I think Michael Steele likes coming on Morning Joe because I actually think its even more of a friendly environment for him than Fox News.  Remember, he might be RNC Chairmen but his own party doesn’t even really respect him.  Whereas Steele sees himself as the conservative answer to President Obama, the rest of his part just wants him to shit quietly in the corner and cut them a check from the RNC bank account whenever they want.  Truth is Michael Steele is a puppet.  Its actually quite sad because I truly believe he is an intelligent man and it pains me to watch him stoop to the level of making rap references and trying to “prove his blackness” by using cool slang words instead of just using his intelligence.  Well, let me amend that.  Steele uses his intelligence for one thing:  Ducking and dodging questions.  He did it before on Morning Joe where he, with the help of Joe Scarborough, completely ignored a valid point that Lawrence O’Donnell was making.  Well, this morning he did it again.  This time he blatantly ignored Donnie Deutsch’s point.

Donnie was pointing out that Harry Reid’s slavery comment wasn’t comparing slavery to Health Care reform but rather to the way opponents of ending slavery used the same idiotic “Its not the right time” logic that those opposed to Health Care Reform are now using.  I know Steele understands that, which is probably why he didn’t want to answer the question.  Steele trying to rally the troops behind the slavery comment is hilarious, especially how he changed his name to Tobe when Rush Limbaugh called him out for daring to speak against Limbaugh’s authority.  Steele can’t stand up against all the blatant and offensive things people in his own party say and do but when Harry Reid makes an analogy that is actually correct (albeit probably foolish considering the heat it was bound to bring) he’s all over it.  What a joke.  Steele also questioned Harry Reid’s leadership skills and abilities, and while I’m no Reid fan, I can’t help but notice that Reid is getting things done while Steele is putting out stupid things like “Patients Bill of Rights”, a Republican Litmus test and being told by his own party to stay out of policy debates.  Right.  You got them right where you want them Steele…with their boot on the back of your neck.  Good boy.

Yesterday morning Carl Bernstein had an EPIC rant about Sarah Palin.  To say he didn’t mince his words is an understatement.  As much as she rails against the media, Sarah Palin really doesn’t get hammered by the mainstream media that much.  When Palin talks about “the Media” giving her and her kids a hard time, she really means “bloggers and gossip magazines.”  You would think someone with a journalism degree, even if they did bounce around 4 – 5 schools, would know the difference between reputable news sources and bloggers in the basement of their houses (I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the monitor as I wrote that).  When you look at the actually MSM, you find that they are actually the ones that prop up this idiot and make it seems like she has political weight.  I’m floored anytime I hear someone like a Jonathan Capehart or an Andrea Mitchell suggest that this idiot has “raw political talent” and is a “force in the Republican party” when she’s the same idiot that thought that being in close proximity to a few Siberian Eskimos gave her foreign policy experience.  Just because she can draw a crowd doesn’t mean she’s a good politician or that people are excited by her.  If that’s the case then we should nominate the cast of Flava of Love to cabinet positions.

Anyway, back to Carl Bernstein.  See, Carl Bernstein does what the media is too afraid to do because none of them want to be labeled as being “sexist” or too hard on Palin.  Bernstein just calls it like it is:  She’s an idiot.  The video is great.  Pat tries to come to Palin’s rescue but you can here Bernstein and Capehart just laugh at his feeble attempt.

Two points real quick:

1. If 50% of the country thinks that torture techniques made this country safer, then that means the other 50% either isn’t sure or doesn’t think so. 50% isn’t a gotdamn minority and I need idiots like Joe Scarborough to stop touting that percentage like it means something. Also, didn’t the election of Obama prove that poll numbers mean shit? The day before the election some polls had the race tied and Obama ended up trouncing McCain by 7%.

2. As the other guest tried to point out (but was talked over and dismissed), comparing Dick Cheney speaking out to Al Gore is not even close to the same comparison. Al Gore disappeared off the face of the earth for a year and came back with a beard looking like Moses coming down off the mountaintop. When he did reappear, his focus was on the environment, not fearmongering everyone into believing they were going to die in a terrorist nuclear attack.

I said it before,I’ll say it again. As a candidate, President Barack Obama stated that he was going to close Gitmo, didn’t believe in torture and wouldn’t support it and would be changing the way the United States is viewed overseas. Now as President, he has the audacity to actually keep campaign promises and douchebags like Dick Cheney and Joe Scarborough are trying to claim he’s making the country unsafer and fear mongering about how unsafe they feel. Honestly…FUCK YOU. I don’t have to time nor the inclination to explain to these morons the ramifications of having this country support State sponsored torture. I mean for fucks sake think about what we’re talking about here. It’s not just torture. According to Cheney we need to torture, wiretap domestically without a warrant, suspend Habeas Corpus, reclassify individuals as ‘enemy combatants’, etc. If you can’t see how that is a gross misuse of governmental powers, you’re an idiot. Joe Scarborough will bitch about universal health care and the government taking over the banks…but he’ll turn a blind eye to the government torturing people. GTFOH.

When it comes to cable news morning shows, each of the three major networks have their own style and blend.  CNN for the most part is the responsible station that while they still make mistakes, are pretty fair and balanced, albeit boring.  Fox News is the class clowns of the News world and I honestly think that deep down inside even they don’t take themselves seriously.  MSNBC, while it has great evening programs, probably have the worse morning show.  Yes, its worse than Fox.  I can view Fox & Friends as entertainment and not to be taken seriously.  Morning Joe on MSNBC however is hosted by two idiots that think they have original thoughts when in actuality they are just a couple of idiots.  Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough are painful to watch in the morning.  But this morning it was particularly painful because the spawn of evil Sith Lord Darth Cheney (Liz Cheney) was on to defend her daddy’s decision to speak out against the current Administration’s stance on torture.

I knew it was going to be bad when Joe Scarborough, who wasn’t in studio, called in just to help defend the red herring arguments that Liz Cheney was using.  It’s like Scarborough has dog ears and republican bullshit is the whistle that only he can hear.  Here’s the illogical arguments that Liz Cheney and Joe Scarborough, along with Dick Cheney and a host of other republican morons, are using to defend torture:

1.  It’s not torture

This was the first argument used back when this topic came up when George Bush was still in office.  It’s not torture, its “harsh interrogation techniques.”  This has to be the most juvenile argument I’ve ever heard.  Its like when you were in the car with your sibling and you put your finger as close to their face as possible and when they said “stop touching me” you’d respond “I’m not touching you.”  Sure, compared to some ancient Medieval torture methods like the rack or removing someone’s internal organs one by one when they are still alive, waterboarding seems pretty tame.  But its still torture.  This is like when Whitney Houston was like “I’m too rich to do crack…I do cocaine…I’m not hooked on drugs.”  WTF?  This redefinition is nothing new for these fools, I’m just mad that news hosts like Mika and Joe let them get away with it.  Remember, these same people trying to redefine torture also later said “Well, even IF it was torture…the treatment of these terrorist prisoners isn’t covered under the Geneva Convention because they aren’t Prisoners of War but “enemy combatants”.  Are you kidding me?  That is absurd.

2.  It worked

The most recent claim now being spearheaded by Dick Cheney and his daughter (who Joe Scarborough is obviously infatuated with ) is that these methods worked and therefore we should continue them.  Since when did this become the issue?  Of course torture produces results.  You water board someone 183 times in a few months and they’re going to talk.  That’s not the issue.  The issue is, is torturing someone the morally right thing to do AND does publicly supporting it benefit us in the long run.  Think about it.  When there’s a serial rapist, the police aren’t allowed to take him into the interrogation room and waterboard him until he confesses.  Our laws don’t allow that.  It would be a lot easier for President Obama to get his policies through if he murdered his political opponents.  Again, I don’t see anyone asking Robert Gibbs when the President plans on getting rid of his Eric Cantor problem.  These things are things that happen in other countries though.  I did a story last week about a pregnant British woman that might face the firing squad in Laos, which hosts a really inhumane prison.  The British and some American groups are outraged.  Yet we allow Dick Cheney and hosts like Joe Scarborough to come on TV and say that because torture works, we should keep doing it.

Here’s the problem, in the short term torture gets your results.  But in the long run, the collateral damage you do far outweighs any benefit.  When your policy on handling prisoners goes around the Geneva Conventions and the policy is to torture, then you’ve made it difficult to make any kind of political solution to the terrorism problem.  Let’s not mince words here.  Waterboarding is torture.  Forcing someone to go through simulated drowning isn’t a harsh interrogation technique, it’s torture.  Plain and simple.  If ass clowns like Dick or Liz Cheney think that because it works we should do it, then I don’t see why they have such a problem calling it what it is.

And I’ll leave with this note.  If torture is such an effective technique, how come in places like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries that support torturing detainees, how come they still produce terrorists.  How come terrorists still plan attacks from these countries?  If torture is such an effective policy, wouldn’t there be zero crime in those countries?  Of course its foolish to come up with such conclusions…but its no more foolish and idiotic than the ones the former Vice President and his daughter are using.

T.I. Fans Being Irrational
Apparently T.I. goes to jail sometime this month to serve his 1 year for those weapons charges he was arrested for a while back.  You remember, this fool was arrested for having his bodyguard buy three machine guns and two silencers for him.  At the time of his arrest, I wrote a post about this that express my belief of how much of a dumb ass Clifford Harris was/is.  Well somehow he was able to avoid a 10 year sentence and get off with a 1 year sentence and probation.  There was a lot of speculation that he “talked” to police but he’s maintained that he didn’t.  I personally think that’s bullshit.  In the grand scheme of things T.I. is a nobody and no, I don’t see the prosecutors really knocking off 9 years just so T.I. could do some community service programs and educate the kids about gun violence.  But that’s beside the point.  T.I. is scheduled to go to prison on March 25^th.   Some of his diehard supporters don’t think that’s fair:

I feel he shouldnt go to prison for a year because he was facing 10 years and he got it dropped down to one year for all that the courts should have put him on probation

I feel lik he wuz jus protectin’ hisself ppl out there tryna KILL his azz -n- if anybody nu dat sombodi wuz comin’ 1V em’ dey would du tha same thing! Well, a smart mutha fer would ! N dats y I don’t trust nobodi cuz his own security set him up dumb azz fake azz bastard!!!!

First off reading those posts on a message board (click here for more of the insanity) made my head hurt.  I understand it’s the Internet, but gotdamn…Ebonics or whatever the hell you want to call that looks twice as bad as it sounds.  But let’s get into the meat of what they are trying to say.  T.I. shouldn’t go to prison because the prosecutor brought the years from 10 to 1, therefore he should have just let T.I. off completely.  Right, that makes sense.  Someone kills your daughter, pleads out to manslaughter 10 – 15 instead of 25 to life, fuck it…since we already knocked off 10 years, how about we knock off 10 more?  Then there’s the completely asinine “He was just trying to protect himself” argument.  Silencers are not for protection.  They are for killing people without making a sound.  Assassins use silencers.  I don’t know of anyone who goes duck hunting with a silencer.  And machine guns?  Small countries need machine guns for protection.  A 5′8 overrated rapper doesn’t.  If the block is that hot…here’s a novel suggestion…MOVE…WTF

Joe Scarborough Defends Jim Cramer
Morning Joe is becoming more and more like “morning joke” every time I watch it.  You have Mika whose job it seems to be to sit there and look pretty and not ask any real questions.  When she does seem to start down the path of a tough question, she pulls back.  Then there’s Joe Scarbourgh who seems to relish the idea of there being a democratic President and Democratic controlled Congress so he can sit back and pretend that he’s really not a republican shill but is actually “reporting”.  The latest example of this was Tuesday morning when Jim Cramer, victim of a complete verbal ass pounding by Jon Stewart and the Daily Show crew, came to friendly territory to seek comfort from Joe.  Joe of course obliges and as a typical republican blames everything on “the liberal left” and claims that Jon Stewart can’t make fun of President Obama so he has to either still make fun of Bush or “cherry pick” things from the media.  The whole clip is bullshit but here are some of my favorites:

1. I don’t know if the transcript of the Daily Show is available or not, but I do know that the entire episodes are usually up on the Comedy Central website the next day.  You want to go after Jon Stewart Joe?  Fine, do this thing they call “research” and have at it.
2. President Obama has been in office for less than 2 months.  He hasn’t royally screwed up anything yet.  If he does, I’m sure the Daily Show and Jon Stewart will be right there to make fun of it.  Bush on the other hand came into office with a bunch of already built in absurdities.  Couple that with the fact that he abused the Constitution, made ridiculous statements, got us into 2 wars that cost American soldiers lives, mishandled the Katrina incident, hired unqualified morons for positions, had a Vice President that thought he was the 4^th branch of government and did what he wanted, had a VP that shot someone in the face, had a VP who worked for a company that got a huge contract to work in Iraq, spent so much money with little regulation that we now face the worse financial crisis in decades and many other things, I can see why Bush was such an easy target to make fun of.
3. A wrong call is when NBA refs let Lebron James get away with taking 3 steps and not calling traveling.  Telling people to buy Bear Stearns stock at $60 when weeks later it’s at $2, is a major fuck up that should preclude you from giving any financial advice.
4. Let’s not forget how this started.  It all started with the rant from Rick Santelli complaining about “bailing out” everyday Americans who were struggling in with their mortgages.  CNBC wasn’t throwing fits about Wall Street getting bailed out, but as soon as Average Joe gets some help, they’re up in arms.

In the words of Jon Stewart:  Fuck You….WTF

Bernie Madoff Pleads Guilty- $64.8 billion
So it turns out we were 14.8 billion off when we talked about how much money Bernie Madoff siphoned off.  This is yet another reason why I don’t trust anything that anyone at CNBC or on Wall Street says.  You’re suppose to be financial advisors and experts, yet this fuckhole gets away with stealing $64.8 billion and no one notices some shit is going on?  Its ass clowns like this that make me long for Medieval torturing methods.  Lock this fucker in the stockade and we all take turns throwing rotten fruit at him.  Then tie his four limbs to the back of four vehicles driving in different directions.  Sounds brutal but I know what’s going to happen.  This old fucker will likely not get life in prison and even if he does, it’ll be at Club Fed where he can live the rest of his days in comfort.  To me, he’s a financial terrorist and should do hard time in a maximum security prison where he has to fear for his life and keeping his asshole virgin.  We need a Gitmo for these financial terrorists where we can lock them up and I damn sure approve of torturing these assholes…WTF

Alabama shooting spree
People that go on shooting sprees and then kill themselves are such cowards.  There’s really nothing much else I can say about that.  Condolences to the families as well as those of the preacher who died in that church shooting in Illinois.  If you want to kill yourself, by all means, do it in your own home and without interrupting the lives of others…WTF

Dwayne Wade’s Game Winner
If D Wade doesn’t win the MVP award this year, I’m leading an armed revolt.  He’s single handedly carried the Heat to where they are today.  Yes I know, everyone else is fighting over who can suck more Lebron or Kobe penis, but the truth is, the MVP award shouldn’t be a popularity contest but really on who the MVP is.  And if you think of the Olympics as an extension of the NBA season and the way Wade dominated in China, it will be an absolute travesty if he doesn’t get the award…WTF

Chris Brown and Rihanna recording a duet
I’ll be doing another Chris Brown/Rihanna story soon, but I had to end WTF Wednesday with this story about the two misguided love birds apparently recording a duet for Brown’s new album.  Wow, these fools really are trying to be the new Ike Turner and Tina. Seriously, I’m at a lost of words at the stupidity. I need a couple of days to get my thoughts together…WTF