WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 2024
Maddow pleases the tribe: We're so old that we can remember when the Supreme Court's Colorado ballot decision was a very big thing.
Checking our calendar, we see that we're referring to this past Monday night, and also to yesterday morning. In this morning's New York Times, one remnant of this era washes ashore in the form of this slightly odd letter:
Supreme Court: Trump Stays on the Ballot
To the Editor:
Re “States Must Keep Trump on Ballot, Justices Rule 9-0” (front page, March 5):
Despite the stunning clarity of the 14th Amendment and the well-documented historical record of its intent, the votes of the three Trump-appointed justices and that of Justice Clarence Thomas to allow an insurrectionist to remain on the ballot were a foregone conclusion.
The only surprise was the unanimous vote.
D— F— / Beverly Hills, Calif.
For this well-intentioned letter writer, the Supreme Court's unanimous vote was the lone surprise. That said:
As we chronicled yesterday, a unanimous vote had been widely predicted ever since the court heard oral arguments back on February 8.
It isn't odd when one letter writer finds that outcome surprising. That said, why would a newspaper start its letters section with a letter to that effect?
We can't answer that question! Nor can we explain the passage in the Washington Post's February 9 news report which we highlight below.
Even now, four weeks later, we can't explain what that news report said:
Supreme Court poised to allow Trump to remain on Colorado ballot
The Supreme Court on Thursday seemed poised to allow former president Donald Trump to remain on the Colorado ballot, expressing deep concerns about permitting a single state to disqualify the leading Republican candidate from seeking national office.
Justices from across the ideological spectrum warned of troubling political ramifications if they do not reverse a ruling from Colorado’s top court that ordered Trump off the ballot after finding that he engaged in insurrection around the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol.
The court was considering the unprecedented and consequential question of whether a state court can enforce a rarely invoked, post-Civil War provision of the Constitution to disqualify Trump from returning to the White House.
During more than two hours of argument, the justices asked questions that suggested their often divided bench could reach a unanimous or near-unanimous decision to reject the challenge to Trump’s eligibility brought by six Colorado voters...
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan repeatedly questioned whether one state should be allowed to decide whether a presidential candidate is disqualified. “Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?” she asked, adding, “That seems quite extraordinary, doesn’t it?”
Right there in paragraph 5, the Post's next-day news report featured Justice Kagan asking a peculiar question. Our puzzlement went like this:
Suppose Colorado had been allowed to bar Trump from its ballot. In what way would the state have been making this decision "not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?"
Four weeks later, we still don't have the slightest idea what Justice Kagan meant. That said, the New York Times also featured that puzzling question from Kagan in its February 9 news report, quoting her in a bit more detail:
Supreme Court Seems Likely to Reject Challenge to Trump’s Eligibility
[...]
Justice Elena Kagan, a liberal, also expressed concern about granting individual states too much power over national elections.
“I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States,” she told Jason C. Murray, a lawyer for the Colorado voters challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility. She added, “Why should a single state have the ability to make this determination not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?”
In what way would Colorado have been "deciding who gets to be president of the United States?" In what way would Colorado have been making that determination "not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?”
Even now, four weeks later, we have no real idea.
Kagan's puzzling question got a lot of play in the days after the February 8 hearing. We've never seen anyone explain what Kagan could have meant. But so it goes—so it repeatedly goes, generally with no one noticing—in this least coherent of all possible highly-educated worlds.
When we were 28, we once journeyed to Washington to visit a college roommate who had just been elected to Congress. At one point, we walked from his office to the House chamber itself so he could cast his vote on a bill creating a weight limit for trucks on interstate highways.
We asked him how he could possibly know what the correct vote would be. Chuckling, he said something to us which went a great deal like this:
"You have to understand, the basic facts of every matter are always in doubt."
The basic facts are never clear! And so it continues to be in this best of all possible tribal worlds.
This very morning, tribunes of our own blue tribe were pounding away on Morning Joe, examining the parameters of Candidate Donald J. Trump's "early onset dementia."
That quotation comes from Joe Scarborough at 6:26 a.m. It reflects the Full Tilt Tribal aspect of our nation's contemporary journalistic culture—a culture which obtains within our own blue tribe as well as among the red.
In the pages of The Iliad, a modern reader is exposed to the dueling cultures which obtained among the poem's two warring tribes.
The Achaeans (the Greeks) have been staging a nine- or ten-year siege of Troy as the poem starts. Within their camp, a Bronze Age male warrior culture obtains—a culture marked by rage and male aggression, in which the defining argument turns on the question of which of the warriors gets to maintain the services of which stolen woman.
Inside the towering walls of Troy, a domestic culture obtains. In the famous scene in question, Hector delights in his "darling son" before he goes off to battle, and he comforts Andromache, his "generous wife:"
In the same breath, shining Hector reached down
for his son—but the boy recoiled,
cringing against his nurse's full breast,
screaming out at the sight of his own father,
terrified by the flashing bronze, the horsehair crest,
the great ridge of the helmet nodding, bristling terror—
so it struck his eyes. And his loving father laughed,
his mother laughed as well, and glorious Hector,
quickly lifting the helmet from his head,
set it down on the ground, fiery in the sunlight,
and raising his son he kissed him, tossed him in his arms,
lifting a prayer to Zeus and the other deathless gods...
Before Hector goes off, expecting to die, he shares a laugh with his generous wife and kisses his darling son.
We'll continue to suggest that members of our own blue tribe should take The Blue Tribe Challenge. We'll continue to suggest that we take a step back from the daily events of our own tribal war and, possibly scrunching our eyes just a bit, that we try to see ourselves a bit more clearly through the intervention of works of ancient literature.
Concerning our modern blue tribe culture, we can tell you this:
Our own Blue America has joined Red America in accepting one aspect of modern journalistic culture. Each tribe has adopted a deeply unintelligent culture shaped by the practice of "segregation by viewpoint."
We refer to a practice in which tribal tribunes are never asked to interact with people who disagree, in any way, with their own mandated tribal frameworks, viewpoints and claims. Thought leaders interact with people who will echo their views—and with no one else.
So it went at the start of today's Morning Joe as participants took turns echoing (and embellishing) each other's basic claims. So it was going on Fox & Friends as red tribe tribunes disappeared certain facts and claims and kept asserting others.
Our own blue tribe has come to accept the wages of this culture. On Monday evening, it gifted us with Lawrence O'Donnell's absurd claim, a claim he repeated several times, that the court's three liberal justices had "called [Donald Trump] an oath-breaking insurrectionist" in the separate concurrence they filed.
You've heard no one else make that claim because it's baldly inaccurate—but there's no such thing as correction within this devolving form of tribal culture. Nor is there any mechanism by which Rachel Maddow's 25-minute opening segment could be subject to challenge that night.
We refer to a 25-minute opening monologue whose absurdly selective, resentful ending started with Maddow saying this at 9:16 p.m.:
MADDOW (3/4/24): The United States Supreme Court ruled today, as expected, that the part of the 14th amendment that says you can't hold federal office ever again if you took part in trying to overthrow the government of the United States, the court ruled today that Donald Trump's role in the January 6 insurrection isn't enough on its own to trigger that constitutional protection. Perhaps nothing is!
And so even though states can keep candidates off the ballot for lots of other constitutional reasons like being too young or not being a citizen or whatever, with this one, with the trying to overthrow the government and being banned for life from federal office because of it, like the constitution says in its plain language, on this one he's fine.
That's what the Supreme Court said today. Because of course they did.
If you're a Trump fan, if you're a Republican, if you are hoping for a return to power for Donald Trump in this Republican Party, today's Supreme Court ruling was of course great news. The bad news, on the other side of it, is that everyone can see what the Republican Party is like right now under Donald Trump. And he doesn't just get the presidency thanks to the court trying to help him get it.
That's what the Supreme Court said today because of course they did?
Trump doesn't just get the presidency thanks to the court trying to help him get it?
That's the way Maddow's resentful conclusion began. Please don't ask us to tick off the various absurdities just in that opening part of her pseudo-analysis.
Maddow's resentful ending got dumber as it went. She never explained why the three liberal justices would have joined the other six in "trying to help him get it."
Indeed, she never did her viewers the favor of reminding them that the three liberal justices did in fact agree with the other six in the day's principal ruling—in finding that the state of Colorado didn't have the right to ban Trump from the ballot.
Did the three liberal justices say that because of course they did? Thanks to the fact that they were trying to help Trump get elected?
As Maddow's nine-minute ending rolled on, it just got dumber and dumber. By 9:18 p.m., her viewers were hearing this newly issued tribal bromide about Candidate Trump:
MADDOW: He also slipped into admitting or thinking or positing once again that he is running against President Obama rather than President Biden. He does this all the time...
If we want to be honest just once, Trump doesn't do that "all the time. " That said, he has explained, correctly or otherwise, why he sometimes does that.
Because we've watched a lot of red tribe cable, in which it's routinely said that the Obamas—Barack and Michelle—are still the ones who are calling the shots, we find Trump's explanation plausible. That said, being part of today's blue tribe means that you'll never be subjected to the complication of hearing what Trump has said. about something like that.
You'll never hear what he has said. Under new messaging protocols, you'll instead get to hear that Trump's "early onset dementia" is even worse than Biden's!
As a piece of analysis, the nine-minute conclusion to Maddow's monologue was an undisguised hot mess. If this is the best our tribe can expect from the person initially branded as Our Own Rhodes Scholar, you wonder why our society still bothers with higher education at all.
But so it goes when overpaid tribunes are allowed to voice their resentments without any possibility of critique, correction of challenge. Human nature leads us down the path to the gong-show pseudo-discussions now seen on both major channels.
American carnage, the newly inaugurated President Trump once said. Had he referred to American intellectual carnage, we might have called him a seer.
These are the wages of the culture of segregation by viewpoint—a culture which, under current arrangements, is lustily practiced and enjoyed by red and blue tribals alike.
Tomorrow: Red tribe "Bronze Age" culture
Somerby has been all over the place in the past using medically imprecise terms to diagnose Trump: “sociopath”, “mentally ill”, “delusional.”
ReplyDeleteThere is a clear distinction between Trump’s purported personality disorder and his possible dementia. These are two different things, Somerby, you dumbass, not mutually exclusive.
“Dumbass” is medically imprecise.
DeleteIt is not a medical diagnosis, 11:36.
Delete“Lawrence O'Donnell's absurd claim”
ReplyDeleteSince Somerby is such a liar, I await a link.
Eleanor Collins died last week.
ReplyDeleteAntoine Predock died the next day.
Pundits were saying the decision was likely to go in Trump’s favor. That doesn’t mean that the decision isn’t concerning, unless pundits rule your world.
ReplyDeleteThe liberal justices joined in the overall decision. That doesn’t mean the decision was correct.
“Maddow's resentful conclusion”
ReplyDeleteSomerby is now, aside from being a liar, the king of mind readers. There is a rational argument to be made that Maddow is correct here.
The idea of getting real legal analysis out of the media talking heads, or further getting intelligent, productive discussions between two experts with well-reasoned, opposing viewpoints on an issue, well it's becoming increasing naive.
ReplyDeleteWe're entrenched in a very dumb system now where people check their talking points or frantically google until they can come up with one. This is the era of hot takes and poorly-crafted arguments. There's simply no time to dive too deeply into an issue and try to navigate and resolve the real complexities. Need to move on to the next topic right away!
Not sure what could ever get us out of it at this point. It dovetails nicely with the capitalism model and people's tribal insticts so that cements it in place.
But I appreciate Bob tilting at windmills. I'm a bit of a Don Quixote myself.
Those windmills apparently include bashing Biden at every opportunity.
DeleteHave you listened to any legal analysis, rationalist? The pros and cons of this case/decision have been discussed, even at MSNBC, by expert legal minds.
DeleteHere’s the thing: Somerby claimed the other day to have just recently discovered someone called “Bronze Age Pervert”, who, according to Wikipedia, likes to discuss “the heroes of the Homeric epics.”, exactly what Somerby has been going on about for several weeks. He is lying.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this depends on what Somerby means by the word "recently". He has talked about the Iliad several times in past years, including equating himself with Cassandra.
DeleteWhite supremacists have also been enamored of medieval times, which upsets scholars of that time period. This tendency to find justification or validation in the past may be a characteristic of assholes who cannot find it in the present because their views are too bizarre or out-of-step with our current society. Or maybe men need to find heroes in comic books or comic-book equivalents, like the Iliad with its war stories. These are the guys who created the manosphere and populate incel webpages. Woke feminists call this toxic masculinity.
11:29 - This seems to be the third time today you've called Somerby a liar, without backing up your accusation even once.
DeleteYou said you've been here a long time, so you have read the same Somerby essays we have. You should know whether he is a liar or not. Further, you've been reading the comments in order to attack others here, so you know what our complaints about his lies are. No amount of "backup" will satisfy you. So let other people have their opinions.
DeleteI don't think Somerby "just discovered" Bronze Age Pervert either. They are too similar in their beliefs for this to be a big coincidence. BAP's appearance on the internet coincides with the noticeable shift in Somerby's writing here.
Somerby may have blown his own cover (as a liberal).
anon 1:42, I've been following TDH for at least 20 years. He isn't a "liar." To a mathematical certainty he is 100 times more honest that the small crew of crackpot critics (like you). You are not credible when you him a "liar" without providing any evidence. (I'll add that while I believe reading classics is worthwhile, TDH's recent citations of snippets from the Iliad don't seem to me relevant to the current issues he is quixotically tilting at)..
DeleteNo, I'm tired of you being Lucy with the football, calling for proof then not accepting that proof when it is provided, which wastes our time and gets us all nowhere. I always provide evidence in my comments but you are never satisfied with it, so this is a fool's game and I won't play any more.
DeleteWhat was my evidence above? The similarity in beliefs, the Troy allusions, and the timing of Somerby's hard right turn with BAP's appearance online, and then there is the misogyny which they both share. It seems likely BAP gained a disciple.
That is not nothing. You can disagree but you can't say I didn't support my statements.
AC/MA, yesterday I pointed out that Somerby lied about the degree of unanimity of the supreme court on Part II of their decision, which Somerby entirely left out so that he could call MSNBC hosts faking outrage over a predicted decision. Somerby entirely left out half of the decision and misrepresented what the MSNBC hosts were upset about. That is a pretty big lie.
DeleteSomerby has done this numerous times, truncating statements to omit important clarifications, leaving out links so that readers can confirm his excerpts, and so on. I have frequently caught him in such subterfuges. He has also manipulated stats, such as when he tried to claim that the reading score improvements in MS were not real, something mh debunked here. There is lots of evidence of this going back years. But he did the same thing yesterday when he left out the dissent among the justices over the additional considerations the conservatives offered in the second part of the decision. That was crucial to explaining why the MSNBC pundits were upset, but Somerby never mentioned it and instead portrayed them as faking their outrage. That was dishonest and that happened yesterday.
Somerby's quotations from the Iliad have never made any sense in the context of his essays on other topics. They would make sense if Somerby were being paid by the word (as pulp fiction short story writers used to be). With his confession about discovering Bronze Age Pervert, the allusions to Troy make better sense. They are a callout showing brotherhood with the right wing freaks who idolize the Iliad, as Somerby does.
Delete"Rightly or wrong, wisely or not, all nine justices had decided that the state of Colorado didn't have the right to bar Donald J. Trump from the ballot."
DeleteHere's what Somerby said yesterday. It is 100% true. Calling what Somerby said a "lie" is itself a lie.
2:21 - You've gone around the bend now.
DeleteLet me try to make sense of this conspiracy theory. Putin is paying Somerby to pretend to be a liberal and to spread conservative talking points in order to persuade gullible liberals to vote for Trump. And Somerby is making a dog-whistle to right-wing crazies by alluding to the Illiad. Do I have that right?
DeleteGetting worn out yet?
DeleteHave you never heard of a lie by omission?
DeleteSomerby criticized the reactions of MSNBC hosts to the decision, complaining that the decision was unanimous as predicted on Feb 8 and that the pundits shouldn't have been surprised by it. The problem is that the second part of the decision, which was not about CO removing Trump but about future applications of Paragraph 3 requiring an act of Congress, was not unanimous and have 4 dissenting justices, and that was a surprise and upsetting enough to discuss and evoke outrage. By pretending that there was no such second part to the decision, Somerby then said that the pundits were pretending to be outraged for dramatic effect and being performative (or something). Leaving out the source of the outrage presented a different picture of the MSNBC reaction than was true, and that is how Somerby lied -- in order to be critical of those pundits.
This is a complicated situation but it is not rocket science. The problem with Somerby is that he does this sort of thing fairly often and you always have to check his links and sources to make sure he isn't doing it again. He may think of himself as tricky or "owning the libs" but I think it is dishonest.
The folks on MSNBC do not deliberately tell lies, although they may sometimes be wrong about something, especially as news evolves. The people at Fox deliberately tell lies and manufacture disinformation that they spread over and over. They settled a huge defamation suit over the lies they told about voting machines being rigged. Lies and propaganda go hand in hand. That is why Somerby tells lies here -- he is not reporting on anything but is promoting a point of view more consistent with the right than with Democrats. He lies about being a liberal when he obviously is not one himself and does nothing here to serve Democratic interests. He says he wants Biden to win but uses every opportunity to criticize Biden and never says anything to support him. That makes Somerby a big fat liar for right wing gain.
There was a lot of discussion prior to this decision about the case from legal and historical and constitutional experts on MSNBC that Somerby never bothered to review. So now, he’s going to claim his usual bullshit.
ReplyDelete"At one point, we walked from his office to the House chamber itself so he could cast his vote on a bill creating a weight limit for trucks on interstate highways.
ReplyDeleteWe asked him how he could possibly know what the correct vote would be. Chuckling, he said something to us which went a great deal like this:
"You have to understand, the basic facts of every matter are always in doubt."
This is a ridiculous assertion that ignores the contribution of science to answering such questions. Engineers can determine the strength of the materials used to build highways including our interstate system, and they can know the average weight of loaded and unloaded trucks (they are required to stop at weighing stations), so they can determine the maximum weight that would cause damage to the highway. They can also take into account things like truck handling at high speeds should trucks be exceeding speed limits (as they have done in order to meet delivery schedules). These are matters of science and expertise.
Somerby's pretense that there are no ways to know answers to empirical questions marks him as an anti-scientific fool, but that is what the right wing has become. It is not true of the left, so I find Somerby's attribution of that remark to Al Gore (who is famous for An Inconvenient Truth, a film that used science to predict today's global warming) unlikely to be true. That may be why he didn't mention Gore's name. If it were true, Gore should rightfully be embarrassed by having said such a ridiculous thing.
This is today's true Howler, but it was Somerby who said it.
The right decision on every matter may always be in dispute, but there are many times when the facts are not in doubt. It is the duty of our legislators to consider those facts while making political and social decisions that people can live with.
Fact definition: "a thing that is known or proved to be true"
TDH did not agree with that assertion - that facts cannot be determined - IMHO.
DeleteSuppose Colorado had been allowed to bar Trump from its ballot. In what way would the state have been making this decision "not only for their own citizens but for the rest of the nation?"
ReplyDeleteFour weeks later, we still don't have the slightest idea what Justice Kagan meant. That said, the New York Times also featured that puzzling question from Kagan...
The hypothetical was posing a purely a theoretical, though highly improbable possible scenario. My god, do I really have to explain to a Harvard grad?
Federalism for thee, but not for me.
Somerby seems to have not read the decision itself, even though it was short.
DeleteTDH, what Kagan was saying is that keeping a candidate off the ballot in one state could affect the outcome of the election. Not that mysterious. It's a relevant point - individual states keeping a candidate off the ballot could very well affect the outcome.
DeleteA candidate doesn’t get to be on a ballot in a state if he/she fails to pay the filing fee, or doesn’t get enough signatures, etc. Should the Supreme Court overturn those as well?
DeleteMeh. That's it.
ReplyDeleteI thought Somerby was going to show how O'Donnell said Joe Biden didn't win the 2020 Presidential election in a landslide, the way Somerby got so excited.
Colorado's decision has national implications in the most straight forward way. Their electoral college votes would not be added to the national total, if they happened to go to Trump. It's easy to see a degenerate case where enough states kicking either Trump or Biden (don't ask me for what reason) off their ballots, so that the election would become pointless, as no one would be able to garner enough electoral votes.
ReplyDeleteThis decision was a given. It's the second part, to which liberal justices and Barret didn't sign on to, that was even more important. The decision that an act of congress is required to empower the insurrection clause preempts any post election challenges, should Trump win.
"But so it goes when overpaid tribunes are allowed to voice their resentments without any possibility of critique"
ReplyDeleteSomerby again refers to Maddow, who is a journalist and TV celebrity, as a "tribune." She is not a tribune. Our elected representatives are tribunes and they are not particularly overpaid (except for the ones who aren't doing their jobs).
Tribune definition: "an official in ancient Rome chosen by the plebeians to protect their interests"
Alternate definition: "a popular leader; a champion of the people"
Maddow doesn't even fit the latter definition, given that she is not any kind of leader, not even a thought leader. She has become more of a scholar lately, researching and writing books in accord with her doctoral training. She is not a politician, activist or advocate. Nikki Haley is more of a tribune than Maddow, who only has a news show on cable.
By pretending that journalists are or should be tribunes, Somerby gets to call them names for their failure to act in that role. But that is like calling the mailman a mayor or the dog a cat. It is a lie and a ruse to say negative things about the blue tribe.
So calling Maddow a "tribune" is a lie - what is wrong with these Somerby-haters?
DeleteSomerby only calls her a tribune in order to blame her for not acting like one.
Deleteanon 1:24, you exercise invalid logic and an absence of simple understanding. The second definition of "tribune" that you cite is "a popular leader, a champion of the people." Whether she is that is a matter of opinion, not like calling a dog a cat (or a man a woman as has become part of some sectors of current culture). He was a using a somewhat apt metaphor in calling her a "tribune." He wasn't calling her a an elected official in ancient Rome. To pick that out as an example of a TDH "lie" is incredibly absurd. You seem to have no grounding in common sense.
DeleteAC/MA, she is a journalist. Journalistic ethics require them to remain objective and neutral when reporting news. That is incompatible with being a partisan or champion of the people. Tribune is what Rome called their elected officials, so it is relevant when saying she is not a tribune, not elected, not an official, not a politician.
DeleteAnd yes, this is a lie by Somerby. Calling someone something they are not (and not trying to be) and then criticizing them for not being it, is unfair and dishonest. It is a ploy Somerby uses here frequently.
For example, he calls the mainstream media (CNN, MSNBC) the blue media when neither is part of the Democratic party, aspires to be progressive or liberal, or is explicitly political, especially not when compared to Fox News. We have said that here numerous times but Somerby keeps doing it. There is no official blue or liberal news outlet. Somerby's repetition of this accusation is a lie, a great big huge one, especially when applied to The New York Times, which has been provably hostile to liberal candidates and unbalanced (anti-liberal) in both its reporting and its opinion pages.
This isn't a matter of "common sense" but of fact.
The Chicago Tribune is in on it also.
DeleteHere we go. There is a general understanding that CNN and MSNBC reflect liberal ideals and cater toward liberals.
DeleteAs cited by Pew Research:
Among consistent liberals, CNN (15%), NPR (13%), MSNBC (12%) and the New York Times (10%) all rank near the top of the list.
"We have said that numerous times"
Doesn't make it true.
Yes, liberals read those media sources. What else are they going to read/watch? But we also read a lot of other sources too, unlike Fox viewers. That doesn't make the NY Times or CNN liberal in their content.
DeleteThe NY Times has been leading the "Biden is too old" campaign. How does that help Democrats win in 2024? The owners of these media are not Democrats. Most of the opinion writers are not liberal.
They are blue media in that you will generally find that their viewers are not conservative. It's as simple as that. You read into things as much as possible if that is the only avenue to attack Somerby. Although "attack" is to generous a term for these flailing attempts.
DeleteTake the tribune issue. Wow. I mean I don't know what to say. Is Somerby responsible for naming the various media outlets that took up the name "Tribune?" too? At some point it becomes too ridiculous to comment on. I think we're there.
So why am I commenting? Good question. Sort of in an amazed state at the moment.
When did this all start for you, refreshing the page until he posts every morning then flooding the comments section? What precipitated it? I know several of the other readers are curious too.
There are quite a few conservatives writing opinion pieces for the New York Times.
DeleteRationalist, I don't do that. I live in a time zone where Somerby has already posted by the time I finish email and reading the news. I comment on whatever I find worth commenting on. I am not writing all of the comments critical of Somerby, although the right wing trolls would like to think that. Someone is usually there before me. I am sad that mh seems to have departed. I have expertise on some topics that are sometimes relevant here, such as statistics, testing, mental health, and I have been following politics closely all of my life.
DeleteYou might as well as why someone talks to other people or participates in social activities.
Somerby has deteriorated, much as Trump has.
I was hoping comments are improving (some def are). Until that is more general, I miss Corby.
DeleteMeant this about Corby to reply to AnonymousMarch 6, 2024 at 5:09 PM.
DeleteWhile Somerby is attacking Maddow over nothing much, Biden is doing good stuff to help the average voter:
ReplyDeleteFrom Heather Cox Richardson:
"Possibly the biggest story today in terms of its impact on most Americans’ lives is that as part of its war on junk fees, the Biden administration announced an $8 cap on late fees charged by credit card issuers that have more than a million accounts. These companies hold more than 95% of outstanding credit card debt. Currently, fees average $32, and they fall on more than 45 million people. The White House estimates that late fees currently cost Americans about $25 billion a year. The rule change will save Americans about $10 billion a year.
The administration also announced a “strike force” to crack down on “unfair and illegal pricing.” Certain corporations raised prices as strained supply chains made it more expensive to make their products. But after supply chains were fixed and their costs dropped, corporations kept consumer prices high and passed on record profits to their shareholders. The strike force will encourage federal agencies to share information to enable them to identify businesses that are breaking the law."
The cap on late fees is going to result in more credit card debt.
DeleteThe “strike force” idea is a puzzle. I don’t know if what it watches would qualify as profiteering and I don’t know how keeping prices the same after supply-side issues are resolved is unlawful. I’m not sure how shrinkflation (which makes me furious) can be penalized. It’s up to shoppers to be informed and to make savvy decisions.
Perhaps the best approach would be a consumer protection entity that would watchdog more than finance companies and a media that would hype that info regardless of advertizers.
Why would paying less on late fees result in more debt?
DeleteI think Biden's approach is more likely to produce results for consumers than your pie-in-the-sky about the media suddenly not caring about its own revenue.
Anonymouse 2:00pm, because it’s going to make it less costly to be late on a payment or to skip one. That encourages the use of credit cards.
Delete"Why would paying less on late fees result in more debt?"
DeleteI am puzzling a little bit over this myself. Clearly, it's a talking point that came from the bowels of the financial industry, but it needs a little more substance to be taken seriously.
Cecelia, the people who use credit are the ones without money. If you give them more money by letting them pay less in late fees, they are going to spend that money instead of using more credit. So the effect should be the opposite of what you are saying.
DeleteIlya 2:15pm, I’m puzzled by it being difficult to understand why people may be more apt to use credit cards if they know the late fee is low.
DeleteIf I want to buy something, but don’t have the cash, with a late fee less than half the standard one, I may go ahead and buy that item thinking that I’ll make a payment a week or two past the due date when I think I’ll have the money. After all it’s only $8.00, rather than $25.00 or $35.00.
I think this plan will result in more credit card debt, not less.
Anonymouse 2:30.pm, that is counter intuitive.
DeleteThe "strike force" has nothing to do with helping consumers. It is propaganda timed for the SOTU designed to deflect blame for these sustained price increases away from the administration.
DeleteThe strike force won’t help me, because I pay my accounts in full every month.
DeleteI am puzzled by this line of thinking. If you can't afford the minimum credit card payment, late fees are a moot point. At this point you're just scheming. Mostly people forget and get whacked with exorbitant fees.
DeleteNothing stops credit card companies from cutting off credit after two or three late payments. Of course, they still want to milk interest; late fees are just cream on top of that.
Ilya, since when is $8.00 in late fees vs $25.00-$35.00 a moot point when you’re talking yourself into going for something you cant afford in the first place?
DeleteAccommodating that is not good for anyone.
Anonhmouse 4:20pm, I only use credit cards because I can pay them off immediately and score points as to travel expenses and hotels.
DeleteWell, not me. The old man.
More and more new regulations will not help the consumer. Regs particularly harm the poor and uneducated — people who are not good at understanding how to deal with them.
Delete"Regs particularly harm the poor and uneducated.."
DeleteSo, you would be happier if Biden instead banned corporate lobbyists, since they write most of the industry regs? Let's make this happen, David.
Also from Heather Cox Richardson:
ReplyDelete"Three states conducted exit polls and they, too, show warning signs for Trump as 78% of Haley voters in the North Carolina primary, 69% in California, and 68% in Virginia refused to say they would support the party’s nominee no matter who it is.
It is also notable that polls showed Trump with a much stronger margin over Haley than materialized today. "
That is another way of saying that Trump is underperforming compared to the polls. And there was this:
"Trump is certainly in need of money. Today, his lawyers demanded a new trial in the second E. Jean Carroll case, complaining that the judge limited what he could say, and asked for a judgment figure significantly lower than the $83.3 million the jurors awarded. By the end of Friday, Trump must post either the money or a bond covering it.
This morning, Trump told Brian Kilmeade of Fox & Friends that he was not worried about coming up with the money to pay the $454 million he owes in the New York fraud case, or the interest it is accruing at more than $100,000 a day. “I have a lot of money. I can do what I want to do,” Trump said. “I don't worry about anything. I don't worry about the money. I don't worry about money.”
These are not the words of someone in touch with reality. Does anyone believe, given his Truth Social rants, that Trump doesn't worry about anything?
Bottom line: MSNBC’s coverage of the case and how the Court was likely to rule was evenhanded and realistic from the beginning. Its legal commentary suggested that the advocates from Colorado did not do a very good job. Bob suggests Maddow is being one sided, but never explains how. Truth fully, after calling the Colorado ruling “insane” Bob has never shown any interest in the legal ramifications of the case and if it was reading the Constitution correctly. That is why this week he is only interested in gloating, and in the broader picture, he is only interested in getting Trump off the hook.
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