The Morning Joe Rebuttal For December 7th, 2009
Observations:
1) Just like you can’t get completely back on track without some regenerating moment, it appears the weekend had its wondrous effect on our favorite morning team as they found dominant space once again for issues in their program. Unfortunately, when you lose as much ground as you did last Thursday and Friday, Monday’s show was more of a refresher on the issues at hand than a hit the ground running moment. Still, it is a step in the right direction, and I’ll take the awkward abbreviation of luminaries like Ed Rendell as a temporary phenomenon. When you are more on your game and up to speed, you won’t cut the most important spot on the show short to hide your lack of retort.
2) Kudos to Andrea Mitchell for standing up and saying what people like Matt Taibbi have said for some time now. Tom Friedman needs an analogies editor in the worst way, and it took hurting some people to bring that out. It also points to a strength in the show. Other programs would’ve missed this boat and been slammed for seemingly going the wrong way by accepting Friedman’s point blind to its collateral damage. This show had timeless experience whisper in it’s ear in time to avoid some long term embarrassment later, thanks to its longer list of experts than other less dimensional formats.
3) It’s getting to the point that we need a vigil. The vast cast of experts on Morning Joe just cannot find a collective wisdom on jobs. I won’t let a day pass without reminding Joe Scarborough that he has again commented on jobs from 30,000 feet and seems to have an anxiety attack when his G5 gets too close to the solutions and real life issues. Today, JS showed he has no ability to reconcile jobs and health care and is opening himself up to a critical flank attack by going party line with the 30k platform that it’s an “either or” issue. We already had 8 years of a President who played more checkers than chess, and if you think the American people didn’t learn a brutal lesson from what history will define as our Peter Sellers “Being There” period, then just go with that take and be prepared for some real “unable to lead” ammunition from your adversaries for showing a lack of depth here.
4) Copenhagen is a very interesting litmus on the govern-ability of the United States. Dating back to Kyoto, the United States is unable to keep up with other world governments in the “getting it done” department. Leaving climate change aside, it’s more important to look at states like California as leading indicators of hardships on the road ahead for the Federal government. All of the supreme issues of the day: health care, stimulus, banking reform, law and order, infrastructure, and many others find better planning efficiencies in other governments. No one is saying “I hate America” when they express envy that China out-stimulus-ed us by a landslide, that Europe out reformed it’s too big to fail banks by a landslide, that Ecuador is ahead of us in health care provision. We have to begin to apply an efficiency mandate to our government. I don’t envy freedoms lost to a state run economy or media or Internet, but if “we can’t afford it” is the Obama opposition mantra, it’s also a good rallying cry for reform of our broken political process.
5) The west is not kind to Morning Joe. As a fan of the show, I would really advise against any pronounced appearance of the show in the westernmost time zones. While Iowa forever gave the show a flair for being on the ground at the source of news, I’ve seen one too many redeye broadcasts from San Diego, Carlsbad, San Francisco and a “give up on live and tape it” Reagan Library episode to think that you can thrive out here. Remember: 3 hours. It’s not just a time change, not just a show length, it’s a movement from a part of the world that is adequately in motion to support the show to a place that should only be asked to help in an emergency. This is not Brokaw from Berlin. Its Chris Licht on hallucinogens. Don’t do it. Land the G5 at Burbank on Saturday, eat at the chef’s room at the Polo Lounge, catch a football game, and go back to work. Oh and there’s that other thing, no one in this time zone has a clue about the show except a few Orange County people and some Tivo-junkies, so it’s not like you’re abandoning us, it’s that majority of the population from Chicago to New York that gets shorted.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Showing posts with label Ed Rendell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ed Rendell. Show all posts
Monday, December 7, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
You Don't Know What You've Got 'Til It's Gone
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 18th, 2009
1) Dan Abrams and Mort Zuckerman had a wonderful, insightful, and passionate debate about the KSM trial on Morning Joe today. It begs the question: would it have been better or worse if Joe Scarborough hadn't disappeared from the set? Further, is it a fair prediction to think that Dan Abrams best moments in that debate came late, and late would not had happened if JS had done the "shouting down" thing?
Not that I'm the official position of the center left, but this debate left a chief center-left precept on the debate, world optics, out as well.
Look what got accomplished. I really hope that is a teaching moment for the Morning Joe debate and that it grows in looking for veritable conclusion late in an argument. Abbreviation is an attempt at ownership of an issue, not rectitude.
2) Nancy Snyderman had her own version of that same debate scenario when Joe Scarborough was there, and argued with her while concluding the same thing. He was trying to force her into a corner with a rationing claim, and was completely disarmed when she agreed with him. Only politicians are afraid of label words, doctors and scientists are immune to that compartmentalizing process and look where it took the debate.
Joe really wants to paint the Mammography debate with politics, and visually you can see he is struggling with how. You are struggling because it’s a real life circumstance and your heart isn’t letting you. You’re being careful not to be misguided early and have to explain bad initial reaction later.
One thing that is understated after two days of Mammography debate is the emotional and literal scar of the false positive. You can carry on about 1 in 1900 all you want, but you had better add in the number of false positives in that 1900 before you take a step further. Many people feel like even stepping into a hospital is the beginning of the end, and that false positive and over testing in general are very negative, avoidable phenomenon. You have an obligation to be sensitive to that segment of health care consumers when framing this debate.
3) Another thing missed on this show was the re-emergance of the reconciliation option for passage of the senate health care bill. Chuck Todd got the timeline reconfirmation today not from one of the senators I obliged yesterday, but from the president himself. Every day from now until signing (or not), Joe Scarborough will imply March for a final health care vote or failure of the bill, and the White House or the Senate will make a correcting statement. They won’t let it go, they can’t.
It’s interesting that with all the firepower in the discussion today, that reconciliation got picked up elsewhere. It would be a prudent question to set to the Politico staff. Along with Bill Nelson trying to remove anti-trust provisions, along with the emergence of the single largest lobbying expenditure of our lifetimes. The democrats are preparing for scorched earth in December. The timing of a jobs summit and a “we have to move on” rationale are there, and if reconciliation gets that done and prevents the last 5 votes from Nelson-ing or Stupak-ing or Bribe-ing the outcome, the center left is ready, because none of those concepts rest in the center.
4) When you get Ed Rendell on your show, you have to ask him why he can’t bring the Unions onto his side of the health care debate. He is Mr. Union. You could’ve asked him about reconciliation too, if it had been on the table.
5) If you bonus 30 billion dollars but give 500 million dollars to a small business support program that looks like charity, aren’t you just saying the same pre-Bastille math another way: we in the financial sector are worth 60 times the value of the little people? Goldman to the masses: "here’s some cake".
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow
1) Dan Abrams and Mort Zuckerman had a wonderful, insightful, and passionate debate about the KSM trial on Morning Joe today. It begs the question: would it have been better or worse if Joe Scarborough hadn't disappeared from the set? Further, is it a fair prediction to think that Dan Abrams best moments in that debate came late, and late would not had happened if JS had done the "shouting down" thing?
Not that I'm the official position of the center left, but this debate left a chief center-left precept on the debate, world optics, out as well.
Look what got accomplished. I really hope that is a teaching moment for the Morning Joe debate and that it grows in looking for veritable conclusion late in an argument. Abbreviation is an attempt at ownership of an issue, not rectitude.
2) Nancy Snyderman had her own version of that same debate scenario when Joe Scarborough was there, and argued with her while concluding the same thing. He was trying to force her into a corner with a rationing claim, and was completely disarmed when she agreed with him. Only politicians are afraid of label words, doctors and scientists are immune to that compartmentalizing process and look where it took the debate.
Joe really wants to paint the Mammography debate with politics, and visually you can see he is struggling with how. You are struggling because it’s a real life circumstance and your heart isn’t letting you. You’re being careful not to be misguided early and have to explain bad initial reaction later.
One thing that is understated after two days of Mammography debate is the emotional and literal scar of the false positive. You can carry on about 1 in 1900 all you want, but you had better add in the number of false positives in that 1900 before you take a step further. Many people feel like even stepping into a hospital is the beginning of the end, and that false positive and over testing in general are very negative, avoidable phenomenon. You have an obligation to be sensitive to that segment of health care consumers when framing this debate.
3) Another thing missed on this show was the re-emergance of the reconciliation option for passage of the senate health care bill. Chuck Todd got the timeline reconfirmation today not from one of the senators I obliged yesterday, but from the president himself. Every day from now until signing (or not), Joe Scarborough will imply March for a final health care vote or failure of the bill, and the White House or the Senate will make a correcting statement. They won’t let it go, they can’t.
It’s interesting that with all the firepower in the discussion today, that reconciliation got picked up elsewhere. It would be a prudent question to set to the Politico staff. Along with Bill Nelson trying to remove anti-trust provisions, along with the emergence of the single largest lobbying expenditure of our lifetimes. The democrats are preparing for scorched earth in December. The timing of a jobs summit and a “we have to move on” rationale are there, and if reconciliation gets that done and prevents the last 5 votes from Nelson-ing or Stupak-ing or Bribe-ing the outcome, the center left is ready, because none of those concepts rest in the center.
4) When you get Ed Rendell on your show, you have to ask him why he can’t bring the Unions onto his side of the health care debate. He is Mr. Union. You could’ve asked him about reconciliation too, if it had been on the table.
5) If you bonus 30 billion dollars but give 500 million dollars to a small business support program that looks like charity, aren’t you just saying the same pre-Bastille math another way: we in the financial sector are worth 60 times the value of the little people? Goldman to the masses: "here’s some cake".
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow
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