I follow a lot of “never-Trump” Republicans — people like Bill Kristol, Mona Charen, Rick Wilson, Adam Kinzinger and Tom Nichols — and I subscribe to conservative publications such as The Bulwark, because I think it’s important for me to break out of a liberal/left bubble and get other perspectives.
I also find that former Republicans bring a lot of insight on what’s going on within their party, and the Trump movement. They were inside the belly of the beast, so to speak, and they saw what was happening over the past 20 years to the Republican Party as it drifted away from small-d democratic values toward authoritarianism. (In a few cases, their work helped bring about America’s transition away from three shared branches of government to an all-powerful president. Don’t forget it and don’t let them forget it.)
Still — if I were a Democratic Party candidate, I would be suspicious of any advice offered by never-Trumpers, especially on what makes a candidate “electable.”
Never-Trump Republicans, it should be noted, didn’t do a fantastic job running their own party, which is why the U.S. and the world are in the fix we’re currently in.
Put another way, would you ask the Pittsburgh Pirates for advice on how to get to the World Series?
So when never-Trump Republicans say “Abdul El-Sayed isn’t electable in Michigan” or “Zohran Mamdani is going too far in New York,” I think, “yes, but you thought Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Mitt Romney were viable candidates for the presidency.”
It must be obvious by now, but just in case it isn’t: Everything the Trump Administration touches is going to be smeared with shit for the next three years.
The Kennedy Center, the Olympics — and now the Scouts.
Later this year, they’re going to smear July 4 with shit when they have a UFC championship on the White House lawn.
Instead of kids one day having fun memories of cartoons, fireworks and free concerts — like many Americans have of the Bicentennial in 1976 — the 250th Anniversary of the United States is going to be forever tainted by the specter of the shit-throwing madmen looming over it.
Nothing is going to be spared. But live your values and hold your line.
It’s literally the only thing you have control over — yourself, your self-respect and your integrity.
Hold the line for yourself, your family (including chosen family), and your friends.
Stay true to yourself. Have some self-respect. It’s the one thing these shit-stained Nazi morons can’t take away.
I mean, c’mon, my fellow Gen X nerds: We saw Capt. Picard overcome worse than this.
Was it over when Gul Madred tried to make Jean-Luc say there were five lights? Was it over when the Borg collective turned him into Locutus?
My God, those are the geekiest things I’ve ever written.
But no matter what these Nazi assholes say, THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS.
From left, U.S. President Skippin Dipshit, an adorable child with his finger up his booger hole, and Kaiser Donald von Shitzenpantz entertain the circus
It’s just like I always say, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your unelected billionaire Nazi sociopaths who are destroying 249 years of constitutional government.
On Election Day, a middle-aged disc jockey’s mind sometimes wanders. But will it ever come back?
Today, Pennsylvania voters emerge from their boroughs to decide if the U.S. will have early fascism or four more years of democracy.
I sure am tired of every election being “the most important election of our lifetimes.” I want some boring elections. I want a couple of nerds up there, Republican and Democratic, arguing over whether the capital gains tax rate should be 30 percent or 30.5 percent.
Bring back the halcyon days when the vice president couldn’t spell “potatoe” and when people voted against Jimmy Carter because he wore a sweater, not because they thought he literally was a demon.
Bring back the days when a literal joke candidate, such as Pogo Possum or Snoopy or Gracie Allen or Pat Paulsen could run for office, and we knew it was meant to be a joke; as opposed to having a real candidate who pretends to perform oral sex on a microphone and talks about Arnold Palmer’s genitals, and we all have to ask, “is this a joke?”
No matter what happens with this election, I think we’re still a long, long way from getting back to those days.
In 1940, comedian Gracie Allen ran for president on the fictional “Surprise Party” ticket. Read more.
Eight years later, a lot of Republicans are still pissed off that Hillary Clinton referred to some of Trump’s supporters as “a basket of deplorables.”
It was a ham-handed remark that reinforced the idea that Clinton was condescending and out of touch, but to bend over backwards to be fair (and I usually don’t), she did specify that she was referring to people who were “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
That part of what she said was rarely if ever quoted in the media.
The “deplorables” comment haunted her campaign and continues to haunt Democrats. Not a week goes by that I don’t hear or read some Trump supporter bringing up that comment.
Which begs the question: If you think Hillary Clinton was referring to you, does that mean you think you’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or Islamophobic? Because that’s something you have the power to fix.
I guess if I did deplorable things to other people, I would be offended if someone called me “deplorable,” but I try not to do deplorable things to other people.
Which, to be honest, is actually a lot easier than some people make it out to be.
“At a time when the constant use of smoke and mirrors is wielded in an effort to confound many, the boundary between truth and untruth looks quite blurry on the surface. The denigration of immigrants serves as a prime example. When the boundary between truth and untruth becomes blurred, the principles of Scripture, particularly the eternal principles of love and justice, which call people of faith to act with love and fairness, recalibrate our vision and understanding.”
Someone responded: “Tell me you’ve endorsed Kamala without telling me you’ve endorsed Kamala.”
Well, the Lutheran Conference of Bishops issued a similar statement, which says, in part: “We, the members of the Conference of Bishops of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, speak with one voice to condemn the hateful, deceptive, violent speech that has too readily found a place in our national discourse. We lament the ways this language has led to hate-fueled action. We refuse to accept the ongoing normalization of lies and deceit.”
To be fair, the Bible is pretty clear in stating Jesus’ positions on lying (He’s against it) and welcoming strangers and foreigners (He’s for it).
Again, if you dislike being called “deplorable,” then don’t do deplorable things, like lying and demonizing people who look different from you, or who were born in a different country. Again: It’s much simpler than it’s made out to be.
While we’re on the subject, out in my corner of Pennsyltucky, a bunch of new Trump signs and flags went up over the weekend, after the Madison Square Garden rally. Which suggests that a lot of people saw the rally and really liked what they saw; if only we had a word to describe that behavior.
On the other hand, I read somewhere that Leon Mush was spending part of his fortune to provide supporters with free Trump signs. So who knows? If you’re going to get a sign for free, why not?
Which begs another question, why was Trump giving away free signs while the Dems were charging for them? A Kamala Harris sign, from the official Kamala Harris campaign website, was $20, plus $17.06 shipping.
Screenshot
This fits a pattern. Republicans and conservatives give away stuff — including access to their websites. Fox News’ website is free; CNN now has a paywall. The Washington Times (owned by the Rev. Moon’s Unification Church) is free; the Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos) has a paywall.
Is it any wonder that right-wing propaganda spreads so quickly?
To paraphrase Mark Twain, a lie travels halfway around the world while the truth is still figuring out the shipping and handling costs.
Finally, I rarely if ever watch “Saturday Night Live” these days, and this season has been no exception.
However, if this Saturday, we have to see Maya Rudolph sing “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen on an empty stage, I’m going to go all Elvis on my TV.
Kamala Harris: Women’s reproductive health is on the ballot, we need incentives for small businesses to grow, and consumer prices are too damned high
Donald Trump: Arnold Palmer had an amazing schlong, we need to deport legal immigrants, I love ogling women
Undecided Voters: I don’t know enough about the candidates
The New York Times: Kamala Harris isn’t talking enough about issues that matter to the American public
Also, can we agree that this headline from the Tribune-Review (proprietor, the estate of the late Richard Mellon Scaife) brings spin to a whole new level?
“Trump reminisces about Arnold Palmer.” In other news, Richard Speck reminisces about dating student nurses; Hannibal Lecter reminisces about fava beans and Chianti.
Sportswriter Rick Reilly contends that in real-life, Arnold Palmer hated Donald Trump:
On a happier note, Alert Listener Mark S. reminds me that today is the birthday of my fellow Magyar Bela Lugosi, born Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó this day in 1882.
Pull the string! Pull the string!
Finally, I am reminded of all of those commercials that Arnold Palmer did for Pennzoil. He recommended it for all of your lubrication needs. And no wonder.
Is my GE Superadio answering to a higher power or does its automatic frequency control require a laying on of hands (and soldering iron)
The mug is from Cold War Motors in Ardrossan, Alberta: “Sick cars for a sick planet”
I have this somewhat battered, well-traveled GE Superadio III in my office. Most days, if it’s not tuned to WRCT at 88.3 or WPTS at 92.1, it’s on WZUM at 101.1 FM.
The Superadio was extremely popular with radio buffs about 10 or 20 years ago, to the point that (if I remember correctly) when it finally went out of production in the early 2000s, it was put back into production due to popular demand. There were even shortages reported by stores. For a while, they were selling for ridiculous prices on eBay.
The reasons for its popularity were excellent sound quality (instead of a single speaker, it’s got a massive woofer and a separate tweeter) on both AM and FM. In fact, on AM, there’s a “wideband” switch which enables many AM stations to sound almost as good as FM. (Without getting into too much technical mumbo-jumbo, it’s a definite case of “garbage-in, garbage-out” — if the AM station is transmitting a sufficiently good signal, the Superadio will sound pretty darn good. If it’s all crunched and compressed, it won’t.)
Anyway, I can’t pick up any AM stations inside the steel and concrete building in which I work. On FM, I’ve noticed the Superadio has a tendency to drift off frequency.
What that means is that sometimes, I’ll be listening to 101.1 FM and without me going near the radio, it will quietly drift over to 101.5 FM.
As you may know, 101.5 is WORD-FM, a Christian station. One minute, Ornette Coleman is wailing away on his saxophone; suddenly and imperceptibly, some dude with a Southern accent is going, “… IS WHY THE LORD COMMANDS YOU TO REJECT THE MODERNIST GOSPEL OF WOKE!”
To say it’s jarring is an understatement.
Occasionally, for research purposes, I’ll spend some time listening to WORD-FM, and I’ve got to tell you, even for someone who went to Episcopal pre-school and 13 years of Catholic school, WORD-FM is an excessive amount of Jesus. I don’t like all-sports radio and I’m not sure I like all-Jesus radio any better.
In case you think that WORD-FM is owned by a church or some other not-for-profit charity, it isn’t — it’s owned by Salem Media Group, which is traded on the stock market and is tied with Audacy (the currently bankrupt owner of KDKA) as the fifth-largest radio station company in the U.S.
Salem also owns WPIT (730) and WPGP (1250), a far-right conservative talk-radio station that brands itself as “The Answer,” and it’s definitely “The Answer” if the question is, “what Pittsburgh radio station sounds like it’s being translated from 1930s Germany”?
Salem recently signed Lara Trump to its podcast network. That’s enough to make you wish for a power outage.
Until last year, Salem also owned Regnery, the book publishing house that prints titles by such literary luminaries as Ann Coulter, Ted Cruz, Newt Gingrich, Josh Hawley, Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin and Mike Pence.
(These are books, as the saying goes, not to be taken lightly; instead, they should be thrown, and with great force.)
In other words, Salem is part of the single overlapping circle of Republican politics and conservative Christianity in America. There is no daylight any more between MAGA and fundamentalist religion and corporate greed; it’s one big continuous grift.
Although Salem Media itself is currently losing money ($31 million during the three months that ended Sept. 30, 2023, and it was recently de-listed from the NASDAQ after its stock price fell under $1 per share), the top executives are crying all the way to the bank. Give me that old-time religion, it’s good enough to make Salem’s chairman of the board the 14th-highest paid executive in the broadcasting industry.
I wonder if anyone’s radio ever drifts the other way? Like, is there someone in Pittsburgh who’s getting some old-time Free Will Baptist Gospel drummed into their head from 101.5 FM, when their GE Superadio drifts over to 101.1 FM, and suddenly they’re hearing a Blossom Dearie record and their whole day becomes brighter.
Hallelujah! They’re saved from the eternal damnation of dreary corporate Jesus-talk radio.
From the No One Could Have Predicted This Would Happen Dept.:
In other news, a Utah man has been barred from attending school sports after “belligerently” accusing a 17-year-old girl of being transgender — even after being told the student had submitted their birth certificate.
“I wasn’t born yesterday, I know that’s a boy,” he said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune’s website.
As soon as we had conservatives policing transgender people from using public restrooms and playing sports, it was obviously going to be a short slide to policing non-transgender people (particularly young women and girls) who don’t look “pretty” or “feminine” enough.
Tolstoy said “happy families are all alike,” and so are fundamentalists and fascists.
The History of Scabby the Rat: The AFL-CIO posted a short history of “Scabby the Rat” on social media the other day.
Scabby the Rat, as you probably know, is a scrofulous-looking inflatable rodent who shows up wherever strike-breakers cross picket lines.
These days, I’ve heard rumors that Scabby the Rat has gone respectable and high-class. He edits a certain Pittsburgh newspaper.
Seen elsewhere: “Republicans are making age an issue in the presidential race. They point out that Joe Biden can barely stay incoherent for 15 minutes at a time, while Donald Trump can talk incoherently for hours.”
Seen on Facebook: “Aaron Rodgers made it to four plays. That’s three more than Lincoln.”
Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about the environmental impact of The Sherwin-Williams Company pouring red paint all over the North Pole?
Google tells me that the surface area of Earth is approximately 197,000,000 square miles, which leads me to believe something like 100,000,000 square miles is being covered by that paint spill.
Maybe it’s a solution to global warming. In which case, instead of red paint, couldn’t they do something more reflective, like silver?
MyFAFO: Mike Lindell of MyPillow has completed the “f-ck around” phase and is now experiencing the “find out” phase, as the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports:
MyPillow is auctioning off hundreds of pieces of equipment and subleasing manufacturing space after several shopping networks and major retailers took the company’s products off shelves … sewing machines, industrial fabric spreaders, forklifts and even desks and chairs are up for auction.
SCAM ALERT: I just got an electronic message that was like 10 minutes of repetitive guitar riffs and drum solos.
Yeah. It was another Phishing email.
Garth Brooks talking to Billboard Magazine. I think that’s Crow, Servo and Mike Nelson in the front row. (YouTube)
Garth Brooks is opening a bar in Nashville and says he will not join a conservative boycott of Bud Light.
In a Q&A with Melinda Newman of Billboard magazine, Brooks said his new bar, called Friends in Low Places, will be “a place you feel safe in. I want it to be a place that you feel like there are manners and people love one another … And yes, we’re going to serve every brand of beer. We just are.”
That’s a reference to an ongoing boycott by morons conservatives, who are angry that Bud Light produced a special one-off commemorative can featuring TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney, who is transgender.
Kid Rock, a vocal moron conservative, posted a video of himself shooting cases of Bud Light with an automatic rifle, and some bars that cater to bigots and rednecks Republicans have either stopped selling Bud Light, or held promotions where they’ve poured the beer down the drain.
To be clear, however, it’s still OK if you’re not buying Bud Light simply because it’s really crummy beer. As the Pythons said, “it’s like making love in a canoe.”
