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MSNBC is a Cult
As one of the 99.9% of Americans who never or rarely ever watch MSNBC, my viewing habits were unaffected by the reports of the hissy fits triggered by the hiring and then firing of a failed RNC chairwoman. The pull of bias at MSNBC has so completely collapsed into itself like a cognitive black hole that there is not even room for a token punching bag RINO on staff.
I used to tune in occasionally. I was interviewed by Chris Matthews regarding a topical issue way back when the network was brand new, back when he was still using a blue-collar, regular-guy Democrat persona based on his former staff work for Tip O’Neill. That version of Chris Matthews disappeared into the bias black hole long ago.
At his peak, Rush Limbaugh’s audience was 20-40 times larger than any show on MSNBC. Limbaugh and Fox News provided content and a viewpoint that was not available in the media echo chambers online, in print, or on the air. The appeal was because it offered a substantive challenge to the prevailing intellectually lazy, leftish orthodoxy.
In stark contrast, MSNBC is itself a circling of the wagons against any challenge to that orthodoxy, presenting highly distilled versions of The Narrative often using some deeply pathetic presenters and “experts”. Limbaugh’s audience was forced to listen to the other side from many outlets all day and welcomed support for the resistance he led, glad that a debate was undertaken and appreciative of the sheer novelty of common-sense pushback. MSNBC literally wants to prevent such debate. The use of caricature, fear, an aversion to disobedient facts, and a strange common smugness create a well-defined but small and self-limited audience. It is a cult that thinks it is speaking to the nation.
The weird thing is that a show in which articulate conservatives and non-zombie liberals conducted respectful, focused debates with informative interviews of real experts could probably double or triple MSNBC’s net audience in the evening slots; even allowing for the departure of most of their bubble-dwelling regulars, who would be triggered, offended and horrified. But there is a greater probability of LGBTQ+ concerns being debated on Saudi or Iranian news channels than such an event happening on MSNBC.
Published in General
During the Iraq War, many American journalists covered the war from the Iraq side and perspective, often to the detriment of American military forces in Iraq. There was a lot of “Whose side are these journalists on?” debate among the conservative commentators. And it was a fair question in many cases. We were at war.
This incident at NBC has shone a new spotlight on how serious the divide is between the Democrats and Republicans right now. The Democrats at NBC are acting like they are at war with Republicans. Having Ronna McDaniel on their newscast was tantamount to treason for them.
I think it’s the Democrats and their emotional leaders who are to blame for the Democrats’ holy mission to defeat the bad Republicans.
I’ll give you that Hewitt is a Nixon Conservative. He has pursued a law career under the auspices of the EPA, a Nixon creation, with environmental litigation. Just as my “conservative” brother has made a very lucrative career as a tax lawyer under the auspices of the IRS. Both agencies any self respecting Constitutional Conservative would eschew in all circumstances, and try mightily to eliminate, even though Constitutional amendments be required to do so. In its history, the Republican Party has covered the extremes of the political spectrum. McKinley was a Progressive. Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive. Herbert Hoover was a Progressive. Nelson Rockefeller was an ur-Progressive. Barry Goldwater was a libertarian masquerading as a conservative. Reagan was an FDR Democrat until he ran in to the buzz saw of the Communist party as president of SAG. Both Bushes were Progressives. McCain was a rogue Progressive who simply didn’t understand economics at all. It is difficult to find a Republican leader in the 20th Century that was not more Progressive than Conservative. Hugh bridges the extremes, as Nixon did.
And, yes, you are right. That is my problem. But also the nation’s problem. And the world’s.Tell me we aren’t heading for the ice berg and trying to steer as directly into it as we can.
I just read that. This is a quote from that article. The article is very short and valuable.
That is the basic urge my brother-in-law has to deal with me if we are discussing politics. The vast majority of the time I don’t respond in kind and it freaks him out, basically.
I think he wrote a book about him.
You can talk like that, but the big problem is inflation. I mean, we need zero real inflation, at the most, if libertarian and conservatives are going to take any ground. Nobody is going to talk like that.
They need to come up with some collective insurance situation, but it sure as hell isn’t Obamacare. I have very little idea of what to do right now.
Everybody would survive quite nicely if the government only produced actual public goods, but nobody knows what the hell I’m talking about.
Oh, yeah. Hugh was all in on Mitt. When Mitt refused to even consider that Romneycare might have not been such a good idea after all, I noped out. I still loved the show, though.
I’m not an expert on this, but some people from Massachusetts that are on this website say that Romney improved it quite a bit because the communists in Massachusetts wanted to go crazy.
I’ve listened to all of this stuff way too long and as far as I’m concerned, the ACA is a scam to force single payer.
I could have fixed all of this in 1946. I don’t know what to do about it now..
Yeah, it was Massachusetts, but claiming credit on that basis is a little like bragging about trimming the crust off of a poop sandwich. Not exactly “severely conservative” territory.
Could I do better? In a sense I did. I didn’t take that job on Route 128 and thus didn’t have to move to Massachusetts.
They talk about the success of the ACA, but nobody’s bills are going down, and most of it is gigantic increases of people on Medicaid.
Surely you must be incorrect, the CBO model assured us that PPACA would bend the cost curve down. (…Mumbles something about those lying whores at the CBO and the faked model rigged in open collusion with the Obama clowns.)
Peter Orszag. Now even the CBO is leftist politicized. Then the ACA was passed with a parliamentary trick, that was stupidly endorsed by the Supreme Court. You can’t trust anything, anymore.
***They literally started the CBO because LBJ lied so much about the actuarials from Medicare***. Both parties recognized eight years after it started that It was going to be an actual disaster. The actuarials were off by factors of dozens.
That would be me. :) :)
Long explanation, which I think you may be only person to have read. :) Thank you! :) :)
Maybe it would have been better if it hadn’t been “improved,” if that meant it would have imploded earlier and more spectacularly, thus giving an excellent example of what NOT to do.
LOL I actually really appreciated your input on that.
For what it’s worth, I listen to Howie Carr every day. He’s a regional, north east talkshow host, but he is definitely the best talkshow host in the country. I love it. If anybody’s interested, it runs for four hours, and he mostly shifts the local stuff into the fourth hour, but not all of it because some of it is really interesting. He starts at 2 PM central on iHeart. I usually use Talk Stream Live to get it.
That is not going to happen. The only time that has ever happened was when Vermont tried to go to single-payer on their own. It lasted about a year. Minnesota has threatened it twice. The only way single payer is going to “work” is, if you put a gun to the whole countries head. The Minnesota situation was silly because they were breaking the constitution and they were literally saying that there was going to be this committee that nobody could challenge blah blah blah. It was nuts.
What Romney himself did was frankly pretty brilliant. I don’t have time to write out the story today.
Let me just say this. ObamaCare had only one thing in common with Romney’s solution to healthcare financing in Massachusetts: the individual mandate, which I am opposed to in principle. But I admired everything else about Romney’s suggestions. It was private sector based, which I liked. And it breathed new life into our bankrupt healthcare system. We have some of the best healthcare in the world, at least we did back then, but we were completely broke. Romney came up with a way to keep the healthcare ship afloat here. At no time did he ever recommend this solution for the rest of the country. We were unique in the problems we were facing and in our goals and objectives.
Keep in mind, though, as proof that ObamaCare is not RomneyCare, that when the federal government adopted the ACA bills, it required the states to put in a federally constructed computer reporting system–presently the bane of every physician’s existence. The state of Massachusetts, under Romney, had already spent $8 million to have our own reporting system developed. It wasn’t great, but it was okay. When Deval Patrick replaced Romney as governor, we had to adopt the federal system–and pay millions to do so–and we had to throw out–completely–the system we had developed. Completely!
Obama saw an opportunity to cause Republicans to walk away from Romney. Obama came to Boston with great fanfare to give Romney credit for ObamaCare. What a joke. What a performance. Obama is the ultimate politician, and he saw a way to take out his strongest competitor: he pinned ObamaCare, which he knew was very unpopular with Republicans–on Romney. Obama hit his bull’s eye.
I am no longer a fan of Mitt Romney, but I will always respect the tremendous work he did in redesigning healthcare financing in Massachusetts.
One of Romney’s advisors was Professor Regina Herzlinger, who wrote a brilliant book called Who Killed Health Care? I strongly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about the history of the Affordable Care Acts, which were being constructed when she wrote the book.
It’s too late for this, but the way to fix it is to let individuals manage very big deductibles under government insurance. Something like $250,000 or $500,000. Then you do it with straight indemnity contracts or whatever you call it. You get a flat payment for this or that problem and then you work it out with the provider. No third-party. It’s way too late for this, but you could also have people funding something like a whole life policy that they could draw on when they get older or something like that. They should have done this in 1946 and the government should have never started the VA. They just should have just paid this for the returning soldiers. It’s all moot though at this point. I have no idea what to do.
***edit
The other thing is, look at all of the damn money the government has printed since 1946. Do you think we would all be better off if every single baby was given some printed money for a whole life policy they could start using to defer medical costs after they leave the home? Do you think they would be motivated to not blow that money if they got to keep most of it over time if it wasn’t spent?
I like Howie too. But on the solution Romney came up with for our bankrupt healthcare system, Howie and I disagree a lot.
They start Social Security at gunpoint and lie about it to “help” us. All it does is steal from generation to generation. It will implode.
Medicare is even worse. They knew Medicare was a disaster by 1973.
Right. I remember you said that.
Thomas Saving, a healthcare economist who was on the Social Security/Medicare board in the early 2000s, had a very well laid out plan to transition from Medicare by allowing individuals to route their medicare taxes into individual health savings accounts, life long, so that they could continue in retirement on personalized, individual healthcare savings account policies. That is, his plan was a privatization of Medicare. No politician would touch it then, as none will touch it now. Much to the detriment of the younger generations Indeed, Social Security could be fixed by allowing those paying into it to route their Social Security funds into their own retirement accounts, which they would own. What data have been obtained suggest that under such a policy individuals will come out better by a factor of 4 then they do under Social Security. The shortfall for those already at or near retirement age would have to be made up out of general funds, but over a generation the problem would be fixed. of course that assumes sufficiently good fiscal and monetary policy from the Federal government ate we don’t wind up in a Weimar Republic situation with hyperinflation, which is the odds on most likely scenario if we continue our current path. But then the whole economy will be in a state of collapse.
Americans seem to have no idea of how to achieve their own well being. Letting the government take care of them, as Americans seem to want, is clearly not the answer.
Romneycare was an expensive abomination, and continues to be. But then, our entire healthcare system is in a slow motion state of collapse.
The estimate projected for the annual cost of Medicare by 1990, when Medicare was passed in 1965, was $10 billion. The actual annual cost by then was $90 billion. Off by a factor of 9. The reason was that Medicare had no controls on hospital and physician’s fees. Whatever bill was sent in was paid. The result: 30% inflation a year in medical costs. Medicare ushered in the Golden Financial Age of Medicine. Hospitals, labs, and imaging centers were opening on every corner. Everyone wants to go to medical school. in fast the number of medical schools skyrocketed. So not only did costs climb rapidly, medical infrastructure also expanded rapidly. Medical care went from under 5% of the economy to 20% of the economy. Under Reagan, attempts were made to control medical costs, which gave us RBRVS, capping of physician fees, managed care, and Gail Wilensky, head of CMS under Reagan and a conservative health care economist, testifying to the “perverse incentive inherent in a fee-for-service system.” She sounded like a member of the Politburo.
What actually happened with the ACA? As an Endocrinologist working in a staff model HMO in the 2014-2019 time frame, I would see type 1 diabetes patients newly signed up for Obamacare (previously they had not had insurance). They were poor and obtained Obamacare coverage through the exchange with subsidized premiums. However the deductibles were sky high (5000 or more depending on the plan–mot were on the bronze plans with these high deductibles). The patients could not meet the deductibles. I would write prescriptions for insulin, but they had to pay market price for the insulin and couldn’t afford it. Mostly I would see them once and they would never return. Obamacare proved to be completely useless for them. They still couldn’t get care for their diabetes.
You have really good information. Thanks.
For what it’s worth, I heard it was 100x which seems preposterous. 9x is bad enough. Something must have been 100x.
You really wonder who was involved with LBJ starting Medicare.
You could literally be 65 in 1965, totally wealthy, not needing any support, and your children will inherit more because healthcare was all “free” to you.
This is a perfectly insurable event, if you get the insurance before you are born. Of course nobody in the government thinks like that.
The deductibles and the premiums on the ACA are a complete illogical, pathetic, meaningless, joke. It’s all arbitrary.
Hugh likes to call his TV show “the lowest rated show in MSNBC history” and it was on after the overnight infomercials.
He was on contract as an analyst and at some point they just stopped having him on-air. Eventually they mutually ended the contract and he now appears regularly on Fox and occasionally on CNN.