Trump and the End of the Current Right Wing

I've never seen it before. Or heard it, I should say. I listen to local guy Brian Thomas, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and many others on a daily basis, and for the last few years, it's a very direct, right-wing talking point script: Obama bad, Hillary bad, America in ruins, Christian persecution, etc. I could hit Brian Thomas in the early morning and if I happened upon Limbaugh or Hannity at some time during the rest of the day, the talking points and formula was the same; they were literally getting all their material and opinions from the same websites like Drudge or National Review.

It was incessant, predictable, and obvious. But then Trump joined the race, and I truly enjoy the madness that has followed. The script has changed. Every local show is looking for the angle and not quite sure where to go based on the differing views of the bigger names. And the RNC is going through the same mess. The convention is going to be a circus - and it's right here in Ohio.

Here's a quick overview on the strange split in the AM talk show hosts' opinions.

Brian Thomas

Brian leans a little nutty and grabs onto outlier talking points at times, but he's not hard to listen to. Brian is all conservative, and he is not in for Trump. An interaction on his show from yesterday tells it all:

BT: You're on, go ahead

Call: You're all backwards, man. You're just mad Trump's going to build a wall and send the bill to Mexico and fix America.

BT: Well, that's you're opinion.

Call: Yeah, you're all backwards.

BT: I never addressed Trump on immigration except to ask about the logistics of it: how is he going to build a wall and get Mexico to foot the bill? I'm just looking for a substantial answer.


Glenn Beck

Glenn's insufferable, sanctimonious, and awful at times, but can be entertaining, especially when he's dumping on Trump.

Glenn, by his own report, has never endorsed a person for POTUS. He has now endorsed Ted Cruz because he not only doesn't like Trump, but he thinks Trump is outright dangerous for our country. He is now daily bringing out every awfulness about Trump, things I haven't even heard from liberal voices, and if he becomes the nominee, the Democratic Party has only to look at his archives for every dirty bit to attack him with.

Today, he threw out a Hitler bone on unqualified but strong and feeding a need from the people.

I have to say I kind of agree with Glenn Beck on this one.


Rush Limbaugh

Dude's old, weak, and it scrambles my brains to listen. He spends just a little more time swearing he's not in the bag for Trump than he spends explaining how Trump is winning and he respects the guy. He also respects Cruz, and Rubio, and ...

Limbaugh is on the fence so hard he has ass splinters. He doesn't want to offend anyone, will not commit, and wants to play nice and objective, but he's got a bit of a Trump bug if you listen for more than 20 minutes.


Sean Hannity

I honestly do not know how he speaks through 3 hours of radio and 1 hour of television every day with Trump's cock that far down his throat.

Hannity is a goddamned Trump Worshiper. Church of Trump. If you could register Trump in the primaries, he'd jump on it. He's riding the Trump Train, the Trump Pony, and the Trump Wave all at once. He probably has Trump sheets and curtains and a Trump throw on his couch.

I don't like Hannity. I don't even respect what he does in any way. I am embarrassed for him and his family. I don't know if Trump is paying him under the table, but the fawning and pawing and exaltation makes it a serious question, and his claims that he hasn't made up his mind between Trump and Cruz false on its face.

Hannity is somehow an even sadder man than I thought possible.


So that's the roundup. If you've heard any others mention Trump, feel free to comment. The man is a monster and he's made it this far.

I'll be posting all next week on different aspects of this run and the terror of Trump. Next up? Trump the Bully

Andrew Wilkow Continues

Over a year ago, after listening to Andrew Wilkow a few times on Sirius, I created a post entitled Andrew Wilkow: My New Pain in the Ass.

If you haven't read it, it's interesting enough. Calling out right-wing douchebags usually is. The reason I mention it is that is has consistently been the largest draw to my blog and even after a year still getting comments (many are mine, but I'm up to 89). Enjoy!

I believe tomorrow I shall inform you about what else seems to draw people here. It's quite interesting and involves elf porn.

The Republican Tax Day Teabaggin' Party!

I've written repeatedly about how out of touch Republicans are when it comes to things like technology, entertainment, and pop culture. And now, as if staging a deliberate attempt to prove themselves fools, Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity (the Teabaggin' Triumvirate) - along with their multiple conservative mouthpieces - have been billing tomorrow's myopic homage to the Boston Tea Party as a "teabagging" event.

Here are the three biggest problems from my perspective:

1. The Boston Tea Party was a revolt in response to paying taxes to England, a form of "Taxation without representation." We currently have elected representation in America.
2. As of tomorrow, revolting against taxes will actually be revolting against the George W. Bush tax structure as no federal tax (save cigs *argh*) has been enacted by President Obama.
3. UrbanDictionary.com defines Teabagging as: To have a man insert his scrotum into another person's mouth in the fashion of a teabag into a mug with an up/down (in/out) motion.

Some days I just want to jump up and down and shout in wonder: How can you be so lame?

Where were the revolts when Bush killed thousands of Americans? Where were the revolts when he spent billions and billions of our dollars on Iraq - and didn't find it necessary to put it on the books?

If you look at the pictures on the teevee concerning tomorrow, you've got a bunch of assclowns holding up signs about Obama being a socialist, blah blah Wilkow/Hannity/Beck/Limbaugh juice. So apparently they're really protesting money that they pay in taxes that they do not get back in equal share? Not quite sure as the answers can range from confused to unintelligible.

So let's put it this way: I will take these people seriously as soon as they sign a federal, legally-binding document stating that they will never touch one dollar from Unemployment, Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid for the rest of their lives. And if they do, we will toss them into Boston Harbor. Teabagging is optional on the deportation boat.

The Wilkow Arguments

Yes, still more on Andrew Wilkow.

I originally wrote, after getting Sirius Radio, about someone I'd never heard about before: Andrew Wilkow. Why? He's a right-wing nutter and drives me insane some days. What do I mean by "some days?" I listen to him as long as I can stand because he's got a unique perspective, bases his many arguments in the founding documents of our country, and I respect his opinion even if I don't agree with it. Most of the time.

I'm still getting comments on my original post (most anonymous right-wing cowards with bad grammar skills), and one came through the other day that needed notice:

"How can you say Rush or Wilkow make things up?"

Rush Limbaugh makes shit up all the damned time, misappropriates stats to bounce his opinions, and cherry-picks quotes with inferences designed to fire up his ignorant, worshipful base. Talk about messianic. There are dozens of sites that'll give you a rundown; this isn't one of them.

But I figured Andrew deserved a little more. So I specifically listened to see if anything didn't quite jive. And, damn, shit just didn't jive.

It started with Andrew stating that the top three leading causes of death in America were smoking-related cancer, obesity, and promiscuous sex ("AIDS-related death" is what he said). While I have no reason to argue with the smoking-related cancer (and other problems associated with it) and obesity (and problems associated with it), but promiscuous sex?

I looked at the primary avoidable causes of death in America and compiled a list of references from the CDC, Vandenberg Air Force Base, and The Mayo Clinic.

They all list things like heart disease, cancer, stroke, accidents, flu, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and septicemia.

Where does that gay AIDS sex come in? It doesn't. If he was citing something, I could not find it, and everything that could be found wasn't even close. This would be one of those "made up" things, skewered truth to twist his argument.

But what was the argument? It was an argument against Universal, socialized medicine. Unfortunately for Andrew, Barack Obama's health care plan is not "Universal health care" as he repeatedly claimed.

The argument itself centered around how wrong the socialism aspect of health care is if someone who smokes or is obese or has promiscuous sex and taxes the system unfairly because everyone is paying into the same system but some people are getting more out of it. That, encapsulated, makes a bit of sense.

But where does the argument end when it comes to practical applications in a "perfect," capitalist-driven medical society? Well, kind of in the suck state it's in now: controlled by an insurance collusion where competition is not defined by gaining the most customers, but by cutting costs, dropping risk, and leaving even those with insurance unable to get the treatment they may need. We've got differences in cost for people who smoke and some creeping up for obesity. Next comes labs - high cholesterol, diabetes, etc. Then DNA. And then the insurance companies raise and raise and raise rates at will, cite whatever they want, and are unaccountable to anyone. Why? The Great Right Wing Deregulation Machine.

That's no way to keep people healthy. Our form of health care in America is a collapsing disaster. And socializing it could only be a good thing.

Why not? Every government employee is currently receiving socialized, government-controlled health care. Personally, I pay property taxes based on the value of my home and have equal access to services such as fire and police. Do they take into account whether or not I don't lock my doors or have a gas stove or an open fireplace or smoke in my house, all things that increase the chances of me requiring those services? Nope. Why? We live in a society where parts of it are already socialized. And those parts work pretty damned well.

And as for socialism, The Republican Vice Presidential candidate is governor of a state that holds socialized, collective control of the oil in the state and every resident gets a check cut by the state. Now that's socialism.


One final note on the show. Andrew Wilkow, railing against the red herring that is conservative ACORN scare tactics, asked "Why would you have to file one fake ballot?" What follows are actual facts:
- No one is committing voting fraud. That happens when you vote. Hence the name.
- No one is submitting fake ballots. See above.
- Employees of ACORN are not perpetuating an organized attack at the heart of democracy; they are idiots trying to pad their pockets, making this employee fraud.
- ACORN is the victim of this fraud.
- Not one fictional person, including Mickey Mouse, will show up to vote on November 4th because they do not exist in this reality, nor would they have a valid ID to match their fictional address.
- Federal law states that every voter registration collected must be submitted, even if it appears fraudulent.

This is a non-issue, and the fact that Andrew Wilkow took this tack, wielded the purposefully-confused righty rhetoric designed to grow fear, well that makes him nothing more than a tool on this topic, an appendage of the Republican Terror Machine. And while this example - mixing up the language, turning a non-issue into a scare tactic - is not him making things up, if he's as smart and "intellectual" as he says he is, he should know better. And if he does, then he's purposefully lying. And that's even worse.

Still on the Andrew Wilkow

Even though I posted Andrew Wilkow: My New Pain in the Ass back at the beginning of March, it's one of those posts that just won't die: every week or so I get another comment, usually from a conservative troll, sans grammatical or linguistic ability, too afeared to post anything except as Anonymous.

This week was no different. Anonymous first seemed centerist, argued that aesthetic traits (whiny) are irrelevant to any argument against a person. Then:

"Most liberal statements are, in all truth, irrelevant, or crafted in a manner which simply appeals to aesthetics and the dog-like qualities."

Ah, to the crux. I replied:

Most critical conservative statements are generalizations, based on untruths, peppered with obfuscation, and punctuated with one thing the ignorant masses can hang onto, such as "he's a commie!"

Liberals also tend to be more internet savvy and understand the importance of signing posts and owning your own words.

And on a sidenote, aesthetics carries a great deal of relevance, especially when all you have to go on is the voice itself. If your word choice, tone, temperament, and speech pattern peg you - in my mind - as a collar-popping guido douchebag, there's not much you can say that can break through that. Lynn Samuels has a voice like nails on a chalkboard interrupted by a smoke detector. Hence, I don't listen.

Finally, tips for credibility. This is for you, trolls! Want to come across as intelligent? Here's how:

• Post using your username and claim some responsibility for your words
• Grammar and spelling are important; Firefox has built-in spellcheck.
• Make a substantial (or humorous) post without devolving into "ur a stupid librl whoz stupid n stuff"

I know. That last one is probably asking a bit too much.

Andrew Wilkow: My New Pain in the Ass

(Actually, it's more like my new aneurysm.)

As I've mentioned repeatedly, I listen to the right wing radio folks because, well, it's important to know what they're up to (e.g., Rush Limbaugh is pushing for Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow, March 4th [all primaries are some form of "open"], to keep the competition going and force a crippling rift in the Democratic party with no majority at the convention.)

I thought I'd been seasoned by Limbaugh and Hannity, tempered by Savage and Levin, but Mrs. Shambles got me Sirius Radio for my birthday (*kiss*) and with it came something I was not prepared for: Andrew Wilkow.

The first time I listened to The Wilkow Majority on channel 144 (Noon - 3pm), I could only listen intermittently. After two weeks, more often than not I can make it through all 3 hours. I don't know if the show is more audacious because Wilkow's trying to prove he's one of the big boys or because he's on uncensored radio, but when he's done at 3 and Sean Hannity comes on, I am tremendously relieved; it's like I can breathe again.

Why is Andrew Wilkow burnin' my biscuits? Some of the stuff is the same: Global warming is a sham (featuring "Stop Global Whining" by the Right Brothers), and liburlz r devuls, and general ignorance spouting like Hey, Nazism is a left wing thing and we want to take Israel dry so Repubs can't even be racist; Democrats don't care about the Blacks. But that's just a paraphrase.

Today's rantings were especially egregious and prompted the post because of two things. Let's start with the quote while talking about ethanol:

Mexicans can't afford their tortillas anymore. ...guess they'll just have to eat Wonder bread like the rest of us.

Who the fuck talks like that?

The other notable remark was the automobile ignorance that I thought died ten years ago: 'Merican cars are made in America and if you buy foreign cars, th'r takin' r'jobs! This is such bullshit. Specifically, Andrew was talking about how an Obama sticker on a foreign car is an oxymoron because he makes sure all his stuff is American-made, blah-blah, self-aggrandizing autoerotica.

The truth is that it is impossible to find an "American" car in which all the parts of that car are manufactured and assembled in America. And if you're talking just about the actual assembly of the vehicle, let's talk about Toyota for a second, where plants are located in Huntsville, Alabama; Georgetown, Kentucky; Princeton, Indiana; San Antonio, Texas; Buffalo, West Virginia; and a new one being built in Blue Springs, Mississippi. Heck, some of those are actually shipped back over to Japan! So there are clearly plenty of "foreign cars" that are manufactured and assembled right here in the good old USA.

And I'm sure there is more ignorance to follow, more thinly-veiled bigotry to come, and more reasons for me to pop a Motrin or two in the middle of the afternoon.