Morning Joe 10/16/2012 -- Uncovering a scandal is not politicizing

On Morning Joe a video clip was shown of Hillary Clinton taking responsibility for the tragedy in Benghazi. Surely Obama won't allow Clinton to take the hit. If this stands and Clinton isn't reprimanded by Obama, then we'll know it's just a political fix. Clinton asked everyone to not politicize this issue, but it's exactly what she's doing if she is allowed to take the blame with no consequences.

Obama should either come out and say that he is responsible, like John Heilemann suggested on the show this morning, or Clinton should be reprimanded. Either way, we should quickly get to the bottom and present findings. It amazes me that Rice, Clinton, Obama and others were blaming the Youtube film when it was known that there were no protests that led to the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and the other three Americans. The Obama administration must be hoping that they can create enough confusion and doubt to get past the re-election. The Morning Joe crew didn't dig any deeper than the surface, even when Robert Gibbs came on and started blaming Romney, because Romney criticized the President's response. It appears the tactic now is to ask media to not politicize the story -- in other words, just let it slide and the administration will look into it and get the facts. Media has shamelessly protected Obama by not vigorously pushing this story and demanding answers.

The Morning Joe crew showed polls that have Romney and Obama neck to neck, but Gibbs said the polls regarding women voters now liking Romney are all wrong, and that there is only one poll saying that. Scarborough presented a second poll showing a tie among women voters, but, strangely, no one asked Gibbs why he mistated the facts. Gibbs was allowed to present an Obama commercial.

They discussed the debate scheduled for tonight, and the consensus is that Obama will be better stylistically. Unless Obama presents something bold, he will fall further behind, because Romney will surely present his plans to allow the economy to grow. Obama is stuck with infrastructure, but building roads is not going to convince Americans that he has an answer. Building roads is a symptomatic solution to symptomatic problems. Americans are looking for fundamental solutions. Obama believes that government should take money away from successful industries to give to those in need. Obama believes that much more money should be spent on education. Obama believes that green energy is the future. What else does Obama believe? Americans aren't convinced that taking money from the rich is helpful unless maybe the money is used in ways that can be shown to create jobs and economic growth, so how does Obama make that case? It's not good enough to say the money will be used to save the jobs of government employees, because Americans don't see a bigger government as the solution.

Obama has to come out with a FDR plan to directly create good jobs, not just highway labor jobs. It will be interesting to see how Americans respond to such a stimulus effort. I don't know if the average American understands enough about economics to reject a large FDR-style stimulus, so Obama might go there and make the big move. It's the only thing he can do, because otherwise he'll have to talk about getting out of the way and allowing the private sector to grow the economy in its own ways.

Morning Joe 8/8/2012 -- Politics over honesty

I was going to skip commenting on Morning Joe again this morning, because most of it was the same election-centered drivel that ignores our most pressing problems, but then Robert Gibbs came on. Gibbs is representative of the complete dishonesty in DC. The political game has gained total prominence in the political class, including media, and honesty is hardly ever considered. To the Morning Joe crew's credit, Sam Stein, Mark Halperin, and even Mika, they are uncomfortable with the current election ads such as the one they discussed today that has a man implying that Romney is responsible for his, the guy in the commercial, wife dying of cancer in 2006 because Bain Capital closed the plant where the guy in the commercial worked in 2000, causing them to lose insurance. Stein stated that the facts don't line up with the commercial, that the man's wife had insurance and she died 6 years after the closing -- but, anyway, the insinuation that Romney is responsible is so over the top and slimy that anyone with a shred of honesty and decency would condemn the ad. Gibbs wouldn't condemn the ad.

That's the dirty dishonesty in this election campaign, but earlier Gibbs said something else that the Morning Joe Joe basically let slide, and it's because they don't know how to talk about these things. Scarborough, or Mika, asked Gibbs about the bad economy and what can Obama tell the nation that will make them want to vote for him. Gibbs said that when Obama came in office the economy was losing 800,000 a month and now they've created over 4 million jobs. No one challenged this. The economy goes through a business cycle mainly because of Fed manipulation of money supply and interest rates, thus we have a big boom in the economy followed by a big bust. Obama happened to come into office when businesses across America saw clearly the recession and drastically trimmed the workforce, so one month about 750,000 workers were let go. This is what happens in a recession -- businesses usually act around the same time trimming back to remain competitive. There is no situation except complete economic collapse in which we could expect the loss of 750,000 jobs a month for an extended period.

Companies shed workers at the same time, and Obama came into office around that time -- there's no connection between the two. Obama didn't cause the loss of jobs. As I said, Fed interventions, coupled with cooperative government interventions, created incentives for investment to flow into housing, creating a boom, then a bust when owners discovered their inflated property prices were an illusion. After companies shed the bulk of workers who were no longer considered productive in a recession, the number of jobs lost naturally went down, and soon there was a monthly increase in jobs as companies gradually hired back. In past recessions, companies have hired back in a recession at much greater rate of increase. What we have seen, the 4 million or so mentioned by Gibbs, is anemic and doesn't keep up with population growth and retirement. Gibbs made it sound as if Obama's policies turned around job losses of 800,000 a month and started adding jobs. It's much more likely, if we can believe the people doing the hiring and firing moreso than Gibbs, a political monkey, that Obama's policies and proposed plans have caused the anemic job gains that don't keep up with population growth and retirement. No one on Morning Joe called Gibbs on this meme that has been repeated over and over and over by other political monkeys supporting Obama -- no one in the MSM makes this case against the claims of operatives like Gibbs.

Gibbs was given a hard time by the Morning Joe crew regarding his punkish, weaselly refusal to condemn the over the top sliminess of the ad accusing Romney of killing a man's wife, so the MJ crew is at least standing up against the worst forms of dishonesty. Stein was courageous and tough in his stand -- I was impressed.

Meet the Press 8/21/2011 -- Stimulus, and more stimulus

Savannah Guthrie substituted for David Gregory this morning on Meet the Press, and she started out interviewing Robert Gibbs and Mitch Daniels. Guthrie did a fairly good job interviewing Gibbs, but the question is why have on a low-value guest like Gibbs, especially during a time when viewers are looking for objective, smart political analysis. Gibbs is a political hack and Obama flunky, and his opinions and spin are useless to the national political debate. Gibbs answered every criticism of Obama by denying what was brought up is a problem and saying that Obama outlines ideas every day of his presidency, Obama concentrates on jobs everyday of his presidency and Obama has offered a plan, it's just those damn obstructionist Republicans and headwinds that put a crink in the recovery Obama started from an economic point which was the worst in our history. I say Gibbs is a low-value guest because he offers nothing but regurgitated Obama-excuses and propaganda. The producers of Meet the Press have to know that Gibbs is going to cheerlead for Obama and that Guthrie is not going to respond in the only way appropriate -- Bullshit!

The Mitch Daniels interview was better in that Daniels is somewhat more objective than Gibbs, but we learned nothing new -- Daniels did analyze the current economic situation in smart fashion by alluding to the systemic changes needed in government -- tax and regulatory reform.

The roundtable was pretty predictable, also, with Peggy Noonan, Harold Ford, E.J. Dionne and Maria Bartiroma discussing the Republican field and Obama's performance so far. But to take a President-centric approach to our problems is poor analysis. Presidents can only do so much in this statist system which is set on automatic spending on an out of control welfare state, plus, no one talked about our mideast entanglements. Dionne, of course, wants the President to stimulate, stimulate and then stimulate some more -- he, like most liberals and progressives, believe that demand is our problem, and if you just give people enough money to spend, things will get better. As Bartiroma and Noonan, and even Harold Ford, pointed out, businesses are uncertain of the tax and regulatory future.

Businesses are not going to expand on short term tweaks to the economy, and new businesses will not arise on short-term stimulus and temporary demand. Someone considering a business start-up is not going to pull the trigger because Obama has stimulated demand through 2012 -- existing businesses are not going to expand and hire on temporary demand that fades when the stimulus stops.

Businesses will take a risk if they know their costs and are reasonably confident that government will not tax and regulate them out of business in a few years.

Of course, there was the obligatory denigration of current Republican candidates, but it's way too early for the 2012 elections to take up a full program when America faces a debt problem, a global economic crisis, entanglements in the mideast, high unemployment, a failing public education system and growing dissatisfaction with government in general, not just the present and temporary president. 

Morning Joe 6/16/2011 - Destroy Perry

Media is so predictable. On Morning Joe today Willie Geist, Mike Barnicle, Wes Moreland and Mark Halperin discussed why Ron Paul is ignored. Halperin talked about Paul as if he's in a third party candidate, saying that third party fringe candidates don't do well -- Paul is a Republican, Mark.

But they all decided that Paul can't win, so they'll talk about Bachmann who can't win because she's "interesting". This is media in 2011 covering politics. It's predictable, also, that Perry will be destroyed by media. Chris Matthews, on Hardball, said the media will spend their last dolar digging up dirt on Perry.

I'm not defending Perry -- I think he's a weak candidate when it comes to ideas. Paul is the candidate whom a sane media would listen to and find interesting, but the political world is not sane, so media will follow Perry and try to marginalize him quickly so Romney can be elevated until right before the elections, then they'll tear him down too. Obama's record will be defended. So predictable.

But as I said before, this year a New Media has influence, and the media/political experts will likely be confounded. All in all, especially Robert Gibb's propaganda spot, Morning Joe today was a bust.

The Professional Left?

I wrote last year that "real" liberals would do good to distinguish themselves from the far left and to resist the progressive agenda. Any person who claims to be liberal cannot in good conscience support the progressive agenda. But most liberals in government did support the liberal agenda, and two major pieces of legislation passed which will change America in ways many of us believe will be detrimental. The liberals, the progressives in congress and the administration wanted to do more and would have passed cap and trade is there hadn't been so much pressure from the public to stop the sweeping legislation. This is an important point to understand as we see reports of Robert Gibbs criticizing the Profession Left, and as we hear reports that Obama is really a centrist -- Obama and liberals in congress might be political animals who will feint to the center for mid-term elections, but there is no evidence that the liberals are resisting the progrressives.

There's much evidence that liberals have enabled the progressive agenda, and if the Democrats maintain power after the mid-term election, and if Obama is re-elected, all indicatons point to the Democrats going full-speed to implement every last aspect of the progressive agenda. Just because the politicians think they have to look like centrists around election time doesn't mean that the Democrat Party has reformd itself and is turning on its leftist base.