There is no precedent for covering a president as incompetent as Trump. And so reporters go on treating him like they would any other commander-in-chief, instead of making his unprecedented incompetence the headline story it should be.The first sentence is true, oh yes. But I take issue with the second. Even the staid, down the middle Associated Press has been adding "unsupportedly"s to "Trump said," or pointing out that there is no evidence for something he says or that it has been thoroughly disproved. More after the break.
I've never seen the AP do that to a serving public official. In fact, it is so rare in news stories that I am sure I never did it. If Trump said his beautiful new insurance executive order would bring down costs for everybody (as he did), and this were still when America was great, reporters would call an insurance industry authority so they could add to the story:
Joe Blow, president of insurance giant Happy Returns, notes, however, that the Trump order could have bad effects. "While lowering the costs for many, it would probably raise costs for the hardest to insure," Mr. Blow said.My strong impression is that reporters are bypassing the spokesman for truth when they deal with a presidential absurdities these days and are simply reporting as fact what the spokesperson would say. That may where Trump gets the idea it's "fake news."
Where the infinitely distracted media are falling down is not in noticing the presidential lulus but in letting his lulus consume them. Shout "Twitter" at them, and they are off like a dog chasing the mail truck. Meanwhile they are barely or not at all covering the pillage of national assets going on up and down the organs of the executive branch of government. The odd howl of one of the lions make the news, but the jackals are feasting on the government night and day while no one pays attention. Oh, the presidential pardons that will have to be issued if anyone ever does get around to covering what is going on in the agencies.
P.S. Will whoever is in charge give Unagidon access.
Please! I miss Unagidon. That person was so helpful in clarifying all those insurance problems.
ReplyDeleteDavid is in charge, I think.
ReplyDeleteUnagidon has commented here under his real name. It would be terrific to have him as a contributor. To invite him, I need his e-mail address. If he would write to me at david.nickol@gmail.com, I will send him an invitation to join as a contributor. If anyone is in touch with him, please let him know he would be more than welcome as a contributor here, or send me his e-mail address and I will contact him.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why you think Mollie's rant was strange. She's merely identifying them fact that Trump is an effing moron. Real people will die for all sorts of reasons because this yahoo is in office.
ReplyDeleteI thought "strange" because everybody knows he is disconnected from everything but his ego and because there are better examples than the problem he was having distinguishing between pensions and insurance. Also, when CNN is breaking new ground in covering the presidency as an unnatural disaster seems to be an odd time to accuse the media of acting as if everything is normal. Have you seen the email sales pitches the gray lady of Times Square has been sending out?
ReplyDeleteI'm not on the gray lady's email list. I cease reading every month after my ten free articles are up.
DeleteI have not been watching CNN because I knew they would be covering the presidency as an unnatural disaster until they get more interesting material like natural disasters, distant wars, and local armed battles.
Oh and also the occasional celebrity disaster. Trump is the biggest celebrity disaster of them all. Celebrity disasters make it seem more personal.
But then I gave up watching the Weather Channel decades ago when it became another entertainment channel. Not particularly interested in seeing weather reporters risk their lives in floods, hurricane winds and tornados
Like Patrick this all reminds me of the fall of Rome, e.g. bread and circuses. Feed them to the lions. Watch death threatening or happening on your TV.
Francis was wise to give it up. I only watch it very, very occasionally, e.g. someday when the Queen will die. I like grand liturgies, and the English know how to do grand liturgy. Count me in for weddings and funerals, and maybe even the coronation. I began watching TV with the coronation of Elizabeth. So I guess I will probably watch Charles, but I don't look forward to it.
Charles!? Good heavens, at the checkout counter I saw on one of Trump's favorite real news sources that the queen bumped Charles aside and will put William on the throne any moment, or has already. Was that wrong?
DeleteTom, was that the same one that lately said Camilla had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel? And showed a hopefully photo-shopped picture of her looking like someone had been slipping her polonium.
DeleteThey frequently have the latest feud between Kate and the queen, of course their reporter interviewed the famously tight-lipped queen for the story. I imagine the reality is that Kate and Will take the kids over to Buckingham Palace for a Sunday visit and they pet the Corgis and have tea and crumpets.
Jack, I agree the grand Anglican liturgies are stirring. I can remember watching Charles and Diana's wedding and was sad when they broke up. Though I think that union never had a chance.
Not only do I rarely watch the "fake news" I skip the news as the checkout counter. I go to the grocery often, don't purchase many items, go swiftly through self checkout usually the attendant bags my items. I get all the news that I need on the weather report.
DeleteThe news page at Google is the first place I go when I turn on the computer ... NYT, LAT, CNN, MSNBC, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Daily Beast, the New Yorker, etc.
DeleteWhen I turn on the internet it first goes to a variety of weather pages: Intellicast, accuweather, the weather underground.
DeleteIn the course migrating to other places, my email, this blog, I encounter a page from Microsoft that lets me know what in all the headlines, etc. That is enough.
Sometime later in the day I check out the Catholic websites.
Most of my reading consists in books supplemented by scholarly journal articles.
I do read a lot of books, but mostly novels and non-fiction from the library - one can download kindle books from there via the computer.
DeleteOn the subject of Trump talking about taking away broadcasting licenses of media which are critical of him, Ben Sasse had this to say: "Question for conservatives: What will you wish you had said now if a President Elizabeth Warren talks about censoring Fox News?" So far, crickets.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Crickets. And have you noticed that the dog didn't bark when Trump -- like a, um, predecessor -- turned to executive orders to do what Congress won't do. Oh, how the hounds once did bray when e'er a president should stray, but now that he is one of them, they never even say, "Ahem."
ReplyDeleteThank you for the offer David Nickol. My email is on the way.
ReplyDeleteAside from Trump's plan to defund the subsidies for the poor (his plan does not remove all the subsidies, but of course it will hit the very poorest, since these people will not be able to make up the smallest reduction) the cornerstone of his new policy tries to destroy the ACA as something that can operate in a market.
A tiny bit of wonk here.
The big thing Trump is proposing is to redefine something called an association. Right now, very large (usually self-funded) groups are under federal rather than state insurance regulation. They are exempt from some of the ACA requirements. Small groups are all under both ACA requirements and their local state regulations.
There were these things called associations that very large groups could join that in effect make them into one multi-state super group. Trump's plan is to now allow small businesses to form these associations (they could not before) and become a pretend large super group, thus allowing them to escape both state regulation and a lot of the ACA regulations.
Insurers have played around in the past with the idea of combining a bunch of small groups into a large group, although they did this at the state level. Large groups have lower premiums, because large groups are more stable relative to their risk characteristics. This is because large businesses tend to be more stable as institutions (if they weren't they wouldn't have become large in the first place). Small groups have lots of turnover, lots of failures, and lots of potential (since there are a lot of them) for them to game the system and understate their riskiness. So these (state level) small groups into large groups have always failed. (Of course, being America, executives roll out the old idea every decade or so as a bold new idea, since that is what they do).
MORE BELOW
I would imagine that insofar as Trump has insurance experts he consults with, they are thinking that the Trump association scheme will create groups so very large that their sheer size will mitigate all of these affects of churn and risk.
DeleteThere are several things here apparent to an insurance insider's eye that have not been reported on well about these associations. These associations can write their own rules (since they will be outside of many regulations) and one thing they will do is reintroduce "medical underwriting" where the sponsoring insurance company will be able to pick and choose among them on the basis of how healthy they are. (This is probably the bone that Trump is giving to the insurers. The right to cherry pick again). The associations will also be able to set their own coverage standards, which naturally are going to diminish.
On the ACA side, what happens is that the associations are designed to pick off the healthy small groups from the exchange plans and leave the sick ones in place. This will cause premiums to go WAY up on the exchanges and will create massive marker instability there which should then cause the private insurers to leave and the exchanges to crash. Obamacare implodes and TRUMP WAS RIGHT AGAIN! SO SAD! IT'S A WIN FOR TRUMP!
Mr. Small Business, thinking that he is not sick and therefore can switch to the association will have nowhere to go if he gets sick, because he will get dumped from the association if that happens. The newly sick businessman will not be protected by any regulations nor by the "free market" since insurers are not in the business of covering people whose premiums bring in less than their illnesses cost.
On the political side, this is part of a trend in general of dividing and conquering the population by pitting them against each other on the basis of the price of things. The idea is to screw a smaller number in the name of lowering prices for a larger number. It's part of, for example, why the unions were destroyed and how the GOP did it.
I see a trend now to pit the old against the young (and not just with insurance). I feel like (but cannot prove) that the hand of that total piece of shit Ryan is involved in this. (I mean total piece of shit in the nicest Franciscan way). He is trying to groom the next generation of "libertarian" young people for the maws of Satan, since older people pretty much have joined their respective tribes and no one is going to change sides at this point.
Glad your back as a commenter, and hopefully as a poster.
DeleteI think you are right about the generation angle.
Paul Taylor (and the PEW research center) in The Next America: Boomers, Millennials and the Looming Generational Showdown claims this will be the central political battlefield in the future.
The millennials were enthusiastic for Bernie Sanders in 2016, as they were for Obama in the two preceding presidential elections. Unfortunately the Democrats did not join them. The young Bernie supports I know, e.g. some who were delegates at the convention are convinced time is on their side and they will have it all in 2024 (they assumed Clinton would win, now 2020 is open).
Trump knows time is on the side of the youth, too and claimed that he was the last chance. The Republicans basically have to divide the youth vote, probably along lines of more educated versus less educated.
On the divide and conquer front, age-related. A review in Friday's (10/13) NYTimes refers to the movie, Goodbye Christopher Robin as "old lady bait." The reference is to movies that appear at the end of the year and presumably are not full of airplane crashes, blood and gore, and frequent rapes.
DeleteI am presumably in the "old lady" category and I take umbrage!! Would the NYTimes ever, ever refer to gay bait, or callow youth bait, or middle-age moron bait? No, it would not. Who do they think is still subscribing to the print edition.
Sorry, somewhat off-topic. But I had to tell someone.
Old lady bait. I agree with you, Margaret. They never would have said that about those other demographics. They actually got in two swipes; sexism and ageism. Ageism is the last socially acceptable prejudice, it seems. It might surprise that reviewer to find out that there is a broad swath of people who prefer not to be exposed to gore and violence. Trouble is they don't go to movies enough.
DeleteI am sick and tired of hearing my sweet young 40-something female coworkers gripe about older women and why they aren't retired. I finally called them on it, and they said, "Oh, we don't mean YOU!" Really? Why not? Apparently because I was sitting right there and I embarrassed them before I doddered away. If they said this to our black, Latino, or gay faculty, it wouldn't be tolerated.
DeleteFrankly, I always wanted to take a chain saw to Winnie the Pooh. Sorry for that violent image.
But enough of that. I wish Patrick wouldn't beat about the bush when it comes to his views about our Speaker of the House.
My dad sent me a Winnie the Pooh birthday card. He can get away with it because he is the only person left on earth who remembers it was my favorite book as a preschooler.
DeleteThat said, I don't know if I want to go to the Christopher Robin movie. I always thought A.A. Milne should have changed the name in the book and other identifying details so his poor son wouldn't have to be mortified by it.
Jean, check out this long lost section of the Bayeux Tapestry.
DeleteOh, THANKS A LOT, Katherine. Now that's going to be in my head all day.
DeleteOur school librarian read Pooh to us in kindergarten, and I was never so bored in my life. I remember thinking that the stories were pointless, confusing, and the characters were mentally deficient. Yes, at four I thought that.
I used to think the Brits had foisted some mighty awful kiddie lit on the world, sickly and sentimental.
And then I discovered Edith Nesbitt's Bastable children.
One of my life's great memories is of sharing a train seat (four people around a table) with a lady and her two kids going from Edinburgh to London, and listening to her read the Bastables while drinking that dreadful instant train tea out of a Styrofoam cup. I had a map, and when Mum wanted a break, I let the kids see where we were and draw lines connecting all the towns we passed. Then they would make me say the names of the towns and rymto correct my accent. They were very encouraging. "Oh, that was quite good!"
My free association of the day ...
Still complaining about the "old lady bait" to an aged friend, she immediately launched into James, James, Morrison, Morrison.....through the whole poem down "to the end of the town," and could have gone through more.... We should be very careful what we pour into ears and minds of little children!
Delete"Wandering vaguely all around, quite of her own accord; she tried to get down to the end of the town: 40 shillings' reward."
DeleteI always thought James Morrison's mother was drunk and looking for a bar at the end of the town. I never associated it with advanced age.
I had no idea this was by Milne. Now I hate it more.
part of the nonsense rhymes and reasons of English lit...cf the Jabborwocky... Frog and Toad!!!
DeleteMust be why they're so good at deciphering
...probably everyone in the Bletchley Circle grew up on something like these.
Katherine: Bayeux Tapestry...I always knew there was more to the Norman Invasion than the medievalists admitted.
Delete