whistle, only Joe Scarborough is convinced that he is predicting the future, and will be revising his historical stance sometime soon to claim he was right about this wrong as well.
2) Thankfully , there was a wide range of guests today and you can point two things out that make the message coming out of the show very well rounded. Joe Conason described the trigger as a way of not providing a public option at all and stated that history shows no trigger has ever, well, triggered in our nation’s history.
That scenario I was asking for last Thursday with Lawrence and one other realist on a panel found the result I had anticipated, albeit on a different front. The spending is out of control and we need to focus on jobs conundrums were reconciled as a “false choice” by Lawrence and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Just to be clear, ARS asked Joe Scarborough for his plan on jobs {thank you!} and it was all about public works, ARS reconciled immediately that that was stimulus and that Joe had to back off of an anti Stimulus position if he wanted public works, and furthered that stimulus is a requirement of a jobs initiative, but because that would require a deficit expenditure, it was a false choice for the shows platform to try and have it both ways. Music to my ears.
If we had made a tourism friendly transit system in Los Angeles a priority with some portion of the stimulus money and stopped greeting European and Japanese tourists with bus maps and dangerous layovers out in the open at Slauson and La Brea, you might argue that you fixed two problems with jobs and revenue in Southern California that will never be able to be fixed at the state or local level. That’s a reconciled stimulus opportunity and I’m sure it exists in all 50 states.
3) Mike Barnicle continues to be confused. How can the oldest soul on the show wake up and suddenly cry foul at an earmark for vote scenario? What have you been covering all of your life, the Philippines? I love the Will Rogers populist take that Mike brings to things, but beyond some point it only accomplishes the preaching of discontent and uncertainty. Guest after guest described the Louisiana earmark scenario as having been played out since the 1920’s as a method for getting a tough bill done. What I wish I would have heard from Mike is the “A-ha” of just why Joe Lieberman is running around with his hat out. But, they’re friends so I guess Joe gets a pass.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Joe Scarborough "We Can Do Health Care Reform Any Time We Want"
Joe Scarborough Takes A Stand: Kill Health Care To Save Our Budget And Jobs Because We Will Have Another Chance At Reform In The Near Future!
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 19th, 2009
This is not news. But this is the single biggest reason I started this project. The quote “You don’t do health care when unemployment is 10% you wait until unemployment is handled then you revisit health care then”
This is the biggest shell game a person could ever attempt, and I am begging Joe Scarborough to limit myopic distortions of the real world from his game.
Why do you think smart people don’t understand that the phenomenon of a congress and president coming into simultaneous unified power is a unique momentum opportunity that occurs every 35 years at best?
Why do you deny reality that any delay in the health care vote is a death sentence to the prospects of it’s passage in our lifetimes.
Why do you allude to this denial-based version of events as a rational choice?
Is this why you rarely take a stand? Because when you do it’s so easy to see that you’re playing to the kick the can down the road crowd? Playing to the crowd that’s afloat in health care lobby money? This is the antithesis of what you want people to believe about you, that you’re a populist.
This is dishonest, and it has your name on it. You’ve said this repeatedly, and no one on the show ever calls you out for how unique this situation is.
Here’s what you’re going to need to do to correct this: any pairing of Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Matthews, Mark Haynes, Dr. Howard Dean, and your choice of any non-congressional right center ally that you can find all in a round table and you make the case that a second opportunity at health care reform, after this next 6 months, exists. Just that. No yes or no on health care, just you defending your blatantly false rationale that there is ubiquitous opportunity to reform health care.
Otherwise you need to find a more credible stand, because a false choice has caught up with you today.
Have a nice day, see you tomorrow.
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 19th, 2009
This is not news. But this is the single biggest reason I started this project. The quote “You don’t do health care when unemployment is 10% you wait until unemployment is handled then you revisit health care then”
This is the biggest shell game a person could ever attempt, and I am begging Joe Scarborough to limit myopic distortions of the real world from his game.
Why do you think smart people don’t understand that the phenomenon of a congress and president coming into simultaneous unified power is a unique momentum opportunity that occurs every 35 years at best?
Why do you deny reality that any delay in the health care vote is a death sentence to the prospects of it’s passage in our lifetimes.
Why do you allude to this denial-based version of events as a rational choice?
Is this why you rarely take a stand? Because when you do it’s so easy to see that you’re playing to the kick the can down the road crowd? Playing to the crowd that’s afloat in health care lobby money? This is the antithesis of what you want people to believe about you, that you’re a populist.
This is dishonest, and it has your name on it. You’ve said this repeatedly, and no one on the show ever calls you out for how unique this situation is.
Here’s what you’re going to need to do to correct this: any pairing of Lawrence O’Donnell, Chris Matthews, Mark Haynes, Dr. Howard Dean, and your choice of any non-congressional right center ally that you can find all in a round table and you make the case that a second opportunity at health care reform, after this next 6 months, exists. Just that. No yes or no on health care, just you defending your blatantly false rationale that there is ubiquitous opportunity to reform health care.
Otherwise you need to find a more credible stand, because a false choice has caught up with you today.
Have a nice day, see you tomorrow.
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