Morning Joe 3/19/2012 -- Prickly Rick Santorum shows his arse

Even when Morning Joe hosts were trying to help Santorum get exposure and explain why he's not going to use government power to forcefully implement his religious principles, Prickly Rick turned on them. Having Santorum on right before Illinois was a big favor in itself, but when Scarborough gave Santorum a softball question regarding the birth control issue and the Catholic reaction, Santorum basically accused Scarborough of trying to frame Santorum as a religious fanatic. Scarborough was taken aback and didn't really know how to respond, so he sent a clear signal by bragging on Prickly Rick's ability to come from 2% to be a major challenger. Prickly Rick accepted that unqualified praise, I think -- he smiled, anyway.

You know, there are a lot of people in media, like Scarborough, who are biting their lips as they boost Santorum in order to suppress Romney. If it ever works and Santorum is the nominee, these media wolves will eat the flesh from Santorum's bones.

Earlier in the program, after the appropriate daily dissing of Romney, the Morning Joe crew discussed Afghanistan, and I give Scarborough credit for being clear on this issue. I have admired Scarborough's consistent position of leaving Afghanistan. Like I've said, though, the test is whether a person believes that mideast/foreign intervention in general has failed and will always fail -- I say it will, but I'm not sure that all those who now see the futility of Afghanistan will apply that principle of non-intervention to other countries and regions. If we don't apply a general doctrine of non-intervention, the problem is that we'll start another Afghanistan in another country when enough interventionists in DC think this time it's the right thing to do. It's how we always get bogged down-- this time will be different -- this is the "good" war -- this is for the "innocent" citizens.

Getting back to Prickly Rick, it was humorous this morning watching Scarborough hold back when Santorum attacked Scarborough for doing Santorum a favor. Andrea Mitchell, Chuck Todd and the others seems baffled also. Yes, if Santorum becomes the nominee, he better watch out, because he ain't seen nuthin' yet.

Meet the Press 3/18/2012 -- Non-interventionism

I understand that no one wants to admit that libertarians have been right on foreign policy, but at least the conversation is taking place about leaving Afghanistan.

David Gregory interviewed John McCain this morning on Meet the Press, and it was striking how out of place McCain appeared with his interventionist position. McCain would have the US keep a presence in Afghanistan permamnently through a military base. McCain would have the US leading an effort against the Assad government in Syria, leading to more pressure on Iran, which McCain would bomb if Iran didn't surrender and fall before the US pressure.

The American people knew what they were doing when they rejected McCain -- if only they had rejected Obama, too. Staying in Afghanistan, leading an attack on Syria and escalating the tensions with Iran all make up the absolute wrong direction for our country. Not only should we stop intervening because the mideast countries should handle their own affairs, but, also, because we're broke -- we can't afford to be the Guiding Light of the Universe. The more we intervene in the mideast, the more the countries of that region will work against us and deceive us and use us and eventually break us.

The round table with Wes Moore, Bob Woodward, and a few others held basically the same conversation, except they concentrated only on the symptomatic problem in Afghanistan. The fundamental problem is a doctrine of interventionism -- this has to change. The roundtable members weren't clear, but they all appeared to accept the futility of continuing what we're doing. At one point there was implications made that a draft would make long term war more fair by investing more people in the wars. A draft would be a great leap from soft tyranny to hard tyranny, and it would only give the State more fodder to conduct wars. The idea is that the rich and powerful would be less eager to go to war, but the result would be that some people receive favors, while many are ordered like slaves to sacrifice their lives for the State.

Up with Chris Hayes 3/17/2012 -- Ezra Klein's form of propaganda

Chris Hayes was missing this morning, and Ezra Klein substituted for Hayes. Klein is a clever partisan hack, but his propaganda doesn't hold up well against smart grownups who know the issues. I've seen Klein become prickly as a guest on other shows when his clever partisan tricks don't work against someone armed with facts and the intellectual power to make Klein look silly.

The panel started out discussing Afghanistan and the history of war strategy in that country, with Spencer Ackerson and Elise Jordan leading the conversation. Surge or no surge, concentrating on al Qaeda or the Taliban, focusing on inner cities are cities on the Pakistan border, the real issue is that we should never have spent 10 years in Afghanistan, and we should leave right away. Until we raise the conversation to the level of inteventionism versus non-interventionism, all this smart insider talk about the wars is nothing but chatter which avoids the fundamental problem -- out role as police in  international affairs. The idea that we're still trying to prevent another 9/11 is ridiculous.

Next, Klein talked about his recent NYT's article regarding the failure of presidential speeches to influence policies or inspire the public to embrace a particular vision. This is Klein's contribution to the narrative that congress has blocked progress and a president can only do so much. Of, course, media have prepared the public to associate obstacles in congress with Republicans.

The Left has it set up where they can acknowledge some of the Right's complaints, but they claim the Right is using legitimate problems to attack women and Hispanics, and, thus, they are running off independents. Of course, to win, Obama needs women, Hispanics and independents, but it's just coincidental that these are the groups Republicans are attacking. Strange, isn't it?

At least no one was hurt by dangerous ideas being flung about -- there were no dangerous ideas, just boring technocratic management of perceptions in order to convince people that voting for Republicans will be a blow against women, minorities and clear headed independents.

Morning Joe 3/16/2012 -- MSNBC Super Pacs

Morning Joe is a MSNBC Super Pac for Obama, as is Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O'Donnell, Martin Bashir, Melissa Harris Perry and Al Sharpton. Did I leave anyone out? These media Super Pacs constantly campaign for Obama and against Republicans.

This morning the Mornig Joe Super Pac commercial for Obama was done by John Meacham, Mika, Barnicle, David Gregory, Tavis Smiley, Lawrence O'Donnell and a few other Leftists. Scarborough is still absent, and Mika still looks like she's pissed at the world. Mika gave Barnicle a hard time for being a slob. Barnicle dressed almost as badly as Scarborough dresses when  he's on.

There was nothing much of interest on the show -- they simply talked about Biden's attack speeches, how Republicans are flat earthers, how Obama is attacking the whole Republican field, and how Paul Ryan's new video is depressing and misguided as far as solutions go. To boil it down -- Republicans still bad, Obama still great.

They talked for a minute with Richard Engel about Afghanistan -- there is still no broad protest in Afghanistan over the soldier killing innocent Afghans, but there is a lot of talk about getting out of Afghanistan. I hope this expands further than just getting out of Afghanistan -- I hope we begin talking about non-interventionism as foreign policy.

Go, Obama, go! Sock it 'em, sock it 'em! Go, Obama, go!

Morning Joe 3/13/2012 -- Good God, Y'all

On Morning Joe today they started off with news of polls showing Obama's approval ratings have sunk 9 percentage points. Kudos to Willie Geist for telling Ed Rendel, who wanted to dismiss the polls, that they made a big deal when Obama's approval ratings went up, so now they should talk about the numbers going down, but, still the general consensus in the end was that Obama is being blamed for things he has no control over, as if when he received praise and high ratings he deserved it. Amazing. These people are partisan animals through and through. Alex Wagner, Mike Barnicle, Ed Rendel, and even SE Cupp, basically dismissed the low approval numbers, although when they've been high, everyone coming through the Morning Joe set, practically, has glowed with pride that their guy is doing so well. I mean, afterall, he shot bin Laden in the eye and turned around the worst economy in, like, forever.

The panel talked some about Afghanistan and the shooting of innocent Afghans by a US soldier. No one wants to admit it yet, but Ron Paul has been right all along -- we should not intervene in the affairs of other nations, even those we think of as enemies. If a country has not attacked us, then we shouldn't be waging war. You can respond by saying Afghanistan harbored the terrorist who excecuted 9/11, but that was in 2001, and al Qaeda has been crushed in Afghanistan. What we've done for over ten years is intervene and attempt to change Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some hawk got on Fox yesterday and said that we have to stay to train the Afghan troops and prevent the Taliban from taking over -- the Taliban? After 10 years? What will be different in 5 years? 10 more years? 20 more years? Nothing. It's time to go, and we need to develope a doctrine of non-intervention to avoid these slogs in the future. It's criminal to ask our troops to place themselves at risk and die for what we have in Afghanistan.

Leaving Afghanistan is one area of concern which I'm in agreement with most of the Morning Joe semi-regulars, but they haven't yet embraced non-interventionism, which means that if we continue intervening, thinking the next time will be different, then we've learned nothing.

Of course, the Lefists on Morning Joe had to play with Romney's words so that the image of Romney as an out-of-touch, phony, northern, rich bastard is kept alive. The media could parse every word Obama says every day and find sentences or excerpts to twist and make fun of -- Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and David Lettermen could pick up on the twisted words and make jokes every night -- but they don't. They single out Romney, and sometimes another Republican candidate, but they don't dissect Obama's words in an attempt to destroy him. Liberal media sources, which are just about all media sources, are  patsies for the Democratic Party, nothing more.