The Morning Joe Rebuttal for August 9th, 2010
Observations:
1) The dynamic that seems to work for the Morning Joe show is when Scarborough surrounds himself with antagonists, keeps maybe one ally and takes them all on kung fu style. The show today would’ve capsized to the right if it had to pass a seaworthiness test, and screamed: bring me Katrina Vanden Heuvel at the top of its lungs.
Nice safe edits of the Sunday talk shows ensued with the favorite being the tape of the two former treasury secretaries agreeing with everything Joe Scarborough ever said, ever. Ruben and O’Neil were in rare form on GPS on Sunday. I wish the Morning Joe show would’ve spent some time talking about Paul O’Neil talking about how he got fired for his loud recognition that WMD was a fallacy or that the Bush tax cuts were catastrophic. No great mystery why that part didn’t make it to the agenda of the day.
To be fair, this show skewers John Boehner every single time. They taunt him, they mock his takes, and as of this morning refer to his appearance as ‘distracting’. It’s always a good day when that is the context of Boehner’s mention on the show, but it appears to be white noise at this point and does not counterbalance the abbreviated representation of the Ruben/O’Neil interview.
Another outright passive aggressive smackdown occurred when Joe Scarborough at the end of the Erin Burnett segment listened to Erin postulate that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will have an at best marginal effect on domestic growth. Upon hearing a take that need to be assassinated at once, Scarborough went to his ‘hypnosis’ face and deep froze the conversation straight to commercial.
But Haass, Halperin, Wallace joined Scarborough and Geist in what amounts to a televised 5-0 verdict on any issue that showed up. Halperin might have seemed like he was dissenting, but that was actually Mark wishing that Democrats would actually be even more extreme and run the ship on the rocks in the 3 months after the election, in hopes that a regime change could be had more possibly in 2012.
2) If I could have asked a question of Jeffrey Sachs, it would have been: does your abandonment of stimulus have to do solely with buyer’s remorse from the mediocrity of the Pelosi plan, or do you share Scarborough’s ban on anything called stimulus? It’s really two different takes on the issue. We have a sinful amount of envy for the recession era investments made by the Chinese, and we have no appetite to have Pelosi II.
But Scarborough ran with the Sachs accompaniment as if it was an endorsement, and that’s just not congruency. It’s OK to say there’s some coincidental parts of the two things, but what I hear when I hear Sachs riff on stimulus or health care or financial regulatory reform is a disenchantment with the diluted solutions of our government and an intent not to fund counterproductive governing bodies. That is worlds away from a small government conservative that would’ve created an equal fiscal catastrophe with misplaced austerity.
I am not surprised by Scarborough magnetizing his position to smart peoples takes that sound like they have similar elements. But there needs to be proof sent out by this claim that Scarborough’s take was something other than extreme with no provable benefit.
So should that question have gone the way I would bet everything it would, I would have followed up with another: if there was a provable architecture and an executive intent to a second stimulus, a do over with a top to bottom plan, could you endorse that? It would separate Sachs from Scarborough and prove that my remorse is solvable, but only by government that adapts to its previous failures.
They are two different takes, don’t adopt it because you won’t like it when it grows up.
3) On Friday, the Sebastian Junger visit followed up by the David Ignatius interview was as good as it’s been on the Morning Joe show in a long while. I looked up the film and found it nearby with one paltry midday showing, but there is zero chance ill miss it. While I love the segment and the reverence, there just doesn’t seem to be any relationship being made that the movie and this book is no different than the WikiLeaks situation.
People trying to bury WikiLeaks will find that Junger’s book and movie won’t make them happy, either. So the question that should be fairly levied here is: why the reverence in one spot and the demonization of the other? I have consistently called the Julian Assange effort a courageous one. I would like to see an explanation about the two different treatments by this show.
We all like Tom Hanks, we all watched The Pacific, so how is Assange a spy and Junger a hero? They are both heroes. I elect as judge of this challenge: Dr Jeffrey Sachs. Good luck winning that one.
Ignatius made everyone’s head spin with real news that the President is trying to look in unorthodox spots like Iran to solve the problems he is facing. If nothing else, the fact that this train of though exists is very good news.
But like we all know, we may want to give that a minute or a week, lest we get bested by quick moving facts.
That's all for today, see you tomorrow.
Showing posts with label jeffrey sachs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jeffrey sachs. Show all posts
Monday, August 9, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Chaos – It’s What’s For Breakfast
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for January 25th, 2010
Observations:
1) Why are the cast members fighting? Why does Willie refer to his segment on the show as ‘trotting out’ the news no one else is willing to associate themselves with? Why does Chris Licht act as though he has had ‘just about enough’ of Mika, and why is Joe Scarborough oblivious?
How on earth was this the backdrop to 3 of the most intense philosophical debates concerning the way forward anyone could have hoped for?
A word of warning if any of the cast take this forward: I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. Mika Brzezinski does not have an ego problem, it’s the psycho mechanical defense mechanism that you have to put a label on everything, and if you had to swim upstream everyday in a world not really trying to ween itself of nonessential pop culture, you might seem during the grind of a 3 hour daily show to be driven by something beyond the normal pale. That’s not ego, that is determination.
The fallout of mis-diagnosis is disintegrative. Its plain that there are giant egos everywhere you look on MSNBC. But those bonfires are of necessity. Your entry into the female lead category for which there is no Emmy, is fighting with you like a psychotic sister and you either argue on the merits, or stay on the sidelines.
2) In the fallout of Massachusetts, everyone is finding consensus rapidly. Dr. Jeffrey Sachs very efficiently speaks on this matter as condensed as Richard Hass speaks to foreign affairs. His take is that dilution of Obama’s economic objectives is what the protest is all about. About the same number of people voted for a public option as voted for a giant industry handout: zero. And when sausage making was the story of the entire first year, revolt ensued.
Everyone is finding consensus that is, except Obama, Congress and Washington. It would seem to the naked eye that this denial is some form of gravy train maintenance. The most effective use of the media in the second year is to amplify this disconnect as loudly as possible. I am enamored with the clarity with which Joe Scarborough basically told Republicans today ‘wipe that smile off of your face, this apocalypse is yours as well’. Obstruction is sausage as well.
This denial, as has been well documented on Morning Joe for some time, was mine as well. And if you look back at my defense of public options and the Obama technique, it was that there must be a secret weapon waiting in the wings. Howard Dean? Reconciliation? Conference? I never thought that was the whole strategy I was watching. The what you see is what you get, we never really had a plan, plan. As it became apparent that no silver bullet existed and that Obama had retreated from the high ground without a plan to fight for it, no megaphone was loud enough for me to shout alongside those on the center right: that’s not leadership, that’s not even realism, that’s attrition. And further, I smell a rat.
3) But as always, optimism must prevail. Obama is having a hard time making a fairly obvious move, and Congress is having a difficult time making a parallel move. Bernanke and Somers have got to be shown the door. Volker, Goolsbee and Elizabeth Warren have to be injected into the conversation, and the first order of business is whether Tim Geithner is a useful conduit in a checks and balances infused financial team or if he needs to go as well. If they fail at this, and I daresay the decision is more evident in the Plouff hiring, as he will be effective in communicating to the administration how damaging a continued Goldman tie is, that failure would be a voter trigger.
That Joe Scarborough is finding optimism in what a better balanced health care move would look like with the stuff the middle of America wanted in that bill back on the table from death’s door, is a very good sign that the voter may get a result after all. If I had one beef with Congress it’s its inability to multi-task. The fact that it’s been broken trying to write health care for months, that the results were failure, that no side looked like a finisher, and that the jobs work was set aside the entire time Congress was busy failing, that fact is a voter trigger.
Congress needs a supervisor much like the cashier at McDonalds needs one. They need to be told that only 20% of their productivity can be allocated to the health care debate but they must come forward with a bipartisan product, post conference, by the summer break. 30% budget, 40% job creation, 10% everything else, no failure permitted or else the voter will be triggered by that lack of accomplishment. That supervisor is meant to be Obama, not by constitution, but as a representative of the revolting voter.
In a dream world, on Wednesday, during the state of the union address, Obama would ask Pelosi, Reid, McConnell and Boehner to stand with him, and they would unveil an 8 item bipartisan health bill where each got a fair bit of representation, and that the majority only determined the order of choice, not the exclusion of choice. Then Obama would reveal that the plan was hammered out in 3 hours in the oval office the day before over Chinese food, and that no longer will the Congress of the United States obstruct the nation’s business for it’s own selfish benefit.
That would be a voter trigger.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Why are the cast members fighting? Why does Willie refer to his segment on the show as ‘trotting out’ the news no one else is willing to associate themselves with? Why does Chris Licht act as though he has had ‘just about enough’ of Mika, and why is Joe Scarborough oblivious?
How on earth was this the backdrop to 3 of the most intense philosophical debates concerning the way forward anyone could have hoped for?
A word of warning if any of the cast take this forward: I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. Mika Brzezinski does not have an ego problem, it’s the psycho mechanical defense mechanism that you have to put a label on everything, and if you had to swim upstream everyday in a world not really trying to ween itself of nonessential pop culture, you might seem during the grind of a 3 hour daily show to be driven by something beyond the normal pale. That’s not ego, that is determination.
The fallout of mis-diagnosis is disintegrative. Its plain that there are giant egos everywhere you look on MSNBC. But those bonfires are of necessity. Your entry into the female lead category for which there is no Emmy, is fighting with you like a psychotic sister and you either argue on the merits, or stay on the sidelines.
2) In the fallout of Massachusetts, everyone is finding consensus rapidly. Dr. Jeffrey Sachs very efficiently speaks on this matter as condensed as Richard Hass speaks to foreign affairs. His take is that dilution of Obama’s economic objectives is what the protest is all about. About the same number of people voted for a public option as voted for a giant industry handout: zero. And when sausage making was the story of the entire first year, revolt ensued.
Everyone is finding consensus that is, except Obama, Congress and Washington. It would seem to the naked eye that this denial is some form of gravy train maintenance. The most effective use of the media in the second year is to amplify this disconnect as loudly as possible. I am enamored with the clarity with which Joe Scarborough basically told Republicans today ‘wipe that smile off of your face, this apocalypse is yours as well’. Obstruction is sausage as well.
This denial, as has been well documented on Morning Joe for some time, was mine as well. And if you look back at my defense of public options and the Obama technique, it was that there must be a secret weapon waiting in the wings. Howard Dean? Reconciliation? Conference? I never thought that was the whole strategy I was watching. The what you see is what you get, we never really had a plan, plan. As it became apparent that no silver bullet existed and that Obama had retreated from the high ground without a plan to fight for it, no megaphone was loud enough for me to shout alongside those on the center right: that’s not leadership, that’s not even realism, that’s attrition. And further, I smell a rat.
3) But as always, optimism must prevail. Obama is having a hard time making a fairly obvious move, and Congress is having a difficult time making a parallel move. Bernanke and Somers have got to be shown the door. Volker, Goolsbee and Elizabeth Warren have to be injected into the conversation, and the first order of business is whether Tim Geithner is a useful conduit in a checks and balances infused financial team or if he needs to go as well. If they fail at this, and I daresay the decision is more evident in the Plouff hiring, as he will be effective in communicating to the administration how damaging a continued Goldman tie is, that failure would be a voter trigger.
That Joe Scarborough is finding optimism in what a better balanced health care move would look like with the stuff the middle of America wanted in that bill back on the table from death’s door, is a very good sign that the voter may get a result after all. If I had one beef with Congress it’s its inability to multi-task. The fact that it’s been broken trying to write health care for months, that the results were failure, that no side looked like a finisher, and that the jobs work was set aside the entire time Congress was busy failing, that fact is a voter trigger.
Congress needs a supervisor much like the cashier at McDonalds needs one. They need to be told that only 20% of their productivity can be allocated to the health care debate but they must come forward with a bipartisan product, post conference, by the summer break. 30% budget, 40% job creation, 10% everything else, no failure permitted or else the voter will be triggered by that lack of accomplishment. That supervisor is meant to be Obama, not by constitution, but as a representative of the revolting voter.
In a dream world, on Wednesday, during the state of the union address, Obama would ask Pelosi, Reid, McConnell and Boehner to stand with him, and they would unveil an 8 item bipartisan health bill where each got a fair bit of representation, and that the majority only determined the order of choice, not the exclusion of choice. Then Obama would reveal that the plan was hammered out in 3 hours in the oval office the day before over Chinese food, and that no longer will the Congress of the United States obstruct the nation’s business for it’s own selfish benefit.
That would be a voter trigger.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
What Do You Stand For Again?
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 11th, 2009
Happy Veteran’s Day
Just one observation today:
Joe Scarborough, what exactly do you stand for?
Are you for the war in Iraq? Are you for the war in Afghanistan? Did you support the bailout? Do you have a schematic in your head for comprehensive health care reform? Where are you on Global Warming? Is there a need for financial reform and what specific steps should be taken? What concrete steps should be in place by the inauguration anniversary to correct the unemployment problem? Immigration?
I know about pro life and small government and fiscal responsibility, but those aren’t platforms those are attitudes. The time for water color is over and the time for real implementation is upon us.
I realized during the show today, that I don’t know of any current solutions on the table with your name on them.
That might just be the premier conundrum between legislators and executives. You have to choose in this world whether to focus your talents on implementation or inhibition.
I find you to be guilty of inhibiting other people’s pragmatic solutions to real problems without providing real alternatives of your own. I find you to be hypocritical in regards your criticism of this administration’s lack of focus on job’s in that you haven’t named anything you would do tomorrow to redirect the employment crisis to a better reality.
Before you lose your temper, why not try it? I make this observation because with all the whispering out there with your name on it, the country would listen. I also would like to see the notion that you might be playing it safe to stay above the fray dispelled sooner than later, otherwise….I find you to be part of the party of no.
Have a great day, see you tomorrow.
Happy Veteran’s Day
Just one observation today:
Joe Scarborough, what exactly do you stand for?
Are you for the war in Iraq? Are you for the war in Afghanistan? Did you support the bailout? Do you have a schematic in your head for comprehensive health care reform? Where are you on Global Warming? Is there a need for financial reform and what specific steps should be taken? What concrete steps should be in place by the inauguration anniversary to correct the unemployment problem? Immigration?
I know about pro life and small government and fiscal responsibility, but those aren’t platforms those are attitudes. The time for water color is over and the time for real implementation is upon us.
I realized during the show today, that I don’t know of any current solutions on the table with your name on them.
That might just be the premier conundrum between legislators and executives. You have to choose in this world whether to focus your talents on implementation or inhibition.
I find you to be guilty of inhibiting other people’s pragmatic solutions to real problems without providing real alternatives of your own. I find you to be hypocritical in regards your criticism of this administration’s lack of focus on job’s in that you haven’t named anything you would do tomorrow to redirect the employment crisis to a better reality.
Before you lose your temper, why not try it? I make this observation because with all the whispering out there with your name on it, the country would listen. I also would like to see the notion that you might be playing it safe to stay above the fray dispelled sooner than later, otherwise….I find you to be part of the party of no.
Have a great day, see you tomorrow.
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