Category Archives: stuff that’s just fucking stupid

whelmed

Posted on by
16

It’s been a month since I’ve written anything on this blog. A whole month. I used to write something here 2-3 times a week. I’ve never gone this long without writing something for the blog. Never. Why is this happening?

Here’s why: Trump trauma. Ever since the election, I’ve been…I don’t know. I can’t quite find the right word to describe this feeling. And it’s not just Trump (though Trump alone is enough); it’s also the collection of incompetent fascist nitwits he (and a complicit GOP Congress) placed in critically important political offices. That means that ever single day, including weekends, there are at least half dozen things so outrageous that they deserve a scathing blog post. And I just don’t have the energy to do that right now.

I mean, if Russia had done what TrumpCo has done to the United States (and for what it’s worth, you can argue Russia IS responsible), you’d say it was an act of war. In a mere one hundred days, TrumpCo has kneecapped the US. They’ve completely shredded our reputation for intelligence gathering and sharing; they’ve ignored basic operational security; they’ve gutted our ability to respond to climate disasters while simultaneously reducing the resources needed to warn the populace about those disasters; they’ve rolled back food testing, increasing the likelihood of contamination; they’ve made it easier to evade taxes and harder for the IRS to collect taxes and prosecute tax cheaters; they’ve cut spending on both medical research and Medicaid, which will certainly lead to increased childhood and elderly mortality; they’ve made air travel less safe; they’ve not only limited civil rights, they’ve actually rescinded civil rights that had already been established; they’ve sent out masked goon squads to kidnap and secretly detain people legally in the US; they’ve…well, you get the idea. TrumpCo has basically shit all over the US Constitution, and done it openly.

It’s overwhelming.

You know what? That’s the word I couldn’t think of when I began writing this post. That’s exactly why I haven’t written anything here for a month. I’m not just whelmed (from the Middle English hwielfan, meaning “to turn upside down (as a ship); to roll over and over”), I’m totally and completely overwhelmed. I’m whelmed the fuck over.

Stunned, exhausted, bedraggled survivors trying to escape a capsized ship.

I feel like the United States has been capsized, like we’re caught up in some political Poseidon Adventure. It’s as if the ship of state has been hit by a rogue wave and turned completely upside down, and we the people have to crawl and fight our way through the burning, topsy-turvy, almost unrecognizable wreckage of the nation we knew in an attempt to reach what used to be the bottom of the ship, hoping that somebody on the other side of the hull will be able to cut a hole through which we can escape to daylight.

Maybe that sort of rescue only happens in movies. But we have to try, right?

this guy?

Posted on by
10

Okay, first off, I admit I’m confused. I mean, I understand that Donald Trump, with the assistance of a cadre of feral Christo-fascist authoritarians and the support of a cartoonist collection of buffoons, is conducting an aggressive frontal assault on the US Constitution. And so far it’s been mostly effective.

Unlike a LOT of folks, I’m inclined to think Trump has a plan. It’s a very simple, very very stupid, and very selfish plan, to be sure. It’s the sort of plan you’d expect from a cartoon villain. But it’s still a plan. As I see it, Donald Trump’s plan is as follows:

Make everybody dependent on the whims and wishes of Donald Trump.

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it. What Trump really wants, of course, is loyalty and respect. Two things he’ll never get. He’ll never get the respect he wants (and thinks he deserves), and I suspect he knows that. Nor will he ever get real loyalty, because loyalty is reciprocal; you earn loyalty by being loyal to others. Trump is loyal to nothing and nobody. Who’s going to respect of be loyal to this guy?

Since he can’t/won’t get the respect and loyalty he truly wants, Trump has to settle for a shabby substitute–unquestioned obedience. The problem for Trump, even as POTUS, is that there are HUGE intentional limits to presidential obedience in a representative democracy.

The president’s actual job is to preside over the government, not to rule it. ‘Preside’ literally means “to sit in front of.” The president is basically like an orchestra leader. In order for Trump to command unquestioned obedience, he has to first weaken or destroy the Constitutional constraints on presidential power.

That’s exactly what he’s doing. In his first term, Trump converted the entire Republican Party to so-called MAGA loyalists (I say ‘so-called’ because many/most of the GOP are just sycophantic cowards or craven opportunists, not actual loyalists). He also stacked the Supreme court with ‘loyalists’. The only check on his authority came from the professionals who occupied the Cabinet posts and the various governmental agencies. Now, in his second term, he’s replaced the Cabinet secretaries and the heads of every government agency with more so-called loyalists. He’s basically removed or degraded almost every federal administrative constraint on his authority (there are still some federal judges who remain independent, though they’re under attack now).

This guy? Powerful politicians and institutions are afraid of this guy? This fucking guy?

There are a few other social constraints that can challenge the president: independent law firms, universities, business interests, and independent news sources. Trump is making every effort to hobble or undermine them, threatening retaliation either in the form of investigations or by removing federal financial aid and federal contracts. In order to avoid this sort of persecution, these social institutions are being required to appeal to Trump personally. To humiliate themselves by publicly kissing his ring. You want to avoid tariffs on products you need? Humbly ask Trump to remove them for YOUR company. You want federal financial aid for teaching or research? Humbly ask Trump to restore the funding he denied. You want to practice law or receive federal contracts? Humbly ask Trump to overlook any earlier opposition and publicly promise to support him. You want access to the Trump administration as a news source? Humbly agree to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. What kind of person or institution would humble themselves before this guy?

But hey, it’s working. Some large law firms and some universities have already compromised themselves; many news agencies have modified their coverage of Trump and are parroting his bullshit; a lot of businesses threatened by Trump’s trade practices are considering personal appeals to Trump and praising his harmful policies. Intimidation works. But c’mon, how could anybody be intimidated by this guy?

I find truly astonishing that so many people and institutions are afraid of this guy. He’s a cartoonish nitwit; he’s more a malignant Elmer Fudd than an evil genius. The sheer mass of his ignorance could bend light. He’s ten pounds of racist bullshit in a five pound bag. He’s a coward and a liar. People are afraid of taking on this guy?

This guy?

but this is trump

Posted on by
2

By now, everybody is aware of the colossal fuck-up in which senior Trump national security officials conducted a high level discussion about launching at attack in Yemen using…and it sounds so stupid to write this, but it’s true…using a messaging platform that IS NOT approved for exchanging classified or secret intelligence.

These weren’t low-level aides we’re talking about. This was Trump’s Vice President, his Director of National Intelligence, his National Security Adviser, his Secretary of Defense, his CIA Director and his Chief of Staff. Oh yeah, and the editor of The Atlantic. The fact that these people had this discussion on a commercially available cell phone app is scandal enough. But it’s just ONE OF MANY scandals revealed by this fuck-up.

For example, Trump’s national security team isn’t quite sure if Trump has actually ordered the attack. They were discussing the timing of the attack–when the attack should take place–when Trump’s Chief of Staff says, “As I heard it, the president was clear: green light.” Seriously, this attack took place when it did because Stephen Miller interpreted some comment from Trump as a ‘green light.’ Apparently nothing was signed; apparently no official record exists authorizing an attack on a foreign nation. In any normal administration, that would be unthinkable. But this is Trump.

Another thing. One of the members of Trump’s national security team, Steve Witkoff, was in Moscow at the time (he’s Trump’s Ukraine negotiator) meeting with Putin and his people. Let me just say that again. This guy was part of a group chat discussing highly sensitive information involving the military’s attack capabilities, using an unapproved app on a cell phone while waiting for a meeting with Vlad Putin IN MOSCOW. In any normal administration, that would be unthinkable. But this is Trump.

There’s more. During this astonishingly stupid group chat on a non-secure cell phone, Trump’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, used the name of an active intelligence officer. He basically outed a working spy, which is a criminal act. In any normal administration, that would not only be unthinkable, but would lead to criminal charges. But this is Trump. His Attorney General and Director of the FBI will almost certainly refuse to investigate the matter, let alone bring criminal charges.

“I don’t know anything about it.”

And if that’s not scandal enough, when confronted by news media about the incident, Trump said he wasn’t aware of it.

“I don’t know anything about it. You’re telling me about it for the first time.”

This is Trump, so that’s almost certainly a lie. Almost certainly, also because this is Trump. It’s entirely possible his national security team 1) had decided Trump probably intended to order an attack on Yemen and didn’t bother to get the decision confirmed, 2) were too lazy or incompetent to use secure communications systems to organize the attack, 3) and when it became public that they’d not only used wildly inappropriate and insecure tech to discuss the attack BUT ALSO INCLUDED A FUCKING CIVILIAN WHO WAS THE EDITOR OF A GODDAMN NEWS MAGAZINE, they decided NOT to tell POTUS that they’d fucked up. Which would mean Trump can’t trust his own hand-picked national security team to keep him informed or tell him the truth. Which is entirely possible. Although it’s more likely Trump just lied about not knowing, because that’s what he does.

In any normal administration, an incident like this would lead to mass resignations and/or terminations as well as criminal charges. But this is Trump.

Right now, it appears the Trump administration is attempting to put the blame for all this on National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who set up the ‘group chat’ and accidentally included the editor of The Atlantic. But every single person who participated in the discussion should have known the proper protocol; they should have objected to having the discussion outside a sensitive compartmentalized information facility (SCIF); they should have refused to participate.

What will happen? Who knows? Democrats will be outraged, but will they actually DO anything? Who knows? Will anybody be held accountable for such a colossal fuck-up? Who knows? It’s possible that this scandal, like every Trump scandal, will be buried beneath the next cascade of scandal. It’s possible nothing at all will happen; nothing will change.

Because this is Trump. Nothing is ordinary anymore. No rules apply, no norms are maintained, no standards exist. There is only Trump and his cadre of trolls, banging around randomly, ignoring actual governance in their pursuit of performative trolling.

in which i get annoyed at success

Posted on by
4

I’m trying to find a balance here between honesty and modesty. Here’s the thing: I mostly write short detective fiction. I write with the intent of selling my stories to one or two magazines–Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine or Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Why those two? Because when I wrote my first short detective story, I checked to see who published the most prestigious mystery magazines, and the answer was AHMM and EQMM. I figure if you’re going to get rejected, you may as well get rejected by the best.

This is where the honesty and modesty business comes in. I’m a good writer. Not a prolific writer, but a careful, deliberate writer. I’ve sold every story I’ve submitted to those magazines, with one exception (which, of course, I think was an error on their part). When you consider the acceptance rate for those magazines is about 3-4%, that’s a pretty good record. I’ve had stories included in Best Of anthologies, I have a story in Alfred Hitchcock’s 50th Anniversary anthology, I’ve won an Edgar for Best Short Story.

So yeah, I think I’m a good writer, but I don’t have much attachment to the finished product. I’ve written about this before.

Once I finish writing a piece of fiction, I seem to lose all emotional attachment to it. I’ve done what I wanted to do with it, I’ve written the story, and now it’s done. I submit the story to a magazine; they either accept it (and send me a check) or reject it (and send me a rejection letter), but that’s their job. My job is over. Time to do something else. The finished story is old news; it just doesn’t seem very important anymore.

So it’s been a weird experience for me to get frustrated over a story that’s actually been accepted. Here’s what happened. I wrote a story, submitted it, didn’t think about it for a few months. I finished writing another story and was getting ready to submit it, which reminded me I hadn’t heard back about the other story (I submitted that story to the other magazine). This was last October. I wrote the editor, asking for an update.

The update? “We like your story and want to buy it.” BUT there was some corporate issues which prevented them from issuing contracts; I was asked if I could be patient for a few weeks while they got the issue settled? I said yes, of course. In mid-December I got an email saying I should get a contract “in the next 2-3 weeks.” I was fine with that. Then on 1/2/25, I was told “your story is at the top of the list for when we can request contracts again.” On 1/24/25, I got an email saying, “you can expect a contract in mid February.”

No, this old photo isn’t how I write; just how I feel at the moment.

Mid-February came; no contract. It was annoying, not just because the contract was taking so long, but because for the first time, I felt emotionally involved in the product. It pissed me off that I cared about the story as a product. I told myself, “It’s just a story. It’s just words in a row. It’s just something I made up. I should be happy that somebody somewhere wants to give me actual money for sitting in a room and making shit up.”

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that the company that publishes those two magazines (and also publishes two of the best known science fiction magazines) had been purchased by another company. That explained the long delay in the contract. But I was still frustrated and annoyed.

So this morning, five fucking months after I was told the magazine wanted to buy my story, I wrote a polite email to the editor saying how much I’ve appreciated working with the staff of the magazine, but that this long delay was a shabby way to treat writers. I said I wanted to withdraw the submission.

I didn’t send the email. Why? Because, as I said earlier, I’m a careful, deliberate writer; I wanted to re-read it and make sure it was correct before I sent it. And I went to the gym.

While I was at the gym, I got an email with the contract.

That should settle the issue, right? But I’m sitting here, still annoyed as fuck. Partly because the email came from a different editor (what happened to the woman I’m used to dealing with?), partly because of the long delay, partly because this contract pays half on acceptance and half on publication (all the previous contracts paid on acceptance), and partly because goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit, I don’t know I’m just pissed.

The rational part of me says, “Just sign the damned thing and take the coin.” It says, “Don’t fuck up a relationship with a magazine that’s been good to me.” It says, “Give the new people a chance to get their shit together.” The irrational part of me wants to reject the contract because goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit, I don’t know I’m just pissed.

I’m also aware that a LOT of my anger is displaced fury at what’s going on in the US right now. I’m not used to being angry. I hate it. But here we are.

And the thing is, I KNOW what I’m going to do. I’m not in this for the money (nobody who writes short fiction is in it for the money, but being offered an extra US$700+ for sitting in a room and making shit up…well, that’s nice and it’ll buy a few eggs.

But goddamnit anyway.

we lost; bullshit won

Posted on by
8

There it is. We lost. I’m not talking about Democrats, or progressives, or any particular political ideology. I’m not talking about the fact that the US has deliberately and with malice aforethought re-elected the most corrupt, ignorant, vindictive, cruel asshole who’s ever held high political office. That’s awful and horrific and it means this nation will suffer mightily and may never fully recover.

But I’m not talking about politics here. The 2024 election is, I think, just a symptom of a far greater defeat. When I say ‘we lost,’ I’m talking about thoughtful people. People who believe in science, in facts, in rationality. People who believe in critical thinking, who are capable of clear-headed skepticism. We lost.

We lost the fight against superstition and pseudo-science. We lost the war between reality and belief. We lost the war between law and disorder. We lost the war between awareness and ignorance. We lost the war between magical fantasy and empirical evidence.

Objective reality lost. Bullshit won.

Fox News won. Alternative facts won. Thoughts and prayers won. Ivermectin won. UFOs won. Crop circles won. Oak Island won. Bigfoot won. The Templars won. Magical thinking won. Apophenia won. The White Queen won (“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”).

It’s not just that science is under attack–you can fight back against an attack; it’s that science had been summarily dismissed as unworthy of consideration. People would rather invest themselves in exploring how Rosicrucians worked with Mayan shamans to bury Viking gold in a South Carolina swamp where ley lines between pyramids in Egypt, Mexico, and the Cahokia Mounds in Collinsville, Illinois meet than try to understand the scientific method.

The very notion of verifiable Truth has collapsed in on itself. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Nope, not anymore. Who are you going to believe, the Bible or Donald Trump? Keep your Truth; we have opinions. Sure, our opinions may be based on the momentary whim of a malignant narcissist, but we have the right to hold fast to our opinions.

We lost and we are seriously fucked. Donald Trump and his Nazgûl Collective will do catastrophic damage to the US and the world at large. But sadly, he could just be the worst symptom of a larger problem. Are we on the brink of a new Dark Age? I don’t know. Maybe. We could ask the question and shake the Magic 8 Ball, but I’m afraid the answer will likely be, “Reply hazy, try again.”

that bastard Pythagoras

Posted on by
5

I have a problem with the ancient Greeks. I can never remember who did what, who said what, and who taught what. I can never quite remember which ones were poets, which ones where philosophers, which ones were mathematicians, which ones were playwrights, which ones were scientists. It doesn’t really matter; it almost always turns out that each of them basically did everything.

But I know this: it’s that bastard Pythagoras who’s credited with first writing ‘There are two sides to every question.’ Then a couple thousand years later, Thomas Jefferson added fuel to the fire in a letter; he wrote: “There’s always a different point of view, which is entitled to be heard.”

Yeah, no.

Pythagoras and Jefferson, those guys took it for granted that those questions and different points of view would be reasonable, at least semi-rational, and somewhat honest. But that’s not the world we live in today. Today a motherfucker will flat out lie his ass off, knowing the news media will find a way to soften–or worse, justify–the lie. Not only that, they’ll dodge using the term ‘lie.’

One of the lead stories in this morning’s WaPo started with this: Donald Trump and his campaign have waged an aggressive campaign against fact-checking. Which is to say Trump doesn’t want anybody to call him out for lying. The article went on to list a few of his lies, calling them ‘falsehoods’ or ‘fabricated tales.’ Fabricated fucking tales. Aesop, another of those Greeks, he told fabricated tales. Donald Trump tells lies.

Pythagoras. I’m not saying it’s all his fault, but c’mon.

But because of that bastard Pythagoras, WaPo felt compelled to include another side to the story. Ready? This: Harris, too, has taken a cautious approach to interviews. Jesus suffering fuck. That ‘too‘ carries a lot of weight. It suggests Trump’s lies are a ‘cautious approach to interviews’ and Harris is basically doing the same thing. That’s not true. In essence, WaPo is lying about Harris in order to be ‘fair’ to that lying sumbitch Donald Trump.

This stuff isn’t complicated. Yeah, there ARE at least two sides to every legitimate question. But c’mon, journalists, do your fucking job. If Candidate A says, “Gravity exists and a fall from a great height can kill you” and Candidate B says, “Gravity is just a theory and the government can’t stop me from jumping from a great height” that doesn’t mean there are two sides to the gravity story. If you report Gravity opponent not afraid of great height risk you’re basically telling folks it’s okay to be suspicious of gravitation. That’s not news; that’s you being irresponsible by spreading bullshit.

Journalists, Pythagoras and Thomas Jefferson aren’t the boss of you. Stop spreading bullshit. If those guys were around today, they’d say, “There are two sides to every question, but c’mon, you can ignore obvious bullshit” or “There’s always a different point of view, which is entitled to be heard, but complete fuckwits should be shrugged off.”

Grow the fuck up, journalists, Call a lie a lie. Do your goddamn job.

undecided? c’mon.

Posted on by
6

A couple of days ago there was a headline in the Philadelphia Enquirer stating “About 3% of Pennsylvania voters are still undecided.” As of October 23 of this year, there are 8,646,572 registered voters in Pennsylvania. That’s 3,897,179 Democrats, 3,451,289 Republicans, and 1,298,104 independent and third party voters. Three percent would be 259,397 undecided voters. A quarter of a million Pennsylvanian claim they just can’t make up their minds. “Harris or Trump…man, I just don’t know.”

I’m inclined to think the headline should have read ‘About 3% of Pennsylvania voters are either lying sacks of shit OR completely fuckwitted chumps.’ The liars, of course, are Trump supporters who don’t want to acknowledge out loud that they’re racist, misogynistic assholes. And really, I don’t blame them. The completely fuckwitted chumps are just that—chumps who are completely fuckwitted.

(Okay, short etymological tangent. The origin of chump is uncertain, but it’s thought to probably be a mash-up of stump, chunk, and lump—all of which at some point referenced a short, thick piece of wood in Old English, Danish, and Middle High German. In other words, a blockhead.)

There has never, in the entire long, ugly, weird history of these United States, been a more vividly clear difference between two presidential candidates. Never. About the only thing they have in common is they both walk upright on two feet (although Trump’s posture calls that into question). Comparing Harris and Trump is like comparing apples and maybe some sort of foot fungus. I could make a list (an incredibly long list) of the differences between them, but unless you’re on the Editorial Board of the Washington Post, you already know most of those differences. And unlike WaPo’s Editorial Board, you know why they’re important.

My point, if you can call it that, is that it seems highly improbable that 3% of the voters in Pennsylvania are truly undecided. The reality is you’ve got some Trump supporters who are either afraid of confessing their support or who’d like to get a little bit of attention, so are lying about their position. And you’ve got some people who simply don’t care about anything outside of their own personal interests and who probably can’t be bothered to vote anyway.

This election won’t turn on convincing ‘undecided’ voters to become ‘decided’ voters. It’ll turn on 1) getting people to the polls and 2) making sure the people in charge of counting the votes and certifying the results do their job. Trump can’t win the popular vote. He probably can’t win the electoral vote. But he’s put a LOT of money and effort into ratfucking the certification process.

I’m confident Harris will win the election. I’m not as confident she’ll become president.

fairness

Posted on by
3

Try to imagine this. A nation in which entities licensed to broadcast news or entertainment to the public were obligated to set aside a certain amount of their broadcast schedule to discuss controversial matters of public concern–and to do so in a way that included different perspectives.

Let’s say there was a television network called Really Good TV. To keep its broadcast license, RGTV created a regularly scheduled program called Really Important Stuff. And let’s also say there was a public controversy involving…I don’t know, maybe the overpopulation of parrots. RGTV’s Really Important Stuff show might do a segment in which people would discuss whether overpopulation of parrots was a critical issue, and if it was, how it might be handled. They’d include folks who very much enjoyed all the parrots and didn’t think it was a problem, and folks who totally fucking hated parrots and felt they should be poisoned at government expense, and folks who felt the best solution to parrot overpopulation was to allow them to be hunted for sport, and folks who felt parrots should be captured and neutered and released back into the city. Every main point of view would be included in the discussion, and viewers would be allowed to evaluate those positions and make up their own minds.

Reader, we actually used to live in that nation. We really did.

In 1927, Congress decided the agency that regulated federal communications (back then it was the Federal Radio Commission) should only issue broadcast licenses when doing so serves the public interest. Not private interests, not corporate interests, not the interests of the rich, not the interests of a particular political party. The public interest. In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission (which expanded the FRC to include television) created a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses to 1) present controversial issues of public importance AND 2) to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints. It was called, appropriately, the Fairness Doctrine.

And hey, it worked. Television and radio stations were allowed to decide for themselves HOW to implement the doctrine; they could do it through news segments, or public affairs shows, or through editorials. Nor were the stations required to provide equal time for the various opposing views. But they had to devote some time to important public issues and they had to present contrasting viewpoints.

It didn’t always work smoothly, but it worked. In 1969, for example, the FCC yanked the broadcast license from WLBT television in Mississippi (an NBC affiliate station) because the station’s overtly segregationist politics shaped their decision to refuse to broadcast NBC’s coverage of the civil rights movement.

News media ‘free speech’ includes misleading information & lying.

Think about that for a moment. A local NBC news station refused to show news coverage of the civil rights movement created by NBC–coverage of a nationally important topic–because the owners/staff of that local station opposed civil rights. That local station didn’t have to agree with the coverage (and clearly, they didn’t; WLBT broadcast the Citizens’ Council Forum, a syndicated series of fifteen-minute interviews with segregationists). But they needed to present the issue fairly to their audience, about half of which was Black. When the station refused, the FCC punished them by taking away their broadcast license.

It was a powerful statement by the government that important public issues broadcast on public airwaves needed to be addressed fairly, and that meant including differing perspectives held by the public.

What happened to the Fairness Doctrine? One of the two dominant political parties felt oppressed by having to present opposing points of view. Care to guess which one?

President Ronald Reagan, in the mid-1980s, appointed three new commissioners to the FCC (the fourth had been appointed by Richard Nixon). They issued a report stating the Fairness Doctrine actually harmed the public interest by violating the 1st Amendment protection of free speech. Seriously. The FCC commissioners argued the free speech rights of political entities were diminished by requiring opposing views to be presented to the public. They voted unanimously to abandon the Fairness Doctrine.

Congress, believe it or not, disagreed with the FCC decision. It’s difficult to imagine now, given the current level of hyper-partisanship, but back then both houses of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, voted to enact the Fairness Doctrine into law (previously it had only been an FCC policy).

Not surprisingly, Reagan (who, again, engineered the destruction of the Fairness Doctrine) vetoed the legislation. Congress failed to overturn the veto. The FCC decision was implemented. By the summer of 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was dead. Dead as the Wicked Witch of the East–not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead.

About a year later, in the summer of 1988, radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh began his new radio show at WABC-AM in New York. In 1991, Democrats attempted to revive legislation to make the Fairness Doctrine law. That failed when President George H.W. Bush announced he would veto the law. In 1996, Rupert Murdoch and former Republican Party political strategist Roger Ailes launched Fox News.

Do the math.