The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 11th, 2010
Observations:
1) The ad goes ‘I can tell when they’re lying’, but decorum prevailed when Senator Kirsten Gillibrand came on the show and said she hadn’t switched on gay marriage or gun control. She has obviously switched on both positions and used political doublespeak like ‘a widening of focus’ to cover both sides of an issue like gun control.
So there was your moment, and you had the trademark Joe Scarborough look on your face as you weighed your options, then nothing. I doubt that Chris Matthews or Jon Stewart would’ve let that pass. Who wins? Does decorum win, or make the viewer lose? Time will tell as I’m sure that your editors are furiously at work looking for then and now video so that you can blanket a future show with your take.
But politics is not gotcha on video, it’s the visceral in person resistance to getting bulldozed on an issue on live television. And the results are in.
2) I’m also not so sure that a paltry $13,250 is the equivalent of the Nixon tapes on this issue of State Senator Perkins obstructing charter schools on behalf of unions. I 100% agree with your take that obstruction is occurring and he is the likely source. But that amount of money is just not a palpable case for a smoking gun.
Also, this story and your rants about charter schools should have been better connected to the Kansas City school district story. Andrew Ross Sorkin makes a valid point that this sort of cost and budget catastrophe is the pain we are all enduring, seemingly invisibly, at the state level. You talk about attrition from district making draconian cuts, Ross talks about pervasive cuts everywhere, and then you talk separately about how there is massive demand for charter schools.
I honestly feel like you should be able to connect these issues better. Why not debate whether a giant cut like that facing Kansas City might actually be an opening for a charter system to fill those closed schools on a high demand basis? Why not debate that those opposing charter conversions face Kansas City’s reality by the virtue of their opposition?
My problem with Ross’ take and the Union and Senator Perkins and budgets in general, is there is no foresight that would create revenue streams, just bad management and then cuts at the end to balance bad budgets. By the time it’s cuts it’s too late. Somewhere along the way was an unduly prioritized dirty contract payment or privatization scheme that got paid, then the least protected people, teachers and children, are the cuts to equate.
I’m with you on charter schools, just don’t forget to turn over all the rocks.
3) This looking for meaning in when Nancy Pelosi knew about Rep. Massa is Joe Scarborough grasping at straws. It does the Republicans no good at all to go with “see, the Dems did it too” because it only highlights how bad it was in 2006, instead of making the Democrats stew in their own juices. Bad strategy, and then, you risk finding out that this case was very different, and the why is that Foley was preying on pages. Do you really want to relive that horror of horrors?
Chuck Todd basically told you that your strong misinterpretation of this timeline was going nowhere, you should probably listen to him.
All this while there was a mega scandal right in front of you. Why, when Obama starts taking earmarks out of the health care bill are you not asking if the administration will do a phase two of this process and remove sweetheart deals for pharma and insurers?
Ed Shultz asked openly last week if the fix was in, if the reason some of the anti insurance, anti pharma stuff like state lines and Canadian drug importation stayed out of this bill was by virtue of a back room administration deal. You have a giant opening on shows like today, and it befuddles the viewer to see that opportunity missed.
You could possibly find redemption in the fact that a stand alone repeal of health insurance anti trust exemption is out there. Don’t you think after all of the megaphone work on that issue that Morning Joe has done, that this bill deserves some coverage?
I do.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Showing posts with label Kirsten Gillibrand. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kirsten Gillibrand. Show all posts
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Populism Takes A Fall
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 2nd, 2010
Observations:
1) Bravo for Harold Ford Jr. He could have been another in a long line of New York enigmas, but saw that as his fate in time to not have it unfold that way. It’s not a clean break, as is evidenced in the tough worded Gillibrand campaign reaction, but a break nonetheless, and possibly accomplished something for the people in the process. If there is any merit to the competitive force creating a necessary edge in the Gillibrand camp theory, her camp has really run with it.
It doesn’t get any easier, with Mort Zuckerman attempting to be Mike Bloomberg II, ‘this time the US Senate is toast’. That message has some merit. I think the way to Mort’s achillies heel is his prone-ness to distractions like the perpetual Israel crusade. It might show that Mort is human and subject to having complexities dilute functionality like the rest of us.
But Harold, although he was still in that bad guy Robocop mode this morning, is back and has a bright future probably in Washington as part of the inevitable revamping of the Obama administration. That seems like an obvious move, but don’t take that as any support from the middle for such a move, as he would represent the wrong side in the Wall Street checks and balances conversation. And didn’t the wrong side just win another battle against the people’s business yesterday with the poaching of another senior Treasury executive by the lobby community. And didn’t exultant lobbyists issue a press release about how they own that much more of the White House as a result?
4 straight administrations poached by Cypress?
2) Melissa Harris-Lacewell will need to learn that it’s not nice to use those pesky articulate facts and comprehensive strategies of popular division to unseat Joe Scarborough as the people’s non wedge Republican. I mean cat’s in Utah reacted like an earthquake was imminent as the defensiveness bubbled out of Scarborough’s every pore.
Lets line this up so the record is straight.
Mr. Scarborough trots out a populist friendly concept that wedge issues get in the way of vetting leadership qualities. That people use a person’s stance on Abortion to decide their vote rather than whether they might be effective at the complex business of running government.
Melissa comes back with the national strategy by the Republican party in the south spanning 3 decades to use those issues to separate middle class southern whites from their own economic well being using the church and abortion as the chisel.
Mr. Scarborough at this point annexes the conversation like the US annexed Hawaii, claiming even a gay couple would prioritize the economy over their equality, oops. I couldn’t have shone a light on the hypocrisy better myself. But wait there's more, Mr. Scarborough pressed forward that too much focus on social issues is the likely cause of the Post-Katrina governmental failure. That’s a nice way of saying it’s your own fault, you victims with convictions.
Let’s not mince words here, I agree with the premise of Mr. Scarborough’s argument, that we should look past wedge issues and choose the leader most capable of governing, a task beyond the complexity comprehension of most Americans. However, trust is an issue. Whether it’s Senate versus the House or Joe Scarborough and Mitt Romney making campaign promises, there is not enough faith in words to believe that the resultant action won’t be erosion of Roe v. Wade and an ignoring of American women’s strong support of the principles of the Supreme Court decision, once the pols are in office and drunk with power. So unless you want to make a legally enforceable written contract with the women of the United States, or the gay married couples of the United States or with Charles Darwin, forgive the American people for not believing in your ability to separate yourself from this issue. Forgive the American people for deciphering the code of “it’s not a federal issue” as a mantra of repeal Roe v. Wade.
And that jab by Harold about Melissa’s support of the health care bill being in contradiction of women’s reproductive rights is all the proof you need that unless it’s in writing, governing in spite of the wedge issue becomes impossible.
3) Senator Jim Bunning is doing the Democratic party a favor. He is poster-izing hypocrisy, obstructionism, and by the fact that he follows Alabama Senator Shelby so closely in a transparently self serving move, he shows the entire Republican party as lockstep in opposing progress or governing, all for political gain.
There is no doubt that the fundamental point that Bunning is opportuning upon is relevant. We can't afford to keep charging things on the governments credit card. But you need to have decided that when you were in power to be valid. And the fact that dime store pundits across the country can name 5 points of outright playing both sides of an issue out of political convenience just can’t bode well for a party trying to represent itself as a better manager.
Although early on, it was a watershed moment for Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough came out on the right side of this issue, but left little doubt that he knew there were repercussions of joining the chorus of loud bipartisan criticisms of what is essentially the current central strategy of the Republican party. You will look great in the next "Don't Obey" poster, sir.
You know that the RNC is furious with Bunning (and Shelby). This is the equivalent of the Harry Reid quote factory from a few months ago. It gives people with some momentum a pause. But there is a problem here that these guys want to retire, some of them are already starting their great twilight, and the RNC has zero ability to control the Decemberist Senators, and there are a lot of them.
Thats all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Bravo for Harold Ford Jr. He could have been another in a long line of New York enigmas, but saw that as his fate in time to not have it unfold that way. It’s not a clean break, as is evidenced in the tough worded Gillibrand campaign reaction, but a break nonetheless, and possibly accomplished something for the people in the process. If there is any merit to the competitive force creating a necessary edge in the Gillibrand camp theory, her camp has really run with it.
It doesn’t get any easier, with Mort Zuckerman attempting to be Mike Bloomberg II, ‘this time the US Senate is toast’. That message has some merit. I think the way to Mort’s achillies heel is his prone-ness to distractions like the perpetual Israel crusade. It might show that Mort is human and subject to having complexities dilute functionality like the rest of us.
But Harold, although he was still in that bad guy Robocop mode this morning, is back and has a bright future probably in Washington as part of the inevitable revamping of the Obama administration. That seems like an obvious move, but don’t take that as any support from the middle for such a move, as he would represent the wrong side in the Wall Street checks and balances conversation. And didn’t the wrong side just win another battle against the people’s business yesterday with the poaching of another senior Treasury executive by the lobby community. And didn’t exultant lobbyists issue a press release about how they own that much more of the White House as a result?
4 straight administrations poached by Cypress?
2) Melissa Harris-Lacewell will need to learn that it’s not nice to use those pesky articulate facts and comprehensive strategies of popular division to unseat Joe Scarborough as the people’s non wedge Republican. I mean cat’s in Utah reacted like an earthquake was imminent as the defensiveness bubbled out of Scarborough’s every pore.
Lets line this up so the record is straight.
Mr. Scarborough trots out a populist friendly concept that wedge issues get in the way of vetting leadership qualities. That people use a person’s stance on Abortion to decide their vote rather than whether they might be effective at the complex business of running government.
Melissa comes back with the national strategy by the Republican party in the south spanning 3 decades to use those issues to separate middle class southern whites from their own economic well being using the church and abortion as the chisel.
Mr. Scarborough at this point annexes the conversation like the US annexed Hawaii, claiming even a gay couple would prioritize the economy over their equality, oops. I couldn’t have shone a light on the hypocrisy better myself. But wait there's more, Mr. Scarborough pressed forward that too much focus on social issues is the likely cause of the Post-Katrina governmental failure. That’s a nice way of saying it’s your own fault, you victims with convictions.
Let’s not mince words here, I agree with the premise of Mr. Scarborough’s argument, that we should look past wedge issues and choose the leader most capable of governing, a task beyond the complexity comprehension of most Americans. However, trust is an issue. Whether it’s Senate versus the House or Joe Scarborough and Mitt Romney making campaign promises, there is not enough faith in words to believe that the resultant action won’t be erosion of Roe v. Wade and an ignoring of American women’s strong support of the principles of the Supreme Court decision, once the pols are in office and drunk with power. So unless you want to make a legally enforceable written contract with the women of the United States, or the gay married couples of the United States or with Charles Darwin, forgive the American people for not believing in your ability to separate yourself from this issue. Forgive the American people for deciphering the code of “it’s not a federal issue” as a mantra of repeal Roe v. Wade.
And that jab by Harold about Melissa’s support of the health care bill being in contradiction of women’s reproductive rights is all the proof you need that unless it’s in writing, governing in spite of the wedge issue becomes impossible.
3) Senator Jim Bunning is doing the Democratic party a favor. He is poster-izing hypocrisy, obstructionism, and by the fact that he follows Alabama Senator Shelby so closely in a transparently self serving move, he shows the entire Republican party as lockstep in opposing progress or governing, all for political gain.
There is no doubt that the fundamental point that Bunning is opportuning upon is relevant. We can't afford to keep charging things on the governments credit card. But you need to have decided that when you were in power to be valid. And the fact that dime store pundits across the country can name 5 points of outright playing both sides of an issue out of political convenience just can’t bode well for a party trying to represent itself as a better manager.
Although early on, it was a watershed moment for Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough came out on the right side of this issue, but left little doubt that he knew there were repercussions of joining the chorus of loud bipartisan criticisms of what is essentially the current central strategy of the Republican party. You will look great in the next "Don't Obey" poster, sir.
You know that the RNC is furious with Bunning (and Shelby). This is the equivalent of the Harry Reid quote factory from a few months ago. It gives people with some momentum a pause. But there is a problem here that these guys want to retire, some of them are already starting their great twilight, and the RNC has zero ability to control the Decemberist Senators, and there are a lot of them.
Thats all for today, see you tomorrow.
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