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Donald Trump Is Wild Mint

January 28, 2016
 Lori Hanes

Writer

The Context

Something has Glenn really lathered up. It's a tiny bottle of hotel shampoo with a hint of wild mint and a touch of ginseng. Gee, that sounds swell, what's the problem? Doesn't he care about his total well-being?

Hotel, Motel, Fancy Soaps Are In

"You know when you stay at a hotel and they have the shampoos --- and they're getting fancier and fancier --- no matter what hotel you stay in, they're getting fancier and fancier," Glenn explained Thursday on The Glenn Beck Program. "Are they supposed to make you feel like, 'Oh, my gosh, this $200 that I spent for this hotel room is darn well worth it now. Seven hundred dollars for a bed to stay overnight, sure, that sounds outrageous, but my gosh, the shampoo was unbelievable.' Now, I don't know about you, but when I go to a hotel and I get into the shower, I'm looking for shampoo. Now, let me define that. I'm looking for something that will wash my hair. I like to call it soap. Or if I really want to get fancy, I'll call it shampoo. But what is shampoo? Soap! That's what I'm looking for."

Keeping Up With the Kardashians

This sense of entitlement and wanting the best of the best (whether it's real or not) is permeating every aspect of our lives: "This is in everything. This isn't just shampoo," Glenn said. "This is in our our television. This is in our schools. This is in the groceries we buy --- in all of the advertisement. This is in our politicians."

Back to Basics

What is it that we really need in Washington, D.C.? "Let's be frank. Let's just be real honest," Glenn said. "It ain't ginseng and wild mint, it's soap. It's shampoo. I don't want the essence of anything anymore. I want the real deal. I want soap."

Common Sense Bottom Line

Let's stick to the basics and stop buying the hype. Donald Trump equals wild mint. First Principles equal soap, and America needs a good scrubbing.

Listen to a segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN: I have in my hands a little bottle of shampoo from a hotel. This bottle of shampoo pisses me off. But this bottle of shampoo explains everything that is going on in our lives. Everything that is happening to America. Everything that is happening in Washington. And the decision that you have to make when you decide who's going to be the next president, all, right here. All, right here, on a little, teeny plastic bottle of shampoo that you get at, you know, any hotel. It pisses me off. It will you. And you'll understand why, right now.

(music)

GLENN: You know when you stay at a hotel and they have the shampoos. And they're getting fancier and fancier. No matter what hotel you stay in, they're getting fancier and fancier. And I don't know. Are they supposed to make you feel like, "Oh, my gosh, this $200 that I spent for this hotel room is darn well worth it now." $700 for a bed to stay overnight, sure, that sounds outrageous. But my gosh, the shampoo was unbelievable.

This is a little, teeny bottle of shampoo that most people won't pay attention to, and they'll use it and it will sit there on the little ledge at the hotel waiting to greet the next unsuspecting guest and help put them to sleep.

It says, "Simply be well. Herbal solutions for total well-being." Now, I don't know about you, but when I go to a hotel and I get into the shower, I'm looking for shampoo. Now, let me define that. I'm looking for something that will wash my hair. I like to call it soap. Or if I really want to get fancy, I'll call it shampoo. But what is shampoo? Soap! That's what I'm looking for.

I'm not getting into the shower and saying, "My gosh. I wish there was a product on this shelf that would give me total well-being."

Now, I read the ingredients on this, and I don't know exactly what is giving me and my hair total well-being, but it might have something to do with above the word shampoo, it says, "Ginseng and wild mint." Now, I don't even know the difference between mint and wild mint.

Do we have to have little street urchins some place around the world in some glorious little village up in the Alps, where it's not mint they're growing in some sort of, you know -- you know, glass greenhouse. No, no, this is wild mint, picked by little street urchins. This is growing in the forest some place under the trees, and they're like, "Oh, Father, over here. I've got some more wild mint."

"Oh, good. Son, we'll be able to eat again tonight because we can sell it to that glorious shampoo company that is making everyone's life complete, and everyone will have well-being because we found the wild mint."

But it also has ginseng. And when I think of washing my hair, I think, "Honey, can you just make a cup of tea for me and throw it in my hair because that would be perfect." If I could just get some ginseng tea with a little bit -- why don't I just wash my hair in a coffee cup? Ginseng, wild mint shampoo for total well-being.

This is everything in our life. This isn't just the little shampoo. This is down to the shampoo that is sitting on the shelf at a -- at a motel or hotel. It's down to that level. It's down to the regular people who are like, "I just want some soap." This is not just in the fancy hotels. This is everywhere now. Wow, I can live the life of the stars. I can go into the Holiday Inn and I can wash my hair like the stars do, with ginseng and wild mint. Oh. Suddenly I'm overcome with this sense of total well-being.

This is in everything. This isn't just shampoo. This is in our -- this is in our -- our television. This is in our schools. This is in the groceries we buy. In all of the advertisement -- this is in our politicians.

What do we need in Washington? Let's be frank. Let's just be real honest. Like when you go and you're standing there naked in all your loveliness in the bathroom and you're ready to crawl into the bathtub and pull something -- as the water is coming out on your head and it's usually cold and you're standing there in the shower and you just want to get clean, what are you looking for? It ain't ginseng and wild mint, it's soap. It's shampoo.

When you're going in and instead of the shower curtain, it's the election booth curtain and you pull that closed, what is it you're looking for?

Well, I'm looking for total well-being, really. What I'm looking for is a politician that has maybe just a touch of green tea and aloe.

No. You're looking for soap. You're looking for somebody who is going to clean this up. That's it.

Now, I don't even know how much green tea or ginseng or wild mint is actually in this, but I bet it's just the mere essence. The mere essence of wild mint. You don't need that much. I mean, sure, it's total well-being, but you don't want to put a lot in there. It's like nitroglycerin. My God, man! Not more than the essence of wild mint! That's all you need. Good Lord!

You look at the -- you look at you will at crap that is on the back of a shampoo bottle, it's got a bunch of -- in the ingredients, it has a bunch of crap you don't even know. What is it? Cleaning chemicals. That's all that is. Soap, that's all that is. The rest is just a perfume to stop the soap. Have you ever had soap that's made, you know, like real soap, like the way they used to make it? It stinks. It's nasty. It will get you clean. But it's nasty stuff. It doesn't smell good. That's what the politicians do.

They put just a hint of wild mint and ginseng on them so they don't stink so bad, when all I really want is soap. All I really want is something that is going to clean Washington up. And we all know what that is. What is it that's going to do that? What is it that's going to do that? What is the soap?

First principles. Period. That's it. I don't know why we're arguing about everything.

Hey, Hillary Clinton, did she send the emails? Did she not send the emails? What did she do? Should she go to jail?

Yeah, she should go to jail. She's admitted to sending emails. She has -- her own emails. When she says -- and this is very carefully worded, "I did not send or receive anything classified. I did not send or receive anything marked classified." You know why? We have it in her own emails from her saying, "Well, all you have to do is cut out -- cut off the top secret classification from the top and the bottom, and then just send me the body of the text and I'll say we didn't send or receive anything classified." That's in her own emails. She's saying how to get around it.

And, by the way, you were the Secretary of State for how many years? You never sent or received. You never had any classified -- you only had your server. That's how you got your emails. That's how you did business. You never sent or received anything? The hell were you doing? Were you in the hotels with the ginseng and wild tea, with the wild mint. Was that you just, "Oh, my gosh. I've just been lathering all day, I have such total well-being here." She should be getting dozens of classified briefings and emails every day. The hell we paying her for?

No, I didn't -- classified, what? I don't even know what you're talking about. So what's going to clean that up?

The soap of the Constitution. Period. We don't need any new laws. We don't need any fancy anything. Did she break the law? Yes or no. Yes or no question. But -- no. It's a yes or no question. Yes, she did -- no, no. You save all of your ginseng and all your wild mint for someone else.

Here's what I want: Soap.

Donald Trump is another great example. He's going to clean things up. Is he? Does he know the Constitution? Is there any soap involved in this guy? He may just be ginseng and wild mint, without any shampoo. He's just the essence that smells good.

Why would I say that? Because what is the soap that will clean up Washington? The soap that will clean up Washington is the rule of law and the Constitution. He doesn't talk about that. He still is talking more and more every day as he's becoming more and more confident about how he will cut deals. That's the problem.

And all of us are looking at him and saying, "Yeah, yeah, I know. But he's got maybe a little bit of aloe in him. I don't know. A green tea. So nice in him." And what is that green tea, what is that aloe? The aloe, the salve that he has an essence of is anger. You're angry, he's angry. That's a little salve, on your frizzy ends of your hair. But it's not really going to help. There's not enough aloe in the green tea and aloe shampoo to do a damn thing. It just makes you feel better. It just makes you stand out of the shower and go, "Oh, my gosh. I have total well-being." And yet, nothing has changed. Nothing has changed.

As you're looking at the candidates that you need to vote for, which one of them is soap? And which one of them is providing you with a total well-being? Which one of you is like the stupid, little container of shampoo that pisses me off, that is trying to be something it will never be and can never be? Shampoo is not made to provide anyone at any time, no matter how expensive or how good it is, it will never provide total well-being. Period.

Are we that shallow? Are we this stupid? I don't want the essence of anything anymore. I want the real deal. I want soap.

Featured Image: Photo Credit: MSPhotographic

A contested Democratic convention could lead to the ONE candidate who could beat Trump, says Michael Medved

Paul Morigi / Stringer/ Getty

On Wednesday's TV show, Glenn Beck sat down with radio show host, author, political commentator, and film critic, Michael Medved.

Michael had an interesting prediction for the 2020 election outcome: a brokered convention by the DNC will usher in former First Lady Michelle Obama to run against President Donald Trump.

Watch the video below to hear why he's making this surprising forecast:

Use code BECK to save $10 on one year of BlazeTV.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

FLASHPOINT? Virginia Gov. Northam declares state of emergency to ban firearms ahead of gun-rights rally


Zach Gibson / Stringer

On Thursday's "Glenn Beck Radio Program," BlazeTV's White House correspondent Jon Miller described the current situation in Virginia after Gov. Ralph Northam (D) declared a state of emergency and banned people carrying guns at Capitol Square just days before a pro-Second-Amendment rally scheduled on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Jon told Glenn that Gov. Northam and the Virginia Legislature are "trying to deprive the people of their Second Amendment rights" but the citizens of Virginia are "rising up" to defend their constitutional rights.

"I do think this is the flashpoint," Jon said. "They [Virginia lawmakers] are saying, 'You cannot exercise your rights ... and instead of trying to de-escalate the situation, we are putting pressure. We're trying to escalate it and we're trying to enrage the citizenry even more'."

Glenn noted how Gov. Northam initially blamed the threat of violence from Antifa for his decision to ban weapons but quickly changed his narrative to blame "white supremacists" to vilify the people who are standing up for the Second Amendment and the Constitution.

"What he's doing is, he's making all all the law-abiding citizens of Virginia into white supremacists," Glenn said.

"Sadly, that's exactly right," Jon replied. "And I think he knows exactly what he's doing."

Watch the video to catch more of the conversation below:

Use code BECK to save $10 on one year of BlazeTV.

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

Ryan: Trump Louisiana Finale

Photo by Jim Dale

Part One. Part Two. Part Three.

At the end of Trump rallies, I would throw on my Carhartt jacket, sneak out of the press area, then blend in with everyone as they left, filing out through swinging doors.

Often, someone held the door open for me. Just 30 minutes earlier, the same person had most likely had most likely hissed at me for being a journalist. And now they were Sunday smiles and "Oh, yes, thank you, sir" like some redneck concierge.

People flooded out of the arena with the stupidity of a fire drill mishap, desperate to survive.

The air smacked you as soon as you crossed the threshold, back into Louisiana. And the lawn was a wasteland of camping chairs and coolers and shopping bags and to-go containers and soda cans and articles of clothing and even a few tents.

In Monroe, in the dark, the Trump supporters bobbled over mounds of waste like elephants trying to tiptoe. And the trash was as neutral to them as concrete or grass. They plodded over it because it, an object, had somehow gotten in their way.

It did not matter that they were responsible for this wreckage.Out in the sharp-edged moonlight, rally-goers hooted and yapped and boogied and danced, and the bbq food truck was all smoke and paper plates.

They were even more pumped than they had been before the rally, like 6,000 eight year olds who'd been chugging Mountain Dew for hours. Which made Donald Trump the father, the trooper, God of the Underworld, Mr. Elite, Sheriff on high horse, the AR-15 sticker of the family.

Ritualistic mayhem, all at once. And, there in Louisiana, Trump's supporters had gotten a taste of it. They were all so happy. It bordered on rage.

Still, I could not imagine their view of America. Worse, after a day of strange hostilities, I did not care.

My highest priority, my job as a reporter, was to care. To understand them and the world that they inhabit. But I did not give a damn and I never wanted to come back.

Worst of all, I would be back. In less than a week.

Was this how dogs felt on the 4th of July? Hunched in a corner while everyone else gets drunk and launches wailing light into the sky? configurations of blue and red and white.

It was 10:00 p.m. and we'd been traveling since 11:00 a.m., and we still had 5 hours to go and all I wanted was a home, my home, any home, just not here, in the cold sweat of this nowhere. Grey-mangled sky. No evidence of planes or satellites or any proof of modern-day. Just century-old bridges that trains shuffled over one clack at a time.

And casinos, all spangles and neon like the 1960s in Las Vegas. Kitchy and dumb, too tacky for lighthearted gambling. And only in the nicer cities, like Shreveport, which is not nice at all.

And swamp. Black water that rarely shimmered. Inhabited by gadflies and leeches and not one single fish that was pretty.

Full of alligators, and other killing types. The storks gnawing on frogs, the vultures never hungry. The coyotes with nobody to stop them and so much land to themselves. The roaches in the wild, like tiny wildebeests.

Then, the occasional deer carcass on the side of the road, eyes splayed as if distracted, tongue out, relaxed but empty. The diseased willows like skeletons in hairnets. The owls that never quit staring. A million facets of wilderness that would outlive us all.

Because Nature has poise. It thrives and is original.

Because silence is impossible. Even in an anechoic chamber, perfectly soundproofed, you can hear your own heartbeat, steady as a drum. A never-ending war.

I put "Headache" by Grouper on repeat as we glided west. We were deadlocked to asphalt, rubber over tarface.

And I thought about lines from a Rita Dove poem titled "I have been a stranger in a strange land"

He was off cataloging the universe, probably,
pretending he could organize
what was clearly someone else's chaos.

Wasn't that exactly what I was doing? Looking for an impossible answer, examining every single accident, eager for meaning? telling myself, "If it happens and matters the next year, in America, I want to be there, or to know what it means. I owe it to whoever cares to listen."

Humans are collectors and I had gone overboard.

Because maybe this wasn't even my home. These landmarks, what did they mean? Was I obvious here? When I smiled, did I trick them into believing that I felt some vague sense of approval? Or did my expressions betray me?

Out in all that garbage-streaked emptiness — despite the occasional burst of passing halogen — I couldn't tell if everything we encountered was haunted or just old, derelict, broken, useless. One never-ending landfill.

Around those parts, they'd made everything into junk. Homes. Roads. Glass. Nature. Life itself, they made into junk.

I cringed as we passed yet another deer carcass mounded on the side of the road.

As written in Job 35:11,

Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds in the sky?

Nobody. Look at nature and you feel something powerful. Look at an animal, in all of its untamable majesty, and you capture a deep love, all swept up in the power of creation. But, here, all I saw were poor creatures who people had slammed into and kept driving. Driving to where? For what reason? What exactly was so important that they left a trail of dead animals behind them?

So I crossed myself dolorously and said an "Our Father" and recited a stanza from Charles Bukowski's "The Laughing Heart"

you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.

Out here, nothing but darkness. Needing some light, by God. Give me something better than a Moon that hides like an underfed coward.

Jade told me about some of the more traumatic things she'd seen while working at the State Fair.

"Bro, they pull roaches out of the iced lemonade jugs and act like nothing happened."

"All right but what about the corn dogs?"

"You do not want to know, little bro."

She looked around in the quiet. "Back in the day, the Louisiana Congress refused to raise the drinking age from 18 to 21," she said. "They didn't want to lose all that drunk gambler money. So the federal government cut off funding to highways."

We glided through moon-pale landscape for an hour before I realized what she had meant. That there weren't any light poles or billboards along the road. Nothing to guide us or distract us. Just us, alone. And it felt like outer space had collapsed, swallowed us like jellybeans.

Like two teenagers playing a prank on the universe.

In the cozy Subaru Crosstrek, in the old wild night, brimming with the uncertainty of life and the nonchalance of failure, we paraded ourselves back to Dallas. Alive in the river silence that follows us everywhere.

New installments come Mondays and Thursdays. Next, the Iowa caucuses. Check out my Twitter. Email me at kryan@blazemedia.com

Amid election security concerns, states should look to blockchain

Wikimedia Commons

The Iowa primary is just around the corner, and concerns of election interference from the last presidential election still loom. Back in 2016, The Associated Press found that a majority of U.S. elections systems still use Windows 7 as an operating system, making them highly susceptible to bugs and errors. And last year, a Mississippi voter tried multiple times to vote for the candidate of his choice, but the system continuously switched his vote to the other candidate. It's pretty clear: America's voting systems desperately need an update.

That's where blockchain voting comes in.

Blockchain voting is a record-keeping system that's 100% verifiable and nearly impossible to hack. Blockchain, the newest innovation in cybersecurity, is set to grow into a $20 billion industry by 2025. Its genius is in its decentralized nature, distributing information throughout a network of computers, requiring would-be hackers to infiltrate a much larger system. Infiltrating multiple access points spread across many computers requires a significant amount of computing power, which often costs more than hackers expect to get in return.

Blockchain voting wouldn't allow for many weak spots. For instance, Voatz, arguably the leading mobile voting platform, requires a person to take a picture of their government-issued ID and a picture of themselves before voting (a feature, of course, not present in vote-by-mail, where the only form of identity verification is a handwritten signature, which is easily forgeable). Voters select their choices and hit submit. They then receive an immediate receipt of their choices via email, another security feature not present in vote-by-mail, or even in-person voting. And because the system operates on blockchain technology, it's nearly impossible to tamper with.

Votes are then tabulated, and the election results are published, providing a paper trail, which is a top priority for elections security experts.

The benefits of blockchain voting can't be dismissed. Folks can cast their vote from the comfort of their homes, offices, etc., vastly increasing the number of people who can participate in the electoral process. Two to three-hour lines at polling places, which often deter voters, would become significantly diminished.

Even outside of the voting increase, the upsides are manifold. Thanks to the photo identification requirements, voter fraud—whether real or merely suspected—would be eliminated. The environment would win, too, since we'd no longer be wasting paper on mail-in ballots. Moreover, the financial burden on election offices would be alleviated, because there's decreased staff time spent on the election, saving the taxpayer money.

From Oregon to West Virginia, elections offices have already implemented blockchain voting, and the results have been highly positive. For example, the city of Denver utilized mobile voting for overseas voters in their 2019 municipal elections. The system was secure and free of technical errors, and participants reported that it was very user-friendly. Utah County used the same system for their 2019 primary and general elections. An independent audit revealed that every vote that was cast on the app was counted and counted correctly. These successful test cases are laying the groundwork for even larger expansions of the program in 2020.

With this vital switch, our elections become significantly more secure, accurate, and efficient. But right now, our election infrastructure is a sitting duck for manipulation. Our current lack of election integrity undermines the results of both local and national elections, fans the flames of partisanship, and zaps voter confidence in the democratic system. While there's never a silver bullet or quick fix to those kinds of things, blockchain voting would push us much closer to a solution than anything else.

Chris Harelson is the Executive Director at Prosperity Council and a Young Voices contributor.