Morning TMZ

The Morning Joe Rebuttal For November 30th, 2009


Observations:


1) Joe Scarborough takes a courageous stand about not wanting the content of his show to be weighted towards Tiger Woods coverage, yet he is outvoted by producers citing the number of world leaders and CEO’s who watch his show and the fact that they expect him to cover it as a matter of necessity? If I took any part of that self serving failure wrong, please correct me, but that is a level of lousy typically reserved for other people, and your viewers are left 3 hours later screaming: SCOREBOARD.


I’m going to lump the White House crashers in with this. Afghanistan, the Jobs Summit, Palin polling at the top of Republican presidential lists, and the purity test have just lost out to the first time in the history of the show that Willie Geist could’ve anchored. Apologies to WG, but we never mention him for a reason. We’re in it for substance, and rather than waste anyone’s time, we can leave the “features” part of the show to others. Old Mika would’ve never let this happen, but passiveness here is the equivalent of job security run amok.


2) Trading tax gets brought up as an opening line in a roundtable featuring the shows cast, Jim Cramer, and Donny Deutsch and yet again the main point of it all might as well be wearing camouflage clothing. A trading tax is a misguided idea trying to find revenue in a lynch mob sort’ve way. It unfortunately is fatally flawed in that it’s too easy to kill for its misguided-ness, and it turns a blind eye to known economic principle. To hear Joe Scarborough go at it in another attempt to shore up his all tax is bad platform was unoffendingly predictable, but to hear Jim Cramer say it’s worse than actually doing something, and Donny Deutsch explain away the idotic optics is unforgivable.


Please have an economist at the table when you talk about these matters so that the bottom line doesn’t get boiled down to what tax will be cute enough to pass. I at first thought I heard this referred to as a “traitor tax” and boy, that is actually the idea to solve it all at once, and you guys accidentally dithered upon it. Lets leave capitol gains taxes exactly where they are, or better yet lower them, depending on the value of the investment towards the lowering of domestic unemployment, the amount of domestic corporate tax value of the company in question, or any version of value to true domestic national product. That’s right, anti-NAFTA, protectionist taxation at the capital gains level. If you are going to move money around to profit speculatively in a way that either benefits a competing nations economy or creates inefficiency in the market for commodities, lets tax it at the top US Income tax scale, because it’s the government that will have to correct the negative effect of your investment, and
they need the money. Goldman Sachs would owe more than their bonuses in that scenario.


3) Donny Deutsch played the race card. It’s not clear to me if Lou Dobbs deserved it or not, but Lou doesn’t like migrant workers I’m told. I do know this, this column is late today as I was driving the 8 freeway from Phoenix to San Diego all day. At points you could see the new border fence just feet from the freeway. It runs continuously across the entire state of California. We have had it pretty good up here. I’ve had a supposed “Lib” or two say that no matter what ideological position I may have adopted, the southern border needs control or it would be the end to the way of life that Southern Californians and Arizonans have enjoyed for many years. Get to the right ideologically, in the purity test crowd, and it’s a far more disturbing version of what needs to be done for the sake of national safety, as exemplified by the forced construction of this fence.


I don’t buy it. It feels so much like South Africa driving that road, that it has an air of natural unsustainability. The fence may be a most modern technology, but it still boils down to me stopping the car inside the US so that a US Agent can inspect the car and “assume we are all US Citizens”, and if Lou Dobbs is racist, so is that misguided interdiction. I love the people of Mexico and have less animosity for many of those citizens than for many north of the border. Tear down that wall. Make a negative a positive. Take money from coyotes and put it towards a prepayment for a work visa that pays a migrant workers taxes and social payments like our new national health care and make it open to anybody who is not a terrorist. Don’t let anyone tell you that pushing migrant workers into the shadows further is good for America, it’s a kick the can down the road endless shell game that trades humiliation for personal political gain.


Donnie was abandoned by the show on the subject as everyone ducked and quickly moved on, so I had the debate for you.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.

Poker Face Mr. Scarborough, For They Refer To You By Proxy

The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 24th, 2009


Observations:


1) With all the talk of Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, there was that familiar discomfort evident on the set today with the unknown political aspirations of Joe Scarborough looming sidestage like a two-ton Frappacino-sucking wildebeest.


Sure a couple of nervous jokes and insinuations place JS in the heap of “talk show host turned candidate”, but none would ask for clarity, as if it was in the pre-show stipulations to leave him out of it.


You don’t owe anyone anything, until you consider that any opinion you render must walk a line between non-hypocritical journalistic endeavors and service to an increasingly intolerant platform of the only party out there waiting for you with open arms. Tough spot, chin up.


2) Mark Halperin has gotten pesky, and that’s a good thing. Halperin as Lawrence O’Donnell did yesterday, is really starting to reinforce the recent platform updates on deficit vs. jobs and Afghanistan vs. deficit vs. jobs. There had in the past on this show been a tendency towards recidivism where a debunked theory like jobs without deficit spending had come back to the fore as a recognized strategic option.


John Halperin, joined by Andrew Ross Sorkin, seemed to be aligned to prevent the reduction of an important advance in the shows recognition that the show can’t complain about jobs without finding an acceptable deficit expanding stimulus program to effect necessary change. Just in the past couple of weeks has this new version of checks and balances seemed to feel to the average subscriber like, well, evolution.


3) It felt like another missed opportunity when The Nations Jeremy Scahill came on to talk about Blackhawk, but the subscriber was reminded that that MJ never got around to covering the DOD direct payments to the Taliban.


That hasn’t stopped Joe Scarborough from defining his Afghanistan position of no matter what the other complexities on the ground, the decision is 2-3 years to clean up and that’s it. I love this position, but I find it easy to predict the Dick Cheney avalanche of criticism that will ensue as a result, and I wonder if JS will ever challenge the Cheney clan on a point-counterpoint basis, leaving President Obama out of the discussion. That would be good television, but Liz Cheney is the second scariest female in Joe Scarborough’s life next to Hillary Clinton, so a fair amount of skepticism must be present at all times that JS would avoid confrontation with a party elder or his proxy.


That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.