Morning Joe 8/8/2011 -- It's the Tea Party's fault

On Morning Joe today the crew started out reporting on the loss of 30 US soldiers in Afghanistan and calling for an end to war. Joe and Mika also brought up that the media is not covering the Afghanistan War in a way that shows the underlying problems and futility of trying to "stabilize" a country that will never be stable -- our country is not stable -- no country is stable -- stability and security in reality are pretty words that mean nothing. There is no way we can assure stability in Afghanistan, now, in 10 years, 50 years or a thousand years. The Afghanistan War is now a political situation in which our leaders are placing young men and women in dangerous situations just because the leaders don't have the courage to stop the war. This is criminal, yet the media is basically silent. All the wars in the Mideast should be front and center in the national debates going toward 2012. It's time to bring all our troops home.

Next, the Morning Joe gang covered the S&P downgrade which started with Steve Ratner and Harold Ford and Mark Halperin and Mika blaming the Tea Party for the downgrade. I warned this was going to happen. Later, Ed Rendel came on the show and helped Joe Scarborough add some perspctive by spreading the blame for the downgrade to the President and congress. Pat Buchanan stated that it is entirely Obama's fault because he hasn't led. It didn't take them long to get around to bipartisan agreement on infrastructure and long term entitlement reforms. The Lefties on the show stated that Obama had agreed to deal with entitlements, but had no specifics when asked by Scarborough. That's because Obama never gave any specifics. Buchanan said that Obama could offer specific, significant entitlement reforms, and then he could get Tea Party reps to go along with closing loopholes and lowering tax rates.

The problem is as Scarborough brought up -- the Democrats do not want to significantly reform entitlements because they hope to use the issue of "cutting" entitlements against the Republicans in 2012 by bringing up Paul Ryan's plan. Democrats have said they will not touch Medicare and SS, over and over. And when the 2012 Presidential debates start, and the Republican candidate is pounded on Ryan's plan, and the Republican candidate states that Obama was prepared to deal entitlements, then Obama is going to be in a bind when asked what he specifically had in mind for the Grand Bargain. You can see the problems arising. Our statist system is set on collapse, and the only suggestions coming from the political class is more government spending and long term entitlement reform. We'll get the short term spending, but the long term reforms never come about somehow.

So, given all this, it was funny when the S&P guy came on and the Morning Joe crowd asked why S&P downgraded America.