Posts Tagged ‘morning joe’

I’m listening to Obama’s Nobel speech…

Posted: December 10, 2009 by datechguy in Afghanistan war, internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…and so far the speech is first rate.

The acknowledgment of those who came before him, winning the prize due to decades of action and suffering, was and is very important. The call out to those who are actually doing peacemaking and are imprisoned for the cause of freedom (it would have been nice to say a few by name but I’ll take it).

He acknowledges the war and his involvement in deploying troops. He declares it a just war.

He then talks about the history of the 20th century and talks about the doctrine of Just war and makes it clear that the United States is justly proud of it’s actions.

He talks about “A few small men with outsized rage.” That is the best description of the terrorists we fight that I’ve heard. He says that you can not negotiate with Al Qaeda.

“To say that force is sometimes necessary is not cynicism”. Is this Actually Barack Obama talking?

He declares publicly that the peace of the latter half of the 20th century was directly purchased by American power and blood. This is a Nixon/China moment. They would have laughed at George Bush saying that even if it was true.

Whoever wrote this speech isn’t being paid enough, this is clearly the best speech I’ve ever heard him give.

Now he is going back to his normal stuff, he is about to hit Gitmo etc…

Ran outside to sand the walk before the wife leaves for work so missed it from that point where he says Wanting peace is not enough it make it happen.

The only applause he gets is when he hits Gitmo, the torture line is BS. this tells us more about this crowd then anything else.

I think he is going too long now, if he is smart he will cut is short here.

He is now talking about proliferation.

Those who care about their own security can’t ignore localized arms races.

He talks about the need to act rather than sit back concerning sanctions.

He talks about freedom of speech and religion and it’s necessity for peace.

He hits Burma and Zimbabwe and Iran by name holy shit he is sounding like an Actual president!

Update: The Wall Street Journal is liveblogging this speech.

He now gives Copenhagen a thumbs up and plugs climate change. Nonsense but not unexpected.

Hits the concept of “Holy War”, throws a bone to Islam by attacking the Crusades. He hasn’t read his Thomas Madden.

Clearly a first rate speech and a decent job. I think it was very much a Nixon China speech. On Morning Joe they point out that the European left will not like this speech.

Update 2: The NYT Take is here.

Talkleft describes the situation as a travesty of a Mockery, it’s true in my opinion he doesn’t deserve the prize but it’s a consolation that the socialist European left that gave him the prize had to listen to him tell them that their ideal world only exists thanks to American Power and Blood, that’s gotta leave a mark!

I guess this is sort of a non-traditional liveblog of President Obama Nobel Olympic Speech, I’d be interested if people think I should have done a more traditional one with timestamps and more direct quotes.

Update 3: Is it just me or could George Bush have given that speech with only minor alterations?

Update 4: I guess I’m in good company

Sarah Palin and President Obama don’t agree on much, but last year’s Republican vice presidential nominee just gave the president’s defense of “just wars” a thumbs up in an interview with USA TODAY. In fact, she said that the president’s address in Oslo, where he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize today, reminded her of what she wrote on the same subject in her hugely successful memoir, Going Rogue.

Smart woman that.

Compare and contrast…

Posted: December 2, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell on Sarah Palin to a 17 year old Palin supporter:

“Did you know that Sarah Palin supported the bailout?…So, Sarah Palin was for the bailout…She’s against the stimulus, but during the campaign, she was for the bailout, as was John McCain.”

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski this morning on Morning Joe concerning Joe Biden doing the network circuit supporting the president’s Afghanistan decision that he personally opposes:

“That is the job of a Vice President”

How ’bout that. The duties of a VP have changed in under two weeks!

Plenty of other people are covering the gruesome murders on the west coast…

Posted: November 30, 2009 by datechguy in elections, opinion/news
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Robert Stacy, Michelle and oh just look at memeorandum thread and start clicking if you want details and it is all over it.

What I have to say is indirect commentary, much less important than the actual act but very telling…

In the first hour or so of Morning Joe today Mika was simply giddy with the idea that Mike Huckabee said on camera that he will likely not run since he doesn’t have the support of the base, she snidely talked about him not passing the “purity test” of the GOP and stressed it as an insult.

At this point Joe and Willie brought up events in Seattle and the fact that the killer was released by Mike Huckabee’s and will become his Willie Horton Moment.

You should have seen Mika’s face, it twisted and changed as if someone had run over her puppy. However later in the show the subject of “purity tests” came up again without the Huckabee connection and she was herself again.

Although the blindsiding of Mika, famous for wanting to deal with “hard news” was funny the real story was the fact that Joe and Willie knew all about what was going on in Seattle and it wasn’t making the news, the Houston Chronicle headline was shown but no further discussion.

Was it due to the race of the subject? Was it because it was concerning a released felon? I think it is because it has no bearing on their media template or ability to hit conservatives in general. It can only hurt Huck and they perfer Huck after all he is very beatable, even by Obama.

Today they briefly mentioned ACORN wanting to change it’s name, the dumping of documents? Not a word.

This is really about the News selection, the people at ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN et/al they KNOW about these stories, (Charlie Gibson not withstanding) and they choose to pretend otherwise or are ordered by their bosses to do so.

They are some of the best of the media’s coffee clatch crowd but are still part of that crowd and want to stay there. There is only so far off the reservation you can go and still be welcome at the parties and get the attention for the shows. That is the tightrope that they choose to walk. Re-admittance to that crowd was Andrew Sullivan’s reward for his change, would he be a regular on Chris Matthews’ show without it?

That’s why Sarah Palin drives them all nuts, she believes what she believes and you can take it or leave it , same with Rush he believes what he believes and doesn’t care what others think about it. They refuse to let others define them. It is a threat to the entire world view of the media culture.

I think their Radio show is going to be interesting, what will they choose to cover?

Note as I’m finishing this post there is 30 min to go in the show and they have hinted they will touch the topic again. Lets see…

Update: Nope Joe didn’t cover it but other liberal outlets are. The Huffpo commentators in particular see Huck’s Christianity and are charging like bulls toward a red cloth.

Meanwhile the Washington post says what I just did:

In a new Washington Post poll, Palin beats other GOP leaders on two questions: who best represents the party’s core values, and who Republicans would vote for if the presidential nomination battle were held today. But she has particular appeal to the loyal followers of Limbaugh and Beck, two of the most popular conservative talk show hosts in the country.

As long as she is unafraid her foes will be.

They don’t call it “talking points memo” for nothing

Posted: November 30, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Speaking of “Talking Points”

Do our beliefs form the basis of our partisan and ideological affiliations? Or is it vice versa?

There’s been a lot of recent evidence not only that Republicans disproportionately disbelieve the evidence for man-made global warming but that their skepticism is growing. I think that trend is fairly classed under the general heading of Republican/conservative hostility to science. But the other point interests me no less.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that Mr. Marshall didn’t spend his thanksgiving in a cave somewhere either in a cave or somewhere neither of those phone network maps have coverage and did in fact hear that there is some new “global warming news” out there.

Don Surber states the obvious:

That is ironic because it is the left — not the right — that is ignoring the growing body of evidence that discredits the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Climategate revealed that data supporting this theory is corrupted by the political agenda and quest for government grants by proponents of anthropogenic global warming at Penn State and at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England.

Today I’m am over an 1:15 into Morning Joe and no mention, the media is doing it’s best to totally ignore this story in keeping with its niche market model. I presume that Marshall has decided to do the same. He should take a lesson from Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

In the law, the discovery of this sort of intentional document destruction would quite likely give rise to some form of “adverse inference instruction,” wherein the judge would instruct or encourage the jury to assume that the discarded evidence was harmful to the case of the party that destroyed it. I might be hesitant to apply this logic to the world of scientific inquiry were it not for the fact that the CRU scientists have demonstrated as little regard for honest adjudication of their position as your run-of-the-mill spoliator of evidence.

To be sure, the current head of the CRU was not in charge when the data were thrown away in the 1980s. Moreover, climate change was not such a heavily politicized issue in those days.

Still, Roger Pielke, the Colorado professor who asked for the records, is quite correct when he says that the CRU is basically insisting that we trust it, a demand that’s inconsistent with the scientific method for resolving debates.

One need not be a hard-core global warming skeptic to question whether we should alter the way we live in response to predictions based on findings that cannot be checked because the raw data was intentionally destroyed by the outfit that made the findings.

Ah but one apparently does need to be a person not wedded to the hard core left for their readership or customer base. When you don’t care about your credibility anything is possible.

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