The Morning Joe Rebuttal for November 29th, 2010
Observations:
1) For a guy who cites demagoguery of others as one of his chief annoyances, Joe Scarborough had zero issues painting a false picture on the tax cuts for the rich debate in his effort to appear on the right side of the issue. Apparently the right side of the issue is that people making 250,000 dollars a year or more in taxable income are the new tired and huddled masses in need of his defense. In his crosshairs are anyone who wants to explain to him that those 250,000 aren’t actually subject to a tax increase, its only the next subsequent dollars earned, thus not a primary income setback. Also in those same crosshairs are the two richest men in America who are on record now saying the Bush tax cuts are a chief fiscal culprit.
That outburst by Scarborough upon viewing the Buffet interview was embarrassing. It was nearly as embarrassing as the Senator-elect Kirk interview. These are two smart people looking you in the eye and lying to you selectively. In a leap of hypocrisy, Scarborough actually was the chief antagonist in the Kirk interview, beating even Howard Dean to the punch in the insolvency of Kirk’s responses, forgetting that Scarborough’s mathematical bonifides left the room just two hours earlier. This of course led to another critical but nuanced on set panic as the Buffet interview got replayed while Dean was still on with the cast, and rather than restate the 6 AM monstrosity, Scarborough had to duck and cover. I used to not notice the planned cover up activity, now it’s like a neon billboard.
2) Kirk was an absolute embarrassment. Yea, I have a dog in this fight, having been on the side of the tough to elect bankster Giannoulias in that election, and in complete admission that this was just more Tim Kaine disaster manufacturing. But Kirk is the new face of the voter who won’t accept tough answers and demands a government that leaks like a colander. If you could buy stock in rich people, now would be a good time, because we have elected 95 new legislators who will be handing the nations treasury to the richest 2% of the country and a newly accelerated rate, and without any recourse or return on investment whatsoever. And it was the 98% who don’t have any money anymore, or at least 40% of those who participate in midterm elections, that created this suicidal mandate.
To hear Kirk apply doublespeak logic to the real problems we face should be a cold shower reminder of the architects of the three Bush tax cuts. This stuff has been completely debunked by every economist and accountant who ever got out of college, yet the American public is going for it like the old ball of string trick, again.
3) And then there was the Wikileaks. Joe Scarborough plastered the face of his chief suspect on the screen no less than 5 times, a private in the army. Scarborough then sentenced the private to 25 years in prison even though there has been no trial or evidence presented. Joe Scarborough never lashed out at the ruler of Yemen for lying to his parliament, to the King of Saudi Arabia for war mongering, or to the State Department as a whole for having the internal maturity of Will Ferrell. No it’s none of these large institutional players doing anything wrong. It’s not the DOD’s fault that it’s getting mugged 52 million dollars at a time in Afghanistan. It’s a private in the army. That kind of scapegoating simply means we will make the same mistakes next week at our highest level.
Reverberating in my head is the weird championing of the Sebastian Junger movie, deserved sure, with the debunking of the organization that brought to light that Baghdad massacre of 17 civilians by a US helicopter gunship. I thought all weekend about the guy who was the shooter in the helicopter. He probably knew he was murdering people when he did it. He probably thought that the government was going to suppress details of his crime for self serving publicity and diplomacy reasons so his demons were limited to a very small sphere of judgment for his crime. Upon the Wikileaks disclosure, that sphere went from very small to global awareness, and likely will lead to his eventual prosecution. Junger is an award winning movie maker, Assange is a war criminal. That math doesn’t work.
Equally appalling is the treatment of the Rolling Stone article that damned General McChrystal when compared to the Wikileaks phenomenon. You probably think that the part of the equation that I’m complaining about was the treatment of the Rolling Stone author as a reviled hero compared to the reviled war criminal treatment Assange is getting. No that was the last paragraph, this paragraph is about the unequal treatment the sophomoric actions of our leaders get across the media, but how Morning Joe takes the prize for degrading this story to its most despotically surreal level as its core show discipline. The Peter King segment about extending the laws of terrorism to include the Wikileaks principals, similar in his mind to the extension of the RICO statutes for its convenience in ‘making up crimes as you go along’ mixed with the Jamie Rubin conjecture of Wikileaks as a ‘cyber attack’ shows that rational responsibility for your actions has taken a holiday.
Where were you when the Freedom of Information Act and the First Amendment were first successfully attacked under the guise of national security? King and Morning Joe were all to happy to start that fight this morning under the guise of terrorizing the Wikileaks phenomenon, and they were too busy with the scapegoat killing to say a single intelligent word about the hollow altruism Wikileaks successfully chronicles.
It’s been the American way for a long time, it’s OK as long as you don’t get caught, or if you can kill the guy who caught you before he gets any momentum. Way to go, Joe, that’s just good journalism.
Showing posts with label peter king. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peter king. Show all posts
Monday, November 29, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Tiananmen In America
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for August 5th, 2010
Observations:
1) You can’t really write this column daily right now. One has to let the worm turn and that takes at a minimum 2 shows in a lot of cases. There is often not enough material to cover, not because there is not enough news, but because the show either chooses something you just wrote about to go nuts on, like the EPA not knowing the long term effects of the dispersants, or because they go after a subject superficially at first, knowing themselves and that any full take will lead to embarrassing revisions later.
The 14th amendment thing is one of those. The Morning Joe show had a take that the Republicans were far, far off the grid to be debating a repeal of the 14th amendment, but of course, that wasn’t the real debate. Pat Buchanan was able to quickly parse that the debate was about anchor babies, a subject that deserves debate and should in fact be covered in any forthcoming immigration legislation.
But the Morning Joe debate that yielded “the Republicans are dead wrong on this one” raged for all of yesterday unimpeded by the narrow scope of the Republican’s intended exploration. Not being a Republican, I should have been content to let that lumping of the issue go on unabated for as long as the cast was willing to trot through it at this superhumanly superficial level.
But if anything, the shouting despite the facts version of manufactured debate on Morning Joe is best highlighted when a faux separation from the right is the attempted engineering. This takes a complex issue and reduces it to a litmus decision: are you for or against repealing the constitution if that’s what it takes to solve our immigration crisis? We recently were forced to submit to this type of dilution of our constitutional rights with the Patriot act, now we’re looking at the 14th amendment from another angle given the next day coincidence of the California gay marriage rule.
Now Joe Scarborough has a problem, and at it’s root is the utter hypocrisy of the Republican party.
If you really want to selectively ignore equal protection under the law so that the institution of marriage can discriminate against the union of same sex life partners, then how different is the selection of certain territorial births as not eligible for citizenship?
If I were to play the other side, on which I am firmly and permanently entrenched, I think the 14th amendment needs to protect gay marriage rights universally in this country, and I would welcome a debate about the exclusion of anchor babies from automatic citizenship
Republicans need the whole 14th amendment debated now that they want automatic citizenship repealed and they want to turn off the equal protection clause for gay marriage. Joe Scarborough can’t explain his anger yesterday about how ridiculous the Republicans were for their anti-14 stance, then explain in any reconciled manner his state’s right to void equal protection stance today. Maybe he can, double speak is a talent that allows you to be on both sides of an issue with a straight face.
2) While Mr. Scarborough had a point that today’s cast was largely identifiable as the coastal blue state types who would always support the evolution of our nation towards recognizing gay marriage, the proposing that the red state average voter should have a right to ban gay marriage at the state level is a revolting throwback to fiefdoms of hate that existed throughout the darkest moments of our nation’s history. What if the blue state types got away with this, would you arm the red state types and send them in to quash the liberal rebellion?
Isn’t that sort of what the real agenda of the Tea Party movement is all about? They lost the election and this is how red state America shows off how to be a sore loser? Isn’t that the core of the issue that ‘we have to take our country back’ types everywhere are militant in their disapproval of gays, immigrants, a black president, and Chinese debt?
Encouraging the middle of the country to stand up for their right to hate gay marriage is the sort of pandering that gets people killed. Elections everywhere have shown that 55% of Americans want the illegal immigrants out, and want gay marriage banned. This is 1859 all over again. The evolution is inevitable, and for all of the people who expressed wonderment that there weren’t tanks in the streets following the crooked path of the 2000 election of George W. Bush, where is that same determination not to have these similar evolutionary steps be peaceful?
How many Republicans are going to pander this way, the same way Joe Scarborough did all day today, to create an anger in their voter base? State’s rights! You have to let the states decide for themselves! In 1859, some states decided for themselves that slavery was enshrined in their states principles. How did that turn out?
Arizona is a bellwether for this kind of sentiment. The roots of the immigration law there are people who believe that it’s OK to promote a society based on the domination of settlers of ‘European descent’. They fear they will be overrun soon and that the lack of federal enforcement of the current immigration statutes have created an existential crisis for them, and that union be damned, they will fix this problem for themselves if the alternative is to let their state become dominated by a different demographic.
What happens if 30 states create anti immigration legislation, ban gay marriage, repeal the health care reform, and do so cooperatively in a soft secession? What next?
3) Speaking of faux anger, that charade today about the Peter King vs. Anthony Weiner dispute was a real step backward for the show. All the same recent symptoms: we can make the government change course by shaming them, making a complex issue a litmus issue, we are the first people to have this take, these were all present in their altruistic glory. All were regrettable occurrences.
Mr. Scarborough, even Peter King told you why the House of Representatives took the course that led to a 2/3rds approval process. He told you that they did it to prevent ‘poison pill’ amendments that have become customary tools of obstruction on behalf of the Republicans as they lock step towards trying to shut the government down. We have talked forever about the concept of Republican amendments attached to bills only to make them politically costly for those voting yes, knowing that the author of the amendment is inserting it even though he will vote no on the ultimate passage of the bill. That is dishonest governing and the type of gamesmanship that you should be angry about.
But no, here we go again, let’s say Nancy Pelosi’s name as spitefully as possible in the neighborhood of 30 times while ranting that this congressional leadership is to blame for it’s attempt to fend off unsavory tactics of it’s opponents.
You can’t vote no on a bill and put “this bill is criminally unjust” amendments on the bill as an additional condemning step. Congress is broken, and myopic interpretation adorned with an element of anger based fakery just won’t help matters.
Did you see Peter King go from his normal ‘waiting to get mad’ self to a sheepish ‘this is a mess’ regret? You made that happen by misguided histrionics, they were all ducking out of embarrassment.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) You can’t really write this column daily right now. One has to let the worm turn and that takes at a minimum 2 shows in a lot of cases. There is often not enough material to cover, not because there is not enough news, but because the show either chooses something you just wrote about to go nuts on, like the EPA not knowing the long term effects of the dispersants, or because they go after a subject superficially at first, knowing themselves and that any full take will lead to embarrassing revisions later.
The 14th amendment thing is one of those. The Morning Joe show had a take that the Republicans were far, far off the grid to be debating a repeal of the 14th amendment, but of course, that wasn’t the real debate. Pat Buchanan was able to quickly parse that the debate was about anchor babies, a subject that deserves debate and should in fact be covered in any forthcoming immigration legislation.
But the Morning Joe debate that yielded “the Republicans are dead wrong on this one” raged for all of yesterday unimpeded by the narrow scope of the Republican’s intended exploration. Not being a Republican, I should have been content to let that lumping of the issue go on unabated for as long as the cast was willing to trot through it at this superhumanly superficial level.
But if anything, the shouting despite the facts version of manufactured debate on Morning Joe is best highlighted when a faux separation from the right is the attempted engineering. This takes a complex issue and reduces it to a litmus decision: are you for or against repealing the constitution if that’s what it takes to solve our immigration crisis? We recently were forced to submit to this type of dilution of our constitutional rights with the Patriot act, now we’re looking at the 14th amendment from another angle given the next day coincidence of the California gay marriage rule.
Now Joe Scarborough has a problem, and at it’s root is the utter hypocrisy of the Republican party.
If you really want to selectively ignore equal protection under the law so that the institution of marriage can discriminate against the union of same sex life partners, then how different is the selection of certain territorial births as not eligible for citizenship?
If I were to play the other side, on which I am firmly and permanently entrenched, I think the 14th amendment needs to protect gay marriage rights universally in this country, and I would welcome a debate about the exclusion of anchor babies from automatic citizenship
Republicans need the whole 14th amendment debated now that they want automatic citizenship repealed and they want to turn off the equal protection clause for gay marriage. Joe Scarborough can’t explain his anger yesterday about how ridiculous the Republicans were for their anti-14 stance, then explain in any reconciled manner his state’s right to void equal protection stance today. Maybe he can, double speak is a talent that allows you to be on both sides of an issue with a straight face.
2) While Mr. Scarborough had a point that today’s cast was largely identifiable as the coastal blue state types who would always support the evolution of our nation towards recognizing gay marriage, the proposing that the red state average voter should have a right to ban gay marriage at the state level is a revolting throwback to fiefdoms of hate that existed throughout the darkest moments of our nation’s history. What if the blue state types got away with this, would you arm the red state types and send them in to quash the liberal rebellion?
Isn’t that sort of what the real agenda of the Tea Party movement is all about? They lost the election and this is how red state America shows off how to be a sore loser? Isn’t that the core of the issue that ‘we have to take our country back’ types everywhere are militant in their disapproval of gays, immigrants, a black president, and Chinese debt?
Encouraging the middle of the country to stand up for their right to hate gay marriage is the sort of pandering that gets people killed. Elections everywhere have shown that 55% of Americans want the illegal immigrants out, and want gay marriage banned. This is 1859 all over again. The evolution is inevitable, and for all of the people who expressed wonderment that there weren’t tanks in the streets following the crooked path of the 2000 election of George W. Bush, where is that same determination not to have these similar evolutionary steps be peaceful?
How many Republicans are going to pander this way, the same way Joe Scarborough did all day today, to create an anger in their voter base? State’s rights! You have to let the states decide for themselves! In 1859, some states decided for themselves that slavery was enshrined in their states principles. How did that turn out?
Arizona is a bellwether for this kind of sentiment. The roots of the immigration law there are people who believe that it’s OK to promote a society based on the domination of settlers of ‘European descent’. They fear they will be overrun soon and that the lack of federal enforcement of the current immigration statutes have created an existential crisis for them, and that union be damned, they will fix this problem for themselves if the alternative is to let their state become dominated by a different demographic.
What happens if 30 states create anti immigration legislation, ban gay marriage, repeal the health care reform, and do so cooperatively in a soft secession? What next?
3) Speaking of faux anger, that charade today about the Peter King vs. Anthony Weiner dispute was a real step backward for the show. All the same recent symptoms: we can make the government change course by shaming them, making a complex issue a litmus issue, we are the first people to have this take, these were all present in their altruistic glory. All were regrettable occurrences.
Mr. Scarborough, even Peter King told you why the House of Representatives took the course that led to a 2/3rds approval process. He told you that they did it to prevent ‘poison pill’ amendments that have become customary tools of obstruction on behalf of the Republicans as they lock step towards trying to shut the government down. We have talked forever about the concept of Republican amendments attached to bills only to make them politically costly for those voting yes, knowing that the author of the amendment is inserting it even though he will vote no on the ultimate passage of the bill. That is dishonest governing and the type of gamesmanship that you should be angry about.
But no, here we go again, let’s say Nancy Pelosi’s name as spitefully as possible in the neighborhood of 30 times while ranting that this congressional leadership is to blame for it’s attempt to fend off unsavory tactics of it’s opponents.
You can’t vote no on a bill and put “this bill is criminally unjust” amendments on the bill as an additional condemning step. Congress is broken, and myopic interpretation adorned with an element of anger based fakery just won’t help matters.
Did you see Peter King go from his normal ‘waiting to get mad’ self to a sheepish ‘this is a mess’ regret? You made that happen by misguided histrionics, they were all ducking out of embarrassment.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Blanche Wins, And It's Our Fault
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for June 9th, 2010
Observations:
1) My candidate failed in Arkansas. I had jumped for joy when it looked like Blanche Lincoln would be primaried in Arkansas a few months back. I am on the side that was still cautiously optimistic even yesterday that it would happen. It did not.
The analysis on the Morning Joe show was astute but incomplete. Clinton was Blanche Lincoln’s endorsement, national labor was Halter’s. Wait, Arkansas is 49th in the United States in union coverage. Clinton is Little Rock’s favorite son. In a word, strategy.
Our candidates pitch must’ve sounded like this:
“We have not done anything to represent your workforce in 100 years, choosing to fight battles elsewhere and writing you off, but today, we ask a favor of you, to fight our Washington DC battle on our behalf”
Their candidates strategy must’ve sounded like this:
"Arkansan”
Where is Darwin when you need him? In Arkansas relieving the ill witted of their out-sized ambitions.
Silver lining? Morning Joe has correctly prognosticated that this is like racing to a red light and wasting gas, that the winner is going to be mowed down in the general. Silver lining #2 is that lame duck candidate Lincoln might as well try a little harder to convince America of her slogans by keeping the Lincoln-authored teeth in the financial reform bill when the conference bribery swap meet commences.
I know, what was incomplete about the Morning Joe coverage? You think that they covered every single point covered above. Give it a second. It’s not that it happened, it’s not that the White House was mad about it, that it was union leader Trumka’s first election to influence, it's that a 5 year old could’ve told you 12 weeks ago that Clinton trumps unions in Arkansas, and 12 weeks ago, you had only spent $650,000 on the election. Strategy, Darwin, missing over 3 hours.
2) Meg Whitman is Arizona redux. In a girl’s night party gala that lasted an entire show, little more than headline treatment was given to Meg Whitman’s victory over Steve Poizner. Engineered by Mike Murphy, a friend of the Morning Joe show, it seemed like Poizner was outmatched.
But on Monday on election eve, as I watched the Padres break up a no hitter that Willie covered on the show, there was an ad that the show should’ve paid attention to. It was Meg Whitman playing the euro card.
“I will control our borders”
“No Amnesty”
“No Drivers Licenses”
If you will recall the ugliness of California’s dark Proposition 187 chapter, you will come down on one side or the other of the statement that 'what the state needs now is an anti-latino candidate like it needs the San Andreas fault to divide the state in two'.
Strategy, Darwin, umm, you’re killing Poizner, you got Murphy, McCain just said on the same day that alienating the Latino population is a bad idea for your party, and you unnecessarily play the Californians of European descent should vote for me before the state gets any more overrun by the other people card?
Joe Scarborough made a statement today that the country is looking for solutions to its problems, that Washington has proven incapable of problem solving and that candidates like Fiorina and Whitman appeal for their ability to not make the simple mistakes that continually trip up our leaders in DC.
The simple mistakes of not voting until you’re 48 years old, of running unnecessary xenophobic ads in the 11th hour? Make that case again friend, one more time with feeling.
3) When Joe Scarborough let Peter King off the hook it was a lesson that many people could learn from. King is the worst kind of convenience fighter. Whatever fact is on George W. Bush’s old message agenda is King’s talking point, and up is only up if the book says it’s up.
That kind of convenience logic is just unbearable to listen to, but if you want a candidate that is loyal and resolute he is your guy. Scarborough found the hole in King’s logic and accurately derailed any momentum the congressmen thought he might garner. Then Scarborough caught himself, and stopped short of permanent damage.
The reason this is so important, is that King will live to deliver logic of convenience another day, like Giuliani, like Rove, like Fleischer, like, to be fair, Dick Gephardt or Blanche Lincoln. These people are the enemy, for their doublespeak.
Scarborough knows that one day he may need a flank defense, and King will be there. Politicians never know when the logic will run out and you will need an ace double-spokesman to keep you afloat.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) My candidate failed in Arkansas. I had jumped for joy when it looked like Blanche Lincoln would be primaried in Arkansas a few months back. I am on the side that was still cautiously optimistic even yesterday that it would happen. It did not.
The analysis on the Morning Joe show was astute but incomplete. Clinton was Blanche Lincoln’s endorsement, national labor was Halter’s. Wait, Arkansas is 49th in the United States in union coverage. Clinton is Little Rock’s favorite son. In a word, strategy.
Our candidates pitch must’ve sounded like this:
“We have not done anything to represent your workforce in 100 years, choosing to fight battles elsewhere and writing you off, but today, we ask a favor of you, to fight our Washington DC battle on our behalf”
Their candidates strategy must’ve sounded like this:
"Arkansan”
Where is Darwin when you need him? In Arkansas relieving the ill witted of their out-sized ambitions.
Silver lining? Morning Joe has correctly prognosticated that this is like racing to a red light and wasting gas, that the winner is going to be mowed down in the general. Silver lining #2 is that lame duck candidate Lincoln might as well try a little harder to convince America of her slogans by keeping the Lincoln-authored teeth in the financial reform bill when the conference bribery swap meet commences.
I know, what was incomplete about the Morning Joe coverage? You think that they covered every single point covered above. Give it a second. It’s not that it happened, it’s not that the White House was mad about it, that it was union leader Trumka’s first election to influence, it's that a 5 year old could’ve told you 12 weeks ago that Clinton trumps unions in Arkansas, and 12 weeks ago, you had only spent $650,000 on the election. Strategy, Darwin, missing over 3 hours.
2) Meg Whitman is Arizona redux. In a girl’s night party gala that lasted an entire show, little more than headline treatment was given to Meg Whitman’s victory over Steve Poizner. Engineered by Mike Murphy, a friend of the Morning Joe show, it seemed like Poizner was outmatched.
But on Monday on election eve, as I watched the Padres break up a no hitter that Willie covered on the show, there was an ad that the show should’ve paid attention to. It was Meg Whitman playing the euro card.
“I will control our borders”
“No Amnesty”
“No Drivers Licenses”
If you will recall the ugliness of California’s dark Proposition 187 chapter, you will come down on one side or the other of the statement that 'what the state needs now is an anti-latino candidate like it needs the San Andreas fault to divide the state in two'.
Strategy, Darwin, umm, you’re killing Poizner, you got Murphy, McCain just said on the same day that alienating the Latino population is a bad idea for your party, and you unnecessarily play the Californians of European descent should vote for me before the state gets any more overrun by the other people card?
Joe Scarborough made a statement today that the country is looking for solutions to its problems, that Washington has proven incapable of problem solving and that candidates like Fiorina and Whitman appeal for their ability to not make the simple mistakes that continually trip up our leaders in DC.
The simple mistakes of not voting until you’re 48 years old, of running unnecessary xenophobic ads in the 11th hour? Make that case again friend, one more time with feeling.
3) When Joe Scarborough let Peter King off the hook it was a lesson that many people could learn from. King is the worst kind of convenience fighter. Whatever fact is on George W. Bush’s old message agenda is King’s talking point, and up is only up if the book says it’s up.
That kind of convenience logic is just unbearable to listen to, but if you want a candidate that is loyal and resolute he is your guy. Scarborough found the hole in King’s logic and accurately derailed any momentum the congressmen thought he might garner. Then Scarborough caught himself, and stopped short of permanent damage.
The reason this is so important, is that King will live to deliver logic of convenience another day, like Giuliani, like Rove, like Fleischer, like, to be fair, Dick Gephardt or Blanche Lincoln. These people are the enemy, for their doublespeak.
Scarborough knows that one day he may need a flank defense, and King will be there. Politicians never know when the logic will run out and you will need an ace double-spokesman to keep you afloat.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
