The Morning Joe Rebuttal for Election Day, 2010
Observations:
1) I guess I should have known when there was a managed media blackout on Morning Joe suppressing coverage of the gulf oil spill, that the show was doing a bit of a dry run in preparation to be that outpost on MSNBC that emulates Fox News’ efforts to suppress the progressive vote.
On the surface, it all seems so reasonable, Joe is a right leaning guy, his henchmen Halperin and Buchanan have a vested interest in the outcome, so why all the surprise that they would perform a service to the ruling class by convincing voters that they need no longer participate in the democratic process, for it is a foregone conclusion that the 78% unfavorable Republicans will be handed the halls of the nation’s legislature.
The demonization of progress, the irrationality of scapegoating the wrong guy for all the job losses, and the indescribably logic free notion that further enriching the ultra rich is the way out of the economic downturn caused by the net effect of the last wealth transfer is stunning for it's myopic effectiveness.
Joe Scarborough is guilty for terming the next step of the disintegration of the middle class necessary progress, and that step is this pre-ordained Republican victory. You can’t waste your days hoping Ed Schultz will bust on the set and beat Scarborough’s ass (you know he wants to), you just have to know what is happening around you and figure out your next step.
2) This notion of voter suppression is so irrational that it may be a greater mystery than what causes cancer.
We all know that the final margin in the Reagan – Carter presidential was drastically affected by the media coverage handing the country to Reagan before anyone from Colorado to the Pacific Ocean had voted. The margin of victory was significantly widened when those states that amalgamate to a huge progressive voting block, became suddenly disaffected voters. The undercard elections in those states swung mercilessly right and outcomes throughout the west were distorted by unprecedented leaps, resulting in permanent damage.
This phenomenon has driven strict media rules that for the most part don’t help at all, because of the nature of new media, and it’s ability to move information around any attempt to suppress.
So here we are today and the lessons, not the constructive ones that had us trying to curb election steering by showing the eastern state's results, but the diabolical ones about how a person stays home if you convince him it’s a lost cause, are now part and parcel to modern political science. The election process of buying media advertisements and debating is an expensive stalemate process. The new needle mover is voter suppression, and the historic turnout in 2008 is the greatest threat to future Republican power holds, the simple fact being the return on investment is greater in this arena than the traditional campaign tactics.
The evidence is as simple as looking at what mandated voting would look like. There would be two drastic effects: a devaluation of the white vote, and an end to the effectiveness of gerrymandering. Oh there would be one other effect, a Democratic super majority for the foreseeable future, and an end to the current corporate control of the nation’s capital. If you’re a Republican, a white person interested in retaining control of the politics of the United States, or a chamber of commerce, voter suppression is vital to your survival.
3) Social Media could produce the next step necessary in modern politics. For lack of a better descriptive, Facebook or its nextgen could be the architecture for a form of a witch-hunt that could use its loose interpretation of privacy to build a virtual inventory of the voter base. Add in one sprinkle of Google maps or Zillow real estate chronicling, and there could be an available tracking of who is voting and who is not, and pressure could be applied to those submitting to voter suppression to endear upon them the patriotic loss that goes with their missing vote.
That’s right, I said it, I have extreme disdain for the 60% who will hand power elsewhere today. It’s on my list of national crises and I want answers from those people. I had a very good chance this election cycle when Meg Whitman suddenly wanted to control the California governor’s office despite here disinterest in voting until the age of 46. That kind of hypocrisy is a punishable event, and 150 million dollars is a good riddance deserved.
But as an equal opportunist in this realm, I have equal disdain for people who attend protests, there aren’t enough recent examples if you’ve noticed, but who have an imperfect record of participating in the voting process. The last time there was a solid protest schedule was in the run up to the Iraq war. I felt then and I feel now that those protests were hollow because of how many of the participants didn’t vote. I irrationally think people who did not vote should be arrested if they attend a protest for their hypocrisy. The net effect is the protests ran out of gas, and protest have become more and more diluted and easily policed in this country.
Largely disintegrated by our lack of a Democratic credibility, we Americans can only watch with confused admiration while French and Greek citizens keep their governments in exponentially more effective check. The reason is so simple, yet today we risk a dangerous repeat of our irrational path. The reason is we think its OK to hand the government to agents of our demise via voter attrition to the tune of 60%.
Various elements of the corporate interest have actually broken away from the indirect suppressive effort and tried to run ads that simply told people who weren’t going to vote in their favor to not vote. Those ads never made it to the airwaves but you would never know it given the coverage they received from the media. It’s a modern phenomenon that you can run this stuff knowing that it won’t actually be televised on a paid basis, but you will have a publicity effect for your message because it’s so extreme that it can be called news, despite it’s blatant marketing composition. Was the media duped? No, they consider this stuff tools to their ultimate goal.
Joe Scarborough has been projecting wishful thinking since 1994. This is his most successful year. It is much easier to effect the country from a commercial pulpit, and he is really ready to cement his will on the nation from here for a long time. It’s evident that he became interested in his electability late last year, and got his answer: stay in media. No background checks, deserved or not, and no fact checks. You can go on forever in this environment, that is unless any of the changes that need to happen see the light of day: campaign finance reform, disassociation of lobby interests from congress, and a comprehensive study on the process of steering our politics via formerly objective journalism.
4) How can I make these outlandish claims? In the 3 hours of Morning Joe directly adjacent to the mid term election, there were Pulitzer Prize winning left leaning journalists, there was the DNC chair, and there was Scarborough going after any Republican that claims to be ready to solve any problems as having no credibility.
To me, the left elements of the show were pure capitulation, lead by Mika Brzezinski, in one of her finest Alan Colmes moments. Eugene Robinson seemed forlorn, and Tim Kaine seemed just as delusional as when he began the malpractice he calls his tenure at the top of the Democratic Party.
John Stewart captured the same delusional moment from DCCC chair Van Hollen. Stewart then called it delusional. Shock, he called a spade a spade.
It all seems so credible when presented on the show, but as Zbigniew Brzezinski has indicated conclusively, Morning Joe is the most extreme example of superficial objectivity currently being televised. At least Fox makes no illusion of really being fair and balanced. The roots of the superficiality are the extreme talent of Joe Scarborough at taking distorted anecdote and turning it into a mantra for governing, no matter how falsely based.
Wow, and you are going to fall for it.
Showing posts with label tim kaine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tim kaine. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Armed With 15% Of The Facts And A Howitzer
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for September 8th, 2010
Observations:
1) How embarrassing is Tim Kaine? Audacity is defined as making that quip “I don’t pretend anyone remembers a DNC chairmen 3 minutes after they’re gone”. Ummm, I think every registered Democrat remembers the last DNC chairman, that guy who WON elections. Howard Dean.
But rather than just lament the critical velocity in reverse that the above misquidedness represents, it’s more important to point out the sheer lack of lucidity when Kaine speaks. It is all rosy if you ask Mr. Kaine. Often you hear people say this would all be a little easier if someone in government was simply speaking like adults or business men (not their publicists).
That is the opposite of the effect given off when Kaine describes how strong the Health Care Reform polls. That is just wishful thinking and amateurish projection of that wishful thinking. Health Care polls as poorly as possible because the part people need is 40 months away, and all we can think about as we wait those 40 months is the sheer capitulation that occurred defanging the needed reform. When HCR gets in place will we then find out it actually has been outflanked by defensive maneuvers by the insurers who’ve had the 40 months to get back to status quo?
The bottom line on our current DNC chairman is that he is the doctor whose bedside manner is so bad that he just lies. He tells the cancer victim that recovery is imminent so that he doesn’t have to do the tough work of telling them to write their will. Kaine is selling lottery tickets with his prediction that the Democrats will come back. All of the ‘he has to do that rationale’ is actually the strategy of the other side. This side gets its backbone by saying the truth, which is not centrist doctrine. The Kucinich's and Weiners of the world don’t go down making false promises that a nonexistent turnaround is just around the corner. They appeal to passion, and in Tim Kaine representation of the role of the DNC chairman today, could you spot that passion in any lucid form? No, it just seemed like a door to door Xerox salesman who would say anything.
While I’m throwing darts at that guy, I want to point out that there was a publicity stunt in February where it was leaked that Kaine would finally fulfill his potential as DNC Chair because Virginia inaugurated a new governor and Kaine would no longer have to split his time. His focus in the six months since has made things worse as he has been free to make more half pronouncements in a day than previously possible.
2) Now, its actually good news that Joe Scarborough can’t actually stop talking about the positive economic effects of extending tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. That opposing the extension is “mindless”. You can already see the retort on the Daily Show. Joe Scarborough would walk into this ambush like a basic training flunkee.
You can pick from about 87 3 minute rants all with the same message, jump to Mika endorsing with a “you’ve been saying that all along”, and then play 25 guests on the Morning Joe show that have lined up to say in a deep as available science that the economic foundation of Joe Scarboroughs argument is 100% fallacy.
One would say on an ROI basis with limited available funds, tax cuts to the rich are in last place, another would say it’s not 2% small business its less than that, a third small business growth we seek primarily offshoots from manufacturing growth, not singular business. At the end of 25, none of which would need to be Paul Krugman or Robert Reich mind you, it would be obvious that Joe Scarborough stands in distant opposition to genuine economic consensus, and makes you wonder about his motivation in doing so.
I fully realize that this rationale has zero effect on Joe or John Boehner’s complete rejection of letting the tax cuts expire, but I think there is also a growing consensus of people forced into a better understanding of economics by tough times asking why those leaders pursue this path? It seems dishonest with great costs to America associated to those dishonest claims.
The more middle America hears a false argument, the more a baseline realization that we're being duped sets in. We used to talk about how in polls Americans embarrassingly told pollsters they thought Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. It’s safe to say that the awfulness of that national misunderstanding has corrected itself through repeating with great frequency just how embarrassingly wrong it was.
Similarly, Americans on the right, in the Tea Party or towards the middle right of America, will look with a degree of humiliation at where they were duped into making the comparatively poor investment of repealing a tax on the top 2% of America instead of directly investing in new jobs for their constituencies. You aren’t in that 2%. Supply side economics is the economics of waiting for crumbs, and you don’t have time to wait. Direct investments in your constituencies revive economies at a 2 to 1 rate compared to tax repeals for the rich, because the rich have the option to NOT spend the money, which they exercise at least HALF the time.
Why do John Boehner and Joe Scarborough make the trickle down case at every opportunity in defiance of any logic except the artificial one they simply concoct on the spot? It can only be one of two reasons: they are in the 2% or they are paid to protect the interest of the 2%.
3) As suspicious as I am about Maria Bartiromo, it was happy to see her on the show trying to find common ground with Arianna Huffington. But before that Willie Geist did a connect the jobs duty by asking Maria to weigh in on the small business negative impact of the tax cut for the rich debate. She of course ducked the question, instead going with the fact that if you want to talk negligible, talk about the amount of money the government gets via the top 2% returning to a 29.9% federal rate. It’s insignificant, its $36 billion dollars. Does that seem insignificant to you? Or did she just put some words together and hope nobody would check?
But yes, Arianna and Maria found middle ground. It’s as if Maria had a bit of an awakening working on her book where she was forced to analyze the role of market touts in explaining away the criminal behavior that’s taken control of Wall Street. Well, I obviously took it too far, but let’s see if over time Maria starts to look for an exit from fallacy island.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) How embarrassing is Tim Kaine? Audacity is defined as making that quip “I don’t pretend anyone remembers a DNC chairmen 3 minutes after they’re gone”. Ummm, I think every registered Democrat remembers the last DNC chairman, that guy who WON elections. Howard Dean.
But rather than just lament the critical velocity in reverse that the above misquidedness represents, it’s more important to point out the sheer lack of lucidity when Kaine speaks. It is all rosy if you ask Mr. Kaine. Often you hear people say this would all be a little easier if someone in government was simply speaking like adults or business men (not their publicists).
That is the opposite of the effect given off when Kaine describes how strong the Health Care Reform polls. That is just wishful thinking and amateurish projection of that wishful thinking. Health Care polls as poorly as possible because the part people need is 40 months away, and all we can think about as we wait those 40 months is the sheer capitulation that occurred defanging the needed reform. When HCR gets in place will we then find out it actually has been outflanked by defensive maneuvers by the insurers who’ve had the 40 months to get back to status quo?
The bottom line on our current DNC chairman is that he is the doctor whose bedside manner is so bad that he just lies. He tells the cancer victim that recovery is imminent so that he doesn’t have to do the tough work of telling them to write their will. Kaine is selling lottery tickets with his prediction that the Democrats will come back. All of the ‘he has to do that rationale’ is actually the strategy of the other side. This side gets its backbone by saying the truth, which is not centrist doctrine. The Kucinich's and Weiners of the world don’t go down making false promises that a nonexistent turnaround is just around the corner. They appeal to passion, and in Tim Kaine representation of the role of the DNC chairman today, could you spot that passion in any lucid form? No, it just seemed like a door to door Xerox salesman who would say anything.
While I’m throwing darts at that guy, I want to point out that there was a publicity stunt in February where it was leaked that Kaine would finally fulfill his potential as DNC Chair because Virginia inaugurated a new governor and Kaine would no longer have to split his time. His focus in the six months since has made things worse as he has been free to make more half pronouncements in a day than previously possible.
2) Now, its actually good news that Joe Scarborough can’t actually stop talking about the positive economic effects of extending tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. That opposing the extension is “mindless”. You can already see the retort on the Daily Show. Joe Scarborough would walk into this ambush like a basic training flunkee.
You can pick from about 87 3 minute rants all with the same message, jump to Mika endorsing with a “you’ve been saying that all along”, and then play 25 guests on the Morning Joe show that have lined up to say in a deep as available science that the economic foundation of Joe Scarboroughs argument is 100% fallacy.
One would say on an ROI basis with limited available funds, tax cuts to the rich are in last place, another would say it’s not 2% small business its less than that, a third small business growth we seek primarily offshoots from manufacturing growth, not singular business. At the end of 25, none of which would need to be Paul Krugman or Robert Reich mind you, it would be obvious that Joe Scarborough stands in distant opposition to genuine economic consensus, and makes you wonder about his motivation in doing so.
I fully realize that this rationale has zero effect on Joe or John Boehner’s complete rejection of letting the tax cuts expire, but I think there is also a growing consensus of people forced into a better understanding of economics by tough times asking why those leaders pursue this path? It seems dishonest with great costs to America associated to those dishonest claims.
The more middle America hears a false argument, the more a baseline realization that we're being duped sets in. We used to talk about how in polls Americans embarrassingly told pollsters they thought Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. It’s safe to say that the awfulness of that national misunderstanding has corrected itself through repeating with great frequency just how embarrassingly wrong it was.
Similarly, Americans on the right, in the Tea Party or towards the middle right of America, will look with a degree of humiliation at where they were duped into making the comparatively poor investment of repealing a tax on the top 2% of America instead of directly investing in new jobs for their constituencies. You aren’t in that 2%. Supply side economics is the economics of waiting for crumbs, and you don’t have time to wait. Direct investments in your constituencies revive economies at a 2 to 1 rate compared to tax repeals for the rich, because the rich have the option to NOT spend the money, which they exercise at least HALF the time.
Why do John Boehner and Joe Scarborough make the trickle down case at every opportunity in defiance of any logic except the artificial one they simply concoct on the spot? It can only be one of two reasons: they are in the 2% or they are paid to protect the interest of the 2%.
3) As suspicious as I am about Maria Bartiromo, it was happy to see her on the show trying to find common ground with Arianna Huffington. But before that Willie Geist did a connect the jobs duty by asking Maria to weigh in on the small business negative impact of the tax cut for the rich debate. She of course ducked the question, instead going with the fact that if you want to talk negligible, talk about the amount of money the government gets via the top 2% returning to a 29.9% federal rate. It’s insignificant, its $36 billion dollars. Does that seem insignificant to you? Or did she just put some words together and hope nobody would check?
But yes, Arianna and Maria found middle ground. It’s as if Maria had a bit of an awakening working on her book where she was forced to analyze the role of market touts in explaining away the criminal behavior that’s taken control of Wall Street. Well, I obviously took it too far, but let’s see if over time Maria starts to look for an exit from fallacy island.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Wants Cake, Also Wants To Eat
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for July 13th, 2010
Observations:
1) Just an astounding conversation with Joe Scarborough and Andrew Ross Sorkin today where JS felt compelled to ask for 100% assurance of immediate containment of any spill prior to there being more drilling. Now far be it from me to feel like Scarborough needs a reality check, but in this case this was an absolutely egregious and selective personal optimization choice. Let’s list our components:
· Drove V8 forever
· All of his Florida and DC neighbors drove V8 forever
· Suddenly a “surprise” attack of an oil spill creates mea culpa
· Wants oil, but only with assurance
· Wants green overhaul of economy if no assurance is available
Now, this has all the hypocritical connotation of ‘clean coal’ or ‘natural gas’. We know the truth, that we are dependent on oil and have the world’s biggest consumer economy for it and are thus responsible not just for the consumption of, but logistics of transporting the 25% of the global oil supply.
In our haste to grow GDP quarter over quarter, we promote the recklessness that is BP’s environmental record in order to not have the supply of oil be any inhibition to our free enterprise system. The national economic security implications of the oil supply assure that the most profitable American companies are oil companies. It is known.
So with oil fueling the nation and its economy along with it, the pressure to grow the economy means eventually an anomaly will occur in that supply and we will have either a price catastrophe, security catastrophe, financial catastrophe or environmental catastrophe, wait, we’ve had all of these happen already.
And Mr. Scarborough loudly beckons for certainty? Quaint.
2) I understand that we on the left have empowered minor leaguers to run the country and are now facing a hefty mid term election task to keep these guys in place until they get the speed of the game. I understand that their inability to master their skill at national governance is being exploited by the right and the old guard left and that status quo continues to rule the day one maneuver at a time.
But are you really ready to send any part of this government back to the Iraq invading, Patriot en-Act-ing, Medicare “D” initiating, Cheney Energy Commission-ing, torture-ing, fear-baiting, mandate intolerance by law cronies that we all so desperately conspired to usher out over the last 40 months? You would give these guys the keys so that you could better afford Chinese socks from Wal-mart?
As you can see by some of my previous rants, I’m hard up to find who to trust. I trust myself, Elizabeth Warren, Nassim Taleb, Matt Taibbi, and get this: Joe Scarborough. I trust that Obama and Axelrod mean well but are currently outclassed and out framed in their governance. I don’t know anything about Rahm Emmanuel, and that’s a problem at this point.
But the list of people I don’t trust is long and growing. I learned not to trust most of them years ago, but every day another person makes the perp walk, not to jail, but to the microphone to lay out a doublespeak demonstration why they cannot support the middle class against the ruling elite for whatever hollow reason suits them that day, and today that was Tim Kaine (yikes!).
But I can tell you one thing, if Joe Barton is a committee chairmanship next year, it’s pitchfork time, if Boehner is in charge of anything other than the detention of the Breakfast Club, it’s pitchfork time.
You need to make an appropriately proportionate decision, immediately.
3) Thad Allen was not convincing in his reaction to Willie Geist’s well timed grenade about containment ship operations. The amount of unexplainable nonsense coming from the spill site is literally JFK-assassination-level unsavory. No one will ever convince the American people that there aren’t two stories, one told (sometimes) now, and one that will come out in 40 years talking about ‘the American people would’ve never accepted the real story’.
The earnings date, the Libya thing (that everyone knew already), the missing details on the containment, the press blockade, the scope of the disaster. These are all things that continue to amalgamate into a story of a disaster where everyone panicked.
I’m happy that we are seeing the story on the Morning Joe show after a long gap. It seems like it’s only on the show now because the good news is starting to show up, and it was too hard when the news was only bad. Stuff we learned when Iraq stopped getting covered in 2005.
If you’re serious, we need to get an environmental expert on the show who is willing to talk about the toxicity of the dispersants, who is willing to talk about the real fallout, willing to show the computer predictions of 15 years of oil flows. We need someone who can explain, like you got on PBS yesterday, that all of the animals that live in oceans drop down to the line of perpetual darkness to feed: whales, turtles, dolphins, fish, and that is likely where they will find a blinding pool of oil that no one has the courage to enumerate.
Can you find that courage, or are we just here to try and put a fake wrap on this story which will be with us like a generational plague? Mika seems really involved, but honestly, she appears to be an unwitting agent of distraction by finding her focus on the smaller parts of the story to the complete absence of the 150 million barrel guerrilla in the room, and to the complete absence of the 25 billion barrel apocalypse one geological anomaly away from replacing it as our nation’s disaster.
It seems like you’re making it harder than it already is, the question is why?
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Just an astounding conversation with Joe Scarborough and Andrew Ross Sorkin today where JS felt compelled to ask for 100% assurance of immediate containment of any spill prior to there being more drilling. Now far be it from me to feel like Scarborough needs a reality check, but in this case this was an absolutely egregious and selective personal optimization choice. Let’s list our components:
· Drove V8 forever
· All of his Florida and DC neighbors drove V8 forever
· Suddenly a “surprise” attack of an oil spill creates mea culpa
· Wants oil, but only with assurance
· Wants green overhaul of economy if no assurance is available
Now, this has all the hypocritical connotation of ‘clean coal’ or ‘natural gas’. We know the truth, that we are dependent on oil and have the world’s biggest consumer economy for it and are thus responsible not just for the consumption of, but logistics of transporting the 25% of the global oil supply.
In our haste to grow GDP quarter over quarter, we promote the recklessness that is BP’s environmental record in order to not have the supply of oil be any inhibition to our free enterprise system. The national economic security implications of the oil supply assure that the most profitable American companies are oil companies. It is known.
So with oil fueling the nation and its economy along with it, the pressure to grow the economy means eventually an anomaly will occur in that supply and we will have either a price catastrophe, security catastrophe, financial catastrophe or environmental catastrophe, wait, we’ve had all of these happen already.
And Mr. Scarborough loudly beckons for certainty? Quaint.
2) I understand that we on the left have empowered minor leaguers to run the country and are now facing a hefty mid term election task to keep these guys in place until they get the speed of the game. I understand that their inability to master their skill at national governance is being exploited by the right and the old guard left and that status quo continues to rule the day one maneuver at a time.
But are you really ready to send any part of this government back to the Iraq invading, Patriot en-Act-ing, Medicare “D” initiating, Cheney Energy Commission-ing, torture-ing, fear-baiting, mandate intolerance by law cronies that we all so desperately conspired to usher out over the last 40 months? You would give these guys the keys so that you could better afford Chinese socks from Wal-mart?
As you can see by some of my previous rants, I’m hard up to find who to trust. I trust myself, Elizabeth Warren, Nassim Taleb, Matt Taibbi, and get this: Joe Scarborough. I trust that Obama and Axelrod mean well but are currently outclassed and out framed in their governance. I don’t know anything about Rahm Emmanuel, and that’s a problem at this point.
But the list of people I don’t trust is long and growing. I learned not to trust most of them years ago, but every day another person makes the perp walk, not to jail, but to the microphone to lay out a doublespeak demonstration why they cannot support the middle class against the ruling elite for whatever hollow reason suits them that day, and today that was Tim Kaine (yikes!).
But I can tell you one thing, if Joe Barton is a committee chairmanship next year, it’s pitchfork time, if Boehner is in charge of anything other than the detention of the Breakfast Club, it’s pitchfork time.
You need to make an appropriately proportionate decision, immediately.
3) Thad Allen was not convincing in his reaction to Willie Geist’s well timed grenade about containment ship operations. The amount of unexplainable nonsense coming from the spill site is literally JFK-assassination-level unsavory. No one will ever convince the American people that there aren’t two stories, one told (sometimes) now, and one that will come out in 40 years talking about ‘the American people would’ve never accepted the real story’.
The earnings date, the Libya thing (that everyone knew already), the missing details on the containment, the press blockade, the scope of the disaster. These are all things that continue to amalgamate into a story of a disaster where everyone panicked.
I’m happy that we are seeing the story on the Morning Joe show after a long gap. It seems like it’s only on the show now because the good news is starting to show up, and it was too hard when the news was only bad. Stuff we learned when Iraq stopped getting covered in 2005.
If you’re serious, we need to get an environmental expert on the show who is willing to talk about the toxicity of the dispersants, who is willing to talk about the real fallout, willing to show the computer predictions of 15 years of oil flows. We need someone who can explain, like you got on PBS yesterday, that all of the animals that live in oceans drop down to the line of perpetual darkness to feed: whales, turtles, dolphins, fish, and that is likely where they will find a blinding pool of oil that no one has the courage to enumerate.
Can you find that courage, or are we just here to try and put a fake wrap on this story which will be with us like a generational plague? Mika seems really involved, but honestly, she appears to be an unwitting agent of distraction by finding her focus on the smaller parts of the story to the complete absence of the 150 million barrel guerrilla in the room, and to the complete absence of the 25 billion barrel apocalypse one geological anomaly away from replacing it as our nation’s disaster.
It seems like you’re making it harder than it already is, the question is why?
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Two Parties One Failure
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for March 4th, 2010
Observations:
1) I remember where I was when Mark Foley helped the Democratic party seem like they possessed the high ground, and oh how I long for those days. The entire institution has deteriorated from every angle and amongst all participants precipitously so since then. Today, I thought the fear based cartoons were the least bad of the day’s clown parade. I thought it was actually a worse day for Democrats, as they have ceded morality entirely in this news cycle.
I also found it ironic that it was an appearance day for Tim Kaines. This guy is in charge of the boiled down message for the Democratic party. What is a guy to do? Tell the truth? It certainly seems like his leadership is meant to evoke doublespeak as a mantra. A mantra that flows through the White House. And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because another simultaneous act was another Obama speech with that forcefulness that used to mean uniting lucidity. Now it seems like it is a tool with an on-off switch. I still feel like the Obama speech made logical single truth based sense, but combined with all of the stuff above, the recipe is for dilution and doublespeak.
2) On health care, I don’t see the hypocritical equivalence of the Obama speech and the McConnell reaction. It seems that McConnell is in fact just plain saying two different things out of convenience, because his point isn’t progress it’s status quo that he has no intention of replacing with any other issue specific progress, new day, new way of saying no.
Conversely, you could make the point that Obama is guilty of nothing more than strategic correction in the name of progress, knowing his product is the only hope for a move forward on the issue in our lifetime. This is a correction the American people would hope he would make, rather than accept failure at the brink citing parliamentary design flaws as his excuse.
My great hope isn’t to parade around this health bill as a final solution to our need for reform, but that once in place it will be the province of the Al Franken’s and Howard Dean’s of the world as the carrier they can improve over time. There is a laundry list of improvements that can occur with the bill. Those improvements can’t exist without something to ride on.
3) Tort reform is also part of the bill. It isn’t the meaningful tort reform that Joe Scarborough is asking for, but it’s a starting point. I fail to see the cost justification of all the air time devoted to tort reform, which gets really spirited questioning from panelist after panelist, but continues to be JS’s Sally Struthers moment.
When it doesn’t have any equitable merit in the argument, it must be an obstruction or delay tactic. Remember, the Republicans aren’t going to vote for the bill, but the starting point for tort reform was in there anyway. Any further conversation on the matter as it pertains to this bill needs to come with some level of voting participation, otherwise wait until your cycle, and thank the Democrats for getting you started.
That’s right, the Republicans would never initiate health care reform. And, they will never repeal the reform. But if the legislature of the United States becomes Republican this fall, thanks to this bill, the Republicans can employ all of their improvements to the cause. Tort reform, medicare fraud enforcement, repeal the anti trust exemption, state lines, portability, and any other encumbrances to a free open market for national private health coverage.
I sincerely wish that 90% of all money paid to a health care insurer went to health care as opposed to a debatable 70% currently. It’s debatable because it’s a cat and mouse figure with enforcement tantamount to mortgage fraud enforcement in 2005. There are two paths to achieve 90% flow through. One is by government mandate, opening up an enforcement branch of government that would not be self-sustaining and result in inferior results towards the 90% goal.
The other is competition. If you want the last laugh against insurers, make them look at the airline industry, or the cell phone industry. Tell them in a hyper competitive market with multiple producers, and information they cannot collude to adjust, profit (the bellwether of flow through) moves to zero.
The airline industry really has an envy issue with the credit card industry. Man those contract tricks that let the credit card firms bilk customers for fees and fines, if bag charges could be that way, they might get some guaranteed money above the competitive wasteland. But they can’t, because in their business, smart consumers simply boil fees into their ticket price, with some travel sites doing it for you, the result, competition on final price wins.
We now possess the level of information technology to create a personal health profile for our family, to possess our medical records digitally and to shop our health needs to the penny competitively. We can even enforce emergency room and ambulance pricing, by having an alternative ready beforehand as opposed to an unnegotiated bill afterwards.
The Republicans can get a lot of this done, if my party can’t, in their 2 or so years in power starting this fall, if the Democrats continue to Carter themselves like they did today.
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Observations:
1) I remember where I was when Mark Foley helped the Democratic party seem like they possessed the high ground, and oh how I long for those days. The entire institution has deteriorated from every angle and amongst all participants precipitously so since then. Today, I thought the fear based cartoons were the least bad of the day’s clown parade. I thought it was actually a worse day for Democrats, as they have ceded morality entirely in this news cycle.
I also found it ironic that it was an appearance day for Tim Kaines. This guy is in charge of the boiled down message for the Democratic party. What is a guy to do? Tell the truth? It certainly seems like his leadership is meant to evoke doublespeak as a mantra. A mantra that flows through the White House. And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because another simultaneous act was another Obama speech with that forcefulness that used to mean uniting lucidity. Now it seems like it is a tool with an on-off switch. I still feel like the Obama speech made logical single truth based sense, but combined with all of the stuff above, the recipe is for dilution and doublespeak.
2) On health care, I don’t see the hypocritical equivalence of the Obama speech and the McConnell reaction. It seems that McConnell is in fact just plain saying two different things out of convenience, because his point isn’t progress it’s status quo that he has no intention of replacing with any other issue specific progress, new day, new way of saying no.
Conversely, you could make the point that Obama is guilty of nothing more than strategic correction in the name of progress, knowing his product is the only hope for a move forward on the issue in our lifetime. This is a correction the American people would hope he would make, rather than accept failure at the brink citing parliamentary design flaws as his excuse.
My great hope isn’t to parade around this health bill as a final solution to our need for reform, but that once in place it will be the province of the Al Franken’s and Howard Dean’s of the world as the carrier they can improve over time. There is a laundry list of improvements that can occur with the bill. Those improvements can’t exist without something to ride on.
3) Tort reform is also part of the bill. It isn’t the meaningful tort reform that Joe Scarborough is asking for, but it’s a starting point. I fail to see the cost justification of all the air time devoted to tort reform, which gets really spirited questioning from panelist after panelist, but continues to be JS’s Sally Struthers moment.
When it doesn’t have any equitable merit in the argument, it must be an obstruction or delay tactic. Remember, the Republicans aren’t going to vote for the bill, but the starting point for tort reform was in there anyway. Any further conversation on the matter as it pertains to this bill needs to come with some level of voting participation, otherwise wait until your cycle, and thank the Democrats for getting you started.
That’s right, the Republicans would never initiate health care reform. And, they will never repeal the reform. But if the legislature of the United States becomes Republican this fall, thanks to this bill, the Republicans can employ all of their improvements to the cause. Tort reform, medicare fraud enforcement, repeal the anti trust exemption, state lines, portability, and any other encumbrances to a free open market for national private health coverage.
I sincerely wish that 90% of all money paid to a health care insurer went to health care as opposed to a debatable 70% currently. It’s debatable because it’s a cat and mouse figure with enforcement tantamount to mortgage fraud enforcement in 2005. There are two paths to achieve 90% flow through. One is by government mandate, opening up an enforcement branch of government that would not be self-sustaining and result in inferior results towards the 90% goal.
The other is competition. If you want the last laugh against insurers, make them look at the airline industry, or the cell phone industry. Tell them in a hyper competitive market with multiple producers, and information they cannot collude to adjust, profit (the bellwether of flow through) moves to zero.
The airline industry really has an envy issue with the credit card industry. Man those contract tricks that let the credit card firms bilk customers for fees and fines, if bag charges could be that way, they might get some guaranteed money above the competitive wasteland. But they can’t, because in their business, smart consumers simply boil fees into their ticket price, with some travel sites doing it for you, the result, competition on final price wins.
We now possess the level of information technology to create a personal health profile for our family, to possess our medical records digitally and to shop our health needs to the penny competitively. We can even enforce emergency room and ambulance pricing, by having an alternative ready beforehand as opposed to an unnegotiated bill afterwards.
The Republicans can get a lot of this done, if my party can’t, in their 2 or so years in power starting this fall, if the Democrats continue to Carter themselves like they did today.
That’s all for today, see you Monday.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Man Up
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for February 17, 2010
Observations:
1) Today’s Morning Joe show was overbooked. The raw mechanics of what was on paper versus what came across was critically out of balance in that with all the ads that talked about Tim Kaine being on the show, when he was there, he was half of what the fractious audience needed to explain all the Democratic party dysfunction. It was no payoff to all of the buildup.
We are a mad electorate, and we have now loudly started to call for that man’s resignation. To finally get him on and to have him get away with being a statistical apologist for about 2 minutes and get only one question from Bob Woodward, and regrets from Sam Stein, is to give him sanctuary rather than shine a light on a huge issue.
The one questions from Bob Woodward said so much. “Sir, do you and the President talk?”. Wow.
2) So, yea, tough day for me in all the days travels, but I still got to be part of that glorious moment of Chris Dodd being on the show (on the same day as Tim Kaines), and saying with a straight face that filibuster isn’t the problem, it’s the transportation curve allowing Congress to no longer function like a boarding school that is the ill of the legislative branch. I’m sorry but that is the most excuse driven, cause and effect denial I have ever heard. It is also a golden ticket for Mr. Dodd to move to the next phase of his life, for he clearly displayed how he cannot be the path forward today.
Mr. Dodd might be a nice enough person, and his wife might have a point about the Countrywide scandal being an unfair bookmark on the guy's legacy. But that is really a cheap camouflage and someday someone will explain to his wife that the Countrywide situation is a convenient ‘explain away’ to cover other scandals far more distressing. What is happening here and in Iowa and in South Dakota, and on the other side of the aisle, is that a legion of Duke Cunninghams are choosing to get out or to have the world and the modern informational path congregate around the aggregated deals of their legislative lifetime, and see the rats.
3) But the real show was the Dr. Dean segment, where so much logic and order was placed upon the situation it was both infuriating and hopeful. Look, you had both the current and form DNC chairmen on one show. One guy came on late and all he could do was sound like a statistician anticipating a level of economic disarray, as if to say “here are all the reasons we should expect things to be bad”, but no solutions, and the other guy earlier in the day saying “the solution was right there”.
Today’s problems were solvable in 2009 but our administration was not man enough to accomplish them. And they will be much tougher to solve in 2010 because the odds will be further stacked against progress. If we complained bitterly about the effect of the 58th, 59th, and 60th vote in the Senate and how those three voting Senators were allowed to functionally change over half of the health care bill, can you imagine what our reaction will be if they are the 49th, 50th, and 51st vote? Maddening. If we look at Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman again in a 'pay the piper' way but at the crossroads of reconciliation, when we had it as an unused option and leverage in 2009, we will then cement on our psyche that we did this to ourselves through lack of certain leadership.
But the optimist is where we are on the calendar. Dr. Dean said what we have all said, so it might actually be true. We got the memo in January of 2010, Bill Clinton got the memo on Halloween of 1994. that 10 month gap might be the turnaround opportunity that saves us all. Mr. Obama is a different guy. He is taking hard shots across the bow of not just the Republican party but the dysfunction of Congress.
There is no doubt we are at a second genesis of this Presidency and thankfully so. If it is anything, it’s not too late, not because of the good break of the calendar, but because the Achilles heel of the Republican party is a hallow platform.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Observations:
1) Today’s Morning Joe show was overbooked. The raw mechanics of what was on paper versus what came across was critically out of balance in that with all the ads that talked about Tim Kaine being on the show, when he was there, he was half of what the fractious audience needed to explain all the Democratic party dysfunction. It was no payoff to all of the buildup.
We are a mad electorate, and we have now loudly started to call for that man’s resignation. To finally get him on and to have him get away with being a statistical apologist for about 2 minutes and get only one question from Bob Woodward, and regrets from Sam Stein, is to give him sanctuary rather than shine a light on a huge issue.
The one questions from Bob Woodward said so much. “Sir, do you and the President talk?”. Wow.
2) So, yea, tough day for me in all the days travels, but I still got to be part of that glorious moment of Chris Dodd being on the show (on the same day as Tim Kaines), and saying with a straight face that filibuster isn’t the problem, it’s the transportation curve allowing Congress to no longer function like a boarding school that is the ill of the legislative branch. I’m sorry but that is the most excuse driven, cause and effect denial I have ever heard. It is also a golden ticket for Mr. Dodd to move to the next phase of his life, for he clearly displayed how he cannot be the path forward today.
Mr. Dodd might be a nice enough person, and his wife might have a point about the Countrywide scandal being an unfair bookmark on the guy's legacy. But that is really a cheap camouflage and someday someone will explain to his wife that the Countrywide situation is a convenient ‘explain away’ to cover other scandals far more distressing. What is happening here and in Iowa and in South Dakota, and on the other side of the aisle, is that a legion of Duke Cunninghams are choosing to get out or to have the world and the modern informational path congregate around the aggregated deals of their legislative lifetime, and see the rats.
3) But the real show was the Dr. Dean segment, where so much logic and order was placed upon the situation it was both infuriating and hopeful. Look, you had both the current and form DNC chairmen on one show. One guy came on late and all he could do was sound like a statistician anticipating a level of economic disarray, as if to say “here are all the reasons we should expect things to be bad”, but no solutions, and the other guy earlier in the day saying “the solution was right there”.
Today’s problems were solvable in 2009 but our administration was not man enough to accomplish them. And they will be much tougher to solve in 2010 because the odds will be further stacked against progress. If we complained bitterly about the effect of the 58th, 59th, and 60th vote in the Senate and how those three voting Senators were allowed to functionally change over half of the health care bill, can you imagine what our reaction will be if they are the 49th, 50th, and 51st vote? Maddening. If we look at Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman again in a 'pay the piper' way but at the crossroads of reconciliation, when we had it as an unused option and leverage in 2009, we will then cement on our psyche that we did this to ourselves through lack of certain leadership.
But the optimist is where we are on the calendar. Dr. Dean said what we have all said, so it might actually be true. We got the memo in January of 2010, Bill Clinton got the memo on Halloween of 1994. that 10 month gap might be the turnaround opportunity that saves us all. Mr. Obama is a different guy. He is taking hard shots across the bow of not just the Republican party but the dysfunction of Congress.
There is no doubt we are at a second genesis of this Presidency and thankfully so. If it is anything, it’s not too late, not because of the good break of the calendar, but because the Achilles heel of the Republican party is a hallow platform.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
What We Learned Today is “That We Have A Broken Legislative Body That Will Cause The Country Problems For A Long Time”
The Morning Joe Rebuttal for January 28th, 2010
Observations:
1) That is a real quote above from Mort Zuckerman in the normally fluffy “What Did We Learn Today” segment of the show. When an absolute captain of industry is that depressed at the state of things, it has to be a front and center concern for all of us. Joe Scarborough claims that the rules of the legislative body prevent it from swinging wildly, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem. Paralysis seems to be the problem, the ‘broken’ in Mort’s statement.
Look at the Republicans during the state of the union address. They had all of the posture of an invading army just out of reach of the cannons. They had the confident look of ‘we will be in charge this time next year’. I am the first to admit that the claims of obstruction go both ways. But the motivations of those parallel actions are so vastly different that we have to take a second to understand them before we can digest what we’re seeing.
The Republicans are lockstep to a mantra of anti-big government. They obstruct because they feel like Democrats are giving away the store via new unfundable mandates and entitlements. Government run health care, government established pollution policy. They say let the free market take care of itself or you will inhibit business beyond it’s ability to grow the economy.
The Democrats when in a similar situation in 2004 made similarly desperate obstructions a daily occurrence and hissed at President Bush’s address. They felt the Bush administration had made calculated, disengenuious claims that took us into an unnecessary war, but that also the war and the prescription drug overhaul and the tax cuts and the actions by the EPA were all mechanisms to transfer power and wealth to a small elite segment of the private sector.
Halliburton was Dick Cheney’s first taste of real wealth in this world. He got that job because he was a Defense Secretary. Once installed as a CEO there, he was an interested party in their well being forever. The magnitude of their enrichment by the Iraq war is still not fully understood. The fact that they profited to a far greater extent because Cheney and Rumsfeld did such a lousy job prosecuting the first 90 days of post invasion occupation has never really been examined as a potential strategy for the greatest war profiteering scheme in human history.
Yea, Democrats were obstructing in congress in 2004. this has nothing to do with the size of government. Yea the Republicans are bent on a zero outcome for 2010, until they think they can regain power and possibly move the 2012 presidential election towards Mitt Romney. This also has nothing to do with the size of government. Ladies and gentlemen, the ‘broken’ in Mort Zuckerman’s statement is that the two parties are on either side of the transfer of wealth issue, and that sneering, arms crossed group of 41 Senators and 178 Congressmen will have a tough time explaining why a smaller government will help you keep your money away from their clients Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Eli Lilly, CIGNA, Exxon Mobil, and Comcast. Do your job as a voter and make them explain that before you put them back in power.
2) Katrina Vanden Heuvel had a spot at the table when Tim Kaine was on the show today and really missed a great opportunity. It is so crucial, and was literally set up for her by a fantastic grenade by Mika when she asked the DNC chairman if he was sucking up in his state of the union analysis and made Kaine explain himself on a reality check basis.
We all want to know where Kaine was in the Massachusetts election. There he was, there was Katrina, and nothing. Everyone on the set at that time is responsible for this misstep, you’ve as a cast setback your journalistic goals, but Katrina, cmon!
Kaine should have spent the entire time squirming out of his role in the Massachusetts debacle and been asked to compare and contrast his contribution to the DNC chairmanship to Howard Dean’s, and then he should’ve been asked if he should still be getting paid for that job, or was he actually being paid by CIGNA. Kaine should literally be fighting for his life right now and I’m shocked by the softballs.
3) I am impressed by the Joe Scarborough stand on the Justice Alito issue. I’m not taking sides, I think the campaign finance issue is horrible, the Supreme Court decision makes it worse, but it does us no good to argue from a distorted platform. As an optimist, I feel like the Supreme Court may have paved the way to get campaign finance reformed fully and finally. Our sister nations don’t allow paid television advertising and strictly limit the nature of campaign funding. We have to look at the equation of campaign finance and conflict of interest. We can’t keep putting loophole creators in with doublespeak names claiming to be campaign finance reform. We also can’t violate free speech. We also can’t deny market and profit impact of elections.
Just like healthcare reform is a lot simpler than 2600 pages. Campaign finance reform is a lot simpler than McCain Feingold. When it gets complicated, you’re being wagged.
McCain Feingold could be best described as a finger in the dike. Eventually it and everything else that only halfway accomplishes reform will be eroded away fully by a lawsuit or a planted loophole. That concept is not limited to this singular issue. It extends fully across our broken legislative and executive branches of government.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow
Observations:
1) That is a real quote above from Mort Zuckerman in the normally fluffy “What Did We Learn Today” segment of the show. When an absolute captain of industry is that depressed at the state of things, it has to be a front and center concern for all of us. Joe Scarborough claims that the rules of the legislative body prevent it from swinging wildly, but that doesn’t seem to be the problem. Paralysis seems to be the problem, the ‘broken’ in Mort’s statement.
Look at the Republicans during the state of the union address. They had all of the posture of an invading army just out of reach of the cannons. They had the confident look of ‘we will be in charge this time next year’. I am the first to admit that the claims of obstruction go both ways. But the motivations of those parallel actions are so vastly different that we have to take a second to understand them before we can digest what we’re seeing.
The Republicans are lockstep to a mantra of anti-big government. They obstruct because they feel like Democrats are giving away the store via new unfundable mandates and entitlements. Government run health care, government established pollution policy. They say let the free market take care of itself or you will inhibit business beyond it’s ability to grow the economy.
The Democrats when in a similar situation in 2004 made similarly desperate obstructions a daily occurrence and hissed at President Bush’s address. They felt the Bush administration had made calculated, disengenuious claims that took us into an unnecessary war, but that also the war and the prescription drug overhaul and the tax cuts and the actions by the EPA were all mechanisms to transfer power and wealth to a small elite segment of the private sector.
Halliburton was Dick Cheney’s first taste of real wealth in this world. He got that job because he was a Defense Secretary. Once installed as a CEO there, he was an interested party in their well being forever. The magnitude of their enrichment by the Iraq war is still not fully understood. The fact that they profited to a far greater extent because Cheney and Rumsfeld did such a lousy job prosecuting the first 90 days of post invasion occupation has never really been examined as a potential strategy for the greatest war profiteering scheme in human history.
Yea, Democrats were obstructing in congress in 2004. this has nothing to do with the size of government. Yea the Republicans are bent on a zero outcome for 2010, until they think they can regain power and possibly move the 2012 presidential election towards Mitt Romney. This also has nothing to do with the size of government. Ladies and gentlemen, the ‘broken’ in Mort Zuckerman’s statement is that the two parties are on either side of the transfer of wealth issue, and that sneering, arms crossed group of 41 Senators and 178 Congressmen will have a tough time explaining why a smaller government will help you keep your money away from their clients Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, Eli Lilly, CIGNA, Exxon Mobil, and Comcast. Do your job as a voter and make them explain that before you put them back in power.
2) Katrina Vanden Heuvel had a spot at the table when Tim Kaine was on the show today and really missed a great opportunity. It is so crucial, and was literally set up for her by a fantastic grenade by Mika when she asked the DNC chairman if he was sucking up in his state of the union analysis and made Kaine explain himself on a reality check basis.
We all want to know where Kaine was in the Massachusetts election. There he was, there was Katrina, and nothing. Everyone on the set at that time is responsible for this misstep, you’ve as a cast setback your journalistic goals, but Katrina, cmon!
Kaine should have spent the entire time squirming out of his role in the Massachusetts debacle and been asked to compare and contrast his contribution to the DNC chairmanship to Howard Dean’s, and then he should’ve been asked if he should still be getting paid for that job, or was he actually being paid by CIGNA. Kaine should literally be fighting for his life right now and I’m shocked by the softballs.
3) I am impressed by the Joe Scarborough stand on the Justice Alito issue. I’m not taking sides, I think the campaign finance issue is horrible, the Supreme Court decision makes it worse, but it does us no good to argue from a distorted platform. As an optimist, I feel like the Supreme Court may have paved the way to get campaign finance reformed fully and finally. Our sister nations don’t allow paid television advertising and strictly limit the nature of campaign funding. We have to look at the equation of campaign finance and conflict of interest. We can’t keep putting loophole creators in with doublespeak names claiming to be campaign finance reform. We also can’t violate free speech. We also can’t deny market and profit impact of elections.
Just like healthcare reform is a lot simpler than 2600 pages. Campaign finance reform is a lot simpler than McCain Feingold. When it gets complicated, you’re being wagged.
McCain Feingold could be best described as a finger in the dike. Eventually it and everything else that only halfway accomplishes reform will be eroded away fully by a lawsuit or a planted loophole. That concept is not limited to this singular issue. It extends fully across our broken legislative and executive branches of government.
That’s all for today, see you tomorrow
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