Funny Thing

Once again the Orangeman is being vilified. He suggested that Joe Scarborough might have murdered his female intern back in 2001. Funny thing ... when Scarborough was a Republican ... pre-Mika-ing ... it was Michael Moore who was suggesting this very same possibility ... see: Daily Kos Story. Everything is red or blue politics these days ... no?

Afterward ... see also: Don Imus Interview.

Famous Chameleons

Joe Scarborough

Ariana Huffington

Nicole Wallace

Headlines

Mueller charges 13 Russians with 2016 election 'information warfare'

Mueller 'targets' Russia, Trump team 'unwitting'

Sales of bulletproof backpacks soar ...

Merkel says Germany 'deplores' Brexit at meet with [PM] May

FBI failed to follow up on Florida shooting suspect tip in January

NO OBSTRUCTION: Rosenstein holds a presser essentially kills probe into Trump-Russia collusion

Trump cleared? Indictment says Russians worked with 'unwitting' participants ...

Evolution of Joe Scarborough -- from gun nut to gun grabber

Mitt Romney announces run for U.S. Senate in Utah

Keith Ellison in full panic mode after getting caught meeting with Louis Farrakhan

ICE arrests 212 illegals, targets 122 businesses in LA sweep ...

Lee Smith: Everything media accuses Trump of doing with Russia, Obama actually did

Topsy Turvy

Al Gore now says that all our extremely frigid weather is all because of global warming ... see: Climate Depot Story. Joe Scarborough is rolling his eyes and foaming at the mouth as he declares President Trump to be crazy. Kim Jong-un is making nice-nice with South Korea suggesting that the North might take part in the upcoming Winter Olympics there. California Governor Jerry Brown, in the midst of the marajuana purple haze that is now enveloping his state, has established his own immigration laws. Meryl Streep had no idea that Harvey Weinstein was the perviest of pervs. He was "a god."

Is the world losing its collective mind? Is down now up and versa visa? Are we all now topsy turvy?

Question?

Joe Scarborough as a boy

How many times has Trump tweeted a shocker (been wire-tapped by Obama, politicized inteligence agencies, etc.), which has been widely ridiculed in the national media for same, and, in the end, been shown to be correct?

Proportionality

I absolutely had to watch Morning Joe this AM after President Trump's tweetings yesterday hitting back at Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough for their daily doses of vicious vitriol directed towards him ... see: NY Times Article.Without trying to defend Trump's puerile behavior that is not befitting a president, I was expecting and did watch a conga line of outrage by the invited guests on this show. If there is a stronger word for outrage then I would use it, but I can't think of one now.

However, I was also struck by the contrast between these highly emotional reactions and the almost matter-of-fact reactions by these same players to the baseball field shooting of a Republican Congressman, Steve Scalise, last month. Not that there wasn't condemnation, but I don't recall the foaming mouths and the shallow breathing like I saw this morning on MSNBC. What we are basically comparing here is an infantile insult of two rabid Trump haters versus the attempted mass murder of Republican Congressmen.

I guess, very simply, what I am looking for (and not finding) is a sense of proportionality in our media. And it is this lack of proportionality that permits Trump to keep up this compulsive behavior (which most of us would prefer him not doing.)

Afterward: What Morning Joe and the NYT focused on was that Trump's tweets were a sexist attack on Mika. Not quite true ... he also called Joe "Psycho". Now to see why this might be apt, Google "Why Joe Scarborough left Congress" ...

After Afterward: I find it curious that the media never seems to label attacks on conservative women (Ann Coulter, Kelluanne Conway, Sarah Palin) as "sexist" ...

Morning Joe

I have watched the MSNBC show "Morning Joe" for enough time now that I think I can reproduce the typical banter between its two co-hosts ... viz:

Joe Scarborough: Trump has tweeted out this morning that he is under investigation by the Special Counsel Mueller ...

Mika Brzezinski: We've known Trump for a long time.  I'm just saying ...you can't trust anything he says because he is a liar ...

Joe Scarborough: But his lawyer said yesterday that he was not under investigation!

Mika Brzezinski: Sigh! Both Trump and his lawyer are liars ... Trump lies about lying ...

Joe Scarborough: If I were still in Congress, I would look my red-neck constituents in the eyes and tell them the truth ... like I always did and that's why they elected me ...

Mika Brzezinski: You told the truth, Trump lies ...

Joe Scarborough: My voters could always tell when I tried anything funny or political ... My voters loved my honesty ...

Mika Brzezinski: Sigh! That's what I love about you Joe ... and Elizabeth Warren ... not like Trump's constant prevarication

Joe Scarborough: And that's what I love about you Mika ... among some other things ...

Mika Brzezinski: Sigh, I mean ... I really can't fathom why Trump keeps lying all the time ... even in his tweets ... especially ... he constantly lies in his tweets ...

Joe Scarborough: You look so sexy this morning. Let's throw the show to Mike Barnicle ...

Mika Brzezinski: You look very hunky too Joe ... OK, I'm game. Did I mention that Trump is a liar? ...

[Fade to a Planned Parenthood commercial] ...

With Both Barrels

There has been a dramatic change in the tenor of media coverage of this presidential race ... presumably because the "establishment" media now sees that Donald Trump has a shot at winning. Before, he was entertainment ... now things are for keeps.  I don't recall ever seeing a more evocative turn-around on television like has occurred on Morning Joe since the Republican convention. When Trump was fighting 16 other hopefuls for the Republican nomination, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were all sweetness and light toward Trump. They honey-talked him almost every morning ... mostly by phone  ... and clearly were playing him for higher ratings.

Now I almost can't watch these two harpies anymore ... who find the most trivial  things to excoriate Trump with. Of course Trump knows the game that they are playing and won't appear on their show anymore ... which causes white spittle to form on their lips as they continually try to let him have it with both barrels. Can't they see the change in their own behavior ... and how hypocritical they appear? I guess that this is of no concern to them as their ambition overtakes any comity.

And of course, these two media mavens are not alone in trying to take Trump down. Even such Op-Ed  stalwarts as Maureen Dowd has taken fingers to keyboard to paint a grotesque hypothetical word picture of Trump after the election ... see: NY Times Op Ed. I can understand Ms. Dowd's displeasure ... but I can't fathom her vitriol ... nor that of many others.

Why is there such a uprising against Trump ... which, of course, means support for an even more distasteful and dangerous Hellary Clinton? I can only surmise that it is because Hellary still, with all her warts, represents the status quo. She is not going to give, like Trump, a voice to the voiceless in America. Trump, even more than Bernie Sanders, has come to champion the downtrodden middle class in this country. And this is a clear and present danger to the Washington elites. Too much could and probably would change ... not good. So the establishment is fighting back ...

With both barrels ...

Pillow Talk?

(This item reminds me of the Mary Matalin/James Carville surprisingly strange bedfellows.)

Are Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough a romantic item? Page Six, the gossip column of the New York Post seems to think so ... given that Mika recently got a quiet divorce and Joe was divorced three years ago ... see: New York Post Revelation.

Anyone who has watched the Morning Joe program on MSNBC over the years should have noticed that Joe's politics have been moving left and Mika's, right. Perhaps pillow talk has something to do with this melding of their political minds?

Income Inequality

In what industry do women earn much more money than men? Not surprisingly, it is the pornography industry ... see: Daily Mail Story. I suppose this has something to do with naked women having more commercial appeal than naked men. This article also points out that many of the actors in this medium, who perform as male homosexuals, are surprisingly heterosexuals. I have never ventured into this male-only cinema genre, but I have suspected that this is indeed the case with "gay" females ... not that there is anything wrong with that.

Can we also extrapolate this income differential into the high-fashion modeling business?  I suspect that this is also true. The top female model, Gisele Bundchen, certainly makes a pile more lucre than even her famous sports-star husband, Tom Brady ... see: ESPN Story. So, can we then say that income inequality is "relative?"

And there are at least 15 other industry sectors where women out-earn men ... see: Forbes Article. Can we now expect Mika Brzezinski to modify her periodic Morning Joe mouth-foaming rants against income inequality? I kinda doubt it ... for I suspect this has more to do with what Joe Scarborough earns next to what she makes.

Managing the News

I was saddened ... and Joe Scarborough was ranting on yesterday’s Morning Joe show … saying that the killing of 15 women and children by Israeli artillery was asinine … see: Huffington Post Story. Ban Ki-moon, the Secretary General of the U.N., said that attacking sleeping children was shameful … see: The Guardian Video. Even an Israeli military general was attempting to draw a moral equivalence … saying that the U.S. also killed many women and children when it shelled Fallujah during the Iraq war ... and Britain killed many more women and children when it fire-bombed Dresden during World War II.

However, independent of the horror of this tragic war, there are aspects of the news that we here in America are receiving that should be obvious … but we keep conveniently ignoring … and that is much of what we are hearing is a contrived fiction. The news is being shaded and even subverted by both sides of this conflict. But it does seem that Hamas is more aggressive at this game than Israel. I found the following post of the Powerline blog that showed me more of this subterfuge than one sees in most of our media: Powerline Blog Entry.  Here is a key excerpt:

Consider the case of Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati. On Tuesday, he tweeted that the deaths of Palestinian children on a playground caused by rocket fire were the result of a misfired Hamas rocket. “Misfired rocket killed children in Shati. Witness: militants rushed and cleared debris,” Barbati wrote: 

Significantly, Barbati tweeted this only after he had left Gaza. In the same tweet he wrote, “Out of Gaza far from Hamas retaliation.”

Please read this whole referenced blog entry above to see how closely Hamas manages the news coming out of Gaza. I think we must show a great deal of skepticism when we, including Joe Scarborough and Ban Ki-moon, jump to conclusions about what is actually happening in this current horrific conflict.

The Obama Doctrine

President Obama gave the graduation address at West Point yesterday and once again tried to enunciate the Obama Doctrine. And today on “Morning Joe" (MSNBC), Joe Scarborough asked his assembled lefties to say what this Doctrine actually was. None did a very good job defining it. But by carefully reading our fearless leader’s commencement address text, I think I might be able to codify this Doctrine. Here goes my elevator capsule:

America will never again send our armed forces into battle except under extreme duress and actual threat to our homeland. We will deal with any and all other foreign aggression which does not meet these criteria with “soft power” which is defined as moral suasion, diplomacy, and, if necessary, sanctions … but will never include the implicit or explicit threat to use our military might or atomic weapons. As a consequence the United States will allow our armed forces and armaments to depreciate to a level appropriate to this new foreign-policy stance.

Read the subtle and circuitous route through Obama’s commencement address at West Point (including that which lies between the lines) and see if you don’t concur with my above assessment … see: The New York Times' Transcript  In this speech, Obama does decry our slipping back into our pre-WW2 isolationism.  However, if my statement of the Obama Doctrine is accurate, that is exactly what we are doing ... and I've said this before, see: The World Map. I could be wrong, but I really don’t believe that this is the zeitgeist that now pervades America … despite our foreign policy mistakes under George W. Bush.

I honestly don't think that the American people are ready to step back and concede the rest of the world to the Dark Side.

Afterward: And apparently the New York Times editorial board somewhat agrees with my slant ... see: NY Times Editorial.

The Payoff

Joe Scarborough keeps asking the same question on his Morning Joe show.  How will Obama’s raising the tax rate on the upper 2% of income earners generate any significant amount of revenue?  Were this to happen … Warren Buffet won’t be paying any more taxes.  Michael Moore won’t be paying any more taxes. Harvey Weinstein won’t be paying any more taxes.  Jon Corzine won’t be paying any more taxes.  Hedge fund managers won’t be paying any more taxes.  Anyone who earns money from dividends or capital gains … or those who can afford a good tax attorney won’t be paying any more taxes under Obama’s scheme. 

Do you find it strange that these people are also the ones who have been the big fund raisers for Obama?  So Obama, by being so fiercely adamant in his fiscal-cliff solution, can let his plutocrat friends off the hook while, at the same time, appear to be appeasing the Wall-Street Occupiers.  The people who will be paying more taxes will be those schlemiels who earn $250,000 to $500,000 per year in ordinary income and don’t have any significant offsets.  They are the ones who will be taking in the shorts.  And they are the ones, as the small business owners, who are said to be the major job creators in the country.

On the other hand, how might Obama go after the real millionaires and billionaires?  He could limit total deductions and other income-tax offsets to something like $35,000 or $50,000 or $75,000 … just like what Mitt Romney had proposed in the Presidential debates … and like what the Republicans are currently offering in the fiscal-cliff discussions.  Under this methodology Warren Buffet, Michael Moore, Harvey Weinstein, Jon Corzine, hedge fund managers, and their ilk would be the ones taking in the shorts … instead of the small-business job creators.  And, using this methodology, raising $800 billion in taxes (or much more depending on the limit put on deductions) over ten years would be a piece of cake. 

Therefore, one could reasonably conclude that The Barry’s insistence on just raising taxes-rates on the 2%-ers is really, in truth, a sly payoff to his benefactors by our consummate demagogue-in-chief.

Postscripts:  Please don't assume that, by my not mentioning spending and entitlement cuts, I do not favor them.  I do.  I think they are a must and the ratio of government spending cuts to revenue additions should be at least 6:1.  Also don't infer from the above that I would like to increase the tax rates on dividends and capital gains.  I don't ... however I would be in favor of eliminating the "carried interest" tax loophole that hedge fund managers enjoy.  It is a distasteful  taxing gimmick and it would be a tragedy if this carried-interest tax avoidance loophole was the reason taxes went up on actual capital gains and dividends. 

Judas Goat

When processing plants want to slaughter sheep, they use a goat ... a "Judas goat" ... to lead them into the killing chamber.  They then let the goat escape but not the sheep.  Let me now draw my analogy.  MSNBC has a program starting at 6 AM called Morning Joe staring Joe Scarborough (and Mika Brzezinski) which has gotten quite popular.  Joe Scarborough is a former conservative Congressman from the panhandle region of Florida and has very often been an effective foil for the litany of lefties who are the mainstay of this show.

When Joe is away, the show is virtually unwatchable with its liberal demagoguery.  (Guests like Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Howard Dean and Charles Schumer make my skin crawl ... and recently, when Joe returned from a week off, he jokingly ask a smirking Mika what did they do with all the hammer and sickle banners.)  However, slowly, ever so slowly, Joe is being pulled away from his rock-ribbed conservative stances and too often now will start spouting off like James Carville.  He even recently has, without knowing enough of the evidence, accused and convicted George Zimmerman of manslaughter in the killing of Trayvon Martin.  Tsk, tsk. Joe, you really know better than this.

But what has upset me even more is that Joe did not defend Pat Buchanan when he was booted off the show last fall.  I don't think Scarborough necessarily had to resign over this black-listing of Buchanan, but he clearly turned his back on his compatriot -- one of the few intelligent conservative voices on his show.  Now, in order to hear a few of Joe's right-leaning repartees, viewers are now given quadruple doses of left-wing pap.  I'm beginning to get the feeling that we, as conservative sheep, are being led into that slaughter house called MSNBC by a Judas goat whose name is on the marquee.

Queuing Up

Here is a partial list of well-known Republicans (Rush Limbaugh would call them "Establishment Republicans") who are lining up to take their shots at Newt Gingrich:

Ann Coulter

Joe Scarborough (see: The Newt I Knew)

Eliot Abrams

Bob Tyrrell

Bob Dole

Tom DeLay

Matt Drudge

Mark Steyn

Chris Christie

Marco Rubio

Jonah Goldberg

If Gingrich loses in the Florida primary next Tuesday, it may be because of the rotten tomatoes that this group brought to the festivities.

The Emperor's New Clothes

Hans Christian Andersen tried to teach us about the pomposity of high political office thusly:

The emperor walked beneath the beautiful canopy in the procession, and all the people in the street and in their windows said, "Goodness, the emperor's new clothes are incomparable! What a beautiful train on his jacket. What a perfect fit!" No one wanted it to be noticed that he could see nothing, for then it would be said that he was unfit for his position or that he was stupid. None of the emperor's clothes had ever before received such praise.

"But he doesn't have anything on!" said a small child.

"Good Lord, let us hear the voice of an innocent child!" said the father, and whispered to another what the child had said.

"A small child said that he doesn't have anything on!"

Finally everyone was saying, "He doesn't have anything on!"

In my blog yesterday I mentioned how Mark Halperin had noted that The Barry had acted like "a dick" in his press conference the previous day.  After he had blurted this out, there was universal but short-lived mirth on the set of the Morning Joe show on MSNBC.  Mark Halperin effectively was Andersen's small child calling out our Emperor President for his haughtiness and hubris ... which few others have been willing to notice.  Quickly, however everyone was running around like their hair was on fire ... trying to bury this truism like a cat in a litter box.  Even Mr. Halperin ate a large piece of humble pie when he fully realized what was about to happen to him (and, of course, it did as he was subsequently indefinitely suspended.)  He repeatedly apologized.  Mika Brzezinski apologized.  Joe Scarborough apologized.  The show's producer apologized.  The make-up lady apologized.  The grip and best-boy apologized.

However, the truth will always shine through.  The Barry really is a dick ... even regaled in his new finery.

The X Factor

Male chromosomes are described as X-Y’s whereas female’s are X-X’s. The tides that are sweeping clean the political seashore have been variously described as the Tea Party Express or an anti-incumbency fervor or Palin’s picks. However, I have yet to hear any talking head attribute chromosomes as a major contributor to these surprising primary upsets, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Linda McMahon in Connecticut, Meg Whitman in California, etc., etc. And I strongly suspect that this gender-bending will carry over to the general elections in November. (Remember, you heard it here first.)

One only has to listen to talk radio for a few days to realize that the preponderance of emotional call-ins who decry what is happening in Washington are coming from women. Yes, many men are upset with what has transpired, myself included, but it seems to be the “Momma Grizzlies” that are the most distraught. If one has ever watched a wildlife movie in which the smaller female bear ferociously attacks the much larger male bear to protect her cubs, you will understand this phenomenon. Mothers seem incensed that Washington is besmirching the future prospects for their offspring. Interestingly, many of our erstwhile political pundits, Carl Rove and Joe Scarborough included, seem to be tone-deaf to this building symphonic crescendo. Therefore, if many of the above mentioned X-chromosomers win in November, Sarah Palin will have again shown her political adroitness by coining the term “Momma Grizzlies.”

The Ayatollah is a Neocon?

Zbigniew Brzezinski was on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” for about the twentieth time since his daughter Mika took over as co-host (with Joe Scarborough). As always, he opined mainly about world geopolitics concentrating on, or course, Iran. During this pedantic pontificating he labeled the Ayatollah (or, as Obama calls him, "Supreme Leader") and his henchmen as “Iranian neocons” … not just once but numerous times. This sly semantics of the left unfortunately went unchallenged by the former Republican Representative from Florida, Joe Scarborough, and, more understandingly, the rest of this show’s mostly left-leaning talking heads (including Boston's erstwhile plagiarist, Mike Barnicle). Now, if the MSNBCers can get away with this linguistic slight-of-hand once, they will surely try to drum this notion into the heads of the few thousand viewers that they draw to their other left-wing propaganda podia-ists – Chris Mathews, Rachel Maddow, and Keith Olbermann. I also predict that we will eventually see this smear hung on the neocons by network television, CNN, and most of the print media. Now, here are the things that an alert Joe Scarborough should have said the first time Zbigniew uttered this insidious affront:

- our neocons did not impose a religious agenda on the U.S.
- our neocons did not brutally repress political speech or civilian assembly
- our neocons were freely elected … not governing as a result of a political coup
- our neocons had no private army (such as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the Quds)
- our neocons did not censor the media nor exile foreign correspondents
- our neocons did not sponsor worldwide terrorist activity
- our neocons did not threaten to annihilate Israel (or even the Axis of Evil)
- as far as I know, our neocons did not murder their political enemies

Finally, one should always remember that Zbigniew Brzezinski was our National Security Advisor under Jimmy Carter … when we made such a dog’s breakfast out of our relations with Iran. He just might still have a hidden-agenda reason to deflect criticism from his own historic failings.