Showing posts with label rudy giuliani. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rudy giuliani. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Line Up The Other 999 Guys
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for July 27th, 2010
Observations:
1) It’s an interesting summarization of the Democratic prospects for the mid term elections that Morning Joe can go on about the debate between Charlie Rangel and the House Democratic caucus for an hour. How do you think you will lead the House of Representatives next year if one of your most senior members is holding the election hostage for personal gain? He is putting his exit legacy before the prospects for Democrats holding the house. He has the votes to be elected in his district even if he wasn’t breathing, so close elections of others in his caucus are irrelevant to Mr. Rangel.
That is the story of the transition Democratic party. Back when this stuff was out of public view, save the margin of people who bookwormed the Washington Post, this kind of politics was what you needed to do to keep your party intact, keep your district strong like a small kingdom. Now that the fallout is shared amongst the entire body, it’s the opposite of what is needed to be done, and that transition is lost on Charlie Rangel. It is not lost on the voter, and while Charlie can hold his district hostage, he does it at the expense of guys like Tom Perriello, and apparently a generation ago that was ok, which is all that Charlie knows.
2) The conversation attempted to recapture yesterdays glory on Afghanistan and Pakistan, with little resultant success. It actually seemed like they knew they were just not going to get it back so the effort was moderate to token, a rehash of what everyone not named Zbigeniew said yesterday.
Ari Fleischer channeled Rudy Giuliani like a pro, adding a center right fight song to Buchanan’s outlier right positions, but you need an audience, and a dialogue and there was none. Richard Haass (I need to go back and add that “s” for the last year) got his chance to seem Zbig, and found out what happens when someone else already put their flag up, that it’s a race for second place at this point.
Our protagonist then joined the cast from afar and threw his newly minted post-Brzezinski version of AfPak in, to predictably little effect.
What should have happened? First off, the talking points should have been forced to bounce off of tape of Mr. Brzezinski’s AfPak theory of relativity from yesterday, but that tape was missing. It felt like the strategy was to give Haass the chance to recreate it, but when that didn’t happen, there was no plan b.
Second, Mika needs to know when to do what she’s good at, and today that could have been her contacting the guests on her show with a challenge that they were not saying anything new or advancing the conversation. Mika has the ability to get a conversation to a ‘what now’ sensibility, but for whatever reason she allowed this conversation to regress to the mudbath it became today.
Third, if Barnicle wants to be more than the cranky poet, he shares Mika’s responsibility from #2 above as a failsafe. Today, to put it in baseball terms, it was Barnicle being Barnicle, which means he droned his same and similar take from the last 6 months and could not be an impetus.
The bottom line is the advance of the conversation for today should have been, are we overreacting? Do we have a template that allows the Afghanistan conflict to move to the rear view mirror in the next 12 months, do we have an obligation to spend these next 12 months cleaning up what 8 years of mismanagement caused, or were those 8 years actually appropriate action given what doesn’t work as strategy in Afghanistan that might have worked in Iraq. If so, how is the policy shift even possible if you kept the Defense Secretary from the last administration?
We are on the right path, you don’t have a light switch for Afghanistan, it takes a reasonable amount of time to exit and Obama has told all parties he will be out of Afghanistan with expeditionary forces in 12 months, reserving the right to keep a reactionary force ad infinitum, which might’ve been all that was ever warranted.
5 experts, no dice.
3) Mika did drive one conversation all the way to critical mass today, and it was like watching cockroaches scatter. Ken Feinberg was forced to acknowledge that he optioned to not identify high value targets in the over compensation of Wall Street scandal. He went further saying that it was an option that he didn’t completely research the boundaries of, he just made a practical judgment. Mike Barnicle, smartened from Harold Ford Jr.’s pratfall yesterday, camouflaged his horror knowing his summer party circuit would be severely infringed upon if that high value target list found daylight. But no amount of camouflage could completely conceal Ken and Mike were part of an ‘Old Boys’ network and that possibly Mika asking the obvious was an unexpected genesis.
What we need now is with Feinberg’s template, that Julian Assange makes a ‘maps to the stars homes’ for the eastern seaboard. No I don’t want class warfare, red herrings, I want to continue to ratchet up the pressure for the clawback conversation. What happens on the way to the clawback versus pitchfork debate is a lot of capitulation. Because lets face it, billionaires on Wall Street and their lawyers are impenetrable by contract but the most cowardly class of individuals you will ever meet if they see a squeeze of any sort coming.
Capitulation might mean voluntary programs from any affected company to breathe life into the middle class. If the choice is these types of programs, or income redistribution, and you had the income, what would you choose? Don’t say that is high minded fantasy either, go back and check the price of gas in the US every time a Republican wants to get elected. Something tells me if mortgage forgiveness ever found equitable platitude standing, it might seem like forgiving those already sunk losses might be an easy choice for a frightened capitalist.
Mika, say it with me, clawbacks. That’s where your question leads, and your colleague Dylan Ratigan can tell you all about it. You may need a translator. Or, you could call Matt Taibbi, but he flat out uses the word pitchforks in a sentence daily.
Don’t look at anyone on your panel to join you, they are part of the 999 guys brought in by Jeff Immelt to slow the story down, not the 20-30 guys who won’t stop until daylight shines on all of us equally.
Too bad you don’t have another dad named Nassim Taleb.
Observations:
1) It’s an interesting summarization of the Democratic prospects for the mid term elections that Morning Joe can go on about the debate between Charlie Rangel and the House Democratic caucus for an hour. How do you think you will lead the House of Representatives next year if one of your most senior members is holding the election hostage for personal gain? He is putting his exit legacy before the prospects for Democrats holding the house. He has the votes to be elected in his district even if he wasn’t breathing, so close elections of others in his caucus are irrelevant to Mr. Rangel.
That is the story of the transition Democratic party. Back when this stuff was out of public view, save the margin of people who bookwormed the Washington Post, this kind of politics was what you needed to do to keep your party intact, keep your district strong like a small kingdom. Now that the fallout is shared amongst the entire body, it’s the opposite of what is needed to be done, and that transition is lost on Charlie Rangel. It is not lost on the voter, and while Charlie can hold his district hostage, he does it at the expense of guys like Tom Perriello, and apparently a generation ago that was ok, which is all that Charlie knows.
2) The conversation attempted to recapture yesterdays glory on Afghanistan and Pakistan, with little resultant success. It actually seemed like they knew they were just not going to get it back so the effort was moderate to token, a rehash of what everyone not named Zbigeniew said yesterday.
Ari Fleischer channeled Rudy Giuliani like a pro, adding a center right fight song to Buchanan’s outlier right positions, but you need an audience, and a dialogue and there was none. Richard Haass (I need to go back and add that “s” for the last year) got his chance to seem Zbig, and found out what happens when someone else already put their flag up, that it’s a race for second place at this point.
Our protagonist then joined the cast from afar and threw his newly minted post-Brzezinski version of AfPak in, to predictably little effect.
What should have happened? First off, the talking points should have been forced to bounce off of tape of Mr. Brzezinski’s AfPak theory of relativity from yesterday, but that tape was missing. It felt like the strategy was to give Haass the chance to recreate it, but when that didn’t happen, there was no plan b.
Second, Mika needs to know when to do what she’s good at, and today that could have been her contacting the guests on her show with a challenge that they were not saying anything new or advancing the conversation. Mika has the ability to get a conversation to a ‘what now’ sensibility, but for whatever reason she allowed this conversation to regress to the mudbath it became today.
Third, if Barnicle wants to be more than the cranky poet, he shares Mika’s responsibility from #2 above as a failsafe. Today, to put it in baseball terms, it was Barnicle being Barnicle, which means he droned his same and similar take from the last 6 months and could not be an impetus.
The bottom line is the advance of the conversation for today should have been, are we overreacting? Do we have a template that allows the Afghanistan conflict to move to the rear view mirror in the next 12 months, do we have an obligation to spend these next 12 months cleaning up what 8 years of mismanagement caused, or were those 8 years actually appropriate action given what doesn’t work as strategy in Afghanistan that might have worked in Iraq. If so, how is the policy shift even possible if you kept the Defense Secretary from the last administration?
We are on the right path, you don’t have a light switch for Afghanistan, it takes a reasonable amount of time to exit and Obama has told all parties he will be out of Afghanistan with expeditionary forces in 12 months, reserving the right to keep a reactionary force ad infinitum, which might’ve been all that was ever warranted.
5 experts, no dice.
3) Mika did drive one conversation all the way to critical mass today, and it was like watching cockroaches scatter. Ken Feinberg was forced to acknowledge that he optioned to not identify high value targets in the over compensation of Wall Street scandal. He went further saying that it was an option that he didn’t completely research the boundaries of, he just made a practical judgment. Mike Barnicle, smartened from Harold Ford Jr.’s pratfall yesterday, camouflaged his horror knowing his summer party circuit would be severely infringed upon if that high value target list found daylight. But no amount of camouflage could completely conceal Ken and Mike were part of an ‘Old Boys’ network and that possibly Mika asking the obvious was an unexpected genesis.
What we need now is with Feinberg’s template, that Julian Assange makes a ‘maps to the stars homes’ for the eastern seaboard. No I don’t want class warfare, red herrings, I want to continue to ratchet up the pressure for the clawback conversation. What happens on the way to the clawback versus pitchfork debate is a lot of capitulation. Because lets face it, billionaires on Wall Street and their lawyers are impenetrable by contract but the most cowardly class of individuals you will ever meet if they see a squeeze of any sort coming.
Capitulation might mean voluntary programs from any affected company to breathe life into the middle class. If the choice is these types of programs, or income redistribution, and you had the income, what would you choose? Don’t say that is high minded fantasy either, go back and check the price of gas in the US every time a Republican wants to get elected. Something tells me if mortgage forgiveness ever found equitable platitude standing, it might seem like forgiving those already sunk losses might be an easy choice for a frightened capitalist.
Mika, say it with me, clawbacks. That’s where your question leads, and your colleague Dylan Ratigan can tell you all about it. You may need a translator. Or, you could call Matt Taibbi, but he flat out uses the word pitchforks in a sentence daily.
Don’t look at anyone on your panel to join you, they are part of the 999 guys brought in by Jeff Immelt to slow the story down, not the 20-30 guys who won’t stop until daylight shines on all of us equally.
Too bad you don’t have another dad named Nassim Taleb.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Cliff Notes
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for June 21st, 2010
Observations:
1) Mika is lost like the volleyball on Castaway. I feel horrible about it because it seems like I’m harping on this crazy bring my notes to class disorganization, and I’m not. She is missing the larger point, that no one is saying it’s the empty set of accomplishment for the White House, but everyone is saying the Houston brain trust most likely to have achieved an early answer to the leak catastrophe was not meaningfully engaged. It’s still not.
Through all of this, I also stand alongside, of all people, opportunist supreme Rudy Giuliani for having the most connecting statement crystallizing this “where are the all-stars” question we all began to mutter a few weeks back. Mika’s attempt to discredit his effort from the show last week is a real killer. None of us are the authority until the thing is stopped. Anyone can be heard who brings us closer to a solution. Giuliani brought us closer to a solution, and your notes prove it. Giuliani made the White House scramble to prove it had been doing this all along, but it was too late. Because the correct notion of assembling the dream team had already evolved and today Jack Welch was talking about the mechanics of an all hands on deck solution, while the White House was providing phone records with the 713 area code.
Additionally, the defense of old activities is politicization of the matter. Who cares? Why can’t our governing body empower the good ideas in a crisis rather than be defensive. It’s not you who is defensive, it’s the White House. You don’t say yes I was calling Haliburton looking for more ideas, you say, here is our plan to take on this best available idea starting today. Thanks for that idea Rudy and Jack, and if anyone else can evolve this process farther, our special hotline for BP oil spill solutions is 800-FIXLEAK.
Thanks also to Costner and Cameron.
2) Through all of this Scarborough is evolving as well. I’ve noticed that he is verging on a-partisan. This pocket that he has managed create is an important new concept in non-partisan punditry. I found most of the back and forth today with Joe and Mika to show Mika far more partisan and Joe objective to a fault, stopping short again of concluding an argument, to allow the opponent to regroup, just in case she can be of value in the fight tomorrow.
This stuff is ground breaking. I have not seen anything more closely resemble a shadow government. For a while I was sort’ve looking at Howard Dean as a shadow Democratic leader, but that is a step down the food chain for what I’m witnessing on Morning Joe right now. The long format, the cycle of experts, the dismissal of punditry and the personal evolution away from attack, this is a person acting like a shadow President of the United States. Effectively.
There are a lot of softballs here, Joe Scarborough owns a huge connection to Katrina, and to the Gulf Coast, and is really ‘our man in DC’ for a great deal of the southeastern US. The vacuum created by Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell and Joe Barton allows Scarborough the high ground called “the only guy from the right who might actually give you a straight answer”. Those other guys are completely bankrupt of ideas, and the youth movement of the Republican party seems to lack next level thinking. Scarborough has found lucidity while 99% of his colleagues in the Republican party don’t know where to look.
It’s the medium. This 3 hour format and basis at the heart of the two biggest drivers of data in the US New York and Washington is causing a Gladwell 10,000 hours phenomenon to occur. It’s not that there aren’t talk shows all over, it’s that this one isn’t echoing, it’s self-correcting. The level of expectation to drive the topics at hand further through the analysis process is increasing beyond any other associated medium. It’s just more.
When I started this thing forever ago, I took exception to the planting of doctrine I disagreed with inside a claim of objectivity. I may continue to hold that exception of Joe Scarborough’s work, but don’t forget, the good stuff crystallized here, the evolution occurred here.
3) Whomever’s idea it was to lengthen Erin Burnett’s segment is a genius. I can’t believe we watched the Morning Joe show cut this person off for 2 years. I hope it was her agent. I hope they laid down an ultimatum that if she doesn’t get to complete 3 sentences before someone pipes in Sammy Hagar that they can do the business news themselves.
I'm sure every day this new version exceeds expectations by 20, the powers that be of Morning Joe and the cast hope Jon Stewart doesn’t do the math here and time lapse all of the IQ points lost to bad planning in the first two years.
I want Erin Burnett’s 3 points per episode back, back to episode one, and I bet everyone in Rockefeller Center, Wall Street and Englewood, NJ do to.
That's all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Mika is lost like the volleyball on Castaway. I feel horrible about it because it seems like I’m harping on this crazy bring my notes to class disorganization, and I’m not. She is missing the larger point, that no one is saying it’s the empty set of accomplishment for the White House, but everyone is saying the Houston brain trust most likely to have achieved an early answer to the leak catastrophe was not meaningfully engaged. It’s still not.
Through all of this, I also stand alongside, of all people, opportunist supreme Rudy Giuliani for having the most connecting statement crystallizing this “where are the all-stars” question we all began to mutter a few weeks back. Mika’s attempt to discredit his effort from the show last week is a real killer. None of us are the authority until the thing is stopped. Anyone can be heard who brings us closer to a solution. Giuliani brought us closer to a solution, and your notes prove it. Giuliani made the White House scramble to prove it had been doing this all along, but it was too late. Because the correct notion of assembling the dream team had already evolved and today Jack Welch was talking about the mechanics of an all hands on deck solution, while the White House was providing phone records with the 713 area code.
Additionally, the defense of old activities is politicization of the matter. Who cares? Why can’t our governing body empower the good ideas in a crisis rather than be defensive. It’s not you who is defensive, it’s the White House. You don’t say yes I was calling Haliburton looking for more ideas, you say, here is our plan to take on this best available idea starting today. Thanks for that idea Rudy and Jack, and if anyone else can evolve this process farther, our special hotline for BP oil spill solutions is 800-FIXLEAK.
Thanks also to Costner and Cameron.
2) Through all of this Scarborough is evolving as well. I’ve noticed that he is verging on a-partisan. This pocket that he has managed create is an important new concept in non-partisan punditry. I found most of the back and forth today with Joe and Mika to show Mika far more partisan and Joe objective to a fault, stopping short again of concluding an argument, to allow the opponent to regroup, just in case she can be of value in the fight tomorrow.
This stuff is ground breaking. I have not seen anything more closely resemble a shadow government. For a while I was sort’ve looking at Howard Dean as a shadow Democratic leader, but that is a step down the food chain for what I’m witnessing on Morning Joe right now. The long format, the cycle of experts, the dismissal of punditry and the personal evolution away from attack, this is a person acting like a shadow President of the United States. Effectively.
There are a lot of softballs here, Joe Scarborough owns a huge connection to Katrina, and to the Gulf Coast, and is really ‘our man in DC’ for a great deal of the southeastern US. The vacuum created by Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell and Joe Barton allows Scarborough the high ground called “the only guy from the right who might actually give you a straight answer”. Those other guys are completely bankrupt of ideas, and the youth movement of the Republican party seems to lack next level thinking. Scarborough has found lucidity while 99% of his colleagues in the Republican party don’t know where to look.
It’s the medium. This 3 hour format and basis at the heart of the two biggest drivers of data in the US New York and Washington is causing a Gladwell 10,000 hours phenomenon to occur. It’s not that there aren’t talk shows all over, it’s that this one isn’t echoing, it’s self-correcting. The level of expectation to drive the topics at hand further through the analysis process is increasing beyond any other associated medium. It’s just more.
When I started this thing forever ago, I took exception to the planting of doctrine I disagreed with inside a claim of objectivity. I may continue to hold that exception of Joe Scarborough’s work, but don’t forget, the good stuff crystallized here, the evolution occurred here.
3) Whomever’s idea it was to lengthen Erin Burnett’s segment is a genius. I can’t believe we watched the Morning Joe show cut this person off for 2 years. I hope it was her agent. I hope they laid down an ultimatum that if she doesn’t get to complete 3 sentences before someone pipes in Sammy Hagar that they can do the business news themselves.
I'm sure every day this new version exceeds expectations by 20, the powers that be of Morning Joe and the cast hope Jon Stewart doesn’t do the math here and time lapse all of the IQ points lost to bad planning in the first two years.
I want Erin Burnett’s 3 points per episode back, back to episode one, and I bet everyone in Rockefeller Center, Wall Street and Englewood, NJ do to.
That's all for today, see you tomorrow.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
No Ships On The Horizon
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for June 17th, 2010
Observations:
1) I am going to have to give Rudy Giuliani some props for that analysis. But it sucks, it’s that same level of emptiness that occurred when Darrell Issa was the only guy sounding the alarm on AIG emails.
If it really takes Rudy Giuliani to point out the missing elements of the BP oil disaster response, then the administration needs to go to extension college on governing. Obviously this rare occasion was made possible by Dylan Ratigan and Jim Cramer intensely agreeing on core operational issues, because no one take Rudy seriously solo anymore. He is so, well what did we call Peter King, a credibility disaster that only his resolute take and some accreditation would work.
Missing is the superheroes of Houston and the oil barons. I of course had added the Bush family, but I always take it a step farther.
Missing is the international response offers ignored, and the mobilization of the entire gulf fleet to contain. I have never spoke on this issue, but I think like most Americans, I thought this was obvious and its missing-ness is Katrina-esque.
I mean really, Donald Trump is a stretch and I forgive you for not finding that very good idea from that source, but T Boone Pickens? He has a 'remove oil from our future' agenda. Where are you? Is this about swift boat? Did Ike check voting records on June 5th, 1944?
When the Northridge earthquake ravaged Los Angeles in 1994, the 10 freeway collapsed. The city did a non traditional deal that time incentivized the reopening of that crucial freeway. It worked, it was at level and operational in months not years. There was debate, there were cries of overpayment, but nothing was worth letting that work take even a second longer than minimum.
That kind of resolute government action is missing here. Don Trump is the closest when he tries to incentivize with lease reassignment the solution from the private parties that make up our best hope for stopping the leak.
The White House needs to step up or face disappointing a nation, and lending new credibility to Rudy Giuliani.
2) The White House responding on Mika’s blackberry is as bad a concept as there ever was. This directly makes Robert Gibbs, the Press Secretary, responsible for the worst optics ever. The message is small, Mika has to squint to read it, it makes the communication emanating from the White House seem, well, small.
Don’t ever do this again. Call in, set up a broadcast booth, be a bigger message than your critics if you’re going to take the time to respond. Avoidance is a superior strategy to a 3 inch message.
3) The worst thing ever is the shovel in the ground in Alaska showing oil today left from 1989. It is a concept that needs to find a home with the entire United States. Somehow we are all in denial of that fact. We think some soap and we are going to clean up like a bird in a $400 bath.
We’re not. The slowness of the capture of the leaked oil actually will make this permanence thing even more of a fact of life than it had to be.
There are two schools of thought here. One is that we’re doing all we can and this is the consequences of bad luck and tough problems. The other is that once the Gulf of Mexico is permanently marred by oil, it will be that much easier to grant permits, because the damage is already done.
No on is low enough on the karma food chain to think that way are they. You would’ve had to have been in the meeting with Dick Cheney back in 2000 to know for sure
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) I am going to have to give Rudy Giuliani some props for that analysis. But it sucks, it’s that same level of emptiness that occurred when Darrell Issa was the only guy sounding the alarm on AIG emails.
If it really takes Rudy Giuliani to point out the missing elements of the BP oil disaster response, then the administration needs to go to extension college on governing. Obviously this rare occasion was made possible by Dylan Ratigan and Jim Cramer intensely agreeing on core operational issues, because no one take Rudy seriously solo anymore. He is so, well what did we call Peter King, a credibility disaster that only his resolute take and some accreditation would work.
Missing is the superheroes of Houston and the oil barons. I of course had added the Bush family, but I always take it a step farther.
Missing is the international response offers ignored, and the mobilization of the entire gulf fleet to contain. I have never spoke on this issue, but I think like most Americans, I thought this was obvious and its missing-ness is Katrina-esque.
I mean really, Donald Trump is a stretch and I forgive you for not finding that very good idea from that source, but T Boone Pickens? He has a 'remove oil from our future' agenda. Where are you? Is this about swift boat? Did Ike check voting records on June 5th, 1944?
When the Northridge earthquake ravaged Los Angeles in 1994, the 10 freeway collapsed. The city did a non traditional deal that time incentivized the reopening of that crucial freeway. It worked, it was at level and operational in months not years. There was debate, there were cries of overpayment, but nothing was worth letting that work take even a second longer than minimum.
That kind of resolute government action is missing here. Don Trump is the closest when he tries to incentivize with lease reassignment the solution from the private parties that make up our best hope for stopping the leak.
The White House needs to step up or face disappointing a nation, and lending new credibility to Rudy Giuliani.
2) The White House responding on Mika’s blackberry is as bad a concept as there ever was. This directly makes Robert Gibbs, the Press Secretary, responsible for the worst optics ever. The message is small, Mika has to squint to read it, it makes the communication emanating from the White House seem, well, small.
Don’t ever do this again. Call in, set up a broadcast booth, be a bigger message than your critics if you’re going to take the time to respond. Avoidance is a superior strategy to a 3 inch message.
3) The worst thing ever is the shovel in the ground in Alaska showing oil today left from 1989. It is a concept that needs to find a home with the entire United States. Somehow we are all in denial of that fact. We think some soap and we are going to clean up like a bird in a $400 bath.
We’re not. The slowness of the capture of the leaked oil actually will make this permanence thing even more of a fact of life than it had to be.
There are two schools of thought here. One is that we’re doing all we can and this is the consequences of bad luck and tough problems. The other is that once the Gulf of Mexico is permanently marred by oil, it will be that much easier to grant permits, because the damage is already done.
No on is low enough on the karma food chain to think that way are they. You would’ve had to have been in the meeting with Dick Cheney back in 2000 to know for sure
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
You've Been Karzai'd!
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for April 6th, 2010
Observations:
1. So in a science experiment I decided to let a couple weeks pass and then view the shows in a combined time-lapse 1/10 sequence animation. The combined shows ran for the same three or so hours. The results were hilarious. Even at that time shifted kilter, the words ‘I’m going to have to stop you there, because you’re wrong about every single thing” we’re as clear as when they were shouted at Tina Brown in real time.
Even in time lapse the only real noticeable differences were there was some sort’ve kerfuffle in Florida where public education was defined as a public good necessitating strong government action, and then Joe Scarborough disappeared for either 90 minutes or a week and a half, so he didn’t have to extend the same logic to health care.
It was like a dream sequence, with a lot of inordinately important people in the Florida thing, then Willie Geist ran the network for like 6 months until I woke up.
2) Cut to today and give me a break. That Afghanistan conversation, apparently grounded because conservatives and progressives alike agree, was still mired in more one-dimensional mud than a viewer should be asked to tolerate. Yea, you can say you’re on Biden’s team when it’s convenient, you can say Karzai was another example of a failure about to happen that could be seen from space, but when you try and put it together you just cement your role as falling for whatever the opposition is selling on a news cycle basis.
Has Morning Joe ever gone into the blinders policy of the opium crop in Afghanistan? It was as if when the words ‘drug problem’ were uttered a single time and then the subject was evacuated like an Irwin Allen movie in an attempt to keep the conversation simple, where an Ozzie and Harriet consensus could be achieved without a nap or a headache. I have a long history claiming the vacuum of critical thought that permeates the Afghanistan discussion on Morning Joe is a disservice, to put it kindly. And that analysis stayed true today. Look, when one thing like the Karzai situation goes predictably south, maybe try and follow your own advice and stay calm and move along rather than pull out a Chicken Little routine out of convenience.
In Afghanistan today, the Americans are letting the Afghans have a safe haven in their opium trade, they are taking the lowlands by a surge of military force because it will be more plausible they could retain control there, and they have adopted a Biden strategy in the mountains, where the New York Times just wrote about a climate of no safe haven on either side of the border. This is a complex strategy that deserves to be shown in the context of equally complex strategies in Iran and Pakistan and then, and only then, can your algebraic arguments find any solvency test. Otherwise, you’re just speaking in political code, in an attempt to sway the argument more on a popularity basis than a basis of any real wisdom.
I’m not saying you’re resultant consensus is right or wrong, or that you’re misreading the 10% of the facts you’re acknowledging, it just sounds like Mr. Ed talking with his hoof when there is so much more out there and you know it.
3) Rudy Giuliani in real time or Maria Bartiromo in time lapse, it’s all the same. These people are eroding their credibility with every appearance. In my dream the White House listened to Maria riff on the stimulus for about 45 minutes then intervened. In real time Rudy Giuliani had a perfect opportunity to get somewhere today when Arianna Huffington just lost her mind and cheapened every solid argument she had made in the last 5 years with grade school insults that would get her arrested in Massachusetts. But instead of making any critical establishment of a way forward, his mind was again exposed for the binary mechanism of catastrophe it has become: shoot Karzai, Rubio because of old sandbox scraps with Crist, and I saved New York and the World so I think I know the menace of a social democracy coming when I see it.
If I was mad last August when Obama was having that Mighty Ducks ‘give the bad guys a huge lead’ moment, I just can’t imagine being the guy behind the guy, behind the guy, behind the guy who was behind Michael Steele who was just fired. Those guys are likely pitch-forking each other in a scene out of Lord Of The Flies at this point, pointing to the screen as a former presidential candidate is going on national television with the sole purpose of showing the wide divide within the Republican party. Could that be farther from a message? Rove and Orwell are pissed.
You’ve heard of eating your young, now you’ve seen it.
That’s all for today, see you soon!
Observations:
1. So in a science experiment I decided to let a couple weeks pass and then view the shows in a combined time-lapse 1/10 sequence animation. The combined shows ran for the same three or so hours. The results were hilarious. Even at that time shifted kilter, the words ‘I’m going to have to stop you there, because you’re wrong about every single thing” we’re as clear as when they were shouted at Tina Brown in real time.
Even in time lapse the only real noticeable differences were there was some sort’ve kerfuffle in Florida where public education was defined as a public good necessitating strong government action, and then Joe Scarborough disappeared for either 90 minutes or a week and a half, so he didn’t have to extend the same logic to health care.
It was like a dream sequence, with a lot of inordinately important people in the Florida thing, then Willie Geist ran the network for like 6 months until I woke up.
2) Cut to today and give me a break. That Afghanistan conversation, apparently grounded because conservatives and progressives alike agree, was still mired in more one-dimensional mud than a viewer should be asked to tolerate. Yea, you can say you’re on Biden’s team when it’s convenient, you can say Karzai was another example of a failure about to happen that could be seen from space, but when you try and put it together you just cement your role as falling for whatever the opposition is selling on a news cycle basis.
Has Morning Joe ever gone into the blinders policy of the opium crop in Afghanistan? It was as if when the words ‘drug problem’ were uttered a single time and then the subject was evacuated like an Irwin Allen movie in an attempt to keep the conversation simple, where an Ozzie and Harriet consensus could be achieved without a nap or a headache. I have a long history claiming the vacuum of critical thought that permeates the Afghanistan discussion on Morning Joe is a disservice, to put it kindly. And that analysis stayed true today. Look, when one thing like the Karzai situation goes predictably south, maybe try and follow your own advice and stay calm and move along rather than pull out a Chicken Little routine out of convenience.
In Afghanistan today, the Americans are letting the Afghans have a safe haven in their opium trade, they are taking the lowlands by a surge of military force because it will be more plausible they could retain control there, and they have adopted a Biden strategy in the mountains, where the New York Times just wrote about a climate of no safe haven on either side of the border. This is a complex strategy that deserves to be shown in the context of equally complex strategies in Iran and Pakistan and then, and only then, can your algebraic arguments find any solvency test. Otherwise, you’re just speaking in political code, in an attempt to sway the argument more on a popularity basis than a basis of any real wisdom.
I’m not saying you’re resultant consensus is right or wrong, or that you’re misreading the 10% of the facts you’re acknowledging, it just sounds like Mr. Ed talking with his hoof when there is so much more out there and you know it.
3) Rudy Giuliani in real time or Maria Bartiromo in time lapse, it’s all the same. These people are eroding their credibility with every appearance. In my dream the White House listened to Maria riff on the stimulus for about 45 minutes then intervened. In real time Rudy Giuliani had a perfect opportunity to get somewhere today when Arianna Huffington just lost her mind and cheapened every solid argument she had made in the last 5 years with grade school insults that would get her arrested in Massachusetts. But instead of making any critical establishment of a way forward, his mind was again exposed for the binary mechanism of catastrophe it has become: shoot Karzai, Rubio because of old sandbox scraps with Crist, and I saved New York and the World so I think I know the menace of a social democracy coming when I see it.
If I was mad last August when Obama was having that Mighty Ducks ‘give the bad guys a huge lead’ moment, I just can’t imagine being the guy behind the guy, behind the guy, behind the guy who was behind Michael Steele who was just fired. Those guys are likely pitch-forking each other in a scene out of Lord Of The Flies at this point, pointing to the screen as a former presidential candidate is going on national television with the sole purpose of showing the wide divide within the Republican party. Could that be farther from a message? Rove and Orwell are pissed.
You’ve heard of eating your young, now you’ve seen it.
That’s all for today, see you soon!
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.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
If Republicans Think This Is Their Time, Let Them Delude
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for January 21st, 2010
Observations:
1) Maria Bartiromo needs the truth-o-meter. Loretta Sanchez had it bad enough with the classic ‘never empower the question’ histrionics of Rudy Giuliani, but when future Wall Street super lobbyist Bartiromo claims any sort of divining rod in what’s right and rational in the banking system at this level, she is exposed as an arbiter of conflict of interest. Just Google Maria Bartiromo and try and find hard hitting journalism about the role of Moody’s in the financial meltdown, and all you’ll find is pro business fluff pieces. That’s what an apologist does, that’s what a lobbyist does. Loretta Sanchez had it exactly right, fine, talk about Countrywide, but give equal time the sub prime mortgage securitization process and the role a compromised Moody’s played in that. You were there, Maria, you were part of the hoax.
Now, as for Rudy, I don’t need game film to call you out for all of the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ level anecdotal nonsense, it just isn’t necessary. You do enough yourself. If anyone doesn’t characterize Giuliani getting off of a plane in Massachusetts as wanton opportunism, if they can’t directly see that part in ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ where the fat incumbent Governor Pappy O'Daniel dances a jig to George Cluny’s sudden hero, then they simply don’t understand the shallow place hermit crab Giuliani has chosen to dwell this week.
2) Mike and Willie did something very right today when they didn’t become the 104th on-air opportunity for Indiana Republican Mike Pence, who went everywhere else to try and claim a victory lap for the Republican party based on the Massachusetts election. This guy is looking for the airtime just to float his coming senatorial campaign. But the fact that he has decided to break national based on a dubious read of momentum is astounding.
We had a super shift in the standing of the independent voter in Massachusetts. There was no pro Republican message anywhere in the Brown campaign. Pence is so far off in his interpretation of the Brown message, that he probably should be counseled by the RNC prior to causing a huge schism in any real opportunity possessed by them in the next 12 months. An incumbent is an incumbent. Financial records will already show they’re in the bag for special interests and voters have reacted to a modern media phenomenon where virtual inventory of your vast bank of conflicts of interest is part of their voting decision.
The jig is up for the Dodds and the Sessions of the world equally. Pence running around with an elephant flag is Gary Larson level misinterpretation on display.
The show, instead of having Pence, or anyone else with any party delusion for that matter, on to try and spin rightward, chose a very moderate Nicole Wallace, and a very scholarly Melissa Harris-Lacewell to have an adult discussion of the facts on the ground subsequent to the Massachusetts (and New Jersey) elections. That is an astounding victory for the show where your competitors were letting Republicans shoot episodes of ‘The Far Side’.
3) I thought it was interesting today that Mike Barnicle talked about his checkered past with banks, foreclosures, repossession and credit. This comes a couple of days after this column blasted Mike and Harold Ford Jr. for being part of the machine while claiming to be agents of honest appraisal. I want to know more, because I find this self-characterization of today troubling.
On one hand, it could be that all the personal experience led a rational broke person to marry well so that he could carry on with his low paying populist vocation comfortably. On the other hand, he might’ve run game film on himself and felt the need to place some populist credibility on his public record. Either way, Countrywide came up again today. They are hurting people. Bank of America owns them. Mortgage restructurings account for less than five percent of all defaults. The banks are not allowing any of the government mortgage relief mandates to move forward. They are slow walking the mandates trying to force a 100 cents on the dollar subsidization of mortgage restructuring by the government similar to the deal Goldman got for it’s AIG repayment. That is Bank of America hurting main street for profit, trying to dynamically force an enriching bailout one American family tragedy at a time. Who pays your mortgage again?
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Maria Bartiromo needs the truth-o-meter. Loretta Sanchez had it bad enough with the classic ‘never empower the question’ histrionics of Rudy Giuliani, but when future Wall Street super lobbyist Bartiromo claims any sort of divining rod in what’s right and rational in the banking system at this level, she is exposed as an arbiter of conflict of interest. Just Google Maria Bartiromo and try and find hard hitting journalism about the role of Moody’s in the financial meltdown, and all you’ll find is pro business fluff pieces. That’s what an apologist does, that’s what a lobbyist does. Loretta Sanchez had it exactly right, fine, talk about Countrywide, but give equal time the sub prime mortgage securitization process and the role a compromised Moody’s played in that. You were there, Maria, you were part of the hoax.
Now, as for Rudy, I don’t need game film to call you out for all of the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ level anecdotal nonsense, it just isn’t necessary. You do enough yourself. If anyone doesn’t characterize Giuliani getting off of a plane in Massachusetts as wanton opportunism, if they can’t directly see that part in ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’ where the fat incumbent Governor Pappy O'Daniel dances a jig to George Cluny’s sudden hero, then they simply don’t understand the shallow place hermit crab Giuliani has chosen to dwell this week.
2) Mike and Willie did something very right today when they didn’t become the 104th on-air opportunity for Indiana Republican Mike Pence, who went everywhere else to try and claim a victory lap for the Republican party based on the Massachusetts election. This guy is looking for the airtime just to float his coming senatorial campaign. But the fact that he has decided to break national based on a dubious read of momentum is astounding.
We had a super shift in the standing of the independent voter in Massachusetts. There was no pro Republican message anywhere in the Brown campaign. Pence is so far off in his interpretation of the Brown message, that he probably should be counseled by the RNC prior to causing a huge schism in any real opportunity possessed by them in the next 12 months. An incumbent is an incumbent. Financial records will already show they’re in the bag for special interests and voters have reacted to a modern media phenomenon where virtual inventory of your vast bank of conflicts of interest is part of their voting decision.
The jig is up for the Dodds and the Sessions of the world equally. Pence running around with an elephant flag is Gary Larson level misinterpretation on display.
The show, instead of having Pence, or anyone else with any party delusion for that matter, on to try and spin rightward, chose a very moderate Nicole Wallace, and a very scholarly Melissa Harris-Lacewell to have an adult discussion of the facts on the ground subsequent to the Massachusetts (and New Jersey) elections. That is an astounding victory for the show where your competitors were letting Republicans shoot episodes of ‘The Far Side’.
3) I thought it was interesting today that Mike Barnicle talked about his checkered past with banks, foreclosures, repossession and credit. This comes a couple of days after this column blasted Mike and Harold Ford Jr. for being part of the machine while claiming to be agents of honest appraisal. I want to know more, because I find this self-characterization of today troubling.
On one hand, it could be that all the personal experience led a rational broke person to marry well so that he could carry on with his low paying populist vocation comfortably. On the other hand, he might’ve run game film on himself and felt the need to place some populist credibility on his public record. Either way, Countrywide came up again today. They are hurting people. Bank of America owns them. Mortgage restructurings account for less than five percent of all defaults. The banks are not allowing any of the government mortgage relief mandates to move forward. They are slow walking the mandates trying to force a 100 cents on the dollar subsidization of mortgage restructuring by the government similar to the deal Goldman got for it’s AIG repayment. That is Bank of America hurting main street for profit, trying to dynamically force an enriching bailout one American family tragedy at a time. Who pays your mortgage again?
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Friday, January 8, 2010
The Morning Joe Torture Test
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for January 8th, 2010
Observations:
1) While it may have felt good to get Dylan Ratigan on the set, it accomplished very little. There he was like a frustrated 5 year old, frustrated because the words aren’t serving the ideas racing about his head, and he was trying to ask the uber-polished Rudy Giuliani a simple question. “Mr. Giuliani, if it was your watch, what would you do going forward 10 years”. But alas, by the time the question got out, he had worn out everyone with endless qualifications, and the music was playing. But this isn’t about Dylan, it’s about Mika and Joe, who had an opportunity to listen to Giuliani hedge at Obama’s expense and then redirect him to Dylan’s intent. “That’s great Mr. Mayor, but what would you do going forward 10 years, what are your big ideas?”
Dylan desperately needs a teaching moment, his thought process is leading edge, but the machine is broken. Over time Joe and Mika (and Mike and Willie?) have become ace question/grenade lobbers, and they need to get that skill transferred to Mr. Ratigan.
2) I feel like there was a great equalizing force between the show today and the prior show that elicited the complaint of bias on it’s reporting of Democratic election prognoses. Joe Conason leveled the playing field and it appeared convinced even Joe Scarborough that the right is overcounting its support and underestimating its split.
The additional daily dose of Micheal Steele reporting points to a remarkable move towards realistic expectations on behalf of those on the right, I mean, he almost sounds like DNC era Howard Dean for the opposition. Howard will be on the show on Monday and it would be a fair subject to try and define if Michael Steele is “doing what Howard would do” for the Republicans.
I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid to the extent that I think Steele has dropped agenda-speak and that the Republicans are now realizing that they’ll have to separate distant agenda items like abortion and fiscal responsibility to ever win the middle again. But what candidates like mega conservative Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania are doing is trying to sway the conversation away from base baiting subjects. He has given interviews to left leaning publications and had the content been exclusively economic, leaving out some fairly important hate mongering subjects, in an effort to appeal to middle voters, like myself, who put fiscal leanings of some Republicans in high regard, but litmus them away upon discovering their dark social restriction.
A while ago, Joe Scarborough made a very valid point, that there is an equation where you can agree explicitly and up front, to remove a nasty albatross like abortion from a discussion or even a platform, for a term, in order to focus solely on other priorities if you were deemed to be the best leader for the accomplishment of those other priorities. That concept, if Michael Steele ever mastered it, would do more to re-unify the Republican party based on his established program, than anything else.
3) San Diego got a shout out when Ron Insana talked about the available gold rush of real estate bargains in cities like this one. It’s a fact. I saw a house with a horizon view of the ocean go in north San Diego country last month for less than $300,000. It’s unreal, but also an equation. The big negative for this area for a long time is unless you’re married to the service industry, the jobs are there, just not fulfilling or an exercise in career growth. Houses a fraction of the size of the one above are still getting $800,000 2 counties north because a job there means 3 times as much as a job here.
When you’re cutting jobs at your mega company, you close the esoteric satellite operations first, and doesn’t that sound like San Diego? Until that changes, yea you can buy some investment houses and rent them to San Diego State students, but there is little opportunity to look at this region as our state’s Oregon.
4) The Morning Joe torture is when you bring a guest on at the top of the hour, and then get to him at 15 past the hour, and that’s after making him watch a fight from "Jersey Shore". If he doesn’t tell you all the information you want right on cue, you can move your torture to a waterboarding level by asking him what he thought of the fight on "Jersey Shore". If that doesn’t work, play the music and show the Koalas.
That’s Stern meets Clockwork Orange level stuff and today I thought it was done on purpose because it was Joe Conason, then I remembered you did it to Richard Haas. I am alerting Geneva.
That’s all for today, see you Monday
Observations:
1) While it may have felt good to get Dylan Ratigan on the set, it accomplished very little. There he was like a frustrated 5 year old, frustrated because the words aren’t serving the ideas racing about his head, and he was trying to ask the uber-polished Rudy Giuliani a simple question. “Mr. Giuliani, if it was your watch, what would you do going forward 10 years”. But alas, by the time the question got out, he had worn out everyone with endless qualifications, and the music was playing. But this isn’t about Dylan, it’s about Mika and Joe, who had an opportunity to listen to Giuliani hedge at Obama’s expense and then redirect him to Dylan’s intent. “That’s great Mr. Mayor, but what would you do going forward 10 years, what are your big ideas?”
Dylan desperately needs a teaching moment, his thought process is leading edge, but the machine is broken. Over time Joe and Mika (and Mike and Willie?) have become ace question/grenade lobbers, and they need to get that skill transferred to Mr. Ratigan.
2) I feel like there was a great equalizing force between the show today and the prior show that elicited the complaint of bias on it’s reporting of Democratic election prognoses. Joe Conason leveled the playing field and it appeared convinced even Joe Scarborough that the right is overcounting its support and underestimating its split.
The additional daily dose of Micheal Steele reporting points to a remarkable move towards realistic expectations on behalf of those on the right, I mean, he almost sounds like DNC era Howard Dean for the opposition. Howard will be on the show on Monday and it would be a fair subject to try and define if Michael Steele is “doing what Howard would do” for the Republicans.
I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid to the extent that I think Steele has dropped agenda-speak and that the Republicans are now realizing that they’ll have to separate distant agenda items like abortion and fiscal responsibility to ever win the middle again. But what candidates like mega conservative Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania are doing is trying to sway the conversation away from base baiting subjects. He has given interviews to left leaning publications and had the content been exclusively economic, leaving out some fairly important hate mongering subjects, in an effort to appeal to middle voters, like myself, who put fiscal leanings of some Republicans in high regard, but litmus them away upon discovering their dark social restriction.
A while ago, Joe Scarborough made a very valid point, that there is an equation where you can agree explicitly and up front, to remove a nasty albatross like abortion from a discussion or even a platform, for a term, in order to focus solely on other priorities if you were deemed to be the best leader for the accomplishment of those other priorities. That concept, if Michael Steele ever mastered it, would do more to re-unify the Republican party based on his established program, than anything else.
3) San Diego got a shout out when Ron Insana talked about the available gold rush of real estate bargains in cities like this one. It’s a fact. I saw a house with a horizon view of the ocean go in north San Diego country last month for less than $300,000. It’s unreal, but also an equation. The big negative for this area for a long time is unless you’re married to the service industry, the jobs are there, just not fulfilling or an exercise in career growth. Houses a fraction of the size of the one above are still getting $800,000 2 counties north because a job there means 3 times as much as a job here.
When you’re cutting jobs at your mega company, you close the esoteric satellite operations first, and doesn’t that sound like San Diego? Until that changes, yea you can buy some investment houses and rent them to San Diego State students, but there is little opportunity to look at this region as our state’s Oregon.
4) The Morning Joe torture is when you bring a guest on at the top of the hour, and then get to him at 15 past the hour, and that’s after making him watch a fight from "Jersey Shore". If he doesn’t tell you all the information you want right on cue, you can move your torture to a waterboarding level by asking him what he thought of the fight on "Jersey Shore". If that doesn’t work, play the music and show the Koalas.
That’s Stern meets Clockwork Orange level stuff and today I thought it was done on purpose because it was Joe Conason, then I remembered you did it to Richard Haas. I am alerting Geneva.
That’s all for today, see you Monday
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