'A lousy Republican, a lousy conservative, and a vulgar human being'

Some televised commentary about various 2016 candidates, including a shout-out to "Team Woodchipper"

Is the "Chillary Clinton" Vine the worst robot performance since Jude Law in that bad Spielberg movie? What's more awesome, Marco Rubio's taste in gangsta rap or the fact that a shall-go-unnamed TV guest in the Fox green room asked "Can anyone tell me what N.W.A. stands for?" And who's got two thumbs and declared himself a member "Team Woodchipper"? (This guy!)

All of which you can watch below after an initial discussion about Donald Trump, during my appearance yesterday on FBN's After the Bell:

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

And who's got two thumbs and declared himself a member "Team Woodchipper"?

Not the guy down the street who was careless feeding his woodchipper.

[Lee G]

I knew of someone who actually got "chipped". If he were still with us instead of composting the yard, I imagine losing a couple of thumbs would have seemed like a good deal to him.

[Loki]

On the plus side I bet that yard looks great. I hear people make excellent compost.

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

IT'S PEOPLE!!! TRU-GREEN? IS PEOPLE!!!

[Fist of Etiquette]

Lindsey Graham still uses a flip phone? LOSER.

[Matt Welch]

As someone (was it here?) pointed out, Lindsey Graham apparently doesn't understand that you typically keep your phone number even after you switch phones....

[Mazakon]

Quite a few people I saw on Twitter were arguing the opposite, saying that he didn't need to change his phone, just his number.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I doubt Graham's phone is ringing off the hook either way.

[Mazakon]

What are you talking about? He's the bachelor candidate, his phone's probably full of calls from women!

[Fist of Etiquette]

They can all be in the rotation as his first lady.

[egould310 reppin' LBC]

Lindsay Graham's first lady would be his first lady.

[Brochettaward]

I'd vote for Graham if it meant he dressed in drag as the first lady, and there was a running gag how the two were never seen together at the same time.

[Loki]

The SNL sketches would write themselves.

[Pan Zagloba]

Easy - one of the duties of Miss America is to be the first lady when protocol calls for it. You'd probably wind up with most sensible, kindest and earnest first lady since Mrs. Eisenhower at least. And definitely easier on the eyes.
Hell, if Hollande can parade around with his mistresses, why not?

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Oh shut up. You're Canadian. What do you know?

Wait a sec...

[Inigo "Chip" DuBois]

The 55-year old virgin.

[Brandybuck]

That's not true! I shagged Mary Joe behind shop class my junior year!

[Hidebehindyourcause]

Funny thing is, his sister has the same name?

[Loki]

his phone's probably full of calls from women!

As long as he doesn't have binders full of women...

[BigT]

Yeah, can you just see how amusing the video would be of Graham changing his number! He tots missed it.

[Citizen X]

He's either poor, or a time traveler.

[Hidebehindyourcause]

I bet he has a WMD scanner so he can single out the jihadists

[B.P.]

I have a flip phone. As a result, every person in public is my personal information footman, and they all eagerly type all of my information requests into their fancy phones. I get better voice reception, too.

[Inigo "Chip" DuBois]

I read somewhere that hipsters are reverting to older model flip phones. Ironically, of course. Not sure what that says about Graham. He doesn't seem like a hipster, but maybe he will grow a bushy beard and cut his hair short. Couldn't hurt his chances at this point.

[thrakkorzog]

Flip phones usually have long ass battery life. So if you just want to use a cell phone as a phone instead of a tiny Internet portal, then flip phones are actually a decent choice.

[Brandybuck]

Also, blending an iPhone costs you $600 a pop...

[JRS1001]

It really wasn't his phone just a prop guys

[Fist of Etiquette]

I don't think Melissa got Welch's woodchipper in-joke.

[Fist of Etiquette]

The others seemed to, though.

[Wizard with a Woodchipper]

And in real news, the "Third Rail of Politics" will collapse of its own weight in 2016:

Social Security Disability Trust Fund to Run Dry in 2016

http://www.nbcnews.com/busines.....16-n396641

In case you don't trust the messenger, it's based on the trustees summary here:
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/

[Lee G]

Well, if they would not backstop it and clean the program up, it would be a good thing. But I'm guessing they'll just sell some bonds instead.

[John]

There is never enough free money. And most people have no idea that Social Security is a lot more than sending old people checks. The program is unsustainable enough on its own. They couldn't just leave it as designed, the government has spent decades expanding it into an all purpose welfare program.

[Mike M.]

What started off as basically a good idea (a problem to help the disabled) has turned into one of the biggest scams in America. The number of people who have become "disabled" in the last several years is unprecedented. And cops are some of the worst offenders.

[Overt]

Are Cops able to partake in Social Security? Most state employees I know don't really get much or anything from SS because they get a state pension instead.

[Galactic Chipper Cdr Lytton]

Depends. More and more public employees are being added into Social Security.

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10051.pdf

The real payout for cops and firefighters is from their employers' disability plans. Social Security disability doesn't pay all that much ($2663/month, nice but not cop/firefighter nice). Having watched a relative try to go through the SSA disability process, the system is geared to reward the dedicated malingerer and the cottage industry assisting claimants. SSA pretty much blanket denies all claims at the first step, and then approves them on appeal on the 2nd or 3rd step. Only someone dedicated to milking it would bother to work through the process.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I think Rubio's gonna be serenading his own campaign with Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" soon.

[commodious spittoon]

Who is John Tamny and why is he staring above the camera?

[Jed Templin]

Is the "Chillary Clinton" Vine the worst robot performance since Jude Law in that bad Spielberg movie?

Maybe it's just the nostalgia talking, but I remember A.I. being thoughtful and affecting.
But, yes, Matt, you're right, "Chillary Clinton" appears to posses less human emotion than season one ST:TNG's Data.

[Lee G]

Thoughtful and affecting right up to the point that the sea level rise exceeds 230 feet, the absolute maximum possible.

[commodious spittoon]

Also around the third-hour mark when you realize this movie is just not going to end.

[Lee G]

That's just so you get an actual sense of how much time has passed in the movie.

[Gojira]

It's because Spielberg kept trying to end it, but couldn't find an "up happy" ending saccharine enough for him, so he kept tacking more and more on until it worked out.

It's like the end of his remake of War of the Worlds, when the kid, who ran towards a hopeless suicide battle earlier in the film, mysteriously and unexplained turns up alive at the end, just so that everyone can have a feel-good moment. He's incapable of serious film-making anymore. I'm honest-to-god shocked that he let Hanks die at the end of Private Ryan, or that he didn't end Schindler's List with a Jew waking up and realizing the entire Holocaust was only a bad dream.

[Gojira]

Sorry for the rant, this subject is a bit of a soapbox for me, because I love Jaws so much, and I just don't see that director anymore.

[SugarFree]

Nope, you are stop on.

He did the same thing in Minority Report.

[John]

Saving Private Ryan is ruined by two scenes. The first is the bunker scene. First, the scene is totally idiotic and unrealistic. Just how the hell is there a german machine gun nest totally isolated? And even if there were, how exactly does a Ranger officer on a completely unrelated mission decide he must destroy it? And when he does, what the hell kind of a retard thinks the way to do so is to charge across and open field of fire in broad daylight?

Then of course there is the resulting POW scene. That is the most contrived mawkish bullshit scene ever made. They knew they were isolated and had no way to deal with prisoners. No one would have ever had to say a word about that fact. When they took the bunker they just would have shot everyone. If someone had tried to surrender it would have been "oh I guess I missed that" and everyone would have moved on. No scene like what was filmed would have ever happened.

Lastly the end of the movie where Matt Damon gives his "I want to stay here with buddies" speech, makes me want to vomit every time I see it. Those guys were not cowards but no one in that situation turns down an honorable way to go home. They didn't call them "million dollar wounds" for nothing. Anyone who had survived jumping into Normandy and then been told the Chief of Staff of the Army is ordering them home, would have said "see you suckers" and the rest of the guys in the unit would have been "congratulations dude".

God that movie drives me nuts.

[Gojira]

I remember thinking that about the bunker even at the time, being a teenager, not having joined the army yet.

"What the fuck are these assholes just doing out cooling their heels in the middle of the countryside with nary another German for miles in any direction? Are German platoon or company leaders really just that terrible, that they go around sprinkling heavy weapons positions around with no though to interlocking fields of fire, expecting them to just hang out in case some dudes show up?"

[John]

Yeah. That is not how things work. The entire concept of the movie is stupid. They are going to waste a ranger platoon to wonder around the battlefield for days looking for some Joe who just got a golden ticket home? It is not like they couldn't have just waited a few days until the infantry and armor were off the beaches and linked up with airborne units and told those units to send him home. Nope. He had to be found. UGH!!

[some guy]

Those guys were not cowards but no one in that situation turns down an honorable way to go home.

You clearly didn't think this one through, John. There have always been people willing to volunteer for combat, even if they don't have to. It goes back a lot longer than the history of the US. There are plenty of specific examples, like the Doolittle raid on Japan in WWII. But we have plenty of general modern examples as well. How many warfighters re-upped during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars fully knowing they were going to get couple more tours out of it? Sure, plenty will take the million dollar wound and go home, but plenty more will stick around for camaraderie or their own personal code of honor. Nothing about that final scene is hard to believe except the speech itself, because what private is going to get up and give a speech without his sergeant jumping down his throat after five seconds?

[some guy]

Also, John... IIRC the foxhole scene happened behind enemy lines, or at least during the confusing time when the two lines were intermixed. It shouldn't be too surprising that single position might be able to defend itself for awhile, even after getting isolated.

I do agree on the POW scene, though. Letting that guy go never would have happened. 99% chance that guy gets shot. 1% chance he gets bound, gagged and tied to a tree.

[Lord at War]

It's the opening scene that ruins the movie. The old guy visits the cemetary, gets choked up, then the scene fades through his eyes to the D-Day landing like it was a memory.

But the old man is Matt Damon's character- who wasn't even there!

[Harold Falcon]

Agree completely. The man hasn't ended a movie properly since Raiders. And he tried to go back and ruin CE3K, too.

[John]

Not true. Empire of the Sun is a really good movie and that was after Raiders. And Schindlers' List is a great movie, though I am not sure why I would ever want to watch it again.

[Lee G]

I had heard that the studio made Spielberg change the Close Encounters Special Edition ending, and that he regretted doing it. At least he has that going for him.

[Lee G]

I was being sarcastic, but yes, I agree about Spielberg turning into a crap director. I can understand Ford getting contractually roped into Crystal Skull, but Spielberg could have said "WTF is this shit" at any point in the movie making process.

[Gojira]

Ah, I honestly didn't realize you were being sarcastic, I have been, as they say, "had".

[commodious spittoon]

Is Crystal Skull an unwatchably bad movie by itself or just a disappointment given the series?

[Lee G]

It's just horrible. In comparison to the first three, it's a damned disaster. I wouldn't even watch it again if I were drunk on a Saturday afternoon and it came on a network channel.

And I say that as someone who enjoys some truly crappy movies.

[Gojira]

It's the former, heinously enhanced by the latter.

[Jed Templin]

I don't think that anything is, strictly speaking, unwatchable, but yes, it is terrible by itself. It's why the phrase "nuked the fridge" is now synonymous with "jumped the shark."

[Jed Templin]

Well, clearly, nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.

[MJGreen - Docile Citizen]

Munich ended on a bit of a downer. It was kind of hard to avoid the ending of Lincoln, though he still made it as corny as possible.

Regarding Indy 4, there are a couple good sequences in there, because Spielberg is too good of a director. The zany malt shop and bike ride scene when he first meets LeBeouf is very well done.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

The ending to Lincoln was mind-blowing.

[Bobarian (Would Chip Her)]

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

[John]

Welch should be praising Trump. Trump by being such an ass clown has taken the serious problems associated with immigration, problems people like Welch don't want to discuss and turned the debate into a clown show where anyone who brings these issues up is associated with the Trump clown show.

From October 2008 to April 2014, Texas identified a total 177,588 unique criminal alien defendants booked into Texas county jails. These individuals have been identified through the Secure Communities initiative, in which Texas has participated since October 2008.

A review of these 177,588 defendants shows that they are responsible for at least 611,234 individual criminal charges over their criminal careers, including 2,993 homicides and 7,695 sexual assaults.

http://pjmedia.com/jchristiana.....epage=true

I am sorry but "we have a moral duty to let everyone in" and "but native people commit crimes too" doesn't answer people's concerns over this. Sure, there are native criminals just like there are Latin American criminals. The difference is Latin American criminals are not here. The public demanding its government do something to keep it that way is hardly unreasonable.

But hey, lets talk about Trump instead.

[Harold Falcon]

The same walls that keep them out keep us in. I don't want to live in a prison. If that means some bad people sneak in, so be it. That's the cost of freedom. Stop being such a whiny pussy and take responsibility for your own safety.

[Careless]

A) you aren't allowed to just walk into Canada or Mexico, walls or not
B) the walls don't stop you from leaving. You're free to use the gates
C) the walls basically don't exist.

[Loki]

A review of these 177,588 defendants shows that they are responsible for at least 611,234 individual criminal charges over their criminal careers, including 2,993 homicides and 7,695 sexual assaults.

I wonder how many of those remaining 611,234 charges are non-violent drug offenses. Note that I'm not a pro open borders person, nor am I suggesting that ending the drug is some kind of cure all, but it does occur to me that if selling drugs was just a legitimate business transaction carried out in a free market, at least some of those numbers might not look as bad. At the very least we'd be able to get an idea of how bad the violent crimes committed by illegal immigrants problem really is instead of having all the non-violent drug offenses skewing the numbers.

[John]

For sure. I don't give a shit about the offenses except for the violent ones. But there are a lot of violent offenses.

[BearOdinson]

You do bring up a good point. Even though your choice of name sake leaves something to be desired! 😉 (But hey, I am an Odinsman so what can I say!)

[Loki]

It's not my fault you Odinson's can't take a little joke. Sheesh.

[Tony]

What about the consistent findings that illegal immigrants commit less crimes and are incarcerated at lower rates than the native population? If this is your actual concern, shouldn't we consider deporting Americans and letting more Latinos in?

[LynchPin1477]

Reason published a small book-sized collection of articles and essays that discussed a wide range of solutions, most pragmatic, that would streamline the immigration process without resorting to full open borders. Providing a way for the decent immigrants to come legally would make it easier to focus on the dangerous ones. That's a real solution.

But it's much easier to throw up a false choice between open borders vs even more immigration crackdown.

[Eric Bana]

Yes.

[mfckr]

But hey, lets talk about Trump instead.

Guys, I think John is onto something here.

[straffinrun]

A lousy Republican, a lousy conservative and a vulgar human being. You say that like it's a bad thing.

[Matt Welch]

On guy on Twitter said "But enough about John McCain...."

[R C Dean]

Silly Tweeter. If its from Reason, its the Trumpocalypse.

[gaoxiaen]

The Trumpnado.

[Free Society]

So Lindsay Graham gets props for making a funny video in response to Trump releasing his cell phone number. If nothing else, I think he deserves props for resisting the urge to orchestrate a military coup in response.

[Citizen X]

You just wait until the S.C. National Guard finally returns his calls...

[Dark Lord of the wood chipper]

They tried, but he left them the wrong number.

[Ted S.]

or the fact that a shall-go-unnamed TV guest in the Fox green room asked "Can anyone tell me what N.W.A. stands for?"

Matt Welch doesn't know what NWA stands for?

[Idle Hands]

North West Airlines?

[Ken Shultz]

Matt knew that.

He's from Long Beach.

[Conchfritters]

With so much drama in the L-B-C, it's kinda hard bein Matt W-e-l-ch ee G.

[Dark Lord of the wood chipper]

National Wrestling Alliance?

[Loki]

National Woodchipping Association.

[A Self-Identified $park?]

Non White Americans?

[Hidebehindyourcause]

lmao

Of all these fabulous guesses, yours is the closest. Damn marijuana smoking wretches

[Ken Shultz]

Shout out to Team Woodchipper was full of awesome.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Matt, scolta mio caro, I'm beginning to worry if Trump is a metaphor for other things going on in your life.

I want you to be open about it. We're here to help. I think you know that.

/licks soft peppermint chocolate ice cream. Turns woodchipper on.

[Charles Easterly]

Your concern is touching, Rufus.

Clearly your love for Matt is better than ice cream....

Must be a Canadian thing.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

I know.

Even if Matt doesn't know it.

Yet.

[Conchfritters]

NWA, Dre's first solo album, Ice Cubes initial solo work (Predator), Snoop and Eminem's first albums are the stuff of legend. Today's rap music is terrible - I can't even believe any of that stuff is commercially successful. Give me NWA over Kanye, Jay Z, or Taylor Swift any day.

Society is going down the tubes. Todays kids could probably name every contestant on The Bachelorette, but couldn't name one Supreme Court Justice, cabinet minister, or one member of NWA. The latter should disqualify them from life.

[lap83]

Taylor Swift is considered a rap artist?

[*GILMORE*]

(shhh he's on a roll)

[Hidebehindyourcause]

Predator is a rapper? Holy crap and all this time I just thought he was in really violent sci fi movies

[sloopyinTEXAS]

In a sane world, the names of Supreme Court justices and cabinet ministers (or secretaries in America) would mean so little that not knowing them would not matter.

[tweaver1945]

Kool Aid! Drinking Trump Kool Aid? Will do it all day long. Here's someone that scares all the libturds, is genuine, no hidden agendas, uses no scripts, uses no teleprompters, and speaks truth. And, that is what scares half of the local yokel media and politicians too.

[Loki]

Uh, hello, it was Denise Richards in her prime. It literally didn't matter what her character was.

As for unwatchable movies, thee words: Jack and Jill . Three more words: Howard the Duck. Enough said.

[Jed Templin]

Are you saying that Denise Richards can be unwatchable? Because I think we're gonna have to disagree on that.

*rocks gently and sings to himself*
You see, every cloud
Has a silver lining
And sometimes paradise
Around your corner lies.
In Amazona everything is nice

[The Last American Hero]

I found her very...watchable.

Why do you hate Christmas?

[Hidebehindyourcause]

I just remember that scene in Wild Things. Could care less about anything else she was in