Guest Editorial
BY MENCKEN'S GHOST | DECEMBER 14, 2011
Donald Trump and Sean Hannity: partners in baloney
This day, Dec. 5, 2011, will live in baloney. Today, Wurstmacher Donald Trump was a guest on Wurstmacher Sean Hannity’s radio show.
The two sausage makers began by taking their populist pap about trade with China and putting it through a meat grinder. By the time they were done, the end product had no resemblance to the truth. No doubt, though, it tasted good to their diehard fans in the jingoistic wing of the Republican Party, just as President Obama’s economics baloney tastes good to his loyal supporters in the Marxist wing of the Democrat Party.
Then things went from bad to wurst, er, worse. The two began talking about Veterans’ benefits. Trump made the claim that families of severely wounded soldiers “don’t get anything.” Hannity agreed. Trump then said it twice more, and Hannity agreed twice more.
Trump went on to say that the United States should have taken Iraqi oil and used the proceeds to give a million dollars apiece to the families of American soldiers who were killed or severely wounded in Iraq. He didn’t say anything about innocent Iraqis who were wounded or killed in the crossfire of a war that many Iraqis didn’t want. Nor did he mention the tens of thousands of Christians who have left the country due to persecution by Muslim factions.
However, Trump’s comments were in keeping with the lyrics in Hannity’s new theme song: “We’ll put a boot in your ass / It’s the American way.”
This former artillery officer would like to put the barrel of a 105mm howitzer in the ass of Hannity, who never served in the military. On second thought, make that a 155mm howitzer. One high explosive shell and five bags of powder should be sufficient to dislodge Hannity’s head from his red-white-and-blue ass.
At least Trump graduated with distinction from a military school, although he somehow avoided the draft and never served on active duty. Maybe he was too busy inheriting his daddy’s real estate business.
With a combination of eight years active and reserve duty, plus another four years of ROTC training, I’m not exactly ignorant about the military or veterans’ benefits, especially with my Dad being buried in a Veterans cemetery. Granted, my service was a long time ago, during the era when the USA sent men to die over fictitious dominoes instead of fictitious WMD. Not only did the dominoes not fall, but Vietnam has shifted in the direction of a market economy. And the WMD are now being developed by Iran in the power vacuum created by the USA’s overthrow of the Sunni regime in Iraq.
But in the event that veterans’ benefits have changed since my time in the service, I decided to do some research to verify that the jingoistic duo of Trump and Hannity had indeed spouted baloney.
Indeed they had.
Disabled veterans can receive over $3,100 per month in tax-exempt disability payments. The payments increase if they have a spouse, children, or dependent parents. And they increase even more for serious (and tragic) disabilities, such as an amputation.
Survivor’s benefits are given to the dependents of military personnel killed while on active duty. The benefits include a tax-exempt payment of $100,000, monthly compensation for a spouse and dependent children, education benefits for dependent children, a temporary housing allowance, legal assistance, tax forgiveness for the families of those who died in a combat zone, and homeowner’s assistance.
Whether or not these benefits are enough, they sure aren’t nothing. And they are sure a lot better than what an immigrant family from India gets if the father of the family is shot in the face in his convenience store by a robber at 1 a.m., after he had been at work for 15 hours. Other than a passing mention in the news, there is no media concern about the family getting nothing, certainly not from jingoistic wurstmachers like Trump and Hannity.
Mencken’s Ghost is the nom de plume of an Arizona writer who can be reached at [email protected].
